And the navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees, and precious stones.
Almug trees - or algum. Parenthetically, along with the valuable presents of the queen of Sheba, is mentioned a foreign wood, which was brought in the Ophir ships. It is thought by some to be the sandal-wood, the produce of a low shrub, resembling the privet, remarkable for the fragrance of the central parts of the stem near the root, and brought from some district of India, where it is still very abundant; by others, supposed to be the Deodar (Cedrus deodara), a species of fragrant fir, much used in India for sacred and important works. Solomon used it as well-fitted by its red colour to be ornamental for stairs in his temple and palace (2 Chronicles 9:11), but chiefly for musical instruments, 'Sandal-wood is found indigenous on the coast of Malabar only; and one of its numerous names there and in Sanskrit is Valgulka-clearly the name which Jewish and Phoenician merchants corrupted into algum, and which in Hebrew was still further changed in almug' (Max Muller, 'Lectures on the Science of Language,' pp. 189-191).