Indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia)

Sonokeling or Java palisandre or Indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia) is a kind of tree belonging to Fabaceae, a producer of beautiful hardwood and high quality. This medium weight wood in trade comes from medium to large trees, 20-40 meters high with 1.5-2 meters tall.

D. latifolia has a dome-shaped dense canopy and leaves off during the dry season. The outer skin is brownish gray and has a slightly longitudinal crack. The odd pinnate compound leaves with 5-7 sub-leaves which are not the same size and intersect on the shaft.

The sub-leaves are dense-shaped wide, green on the upper side and grayish on the lower side. Small flowers have a length of 0.5-1 cm, collected in panicles in the limb armpit. Pods have 1-4 brown seeds, elongated and tapered lancets. Leaves for animal feed and green manure. Rooting binds nitrogen and improves soil fertility.

Indian rosewood grow wild in forests at altitudes below 600 meters above sea level, especially in rocky, infertile, and dry soils regularly. Growing in groups, but not too much in the seasonal forests that shed leaves in the dry season.

Sonokeling is a hard tree and has a specific gravity of 0.77 to 0.86 at a moisture content of around 15%. Fine texture with straight fiber direction and sometimes choppy. This wood is also durable, resistant to dry wood termites and very resistant to wood rot mold.

Wood has beautiful patterns, purple dotted black or purplish black with reddish brown tones. The surface can be shaved to slippery, peeled and sliced for decorative. This wood can also be turned, screwed and decorative veneers used to coat the surface of expensive plywood.

Java palisandre is commonly used for furniture, cupboards, carved items, lathe, musical and sports equipment, umbrella handles, walking sticks and others. Wood is strong, durable and often used for construction of frames, doors, windows, trains, ax handles, hammers, machines and parquet floors.

Sonokeling is one of the most popular agroforestry plants and is grown in the intercropping system to be interspersed with a variety of food crops including rice, corn, cassava and beans. This plant is also a tree making agroforestry with mango, jackfruit, soursop, guava and others.

Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Rosids
Order: Fabales
Family: Fabaceae
Genus: Dalbergia
Species: D. latifolia

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Dlium

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