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Burmese Rosewood

Dalbergia oliveri

1 NParks heritage tree in Singapore: Found in Fort Canning Park, Fort Green

Burmese Rosewood
Photo: 阿橋 HQ, CC BY-SA 2.0

Burmese rosewood is a large forest tree in the pea family, growing 15 to 30 m tall, valued for its dense red-brown timber. It is a timber and conservation species, and is rarely grown in home gardens, so care notes apply mainly to young trees grown in tropical or subtropical conditions.

Family
Fabaceae (Pea & bean family)
Grows as
Tree
Light
Full sun
Water
Water regularly while young, then allow the soil to dry a little between waterings; it tolerates seasonal drought once established.
Soil
Well-drained, fertile soil or loamy garden soil.
Temperature
20–35 °C; protect below 10 °C
How easy
Moderate
Native range
Arunachal Pradesh to Pen. Malaysia
Climate
seasonally dry tropical

About

Dalbergia oliveri is a species of legume in the family Fabaceae which grows in tree form to 15 – 30 meters in height (up to 100 ft.). The fruit is a green pod containing one to two seeds which turn brown to black when ripe. It is threatened by habitat loss and over-harvesting for its valuable red "rosewood" timber.

University of Oxford published the transcriptomes of Dalbergia oliveri and five other Dalbergia spp. It was found that D. oliveri had more R genes than the co-occurring Dalbergia cochinchinensis.

Where it grows

The species is native to Arunachal Pradesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Common names in S.E. Asia are: Cambodian: "Neang Nuon", Thai: "Mai Ching Chan" (ไม้ชิงชัน), Laos: "Mai Kham Phii" (ໄມ້ຄຳພີ), Myanmar: "tamalan" (တမလန်း).

Uses

The wood of this rosewood-family tree is valuable for ornamental work including Woodturning and furniture. The sapwood is yellowish-white with dark brown heartwood. The heartwood is very hard and heavy. The lumber is sold under the names Burmese rosewood, Laos rosewood, and Asian rosewood.

Other Dalbergia plants

Hluhluwe climber · Thailand rosewood · Coinvine · Cocobolo · Hwangdan · Indian rosewood · Dalbergia maritima · African blackwood · Dalbergia miscolobium · Brazilian rosewood · Climbing Flat Bean · Fragrant Rosewood

[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dalbergia oliveri 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.

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