What Is Spikenard (nard) in the Bible?
Plant
A very costly perfume, made from a plant that grows in the Himalaya mountains, very far from Israel. Judas says it was worth “three hundred denarii”: the pay for about three hundred days of work.
Today
The plant still exists, but today it is in danger of disappearing.
Where it appears in the Bible
John 12:3; John 12:5
What the Bible says
John 12:3
Mary therefore took a pound of ointment of right spikenard, of great price, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.
John 12:5
Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?
Douay-Rheims Bible (Challoner revision), public domain.
Source: John 12:3-5 and the NABRE note on John 12:5; Britannica, “spikenard”