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Mesua ferrea
Also called Mesua, Ceylon Ironwood
In Singapore: Ceylon Ironwood, Na Tree, Diya Na, Nagchampa, Nagacuram, Nagasari, Ironwood Tree, Ironwood, Indian Rose Chestnut, Poached Egg Tree, Cobra's Saffron, Penaga Lilin, Penaga, Lenggapus, 铁力木, 铁木树 (Grown in Singapore)
Mesua ferrea, the Ceylon ironwood, is a slow-growing evergreen tree from wet tropical forests of South and Southeast Asia, grown for its graceful shape, drooping pink-red young leaves and large fragrant white flowers. It is a tree species, not a shrub, and it prefers consistent moisture and warmth.
Mesua ferrea, the Ceylon ironwood, or cobra saffron, is a species in the family Calophyllaceae native to the Indomalayan realm. This slow-growing tree is named after the heaviness and hardness of its timber. It is widely cultivated as an ornamental for its graceful shape, grayish-green foliage with a striking pink to red flush of drooping young leaves, and its large, fragrant white flowers. It is the national tree of Sri Lanka, as well as the state tree of Mizoram and state flower of Tripura in India.
It is native to wet, tropical parts of Sri Lanka, India, southern Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Indochina, the Philippines, Malaysia and Sumatra, where it grows in evergreen forests, especially in river valleys. In the eastern Himalayas and Western Ghats in India it grows up to elevations of 1,500 m (4,900 ft), while in Sri Lanka up to 1,000 m (3,300 ft).
As the English name indicates, the wood of this tree is very heavy, hard and strong. The density is 940 to 1,195 kg/m3 (59 to 75 lb/ft3) at 15% moisture content. The colour is deep dark red. It is hard to saw and is mainly used for railroad ties and heavy structural timber.
[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 Mesua ferrea 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.
