Agroforestree database This database provides detailed information on a total of 670 agroforestry tree species. It is intended to help field workers and researchers in selecting appropriate species for agroforestry systems and technologies. For each species, the database includes information on identity, ecology and distribution, propagation and management, functional uses, pests and diseases and a bibliography. This project has been funded by the British Department for International Development (DFID, the European Union and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). |
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| Acacia aneura | Timber: The heartwood of mulga is dark brown with contrasting markings of golden yellow; the sapwood is white. The wood is very hard, heavy (850-1100 kg/cum ) and durable in the ground; it turns well and takes a high polish. The aborigine people of Australia use the wood to make weapons and small ornaments. |
| Acacia aulacocarpa | Timber: The sapwood of A. aulacocarpa is narrow, creamy yellow to straw-coloured, distinct; heartwood pale olive-brown to grey-brown, often attractively streaked with grey bands. The heartwood is reddish-brown, hard, heavy (600-800 kg/cubic metre basic density), moderately durable and tough. Used as a construction timber, for furniture and cabinetwork, flooring, boat building, tool handles, boxes and crates, joinery and turnery. |
| Acacia auriculiformis | Timber: The sapwood is yellow; the heartwood light brown to dark red, straight grained and reasonably durable. The wood has a high basic density (500-650 kg/m³), is fine-grained, often attractively figured and finishes well. It is excellent for turnery articles, toys, carom coins, chessmen and handicrafts. Also used for furniture, joinery, tool handles, and for construction if trees of suitable girth are available. |
| Acacia catechu | Timber: Comparatively heavy with a density of 880-1 000 kg/cubic m at 15% mc. It is recommended to saw the comparatively heavy wood of A. catechu when green; the wood is also very strong, durable and resistant to white ants. Timber is used for house posts, agricultural implements and wheels. Spent chips left over after extraction of katha and cutch can be used for the manufacture of hardboards. |
| Acacia cincinnata | Timber: Wood is dark brown, attractively marked, close-grained, hard, tough, with a basic density of 510-580 kg/cubic m; it is somewhat greasy in nature. It is used for decorative purposes including cabinet work and turnery, and is also suitable for poles and posts. The wood is reportedly resistant to the teredo marine borer and may be useful for some marine purposes. |
| Acacia crassicarpa | Timber: The sapwood is pale yellowish-brown and heartwood golden-brown. The wood is strong and durable with a density of 670-710 kg/cubic metre. It is suitable for a wide range of sawn timber end-uses including light structural and decorative purposes. Examples include construction, furniture, flooring, board and boat building and tobacco curing firewood as is the case in Tanzania. |
| Acacia elatior | Timber: The Turkana of Kenya use the wood to make drinking vessels. |
| Acacia erioloba | Timber: The wood is hard, durable and resistant to borers and termites. The heartwood is dark purple and has been used for poles, especially for the center posts for houses, mine props, wagon building, utensils and even machinery (but the machinery must be kept well oiled). Roots are used as a substitute for reeds to make flutes. |
| Acacia etbaica | Timber: Provides the pillars and beams to hold the heavy earthen roofs of houses in northern Ethiopia. |
| Acacia ferruginea | Timber: Wood is very heavy (1120-1168kg/Cubic M), straight grained and very coarse-textured. Sapwood is thick; yellowish white. Heartwood is olive-brown, turning darker with age. It can be seasoned well with considerable care. The wood is mostly used in cartwheels, posts, beams and agricultural implements. |
| Acacia glauca | Timber: Wood is used for making household tools. |
| Acacia karroo | Timber: Few trees reach a commercial size, limiting their commercial use. The wood saws easily, planes to a smooth finish, is moderately durable, and glues and varnishes well for furniture. It is, however, likely to twist in seasoning and is susceptible to attack by borers and fungi. Kraft properties have been tested, and it pulps quite easily under standard kraft macro-pulping conditions. |
| Acacia koa | Timber: A. koa heartwood is highly valued for its unique grain, varied color and workability. It seasons well without serious warping or splitting. Curly-grained wood, the result of both stress and genetics, is preferred over straight-grained wood. Wood color ranges from a subtle yellow to a striking dark red-purple. The specific gravity of wood averages 0.40, but with curly-grained wood can be as high as 0.65. It is the premier Hawaiian timber for furniture, cabinetry, interior work and woodcrafts. |
| Acacia laeta | Timber: Wood is used for local construction. |
| Acacia lahai | Timber: Wood red, hard and durable. Timber is used for construction in Kenya. |
| Acacia leptocarpa | Timber: The white sapwood and dark brown heartwood of A. leptocarpa are close grained, hard, decorative and useful in turnery and cabinet work. The small dimensions of the tree limit its range of uses; it could provide small posts and poles for village use. |
| Acacia leucophloea | Timber: Its wood is strong, heavy and hard, density 720-890 kg/cu m at 15 % moisture content. It seasons well and takes a good polish. The brick-red heartwood is very beautiful and is used to make decorative furniture. The pale yellow sapwood is perishable. The utilization of this species is limited because its wood has irregular interlocked grain, a rough texture and is difficult to work. Commodities produced from the wood include poles, farming implements, carts, wheels, turnery, indoor construction timbers, flooring and furniture. |
| Acacia mangium | Timber: A. mangium is an important source of wattle timber; the wood is used for construction, boat building, furniture and cabinet making, and veneer. It makes attractive furniture and cabinets, mouldings, and door and window components. Conversion into veneer and plywood is feasible with no specific processing requirements. It is unsuitable for timber because it contains knots and flutes, has a high incidence of rot and is subject to termite attack. Its density is (min. 450) 530-690 kg/cubic m at 15% mc. |
| Acacia mearnsii | Timber: The wood is moderately hard to hard, light yellowish to light red, heavy, durable, fairly tough and strong, with a specific gravity of 0.7-0.85; it is moderately easy to work and polishes well. It is used for house poles, mine props, tool handles, cabinet work, joinery, flooring, construction timber and matchwood. |
| Acacia melanoxylon | Timber: The moderately heavy, light to dark brown, strong wood that is moderately resistant to termites is used for railway coaches, cabinet work, furniture, boat building, bear casks, plywood and tennis racquets. |
| Acacia mellifera | Timber: The wood is taken for building huts and the branches for fencing. |
| Acacia nilotica subsp nilotica | Timber: Since the time of the Pharoahs, large timber trees have been exploited from the riverine forests of the Nile. Sapwood is yellowish-white and heartwood reddish-brown, hard, heavy, durable, difficult to work, although it takes a high polish. Because of its resins, it resists insects and water, and it is harvested for boat making, posts, buildings, water pipes, well planking, ploughs, cabinet work, wheels, tool handles, carts, mallets and other implements. It is an attractive wood, good for carving and turnery. It is the best mining timber in Pakistan. Sudan forests have been managed on a 20-30 year rotation producing termite resistant timber especially suitable for railway sleepers. |
| Acacia pennatula | Timber: A. pennatula is a source of building materials, particularly fence posts however these have to be replaced every 3-5 years. |
| Acacia saligna | Timber: A. saligna is used for vine stakes and small agricultural implements. |
| Acacia senegal | Timber: The heartwood is almost black and takes polish well. It is used for making carts and Persian wheels, sugar cane crushers, agricultural implements, horse girths and tool handles. |
| Acacia seyal | Timber: The wood is pale yellow to medium brown, with localized pinkish-brown patches and some dark mahogany-red heartwood in larger or older individuals. A. seyal wood has potential in rural areas as timber. If the tree is grown with few knots and straight grain, sprayed with insecticide after felling, and treated with preservatives, the timber works well and is hard and tough. It produces a hard, dark wood, called shittim wood, with interlocked, irregular and coarse-textured grain. It takes good a polish but is susceptible to insect attack. Therefore, it must be properly treated by splitting it, putting it under water for a few weeks and then drying it thoroughly. Shittim wood was used by ancient Egyptians for pharaohs’ coffins. |
| Acacia sieberiana | Timber: The termite resistant, moderately hardwood has a featureless, off-white grain with little distinction between heartwood and sapwood. It is easy to work and is used in making furniture, tool handles and mortars. |
| Acacia tortilis | Timber: The sapwood and heartwood are white and lustrous, with the heartwood aging to reddish-brown. Growth rings are distinct and separated by brown lines. The wood is moderately soft, not very strong, and is readily attacked by decay-causing fungi and insects. It should be promptly converted after felling and subjected to rapid drying conditions. The timber is not durable in the open but moderately so under cover. It is used for planking, boxes, poles, moisture-proof plywood, gun and rifle parts, furniture, house construction and farm implements. It is believed that Noah of the Old Testament made his ark from the wood of A. tortilis. |
| Acacia xanthophloea | Timber: The wood is hard, heavy, pale brown with a red tinge. It is valuable as timber; it should be seasoned before use, as it is liable to crack. It is used to make poles and posts. |
| Acrocarpus fraxinifolius | Timber: The sapwood is whitish; the heartwood is bright red to brownish-red with darker veins, making it very decorative. The wood is not very durable and is prone to attack by fungi and insects, but it impregnates well. It is heavy, moderately hard, and compact; specific gravity varies between 0.55 and 0.7 g/cubic cm. It is easy to work with tools and is well suited for turnery, carving and polishing. The wood is used for interior trim, panelling, furniture and cabinet work. Within its native range it is also used for shingles, general construction, floors, stairways, doors, tea crates, beehive frames, and after being impregnated, for railway ties. |
| Adansonia digitata | Timber: The wood is whitish, spongy and light (air-dried 320 kg/cubic m). It is used for making canoes, rafts, insulating boards, wooden platters and trays, boxes and floats for fishing nets. |
| Adenanthera pavonina | Timber: Adenanthera yields medium to heavy hardwood with a density of 595-1100 kg/cubic m at 15% moisture content. The heartwood is bright yellow when fresh, turning red; it is sharply demarcated from the light grey sapwood, which can be up to 5 cm wide. The heartwood is closely and even grained, with a moderately fine to slightly coarse and even texture. Wood moderately lustrous. Shrinkage is variable, and the wood seasons very well with only slight warping. The wood is very hard, durable and strong. It can be easy or somewhat difficult to work, easy to plane and it takes a high finish. The heartwood is resistant to dry wood termites. The wood is used for bridge and household construction (beams, posts, joists and rafters), flooring, paving blocks and vehicle bodies. It may also be suitable for furniture and cabinet work and turnery. |
| Aegle marmelos | Timber: The wood is strongly aromatic when freshly cut. It is gray-white, hard, but not durable; has been used for carts and construction, though it is inclined to warp and crack during curing. It is best utilized for carving, small-scale turnery, tool and knife handles, pestles and combs, taking a fine polish. |
| Afzelia africana | Timber: A. africana has a yellow white sapwood (3-8 cm thick) and a yellow brown heartwood, just after the tree has been felled, turning reddish brown once seasoned. The wood is heavy (790 kg/m3 at 12% humidity, 820 kg/ m3 when air-seasoned). It has properties, which make it excellent for many uses. It is used in carpentry, canoe and house building, furniture making, flooring, and heavy construction. It is also commonly used in woodcarvings, mortars, poles, pilings and other traditional uses. The white or yellow substance, afzelin, in the vessels can cause the wood to stain textiles and other materials that come into contact with it when damp. This species is under pressure from exploitation and it is considered vulnerable according to IUCN. |
| Afzelia quanzensis | Timber: Sapwood is pale brown, and heartwood is dark reddish-brown with paler patches. The wood is hard and easy to work; it polishes well, is durable, resistant to termites and borers on the ground and teredo in seawater. It can be used for construction of doors, shutters, general outdoor joinery, furniture, wagons, railway sleepers, musical instruments and in boat building. |
| Agathis macrophylla | Timber: Its finely grained, pale, easily worked, and uniform timber is of major commercial importance with various high value end-uses, including furniture, handicrafts, veneer, boat building, light construction, and paneling. |
| Agathis philippinensis | Timber: Its high quality timber is used for many general purposes and is much in demand. |
| Ailanthus altissima | Timber: The wood is yellow, ring-porous, moderately hard and heavy (up to 650 kg/cu m at 12 % moisture content). Though little used, except in poorer countries, the wood is suitable for cabinetry, cellulose manufacture, furniture, lumber, pulp, utensils and woodwork. It is difficult to split but easy to work and polish. |
| Ailanthus excelsa | Timber: The wood is easily worked but is perishable and subject to insect attack and stain. It is used in boxes, crates, poles, fishing floats, tool handles, matches and drums. |
| Ailanthus triphysa | Timber: Wood is used for making boats, matches, fishing floats and weaponry accessories e.g. sword handles and spear sheaths. |
| Albizia adianthifolia | Timber: The wood is clean, light, soft, straight-grained, used largely for naves in South Africa and suitable for many other general purposes. The wood works well with a good finish. The colour is golden yellow, sometimes with greenish tinge, making attractive-coloured parquet floors. |
| Albizia amara | Timber: The wood from this species is darkish in colour, fine grained and hard. It can therefore be used for furniture making, agricultural implements and construction. |
| Albizia anthelmintica | Timber: Wood used for poles, posts, furniture, implement handles, carvings and turnery. |
| Albizia chinensis | Timber: The wood is lightweight, soft and not very durable. Sapwood is white, heartwood light to dark brown. Its use is limited to house building, light furniture, tea chests and veneers. In India, it is used for boat building. The wood is resistant to termite and other insects attack. |
| Albizia coriaria | Timber: The sapwood is soft but the heartwood hard and durable. Timber used for boat building, utensils and furniture manufacture. |
| Albizia ferruginea | Timber: A. ferruginea wood is medium-heavy 600-700 kg/cu. m when air seasoned; reasonably hard and durable. The heartwood is moderately resistant to termites. The wood saws easily and is used for interior construction, building of vehicle bodies, veneer production, furniture and wood carvings. It is advisable to treat surfaces with a grain filler before polishing. Wood also suitable for wooden houses. |
| Albizia gummifera | Timber: Bears pale brown heartwood of medium strength. Used as timber but not very durable. This timber is highly susceptible to wood borer attack. |
| Albizia julibrissin | Timber: The wood is used in furniture making. |
| Albizia lebbeck | Timber: Sapwood is pale; heartwood is dark brown with black streaks and very decorative. It is moderately heavy and hard, strong and fairly durable, with a specific gravity of 0.5-0.6 kg/cubic m. The wood seasons well, works and polishes easily, can be used for interior moulding, parquet, furniture, panelling, turnery and general construction. It is also used for making agricultural implements and mine props. Timber plantations in India clear felled after 25-30 years yield about 10-12 cubic m/ha per year of timber, but under semi-arid conditions and on shallow soils, a mean increment of 2-3 cubic m/ha is obtained. |
| Albizia odoratissima | Timber: The heartwood of mature trees is a beautiful dark brown color. The premium quality wood is suitable for paneling and furniture. It is also used for carts, wheels, farm implements and construction timbers. Wood weight at 12% moisture content is 735 kg/cu m. The wood is 20-40% stronger than teak. |
| Albizia procera | Timber: A. procera has a large amount of non-durable, yellowish-white sapwood. The heartwood is hard and heavy, light or dark brown with light and dark bands. Due to the broadly interlocked nature of the grain, it is more suitable for use in large sections where a bolder effect is desired, such as in large-sized panels and tabletops. It seasons and polishes well. The wood is used chiefly for construction, furniture, veneer, cabinet work, flooring, agricultural implements, moulding, carts, carriages, cane crushers, carvings, boats, oars, oil presses and rice pounders. It is resistant to several species of termites, including Bifiditermes beesoni, Cryptotermes cynocephalus and Coptotermes curvignathus, although the last is reported in India as a pest of the tree. |
| Albizia saman | Timber: The sapwood is a cream colour and the heartwood is dark brown,taking a high polish. With its rich dark-and-light pattern, the wood is highly prized for carvings, furniture and panelling. The wood shrinks so little that products may be carved out of green wood without fear of splitting or warping as the wood dries. In Hawaii, bowls and other craft products made from the wood are in such high demand that the local wood supply is supplemented by imports from Indonesia and the Philippines. A moderately durable wood, it is also used in boat building. The beautiful, high-quality wood is used for interior trim, crafts, boxes, veneer, plywood and general construction. |
| Albizia versicolor | Timber: The termite-resistant wood is often used for making furniture, cabinets, parquet floors and as general timber woods on the farm and in the building trade. |
| Albizia zygia | Timber: Produces a class three timber with the trade name “Okuro”, this is a quality timber with a pale brown heartwood fairly easy to work, durable but not termite proof. Used in construction, making handles of farm implements, household utensils and furniture. A. zygia is a preferred species for wood carving in the Democratic Republic of Congo. |
| Aleurites moluccana | Timber: Wood whitish and soft and suitable as a timber species. |
| Allanblackia floribunda | Timber: It produces a fairly durable timber suitable for use under damp conditions especially in harbours, bridges piers and pit props. The wood is resistant to marine borers. |
| Allanblackia stuhlmannii | Timber: The wood has timber value and is used in furniture, boxes, crates, beehives and water containers. |
| Allanblackia ulugurensis | Timber: The timber is suitable for furniture, crates, boxes and beehives. |
| Alnus acuminata | Timber: The wood is light yellowish-brown to pink, odorless and tasteless, without difference between the heartwood and sapwood. It dries easily and preserves well. It has even grain, seasons fairly well, and is easy to work and finish by hand or machine. Despite its light weight, it is tough and strong, and is sometimes used for construction. Timber is used for posts, poles, lumber, boxes, broom handles, plywood cores, particleboard and musical instruments. A match company in Colombia evaluated 20 species and found A. acuminata the best suited for making match sticks. |
| Alnus cordata | Timber: Its timber can be used for construction purposes in wet conditions, since Alder wood is virtually resistant to decay under water. Its poles have been used as foundation poles for the houses and bridges of Venice. It can also be used for firewood. |
| Alnus japonica | Timber: In the Philippines, it has been found suitable as bed logs for shiitake mushroom (Cortinellus shiitake) cultivation. The wood is suitable for making furniture, tools, packaging, and production of charcoal for gunpowder. |
| Alnus nepalensis | Timber: Although not among the best construction timbers, A. nepalensis has an even grain, seasons fairly well, and is easy to saw and finish by hand or machine. The wood preserves fairly well but is perishable if subjected to alternately wet and dry conditions. It is also subject to discolouration by oxidation and fungal sap stain. It is suitable for boxes, splints and matches, poles, general carpentry, furniture parts, turnery and newsprint. |
| Alnus rubra | Timber: Wood moderately dense (specific gravity 0.33-0.48), fine and even textured; it is easy to work and stain. The wood is used for furniture, panelling and pulp. |
| Alphitonia zizyphoides | Timber: The timber is used in house construction and for the manufacture of tools, weapons, and handicrafts and furniture with good technical properties, easy to saw, finish, and season. The wood is also used to make canoes and canoe paddles. |
| Alstonia boonei | Timber: The sapwood, which is not differentiated from the heartwood, is very wide, up to 200 mm, soft, and light in weight when dried. The wood weighs about 400 kg/cubic m. Nearly yellowish-white when freshly cut, the timber darkens on exposure. It has a low lustre and no characteristic odour or taste. The grain is generally straight, and the texture is fine to medium, but the appearance of the wood is often marred by latex canals (slitlike holes about 6 mm across), which often occur at regular intervals. The wood is also liable to staining. It works easily with hand and machine tools, but because of its softness, it is essential to use tools with sharp cutting edges. The wood can be glued, stained and polished satisfactorily. Export prospects are doubtful, although it has a local potential for stools, carvings, domestic utensils, toys, masks, canoes, horns, light carpentry, boxes and wood wool for packing bananas. The well-known Asante stools of Ghana are made from it. |
| Alstonia scholaris | Timber: A. scholaris is the most important source of pulai timber. The density of the wood is 270-490 kg/cubic m at 15% mc. Heartwood cream to pale yellow, sapwood wide and visually indistinct from the heartwood. Often has strong odour and a bitter taste. It is used for pattern making, corestock, plywood, carving and mouldings. The wood is also used for making coffins in Sri Lanka and school boards in Myanmar. |
| Altingia excelsa | Timber: The wood is red, very durable and can be used in direct contact with the soil. Because of its long, branchless bole, it is favoured for frames of bridges, columns and beams for construction, power and telephone transmission poles and railway sleepers. The timber is used in heavy construction, vehicle bodies, ship and boat building, heavy flooring, rafters, veneer, plywood and pulp. |
| Anacardium occidentale | Timber: The wood of A. occidentale (‘white mahogany’ in Latin America) is fairly hard with a density of 500 kg/cm. It finds useful applications in wheel hubs, yoke, fishing boats, furniture, false ceilings and interior decoration. Boxes made from the wood are collapsible but are strong enough to compete with conventional wooden packing cases. |
| Andira inermis | Timber: The wood is very hard, heavy (0.77g/cm³), and very resistant to attack by fungi and termites. Andira inermis lumber has been used for bridges, railroad tracks and waterfront docks and also to make poles, furniture, billiard-cues, umbrella handles and boats. |
| Annona muricata | Timber: Sapwood is whitish and heartwood brown. The wood is soft, light (specific gravity of 0.4), not durable; it is rarely used as timber but has been used for ox yokes. |
| Annona reticulata | Timber: Custard apple wood is yellow, rather soft, fibrous but durable, moderately close-grained, with a specific gravity of 0.65. It is used to make yokes for oxen. |
