MAHOGANY (CUBAN) G.N. 1195 



MAHOGANY (CUBAN) 



Surietenia Mahagoni Jacq. Meliacese. 



A hard, heavy, rich red wood, striped as a rule with lighter and darker 

 bands. Grain coarse, open and generally cross. Surface bright. 



Transverse section. Boundary a fine line of lighter colour, just 

 visible. 



Parenchyma vasicentric (sheathing the vessels) very scanty if any: 

 perhaps the boundary line may, also, be of this tissue. 



Vessels rather large, readily visible when filled with white substance 

 and just visible when filled with black. Few and widely isolated: fairly 

 uniformly distributed with a tendency to oblique lines. Contents mostly 

 black and red, some white and sometimes even green. Mostly single, 

 some pairs and a few radial groups of three pores. 



Rays just visible, fine sub-regular in size and spacing, at intervals of 

 the width of a vessel apart, multiseriate. 



Radial section. Boundary hardly traceable : vessels as medium-coarse 

 grooves with a few resin drops. Silver-grain prominent as narrow, 

 closely-arranged flakes of a lighter colour but duller, than the fibres. 



Tangential section. Boundaries sometimes hardly perceptible, yet clear, 

 fine lines (lens). Rays visible with lens as minute brown lines. Under 

 microscope they are seen to be distorted as though a strand of fibres 

 had been pulled across, thus sub-dividing them. Wood-fibres septate. 



May be confused urith many similarly-coloured woods, especially Hon- 

 duras, Tabasco, African and other Mahoganies. 



Honduras and Tabasco (rays Cuban: rays distorted in tan- 



symmetrical in tangential section). gential section. 



See note at end of Tabasco Mahogany. 



MAHOGANY (HONDURAS) 



Reputed to be Swietenia macrophylla King. Meliacese. 



A rather light diffuse-porous wood of medium hardness. Uniform 

 reddish-brown colour, usually very straight-grained. A few minute 

 glistening beads of resin or gum may be seen here and there. 



Transverse section. Boundary, a fine, but readily visible, white line. 



Parenchyma vasicentric (sheathing the vessels) very scanty or none. 

 Perhaps the boundary line is of this tissue also. 



Vessels rather large, just visible, widely isolated and evenly distributed. 

 Much more numerous than in Cuban Mahogany. Single or in pairs or 

 radial groups of three : contents not so often visible in this section, little, 



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