AFRICAN BLACK-WOOD 



No. 52. AFRICAN BLACK-WOOD. Dalbergia 



melanoxylon. Guill. and Perr. 

 Plate V. Fig. 37. 



Natural Order. Leguminoseae. 



Alternative Names. Ebony in Sierra Leone : Senegal Ebony : 

 African Grendilla-wood (131), Congoholz (131), also Dialamban 

 (107). 



Sources of Su-pply. Tropical Africa, chiefly the West Coast. 



Physical Characters, etc. Recorded weight 74J lbs. per cu. ft. 

 Hardness Grade 1, compare Ebony. Smell slightly fragrant. 

 Taste none. Solution with water faint, olive-brown, afterwards 

 with alcohol, deep port-wine colour, strong, nearly black. Burns 

 fairly well with a lively, smoky flame : heat expels a copious, 

 black juice. 



Grain. Coarse but even, the pores being filled up. Surface 

 glassy and cold to the touch like Ebony, but more so : ground very 

 lustrous, pores dull if empty, reflecting when filled. 



Bark.? 



Uses, etc. Similar to those of Ebony : turnery, Tunbridge- 

 ware, etc. Almost invariably confused with black Ebonies. 



Authorities. Scott-Elliott and Raisin (107). Laslett (160). 

 Wiesner (131), L. 12, p. 943. 



Colour. Jet-black, sometimes brownish-black, similar in all 

 sections. Sharply defined from the narrow brownish-white 

 sap-wood. 



Anatomical Characters. Transverse section : — 



Pores. Visible only by reflection : size 2, little variation : 

 evenly distributed but sometimes in zones : 1-12 per mm. : 

 occasionally grouped or subdivided, mostly single but some threes : 

 nearly always with blackish contents. 



Rays. Almost invisible with lens : size 5-6 : equidistant, less 

 than a large pore-width apart, often stopped by the pores not 

 avoiding them, gently undulating : numerous, 8-n per mm. : 

 denser and darker than the ground in the transparent section, 

 invisible in the solid, black wood. 



Rings. Fairly clearly defined near the pith by more numerous 

 pores, almost a pore-ring of several rows followed by an Autumn 

 zone poor in zones (this is difficult to trace in older wood). The 

 prominent pigment-zones are quite independent of the structure. 



Soft-tissue. Abundant in fine, concentric, much-waved, thread- 

 like lines about the size and colour of the rays (5-6 ray-scale) : 

 pigmented, coarse-celled : numerous, about 5-7 per mm. 

 Pith. Large, hard, dense deeply waved or crenate. 

 Radial Section. Pores inconspicuous, rather coarse lines usually 

 with black contents ; shining, reflect the light upon the surface 



61 



