Dammar, or DAMMAR PINE (Agathis, Dammara), a genus of Coniferae, of the family Araucariæ, distinguished from Araucaria by its laterally winged seeds not being adherent to the carpellary leaf. There are four species, all oriental or Australasian, of which the most familiar is A. (Dammara) orientalis or alba of the lower mountain-regions of the Malay Archipelago, Borneo, and the Philippines, a lofty tree with stout, leathery, lanceolate leaves. The timber is light, but the tree is chiefly valuable for its extraordinary abundance of resin, which is not only obtained in quantity from incisions which are best made in the large knot-like prominences of the lower part of the stem and the root, but which naturally exudes so freely as to form large lumps underground, and foot-long icicles or stalactite-like masses hanging from the branches. According to Miguel it even drips from the branches in Sumatra in such quantity as often to form incrustations and rock-like masses on the banks of streams. At first semifluid and of pleasant balsamic odour, it soon hardens into an inodorous transparent mass, of no great hardness, but of glossy appearance and conchoidal fracture. It is soluble in cold ether, and at all temperatures in ethereal and fatty oils; but not entirely in boiling alcohol. It is of great value in the preparation of transparent and rapidly drying varnishes. The name signifies in Malay, 'light.' The Kauri Pine (q.v.) of New Zealand is A. australis. D. ovata of New Caledonia has also similar properties.
The same name is applied in commerce to the resin of other and unrelated trees. Thus the dammar of shipyards is derived from a species of Canarium, an Amyridaceous tree, while Black Dammar is a kind of pitch derived from the allied Marignia. Shorea robusta, a dipteraceous tree, yields pitch and resin used in Indian dockyards, and sometimes also called dammar. Dammar is also occasionally confused with kinds of copal; thus the resin of Vateria indica (Dipteraceæ) is sometimes known as Dammar or Piny Dammar. It is the source of the Piny Varnish of India. See COPAL.