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Alstonia boonei
Also called Cheesewood, Patternwood, Stoolwood, Boone Alstonia
Alstonia boonei is a very large deciduous tropical forest tree from West Africa, prized for its fine-grained timber and the buttressed, cylindrical trunk it develops. It is not a typical garden or houseplant and is grown mainly for timber in its native wet tropics.
Alstonia boonei is a very large, deciduous, tropical-forest tree in the family Apocynaceae. It is native to tropical West Africa, with a range extending into Ethiopia and Tanzania. Its common name in the English timber trade is cheese wood, pattern wood or stool wood (see Ashanti Empire golden stool) while its common name in the French timber trade is emien (derived from the vernacular of the Ivory Coast).
The wood is fine-grained, lending itself to detailed carving. Like many other members of the Apocynaceae (a family rich in toxic and medicinal species), A. boonei contains alkaloids and yields latex.
Chimpanzees in the Budongo Forest, Uganda have been observed eating small amounts of bark or dead wood from Alstonia boonei. Individuals who travel to consume this tree have been observed to have diarrhea immediately before accessing it. This rare behavior is consistent with self-medication by the chimpanzees and both bark and dead wood show activity against gram-positive bacteria in laboritory settings.
Alstonia angustifolia · Alstonia angustiloba · Alstonia constricta · Deviltree · Alstonia pneumatophora · Indian devil tree · Hard Milkwood · Alstonia
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Alstonia boonei by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
