Common name: Bastard logwood

Originating in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and parts of neighbouring Guatemala and Belize, this plant's flowers produce abundant nectar that attracts honeybees, resulting in significant honey production.

Bastard logwood is a low-branching shrub or small tree 3 to 8 m (10 to 26 ft) tall, with numerous crooked and ascending branches, forming an untidy V-shaped crown. The bark is dark brown, fissured, shredded, or peeling in long strips.

Leaves are oval with blunt tips, 2 to 3.5 cm (0.8 to 1.4 in) long, dark glossy green with short reddish stalks, and alternately arranged at the ends of the branches. In the dry season, they fall to the ground to conserve water, leaving the branches bare and exposed, the new leaves emerging with the rainy season.

The flowers are about 0.7 cm (0.3 in) in diameter with three greenish-yellow, overlapping heart-shaped sepals and erect white stamens at the centre. They bloom in the dry season, borne in narrow clusters at the branches' ends and are sweetly fragrant. Small green fruit follow, usually cloaked in the dried sepals, and are about 1 cm (0.4 in) long with a single seed inside.

Use

The flowers have a heavy flow of nectar, more than enough for honey production, making it is one of the most productive honey plants in Mexico, and in fact, the world, with yields of up to 130 kgs (287 lbs) of honey, per colony, per season.

The honey is high quality, with a  sweet floral aroma, light to dark amber colour, delicate flavour and very slow to crystallise, remaining fluid for a long time. The plant accounts for almost half of the total honey production in the Yucatan during its flowering period. Highly appreciated in its native region, only a small amount is ever exported.

The wood makes an excellent slow-burning firewood and charcoal.

Climate

Grows naturally in sub-humid to moderately humid tropical climates, generally frost-free areas with annual lows of 19 to 24°C, annual highs of 28 to 35°C, annual rainfall of 700 to 1400 mm and a dry season of 3 to 7 months.

Growing

Although not usually cultivated, new plants can be grown from suckers or seed. However, the seed lose their viability quickly and should be sown within thirty days of being extracted from the fruit.

It performs best on sites with full to partial sun exposure and light-textured, free-draining loam, sandy-loam, loamy-sand and limestone or gravel soils of a slightly acid to alkaline nature, generally with a pH of 6.0 to 8.5.

Problem features

Bastard logwood seeds freely and suckers from the roots, forming thickets over time.

Books

• Bradbear, N. 2009, Bees and their role in forest livelihoods : a guide to the services provided by bees and the sustainable harvesting, processing and marketing of their products, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome

• Crane, E., Walker, P. & Day, R. 1984, Directory of important world honey sources, International Bee Research Association, London

• Smith, F. G. 2003, Beekeeping in the tropics, Northern Bee Books, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire

• Standley P. C., & Steyermark J. A. 1946 to 1976, Flora of Guatemala (25 volumes), Botany series publication (Chicago Field Museum of Natural History), Chicago, Illinois