| Annona senegalensis | Timber: Wood is soft and white or light brown in colour; it is used for poles and tool handles. |
| Annona squamosa | Timber: The light yellow sapwood and brownish heartwood are soft, light in weight and weak. |
| Anogeissus latifolia | Timber: Produces a heavy hardwood with a density of 760-940 kg/cu m. Heartwood absent or small; texture fine to medium and even. Shrinkage upon seasoning is moderate to high, and the wood is difficult to season as it is liable to warping, splitting and surface checking. It is possible to modify surface checking completely by soaking in solutions of 50% polyethylene glycol-600 for 1 day. The wood is hard, strong, and can be difficult to saw. When mixed with other woods can make good packing and writing paper. |
| Anthocephalus cadamba | Timber: Sapwood white with a light yellow tinge becoming creamy yellow on exposure; not clearly differentiated from the heartwood. The wood has a density of 290-560 kg/cu m at 15% moisture content, a fine to medium texture; straight grain; low luster and has no characteristic odor or taste. It is easy to work with hand and machine tools, cuts cleanly, gives a very good surface and is easy to nail. However, the wood is rated as non-durable, graveyard tests in Indonesia show an average life in contact with the ground of less than 1.5 years. The timber air dries rapidly with little or no degrade. Kadamb wood is very easy to preserve using either open tank or pressure-vacuum systems. The timber is used for plywood, light construction, pulp and paper, boxes and crates, dug-out canoes, and furniture components. Kadamb yields a pulp of satisfactory brightness and performance as a handsheet. The wood can be easily impregnated with synthetic resins to increase its density and compressive strength. Kadam is becoming one of the most frequently planted trees in the tropics. |
| Antiaris toxicaria | Timber: It yields a lightweight hardwood with a density of 250-540 kg /cu.m. There is little difference between the sap and heartwood; it is yellow-white and soft with moderate shrinkage upon seasoning. The wood has good peeling properties making it a good choice for veneer production. The timber is also used in construction of beer canoes. Wood treatment using boron, chromium, arsenic fluoride treated with 5 and 10% BFCA preservative by hot immersion (1, 2 or 3 h at 60-70 deg C) followed by cold immersion for 24 h was suitable. Rapid conversion and the application of anti stain chemicals upon felling are essential, as the wood is liable to sap-stain. The wood is easily attacked by termites and the marine-borer Limnoria tripunctata. |
| Antidesma bunius | Timber: The timber is reddish and hard. If soaked in water, it becomes heavy and hard. |
| Araucaria bidwillii | Timber: The wood is very much like that of Araucaria cunninghamii, pale pinkish in colour, even in texture, with faint growth rings, and with a density of 520 kg/cubic m. It is not susceptible to lyctus attack. |
| Araucaria cunninghamii | Timber: A. cunninghamii produces a medium-quality softwood for use as general-purpose construction timber; better grades are suitable for internal finishes for buildings, furniture and cabinet making. It is also an excellent veneer species and is used as such. |
| Arbutus unedo | Timber: The wood is used in Greece to make flutes. |
| Areca catechu | Timber: Arecanut stem forms a useful building material in the villages, and it is widely used throughout southeast Asia for a variety of construction purposes. The timber can also be used in making a variety of utility articles such as rulers, shelves and waste paper baskets. Nails made from areca stem are widely used in the furniture industry. |
| Arenga pinnata | Timber: The very hard outer part of the trunk is used for barrels, flooring and furniture. Posts for pepper vines, boards, tool handles and musical instruments like drums are all made from the wood of A. pinnata. |
| Argania spinosa | Timber: The wood of the argan, amazingly indestructible by insects, has been used for centuries in carpentry, charcoal, construction and utensils at local level. |
| Artocarpus altilis | Timber: The wood is differentiated into yellow or brownish-yellow sapwood and heartwood, golden speckled with orange. The golden yellow colour darkens with age. The wood is very light (density 505-645 kg/cubic m at 15% mc), durable, soft, but quite resistant in spite of its low specific gravity. Traditionally it was widely used for construction of houses and canoes because of its resistance to termites and marine worms. The wood is used in Haiti to make bowls, carvings, furniture and even surfboards. |
| Artocarpus camansi | Timber: The wood is lightweight, flexible, and easy to work and carve into statues, bowls, fishing floats, and other objects. |
| Artocarpus heterophyllus | Timber: Wood is yellow at first, becoming red, with a specific gravity of 0.6-0.7. It is classified as medium hardwood. It is resistant to termite attack and fungal and bacterial decay and is easy to season. It takes polish beautifully. Though not as strong as teak, A. heterophyllus wood is considered superior to teak (Teclona grandis) for furniture, construction, turnery and inlay work, masts, oars, implements and musical instruments. The wood is widely used in India and Sri Lanka and is even exported to Europe. Roots are highly prized for carvings and picture framing. |
| Artocarpus integer | Timber: Wood, sold under the trade name jack, is as strong as teak (Tectona grandis), takes a good polish, saws and works easily, and is durable under water. It is generally not attacked by fungi and termites. |
| Artocarpus lakoocha | Timber: The wood is hard and termite resistant with a weight of about 640 kg/m3. It is used in heavy construction, poles, beams, furniture boats, wood based materials and plywood. |
| Artocarpus mariannensis | Timber: The light-weight, flexible wood is easy to work and used to make small canoes, carve into statues, bowls, fishing floats, and other objects, although the wood needs to be protected from direct sunlight. |
| Ateleia herbert-smithii | Timber: Wood is hard, strong, fine-textured and quite easy to work. The wood is used in making posts and material for house construction. The sapwood is preferred for making wooden handles because of its strength. |
| Aucomea klaineana | Timber: Okoumé is a lightweight, comparatively soft hardwood with a density of (320-)430-450(-570) kg/m³ at 12% moisture content. Okoumé is a major commercial timber in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, representing more than 70% of timber production, while it is of lesser importance in Congo. The timber is mainly exported as logs to Europe. It is made into blockboard, particle board and veneer, and is widely used in boat building for decorative interior paneling and for exterior applications. The wood is also suitable for light interior construction, carpentry, furniture, sports equipment, cigar boxes and packing cases. Logs are traditionally used for the construction of canoes. The wood is suitable for the production of pulp for papermaking. |
| Averrhoa bilimbi | Timber: The wood is white, soft but tough, even-grained, and weighs 35 lbs/cu ft. It is seldom available for carpentry. |
| Averrhoa carambola | Timber: The soft, whitish wood is sometimes used for timber. |
| Azadirachta excelsa | Timber: Sentang is a lightweight to medium-weight hardwood, the heartwood is pale reddish-brown and distinctly demarcated from the yellowish-white, greyish white or sometimes grey-pink sapwood. The wood density is 550-780 kg/cu m at 15% moisture content. Sentang wood is rated as non-durable to moderately durable. The wood is generally easy to work with good boring and planing properties, and takes a good finish. The timber has been used for construction work (joinery, interior finishing and flooring) and for furniture. Its veneer potential is high. |
| Azadirachta indica | Timber: A. indica is a species of the mahogany family, and although it has some of the characteristics of a cabinetry wood, its grain is rough and does not polish well. The wood is, nevertheless, used to make wardrobes, bookcases and closets, as well as packing cases because its insect repellent quality helps to protect the contents from insect damage. The main stem of the tree is also widely used to make posts for construction or fencing because the wood is termite resistant. The density of the wood is 720-930 kg/cubic m at 12% mc. |
| Azanza garckeana | Timber: The deep brown mottled wood is used for making bows, tool handles, small pieces of furniture, implement handles and knife sheaths. |
| Balanites aegyptiaca | Timber: The wood is pale yellow or yellowish-brown. Heartwood and sapwood are not clearly differentiated. The wood is hard, durable, worked easily and made into yokes, wooden spoons, pestles, mortars, handles, stools and combs. It shows no serious seasoning defects and no tendency towards surface checking or splitting. The wood saws cleanly and easily, planes without difficulty to a smooth finish and is easy to chisel. It glues firmly and takes a clear varnish. The timber has traditionally been a minor product. The usually small log size and the prevalence of stem fluting makes sawmill processing difficult. |
| Barringtonia procera | Timber: Despite its poor quality, the wood is used for crafts and temporary light construction. The wood is sometimes used for making paddles in the Reef Islands, Temotu Province, Solomon Islands. |
| Barringtonia racemosa | Timber: B. racemosa yields a medium-weight hardwood with a density of 480-815 kg/m³ at 15% mc. Heartwood is pale yellow-brown, sometimes with reddish tinge, not differentiated from the sapwood; grain is straight to interlocked; texture moderately fine and even. The wood is not durable; sapwood is permeable, heartwood moderately resistant to pressure impregnation. The wood is light and soft and is used for light work that does not require great strength. Utilized for temporary construction, local house building (posts and beams), general planking, flooring, boat building, mouldings, interior finish, handles of non-striking tools, household utensils, agricultural implements, boxes and crates and wooden pallets. It is suitable for veneer and plywood manufacturing. In India, it is used additionally for carts, rice pounders and cabinetwork. In the Philippines, it has been reported that when treated with preservatives, the timber can be used to make good ties and paving blocks. In the Pacific region, the wood has additionally been used for carving and turnery. |
| Bauhinia purpurea | Timber: The wood is used for agricultural implements. |
| Bauhinia rufescens | Timber: The light-brown, fine-grained wood can be used for carpentry, joinery and wood-carving if sizes sufficiently large are available; otherwise it is used as stakes and fence poles. |
| Bauhinia tomentosa | Timber: The wood makes rafters for huts. |
| Bauhinia variegata | Timber: The wood is brown and moderately hard and used for agricultural implements. |
| Berchemia discolor | Timber: An important timber species of southern Africa. The sapwood is pale brown; heartwood hard, heavy (air-dry 992 kg/m³) and fine grained, yellow-brown with a reddish tinge. The wood is excellent for making furniture such as tables, chairs and benches and is also used in making poles, pestles and hair combs. |
| Bertholletia excelsa | Timber: B. excelsa is a source of fine timber, and the durable wood is sought by boat builders. Fruit pericarps are sometimes used to make carvings. |
| Bischofia javanica | Timber: Bishop wood is medium-weight and moderately hard. The heartwood is purplish-brown to reddish-brown and is sharply differentiated from the narrow, pale brown to pale reddish-brown sapwood. The density is 520-1 010 kg/m³ at 15 % moisture content, grain is generally interlocked, texture moderately fine to rather coarse and even, wood surface dull to slightly glossy. Fresh wood smells of vinegar. It is used for general construction (beams, posts), bridges, decking, sleepers, mining props, flooring, interior finish, veneer, plywood, implements, carving etc. |
| Bixa orellana | Timber: The sapwood is whitish and the heartwood light brown or yellowish. The wood is soft, light weight (specific gravity 0.4), porous, weak and not durable. |
| Blighia sapida | Timber: Timber from B. sapida is used in making furniture. |
| Bombacopsis quinata | Timber: The heartwood of B. quinata is reddish in colour and the sapwood cream or white. The wood is known for its durability and workability; it is used for furniture, doors, window and ceiling frames, roof construction, interior panelling, particleboard, plywood and veneer. |
| Bombax costatum | Timber: The wood is pale yellow to whitish with an orange lustre when newly felled, it soon turns grey when exposed to sunlight. There are no visible differences between the heartwood and the sapwood. The wood is very soft and weighs 350-450 kg/m³ when air-dried. It is moderately solid, easy to season and not liable to major warping or shrinkage. Untreated, the wood is soon attacked and destroyed by fungi and insects. Wood is workable, timber used in constructing dug-out canoes and match-stick manufacture. |
| Borassus aethiopum | Timber: The wood is hard, moderately heavy and brown with black fibres. The strong trunks are very resistant to decay and to insects, especially termites. They are frequently used as posts and for construction of bridges. The boards cut from the trunks are used for the construction of shower cabins. The trunk and leaf stalks are used to make stakes. In Mozambique, people use the trees to make dugout canoes. Other products include door frames, roof materials, tool handles and drums. |
| Boscia angustifolia | Timber: Wood hard, used in carpentry and water storage vessels. |
| Boscia senegalensis | Timber: Wood is soft and workable when boiled and in Mauritania, when large enough, is used in house construction. |
| Boswellia serrata | Timber: It is used in cheap furniture, ammunition boxes, mica boxes, packing cases, cement barrels, well construction, water pipes, matches, plywood and veneers. |
| Brachylaena huillensis | Timber: The wood is pale yellow to pale brown, with characteristic storeyed structure, scented somewhat like sandalwood, straight grained with conspicuous growth rings; texture is very fine, even, strong and stiff. But its failure in bending is sudden and complete. It is hard to work but does turn and work well with sharp tools. It takes a high polish but splits easily along the grain. It is used in flooring, furniture and joinery. In Kenya, it is a favourite wood for carving artefacts. |
| Brachystegia spiciformis | Timber: The wood is reddish-brown, coarse, not durable, difficult to season, subject to termite attack, tends to twist, split and warp. Even when treated, it is a rather inferior general purpose timber. It can be used for furniture and railway sleepers. |
| Bridelia micrantha | Timber: The sapwood is yellowish and the heartwood reddish-brown to dark brown and is hard and moderately heavy (air-dry 670 kg/m³). The wood is durable, fairly hard and termite resistant. Poles from it are used for building huts and granaries, and are sometimes cut for beams or fence posts. The wood can be used for parquet floors, furniture, panelling, tool handles, boats, bows, carpentry, and most general joinery work. The oiled wood resembles black stinkwood. |
| Brosimum alicastrum | Timber: B. alicastrum wood is white, dense, hard and fine grained. It is used in general construction, for staves, parquet flooring, crafts, tool handles and railway sleepers. |
| Broussonetia papyrifera | Timber: The wood is light-coloured, soft, greyish-white, even and straight grained. It is light, with a basic density of 506 kg/m3. The timber from B. papyrifera, being soft and brittle, is used mainly in the manufacture of cheap furniture, match sticks, packing cases, boxes, plywood, building-boards, sports equipment and pencils. |
| Bruguiera gymnorhiza | Timber: The heavy wood (specific gravity of 0.87–1.08) is durable but hard to saw and work. The wood withstands termite attack and is valuable as fishing stakes, pilings, telephone poles, railway sleepers, rafters, furniture, heavy pillars, beams and other construction. It is commercially planted in Indonesia, Sabah and Sarawak to produce wood chips |
| Bucida buceras | Timber: B. buceras wood is heavy (750-930 kg/m³ when oven dried) and seasons fairly well. However it is difficult to work due to a high silica content. It has an attractive dark yellow-brown to greenish-brown colour with mottled grain and finishes well. It is used for high quality flooring, furniture, interior trim, railroad sleepers, bridge and ship timbers, decking, pilings, posts and pallets. It is resistant to the West Indian dry wood termite, Cryptotermes brevis and subterranean termites. |
| Bursera simaruba | Timber: Used for veneer, as plywood for interior use, in rustic furniture, for rough boxes and crates, as handles for tools, as soles for sandals, for match sticks and toothpicks, to build cabinets, to make decorative articles. |
| Butea monosperma | Timber: The soft and not durable wood is light, about 570 kg/m³ air dry, white or yellowish-brown when fresh, but often turning greyish because of susceptibility to sap stain. It is not of great value but is sometimes used for utensils. |
| Byrsonima crassifolia | Timber: The sapwood is greyish, the heartwood reddish-brown, heavy, coarse-textured, tough, and highly prized for boat ribs though it is brittle and only medium-durable. It is usually available only in small sizes and is used for tool handles, turnery, cabinetwork, furniture and small-scale construction. |
| Caesalpinia sappan | Timber: The tree is the source of the commercial redwood or Brazilwood. Sapwood is white, heartwood makes up to 90 % of the total volume, is yellow or deep orange when fresh turning to dark red. The wood is straight grained with a fine to moderately fine texture, fairly heavy (600-780 kg/m³), hard and lustrous. It is difficult to dry and susceptible to warping and collapse, but moderately easy to work; it takes high finish and is tough and resistant to termite attack. It is used for inlaying work, cabinet making, violin bows and for walking sticks. |
| Caesalpinia spinosa | Timber: The wood is durable. |
| Caesalpinia velutina | Timber: C. velutina wood is dense, hard and durable. It is used in house construction, tools, agricultural implements, rough furniture and fence posts. |
| Cajanus cajan | Timber: The wood is used in light construction such as in roofing, wattling on carts, tubular wickerwork lining for wells and baskets. |
| Calodendrum capense | Timber: The timber is white or light yellow, sometimes with brown markings, and with little difference between sapwood and heartwood. It is fairly hard, moderately heavy (700-800 kg/cubic m), bends well and is easily worked. It is used for tent bows, wagon making, yokes, planking, shovel handles and furniture. |
| Calophyllum brasiliense | Timber: The heartwood is pink or yellowish pink to brick red or rich reddish brown. Sapwood is lighter in color but not always clearly differentiated from the heartwood. The wood is rather difficult to air-season, and drying rate varies substantially. The wood is rather easy to work and usually yields smooth surface if straight grained but usually tears and chips if the grain is interlocked. It is below average in planing, turning and boring. The attractive wood is similar to mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) and has comparable uses. |
| Calophyllum inophyllum | Timber: C. inophyllum is a good general-purpose timber. In several regions, the wood is much sought after for masts, spars, bridgework and scaffolding because of the tall, slender form of the poles. Being close-grained and durable, the wood is used for boat building, railway sleepers, veneer and plywood; being of a rich reddish-brown, it is excellent for cabinet making. The wood is used for light construction, flooring, moulding, joinery, wooden pallets, diving boards, cartwheels and axles, musical instruments and blowpipes. |
| Calotropis procera | Timber: Stems are termite proof and used for roofing and building huts. The very light wood can also be used for fishing net floats. |
| Cananga odorata | Timber: The timber is used for local construction, building canoes and matches. |
| Canarium indicum | Timber: The wood density is 500-650Kg/m3 at 12% moisture content. The wood is used for light construction, mouldings, house-framing, interior finish and canoes construction. |
| Canarium schweinfurthii | Timber: The sapwood, often very thick up to 15 cm is white with pinkish reflections. The heartwood is pinkish when fleshly cut but darkens to light brown mahogany colour. The wood, slightly coarse in texture, has interlocked grains, thus causing a fine striped figure on quarter-sawn boards. Used as a substitute for true mahogany, it seasons slowly but fairly well, works easily, stains and polishes well. End splitting may occur during the drying process. The wood is attacked by termites and fungi. Impregnation of the heartwood is difficult. The timber is used as core veneer, for decorative paneling, parquetry, furniture, flooring and for general utility purposes. Locally, the wood is used for mortars, planks, and canoes. |
| Capparis decidua | Timber: The wood is very hard and used to make water pipes and water troughs. |
| Carapa guianensis | Timber: C. guianensis yields a medium-weight hardwood with a density of 580-750 kg/cubic m at 12% mc. Heartwood pale pink to red-brown when fresh, darkening to a medium reddish-brown to greyish sapwood; grain generally straight, sometimes interlocked; texture fine to coarse. Seasoning must be done carefully to avoid warping and checking. The timber is moderately soft to moderately hard, strong and moderately tough. Good working properties with a moderate dulling effect on tools and a slight tendency to split on nailing; glues well and polishes satisfactorily. Heartwood is moderately durable and resistant to termites. Its main attraction is for high-quality furniture and cabinetwork, stairs and flooring, and as veneer for furniture, interior work and plywood. It is used for masts, building material and as a substitute for okoumé (Aucoumea klineana) and walnut (Juglans regia). In Colombia, shoemakers prefer it for making shoe pieces. |
| Carissa congesta | Timber: The white or yellow wood is hard, smooth and useful for fashioning spoons, combs, household utensils and miscellaneous products of turnery. |
| Caryota urens | Timber: The mature wood is strong, heavy and durable. Caryota stem yields an inferior timber sometimes used for construction purposes such as planking, rafters, roofing, partitioning and fencing. In Papua New Guinea, it is commonly used for flooring and making spears. The stem, cut lengthways in 2 with its centre scooped out, is used for gutters and drains, or to convey water over long distances. Polished stems are used as monoliths in modern houses. |
| Casimiroa edulis | Timber: The wood is yellow, fine-grained, compact, moderately dense and heavy, medium strong and resistant, but not durable for long. It is occasionally employed in carpentry and for domestic furniture in Central America. |
| Cassia abbreviata | Timber: Timber heavy (896 kg/cu. m), dark brown, coarse-grained heartwood with pale blotches, used in house construction. |
| Cassia fistula | Timber: The reddish wood, hard and heavy, weighing around 800 kg/cu. m is strong and durable, it is suited for cabinetwork, farm implements, inlay work, posts, wheels and mortars. |
| Cassia grandis | Timber: C. grandis is reported to give strong multipurpose wood, used in joinery, carpentry, beams among others. |
| Cassia javanica | Timber: The wood is used for general construction, furniture and cabinet making. C. javanica yields a lightweight to heavy hardwood with a density of 400-875 kg/m cubic at 15% moisture content. Heartwood pale yellow when fresh, turning red or pale orange-brown with age, demarcated sharply or not sharply from the 2-5 cm wide white sapwood; grain interlocked; texture moderately fine. Shrinkage of the wood is low; it seasons well with little or no degrade. The wood is hard and strong. It works well and finishes well. The sapwood is very perishable, the heartwood moderately durable when exposed to the weather or in contact with the ground, and very durable for interior work. The sapwood is susceptible to Lyctus. |
