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African Blackwood or Mpingo (Dalbergia melanoxylon) is a flowering plant
Flowering plant

The flowering plants or angiosperms are the most widespread group of Embryophytes. The flowering plants and the gymnosperms are the only extant groups of Spermatophyte....
 in the family Fabaceae
Fabaceae

Fabaceae or Leguminosae is a large and economically important family of flowering plants, which is commonly known as the legume family, pea family, bean family or pulse family....
, native to seasonally dry regions of Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
 from Senegal
Senegal

Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal, is a country south of the S?n?gal River in West Africa. Senegal is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, and Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south....
 east to Eritrea
Eritrea

Eritrea , officially the Country of Eritrea, is a country in Northeast Africa. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast....
 and south to the Transvaal
Transvaal

File:Flag of Transvaal.svgFile:Transvaal map.pngFile:Spelterini Transvaal.jpgThe Transvaal is the name of an area of northern South Africa....
 in South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
.

It is a small tree
TREE

TREE was a Boston hardcore punk band formed in the summer of 1990. They were active in the Boston music scene until disbanding in 2002....
, reaching 4-15 m tall, with grey bark
BARK

BARK was an early Electromechanics. BARK was built using standard phone relays, implementing a 32-bit binary machine and could perform addition in 150 ms and multiplication in 250 ms....
 and spiny
Spine (biology)

In biology, spine or spiny may refer to:*Spine , needle-like structures in plants*Spine , needle-like structures in animalsSpine may also refer to:...
 shoots. The leaves
Leaf

In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant Organ specialized for photosynthesis. For this purpose, a leaf is typically flat and thin, to expose the cells containing chloroplast to light over a broad area, and to allow light to penetrate fully into the tissues....
 are deciduous
Deciduous

Deciduous means falling off at maturity or tending to fall off and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe....
 in the dry season
Dry season

The dry season is a term commonly used when describing the weather in the tropics. The weather in the tropics is dominated by the tropical rain belt, which oscillation from the northern to the southern tropics over the course of the year....
, alternate, 6-22 cm long, pinnate, with 6-9 alternately arranged leaflets. The flower
Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproduction structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to mediate the union of male sperm with female ovum in order to produce seeds....
s are white, produced in dense clusters.






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African Blackwood or Mpingo (Dalbergia melanoxylon) is a flowering plant
Flowering plant

The flowering plants or angiosperms are the most widespread group of Embryophytes. The flowering plants and the gymnosperms are the only extant groups of Spermatophyte....
 in the family Fabaceae
Fabaceae

Fabaceae or Leguminosae is a large and economically important family of flowering plants, which is commonly known as the legume family, pea family, bean family or pulse family....
, native to seasonally dry regions of Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
 from Senegal
Senegal

Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal, is a country south of the S?n?gal River in West Africa. Senegal is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, and Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south....
 east to Eritrea
Eritrea

Eritrea , officially the Country of Eritrea, is a country in Northeast Africa. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast....
 and south to the Transvaal
Transvaal

File:Flag of Transvaal.svgFile:Transvaal map.pngFile:Spelterini Transvaal.jpgThe Transvaal is the name of an area of northern South Africa....
 in South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
.

It is a small tree
TREE

TREE was a Boston hardcore punk band formed in the summer of 1990. They were active in the Boston music scene until disbanding in 2002....
, reaching 4-15 m tall, with grey bark
BARK

BARK was an early Electromechanics. BARK was built using standard phone relays, implementing a 32-bit binary machine and could perform addition in 150 ms and multiplication in 250 ms....
 and spiny
Spine (biology)

In biology, spine or spiny may refer to:*Spine , needle-like structures in plants*Spine , needle-like structures in animalsSpine may also refer to:...
 shoots. The leaves
Leaf

In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant Organ specialized for photosynthesis. For this purpose, a leaf is typically flat and thin, to expose the cells containing chloroplast to light over a broad area, and to allow light to penetrate fully into the tissues....
 are deciduous
Deciduous

Deciduous means falling off at maturity or tending to fall off and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe....
 in the dry season
Dry season

The dry season is a term commonly used when describing the weather in the tropics. The weather in the tropics is dominated by the tropical rain belt, which oscillation from the northern to the southern tropics over the course of the year....
, alternate, 6-22 cm long, pinnate, with 6-9 alternately arranged leaflets. The flower
Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproduction structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to mediate the union of male sperm with female ovum in order to produce seeds....
s are white, produced in dense clusters. The fruit
Fruit

The term fruit has different meanings dependent on context, and the term is not synonymous in food preparation and biology. In botany, which is the scientific study of plants, fruits are the ripened Ovary of flowering plants....
 is a pod
Legume

A legume is a plant in the family Fabaceae , or a fruit of these specific plants. A legume fruit is a Fruit#Simple fruit that develops from a simple carpel and usually Dehiscence on two sides....
 3-7 cm long, containing one to two seed
Seed

A seed is a small Plant embryogenesis plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some Food storage. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant....
s.

