JAVS Winter 1991

25

The Extinction of the Brazilwood Tree, also Known Abroad as Pernambuco Wood There are only a few years before we run out of the last native species ofbrazilwood and the tree that almost five hundred years ago gave its name to this country. Brazilwood became the first commodity to appear on our exports list and is , still today, sold abroad for the manufacture of violin bows. Whatever is left of this wood in the plundered Atlantic forest of the Bahia coastland (in the state of Espirito Santo, where the brazilwood could be found) is now being developed by myself. I am the owner of a brazilwood ecologic station with more than 30,000 trees used for scientific studies. Of the brazilwood tree only BRAZIL is left. In 1500, when the Portuguese arrived here, brazilwood was so plentiful that it didn't take much thinking to name the new land after it. In 1800 the picture was quite different, and there was very little left of those red..dyed trunk trees, once counted among our riches. And should Brazil be discovered today, it would probably not have such a beautiful, singular name. The brazilwood is closely linked to the history of Brazil and can be found from Piaui down to Rio de Janeiro, prevailing in the littoral from Pernambuco to Rio de Janeiro. If the brazilwood gave its name to the newly..discovered land, the Botanist Lamark gave the tree its scientific name: Caesalpinia ecmnata. And it was also known by other names, such as Ibirapitinga (red wood in the Tupian language), pernambucan wood, dye..wood, "arabuta" and "brasileto." But the popular name that remained defines well this tree that conceals within its trunk a wood as red as an ember. For three..hundred years the brazilwood tree was sold to the whole world by the Portuguese who controlled a monopoly. The tree could be found almost all over the country, especially in the coast. Three centuries of incursions by the Portuguese as well as by many smugglers, have brought the forests to a point of exhaustion. Were this not enough, in the beginning of the 18th century, the wood merchants started to invade the inland. Only in 1810 did Portugal begin to be concerned with the depletion of one of its most important sources of wealth and issued a series of acts restricting the exploitation of the brazilwood tree. Quite ironically the beginning of the end came in 1826 with the discovery, in Germany, of anilines of chemical origin: the brazilwood tree was no longer needed as the main source of raw material for the dyeing industry. Thus, from the wholesale cutting down of trees, we came to a state of disinterest and forgetfulness. Today, few children or adults know what a brazilwood tree looks like. The tree grows very slowly, but when fully grown can reach a formidable height. The trunk is thorny and the perennial leaves are fragrant and oval ..shaped. The yellow and red flowers form conical bunches, but they only appear when the tree is over twenty..five years old. To grow, to flower, and for everything else the brazilwood tree demands time, a sad irony for a species on the verge of extinction.

-Horst John

Caixa Postal, 606 Rio de Janiero, Brazil