| Cassipourea malosana | Timber: C. malosana is an important timber tree in East Africa with undifferentiated sapwood and heartwood, white to light brown often with purplish streaks resulting from fungal attack. Specific gravity 0.59. Texture fine and even; grain usually straight but with a slight to marked tendency to spiraling. It has very hard timber which dries slowly and is subject to distortion. Timber suited for flooring, turnery, tool handles and construction work requiring great strength and elasticity. Sawing of green timber is difficult because of its tendency to spring. Dry wood is easier to work. |
| Castanospermum australe | Timber: The Australian chestnut Produces one of the most valuable woods in Australia. The sapwood varies from white to yellow. The heartwood is dark-brown to almost black, slightly greasy and straight grained but sometimes interlocked. This wood is suitable for carved work, furniture, panelling, plywood and joinery. The sliced veneers of this wood can be good substitute for teak. Black bean wood has a density of 700 kg /cu m. |
| Casuarina cunninghamiana | Timber: Sapwood is narrow and pale with dark reddish or purplish-brown heartwood. In Australia, the wood has a reputation of being moderately strong but tough and fissile, fine-textured, straight-grained and with wide medullary rays. It is hard to work and dress but takes a good polish, with a green density of 800-900 kg/cubic m. It requires care in gluing and preboring is necessary for nailing. Heartwood is extremely resistant to preservative treatment but is durable and may last for 15-25 years in the ground. It has been used for panelling, furniture, casks, axe handles and ornamental turnery, as well as general utility farm timber. In Argentina, it is recommended for use in parquetry flooring, packing cases, veneer and barrels. Its utilization as sawn wood is limited by its tendency to warp, twist and split during seasoning. |
| Casuarina equisetifolia | Timber: C. equisetifolia yields a heavy hardwood with an air-density of 900-1000 kg/cubic m. Heartwood is pale red, pale brown to dark red-brown, moderately to sharply differentiated from the sapwood, which is yellowish or pale yellow-brown with a pink tinge. Grain is straight, slightly interlocked or wavy; texture fine to moderately fine and even. Shrinkage is moderate to very high, and in the latter case the wood is difficult to season due to severe warping and checking. Wood is hard to very hard and strong. The heartwood is highly resistant to pressure treatment, but sapwood is amenable to such treatment. Heartwood is also resistant to dry-wood termites. On sawn timber, the rays are prominent on radial faces. Uses include house posts, rafters, electric poles, tool handles, oars, wagon wheels and mine props. |
| Casuarina glauca | Timber: Sapwood is narrow, pale, and resistant to Lyctus borers; the heartwood is brownish with conspicuous rays, hard, tough and fissile, very dense (air-dry 900-980 kg/cubic m, basic density 650-700 kg/cubic m). Used for tool handles, rafters, flooring and turnery. The brownish timber is nicely marked and is used for fencing rails, shingles, and salt-water pilings. |
| Casuarina junghuhniana | Timber: Very hard, reddish-brown wood, prone to splitting. In Thailand, it is a popular source of construction piles and for fish traps. Also used for pole production. It can be used to make hardboard in a mixture with Dipterocarpus species. Average durability of untreated wood is 4.5 years in direct contact with the ground. This can be increased to 15 years by treatment with creosote preservative. |
| Casuarina oligodon | Timber: The wood is generally hard and heavy (air-dry density is about 900-1 000 kg/cu m) and tends to split when sawn. Split wood is used to construct fences and houses. Round posts for construction, poles, fences suitable for use in the ground and for unprotected extension use in buildings, protected extension and intension work. Specialty uses include tool handles, shuttles and permanently submerged freshwater piles. |
| Cedrela odorata | Timber: C. odorata is a lightweight and comparatively soft wood. The heartwood is pale creamy immediately after sawing, turning pinkish-brown upon exposure, and is clearly demarcated from the narrow band of sapwood. Heartwood is rated as moderately durable and moderately resistant to termites, but the sapwood is susceptible to staining and powder post beetles and is not durable. The density is 410-525 kg/cubic m at 12% mc. The grain is usually interlocked, sometimes straight or woolly, indicating the presence of tension wood; texture moderately fine to moderately coarse; the grain pattern is attractive in flat sown boards. Freshly cut wood has a distinct onionlike odour, which disappears after 2-3 days. It is easy to work, saws, bores, turns and sands without problems and produces a good finish; it is easy to glue. However, growth stresses may cause severe end splitting of logs and warping and splitting during saw milling. Tests in Samoa showed that the timber can be rotary peeled without pretreatment with good results, producing attractively patterned veneer; veneer slicing also gave good results. The wood is difficult to treat with preservatives, even by a pressure treatment. A premier timber for furniture, decorative veneer, musical instruments, wooden novelties and doors. The best known use of cedar timber is for cigar boxes, but it is also used for light construction, mouldings, cabinets, furniture, panelling, boxes, exterior joinery, weather boards, louvred doors, boat building (especially racing boats), canoes, musical instruments, turnery, matchboxes, household implements, face veneer and plywood. Lower grades are suitable for crates, fencing and animal pens. The repellent smell of the wood to insects makes it particularly suitable for the manufacture of clothing chests and wardrobes. |
| Cedrela serrata | Timber: The wood is used for furniture, bridges, poles, packing cases, plywood, door and window shutters, ceiling boards, planking, toys and musical instruments. |
| Cedrus deodara | Timber: The wood is white to light yellowish brown, with a characteristic odour and oily feel. It is straight-grained, medium fine and somewhat uneven-textured. Its average weight is 560 kg/m3. The heartwood is very durable but insects and fungi attack sapwood. Deodar is an important structural timber tree. Its wood is highly valuable and extensively used for building, railway sleepers, carriage and railway wagon work and other purposes for which durability is required. It is used in house building, beams, floorboards, door and window frames, furniture and general carpentry. It also produces quality plywood. |
| Ceiba pentandra | Timber: C. pentandra wood is variable in colour, from white to light brown, but sap-staining fungi may darken it. The wood is very light, with specific gravity of 0.25 g/cc. The wood machines easily but not satisfactorily. Machining characteristics include excellent planing and sanding and resistance to splitting when screwed. Shapes and bores poorly but mortises well. Logs and lumber are very susceptible to insect and fungal attack, but preservation treatment is easy; either pressure-vacuum systems or open-tank methods give good absorption and penetration. The wood is easy to peel for veneer. Reported uses of wood include plywood, packaging, lumber core stock, light construction, pulp and paper products, canoes and rafts, farm implements, furniture and matches. |
| Celtis australis | Timber: C. australis wood is of good quality and is suitable for poles. |
| Ceratonia siliqua | Timber: C. siliqua timber is hard and close-grained and has been used to make utensils. |
| Chrysophyllum albidum | Timber: Wood brownish-white, soft, coarse and open in grain; very perishable in contact with the ground. Easy to saw and plane, nails well, takes a fine polish, and therefore is suitable for construction work, tool handles and similar purposes. |
| Chrysophyllum cainito | Timber: Sapwood and heartwood reddish-brown to dark brown, strong, hard but not durable, with fine to medium texture, fairly straight grain; specific gravity of 0.70. It is used for general indoor construction, such as planking, light framing, flooring, interior trim, lining, shelving, cladding, panelling and partitioning. It is also suitable for mouldings, light tool handles, inlaying, carving, joinery, furniture and cabinet making. Good-quality veneer and plywood can be obtained from it. The use of this wood is not expected to increase. |
| Chukrasia tabularis | Timber: Heartwood is pale reddish-brown, yellowish-red to red, darkening to dark yellowish-brown, reddish-brown to medium dark brown on exposure, sharply differentiated from the yellowish-white, pale yellowish-brown, pinkish-brown or greyish-brown sapwood; dark streaks may be rather prominent. The density is 625-800 kg/cubic m at 15% mc. The grain is interlocked and sometimes wavy, producing a rose figure; texture moderately fine but uneven. Freshly cut wood has a fragrant odour, but dried wood has no characteristic odour or taste. Planed surfaces have a high lustrous satiny sheen. The timber is highly prized for high-grade cabinetwork, decorative panelling, interior joinery such as doors, windows and light flooring, and for carving, toys and turnery. It is also used for railway sleepers, ship and boat building, furniture, musical instruments (including pianos), packing cases, sporting goods, lorry bodies, mallet heads, anvil blocks, brush wares, drawing equipment, rifle butts, veneer and pulp. In India, the timber is also used for light to medium-heavy construction work, such as for posts, beams, scantlings and planks. The wood peels well and gives exceedingly fine veneer. It is suitable for commercial and moisture proof plywood. |
| Cinnamomum camphora | Timber: The sapwood is whitish or brownish, and the heartwood brownish-yellow with a green cast, or olive to light olive-brown to blackish-brown, with a medium to coarse texture, satiny or silky lustre, straight and often rosy grain, spicy odour, and excellent working qualities. |
| Cinnamomum verum | Timber: Sapwood is light brown, slightly soft; heartwood is brownish-yellow with green cast, or olive to light olive brown to blackish-brown, medium to coarse texture, satiny or silky lustre, straight and often rosy grain, spicy odour. Excellent working qualities. |
| Citrus maxima | Timber: The wood is heavy, hard, tough, fine-grained and suitable for making tool handles. |
| Citrus sinensis | Timber: Wood can be used for boards and panelling. |
| Cocos nucifera | Timber: C. nucifera timber has traditionally been used in tropical countries for the structural framework of houses. Coconut timber taken from the lower and middle parts of the trunk can be used for load-bearing structures in buildings, such as frames, floors and trusses. Coconut trunks can be used for poles, as they have great strength and flexibility. The wood can also be used for furniture and parquet flooring. |
| Coffea arabica | Timber: Wood is hard, dense, durable, takes a polish well, and is suitable for tables, chairs and turnery. |
| Cola nitida | Timber: Sapwood is pinkish-white and the heartwood dull yellow. Suitable for furniture, house and boat building, coach-work, plates, domestic utensils, gun stocks, joinery and carvings. |
| Colophospermum mopane | Timber: The dark-grey wood is hard, heavy and quite durable. C. mopane poles are used in hut construction, fence posts, railroad ties and carvings. Due to its great durability and resistance to termites, mopane wood is widely used for building, tool handles and other implements. |
| Colubrina arborescens | Timber: The wood is hard and heavy with a specific gravity of 0.67-0.82. The sapwood is ivory or light brown, and the heartwood is yellowish brown. Because it is resistant to decay, it is used in building materials, constructions planks, fence posts, beams, ridge poles, furniture and was formerly used in marine pilings. |
| Combretum collinum | Timber: The tree has whitish-brown sapwood, which is not clearly differentiated from the light brown heartwood. It is fairly hard, not very durable, has an interlocked grain and a course texture. It is used for wagon building, canoes and tool handles. |
| Combretum molle | Timber: Combretum wood is yellow, hard, coarse, brittle when dry and rots easily. It is said to be reasonably termite resistant and is suitable for implement handles, poles, stools, construction and fence posts. |
| Commiphora africana | Timber: Wood is used for house building, headrests, stools, milk containers and wooden spoons. Stems are utilized as toothbrushes. |
| Copaifera langsdorfii | Timber: The timber is highly resistant to natural decay caused by Gloeophyllum trabeum, Coriolus versicolor and Poria monticola. The wood is used in carpentry. |
| Cordia africana | Timber: The heartwood is pinkish-brown, reasonably durable, relatively termite resistant; it works easily and polishes well but is often twisted and difficult to saw. It is used for high-quality furniture, doors, windows, cabinet making, drums, beehives, joinery, interior construction, mortars, paneling and veneering. |
| Cordia alliodora | Timber: A renowned timber-producing species. The wood is usually straight grained, easy to work to a smooth finish, with little dulling of cutting edges. The wood is used for building construction, flooring, furniture and veneer manufacture, boat timbers, oars, rail sleepers, turnery, scientific equipment, and a wide variety of carvings and artists’ equipment. The wood is resistant to decay; it has some resistance to marine borers and is outstandingly resistant to termite attack. |
| Cordia dichotoma | Timber: The wood is used to make agricultural implements. |
| Cordia sinensis | Timber: The wood is used in the construction, furniture and for agricultural implements (such as tool handles, walking sticks, clubs, wooden spoons, stirrers and stools). |
| Coula edulis | Timber: The sapwood is pinkish-brown, the heartwood is dark red or violet brownish-red. It is extremely hard, heavy, close-grained, and resists water well. It is also resistant to insect attack, particularly termites. It has the disadvantage of being liable to shake and crack. It is used for making piles for bridges and railway ties. |
| Crossopteryx febrifuga | Timber: The wood is hard, fine textured, with a pale pink tinge and used for building domestic implements e.g utensils, tool handles. Wood also used for sculptures. |
| Croton macrostachyus | Timber: The wood is of medium weight, moderately soft, perishable and susceptible to attack by wood borers. It is used for heavy-duty flooring, poles and tool handles. |
| Croton megalocarpus | Timber: Wood is of medium weight, hard, termite-resistant, strong; it is used for timber and building poles. |
| Croton sylvaticus | Timber: Wood yellowish-white, streaked, soft, light and easily worked. |
| Cryptomeria japonica | Timber: Trees grown in India produce soft, light and fragrant wood. The sapwood is white, heartwood is reddish brown and sometimes even black as in aged trees in Japan. The timber is extensively used in Japan for staves, tubs, casks, for building and furniture. It is durable, easy to preserve, saw and season. It is used for light construction, boxes, veneers and plywood. Old wood that has been buried in the soil turns a dark green and is then much esteemed. |
| Cunninghamia lanceolata | Timber: The desirable wood properties make it an important timber species. In China, it accounts for 20-30% of the total commercial timber production. The pale yellow to white wood has straight grains, soft but durable, uniform-textured and has a density 0.4-0.5. it is easily to work, strongly resistant to rot and resistant to insects and termites. It is used for house construction, poles, bridges, boats, vehicles, building and furniture. The older and larger branches are used in turnery. |
| Cupressus lusitanica | Timber: The white wood saws cleanly and has straight fine grain; it is a source of construction wood and pulp wood and is used for furniture, poles and posts. |
| Cupressus torulosa | Timber: Wood is pale yellow with pale brown heartwood, hard and durable with a specific gravity of 0.48-0.52. It is a prime timber with straight grain and fine texture, resistant to termites and insects. Used for cabinetwork, office furniture, fine art articles, construction, fence posts, poles and railway carriage making. |
| Dacryodes edulis | Timber: The wood is elastic, greyish-white to pinkish. The sapwood and heartwood are difficult to distinguish. The wood has general use for tool handles, particularly axe shafts, and occasionally for mortars, and is suitable for carpentry. |
| Dactyladenia barteri | Timber: Wood is dark red, hard, durable and resistant to termite attack. Stems are used for construction work. |
| Dalbergia latifolia | Timber: The sharply defined sapwood is yellowish or pale yellowish-white, often with a purplish tinge. Heartwood varies in color from rose to dark-brown with darker purple-black lines or deep purple with black lines. The darker streaks impart an attractive figure to the timber. The heartwood darkens with age and weighs about 850 kg/cu. m. The wood is fragrant, very hard and difficult to work because of its high density. Rosewood has exceptional dimensional stability, and retains its shape very well after seasoning. The heartwood is rated as very durable, and is generally highly resistant to attack by termites and decay fungi. Heartwood resistance to termites is reported to be only moderate in India. The sapwood, however, is liable to powder-post beetle attack. It is used to make premium-grade furniture, paneling, veneers, and interior and exterior joinery. Secondary uses of the wood include knife handles, musical instruments, agricultural implements calico-printing blocks, mathematical instruments, and boat keels and screws. Fine furniture, decorative veneer, specialty items, joinery, bedroom suites, figured veneer, living-room suites, office furniture, tables. |
| Dalbergia melanoxylon | Timber: The sapwood is white or yellowish-white, often 12 cm wide, and sharply differentiated. The heartwood is purplish black, sometimes darker towards the outside, with light streaks and not always uniform in colour. The timber is slightly oily, exceptionally hard and very heavy (1314 kg/cu. m), brittle and somewhat fissile. The heartwood is extremely durable and resistant to all forms of biological deterioration. The sapwood, however, is susceptible to fungal or insect attack. The dry wood is difficult to saw or plane. It blunts saws and cutters and cannot be nailed or screwed without drilling. It is, however, among the finest of all turnery timbers, cutting exactly and finishing to a brilliantly polished, lustrous surface, dry and cold to the touch. Other products made from the timber include carvings, turnery and marquetry to produce sculptures, musical instruments, ornaments, inlays, chess pieces, walking sticks, bearings and many other products. The main industrial use, long supporting an export trade from East Africa and Mozambique, is the manufacture of musical instruments, especially woodwinds. With its high density and fine texture, D. melanoxylon wood produces a beautiful musical tone. It is stable, stands up to metalwork processes, and takes an excellent finish. |
| Dalbergia sissoo | Timber: Dalbergia sissoo is one of the most useful timber species of India. The heartwood is very hard and close grained with a specific gravity of 0.62-0.82. It seasons well and does not warp or split; it is extremely durable and is one of the timbers least susceptible to dry-wood termites in India. Wood offers resistance to sawing and cutting but is excellent for turnery, takes a good polish and finishes to a smooth surface. It is used for high-quality furniture, cabinets, decorative veneer, marine and aircraft grade plywood, ornamental turnery, carving, engraving, tool handles and sporting goods. Its root wood is used for tobacco pipes. In village industry, D. sissoo is popular for doors and windows. |
| Delonix elata | Timber: The wood weighing 90 kg/cu. ft after seasoning, is yellow, even-grained and easily worked. It is suitable for cabinet work, carvings and utensils. |
| Delonix regia | Timber: The sapwood is light yellow, and the heartwood is yellowish to light brown. It is soft, heavy (specific gravity 0.8), coarse grained, weak, brittle, takes good polish and is rather resistant to moisture and insects although very susceptible to attack by dry-wood termites. |
| Derris microphylla | Timber: Wood is used as building material. |
| Derris robusta | Timber: The wood of D. robusta is pale brown, with heartwood not distinctly demarcated from the sapwood. It is hard and heavy; the density is about 850 kg/m cubic at 15% moisture content. The wood is used in India for e.g. tea chests, and locally in Java for handles of axes. |
| Dialium guineense | Timber: Sapwood is white with distinct ripple marks; the heartwood is red-brown. Because of the high silicate content of the timber, axes and saws quickly get blunt. The wood is hard, durable, heavy, light brown, with a fine texture. It is used for vehicles, houses and flooring. |
| Dichrostachys cinerea | Timber: D. cinerea yields a medium to heavy, durable hardwood with a density of 600-1190 kg/cubic m at 15% mc. Heartwood red or dark purple with darker streaks, sharply differentiated from the yellowish-brown sapwood; grain straight or slightly interlocked; texture rather fine and even. Due to its generally small dimensions, its utilization is limited making such items as walking sticks, handles, spears and tool handles. Fencing posts are durable and termite resistant, easily lasting up to 50 years. |
| Didymopanax morototoni | Timber: Its moderately heavy wood is coloured light cream with some grey, with regular grain; medium texture, shiny and smooth surface and is easily worked with a fine finish. In Puerto Rico, the wood is little used, although it is especially suitable for boxes and crates. Where the trees are more abundant and larger in size, uses include for general carpentry, interior construction and boxes. In Trinidad and British Guyana, the wood is made into matchsticks and matchboxes. Other possible uses are utility grade plywood, toys, and as a substitute for heavier grades of balsa. |
| Dimocarpus longan | Timber: While the tree is not often cut for timber, the wood is used for posts, agricultural implements, furniture and construction. The heartwood is red, hard, and takes a fine polish. |
| Diospyros ebenum | Timber: D. ebenum is said to produce the best commercial black ebony. The sapwood is light yellowish grey, often streaked with black; heartwood very black, heavy with a specific gravity of 1.12. The wood is straight grained, fine and even-textured with a high glossy finish. The wood is difficult to season and work by hand. It is resistant to insect attack and fungi and very durable. It is mainly exported to China for furniture and to Europe as fancy wood. It finds use in sports goods, musical and mathematical instruments, ornamental carvings and turnery. |
| Diospyros kaki | Timber: Wood fairly hard and heavy, black with streaks of orange-yellow, salmon, brown or grey; close-grained; takes a smooth finish and is prized in Japan for fancy inlays, though it has an unpleasant odor. |
| Diospyros melanoxylon | Timber: Wood is hard, whitish-pink, tough, fairly durable and used for building, shoulder poles, mine props and shafts of carriages. The ebony is very heavy and valued for carving and other ornamental works. |
| Diospyros mespiliformis | Timber: Wood with a light coloured sapwood, and a dark brown, fine grained, hard and heavy (air-dry 850 kg/cubic m) heartwood. It is hard, strong, fungi and termite resistant and is used for construction purposes, furniture, carvings, floors, stamping blocks, pestles and walking sticks. Dugout canoes are made from this wood especially in Botswana and Namibia. |
| Diospyros virginiana | Timber: The heavy, hard, strong, smooth and very close grained wood is particularly desirable for turnery, plane stocks, veneer, shoe lasts, shuttles for textile weaving, and golf club heads and occasionally low-grade lumber. |
| Dipterocarpus alatus | Timber: This species is important for its timber. D. alatus, one of the most important timber species next to teak in Thailand. |
| Dipterocarpus grandiflorus | Timber: D.grandiflorus is an important source of keruing timber. The sapwood is yellowish to greying-brown and usually distinctly demarcated from the heartwood, which is greyish-brown to red-brown, usually not distinctly lustrous on planed surfaces. The wood weighs 650-945kg/cu m at 15% moisture content and is very resinous. It is used for medium and heavy construction, agricultural impellents and toys. |
