Pieces of teak in good repair were found in a ruined palace of Bagdad, where dwelt the ancient kings of Persia. Teakwood carvings 2000 years old were found in the cave temples of India and teat rafters have supported Indian buildings through 500 seasons of stormy monsoons.
Sooty brown teak, with its spicy fragrance, is one of the heaviest and most durable of all the hardwoods. For ship building and furniture making it is more dependable than sturdy oak. Teak wood will not cause nails and metal bars to rust and its spicy, oils protect it from fungi and many insects. Yet this durable hardwood is fairly soft and easy to carve and it does not warp or twist out of shape.
It takes a teak tree from 100 to 200 years to gain these valuable qualities, Like other hardwood trees, it is deciduous. It is a member of the verbena family and a native of India, Burma and Thailand. Teak also grows in Java, Malay and the Philippines, for it likes a tropical climate which supplies 100 inches of rainfall a year.
Host hardwood trees grow slowly, for their woody cells are finer and made with thicker walls than those of the softwoods. In its youth, however, the hardwood teak tree grows faster than a softwood pine tree, In two years, it may be ten feet tall. In 15 years, though less than 20 inches around the trunk, a young teak tree may be 60 feet tall.
Growth is now slower as fine, dense fibers are added year by year around the trunk.
After 100 or 200 years, a teak tree may stand 150 feet tall and measure eight feet around the trunk. Its tapering leaves are two or three feet long and a foot wide. Each year its branches are tipped with clusters of white blossoms which ripen into nutty seeds.
At last the tree is ready for lumbering and its bark is circled with a deep cut. For two or three years, the tree is left to die and dry, for the dense, fresh wood is too heavy to float downstream to market.
When freshly felled, the central heartwood of a teak tree is golden yellow and the outer sapwood is almost white. It soon begins to darken and the heartwood may become mottled with graceful designs.
The wood of several other tropical trees often is sold ao teakwood, but an expert can tell the difference. The pretenders are never as heavy as slow growing teakwood. The fine grain of teak can always be recognized, as can the spicy fragrance of its resinous oils.