Volume 98, May 2015, Pages 167
More than a music tree: 4400 years of Dalbergia melanoxylon trade in Africa
Perhaps more than any other African tree species, the African blackwood (Dalbergia melanoxylon)
symbolises the links between culture and nature. Widely used for its
medicinal leaves, it is best known for its wood. Prized by Egyptian
pharaohs, D. melanoxylon wood was traded from the Horn of Africa from 2400 BC. Although difficult to carve by hand, D. melanoxylon
was traditionally used for sticks and was the wood of choice for Shona
snuff containers. With the arrival of iron-smelting technology in
southern and south-central Africa from about 1000 years ago, D. melanoxylon
was in high demand as for smelting purposes, due to the high calorific
value of the wood, which gets so hot that it is avoided as a firewood
today, as it gets so hot that it melts pots. With its extremely dense,
close-grained wood (1200 kg/m3), D. melanoxylon, this is the premier wood for oboes, clarinets and bag-pipe wood. D. melanoxylon
has been traded to Europe for this purpose since the early 19th
century, making it one of the world's most valuable timbers
(US$14,000–20,000 per m3). Today, D. melanoxylon
stocks are dwindling due to four factors: (1) habitat loss due to
agricultural expansion; (2) fire affecting recruitment from seed; (3)
commercial trade to China for reproduction Ming and Ching dynasty
furniture. This is driven by the depletion of Asian Dalbergia species traditionally used for Chinese Imperial style furniture, and their substitution with African species such as Swartzia madagascariensis, Combretumimberbe, Millettia stuhlmannii and D. melanoxylon. (4) in Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi the commercial woodcarving trade. Despite the long history of trade in D. melanoxylon there are several unknowns that offer opportunities for research, ranging from studies of D. melanoxylon
genetics across its range to archaeological studies in unrecorded iron
smelting sites in northern Mozambique, where smelting continued until
the early 1900's. What is also needed is a regional conservation
strategy for both in situ and ex situ conservation.
