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

Obeche

Triplochiton scleroxylon

Also called African Whitewood

Obeche
Photo: Collector(s): Amarh, Amponsah Identifier: Gabriel Ameka, Public domain

Obeche (Triplochiton scleroxylon) is a fast-growing timber tree of the Malvaceae family from the wet tropical forests of West and Central Africa. It is grown mainly for its pale, light hardwood rather than as a garden or houseplant.

Family
Malvaceae (Mallow family)
Grows as
Tree
Light
Full sun
Water
Keep consistently moist during establishment; it needs abundant rainfall in its native habitat.
Soil
Deep, well-drained, fertile forest soil.
Temperature
Warm tropical conditions, about 22–30 °C; not frost tolerant.
How easy
Moderate
Native range
W. & WC. Trop. Africa
Climate
wet tropical

About

Triplochiton scleroxylon is a tree of the genus Triplochiton of the family Malvaceae. The timber is known by the common names African whitewood, abachi, obeche (in Nigeria), wawa (in Ghana), ayous (in Cameroon) and sambawawa (in Ivory Coast). The tree is the official state tree of Ekiti State, Nigeria.

Uses

The timber yielded is typically pale yellow and is moderately soft and light for a hardwood.

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Triplochiton scleroxylon 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…