66 GUIDE TO TIMBERS OF NIGERIA 



straight The grain is so twisted that sometimes the transverse 

 section comes out on the radial surface where even the P. (b) 

 can be seen as in trans, section. A feather pattern discernible 

 here and there. 



Tangential section as the radial, but the grain if anything 

 is even more tortuous. Rays very numerous and close, some- 

 times split up by fibres being drawn across them ; not in 

 parallel ; height variable, up to twenty cells high by 1-4 

 rows wide. 



SAPWOOD not defined from the heartwood. Pith ? Bark ? 



Density, No. 3016, 0-51, or about 32 Ib. per cu. ft. 

 3286, 0-49 301 



3611, 0-57 35J 



3088, 0-69 43 



2841, 0-55 34J 



4040, 0'62 38J 



2906, 0-554 34J 



Figures from other authors are : Chevalier, 0-559-0-574 

 (1909, I.e.) and 0-619 (1917, p. 22) ; Holland, 0-536 ; Armitage, 

 0-54. 



BARK. Chevalier (1909. p. 228) says, "whitish fissured 

 longitudinally, very thick, scaling in plates," and again (1917, 

 p. 223), " ashen, strongly adherent to the sapwood, very thick 

 (12-15 mm. about), falling away in quite small scales ; red- 

 orange in section." 



USES, ETC. " For doors, drums and barrels " (Unwin, 1920, 

 p. 145). 



Conservator's note. " A fairly large straight -growing ever- 

 green tree, practically confined to the neighbourhood of fresh- 

 water swamps, where it grows in groups. Large trees are not 

 plentiful. The timber, which floats, is of a reddish colour. 

 A good general purpose wood, largely used by the Public 

 Works Department for flooring boards." 



Alstonia congensis, Engler. 

 Apocynaceae. Gen. No. 4609. 



Synonym. A. scholar!*. Chevalier (not R. Brown). 



LOCALITIES. Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, Togo, Ivory Coast, 

 British sphere of the Cameroons, British East Africa, Nigeria, 

 Senegal, Uganda, Sudan, Nile-land. 



