A very tall tree from West Africa. With sapelli as its common name, its wood, referred to as African mahogany, is valuable. But this may be a resource from the past, while the future of this tree may well be as a bountiful provider of food protein.
Description
A deciduous forest tree rising to 55 m (200 ft) or more, the trunk is tall and straight, often clear for the first 25-30 m (100 ft), the rounded crown medium sized. The trunk may reach 1 m (3 ft) or more across. The bark is brown and smooth at first, turning grey in mature trees. Leaves are pinnate on stalks to 30 cm (1ft), tufted at the ends of branches.
They show 11-19 leaflets, often alternate, the lowest pairs oval, others long oval up to 12 cm (5 in) long. Like with other Meliaceae, sunshine on the crown favors fruiting, which explains the late age of the first flowering (35-45 years) and of the first fruiting (60-80 years). Flowers are tiny, white on a branched stalk up to 25 cm (10 in). The fruit is a brown woody capsule about 14 cm (8 in), rounded at the tip, breaking into five parts: the capsule opens first at the tip, then the base and pieces fall away one at a time. Winged seeds about 8 cm (3 in) long are attached alternately left and right to a central column. The winged seeds are blown several metres away from the mother tree.
Area of growth.
This species is distributed throughout the Guinean-Congolese basin from the Ivory Coast to Cameroon and east to Uganda, near Lake Victoria. It extrends until the Mayombe forests in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is thus found in the Central African Republic, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia, Nigeria, and Ghana. It grows in a band extending from 12° North latitude to 5° South latitude. It occupies dense evergreen and semi-deciduous humid forests. It is always found at more than 6 km from the Atlantic coast.
Sapelli is a low-altitude rainforest species, up to 500 m (1,500 ft) elevation, present in areas of rainfall between 1200 and 2500 mm per year, with a dry season of less than four months, and ambient temperatures between 15 and 32°C. It is a tree of half-shade when young and of full light later. It is a transitional species between evergreen and semi- deciduous forests. It is much more abundant in the latter, with a presence up to the savannah edge. It also settles in secondary forests and fallow lands. It prefers dry soils of plateaus or slopes and avoids swampy soils.
The wood.
The timber became an export to European markets at the beginning of the twentieth century, when African woods began serving as substitutes for their counterparts from the Americas. Thus, the American genuses Swietenia (mahoganies such as Cuban m. or broad-leafed m.) and Cedrela (Cuban cedar) found replacement with the African genuses Khaya and Entandrophragma.
The latter, the topic of this description, acquired its current name of Sapelli from the logistics of its original shipping to Europe. Sapelli or Sapele is indeed the name of a small river harbor in Nigeria.
Sapelli trees are mainly exploited for their wood. Its density is 0,8 to 0,95 in the green state, 0,65 to 0,75 in the dry state after elimination of 12 % moisture. It is buoyant. Pinkish when freshly cut, it ages to a reddish brown. The grain is usually narrowly layered, with a fairly regular ribbon-like appearance. It is fairly fine-grained, brittle and not very resistant to shock. The heartwood is of average natural durability. Against rot, it demands preservation under high humidity. A preventive treatment against termites is another necessity.
Demand for sapelli as a mahogany substitute, often traded as “African mahogany”, has increased sharply in recent years. It is sold both in lumber and veneer form. It is used predominantly in woodworking and cabinetmaking. Among other applications is use in
musical instruments., guitars and ukuleles predominantly. As advertises a major manufacturer of guitars, based in El Cajon, California, Taylor Guitars —founded in 1974
by Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug –
its tonal output is consistent and balanced across the tonal spectrum, making it compatible with a diverse range of playing styles. It’s comparable to mahogany but its higher density tends to produce a slightly brighter sound with more top-end shimmer.
Such use completes the cycle: trees from the Americas for which Europeans found African
substitutes, which in turn got an American niche for themselves.
Residence for edible caterpillars.
Insects are very rich in protein. Weight for weight, they contain protein three to four times more than pork or chicken. Edible insects are traditionally consumed in many parts of the world, as at least 2 billion people eat them on a regular basis, not only because of their nutritional value but for their taste as well.
Sapelli trees host, among other butterflies, Imbrasia oyemensis. This butterfly feeds on the leaves. In its earlier state as a caterpillar larva, it is much appreciated as food by local populations in West Africa. Such caterpillars serve as substitutes for meat and fish.
Moreover, flour made from those caterpillars can also serve to raise poultry. Each harvestable Sapelli tree — with greater than 80 cm diameter at breast height — yields an average of 11.3 kg fresh weight of edible caterpillars per year; smaller, pre-commercial trees yielded 5.4 kg per tree per year. Towards the end of the Nineties, this even led to dried caterpillars from Central Africa being traded internationally.
One can foresee renewed conflict between those uses of Sapelli, for the wood or for use by this particular butterfly for nesting. In addition, local populations resort to this tree for combating various illnesses.
Pharmacology.
Going by findings about other species in the same genus, the tree is a God-given (Pierre Potier’s La pharmacie du Bon Dieu) resource of beneficient chemicals. In all likelihood, its bark contains both anti-malarial and anti-inflammatory substances.
One among the tallest trees.
In 2016 in a remote valley on the continent’s highest mountain Kilimanjaro, northern Tanzania has been discovered Africa’s tallest tree, it was measured at 81.5 m (268 ft) tall. The ten known tallest individuals of this related species, Entandrophragma excelsum, ranged from 59.2 to 81.5 m and 1.24 to 2.55 m diameter.