Toona ciliata (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Toona ciliata M.J. Roemer

Protologue: Fam. nat. syn. monogr. 1: 139 (1846).

Synonyms

Cedrela toona Roxb. ex Rottler & Willd. (1803), Toona australis Harms (1896), Toona microcarpa (C.DC.) Harms (1896), Toona ternatensis (Miq.) Bahadur (1988).

Vernacular names

• Indian mahogany, Indian toon, Burma toon, Australian toon, Australian red cedar (general)
• Indonesia: suren kapar, suren mal (Java), malapoga (Sulawesi), kukoru (Moluccas)
• Malaysia: surian limpaga, ranggoh (Sabah)
• Philippines: danupra (Iloko). Burma (Myanmar): taung-tama, taw thamgo, thit kador
• Laos: mai-yom-horm
• Thailand: yom-hom (general).

Distribution

Pakistan, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, southern China, Indo-China, Thailand, throughout Malesia and northern Australia. The tree is nowadays much cultivated for its timber and as an ornamental or wayside tree throughout the tropics.

Uses

The timber is used in house and ship building, for high grade furniture, carvings, tea chests and boxes, musical instruments and pencils. The flowers yield a red or yellow dye which is used to colour silk. Various parts of the plant, but especially the bark, are used medicinally, e.g. as astringent and tonic, to treat dysentery and to heal wounds.

Observations

A medium-sized to fairly large tree up to 35(-50) m tall, with bole branchless for up to 24 m and up to 70(-150) cm in diameter, buttressed up to 3.5 m high or without buttresses, bark surface usually fissured and flaky, greyish-white to reddish-brown, bark with aromatic odour when cut; leaflets entire, glabrescent above; petal margins, ovary and disk hairy, style glabrous; columella of fruit concave with apical scarring, fruit valves smooth to minutely lenticellate; seed winged at both ends, wings unequal. T. ciliata occurs in primary and secondary rain forest, often along rivers and in valleys, up to 1500 m altitude, rarely higher. The density of the wood is 330-600 kg/m³at 12% moisture content. See also the table on wood properties.

Selected sources

38, 111, 146, 155, 195, 208, 209, 289, 348, 371, 487, 521, 526, 679, 707, 719.