Meliaceae
Swietenia

Swietenia mahagoni (L.) Jacq.

First published in Enum. Syst. Pl.: 20 (1760)
This species is accepted
The native range of this species is S. Florida to Caribbean. It is a tree and grows primarily in the wet tropical biome.

Descriptions

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/32519/68104916

Conservation
NT - near threatened
[IUCN]

Meliaceae, Styles & F. White (Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford). Flora of Tropical East Africa. 1991

Vernacular
‘Spanish or Cuban Mahogany’
Distribution
Native of the West Indies and Florida. Occasionally planted in Uganda, Kenya (e.g. Mwachi Forest, Faden et al. 77/450!) and Tanzania (e.g. Dar es Salaam, Wigg 958!).
Diagnostic
Tall tree with smaller, more attenuate leaflets and smaller fruits than S. macrophylla.
[FTEA]

Extinction risk predictions for the world's flowering plants to support their conservation (2024). Bachman, S.P., Brown, M.J.M., Leão, T.C.C., Lughadha, E.N., Walker, B.E. https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.19592

Conservation
Predicted extinction risk: not threatened. Confidence: confident
[AERP]

George R. Proctor (2012). Flora of the Cayman Isands (Second Edition). Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Vernacular
MAHOGANY
Morphology General Habit
A tree to 10 m tall or more, with a rounded crown; leaves up to 15 cm long, the leaflets mostly in 4 pairs, recurved-lanceolate or -ovate, 3–6 cm long, sharply acuminate
Morphology Reproductive morphology Flowers Calyx
Calyx ca. 1 mm long or less, with rounded glabrous lobes; petals and stamen-tube ca. 3 mm long
Morphology Reproductive morphology Seeds
Seeds brown, ca. 6 cm long.
Distribution
Cayman Islands. Florida and the West Indies only.
Note
Reports of this species from Central and S. America pertain to Swietenia macrophylla G. King.
Ecology
In the Cayman Islands, S. mahagoni occurs chiefly in rocky woodlands, where it could formerly be found with massive trunks up to 1 m in diameter or more. Nearly all of these large, very old trees have long since been cut.
[Cayman]

Common Names

english
mahagony
unknown
American mahogany, Cuban mahogany, Jamaican mahogany, Spanish mahogany, West Indian mahogany, caoba, caoba de Cuba (Spanish), mahogany, small leaf mahogany

Sources

  • Angiosperm Extinction Risk Predictions v1

    • Angiosperm Threat Predictions
    • http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

  • EBC Common Names

    • Common Names from Kew's Economic Botany Collection https://www.kew.org/science/collections-and-resources/collections/economic-botany-collection

  • Flora of Tropical East Africa

    • Flora of Tropical East Africa
    • http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0

  • Flora of the Cayman Islands

    • Flora of the Cayman Islands
    • http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0

  • Herbarium Catalogue Specimens

    • 'The Herbarium Catalogue, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Published on the Internet http://www.kew.org/herbcat [accessed on Day Month Year]'. Please enter the date on which you consulted the system.
    • Digital Image © Board of Trustees, RBG Kew http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

  • IUCN Categories

    • IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
    • http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0

  • Kew Backbone Distributions

    • The International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Vascular Plants 2025. Published on the Internet at http://www.ipni.org and https://powo.science.kew.org/
    • © Copyright 2023 World Checklist of Vascular Plants. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

  • Kew Living Collection Database

    • Common Names from Kew's Living Collection Database

  • Kew Names and Taxonomic Backbone

    • The International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Vascular Plants 2025. Published on the Internet at http://www.ipni.org and https://powo.science.kew.org/
    • © Copyright 2023 International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Vascular Plants. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

  • Kew Science Photographs

    • Copyright applied to individual images

  • Wood Anatomy Microscope Slides

    • Digital Image © Board of Trustees, RBG Kew http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/