It has a dark thin papery bark, a spongy texture, and the cut surface is marbled with white and blackish or pale brown; it has a musky odor and a bitter aromatic taste.
It is of a browner hue, has the taste of ammoniacum, and gives a much darker tincture than the genuine drug; it is thus easily detected.
The name "sumbal" (a word of Arabic origin, signifying a spike or ear) is applied to several fragrant roots in the East, the principal being Nardostachys jatamansi, (see spikenard).
Half an ounce of a tincture produced narcotic symptoms, confusing the head, causing a tendency to snore even when awake, and giving feelings of tingling, etc., with a strong odour of the drug from the breath and skin which only passed off after a day or two.- thus Mrs. Grieve in her Modern Herbal of 1931, noting also that, among other medicinal effects, the drug derived from the plant resembles Valerian in its action and is used in various hysterical conditions (i.e. has tranquilising effects).
The likely volatile nature of the psychoactive principle involved (suggested by the appearance of the odour of the drug in the breath of those intoxicated by it) may point to psychoactive potential in the incense derived from Ferula moschata from which volatile components would be absorbed via the lungs, when inhaled as vapour or smoke.