| Dobera glabra | Timber: The fairly soft wood is used for carving such as for pestles, mortars, spoons, storage containers and other domestic items. It is also used for making bed-frames and stools. |
| Dodonaea angustifolia | Timber: The wood is hard, termite resistant and heavy, useful for implement handles. |
| Dovyalis caffra | Timber: The wood is white, dense and heavy; usually too small to be of general use. |
| Dracontomelon dao | Timber: D. dao is the main source of dao timber, density of the wood is (330-) 370-790 kg/cu m at 15 % moisture content. The heartwood is greyish, greenish-yellow to walnut brown, often with irregular dark brown to nearly black bands or fine streaks, the more or less clearly differentiated sapwood is pale yellow with pinkish or greyish tinge, up to 10 cm wide. Grain straight or interlocked, texture moderately coarse to coarse and even, lustrous, wavy grain sometimes producing a coarse fiddle-back figure. It is used for veneers, furniture, plywood, interior trim and light frames. |
| Durio zibethinus | Timber: Heartwood is dark red. The relatively durable wood is used in interior construction and for making cheaper types of furniture and packing cases. |
| Ekebergia capensis | Timber: The heartwood and sapwood are not clearly defined; wood is susceptible to insect attack, is light (air-dry 592 kg/cubic m), soft, with an even grain, easily worked; straw-coloured to light brown; polishes well, but is not very durable. It must be treated with a 10% solution of zinc chloride to protect against insects. Used for furniture, light construction, poles, tool handles, panelling, beams for boat building, sides of wagons, doors, windows, carving, interior carpentry and broom handles. |
| Emblica officinalis | Timber: The hard but flexible red wood, though highly subject to warping and splitting, is used for minor construction, furniture, implements, gunstocks, hookas and ordinary pipes. Durable when submerged and believed to clarify water, it is utilized for crude aqueducts and inner braces for wells, and branches and chips of the wood are thrown into muddy streams for clarification and to impart a pleasant flavour. |
| Endospermum malaccense | Timber: E. malaccense is a light hardwood timber with an average density of about 400 kg per cubic m at 15% moisture content. The wood is bright yellow and is difficult to differentiate between the sapwood and the heartwood. It is suitable for a wide range of general utility purposes such as for making matchboxes, match splints, drawing boards, black boards and toys. It is a favourite timbers for making clogs, pattern making, trays, furniture parts, plywood chests, low grade coffins, disposable chop-sticks and other small articles. |
| Entada abyssinica | Timber: Heartwood is pale brown, occasionally tinged with pink, and is moderately light and easy to work. |
| Entada africana | Timber: Wood is light red, soft and easy to work. |
| Entandrophragma utile | Timber: Produces an excellent timber, specific gravity about 0.54-0.75 g/cu cm, similar to that of mahogany (Khaya spp.), reddish in colour and fine grained, with multiple uses in high class joinery and furniture, canoes, railway coachwork, plywood manufacture and decorative veneer. The wood seasons well and is easy to work. Its natural durability is good, it glues well, has good strength attributes for fastening with nails and screws, and can be easily processed. Large quantities, of ready or part sawn timber are exported to Europe. Wood drying was significantly affected by temperature but little affected by pressure, high pressure causes excessive thickness shrinkage. Drying defects were considerably reduced by starting with a temperature of 120 deg C and increasing it by 10 deg C steps to a final value of 150 deg C at a constant pressure of 15 Kp/sq cm (Okoh 1984). |
| Enterolobium cyclocarpum | Timber: E. cyclocarpum heartwood is reddish-brown, coarse-textured and moderately durable. The wood is resistant to attack by dry-wood termites and Lyctus, and can be used in house construction as well as in interior elements, including panelling. The white sapwood is susceptible to insect attack. The wood may also be used for boat building, because of its durability in water. |
| Eriobotrya japonica | Timber: E. japonica has a medium-weight to heavy heartwood with a density of 655-950 kg/cubic m at 15% mc. The heartwood is pale purple-brown with darker streaks, not clearly differentiated from the sapwood. The grain is straight with an attractive silvery look, and the texture is fine and even. The wood is occasionally slightly fragrant. The wood has very little tendency to split or check, is hard, and takes a good polish. It is suitable for poles and posts, carving and drawing materials such as rulers, and is in demand for making stringed musical instruments. |
| Erythrina abyssinica | Timber: The termite-resistant wood E. abyssinica is soft, greyish-white, non-durable, susceptible to fungal attack, and with a shot-silk effect. Although it is somewhat woolly to work, it does not split when nailed but has poor nail-holding ability. It has been used to make stools, toys, drums, utensils, mortars, beehives, pestles, boxes, picture frames, floors, shoes and for construction. |
| Erythrina berteroana | Timber: Wood is white to yellow, lightweight with a specific gravity of about 0.25. It is used as a substitute for cork when dry, and also for carving religious objects and toys. |
| Erythrina caffra | Timber: The wood is white or grey blue and is very soft, light and spongy. It is used in making canoes, troughs, floats and fishing nets; when tarred, it makes good roofing shingles. |
| Erythrina edulis | Timber: The wood is used for construction. |
| Erythrina indica | Timber: The wood is light, soft, does not split and neither warps, making it suitable in applications where heavy wood is unsuitable such as in small curved articles. |
| Erythrina sandwicensis | Timber: Wood is lightweight and was used by ancient Hawaiians for fishing net buoys, surfboards and outriggers on canoes. More recently, wood from the wiliwili has been carved into imitation whale-tooth necklaces. |
| Erythrina variegata | Timber: The wood is white and soft, spongy, fibrous and darker towards the centre. Growth rings are visible. The density of the wood is 300 kg/m cubic. In New Britain, the wood is used for spears and shields. The light, spongy wood is used in Cambodia as floats for fishing-nets. |
| Eucalyptus camaldulensis | Timber: Because of its great strength and good durability, the wood is suitable for many structural applications, for example, railway sleepers, poles, posts, floorings, wharves, ship building and heavy construction. The density of the wood is 900-980 kg/cubic m at 12% mc. In Pakistan, it is a raw material for the chipboard industry. Estimates show that in 1993, 800 tonnes of raw material was from this species (Charles and Naughton, 1994). |
| Eucalyptus citriodora | Timber: The wood density is 785-990 kg/cubic m at 12% mc. The wood is heavy, strong, tough and resistant to termites. The heartwood is light brown to grey-brown and sometimes waxy to the touch. The sapwood is whitish, pinkish or cream, usually 25-60 mm wide, but the width varies with growth rate. The grain is straight to interlocked, forming a ribbon stripe when quarter-sawn; a fiddleback pattern is sometimes evident. The timber is used for general construction, bridges, railway sleepers and ties, flooring, poles, sporting goods, agricultural implements and tool handles. |
| Eucalyptus deglupta | Timber: E. deglupta wood is light to dark brown with a slight lustre, more like coarse-grained rainforest wood than an eucalypt. It is of moderate strength but is not durable. Its density is 390-810 kg/cubic m at 15% mc. Wood of E. deguplta works well with hand and machine tools, although it has a slight tendency to tear out in machining and boring and to slight chipping of sharp edges in turning. The heartwood is usually resistant to preservative treatment, and the sapwood permeable. But in plantation-grown material the uptake of copper-chrome-arsenate salts may be fair. Plantation-grown wood of E. deglupta is significantly easier to impregnate than wood from natural forest. The wood is useful for furniture, moulding, flooring, construction lumber, boat building, veneer and plywood. In Papua New Guinea, E. deglupta is one of the major export timbers. |
| Eucalyptus globulus ssp. globulus | Timber: The wood is very hard and strong, with medium texture. It seasons poorly, is difficult to work and nail but takes a high finish. It is used for light construction, plywood, utility poles, piles, tool handles and even railway sleepers. Some of the important wood products include parquet, cooperage, low-grade veneer, furniture and various types of sawn timber. The timber requires special care in sawing and drying because of high incidence of spiral grain. |
| Eucalyptus grandis | Timber: The wood has been used for fence posts, building, transmission and telephone poles, boxes and hooks. It is especially used for boat building, flooring, plywood, panelling and general construction. It can also be used for sawn timber but has tendency to split. |
| Eucalyptus maculata | Timber: Heartwood is light brown to dark brown. Sapwood is pale, up to 8 cm wide. Texture is moderately coarse, with an interlocked grain. The frequent presence of wavy grain produces an attractive 'fiddleback' grain. The wood is slightly greasy and gum veins are common. It is hard, strong and tough and weighs 590-860 kg/cu. m, moderately durable and easy to work. It is widely used for structural purposes, poles, flooring, furniture, veneer, railway sleepers and tool handles. |
| Eucalyptus nitens | Timber: The heartwood is straw coloured or pale pink, straight grained, tough but relatively easy to work, and not durable. It has a density of 670-720 kg/cubic m. It is used for general building construction, flooring, joinery, panelling and furniture. The wood is suitable for sawing and is used for general construction and, in a round form, for building and transmission poles. |
| Eucalyptus pellita | Timber: The heartwood is red to dark red, strong and durable, moderately heavy with a density of 990 kg/cubic m. Although the grain is somewhat interlocked, the wood is not difficult to work. It has a wide range of uses for buildings, heavy construction and heavy ornamental work. The timber is similar to that of red mahogany, E. resinifera. |
| Eucalyptus robusta | Timber: The wood is light red to reddish-brown, coarse textured, moderately hard, strong and durable, with a density of 770 kg/m³. It is difficult to season. It is used for general construction and for poles, fencing, and wharf and bridge work. Other uses include pallets, house siding, flooring, interior trim, and panelling. Because of its strength and durability, E. robusta is also commonly used for fence posts and gates. |
| Eucalyptus saligna | Timber: The heartwood is red or pink, hard, stiff, coarse textured, usually straight grained, moderately durable, has a density of about 900 kg/cubic m, is easy to work and polishes. It is an important general-purpose hardwood in Australia, and is favoured for construction, flooring, cladding and panelling. |
| Eucalyptus tereticornis | Timber: The wood is red, hard, heavy, strong, durable, uniform in texture and has an interlocked grain. In Australia the wood is one of the types most resistant to marine borer and is widely used as a construction and mining timber. It is also used for poles, stakes, boxwoods, bridge timber, railway sleepers and wharves. It is suitable for posts of all sizes. |
| Eucalyptus urophylla | Timber: E. urophylla is an important source of heavy timber. In Timor, the wood is used in heavy construction, bridging, flooring and framing. The round wood is used for building poles and fence posts. |
| Euphorbia tirucalli | Timber: The wood is white, close grained and fairly hard. It is used for toys, rafters and veneers. |
| Fagraea racemosa | Timber: The density of the wood is 700-870 kg/m cubic at 15% moisture content. The wood is used as tembesu, but the timber is often only available in small dimensions. It is used for general construction and combs. |
| Faidherbia albida | Timber: The heartwood (specific gravity 0.56-0.71) is pale and creamy, brown sapwood slightly paler than the heartwood. The wood is susceptible to staining fungi and pinhole borer when green; therefore, it is left to soak for several months to remove sap and minimize attack by fungi, borers and termites. Even after the most careful seasoning, the boards tend to spring and twist one or two hours after they are sawn. The wood works fairly easily by hand, but a smooth finish is difficult to obtain. Care must be taken when nailing, bolting and joining. It is used to make utensils, canoes, furniture, boxes, drums and oil presses. |
| Faurea saligna | Timber: The wood is strong, durable, of medium weight, brittle, and pale yellow, red or dark brown. It is beautifully figured, handsomely coarse grained, polishes well, does not warp or shrink and can be worked green, but suffers from gum pockets (cracks in the wood filled with bright yellow gum). It is easy to work and excellent for furniture, cabinet making, internal construction, joinery, doors, wagons, poles, posts, water wheels, panelling and as general-purpose timber. It is not attacked by borers or termites. |
| Feijoa sellowiana | Timber: The wood is dense, hard and brittle. |
| Feronia limonia | Timber: Wood is yellow-grey or whitish, hard, heavy, durable, and valued for construction, pattern-making, agricultural implements, rollers for mills, carving, rulers, and other products. |
| Ficus religiosa | Timber: Its wood is greyish-white, moderately hard, and heavy, weighing 480-640 kg/m3. It is moderately durable under cover and quite durable under water. It is little used but is occasionally converted into packing cases, cheap boarding, yokes, spoons and bowls. |
| Ficus subcordata | Timber: The timber is not hard enough for building houses, making farm implements or woodcarving. |
| Ficus sycomorus | Timber: The wood is creamy brown, has a fairly uniform structure, is very light (air-dry 510 kg/m³), soft to moderately hard, tough, strong, easy to work, finishes smoothly and holds nails firmly. It is not very durable and is easily attacked by termites. Mainly used for making mortars and pestles, drums, stools, doors, beehives, dugout canoes, carvings and for house building. |
| Ficus thonningii | Timber: The wood is creamy brown, has a fairly uniform structure, is light (510 kg/cubic m), soft to moderately hard, with a rough texture, tough, strong, easy to work; it finishes smoothly and holds nails firmly. Its durability is low, and it is easily attacked by termites. |
| Flacourtia indica | Timber: The sapwood is light brown, gradually merging into the chocolate-brown heartwood. It is very hard, heavy to very heavy (850 kg/m³), straight grained and durable, though liable to splitting. It has a fine even texture. Used for agricultural implements such as ploughs, posts, building poles, rough beams, walking sticks and the manufacture of turnery articles. The small size of the wood limits its usefulness. |
| Fraxinus excelsior | Timber: Ash wood was preferred for axe handles, spears, axles, planks for boat construction and all necessary materials for which the Norwegians were famous in the middle age wars. Skis were made of ash as well as oars, baseball bats, church pews and bowling alleys. The bark also served as a good writing surface. |
| Funtumia africana | Timber: F. africana wood is white, even textured with a weight of 64 kg/m³. air dry. It is used for cheap joinery, furniture and matchstick manufacture. The wood is also reportedly used for carving stools, doors and miscellaneous household requirements. |
| Garcinia gummi-gutta | Timber: Its wood is used in construction and furniture making |
| Garcinia hanburyi | Timber: The wood is pale or brownish-yellow, straight grained, with fine texture, and fairly heavy, weighing about 900 kg/m. It is moderately hard and works easily; it takes a fine polish. The wood is sometimes used for interior work. |
| Garcinia livingstonei | Timber: The wood is used as small timber, implements, fencing posts and rails. |
| Garcinia mangostana | Timber: In Thailand, all non-bearing trees are felled, so the wood is available but usually only in small dimensions. It is dark-brown, heavy, almost sinks in water, and is moderately durable. It has been used in construction and cabinetwork, to make handles for spears and rice pounders. |
| Garcinia quaesita | Timber: The grey, close-grained wood produces a non-durable of low quality (600-700 kg/m3). The heartwood is distinctly hard and durable in old trees. The wood is used for posts, matchboxes and splits while the timber is used in cheap boxes |
| Genipa americana | Timber: The wood is yellowish-white or sometimes slightly pinkish or lavender, with light, reddish-brown streaks. It is of good quality with fine grain and easy to work. It is used for cabinets, carvings, light construction and many other minor uses. It is neither durable nor resistant to termites, borers and fungi. Saplings are usually harvested at 5-6 years old for poles or fence posts |
| Gevuina avellana | Timber: The timber is pale brown with an attractive grain, light, strong, durable and easy to work. It is used in its native range for turnery, musical instruments, picture frames, furniture and shingles. |
| Gleditsia triacanthos | Timber: The wood is strong, hard and durable, resistant to shock, and reddish-brown with attractive figuring; it is used locally for fence posts, pallets, crating, general construction, railroad ties and by woodworkers for making guitars. |
| Gliricidia sepium | Timber: Gliricidia has light brown sapwood and dark brown heartwood, turning reddish-brown on exposure to air. It is hard, coarse textured with an irregular grain, very durable and termite resistant. Wood is utilized for railway sleepers, farm implements, furniture, house construction and as mother posts in live-fence establishment. |
| Gmelina arborea | Timber: When 1st cut, the wood is yellowish- to reddish-white, turning light russet or yellowish-brown with a density of 400-560 kg/cubic m. The wood seasons well without degrading, but it is slow to dry both in the open and in a kiln. Where it is indigenous, it is regarded as a valuable general-purpose wood because of its dimensional stability. The natural durability of the wood is about 15 years. Uses include the manufacture of furniture, plywood core stock, mine props, matches and timber for light construction. |
| Gnetum costatum | Timber: The wood is of no commercial value. |
| Gnetum gnemon | Timber: Wood used in Indonesia for pulp and house construction and in Malaysia, and Hong Kong for paper, boxes, and housing. |
| Gonystylus bancanus | Timber: The timber has white to light yellowish-white heartwood, moderately fine with even texture, and density of 0.54-0.75 g/cm3 (moisture content 15%). It is very suitable for veneer and plywood, and highly valued for light construction including door and window frames, moulding, skirting, ceilings and partitions. Among other things it is used for decorative cabinets, furniture, interior decoration, wall panelling, light flooring, toys, turnery, broom handles and other non-impact handles, venetian blind slats, dowels, rulers, picture frames, and drawing boards. Populations and habitats of the species have decreased sharply due to over exploitation. |
| Grevillea robusta | Timber: Grevillea yields a medium-weight hardwood with a density of 540-720 kg/cubic m at 15% moisture content. The timber has economic potential. Heartwood is pale pink-brown, turning to yellow-brown or red-brown on exposure; moderately clearly differentiated from the cream-coloured to pale pink sapwood; grain straight to wavy; texture medium to coarse and uneven; wood lustrous; prominent silver grain on radial surface. Shrinkage upon seasoning is low to moderate; seasoning properties are rated from good to poor; wood air-dries slowly. It has a tendency to warp and check; therefore, thick material should be air-dried slowly followed by a mild kiln schedule to avoid honeycombing. The wood is hard, of low strength, but elastic, can be peeled and sliced satisfactorily, is moderately durable to non-durable and shows an absorption of creosote of 128 kg/cubic m when treated by open-tank method and 321 kg/cubic m with pressure treatment. The wood is susceptible to marine borer, pinhole borer and termite attack. It is easy to work with hand and machine tools, but cutting at an angle of 10 degrees is required to obtain a good finish on quarter-sawn faces. The wood is used in making railroad ties, plywood, panelling, air-freight cases and furniture, parquetry, turnery, boat building, interior trim, cabinet work, parquet flooring, boxes, toys and novelties. |
| Grewia asiatica | Timber: Grewia yields a medium-weight to heavy hardwood with a density of 730-900 kg/cubic m at 15% mc. Heartwood pale grey to pale brown, not sharply differentiated from the sapwood; grain interlocked; texture fine; wood with some silver grain. The wood seasons well, is moderately soft to moderately hard, tough and moderately strong; it works satisfactorily with hand and machine tools. Non-durable when exposed to the weather or in contact with the ground, but durable for interior use. Under cover, the heartwood is moderately resistant to dry-wood termites. Wood is generally used for small articles where toughness is required, such as tool handles, spades, shafts of golf sticks, shoulder poles for carrying small loads, pestles, bows, billiards cues and shingles. In the Philippines it is regarded as a good substitute for ‘lanutan’ (Hibiscus campylosiphon) and used for vehicle bodies. In India, the wood is sometimes used for construction. The shoots obtained after annual prunings are used for making baskets, quite strong, to transport fruit and vegetables. |
| Grewia bicolor | Timber: Wood used for walking sticks and canes, tool handles, weapons, hut frames and nomadic tent posts, and picture frames. |
| Grewia optiva | Timber: The wood, weighing 801 kg/cu. m, is whitish with little reddish-brown heartwood. It is fine textured with distinct growth rings. It is hard, tough with good elasticity and strength properties. It becomes difficult to work by hand after seasoning. The timber is used for oar shafts, poles, frames, tool handles and other purposes where strength and elasticity are required. It is thought to be suitable for paper production and branches are used for making baskets. |
| Grewia tenax | Timber: G. tenax wood is used in making weapons such as clubs, bows, arrows and for other general purposes. |
| Grewia villosa | Timber: The wood is made into walking sticks, bows, arrows and spear shafts. |
| Guaiacum officinale | Timber: The heartwood is greenish-brown; sapwood pale yellow, and usually thin, though if the logs have lain for a long time on the ground or in the water it may be entirely absent. Its great strength and tenacity, combined with the self-lubricating properties due to the resin content, make this wood especially adapted for bearing underwater. It is remarkable for the direction of its fibres, each layer of which crosses the previous diagonally. The most important as well as the most exacting use for it is for bearing or bushing blocks lining the stern tubes of propeller shafts of steamships. Other uses are mallets, pulley sheaves, caster wheels, bowling balls, masthead trucks, stencil and chisel blocks, cable dressers, and turned novelties; it is employed to a limited extent for brush backs. Steel and tube mills are made using lignum-vitae in increasing amounts to replace brass and babbit metal for bearings in roller mills and pumps, as the initial cost is less than metal, the life is several times longer, and lubrication is unnecessary. When rubbed and heated it gives off a faint, disagreeable aromatic odour, its taste is pungent and aromatic. |
| Guazuma ulmifolia | Timber: The wood is used for posts, interior carpentry, light construction, boxes and crates, shoe horns and tool handles. The sapwood is light brown and the heartwood pinkish to brownish. The wood is easy to work, with a specific gravity of 550-570 kg/cubic m. |
