Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Mountain Mahogany

Entandrophragma caudatum

Also called Caprivi Wooden Banana, Wooden Banana, Wooden Banana Tree

Mountain Mahogany
Photo: Matilda Smith (1854–1926), Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865), Public domain

Entandrophragma caudatum is a large deciduous tree from southern Africa, reaching about 20 m, usually found in river valleys and open woodland. It is a timber tree rather than a garden or houseplant, so care notes apply mainly to young trees or specimens grown in warm, frost-free climates.

Family
Meliaceae (Meli family)
Grows as
Tree
Light
Full sun
Water
Water regularly when young and during the growing season, then reduce as the tree establishes; it tolerates seasonal dryness.
Soil
Well-drained, fertile soil; tolerates rocky or sandy ground.
Temperature
18–35 °C; protect below 5 °C
How easy
Moderate
Native range
S. Trop. & S. Africa
Climate
seasonally dry tropical

About

Entandrophragma caudatum, or mountain mahogany, is a large Southern African tree belonging to the mahogany family and found in eastern and north eastern South Africa, Eswatini, Botswana, Angola, the Caprivi Strip region of Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. Kew currently recognises 12 other species of Entandrophragma, all with a tropical and sub-tropical African distribution.

This is a large deciduous tree up to 20m in height, found at low altitudes in river valleys, but also in open woodland on rocky slopes and ridges. Bark is grey, flaking in large, irregular scales and revealing a buff surface, giving a mottled appearance. The leaves up to 25 cm long, puberulous, crowded near the ends of branches, paripinnately compound with 6 or 7 pairs of leaflets, each leaflet measuring up to 11 x 3.5 cm. The leaflets are hairless with a narrowly attenuate apex or drip tip, and entire margin.

Other Entandrophragma plants

Mahogany · Sapele · Entandrophragma excelsum · Mahogany · African Mahogony

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Entandrophragma caudatum 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.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…