Uses

The dense, lustrous wood
Wood

Wood is an organic material; in the strict sense wood is produced as secondary xylem in the stems of woody plants, notably trees but also shrubs, etc....
 ranges from reddish to pure black. It is generally cut into small billets or logs with its sharply demarcated bright yellow white sapwood left on to assist in the slow drying so as to prevent cracks developing. Good quality "A" grade African Blackwood commands high prices on the commercial timber market. The tonal qualities of African Blackwood are particularly valued when used in woodwind instruments, principally clarinet
Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The name derives from adding the suffix -et meaning little to the Italian word clarino meaning a particular type of trumpet, as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet....
s, oboe
Oboe

The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois", "hoboy", or "French hoboy"....
s, Highland pipes, and Northumbrian pipes. Furniture makers from the time of the Egyptians
Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
 have valued this timber. A story states that it has even been used as ballast in trading ships and that some enterprising Northumbrian pipe makers used old discarded Blackwood ballast to great effect.

Due to overuse, the mpingo tree is severely threatened in Kenya and needing attention in Tanzania and Mozambique. The trees are being harvested at an unsustainable rate, partly because of illegal smuggling of the wood into Kenya, but also because the tree takes upwards of 60 years to mature.

Gresso, a cell phone manufacturer based in Russia, recently began selling luxury cell phones whose casing is made from African Blackwood.

Relation to other woods

  • African Blackwood is no longer regarded as ebony
    Ebony

    Ebony is a general name for very dense black wood. In the strict sense it is yielded by several species in the genus Diospyros, but other heavy, black woods are sometimes also called ebony....
    , a name now reserved for a limited number of timbers yielded by the genus Diospyros
    Diospyros

    Diospyros is a genus of about 450-500 species of deciduous and evergreen trees. The majority are native to the tropics, with only a few species extending into temperate regions....
    ; these are more of a matte appearance and are more brittle.
  • The genus Dalbergia
    Dalbergia

    Dalbergia is a large genus of small to medium-size trees, shrubs and lianas in the pea family, Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. The genus has a wide distribution, native to the tropical regions of Central America and South America, Africa, Madagascar and southern Asia....
     yields other famous timbers such as rosewood
    Rosewood

    Rosewood refers to any of a number of richly hued timbers, often brownish with darker veining but found in many different hues. All rosewoods are strong and heavy, taking an excellent polish, being suitable for Parquetry, furniture, Woodturning, musical instruments, John Parris, and chess piece ....
    , tulipwood
    Tulipwood

    Most commonly, Tulipwood is the yellowish greenish wood yielded from the Liriodendron tulipifera, found on the Eastern side of North America and also in some parts of China....
     and cocobolo
    Cocobolo

    Cocobolo is a tropical hardwood from Central America. Cocobolo is known to change color after being cut, lending to its appeal. The heartwood is typically orange or reddish-brown in color, often with a figuring of darker irregular traces weaving through the wood, while the sapwood is a creamy yellow, contrasting sharply with the heartwood....
    .


Names

Other names by which the tree is known include babanus and grenadilla, which appear as loanword
Loanword

A loanword is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept whereby it is the Meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself....
s in various local English dialects.

Conservation

There are two organisations involved in the conservation of African blackwood, the Mpingo Conservation Project and the African Blackwood Conservation Project.

The Mpingo Conservation Project (MCP) is involved in research, awareness raising and practical conservation of African Blackwood. Conservation of Mpingo and its natural habitat can be achieved by ensuring that local people living in mpingo harvesting areas receive a fair share of the revenue created, thus providing them with an incentive to manage the habitat in an environmentally friendly manner. In order to achieve this the MCP is helping communities to get Forest Stewardship Certification. Link http://www.mpingoconservation.org/ and http://www.sustainableblackwood.org/.

The African Blackwood Conservation Project works around Mount Kilimanjaro replanting African Blackwood trees, and in conservation education. It also works with adult and women's groups in the promotion of environmentally sound land uses. Link http://www.blackwoodconservation.org/index.html