Chinese cedar

Description

Toona sinensis, commonly called Chinese mahogany, Chinese cedar, Chinese toon, beef and onion plant, or red toon is a species of Toona native to eastern and southeastern Asia, from North Korea south through most of eastern, central and southwestern China to Nepal, northeastern India, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, and western Indonesia. It is a deciduous tree growing to 25 metres (82 ft) tall with a trunk up to 70 cm diameter. The bark is brown, smooth on young trees, becoming scaly to shaggy on old trees. The leaves are pinnate, 50–70 cm long and 30–40 cm broad, with 10–40 leaflets, the terminal leaflet usually absent (paripinnate) but sometimes present (imparipennate); the individual leaflets 9–15 cm long and 2.5–4 cm broad, with an entire or weakly serrated margin. The young leaves are reddish-brown or purple, and have a smell. The flowers are produced in summer in panicles 30–50 cm long at the end of a branch; each flower is small, 4–5 mm diameter, with five white or pale pink petals. The fruit is a golden capsule 2–3.5 cm long, containing several winged seeds. It is similar to Ailanthus altissima in appearance, but their leaves smell differently. Toona has rough bark, while A. altissima has smooth bark. Toona sinensis can reproduce both sexually and asexually, including seed propagation, cutting propagation and tissue culture. Seed propagation can provide large quantity of seedlings, which is suitable for the need of mass cultivation. Seeds soaked in warm water for a moderate amount of time before sowing are more likely to bud. Normally, seeds of T. sinensis are sowed between the late March and early April in East Asia, and the time may vary depending on the actual planting area. Saplings grown from seeds in spring can be transplanted with leaves in fall. Cutting propagation uses a piece of stem or root of mature plant to grow a new plant in media like moist soil. This method has a higher survival rate in saplings than other methods. Usually semi-lignified stems are used in planting because those that have undergone full lignification process are hard to take root or root slowly and stems that have not lignified are easy to decay after planting. NAA or Vitamin D solutions can help with the rooting of cut stems.