| Haematoxylum campechianum | Timber: The wood is very hard and heavy, with an air-dry weight of 950-1085 kg/m. The sapwood ring is thin, white or yellowish, and does not contain haematoxylin; heartwood turns bright reddish on exposure. It is compact, with interlocked grain and a coarse texture but fairly even. It has an agreeable odour resembling violets, and a sweet astringent taste. As timber its use is largely limited by the irregularity of the trunk. The wood is strong but brittle; it is durable for use outdoors and in contact with the ground. It is sometimes used for furniture and fancy articles because it may be finished to a very smooth surface and takes a high polish. |
| Hagenia abyssinica | Timber: Wood is dark red, medium soft but not durable; it is used for furniture, poles, flooring, carving and cabinet making. |
| Hardwickia binata | Timber: The wood is perhaps the hardest and heaviest in India. The sapwood is small and white, the heartwood dark reddish-brown streaked with purple; used for beams and mine props, bridge and house construction, agricultural implements, carts and wheel work. It is close grained, difficult to season but fairly durable. |
| Harungana madagascariensis | Timber: The wood is pink, orange-red to yellow and can have most attractive colouring in larger specimens. The tree is not used commercially because it seldom grows to a merchantable size, though the rather light wood is used to make poles for building houses. |
| Hevea brasiliensis | Timber: Heartwood pale cream, often with a pink tinge when fresh, darkening on exposure to pale straw-coloured or pale brown, not clearly demarcated from the sapwood. Grain straight to shallowly interlocked. Texture moderately coarse but even; sawn rubberwood often shows black stripes with the inclusion of bark material, the result of poor tapping practices with damaged or removed cambium; in freshly sawn wood there is a characteristic and distinct smell of latex. The importance of the timber from the rubber plantations is now fully recognized, and in Southeast Asia it is planted solely for timber production. Most of the timber is used to manufacture furniture. Other uses include interior finish, moulding, e.g. for wall panelling, picture frames, drawer guides, cabinet and other handles, parquet flooring, many household utensils, blockboard cores, pallets, crates, coffins, veneer, and glue-laminated timber, e.g. for staircases and door and window components. Since the timber is only moderately durable when exposed to the elements, it should not be used for exterior purposes. |
| Holarrhena floribunda | Timber: Timber widely used to construct granaries or cribs in Benin. Its white wood is resistant to attack by Prostephanus truncatus. H. floribunda is considered the best for carving native stools. |
| Hopea odorata | Timber: The sapwood is pale yellow or greyish yellow turning pale brown on exposure, heartwood yellowish-brown to brownish red sometimes with dark streaks, turning purplish on exposure, with lustrous white resin canals at irregular intervals, becoming dull with age. The wood is very hard and heavy weighing 755-kg/cu m, difficult to saw but finishes well. It is chiefly used for boat-building, dug-out canoes and for construction purposes, where durability and strength are of primary importance. It is also used for carts, presses flooring, roofing, piles, fence-posts, ploughs, furniture, etc. It is a first class sleeper wood. |
| Hyeronima alchorneoides | Timber: H. alchorneoides has a reddish-brown heartwood, and sapwood with a lighter colour and pinkish hue. The wood specific gravity ranges from 0.59-0.86. It is suitable for heavy construction, including railway sleepers, bridges, columns and beams, fence posts, stakes, piles and in marine construction. In addition, it is used for furniture, cabinetwork, flooring, decorative veneers, turnery and joinery. It is durable and fairly resistant to termites but difficult to impregnate and prone to decomposition, especially below ground |
| Hymenaea courbaril | Timber: The hard, durable, tough wood is one of the best from the region. Heartwood is salmon pink to orange-brown when fresh, becoming russet to reddish-brown when seasoned; often marked with dark streaks. Sapwood is usually wide, white, grey, or pinkish. Texture is medium to rather coarse; grain mostly interlocked; golden lustre, without distinctive odour or taste. The wood is moderately difficult to saw and machine, largely because of its high density, but except in planing it can be machined to a smooth surface. It is easy to glue and finish satisfactorily. Wood very resistant to brown-rot and white-rot fungi. Heartwood is also rated very resistant to dry-wood termites; it has little resistance to marine borers. This important timber tree is used for furniture (sometimes compared with mahogany), carpentry, general construction, wheels and cogs, dugouts, shipbuilding, posts, looms, cartwheels and rail ties. The wood is also attractive for cabinetwork, musical instruments, interior trim, plywood, turnery, and veneer. |
| Hymenocardia acida | Timber: The sapwood is ivory-white and the heartwood pink to light-brown darkening to orange on exposure. The wood is hard, close grained, very durable and termite resistant. Used for hut poles, stockades, and for making pestles and mallets. |
| Hyphaene thebaica | Timber: Wood can be cut using an axe, but is difficult to saw due to the many fibres that constitute the wood. Timber from the male palm is said to be better than that from the female, as it is borer and termite proof, decorative and durable. It is often used for construction, providing supports and rafters for houses, water ducts and wheels, railway sleepers, planks, fence posts and raft construction. |
| Ilex mitis | Timber: The wood is close-grained, medium-hard and medium-heavy and whitish to grey-green in colour that is easily worked and can be attractively marked. Though used as timber, normally the trunk is too short to obtain long boards. The wood was once used in the construction of wagons for buckboards and occasionally for spokes. It was also in demand for the heels of ladies shoes and is still used for implement handles and furniture. |
| Illicium verum | Timber: The fragrant wood is used for construction and furniture. |
| Inga vera | Timber: Sapwood whitish and heartwood pale brown to golden brown with longitudinal streaks or patches of darker brown, often shaded with green or yellow. Wood moderately hard, slightly heavy (specific gravity 0.57-0.59), strong and tough. The timber is suitable for utility furniture, boxes, crates, light construction, posts and general carpentry. |
| Intsia bijuga | Timber: U’ula timber is highly prized within the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Malaysia and is used for heavy construction for instance bridge making, power pole cross-arms, railway sleepers, boat building, house post beams and furniture. Other items made from the wood are walking sticks, food bowls, canoes and carvings. I. bijuga is used in constructing the main hull, masthead, maststep and steering oar of ocean-going canoes. Desirable properties of the timber are its strength, workability, satisfactory glueing, durability and its moderate resistance to ocean water. The wood does not shrink drastically on seasoning and has a density of 630-1 040 kg/cu m at 15% moisture content. The heartwood is durable (very difficult to treat with preservatives) and shows an average service life of 6-11.5 years in contact with the ground under tropical conditions and 20 years under temperate conditions. In experimental trials with small wood samples, I. bijuga was durable against the dry-wood termite Cryptotermes cynocephalus and the subterranean termite Coptotermes curvignathus. |
| Irvingia gabonensis | Timber: Wood pale brown, very hard and fine grained, not easy to cut, which limits its usefulness. Its weight precludes it from all but the most rugged construction work, e.g. for railway ties. Useful for making canoes and pestles for yam mortars; also suitable for boards, planking, ship decking and paving blocks. |
| Jacaranda mimosifolia | Timber: The timber is yellowish-white, hard, moderately heavy, fine textured, easy to work, and is used for carpentry. Wood is light brown and soft; it is used for poles and for making small items such as tool handles and carvings. Note that the wood associated with the timber trade name ‘jacaranda’ does not come from this tree but from Dalbergia nigra. |
| Juniperus procera | Timber: The wood is fine textured, straight-grained and of medium hardness, difficult to season, rather brittle at the edges; it splits on nailing, is durable, easy to work and polish, and whittles and glues well. Mainly used for construction, power transmission posts, fencing and telegraphic poles, manufacturing pencils, furniture. Cedar wood has a distinctive smell. Heartwood resistant to termite attack. |
| Khaya ivorensis | Timber: The sapwood is yellowish-brown, and the heartwood, which is not always readily distinguishable from the former, is pale reddish-brown. The wood is durable and has a fine fairly regular grain; it is easy to work and season but is difficult to impregnate. It has a mean specific gravity of 0.53 g/cubic m. The wood commands a very high price on the market, and is used above all for high-quality cabinet work, furniture and expensive interior finishing. Large quantities are also used for boat and ship construction. A high percentage of the wood sold in Europe as ‘mahogany’ comes from K. ivorensis. |
| Khaya nyasica | Timber: Used for framing, panelling and veneer. Large logs are used to make dugout canoes. |
| Khaya senegalensis | Timber: One of the hardest African mahoganies and the hardest of the Khaya species. It is widely used on a commercial scale, particularly in West Africa. The wood density ranges from 0.6 to 0.85, depending on locality. The sapwood is pinkish-tan in colour and the heartwood an attractive dark red-brown. It is moderately resistant to fungi, insects and termites. The sapwood is moderately resistant to preservation treatment, the heartwood extremely so. The timber saws well except for a tendency to be woolly in cross grain. It seasons rapidly, with little degradation; however, tension may occasionally cause splitting and warping. It is favoured for furniture, high-class joinery, trim and boat building. The wood is also used locally for railroad ties, flooring, turnery and veneer. Because of its decorative appearance, the wood of K. senegalensis is a very popular timber. |
| Kigelia pinnata | Timber: Wood is moderately heavy (air-dry 720 kg/cubic m). The wood is easy to work and produces a good-quality timber for general use. The sapwood is whitish or yellow and, although rather soft, has been used for planking, yokes, fruit boxes and shelving. Heartwood is light brown and is used for drums, utensils and cutlery. In South Africa, inhabitants of the areas along larger rivers, especially the Chobe and Zambezi, make their dugout canoes from K. africana. |
| Lagerstroemia speciosa | Timber: The medium-weight hardwood has a density of 505-810 kg/cu m at 15 % moisture content. Heartwood pale brown, yellow-brown, greyish or reddish to red-brown, not differentiated from the white or grey-white to yellow-brown, up to 8 cm wide sapwood. Grain straight or slightly interlocked, occasionally conspicuously wavy, texture moderately fine to rather coarse, lustrous. The timber is resistant to termites. |
| Lansium domesticum | Timber: The wood is light-brown, medium-hard, fine-grained, tough, elastic and durable, weighing 840 kg/ cu m. It is utilized in Java for house posts, rafters, tool handles and small utensils. Wood tar, derived by distillation, is employed to blacken the teeth. |
| Lawsonia inermis | Timber: The wood of henna is fine grained, hard, and is used to make tent pegs and tool handles in India. |
| Leucaena collinsii | Timber: L. collinsii produces wood of high density and a high proportion of heartwood with mean wood density ranging between 0.75-0.91. It is very durable and therefore highly valued for poles and fence posts. Subspecies zacapana is extremely valued for its dense wood with abundant heartwood. Secondary stands are managed in parts of Guatemala on a four year coppice rotation specifically for fuelwood production. |
| Leucaena diversifolia | Timber: Sufficiently large logs are used in construction and as poles. The wood of L. diversifolia has a density of 400-500 kg/cubic m. |
| Leucaena esculenta | Timber: The wood of L. esculenta has an average density of (0.7), with slow early formation of heartwood. It is rarely used in Mexico because trees are protected for pod production. Non-seedy or seedless clones are attractive options for most of leucaena's wood uses, including fuelwood, pulpwood, roundwood, charcoal, parquet, and craftwood. |
| Leucaena leucocephala | Timber: L. leucocephala has hard heavy wood (about 800 kg/m), with a pale yellow sapwood and light reddish-brown heartwood. The wood is known to be of medium density and to dry without splitting or checking. It is strong, medium textured, close grained and easily workable for a wide variety of carpentry purposes. Sawn timber, mine props, furniture and parquet flooring are among increasingly popular uses. However, the use of L. leucocephala for sawn timber is greatly limited by its generally small dimensions (usually not greater than 30 cm diameter), its branchiness, which limits lengths of clear bole available and means wood is often knotty, and its high proportion of juvenile wood. Nevertheless, there is growing use of small-dimension sawn wood in a number of industries such as flooring, which might include L. leucocephala in the future. Poles are used to prop bananas and as a support for yams, pepper and other vines. Use of short-rotation L. leucocephala for poles is limited by their lack of durability and susceptibility to attack by termites and woodborers. |
| Leucaena pallida | Timber: The hybrid L. diversifolia x L. pallida is psyllid resistant and grows as a pseudo-shrub with many long straight branches. Poles are commonly used in the production of vine crops (black pepper, passion fruit, pole beans) where long, straight, thin poles are preferred. |
| Leucaena salvadorensis | Timber: It is believed that reported straight, single-stemmed provenances may be the result of active manipulation by farmers. The poles are used in traditional houses as large-diameter corner posts and in roof construction. The wood is reputedly resistant to decay and durable in the ground; according to local residents, corner posts last 10-20 years. |
| Leucaena trichandra | Timber: Trees are used as a source of high quality poles and corner posts for house construction. The wood density varies with seed source. Wood from superior seed sources have average mean density of 0.7 and moderately high proportions of durable heartwood that forms rapidly. |
| Liquidambar styraciflua | Timber: The heartwood is a distinctive dark brown, sometimes beautifully figured with deep markings. Wood is hard, dense, bright red-brown; in the USA it is widely used by the furniture and cabinet making industries. Other major uses include boxes, crates, pallets and plywood. |
| Litchi chinensis | Timber: The wood is said to be nearly indestructible, although it is brittle and has few uses. |
| Litsea monopetala | Timber: The density of the wood is about 540 kg/m cubic at 15% moisture content. The wood is used as medang, e.g. for planks and tool handles, house building, furniture and plywood production. |
| Lovoa swynnertonii | Timber: The tree produces a beautiful dark brownish red timber, is cross-grained and difficult to work. The timber is generally marketed with L. trichiloides. In Zimbabawe it was formerly used for outdoor work. |
| Lovoa trichilioides | Timber: The wood is easy to work, provided sharp tools are used. It dries easily, nailing and screwing are easy but the wood may sometimes crack. Drilling, turning and milling are easy glueing, varnishing, staining offer no difficulties. The wood has a specific gravity of 0.54. The sapwood is narrow, greyish to beige in colour and not durable. Lovoa is used as a substitute for true walnut in furniture and high-class joinery, veneer and plywood. Other uses include panelling, joinery, ship building flooring, pianos, radio cases, car and carriage building. |
| Macadamia tetraphylla | Timber: The wood is reddish, hard and tough, attractively marked, used in small turnery jobs. The timber is not generally exploited. |
| Macaranga kilimandscharica | Timber: Wood pink, soft, straight grained; weight 54-68 kg/cu ft, difficult to saw and apt to split in seasoning. Has been used for boxes and crates in Kenya. |
| Macaranga tanarius | Timber: The timber is soft and light, about 500 kg/cubic m air-dry. It is not durable or resistant to termite attack but is fairly tough. The grain is straight or only shallowly interlocked, with a moderately fine and even texture. Pepper growers in southern Sumatra use it to make temporary ladders to harvest their crop. |
| Madhuca latifolia | Timber: The heartwood is reddish brown, strong, hard and durable; very heavy (929 kg/cu. m), takes a fine finish. It is used for house construction, naves and felloes of cartwheels, door and window frames. |
| Madhuca utilis | Timber: The heartwood is dark red-brown, often with a purplish tinge. The density is 920-1200 kg/m cubic at 15% moisture content. Grain straight or slightly interlocked, texture fine and even. M. utilis is durable but it is very difficult to impregnate. Timber of M. utilis is susceptible to marine borers. The timber is used as bitis, for heavy constructional work, paving blocks, agricultural implements and turnery. |
| Maesopsis eminii | Timber: The sapwood is light coloured, heartwood brownish-olive to dark red, soft and light with a coarse grain. Wood density varies from 0.38 to 0.48 g/cubic cm. The wood dries rapidly, but logs have a tendency to split during felling and storage. The wood saws and machines easily, and its high absorbency makes it easy to treat with preservatives but difficult to finish. M. eminii wood is used in poles, boxes, crates, millwork, plywood, corestock and lumber construction. Untreated wood is vulnerable to termites and decays in contact with the ground or continual moisture. |
| Mallotus philippensis | Timber: The wood is whitish to pale reddish-grey, often with darker streaks, and fairly close and straight grained; heartwood not distinct; somewhat lustrous, working to a smooth surface under tools, without characteristic odour or taste; hard and moderately heavy, averaging 770 kg/cubic metre. It shrinks considerably and is susceptible to insect attack. The wood is sometimes used as timber for implements. |
| Malpighia glabra | Timber: The wood, which is hard and heavy, can be used for small utensils. |
| Mammea africana | Timber: M. africana is one of the timber species exported from Ghana. It is used for construction, furniture, exterior joinery, carpentry work and railway sleepers. |
| Mammea americana | Timber: The heartwood is reddish or purple-brown; sapwood much lighter in color. Wood hard and heavy with a specific gravity of 0.86-0.98 g/cu cm, easy to work, fine-grained and strong; has an attractive grain and polishes well. It is useful in cabinetwork, valued for pillars, rafters, decorative features of fine houses, interior sheathing, turnery and posts since it is fairly decay-resistant. It is, however, highly susceptible to termites. |
| Mangifera caesia | Timber: The density of the wood is 410-570 kg/m cubic at 15% moisture content. The wood is used for light construction. |
| Mangifera foetida | Timber: The density of the wood is 545-785 kg/m cubic at 15% moisture content. The wood is not durable, but is suitable for light indoor constructions, temporary constructions and plywood. Streaked heartwood is suitable for the manufacture of furniture. |
| Mangifera indica | Timber: Heartwood is pale yellowish-brown to reddish-brown, darkening on exposure, not clearly demarcated from the pale yellowish-brown sapwood. Grain somewhat wavy, texture moderately coarse; freshly cut wood is scentless. The wood is used for many purposes, including indoor construction, meat-chopping blocks, furniture, carpentry, flooring, boxes, crates and boat building (canoes and dugouts). |
| Mangifera odorata | Timber: The wood is used locally as machang, but is reportedly of poor quality. |
| Manilkara zapota | Timber: The valuable wood is homogenous, deep red in colour, very hard, strong, tough, dense, resistant and durable. It is suitable for heavy construction, furniture, joinery and tool handles. |
| Markhamia lutea | Timber: The wood, which is fairly resistant to termites, is used for furniture, poles, posts, tool handles and boat building. |
| Melaleuca quinquenervia | Timber: The sapwood is pale yellow to pink. Heartwood is pink to reddish-brown with light and dark rippled figuring, hard, fine textured, porous, tough, tending to warp and difficult to season. Wood contains silica that rapidly blunts saws and planes. The specific gravity is generally within the range 0.49-0.55, and it has an air-dry density of 700-750 kg/cubic m. The wood is used for a wide range of purposes, including mine timber, fence posts and rails, flooring and house timbers. |
| Melia azedarach | Timber: M. azedarach wood (the ‘white cedar’ of commerce), which resembles mahogany, is used to manufacture agricultural implements, furniture, plywood, boxes, poles, tool handles; it is used in cabinet making and in construction because of its resistance to termites. The density is 510-660 kg/cubic m. |
| Melia volkensii | Timber: The wood is easily worked and shaped, making it suitable for making acoustic drums, containers and mortars. The coarse-textured heartwood with a density of around 0.62 works easily, planes well, is durable and extremely termite and decay resistant comparing favourably with Ocotea usambarensis, Vitex keniensis and Khaya species. The timber is valued locally for door and window frames, doors shutters, rafters, poles and furniture. |
| Mesua ferrea | Timber: Yields a moderately durable, heavy and very hard wood (often blunts saws). The heartwood is reddish-brown with a purple tinge when fresh, becoming dark red-brown upon exposure. Its density is 940-1 195 kg/cu m at 15% moisture content. The wood is used for heavy construction (posts, beams, rafters, joists, columns) and heavy duty flooring and furniture. Also used for joinery, cabinet work, tool handles, agricultural implements, vehicles and boat building. |
| Michelia champaca | Timber: Heartwood, olive-brown turning to dark brown with a greenish tinge upon exposure, is clearly differentiated from the pale brown, up to 8 cm wide sapwood. Grain straight or slightly interlocked, texture fine to moderately fine and even. Michelia wood is nicely figured and is used for furniture, cabinetwork, carvings, turnery and pattern making; it has also been used for cement-bonded wood-wool board. In India it has been recommended to ring girdle trees about 3 years before felling to prevent possible warping and checking of the wood. |
| Milicia excelsa | Timber: Mvule is one of the most popular timber species in East Africa. The wood is an attractive brown colour, which darkens on exposure and with oiling; the hard, dark heartwood is durable on the ground, works easily, and is heavy, strong, open grained and resistant to termites. It resembles teak and is mainly used for outdoor construction work, furniture, boats, cabinet work, panelling, frames and floors. |
| Millettia dura | Timber: The wood is tough and resistant to termites. Used for poles and tool handles. |
| Millettia thonningii | Timber: The sap wood is yellowish-white with a darker greenish brown heartwood, heavy and fine grained, very hard, flexible and polishes well. It is used to make handles for implements such as axes, knives, tools, and the flexible young branches are used in construction of huts yam stakes, fencing poles and making traps. |
| Mimosa scabrella | Timber: A valuable source of timber. The heartwood is tinted a greyish-rose colour, is hard, moderately heavy, and with a specific gravity reported to range from 450 to 670 kg/cubic m; the sapwood is pinkish. The wood is used for lumber and is straight grained and medium textured with a moderately rough surface without lustre. |
| Morinda citrifolia | Timber: The wood splits excessively in drying and its uses are restricted to fuel and poles. |
| Moringa oleifera | Timber: The wood is very soft and light and is useful only for light construction work. |
