Tabebuia - Uses and Ecology

Uses and Ecology

Species in this genus are important as timber trees. The wood is used for furniture, decking, and other outdoor uses. It is increasingly popular as a decking material due to its insect resistance and durability. By 2007, FSC-certified ipê wood had become readily available on the market, although certificates are occasionally forged.

Indigenous peoples of the Amazon made hunting bows from the wood, which is the source of the common name pau d'arco, "bow stick".

Tabebuia is widely used as ornamental tree in the tropics in landscaping gardens, public squares, and boulevards due to its impressive and colorful flowering. Many flowers appear on still leafless stems at the end of the dry season, making the floral display more conspicuous. They are useful as honey plants for bees, and are popular with certain hummingbirds. Naturalist Madhaviah Krishnan on the other hand once famously took offense at ipé grown in India, where it is not native.

The bark is dried, shredded, and then boiled making a bitter or sour-tasting brownish-colored tea. Tea from the inner bark of Pink Ipê (T. impetiginosa) is known as pau d'arco, Lapacho, or Taheebo. Its main chemical principles are lapachol, quercetin, and other flavonoids. It is also available in pill form. Taheebo has been used for years in Central America and South America to treat a number of diseases including Eczema, Candidiasis, Fungal infections and even cancer. The worth and use of Taheebo extract has been related to the importance of quinine, which is taken from the bark of the South American Cinchona tree and is a medicinally accepted treatment for malaria. The herbal remedy is typically used during flu and cold season and for easing smoker's cough. It apparently works as an expectorant, by promoting the lungs to cough up and free deeply embedded mucus and contaminants. However, lapachol is rather toxic and therefore a more topical use e.g. as antibiotic or pesticide may be advisable. Other species with significant folk medical use are T. alba and Yellow Lapacho (T. serratifolia).

Tabebuia heteropoda, T. incana, and other species are occasionally used as an additive to the entheogenic drink Ayahuasca.

Mycosphaerella tabebuiae, a plant pathogenic sac fungus, was first discovered on an ipê tree.

Much of the ipê imported into the United States is used for decking. Starting in the late 1960s, importing companies targeted large boardwalk projects to sell ipê, beginning with New York City Department of Parks and Recreation ("Parks") which maintains the city's boardwalks, including along the beach of Coney Island. The city began using ipê around that time and has since converted the entire boardwalk—over 10 miles (16 km) long—to ipê. The ipê lasted about 25 years, at which time (1994) Parks has been replacing it with new ipê. Given that ipê trees typically grow in densities of only one or two trees per acre, large areas of forest must be searched and cut down to create paths to harvest and fill orders for boardwalks and, to a lesser extent, homeowner decks.

In 2008-2009 Wildwood, New Jersey rebuilt a section of their boardwalk using ipê, the town had pledged to use domestic black locust, but it was not available in time.

Nowadays, ipé wood from cultivated trees supersedes timber extracted from the wild. As noted above, customers should check for legitimacy of certificates.