Toona

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

iToona

Toona ciliata

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Plantae
Division:	Magnoliophyta
Class:	Magnoliopsida
Order:	Sapindales
Family:	Meliaceae
Genus:	Toona

species

See text.

Toona is a genus of five or six species of trees in the mahogany family Meliaceae, native from eastern China south to India, southeast Asia and northern Australia.

Toona australis - Australian Red Cedar
Toona calantas - Kalantas or Philippine Mahogany
Toona ciliata - Toon, Suren or Indian Mahogany
Toona febrifuga - Vietnam Mahogany
Toona sinensis - Chinese Mahogany or Chinese Toon
Toona sureni - Suren or Indonesian Mahogany

Toona australis and T. ciliata are important timber trees, providing a valuable hardwood used for furniture, ornamental panelling, shipbuilding, etc. Many authorities treat these two as the same species, under the name T. ciliata.

Image:ToonaSinensis.jpg

Toona sinensis is of interest as by far the most cold-tolerant species in the Meliaceae, native in China as far north as 40°N in the Beijing area, where its tender shoots, called xiangchun (Chinese: 香椿; pinyin: xiāngchūn), are a traditional local leaf vegetable. It is the only member of the family that can be cultivated successfully in northern Europe, where it is sometimes planted as an ornamental tree in parks and avenues. Until recently, it had no widespread English common name, though Chinese Mahogany (reflecting its botanical relationship) is now used (e.g. Rushforth 1999).

In older texts, the genus was often incorporated within a wider circumscription of the related genus Cedrela, but that genus is now restricted to species from the New World.

The largest recorded Australian Red Cedar grew near Nulla Nulla Creek, west of Kempsey, New South Wales and was felled in 1883.