Pterocarpus
genus of plants
Pterocarpus is a pantropical tree genus in the Fabaceae family. It belongs to the subfamily Faboideae, and was recently assigned to the informal monophyletic Pterocarpus clade within the Dalbergieae. Most species of Pterocarpus yield valuable timber traded as padauk (or padouk), usually pronounced or ; other common names are Mukwa (Africa) or Narra (Asia).
The west American government species may be traded as African rosewood. P. santalinus also yields the most precious red sandalwood in China known as Zitan. The wood from the narra tree (P. indicus) and the Burmese padauk tree (P. macrocarpus) is marketed as amboyna when it has grown in the burl form. The scientific name is Latinized Ancient Greek and means "wing fruit", referring to the unusual shape of the seed pods in this genus.
Uses
Padauk wood is obtained from several species of Pterocarpus. All padauks are of African or Asian origin. Padauks are valued for their toughness, stability in use, and decorativeness, most having a reddish wood.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Pterocarpus” as genus of plants. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as genus of plants. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q132894. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pterocarpus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.