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.
Pterocarpus soyauxii
Also called African Coralwood, African Padauk, Gabon Padauk, Muenge, Redwood
Barwood (Pterocarpus soyauxii) is a large tropical African hardwood tree, valued for its durable reddish timber and grown mainly in its native forests rather than as a garden plant. It is not a practical houseplant or ornamental for home gardens.
Pterocarpus soyauxii, the African padauk or African coralwood, is a species of Pterocarpus in the family Fabaceae, native to central and tropical west Africa, from Nigeria east to Congo-Kinshasa and south to Angola.
It is a tree growing to 27–34 m tall, with a trunk diameter up to 1 m with flaky reddish-grey bark. The leaves are pinnate, with 11–13 leaflets. The flowers are produced in panicles. The fruit is a thorny pod 6–9 cm long, which does not split open at maturity.
The leaves are edible, and contain large amounts of vitamin C; they are eaten as a leaf vegetable.
Bleedwood tree · East Indian mahogany · Barwood · Pterocarpus · Small Leaved Bloodwood · Malabar kino · Dragonsblood tree · Red sandalwood · Pterocarpus
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pterocarpus soyauxii 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.
