There are many products on the market made from species called mahogany. They are often quite expensive. However, only a small number of them have excellent performance characteristics of a real mahogany - a breed of the Sviteniya genus of the Meliev family.
The first species to be widely known was the Mahogany Sweep, which is simply called mahogany, mogno, or mahogany wood. This mahogany is common in the Antilles in the West Indies. Here it grows abundantly in the lowlands and on the hills. This breed is very fond of fertile moist soils. These are unusually large trees with a height of 30 - 45 meters. Their trunk diameter reaches 2 m.
In the first few decades of the twentieth century, redwood was practically cut down. However, in the middle of the century, artificial mahogany plantations were established on a number of tropical Caribbean islands. In addition, the British brought this breed to India and the island of Sri Lanka.
There is another variety of trees that fit the definition"red". Their wood is somewhat inferior in quality to mahogany, but its reserves, unlike the latter, are quite large. This is the large-leaved Svitenia, or koaba. It grows in Mexico, eastern Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia. In addition, this mahogany was transported by the same British to the Fiji Islands. And the third type of American tree that can be classified as "red" is Switenia humilis. It is distributed in El Salvador, in the southern regions of Mexico, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. As a material for the manufacture of various kinds of products, this type is less known than others.
In addition to American, there are African varieties of trees such as mahogany. Two types of such plants are common on this continent. The first of them is the genus Kaya. These are evergreen trees found in Madagascar and the Cape Verde Islands.
The most common breed of kaya-mahogany, which is also called African kaoba or African mahogany. A fairly well-known variety also belongs to the Kaya genus - I will say white. It is named after the color of the bark and is a fairly tall tree (15 - 50 m).
Another African genus of the Meliaceae family is called Entadrophragma. It includes varieties such as sipo, sapele and casipo. Just like kaya, these are very large trees - up to 45 cm high and up to 2 m in diameter at the bottom of the trunk.
Solid mahogany is used for interior decoration and cladding of various structural elements (walls,doors, floors). Often this breed is used for the manufacture of various kinds of decorative interior items: figurines, masks, caskets. This wood is so valuable that not every craftsman will decide to take up the manufacture of, say, the same cabinet from this material. Its main advantage lies in the ability to maintain its shape for many years. Such furniture is fabulously expensive.
In Russia, a real mahogany, the photos of which can be seen a little higher, is almost impossible to find on sale. In most cases, the maximum that our consumers can count on is a chest variety, which is also called sugar. This is a yellowish-orange breed with a rather pleasant smell for humans, disastrous for insects.
