{"id":1080,"date":"2015-10-11T04:00:21","date_gmt":"2015-10-11T08:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.woodturningpens.com\/?p=1080"},"modified":"2015-10-11T04:00:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-11T08:00:21","slug":"honduran-rosewood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woodturningpens.com\/honduran-rosewood\/","title":{"rendered":"Honduran Rosewood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
The wood most commonly marketed as Honduran, or Honduras, Rosewood is scientifically known as Dalbergia stevensonii<\/em>. Some regular readers, and\/or those who are familiar with the genus specifications of trees and wood, will recognize that Honduran Rosewood is a “true” rosewood since it belongs to the Dalbergia<\/em> species. Ultimately, Dalbergia<\/em> belongs to the much larger pea family and includes a very large number of small trees, shrubs, and even climbing vines. So, while rosewood that belongs to the Dalbergia<\/em> genus is “true” rosewood, not all Dalbergia<\/em> are rosewood producing plants. And there are a lot of Dalbergia<\/em> genus plants (including trees). One list I consulted has almost 300 named species within Dalbergia<\/em>, and that doesn’t include subspecies.<\/p>\n Readers could be forgiven for guessing that Honduran Rosewood comes from the nation of Honduras in Central America. However, most all of the commercially harvested D. stevensonii<\/em> today comes from Belize. There are some small, and generally not commercially exploited, stocks in southern Mexico and Guatemala. Within Belize, D. stevensonii<\/em> is found in the very wet southern forests. The name makes a bit more sense when one remembers that prior to independence from the United Kingdom in September 1981, today’s nation of Belize was known as British Honduras. Since D. stevensonii<\/em> has been exported from the area that today is known as Belize since 1841, for over a century the wood came from a region that then included “Honduras” in its name and the popular name persisted through independence.<\/p>\n Other common names for D. stevensonii<\/em> include but are certainly not limited to: Central American rosewood, nogaed, and rosul.<\/p>\n For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to D. stevensonii<\/em> as Honduran Rosewood from this point forward.<\/p>\n