The open plant encyclopedia
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.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Lovoa swynnertonii
Also called Kilimanjaro Mahogany
Brown mahogany is a large evergreen forest tree from tropical Africa that can reach 50 metres, grown mainly for its timber rather than as a garden plant. It is not practical to grow at home, and it is not commonly cultivated, so care details below are general guidance only.
Lovoa swynnertonii, also called brown mahogany or Kilimanjaro mahogany, is a species of plant in the family Meliaceae. It is a tree native to Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. It is an evergreen tree which can grow up to 50 metres tall. It grows in lowland and lower montane tropical moist forest from 180 to 1,600 metres elevation. It is threatened by habitat loss from logging and forest clearance for agricultural expansion. Plantations have been unsuccessful because of infestation by the mahogany shoot borer Hypsipyla.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Lovoa swynnertonii 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.
