My theme is the all-too-familiar, mankind the destroyer of nature and its masterpieces. Inadvertently? Not in this case, greed was and remains the main cause.
The Portuguese reached Brazil in April 1500. The very name of the new country referred to the wood of a tree valued for its dyeing properties. As soon as the colonists were established, they started shipping the most precious woods to Portugal.
Rosewood was among them. It is known in Portuguese as jacaranda do Bahia, or jacaranda do Rio, for its regions of origin — in-between Salvador de Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. This is the area — it was rather unfortunately — the location of the Atlantic rainforest. In French, since the seventeenth century, it goes under the name palissandre, derived from the Dutch palissander — the Dutch had introduced in Europe similar hardwoods from Asia.
As for its name in English, it refers to its, truly gorgeous, aspect: reddish brown or purple, with randomly spaced black veins. Cabinet makers were prompt to seize on this wood for their craft. In France, the trend started in 1662, when Colbert, a minister of the French Sun King, who was intent upon ensuring the French economic independence from foreign powers, set up a Royal Manufacture for the Crown furniture.
I can vouch for the beauty of the wood: as a bookish teenager, then living with my family in Rio, I was given by my parents a custom-made set of rosewood bookshelves. I was so much taken by them that, when we had to leave them behind, upon our return to France, I cried!
The tree itself is magnificent. It can reach up to 35 m in height — i.e., about a 12-story building. At breast height, the diameter reaches 5 ft. The leaves are alternate, small and deciduous. The hermaphrodite flowers display small and white-yellow petals.
The genus, counting about 250 species, is named after Carl Gustaf Dahlberg (c. 1720-1761). A Swedish military, he entered Dutch service, became lieutenant-colonel and married a Dutch widow (in 1746 apparently) through whom he acquired considerable land and plantations in Surinam, making him a man of considerable wealth. In 1771 Dahlberg went with his wife to Amsterdam, returning to Surinam at the turn of the year 1775-1776.
On this occasion he obviously sent a large collection of plants in spirits-of-wine to the king of Sweden, who passed them on to Carl Linnaeus.
The beauty and hardiness of the wood doomed the tree, together with most its congeners in the Atlantic Forest. Nowadays, the Atlantic Forest has decreased to only 7.5 % of the area it covered upon arrival of the Europeans in 1500. By way of comparison, French forests today cover a greater total area than in Roman times.
Rosewood is coveted not only for furniture. A number of musical instruments use it too. A friend of mine plays a bassoon, made of that fine timber. Oboes also draw on Rio jacaranda. Together with the original calculator, Blaise Pascal’s arithmetic machine, also made of rosewood.