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Teak

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Teak foliage and seeds

Scientific classification Kingdom: Plantae (unranked): Angiosperms (unranked): Eudicots (unranked): Asterids Order: Lamiales Family: Lamiaceae Genus: Tectona Species Tectona grandis Tectona hamiltoniana Tectona philippinensis

Vimanmek Mansion Bangkok, Thailand. The largest golden teak building in the world.

Flower, fruit & leaves of Tectona grandis in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Teak (Tectona), is a genus of tropical hardwood trees in the mint family, Lamiaceae[1][2][3], native to the south and southeast of Asia, and is commonly found as a component of monsoon forest vegetation. They are large trees, growing to 30-40 m tall, deciduous in the dry season. The name teak comes from the Malayalam[4] word Thekku.

Contents
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1 Systematics 2 Cultivation and uses 3 Propagation 4 Gallery of Tectona grandis (Common Teak) 5 References

[edit] Systematics
Teak belongs to the family Lamiaceae (in older classifications in Verbenaceae). Sometimes it is included in the subfamily Prostantheroideae[5]. There are three species of Tectona:

Tectona grandis (Common Teak) is by far the most important, with a wide distribution in India and Indo-China. Tectona hamiltoniana (Dahat Teak) is a local endemic species confined to Burma, where it is endangered. Tectona philippinensis (Philippine Teak) is endemic to the Philippines, and is also endangered.

[edit] Cultivation and uses

The yellowish brown timber with good grains and texture from teak trunk is used in the manufacture of outdoor furniture, boat decks, and other articles where weather resistance is desired. It is also used for indoor flooring and as a veneer for indoor furnishings. Teak, though easily worked, can cause severe blunting on edge tools because of the presence of silica in the wood. Teak's natural oils make it ideal for use in exposed locations and termite and pest proof, where it is durable even when not treated with oil or varnish. Timber cut from old Teak trees was once believed to be more durable and harder than plantation grown Teak. Studies have shown[6]plantation-grown teak performs on par with old-growth Teak in the following categories; Erosion Rate, Dimensional Stability, Warping, and Surface Checking. Teak is used extensively in India to make doors and window frames, furniture and columns and beams in old type houses. It is very resistant to termite attacks. Mature teak fetches a very good price. It is grown extensively by forest departments of different states in forest areas. Teak consumption encompasses a different set of environmental concerns, such as the disappearance of rare old-growth teak. However, its popularity has led to growth in sustainable production throughout the seasonally dry tropics in forestry plantations. The Forest Stewardship Council offers certification of sustainably grown and harvested teak products. Experiments are ongoing to achieve vegetative propagation from one year old stem cuttings. Popular in the 1950s and 1960s in a style often known as Danish modern, teak furniture has had a second boom in popularity. Teak is one of the most sought-after types of vintage furniture. Leaves of teak wood tree are used in making Pellakai gatti (jackfruit dumpling), where batter is poured in a teak leaf and is steamed.[citation needed] This type of usage is found in coastal districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi in state of Karnataka in India. The leaves are also used in gudeg, a dish of young jackfruit made in Central Java, Indonesia, and give the dish its dark brown color. Teak is used as a food plant by the larvae of moths of the genus Endoclita including E. aroura, E. chalybeatus, E. damor, E. gmelina, E. malabaricus, E. sericeus and E. signifer and other Lepidoptera including Turnip Moth. Hyblaea puera, an insect native to southeast Asia, is a teak pest whose caterpillar feeds on teak and other species of trees common in the region.[7]. Much of the world's teak is exported by Indonesia and Myanmar. There is also a rapidly growing Plantation grown market in Central America (Costa Rica) and South America.

[edit] Propagation
Teak is propagated mainly from seeds. Germination of the seeds involves pretreatment to remove dormancy arising from the thick pericarp. Pretreatment involves alternate wetting and drying of the seed. The seeds are soaked in water for 12 hours and then spread to dry in the sun for 12 hours. This is repeated for 10-14 days and then the seeds are sown in shallow

germination beds of coarse peat covered by sand. The seeds then germinate after 15 to 30 days. large deciduous tree of the family Verbenaceae, or its wood, one of the most valuable timbers. Teak has been widely used in India for more than 2,000 years. The name teak is from the Malayalam word tkka. The tree has a straight but often buttressed stem (i.e., thickened at the base), a spreading crown, and four-sided branchlets with large quadrangular pith. The leaves are opposite or sometimes whorled in young specimens, about 0.5 metre (1.5 feet) long and 23 cm (9 inches) wide. In shape they resemble those of the tobacco plant, but their substance is hard and the surface rough. The branches terminate in many small white flowers in large, erect, crossbranched panicles. The fruit is a drupe (fleshy, with a stony seed) 1.7 cm (two-thirds of an inch) in diameter. The bark of the stem is about 1.3 cm (half an inch) thick, gray or brownish gray, the sapwood white; the unseasoned heartwood has a pleasant and strong aromatic fragrance and a beautiful golden yellow colour, which on seasoning darkens into brown, mottled with darker streaks. The timber retains its aromatic fragrance to a great age. Native to India, Myanmar (Burma), and Thailand, the tree grows as far north as about the 25th parallel in most of this area but to the 32nd parallel in the Punjab. The tree is not found near the coast; the most valuable forests are on low hills up to about 900 metres (3,000 feet). Stands are also found in the Philippines and in Java and elsewhere in the Malay Archipelago. Teak is also planted in Africa, Central America, and South America. During the dry season the tree is leafless; in hot localities the leaves fall in January, but in moist places the tree remains green until March. At the end of the dry season, when the first monsoon rains fall, the new foliage emerges. Although the tree flowers freely, few seeds are produced because many of the flowers are sterile. The forest fires of the dry season, which in India usually occur in March and April after the seeds have ripened and have partly fallen, impede the spread of the tree by self-sown seed. In Burmese plantations, teak trees on good soil have attained an average height of 18 metres (59 feet) in 15 years, with a girth, breast high, of 0.5 metre (1.5 feet). In the natural forests of Myanmar and India, teak timber with a girth of about 2 metres (6.5 feet) and a diameter of 0.6 metre (2 feet) is never less than 100 and often more than 200 years old. Mature trees are usually not more than 46 metres (150 feet) high. Teak timber is valued in warm countries principally for its extraordinary durability. In India and Myanmar, beams of the wood in good preservation are often found in buildings many centuries old, and teak beams have lasted in palaces and temples more than 1,000 years. The timber is practically imperishable under cover. Teakwood is used for shipbuilding, fine furniture, door and window frames, wharves, bridges, cooling-tower louvres, flooring, paneling, railway cars, and venetian blinds. An important property of teak is its extremely good dimensional stability. It is strong, of medium weight, and of average hardness. Termites eat the sapwood but rarely attack the heartwood; it is not, however, completely resistant to marine borers. Myanmar produces most of the worlds supply, with Indonesia, India, and Thailand ranking next in production. Since the mid-1980s, numerous countries have restricted teak logging to control deforestation.

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