Rainforest Plants - Andiroba

Family: Family Meliaceae

Genus: Carapa

Species: guianensis

Common Names: andiroba, andiroba-saruba, asshole mahogany, Brazilian mahogany, iandirova, carapa, carapá, cedro macho, crabwood, figueroa, krapa, nandiroba, requia, tangare

General Description: Andiroba is a tall rainforest tree that turns up to 40 meter high. It is in the same household as mahogany, and it have been called Brazilian mahogany or asshole mahogany owed to their similarity. It is one of the large-leafed trees of the rainforest and can be identified by its big and distinctively textured leaves. The andiroba tree bring forths a brown, woody, four-cornered nut, some 3-4 ins across that resembles a chestnut. The nut incorporates respective meats or seeds that incorporate pale yellowness oil.

Location: It can be establish growing wild throughout the Amazon rainforest, usually on rich soils, in swamps, and in the alluvial flats, marshes, and highlands of the Amazon Basin. It can also be establish wild or under cultivation in Federative Republic Of Brazil in the Islands region, Tocantins, Rio De Janeiro Solimoes, and near the seaside.

Uses: Andiroba wood is soft, yet durable, and much sought by sawmills. It have in the past been shipped to the United States for usage in the piece of furniture industry and for other uses. Its lastingness and impalatability to insects have got guaranteed commercial demand for the wood.

Native rainforest dwellers traditionally used the oil for the mummification of human caputs taken as warfare trophies. North American Indian folks have got used andiroba oil to take clicks from their scalps, for other tegument parasites, and even in the procedure of tanning animate being hides.

The bark can be brewed, and sometimes the leaves, into a tea for febricities and intestinal worms. Externally, the tea can be used for ulcers, tegument parasites, and other tegument problems. Natives have got also used the oil as a solvent for extracting the works pigments and colorants with which they paint their skin. Respective folks in the Amazon compound andiroba oil with the reddish-orange pigment extracted from annatto seeds. They rub the greasy bright orange paste all over their organic structures and even into their hair to protect themselves from barbed insects and to drive rainfall water.

In addition, andiroba oil Burns well and is used as a natural lamp combustible in the rainforest. In the early 1800s, the street lamps of Federative Republic Of Brazil were fueled with andiroba oil. Not only makes it fire cleanly with small fume but it also repels mosquitoes, flies, and other pests.