Padauk
Also called: padouk, pterocarpus
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Padauk is the common name for several richly coloured, reddish hardwoods from trees in the genus Pterocarpus, a group of related tropical species. African padauk is the timber most often sold under the name today, though the word has also been used loosely enough in the past to blur the line between quite different woods.
A confused name
Jones (1920) called Philippine mahogany "most misleadingly used for at least three entirely distinct woods, none of which is a true Mahogany", and among the timbers swept up under that mislabelling was padouk, Pterocarpus indicus and related species, itself no kind of mahogany at all. The confusion runs further back still: writing on Chinese furniture timbers, Ecke (1962) noted that the identity of tzu tan, a wood prized for centuries in fine Chinese furniture, as either Pterocarpus or Dalbergia remained disputed among experts, and that in the West the name padauk had itself sometimes been used loosely enough to take in huali timbers as well, which belong to Dalbergia rather than Pterocarpus. A name on a timber merchant's list, in other words, is not on its own a reliable guide to which tree the wood actually came from. That uncertainty has practical consequences: USDA (2021) describes using DNA barcoding, checked against vouchered reference wood specimens, to authenticate what it calls the endangered and precious timber species of Pterocarpus, the genus padauk belongs to.
Working properties
The species most commonly sold as padauk today is African padauk, Pterocarpus soyauxii, also traded under names including barwood, bosulu, camwood, corail, mbe, mututi and ngula (Porter 2004). Freshly cut, its heartwood, the older, harder wood at the centre of the trunk, is a vivid reddish orange, though the colour changes as the wood is exposed to light and air over time. Porter (2004) recorded that it dries with almost no degrade and moves very little once it is in service, and that despite being a dense timber it works well, with only a slight dulling effect on cutting edges.