| Morus alba | Timber: M. alba yields a medium-weight hardwood with a density of 670-850 kg/cubic m. Heartwood yellow or yellowish-brown, darkening to golden or red-brown upon exposure, sharply demarcated from up to 4 cm wide; white or pale yellow sapwood; grain straight, texture moderately coarse and even in the semi-ring porous material, uneven in ring porous material; wood lustrous at first, becoming dull with age, with attractive silver grain. In seasoning, the wood has a tendency to warp. It is easy to saw, work, turn, bend and finish, and it seasons well. It is suitable for house building, boats, beams, posts, flooring, bridge building, agricultural implements, cabinet work, furniture and turnery, especially picker arms, bobbins and tool handles; useful for spokes, poles, shafts and bent parts of carriages and carts; also much valued for sports equipment such as hockey sticks, tennis and badminton rackets, and cricket bats. |
| Morus nigra | Timber: The wood is a rich yellow that darkens over time to a rich golden brown. The wood is not affected by water and, because of its hardness, is used in joinery for articles subject to wear, for lathe work, and in the manufacture of barrels, caskets, snuffboxes and cups. |
| Musanga cecropioides | Timber: The wood is very light, white or slightly pink in colour when freshly cut, soft and coarse grained and about 265 kg/cu m at 12% moisture content. In Ghana the timber is used as roofing material. The wood is also used in making drums, construction of canoes and utensils. The poles are very commonly used as rafters, the stems are often hollowed out to make palm wine containers. |
| Myrianthus arboreus | Timber: The wood may be used for general purposes. |
| Myroxylon balsamum | Timber: Balsam wood is used for flooring, furniture, cabinetwork, turnery and railroad ties. It is moderately difficult to work but can be finished smoothly with a high natural polish. Heartwood is reddish brown, turning deep red or purplish upon exposure, has a spicy scent and is very resistant to fungal decay. The wood has a density of 900-1 090 kg/cubic metre and a specific gravity of 0.74-0.81. Shrinkage values from green to oven dry are very low for a wood of this density. The wood is not commercially marketed. |
| Nauclea diderrichii | Timber: A commercial timber of West Africa. The wood is yellow and darkens slightly when exposed to light. It is semi-heavy and of medium hardness; its shrinkage and nervosity are average. Because of its good mechanical properties and natural durability, which can be enhanced by preservative treatment, it is sought after as a timber for outdoor uses (harbour works, railway sleepers), buildings (carpentry, floors, facings, indoor and outdoor woodwork) and for cabinet making. The wood is also suitable for fence posts and bridges as it is moderately termite-resistant and resistant to fungi and marine borers. In Ghana, its most popular use is for mortars, but it is also used to make telegraph poles, pit props and mine-shaft guides, furniture and drums. |
| Nauclea orientalis | Timber: Yields a soft easily-cut wood. Heartwood yellowish or orange easily cut but not durable when exposed to the weather, density 560 kg/ cu m. The timber can be used for framing and internal flooring and other uses not exposing it to the weather. It can be used for novelties where a timber with distinctive colour is desirable. |
| Neobalanocarpus heimii | Timber: Chengal produces a very durable and heavy timber, with an air-dry density of 915-980 kg/m3. The sapwood is pale-yellow, heartwood light-brown, darkening on exposure. The wood is moderately lustrous with prominent ripple marks. It is suitable for all forms of heavy construction, particularly boat-building, bridges, railway sleepers, sawn power line posts, heavy flooring, rubber coagulating tanks and many other uses where great strength and durability are required. Like teak, the timber contains preservative compounds that protect the heartwood and even under exposed conditions the timber can last about 100 years. The breaking strength is several times higher than that of oak, both radially and horizontally. The species is over-exploited, has poor regeneration and is in need of in situ conservation especially in Malaysia. |
| Nephelium lappaceum | Timber: The wood of N. lappaceum is liable to splitting during seasoning. It is moderately hard to very hard, strong and tough. The wood is easy to work and can be finished well. It is durable under cover and generally resistant to insect attacks, but susceptible to fungal attacks. The reddish coloured rambutan wood is usually too small to be valued as timber. The average fibre length of wood is 1.07 mm. |
| Newtonia buchananii | Timber: The brown to red-brown hardwood is durable in water and thus a favourite for boat/ canoe building. Poles from the tree are used in house construction. |
| Nuxia congesta | Timber: Wood is soft, white with little difference between sap and heartwood. The wood is used for building. |
| Ocotea usambarensis | Timber: The heartwood is light yellowish-brown, darkening to a deep brown on exposure; sapwood slightly paler, not clearly demarcated. The texture is medium to fine and even; grain interlocked producing a stripe figure; sometimes lustrous; timber has a distinct camphor scent. The wood seasons well and is resistant to acids and fungi but not to termites. It can be used for furniture, railway-coach frames, joinery, panelling, building poles and the production of veneer. |
| Olea capensis | Timber: The wood of ssp. capensis and ssp. enervis is rarely used, but that of ssp. macrocarpa makes a fine, high quality timber. It has dark brown heartwood and is attractively figured, fine-grained, hard and heavy and although it is difficult to work it has been widely used in railway sleepers, wagon woods, bridge construction and for flooring blocks. It can also produce beautiful furniture. |
| Olea europaea ssp. africana | Timber: Wood is hard and heavy, weighing approximately 1 140 kg/cubic m. Sapwood is light brown while the heartwood is red-brown to yellow, with dark figuring. The wood is fine-textured and finishes well, and is often used to make ornaments such as wall clocks and vases. Jewellery items such as beads, brooches and bangles are also made from wild olive wood. Although the tree does not produce sawable logs or branches, there are still several furniture-makers that, with great effort produce furniture from the limited quantities of timber. |
| Olneya tesota | Timber: The wood is very hard, one of the heaviest in the world, dense and durable. It will not float in water. The wood is used for gift items, pens and carvings. The heartwood is dark brown and takes a beautiful polish. |
| Orbignya phalerata | Timber: The old trunks are useful for bridges and building as well as cellulose and paper. |
| Osyris compressa | Timber: The wood is heavy and fine-grained, suitable for curving ornaments and small utensils like pestles. |
| Osyris lanceolata | Timber: The wood is very hard, strong and heavy. It is used for carvings, grain mortars, pestles, pegs, and for building poles and bedsteads. |
| Ougeinia dalbergioides | Timber: O. dalbergioides yields a valuable timber. The sapwood is grey and narrow, the heartwood is light golden brown, hard, strong, heavy and elastic-specific gravity is 0.84 and average weight is 865 kg/m³. The wood air seasons slowly without much degradation. The wood can be kiln-seasoned without difficulty, requires slow and careful drying and does not require preservative treatment. It is difficult to work, turns well and takes polish readily. Though originally considered difficult to peel, it is now frequently utilized for plywood. Sandan timber is used in the manufacture of agricultural implements, construction timbers, furniture and textile mill implements. It is also a specialty timber for marine plywood. |
| Pachystela msolo | Timber: The tree is reputed to produce good-quality poles for construction. |
| Paraserianthes falcataria | Timber: The comparatively soft timber is suitable for general utility purposes, such as light construction, furniture, cabinet work, lightweight packing materials and pallets, and chopsticks. Because the wood is fairly easy to cut, P. falcataria is also suitable for wooden shoes, musical instruments, toys and novelties, forms and general turnery. P. falcataria is an important source of veneer and plywood and is very suitable for the manufacture of particleboard, wood-wool board and hardboard and has recently been used for blockboard. |
| Parinari curatellifolia | Timber: The wood is pink-brown in colour, with a featureless grain scored by many narrow pores, which show up well on the flat or tangential surfaces. It is hard and moderately heavy (720 kg/m³). P. curatellifolia is borer proof and, although not durable if left exposed to weather, it has been used fairly extensively for rafters, beams, poles, benches, building mortars, railway sleepers, canoes and mine timber. However, it contains silica crystals that make it difficult to work, as they very rapidly blunt saw blades and other tools. |
| Parkia biglobosa | Timber: Wood is whitish, moderately heavy, 580-640 kg/cubic m when air seasoned, relatively hard and solid; it smells unpleasant when newly felled, but seasoning does not take long and only occasionally causes shape distortion; easily worked by hand or power tools; nails, glues, varnishes and paints well; mainly useful as a light structural timber, for example, for vehicle bodies, agricultural implements, boxes, crates and barrels, furniture, mortars and pestles, bowls, planks and carvings. Twigs are used to clean teeth; bark stains mouth red and contains saponins that clean teeth. |
| Parkia speciosa | Timber: Parkia yields a usually lightweight, occasionally medium-weight hardwood with a density of 350-810 kg/m³ at 15% mc. Heartwood white, yellow-white or pale yellowish-brown, with paler and darker streaks in older trees; not clearly differentiated from the rather wide sapwood, which is paler in colour; very occasionally, a darker-coloured core is present. Grain straight or slightly interlocked; texture moderately coarse and uneven. Wood with unpleasant garlic or beanlike odour when fresh. Shrinkage upon seasoning is low; degrading during seasoning is mainly due to insect attack and blue stain; end-checks have been observed in P. speciosa. Air-drying takes 3-4 months for boards 13 mm thick and 4.5-5 months for those 38 mm thick. Wood is non-durable with a service life of about 1 year, but preservative treatment is easy. The wood of Parkia is used locally for temporary light construction, carpentry, furniture and cabinet making, mouldings, interior finish, cladding, concrete shuttering, boxes and crates, matches, clogs, disposable chopsticks and fishnet floats. General utility plywood has been manufactured from the wood. |
| Parkinsonia aculeata | Timber: The heavy timber (833 kg/m³) is generally too small for sawn applications but finds use as light poles and posts. |
| Paulownia imperialis | Timber: The wood has a uniformly coloured, light-brown heartwood, and a narrow, light-grey sapwood. P. imperialis is the lightest wood grown in China (specific gravity 0.3 g/m³). It is odourless, has good physical properties and is easy to season but is only moderately durable. Because of its above-average acoustic properties, it is used in China for making traditional musical instruments. Its other applications include models and glider construction, sculptures, small utensils and domestic articles. In Japan, it is used for making matches, wooden shoes and crates. Plantation-grown wood from Brazil is often utilized for simple furniture. The popularity of P. imperialis among the Chinese has inaugurated the convenient custom of planting a sapling at the birth of a daughter. By the time the girl is old enough to get married the tree is big enough to be used for the construction of her wardrobes, which are important articles in her dowry. |
| Paulownia tomentosa | Timber: This species is not grown for its biomass alone, but also for its use as a quality furniture wood, veneer, carving and musical instruments. |
| Pausinystalia johimbe | Timber: The young poles are used for construction purposes. The species is widely used as a snare-trap mechanism due to its flexibility. |
| Peltophorum africanum | Timber: The sapwood is attractive and has a wavy grain of light-brown colour interspersed with light pink; pitting adds to the grain character. The proportion of heartwood is very small; it is reddish, close grained, of medium weight, fairly hard and tough, and is almost termite proof if well seasoned. It takes a good polish and works easily. Although its size limits its use, P. africanum has good-quality timber. It is used mainly to produce tool handles, carvings and similar small items but is sometimes used for furniture and wagons. |
| Peltophorum dasyrhachis | Timber: The yellowish-red heartwood is heavy, but brittle and is attacked by termites and boring insects. It is locally used for planks in house-building, but is of little market value. |
| Peltophorum pterocarpum | Timber: The sapwood is greyish-white, turning grey-brown on aging. The heartwood is light reddish-brown or black, moderately hard, moderately heavy, and somewhat lustrous, with a straight to interlocking grain. The wood is used locally for light construction purposes, cabinet making, sawn or hewn building timbers, woodware, woodcarving and marquetry. |
| Pentaclethra macroloba | Timber: The wood is hard, heavy, tough and strong with a specific gravity in the range of 750-850 kg/m3 and often used as a substitute for mahogany. The wood is attractive but has no distinctive figure or grain. It can be used in heavy construction, railway sleepers, furniture, house frames, scaffolding and floor beams |
| Pentaclethra macrophylla | Timber: Wood is used in carving bowls and other household utensils in Nigeria and Ghana. |
| Persea americana | Timber: Wood of Persea has been used for house building (especially for house posts), light construction, furniture, cabinet making, agricultural implements, carving, sculptures, musical instruments, paddles, small articles like pen and brush holders, and novelties. It also yields a good-quality veneer and plywood. More popular for its fruits the wood of avocado is seldom used. The wood is brittle and susceptible to termite attack. |
| Phoenix dactylifera | Timber: The trunks are strong and resistant to termites, providing much valued construction timber. |
| Phoenix reclinata | Timber: The wood, which is resistant to white ants and fungi, is used for hut building, making doors, windows and fence posts. |
| Phyllanthus acidus | Timber: The wood is fairly hard, strong, tough and durable if seasoned. It is used for utensils and other small objects. |
| Phyllanthus reticulatus | Timber: The wood is hard and tough, and greyish-white to reddish. The wood is sometimes used to make utensils. |
| Piliostigma malabaricum | Timber: The Malabar orchid yields a medium-weight hardwood with a density of 665-820 kg/cu m at 15% moisture content. The pale red heartwood is not clearly differentiated from the sapwood. The wood seasons well, works moderately easily but is only durable for interior work. The wood is provides temporary construction material in rural areas. The wooden heels of certain types of women’s slippers are obtained from P. malabarica. |
| Piliostigma thonningii | Timber: The sapwood is straight grained and light brown, heartwood is pinkish to dark brown and contributes less bulk. Household utensils and farm implements are made from this wood. |
| Pinus caribaea | Timber: Plantation-grown wood has an average density of 410 kg/m³. The grain is even to finely interlocked with a coarse texture. Transmission poles of P. caribaea are popular in Tanzania and Malaysia, among other places. Its low timber density and other poor properties, however, render the timber unstable for structural work or even furniture. The wood exudes much resin, which makes it less suitable for certain uses such as joinery and flooring. It can be used for shuttering, temporary applications and packaging. Ease of setting, ease of nailing it, and its resistance to splitting render it useful for turnery, toys, moulding and other novelty items. |
| Pinus kesiya | Timber: Timber of P. kesiya from the Philippines and Burma has an average density of 560 kg/m cubic at 12% moisture content. The timber of P. kesiya is easy to cut into smooth, tight veneer of uniform thickness at a cutting temperature of 50-70 deg. C. During drying the veneer shows slight to moderate shrinkage and warping, and is usually split-free. To obtain an acceptable quality of veneer it is often necessary to patch or fill imperfections in the wood due to the presence of knots and localized raised grain, and then to sand the surface. Benguet pine is a general purpose timber. |
| Pinus merkusii | Timber: Merkus pine is a general-purpose timber; it can also be used for construction work, flooring and boat building as it is fairly durable and heavy. |
| Pinus patula | Timber: The wood is suitable for particle board manufacture and gives a board of good strength, does not appreciably retard the setting of cement and can be used satisfactorily for making wood-wool slabs and boards. |
| Pinus wallichiana | Timber: It is a well-known and extensively used joinery wood in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan. The timber is used for construction, in joinery, house fitments, light furniture, packing cases, lamin-boards, flush doors, plane tables and railway sleepers after treatment. The wood is durable under cover but is non-durable in exposed conditions. It is easy to treat with preservatives and can be seasoned well both in air and kilns. |
| Pistacia integerrima | Timber: Timber used in house construction, carving, furniture manufacture, farm implements, musical instruments and thatch. The timber can also be used in veneer and plywood manufacture. |
| Pithecellobium dulce | Timber: Sapwood is yellowish, and heartwood yellowish or reddish-brown. The wood of P. dulce is strong and durable yet soft and flexible. It is moderately hard and usually straight grained. It weighs about 590 kg/m³, is easy to saw and finishes to a smooth surface. In south India, it is used to make drums, while in China, it is said to be used for matches. It can be used in construction and for posts. The short spines and irregular, crooked growth make it less attractive for wood uses. |
| Platycladus orientalis | Timber: Wood close-grained and knotty, heartwood dark brown, sapwood white or cream. The timber is used for gateposts and furniture. |
| Podocarpus falcatus | Timber: It furnishes an excellent timber of an attractive yellow to yellowish brown colour throughout with normally no clear distinction between sapwood and heartwood. The wood is normally straight-grained very fine, featureless and non-resinous. Soft and moderately hard and of medium density, though needs preservatives and careful seasoning to prevent warping. The timber of this species is a standard building timber and is extensively used for floors and roofing though not suitable for external joinery and doorframes. The light wood of high quality is widely used for furniture, panelling, shelving, drawer linings, shop counters and light duty impregnated railway sleepers. Being free of odour and taste, it is the wood most used locally for butter and cheese boxes and other food containers. |
| Polyscias fulva | Timber: Wood is soft, white, odourless and not durable; used to make food containers, tea chests, veneers, plywood, beehives, utensils, musical instruments and mole traps. |
| Polyscias kikuyuensis | Timber: Produces soft white wood used in boxmaking; the tree trunk can be useful in beehive making. |
| Pometia pinnata | Timber: Heartwood light to dark red, medium dark red-brown, sometimes purplish, sometimes with dark coloured ribbons on radial and tangential sections, not always well demarcated from the pink or buff-coloured sapwood. Grain straight or slightly interlocked. Texture rather coarse but even; wood surface glossy. The wood density P. pinnata is 500-990 kg/m cubic at 15% moisture content. The timber is used as kasai. |
| Pongamia pinnata | Timber: Wood varies from white to yellowish-grey with no distinct heartwood; beautifully grained and medium to coarse textured. Although it is a moderately strong timber that is relatively easy to saw, turn and finish, the wood is not considered a quality timber because it is not durable, tends to split and warp during seasoning and is susceptible to insect attack. The wood is used for cabinet making, cartwheels, posts, agricultural implements, tool handles and combs. |
| Populus ciliata | Timber: Wood is used for making boxes for packing grapes; also for poles, trucks and barrow-trays, coaches, furniture and cross-beams. Suitable for second quality match-splinters. The finishing quality of the wood is nearly equal to that of teak. |
| Populus deltoides | Timber: The timber is used principally for lumber, veneer, pulpwood and excelsior. |
| Populus euphratica | Timber: The wood is easy to saw and works to a good finish. It is good for turnery and can be peeled off with a rotary cutter. Used for planking, lacquer work, artificial limbs, matchboxes and splints. It is also suitable for plywood, cricket bats, shoe heels and bobbins. |
| Pouteria campechiana | Timber: The fine-grained, compact, strong, moderate to very heavy and hard timber is valued especially for planks and rafters in construction. The heartwood is greyish-brown to reddish-brown and blends into the sapwood, which is somewhat lighter in color. The darker the color, the more resistant to decay. |
| Pouteria sapota | Timber: The trees are seldom cut for timber, unless they bear poor quality fruit. There is very little sapwood. The heartwood is buff or brown when fresh, becoming reddish with age; sometimes resembles mahogany but is redder and more or less mottled with darker tones. It is fine-grained, compact, generally hard and fairly heavy, strong, easy to work and fairly durable. It is rated as suitable for cabinetwork and is made into furniture, but mostly serves for building carts, and for shelving and house frames. |
| Prosopis africana | Timber: The wood is hard, medium heavy to heavy, with fine grain. Sapwood is narrow, light yellow to light brown, clearly distinguished from the dark red-brown heartwood. The latter assumes a dark wine-red colour after drying. Pleasant fragrance when freshly cut. The wood is difficult to saw and plane and blunts the cutting tools. It cannot be nailed without predrilling; however, it is durable and easy to carve, turn and glue. It has many uses over the entire area of its distribution, depending to the dimensions in which it is available. In Senegal it is preferred for art and craft work, while in Ghana it is used for pestles, mortars, mallets, cudgels, furniture, joinery, sleepers in the construction of railway lines, boat building and axe handles. |
| Prosopis alba | Timber: The timber is difficult to work but finds use in flooring, wine casks, shoe casts and paving blocks. |
| Prosopis chilensis | Timber: P. chilensis wood is relatively dense (about 700-800 kg/m³). It is valued for furniture, doors, cobblestones and parquet floors. The wood has a low volumetric shrinkage hence joints in furniture have much less tendency to open during conditions of changing humidity. |
| Prosopis cineraria | Timber: Wood used for boat frames, houses, posts, and tool handles; the poor form of unimproved trees limits use as timber. |
| Prosopis glandulosa | Timber: P. glandulosa wood is very dense with a specific gravity of 0.7 or more, and its shirinkage on drying is very balanced. These properties make it excellent for woodworking. |
| Prosopis juliflora | Timber: Seasoned wood is used for fence posts, furniture, crafts and corrals. It is rarely used in construction, as most tree trunks are not long or straight enough. |
| Prosopis tamarugo | Timber: The wood is used for furniture, although it is very heavy and difficult to work because it is very hard. |
| Prunus africana | Timber: The wood is heavy, hard, durable, close and straight grained, strong, red-brown, planes well, takes a high polish, but splits and twists; it is used for heavy construction work, furniture, flooring, turnery, mouldings, poles and mortars. |
| Pseudosamanea guachapele | Timber: Heartwood is rated durable to very durable upon exposure to both white-rot and brown-rot fungi, specific gravity 0.55-0.6. Reported to have excellent weathering characteristics. Produces good quality timber with a high proportion of heartwood, widely appreciated within its native range. The wood is moderately durable and finishes well. Used in shipbuilding for planking, ribs, decking, railroad crossties, general construction, flooring, decorative veneers and furniture components. Reported to be somewhat difficult to air season. A moderate rate of drying resulted in some warping and slight checking. |
