Swietenia Mahagoni - Discovery

Discovery

The earliest recorded use of S. mahagoni was in the year 1514. That date was carved into a rough-hewn cross placed at the beginning of the Catedral de Santa María la Menor in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The cathedral was richly ornamented with carved S. mahagoni woodwork that was still in almost perfect condition after more than 400 years in the tropics. Completed about 1540, it is the oldest church in the West Indies. Santo Domingo is the oldest European-founded city in the Western Hemisphere. Bartholomew Columbus, a brother of Christopher Columbus, founded it in 1496. Other records refer to the use of mahogany between 1521 and 1540 when Spanish explorers employed the wood for making canoes and for ship repair work in the West Indies. The next significant recorded use was in 1597 regarding repairs for Sir Walter Raleigh's ships in the West Indies. The first documented use in Europe of West Indies mahogany for major building structures prior to 1578 was in Spain. It was specified for use in the construction and interior trim of one of the great Renaissance churches of Europe, the Escorial. It is evident that its merits were well-known and that it was used extensively, or the king's advisors would not have requisitioned it for making the fancy furniture and trim work of a group of the most beautiful buildings in Europe. "When in 1578 the king ordered incorruptible and very good woods - cedar, ebony, mahogany, acana, guayacan and iron wood - sent to embellish the Excorial, they had to be brought from a distance by the slaves. A shipment of such woods was made in the summer of 1579 and others followed through a period of ten years at least." Its first major use in Spain and England was for ship building and during the eighteenth century it was the chief wood employed in Europe for that purpose. Mark Catesby's Natural History describes mahogany's excellence in that regard. " has Properties for that Use excelling Oak, and all other Wood, viz. Durableness, resisting Gunshots, and burying the Shot without Splintering." That merchant ships calling on West Indies ports took on occasional parcels of mahogany logs prior to 1666 may be accepted from what Davis says: "Some masters of ships who trade to the Caribbies many times bring thence planks of this wood which are of such length and breadth that there needs but one to make a fair and large table."

Its blossom is the national tree of the Dominican Republic.