Currently, little is known about the natural chemical variability of resins and ambers. To understand how much resin variability occurs naturally we ran experiments on plants and then investigated the resultant resins with FTIR-ATR spectroscopy. We detected that resin viscosity and genetic variation are important factors in determining the amount of variation in resin chemistry. This natural variability needs to be taken into account when testing resin and amber chemistries in the future.