| Psidium guajava | Timber: Sapwood light brown, heartwood brown or reddish; hard, moderately strong and durable. It is used for tool handle, fence posts and in carpentry and turnery. |
| Pterocarpus angolensis | Timber: The heartwood makes high-quality furniture, as it is easily worked, glues and screws well and takes a fine polish. It shrinks very little when drying from the green condition, and this quality, together with its high durability, makes it particularly suitable for boat building, canoes and bathroom floors. It makes most handsome furniture and shelving, floors, panels, doors and window frames. Locally used for dishes, mortars and drums, and is one of the few woods favoured for canoe paddles and game and fish spears. It varies greatly in colour and weight. Sapwood is yellow. Heartwood ranges from light brown to dark reddish-brown, with purplish or golden wavy streaks often blended in the same piece of wood. Heartwood is resistant to both borers and termites, although sapwood is susceptible to borer attack and should be treated with an insecticide. When worked it has a pleasant pungent smell but can cause irritation and asthma. |
| Pterocarpus erinaceus | Timber: The wood has a handsome fine-grained appearance and, once seasoned, maintains shape very well. Used for external construction, furniture including cabinets and stools. Also used in carpentry for doors window frames, decorative panelling, parquet flooring. |
| Pterocarpus indicus | Timber: The timbers of all species of Pterocarpus are highly valued. P. indicus timber is moderately hard (.52 specific gravity), moderately heavy, easy to work, pleasantly rose-scented, takes a fine polish, develops a range of rich colors from yellow to red, and has conspicuous growth rings, which impart a fine figure to the wood. Remarkably, such growth rings are developed even in the non-seasonal humid tropics. Traditionally, Pterocarpus has been so much in demand for cabinet class furniture that nearly everywhere its existence in the wild is precarious. In the Philippines, it is the national tree and the favorite timber for the manufacture of fine furniture, cabinetry, cart wheels, carving, construction and musical instruments. The heartwood is brick red to golden brown in color but ages to a dull brown leather colour. The highly prized Amboyna burl, one of the rarest and most valued wood products in the world, is marked with little twisted curls and knots in a manner more varied than bird's-eye maple. There is a distinctive sweet smell when working the wood. The more red the wood, the heavier it is, but an average density might be 720 kg/m³. It is little used for ornamental turning, but because the burl is so exquisitely figured, it makes a nice compliment to a piece to use it for finials or perhaps a cabochon-like inlay on a flat box top. |
| Pterocarpus lucens | Timber: The wood is light yellow, hard and does not split. It is used to make wheel rims, tool handles, pestles, beams, rafters, houses, low-quality furniture and poles. |
| Pterocarpus rotundifolius | Timber: Heart and sapwood indistinguishable, yellow with pale brown markings, moderately heavy (air-dry 848 kg/m³). The wood is used as a general purpose timber on the farm. Large pieces can be used for shelving, kitchen furniture and picture frames. |
| Pterocarpus santalinoides | Timber: Wood white or yellow, not hard but termite-resistant. |
| Pterocarpus soyauxii | Timber: The wood commercially known as ‘African padouk’ (P. osun and P. tinctorius are also marketed under the same name) is of medium weight, very hard and durable, termite resistant, fading blood red in colour, impregnable with preservatives, difficult to plane, can be turned and polished. Used for walking sticks, canoe construction, buildings, wooden shovels, yam pestles and heavy furniture; pulping trials were satisfactory. There is an almost exclusive use of P. soyauxii timber for drums by African craftsmen because of its reputed high resonance qualities. Redwood is an important lumber export of Cameroon. |
| Pterogyne nitens | Timber: Heartwood reddish brown suggesting mahogany often with darker striping; not sharply demarcated from the yellowish-brown sapwood. Luster medium to high; texture medium; grain often roey; without distinctive odour or taste. Has a low retractibility, handsome appearance and medium mechanical resistance. Wood reported to be fairly durable with a basic specific gravity of 0.66. Works easily and finishes smoothly. Used for fine furniture and cabinet work, turnery, floor tiles, veneers, interior trim, cooperage, and steam-bent work. The wood is also recommended for the construction of truck bodies and interiors of railway wagons. |
| Punica granatum | Timber: The wood is hard and durable, mostly used in making farm implements. |
| Pycnanthus angolensis | Timber: Wood is greyish-white or tinged with pink. It is light, very soft, of medium nervosity and shrinkage. Its natural durability is low, but it is easy to impregnate; mechanical properties are medium and it is easily machined. During seasoning the wood sometimes warps. This easily worked, and straight-grained wood is used for veneer peeling, panels, furniture frames, box-making and minor joinery. In Cameroon it is split into rough planks for house building and roofing materials. |
| Pyrus communis | Timber: Its wood is brown-reddish, compacts, with several applications such as in furniture. |
| Quercus floribunda | Timber: Sapwood thin, grey while heartwood is russet to pale greyish brown with darker streaks, very hard, strong and heavy (wood weighs about 970 kg/cu. m). It has a straight grain but uneven texture, is difficult to season and work. In the western Himalayas, it is used for structural building construction, railway sleepers, dunnage pallets, tool handles, heavy-duty flooring, agricultural implements and door and window frames as well as for fuel and charcoal. |
| Quercus glauca | Timber: The wood is a good quality timber with a fine texture and straight grain. The specific gravity is about 0.89 g/cubic cm. The wood is hard, fairly durable and used for heavy and light construction purposes, railway sleepers, posts, stakes, poles, making containers and furniture and as fuelwood. |
| Quercus humboldtii | Timber: The wood is hard and heavy, easy to work, with a smooth finish. Wood density is 0.9-1.0 grams/cm³. Suitable for poles, tool handles, rollers and exterior use in general. |
| Quercus semecarpifolia | Timber: Heartwood reddish-grey, very hard, annual rings not very distinct. Weight 850 kg/cum. The wood splits on seasoning. It is used only locally for building, door-frames, beds steads, ploughs and mule-saddles. Wood is also used as a substitute for imported oak for kegs in distilleries. |
| Rauvolfia caffra | Timber: Wood is yellowish-white with a small heartwood, soft and light (air-dry 540 kg/m³). It is suitable for general timber work and takes nails well. An excellent wood for making fruit boxes and is ideal for kitchen furniture and shelving. Household utensils are sometimes carved from this wood. |
| Rauvolfia vomitoria | Timber: Kakapenpen yields a white and fine grained wood which reddens with age and has a fairly hard heartwood. This wood is a substitute for boxwood. |
| Rhamnus prinoides | Timber: The wood is white to yellow, often streaked with brown, pink, red or green; it is hard and heavy but usually not hard enough to make anything but small articles. |
| Rhizophora mucronata | Timber: The wood shows a beautiful silver grain on radial section and the heartwood is dark orange-red. The use of the wood is limited because of its light weight, poor durability and small size of the trunk. |
| Rhododendron arboreum | Timber: Sapwood reddish to brownish white; heartwood reddish brown, moderately hard, 640 kg/cu. m. It is easy to work, finishing to a smooth surface. It is used for tool handles, boxes and posts and is suitable for plywood. |
| Rhus natalensis | Timber: The wood is used in making household items, agricultural implements and tool handles. |
| Ricinodendron heudelotii | Timber: The dull, white wood is fibrous, soft, light and perishable. Used for rough planks, coffins, fishing net floats and rafts for heavy timbers. It is curved into fetish masks, spoons, ladles, plates, platters, bowls, dippers and stools. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the wood is used for making drums, which are said to be very sonorous, and in southern Nigeria, Gabon and Angola, it is carved to make the whole or the resonant parts of musical instruments. In Ghana, it is currently recommended for use in insulation, and the sawdust is suitable for use in sun helmets. |
| Robinia pseudoacacia | Timber: R. pseudoacacia is high in specific gravity (0.8) and variable in colour, but it darkens to an attractive golden brown. The wood’s hardness makes it difficult to work, but it has been widely used for fence posts, household furniture, wooden pins, wagon-wheel hubs, panelling, siding flooring, boat building, decking, vineyard or nursery props, fruit boxes and pallets. High levels of the alkaloid taxifloin make the wood very resistant to rot. |
| Saba comorensis | Timber: Stems are used in hut building. |
| Salix babylonica | Timber: Weeping willow wood is usually reddish-brown, light and soft, with a straight grain, and of moderate density (325-450 kg/cu. m). It is widely used for furniture, packing cases, agricultural tools, fibreboard, plywood and mine poles |
| Salvadora oleoides | Timber: Wood is light red or yellow, weighs about 608-865 kg/m³, is moderately hard, with a small, irregular, purple heartwood. It is used for building purposes, agricultural implements, Persian wheels and boats. |
| Salvadora persica | Timber: The wood is soft, white, easy to work and is not liable to termite attack. Used for coffins and clubs. |
| Sandoricum koetjape | Timber: S. koetjape yields a lightweight to medium-weight hardwood with a density of 290-590 kg/m³ at 15% moisture content. Heartwood is pale red, yellowish-red or yellow-brown with a pink tinge, indistinct or distinguishable from the pale white or pinkish sapwood; grain straight or slightly wavy. |
| Santalum album | Timber: S. album is mainly grown for its timber, which weighs 870 kg/cubic m, is durable and strong. Its close grained heartwood is used for ornamental and carving work. |
| Santalum ellipticum | Timber: Sandalwood is used for carving religious statues and objects, handicrafts, art, and decorative furniture, musical instruments and canoe construction. |
| Santalum spicatum | Timber: S. spicatum produces dark brown heartwood surrounded by pale coloured sapwood. Sandalwood is used for a variety of purposes. In powdered form it is used for the manufacture of joss sticks. The wood is used for carvings and the production of napkin rings, small boxes and fans. |
| Sapindus mukorossi | Timber: The wood is light yellow, compact, close-grained and fairly hard, weighing 750 kg/m³ at 12 % moisture content. |
| Sapium ellipticum | Timber: The wood is soft, pale coloured, light in weight and tough, but not durable; it is used for tool handles and farm implements. |
| Sarcocephalus latifolius | Timber: Opepe wood is termite resistant. |
| Schefflera heptaphylla | Timber and Fibre: The wood of S. heptaphylla is soft, light and easy to work, and can be used for paper, musical instruments and matchboxes. |
| Schefflera volkensii | Timber: The wood can be used for a number of general purposes. |
| Schima wallichii | Timber: S. wallichii yields a medium-weight to heavy hardwood with a density of 450-920 kg/cubic cm at 15% mc. Heartwood is pink-brown, red-brown or grey-brown, but is sometimes dark red-brown; it is not clearly differentiated from the pale grey sapwood; grain is straight or interlocked, frequently irregular; texture moderately fine or fine and even. Shrinkage is moderate to very high, and the timber seasons fairly rapidly; in Malaysia, boards 13 mm and 38 mm thick were observed to take about 2.5 months and 3 months, respectively, to air-dry. The wood is moderately durable and hard and is fairly strong. It is easy to work with hand and machine tools and polishes satisfactorily. Wood is relatively resistant to dry-wood termites. Used for medium-heavy construction that is under cover, such as columns and beams, for flooring, interior fitting, panelling, door and window frames, joinery, utility furniture, ship and boat building (ribs, decks), vehicle bodies, agricultural implements, pallets, boxes and crates, poles, toys, turnery and, when treated, for railway sleepers. It has been used for bridge building in mountain areas, and young trees have been used as rafters. Good-quality plywood can be manufactured from the wood, and it is suitable for the production of wood-wool boards. |
| Schinus molle | Timber: Heartwood is a dull, light red, deepening upon exposure and becoming more or less purplish and rather oily looking; distinct but not sharply demarcated from the brownish-grey sapwood; moderately hard and heavy, specific gravity (air-dry) 0.54-0.68; texture medium to fine, uniform; grain variable, often irregular; very easy to work; durability high; wood is termite resistant and therefore suitable for posts. |
| Schinus terebinthifolius | Timber: the Brazilian pepper tree does not have significant commercial value in brazil, but is generally used for posts, round wood; stakes; pit props; pulp and short fibre pulp. |
| Schinziophyton rautanenii | Timber: The whitish wood is soft, very light but not very durable, and although wooly it is easy to work and is strong. It was at one time used to make particle board on a commercial scale, and a reasonable paper has been made from it on experimental scale and has potential use in making packing cases and matches. Current uses are the making of masks, drums and temporary canoes. |
| Schizolobium parahybum | Timber: Wood with a low specific gravity of 0.28-0.35 g/cu cm The timber is rarely utilized, possibly because of its repulsive smell when fresh. Wood not durable and resistant to insect attack. Quamwood is a potential source of paper pulp and plywood. |
| Sclerocarya birrea ssp. caffra | Timber: Wood is light reddish-brown to whitish with no definite heartwood, soft and light (air-dry 560 kg/m³). As trees attain large diameters, the wood is preferred for mortars, pestles, bowls and various local crafts, saddles, furniture and heavy crates. In South Africa, commercial utilization of the wood was halted in 1962 when the tree was officially declared a protected species throughout the country. |
| Securidaca longepedunculata | Timber: Wood is pale, soft, spongy, very light, and brittle, and is regarded to have little value. Used for poles, hut construction, bows and brooms. It is resistant to termites and decay. |
| Securinega flexuosa | Timber: S. flexuosa yields a heavy hardwood with a density of 810-935 kg/m cubic at 15% moisture content. Heartwood pale yellowish-brown, hardly distinguishable from the up to 3 cm wide pale sapwood; grain straight; texture moderately fine; wood fairly lustrous; wood with a bitter taste. The wood is hard and strong but somewhat brittle. It finishes well, is durable and not susceptible to fungal or dry-wood termite attack. The sapwood is non-susceptible to Lyctus. In the Philippines the wood of S. flexuosa is locally highly valued for house and fence posts, and additionally used for joists, rafters and tool handles. |
| Senna atomaria | Timber: It is a high wood biomass producer, yielding a sapwood yellow in colour, and a darkbrown hard heartwood. The wood has a specific gravity between 0.57 and 0.85. |
| Senna siamea | Timber: S. siamea yields a medium-weight to heavy hardwood with a density of 600-1010 kg/m³ at 15% mc. Heartwood is black-brown with paler streaks, sharply demarcated from the 6-cm wide, pale sapwood; grain is interlocked and occasionally straight; texture is slightly coarse but even. Shrinkage of the wood during seasoning is moderate to high but it seasons with little degradation. The wood is hard to very hard, resistant to termites, strong, durable, difficult to work, with a tendency to pick up in planing and it takes a high polish. Sapwood is permeable to pressure impregnation. The dark heartwood of S. siamea, which is often nicely figured, is used for joinery, cabinet making, inlaying, handles, sticks and other decorative uses. The wood has also been used for poles, posts, bridges, mine poles and beams. |
| Senna singueana | Timber: The conspicuously pitted wood is light brown with a distinct grain. It is used for small furniture, carving and trinket boxes. |
| Senna spectabilis | Timber: The sapwood is whitish and the heartwood is brown. It is described as hard, heavy, durable, termite resistant; it is used to make tool handles. |
| Sesbania grandiflora | Timber: The density of the wood increases with age, and the timber from 5 to 8 year-old trees can be used in house construction or as craft wood. The trunk has been used for poles but may not last long due to rot and insect infestation. The light wood is used in floating fishing nets. |
| Shorea javanica | Timber: S. javanica is a lightweight hardwood. The heartwood is yellowish-white and when freshly cut is indistinct from the sapwood, but it gradually becomes yellowish-brown or light brown, and on exposure is slightly more distinct from the sapwood. The density of the wood is 450-840 kg/m³ at 15% mc. Grain is usually interlocked, and the texture moderately coarse but even. The planed surface is lustrous, often with subtle ribbon figures. The wood is not very durable and should therefore be kept away from contact with the ground unless it is treated. Because of its high silica content, S. javanica is not popular as a sawn timber, but it has been used for a wide variety of purposes, such as door and window frames, posts, beams, joists, rafters, planking, light flooring, ceiling, furniture, interior and shop fitting, vehicle bodies, sports goods, vats, wine casks, food containers, stair stringers, and ship and boat building. The creamy white and uniform colour, the even texture and the good gluing properties make S. javanica a highly preferred timber for plywood production, which is its most important use. |
| Shorea negrosensis | Timber: In the Philippines red lauan is a valuable export timber, in 1989 the export value of sawn timber was US $ 125 million. The bark is considered to have a great potential for use as building board. S. negrosensis yields a pulp with high over-all strength properties. The wood density is 420-805 kg/m³ at 15% moisture content. The timber is commonly used as a compression member in timber framed structures. Metham sodium and methyl isothiocyanate (MITC) are used in protecting and eliminating wood fungal decay. |
| Shorea robusta | Timber: The dark, reddish brown, hard and heavy heartwood (specific gravity of 0.83-0.93 cm³) is very durable and highly resistant to termite attack; grain is strongly spiralled and rather coarsely structured; seasoning also presents problems. Wood is easy to saw, but because of its high resin content, it is difficult to plane and turn; it has a tendency to split when nails are driven into it. This important Indian hardwood is especially well suited for structures subject to heavy stress in house construction, hydraulic engineering, ships and railway cars. It is also used for poles, railway ties and posts, simple interior finishing such as window frames and floors, and many other applications. For making household or agricultural implements, S. robusta coppice shoots are used. |
| Simaruba glauca | Timber: S. glauca wood has a moderate density, is soft and easy to work, grows fast and is broadly adapted with an ample natural regeneration. These factors ensure an adequate supply for local wood industries, thus making it a popular wood for house construction and common furniture for the local farmers. The creamy white colour of the heartwood is barely distinguishable from the sapwood. The wood is light (specific gravity 0.38) and soft, with strength properties normal for a wood its density. It is commonly reported in Haiti and India that the wood has a tendency to split during sawing. Seasoning with prolonged weather exposure causes severe surface and end splitting. The wood is generally sawn into planks that are easy to work as a general utility wood. Staining fungi that attack the wood actually enhance its appearance for decorative uses. The wood industry in Central America uses the species in match manufacture, plywood core, veneer, wood chips and lumber. |
| Sophora japonica | Timber: The wood is durable and tough and can be used for window and door frames, and for agricultural implements. |
| Spathodea campanulata | Timber: In its original habitat, the soft, light brownish-white wood is used for carving and making drums. |
| Spondias mombin | Timber: The heartwood is cream to buff in colour and is not distinguishable from the sapwood. Lustre is medium; texture medium to coarse; grain straight to slightly irregular. The wood is easy to work and generally finishes smoothly; fuzzy grain may develop in some operations. The trunks are occasionally used for dugouts and the stems for posts, boxes, matches, general carpentry, tool handles, millwork, utility plywood, and furniture components. Logs need to be promptly processed to minimize deterioration from insect attack. |
| Spondias purpurea | Timber: Sapwood whitish, heartwood soft and brittle. The wood is used in fencing. |
| Steganotaenia araliacea | Timber: The wood is white and soft, used in making farm tool handles and implements. |
| Sterculia foetida | Timber: The timber is greyish-white and soft but is harder than most other species of the genus. It weighs 449 kg/m³, is easy to saw and work, and finishes fairly well. It is very perishable when exposed to the weather or is in contact with the ground, although it is fairly durable for interior work. Used locally for doors of huts, dugout canoes, boat planking, guitars and carved toys. |
| Sterculia urens | Timber: Sap wood is pale greyish-white, heartwood distinct, red; heavy to very heavy, very strong and very hard, but poor in splitting and retention of shape. It planes and turns to a smooth finish and may also be suitable after seasoning and the adoption of suitable joining techniques for door and window frames, furniture and joinery. It is considered suitable for use as posts, beams, rafters and tool handles. |
| Stereospermum kunthianum | Timber: Wood is whitish, with a medium to coarse texture, saws cleanly to true edges, planes well to a fairly smooth finish, is of moderate durability, good nail-holding capacity, takes a clear varnish finish, glues firmly, has a slight tendency to warp, strong, works well with hand and machine tools and stains well. It is used for furniture, shelving, pattern making, tool and implement handles, poles, utensils, gunstocks, mortars and platters. |
| Strychnos cocculoides | Timber: The soft, white, pliable, tough wood is used for tool handles and building materials. |
| Strychnos henningsii | Timber: Its valued timber is brown to dark grey, heavy, hard, durable and termite-resistant. Wood used for fencing, hut poles, and tool handles. |
| Strychnos innocua | Timber: The cream or pale yellow hardwood is inclined to split; it is used for tool handles and other small articles. |
| Strychnos spinosa | Timber: The straight-grained wood planes well and is used in furniture making. |
| Styrax tonkinensis | Timber: The wood is light and soft with a density of 410-450 kg/m3 (at 15% moisture) and not suitable for construction. In Vietnam it is an important source of wood fibre for the pulp and paper mills and yield and quality of the pulp is comparable with many commercial pulpwood species. It is also used to make wooden shoes, pencils, chopsticks, toothpicks and matches. Wood from thinning is generally used as poles. |
| Swietenia humilis | Timber: The heavy timber is used in local carpentry. |
| Swietenia macrophylla | Timber: The high value attached to S. macrophylla wood in the international markets is well known. The heartwood is red-brown in appearance. The density of the wood of plantation-grown trees is often somewhat less than that of trees from the forest in the natural area of distribution and weighs 485-840 kg/m³ at 12% mc. The wood has been used in interior panelling, joinery work, turnery, furniture, plywood and heavy construction work. Veneer quality is limited by colour variation, wavy grain, pin knots and pinhole borer damage. |
