There are many products on the market made from rocks called mahogany. They are often quite expensive. However, only a small number of them have excellent operational characteristics of real mahogany - a breed of the Sviteniya family of the Meliev family.
The first to be widely known was the view of the Mahogany Enlightenment, which is simply called mahogany, moghno or mahogany. 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 soil. These are unusually large trees with a height of 30 - 45 meters. The diameter of the trunk reaches 2 m.
In the first few decades of the twentieth century, mahogany was almost cut down. However, in the middle of the century, artificial mahogany plantations were laid on a number of tropical islands in the Caribbean. In addition, the British this breed was transported to India and the island of Sri Lanka.
There is another variety of trees that fit the definition of "red." Their wood is somewhat inferior in quality to mahogany, but its reserves, unlike the latter, are quite large. This is the large-leafed enlightenment, or coaba. It grows in Mexico, eastern Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia. In addition, this mahogany was transported by the same British to the
islands of Fiji. And the third type of American tree that can be classified as “red” is Switenia humilis. It is common in El Salvador, in the southern regions of Mexico, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. As a material for the manufacture of various products, this type is less known than others.
In addition to the American, there are African varieties of trees such as mahogany. On this continent, two species of such plants are common. The first of these is the Kaya family. These are evergreen trees growing in Madagascar and the Cape Verde Islands.
The most common breed is the kaya mahogany, which is also called the African kaoba or African mahogany. The genus Kaya also includes a fairly well-known variety - white acaju. It is named after the color of the bark and is a rather tall tree (15 - 50 m).
Another African genus of the Melian family is called Entadrophragma. It includes such varieties as sipo, sapele and casipo. Like kaya, these are very large trees - up to 45 cm high and up to 2 m in diameter below the trunk.
An array of mahogany is used to decorate rooms and clad various kinds of 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 decides to undertake 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, real mahogany, 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 chestnut variety, which is also called sugar. This is a yellowish-orange breed with a rather pleasant smell for humans, fatal to insects.