| Swietenia mahagoni | Timber: S. mahagoni was the original mahogany in commercial trade and was exported from Hispaniola in the 16th century. The heartwood is highly resistant to decay and insect attack, performing better than all other mahoganies on the world market. It is noted for its low and uniform shrinkage and its ability to hold shape much better than other woods of similar densities. The wood works well and finishes to an exceptionally smooth, lustrous surface. The wood is therefore the choice for high-quality furniture and cabinetwork, joinery, boats and pattern work. Wood carvers use a significant amount of the wood in turnery and sculpture. |
| Syzygium cordatum | Timber: The light, reddish-brown to greyish wood is medium hard, heavy (750 kg/cubic m) and works well but should be water seasoned. It is used for good quality furniture, window frames, beams and rafters and, being durable in water, it is especially suitable for boat building. |
| Syzygium cuminii | Timber: The reddish-grey or reddish-brown heartwood is fine grained and is utilized in exterior joinery and carpentry. Wood is durable in water, resistant to termites, and although difficult to work, it saws and machines well and is used for construction, boat building, commercial tea and chest plywood, agricultural implements, tool handles, cart wheels, well curbs and troughs, sleepers, furniture and as props for shafts and galleries in mines. It is also used for building bridges and for making musical instruments, especially guitars. |
| Syzygium guineense | Timber: Syzgium guineense provides reddish-brown, hard, strong, durable wood, that is easy to work and is suitable for poles, posts and for building and bridge construction. |
| Syzygium jambos | Timber: The sapwood is white. The heartwood is dark-red or brown, fibrous, close-grained, medium-heavy to heavy, strong; and has been used to make furniture, spokes for wheels, arms for easy chairs, knees for all kinds of boats, beams for construction, frames for musical instruments (violins, guitars, etc.), and packing cases. It is also popular for general turnery. It is not durable in the ground and is prone to attack by dry wood termites. |
| Syzygium malaccense | Timber: The wood is reddish, hard and grows to dimensions large enough for construction purposes. |
| Syzygium samarangense | Timber: The wood is reddish, hard and grows to dimensions large enough for construction purposes. |
| Tabebuia donnell-smithii | Timber: Heartwood pale blonde to pale brown sometimes with highly attractive greyish-black banding; sapwood not distinct; low to medium lustre; texture fine to medium; grain often interlocked and ribbon-striped; seasons and machines well, with occasional tearing when planing ribbon-striped quarter-sawn faces, specific gravity 0.52. Used for furniture, cabinetwork, veneer, flooring. Resistant to white- and brown-rot fungi and weathers well. |
| Tabebuia rosea | Timber: T. rosea yields an excellent timber. |
| Tabebuia serratifolia | Timber: Heartwood of freshly cut wood is yellowish-green and the sapwood, which is 1.2-8.8 cm wide, is cream coloured. The dry heartwood is light to dark olive-brown, often with lighter or darker streaks. The dry sapwood is white or greyish-white. The grain is straight to very irregular. T. serratifolia dries rapidly during air seasoning in spite of its high density, and the wood is rated easy to season. Timber very hard, heavy, strong and very durable; used for sleepers, house posts, bridge building. The wood is reputed to be highly resistant to decay. |
| Tamarindus indica | Timber: Sapwood is light yellow, heartwood is dark purplish brown; very hard, durable and strong (specific gravity 0.8-0.9g/cubic m), and takes a fine polish. It is used for general carpentry, sugar mills, wheels, hubs, wooden utensils, agricultural tools, mortars, boat planks, toys, panels and furniture. In North America, tamarind wood has been traded under the name of ‘madeira mahogany’. |
| Tamarix aphylla | Timber: Wood, close-grained, light-coloured, fibrous, fairly hard, heavy (specific gravity 0.6-0.7.5) strong, density of about 700 kg/m³, high shock resistance, splits readily when first cut and polishes well. Useful for making ploughs, wheels, carts, construction, tool handles, brush-backs, ornaments, carpentry, furniture, turnery and fruit boxes. |
| Tarchonanthus camphoratus | Timber: Used for hut-building, making of general utensils and hunting weaponry e.g. bows and fishing rods, rungus or knobkerries are made from the rootstock. The wood is termite resistant. |
| Taxus baccata | Timber: The wood is hard, fine, even-grained and moderately heavy (about 700 kg per m). The timber is very valuable and is known for its resistance against rooting. It is used mainly for turnery, marquetry and wood carvery. The colorful wood (red heartwood, white sapwood) was used to veneer furniture, to make lute bodies, bowls, tankards, combs, tool handles, pegs, and various art objects. In the UK, yew veneers is in high demand for its decorative value. In India it is used for carrying poles, bows and furniture. |
| Teclea nobilis | Timber: The wood is used to make bows, tool handles, barkcloth mallets, clubs and walking sticks. Poles obtained from the tree are used for house construction. The wood is tough, strong, durable predisposing it to overexploitation in its native range. |
| Tecoma stans | Timber: Wood is used in the construction of buildings. |
| Tectona grandis | Timber: A rare combination of superior physical and mechanical properties makes T. grandis a paragon of timber, and there is no likelihood of it being eclipsed by any other. The wood is a medium weight timber that is rather soft and has a characteristic appearance. The heartwood is often dull yellowish when freshly cut but turns golden brown or sometimes dark greyish-brown after exposure, often streaked grey or black. The sapwood is yellowish-white or pale yellowish-brown and up to 50 mm thick. Grain is straight, wavy or slightly interlocked, with rather coarse and uneven texture. Density of the wood is (min. 480) 610-750 (max. 850) kg/m³ at 12% mc. The wood is oily to the touch and when freshly cut has a smell reminiscent of leather. Being classified as very resistant to teredo activity, the wood is excellent timber for bridge building and other construction in contact with water such as docks, quays, piers and floodgates in fresh water. In house building, teakwood is particularly suitable for interior and exterior joinery (windows, solid panel doors and framing) and is used for floors exposed to light to moderate pedestrian traffic. It is also used quite extensively for garden furniture. Other uses are for building poles, transmission line poles, fence posts, wallboards, beams, woodwork, boxes, musical instruments, toys, railway sleepers and railcar construction. It is brittle and therefore less suitable for articles requiring high resilience, such as tool handles and sporting goods. Its high resistance to a wide variety of chemicals makes it ideal for laboratory and kitchen tables as well as for scrubbing towers, vats, pipes and fume ducts in industrial chemical plants. The wood grains are figured well, producing an attractive veneer, which is extensively used in the manufacture of furniture and interior fittings. Teakwood is suitable for the manufacture of decorative plywood. Larger logs are utilized for beams and sleepers, smaller ones for scantlings and battens, and thinner top ends and poles are used as round posts. Thinnings are also used for timber. The wood is very durable, difficult to preserve, saws fairly and seasons easily. For the export market, teakwood is recommended for ship decking and other constructional work in boat building. T. grandis is economically one of the most important timber tree species of Indonesia. |
| Terminalia alata | Timber: The density of the dark brown wood is about 1040 kg/m cubic at 12% moisture content. T. alata is a valuable and commercial source of timber and may have potential in other South-East Asian countries. The wood is used as terminalia e.g. for house building, furniture, tool handles, and for underwater purposes. When quarter-sawn, the wood yields attractive veneer. |
| Terminalia arjuna | Timber: The sapwood is pinkish-white and the heartwood is brown to dark-brown, very hard, lustrous, strong and heavy (specific gravity 0.74; weight 816-865 kg/mn). The odourless, coarse-textured wood is streaked with dark lines and has irregularly inter-locked grains. Timber is locally used for carts, agricultural implements, water troughs, traps, boat building, house building, electric poles, tool-handles and jetty-piles. It also provides satisfactory rayon-grade pulp in mixture with other woods. |
| Terminalia bellirica | Timber: The wood is whitish, rather soft, with a density of 675-900 kg/m3 at 12% moisture content; sapwood and heartwood are not distinct with straight grains. The wood is steeped in water to make it more durable then used for making boxes, furniture and construction. |
| Terminalia brownii | Timber: The strong, durable and termite resistant wood is used for construction, beams and rafters, poles and posts, tool handles and mortars and pestles. |
| Terminalia catappa | Timber: The tree provides a red, good-quality, elastic, cross-grained timber that seasons well and works easily. Density of the wood is 450-720 kg/m³ at 12% mc. It is strong and pliable and is used for the construction of buildings, boats, bridges, floors, boxes, crates, planks, carts, wheelbarrows, barrels and water troughs. |
| Terminalia ivorensis | Timber: A useful timber species with yellow-brown wood similar to oak; it dries quickly and well. It is similar in weight to mahogany. The wood is acid and corrosive if placed in contact with some metals, especially iron. The density of the pale yellow to pale greenish-brown wood is 450-675 kg/m³ at 12% mc. Wood of T. ivorensis resists fungi and is moderately resistant to termites. The wood is used for fine carpentry, joinery, building, flooring and plywood manufacture. |
| Terminalia prunioides | Timber: The wood is yellow, hard, heavy, tough, durable even in salty water, resistant to borers; it is used for tool handles, fence posts, house building, dhow keels and wagon axles. |
| Terminalia sericea | Timber: The wood is yellow, hard, heavy, very tough and resistant to both termites and borers. It is used extensively for construction, furniture, fence posts, tool handles and as a general-purpose timber. The bark is cut into strips and used as a rope to hang beehives. The roots are also cut into strips and used as a strong rope for hut construction. |
| Terminalia superba | Timber: The wood is normally creamy white with no noticeable distinction between sapwood and heartwood. The log varies from 50 to 120% mc, depending on the time that elapses between felling and conversion. After exposure to the air, it darkens slightly, verging on a tanned appearance, and resembling a light oak. Three types of commercial limba are recognized: white or straw coloured; black, olive-grey to blackish-brown; and multicoloured, with dark and light streaks. The wood is soft to medium hard, light in weight, somewhat weak, easy to saw and machine, and accepts paints and varnish well. The density of the wood is 480-650 kg/m³ at 12% mc. It can be used for many purposes and is widely known and used, particularly in Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. Used in plywood manufacture, furniture, joinery, for plinths, mouldings, general fittings, and door faces and, after suitable treatment, for external joinery. |
| Tetrapleura tetraptera | Timber: Reddish to brown, fairly hard heartwood and white sapwood. |
| Thespesia populnea | Timber: The fine-grained, strong, hard and durable wood is used for light construction, flooring moulds, musical instruments, utensils and vehicle bodies. As it is very durable under water, it is popular for boat building. The wood of Thespesia is light to medium in weight with a density of 400-770 kg/m³ at 15% mc. The heartwood is dark red and smooth. Its texture is medium to fine. Shrinkage upon seasoning is very low to low. The wood seasons well. It is easy to saw and work despite its wavy grain. Used for horse-drawn carts and wheelbarrows, to carve canoe paddles, bowls, plates and utensils. It is resistant to insect attack. |
| Tipuana tipu | Timber: The tree yields good timber (a variety of rosewood) and is used to make poles. |
| Toona ciliata | Timber: Sapwood is pinkish-white or pale yellow-brown and the heartwood pale brown, cedar brown, dark red-brown or brick red when 1st cut. It darkens upon exposure to a rich reddish-brown with darker brown streaks. Grain is generally straight to somewhat interlocked. Texture is moderately close and uneven, and the wood is lustrous. A strong, fragrant, long-lasting spicy odour is usually present. The heartwood is moderately resistant to decay. Material from Australia is reported to finish cleanly and take a high polish. Staining is satisfactory, and the timber takes both water- and oil-based paints well. Timber produced by T. ciliata (not a true cedar) has moderate weight, strength and hardness. The wood has a variety of uses such as for boat building, cabinet making, cigar boxes, matchboxes, decorative plywood and veneer, food containers, furniture, interior trim, joinery, musical instruments, ornamental work, panelling, boxes and crates, building materials, exterior uses, millwork, mouldings. Sawdust from machining operations has been reported to cause dermatitis in some individuals. |
| Toona sureni | Timber: The sapwood is pink and heartwood light red or brown. It has a density of 270-670 kg/m3 at 15% moisture content. It is used for high-class cabinet wood, furniture, interior finishing, decorative paneling, crafts, musical instruments, cigar boxes and veneers. |
| Treculia africana | Timber: The heartwood is yellow with very narrow pale sapwood; very dense, fairly elastic and flexible, rather heavy, with fine, even structure. It is suitable for furniture, carving, turnery and inlay wood. In Ghana, it is used for furniture and joinery. |
| Trema orientalis | Timber: Wood is off-white or tinged with pink and fine grained but of low durability. Used in manufacturing panel products, poles and drumsticks. |
| Trichilia emetica | Timber: Wood is soft yet firm and works well. There is no real distinction between sapwood and heartwood, usually pinkish in colour and light (560-597 kg/m³), vulnerable to borers and should be treated accordingly. The wood produces beautiful furniture, which darkens with the application of furniture oil. It is also good quality for shelving, and is popular for carvings, musical instruments and various household articles. Trees with long, straight trunks are cut and used for dugout canoes. Owing to its flexibility and good turning properties, it is also good for tool handles and spears. |
| Triplochiton scleroxylon | Timber: Heartwood and sapwood are not clearly differentiated, and the latter is reported to be up to 15 cm wide. Texture usually varies from coarse to moderately fine and even with a natural sheen on the surface. There is usually an unpleasant odour when wood is freshly cut, but the smell disappears after it is seasoned. The wood dries very rapidly and readily, with little or no degradation. Lumber must be stacked carefully to permit good air circulation. Distortion and knot splits may occur during drying. The heartwood is reported to be resistant to preservative treatment. The sapwood is permeable. The material has a slight abrasive effect. It is reported to respond well to hand and machine tools in moulding and most operations. Cutting edges should be kept very sharp when working end-grain material since it has a tendency to crumble and chip at tool exits. Carving characteristics are reported to be generally good. The wood is reported to have good gluing qualities, and gluing is preferable over nailing and screwing for jointed work. Staining properties are reported to be satisfactory, but the surface requires careful filling. Obeche is recognized as a very important source of timber for export. It is one of the three timber species (others are Entandrophragma cylindricum and Lophira alata) that have traditionally accounted for more than half of timber supply in Cameroon (Wunder 2003.). It is reported to be readily available in both veneer and lumber forms. Some of the uses include blockboard, boat and ship building, boxes and crates, cabinet making, plywood, furniture components, marquetry, moldings, bedroom suites, building materials, casks, chests, cutting surfaces, excelsior, furniture, interior construction, radio, stereo and TV cabinets. |
| Uapaca kirkiana | Timber: Wood is light with white sapwood and reddish-brown, figured heartwood. It is hard and durable, has a straight grain, saws clean and can be planed to a smooth finish. It glues well, holds nails firmly and takes a clear varnish finish. Suitable for general carpentry, house building and domestic utensils, furniture and joinery, carvings and boxes. It is termite resistant. |
| Vangueria infausta | Timber: Poles for houses, agricultural implements and handles are some of the ways in which the wood is utilized. |
| Vangueria madagascariensis | Timber: Wood is suitable for building construction, tool handles and carving. |
| Vernonia amygdalina | Timber: The genus Vernonia is a well-known group of timber trees. |
| Vitellaria paradoxa | Timber: Wood brownish-red, darkens readily on exposure; strong, hard, heavy, durable, resilient, and weathers and wears well. Despite its hardness, it saws and planes well, takes an excellent polish, and glues, nails and screws well, but preboring is advisable to prevent splitting. Wood is used in engineering structures, house posts and support poles, also in ship building, for shingles, stakes and fencing, sleepers, medium and heavy-duty flooring, joinery, seats, household utensils, durable platters and bowls, pestles and mortars and tool handles. It is termite resistant. |
| Vitex altissima | Timber: The density of the wood is 800-1010 kg/m cubic at 15% moisture content; the wood is hard and durable. The timber is used for construction, cabinet-work, furniture, turnery, agricultural implements and cart wheels; it is highly prized in India and Sri Lanka. |
| Vitex cofassus | Timber: V. cofassus is a sought after and useful hardwood. It is exported in fairly large amounts from Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, mainly to Japan. The wood is very strong and durable with density of 700-800 kg/m3. Freshly cut wood has a leathery scent and difficult to treat with preservatives. The highly valued timber is used for house construction, boats and domestics utensils such as bowls and platters. In Papua New Guinea, it is highly regarded for the purposes of stringers, keelsons and planking. |
| Vitex doniana | Timber: Wood whitish to light brown. The tree produces a teak-like termite-resistant timber. It is quite hard and suitable for light building material, furniture, carvings and boats. |
| Vitex keniensis | Timber: Wood is pale greyish-brown, coarse textured with well-marked growth zones and often with a wavy grain figure; seasons well. The heartwood of trees over 60 cm in diameter is often dark and very decorative. The timber is hard and durable, very pale and similar to teak. It works easily and is used for cabinet work, panelling, veneer, furniture and coffin boards. |
| Vitex parviflora | Timber: The wood is hard and durable with a density of 940 kg/m³ at 15% moisture content. It is resistant to fungal, termite and Lyctus beetle attack, but not to marine borers. Vitex timber is used for high-grade construction, interior finishing, flooring, house building, shipbuilding, railway sleepers and carving. The wood often takes on a yellowish-green or greenish-brown tint when boiled in water. |
| Vitex payos | Timber: Wood is very hard and is used for making wooden spoons and poles. |
| Vitex pubescens | Timber: The wood is brown, very hard and durable, with density of 800-950 kg/m³ at 15% moisture content. The timber though not commercially important due to its small dimensions is favoured locally for construction, boats and implements. |
| Vochysia guatemalensis | Timber: The wood is light but strong, with a density of 0.35-0.45 g/cubic cm. It is suitable for carpentry, posts, building poles, interior construction, boxes, tool handles, toys, furniture, canoes and veneer. The fibre quality is similar to that of Gmelina arborea and has potential use in production of paper pulp. |
| Warburgia salutaris | Timber: Sapwood light yellow, heartwood dark yellowish-brown, oily, aromatic and darkening with exposure to air. The wood is used as a timber for furniture and tools. It saws and planes well but it is not durable. |
| Warburgia stuhlmannii | Timber: Sapwood white, very wide. Heartwood yellowish-green, darkening to olive green, lustrous, oily, hard and heavy, with fine texture and straight grain, handsomely figured with broad dark bands. The wood contains an aromatic oil with a sweet scent of sandalwood and lemon. Saws easily and machines to an excellent finish. Difficult to nail and liable to split. Used for cabinet making, turnery and furniture. |
| Warburgia ugandensis | Timber: Heartwood yellow or greenish, becoming brown on exposure; very fragrant when freshly cut, the scent somewhat resembling that of sandalwood. Good timber for building and furniture, but not termite resistant. It saws easily, planes well and takes a high polish, but it is not durable and is liable to split on nailing. The wood somewhat resembles teak and shows a satin lustre; its fragrance persists over 4 years of storage. Milling of the wood gives rise to a dust that is very fragrant and causes sneezing. |
| Wrightia tinctoria | Timber: The timber is high in quality, valuable, small, and white. The white wood, which is very fine, is used for turnery, carving, toy making, matchboxes, small boxes and furniture. |
| Ximenia caffra | Timber: Wood is hard and fine-grained. It is used to make tool handles, spoons and in general construction. |
| Xylopia aethiopica | Timber: The wood is used as a general purpose timber in tool handles, beds, oxen yokes, knife sheaths and spear handles. |
| Zanthoxylum chalybeum | Timber: Timber is very hard, heavy, elastic and highly durable. It works well, although it is difficult to nail; finishes and polishes well and has been used for carving, turnery and walking sticks. The twigs are used as toothbrushes. |
| Zanthoxylum gilletii | Timber: In the humid lower highlands Z. gilletii can be planted for timber production. The wood is medium light weight and durable to weather but not in the ground. It seasons well and bends easily on steaming. Used for door-frames, gates, carpentry and all heavy construction works. |
| Zelkova serrata | Timber: Highly valued as a commercial timber tree in Japan, where its close-grained (beautiful) high quality wood is used to make fine furniture, tool handles, for construction etc. The timber production of Z. serrata in Japan has basically depended on exploitation from natural populations. |
| Ziziphus abyssinica | Timber: The dark brown to black wood is heavy, hard and resistant to termites and borers. It is used mainly as poles to fence kraals and villages and to cover graves. It is also used for furniture, interior work and carving. |
| Ziziphus mauritiana | Timber: Z. mauritiana yields a medium-weight to heavy hardwood with a density of 535-1080 kg/m³. Heartwood is buff-coloured, pale red or brown to dark brown, sometimes banded or with dark streaks, not sharply demarcated from pale brown sapwood; grain straight, occasionally wavy; texture fine to coarse; wood fairly lustrous. It seasons well but may split slightly during seasoning; easy to work and takes a high finish. It is hard and strong. The wood is used for general construction, furniture and cabinet work, tool handles, agricultural implements, tent pegs, golf clubs, gun stocks, sandals, yokes, harrows, toys, turnery, household utensils, bowling pins, baseball bats, chisels and packaging. It is also suitable for the production of veneer and plywood. Basically, any product that needs a durable, close-grained wood can be made from it. |
| Ziziphus mucronata | Timber: The termite-resistant wood is used for building poles and posts, live and dry fences, and for hunting and fishing weaponry. Whips and bows are made from saplings and from the flexible shoots. Thorny branches are sometimes used to make kraals. |
| Zizyphus nummularia | Timber: The heartwood is yellow to dark brown, hard, 738 kg/m3 and it is used in farm implements and for house construction. |
| Zizyphus spina-christi | Timber: The termite resistant red or dark brown wood is hard and heavy, used for spear shafts, posts, roofing beams, utensils and cabinet making. |
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