''Toona calantas'' is a species of tree in the mahogany family. It is found in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. It is threatened by habitat loss. It is commonly known as kalantas (also spelled calantas), lanipga (in Visayan and Bikol), ample (in

Batanes Batanes, officially the Province of Batanes ( ivv, Provinsiya nu Batanes; Ilocano: ''Probinsia ti Batanes''; fil, Lalawigan ng Batanes, ), is an archipelagic province in the Philippines, administratively part of the Cagayan Valley region. It i ...

), bantinan (in Cagayan and

Mountain Province Mountain Province is a landlocked province of the Philippines in the Cordillera Administrative Region in Luzon. Its capital is Bontoc. Mountain Province was formerly referred to as ''Mountain'' in some foreign references. The name is usually short ...

), danupra (in Zambales and Ilocos Norte), Philippine cedar, or Philippine mahogany (although the latter is also applied to members of the unrelated genus '' Shorea'').

Description and phenology

The kalantas tree can grow up to and can measure up to in diameter. The color of the bark ranges from yellowish to dark brown and the inner bark is light brown while trunk is straight and terete. The leaves can be described as compound, alternate oblong or broadly lanceolate. The fruit of the kalantas tree is a capsule that can be ellipsoid or oblongoid that measures long. Flowering occurs from June to August while fruiting occurs from September to November. In

Mount Makiling Mount Makiling (also known as Mount Maquiling), is an inactive stratovolcano located in the provinces of Laguna and Batangas on the island of Luzon, Philippines. The mountain rises to an elevation of above mean sea level and is the highest fe ...

Laguna Laguna (Italian and Spanish for lagoon) may refer to: People * Abe Laguna (born 1992), American DJ known as Ookay * Andrés Laguna (1499–1559), Spanish physician, pharmacologist, and botanist * Ana Laguna (born 1955), Spanish-Swedish ballet d ...

, Philippines, seed gathering takes place from February to March.

Distribution, importance and conservation status

Generally scattered all over the Philippines particularly in the

Balabac group of islands Balabac Island is the southernmost island of the Palawan province, and therefore the westernmost undisputed island in the Philippines, only about north from Sabah, Malaysia, across the Balabac Strait. Administratively, the island forms the main ...

, the kalantas tree can be found in the hills of a forest situated in low to medium altitudes. The wood of the tree is used for making boxes, furniture or

plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...

. Kalantas has been

categorized Categorization is the ability and activity of recognizing shared features or similarities between the elements of the experience of the world (such as objects, events, or ideas), organizing and classifying experience by associating them to a ...

by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as Data Deficient but it was reported that kalantas is exhausted due to logging and ''kaingin'' (a

Tagalog Tagalog may refer to: Language * Tagalog language, a language spoken in the Philippines ** Old Tagalog, an archaic form of the language ** Batangas Tagalog, a dialect of the language * Tagalog script, the writing system historically used for Tagal ...

term for slash-and-burn). Reforestation efforts have been done in the Philippines and the kalantas tree is included in these efforts. One of the efforts were done by the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources during the term of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo where the president herself planted a seedling of a kalantas tree, which is the favored tree promoted by the president.

Gallery

File:Toona calantas (Philippine mahogany) seeds - 6.jpeg, A single seed File:Toona calantas (Philippine mahogany) - 5.jpeg, The bark File:JfSantaCruzBulacan9023NLExfvf 08.JPG, Fruits on the trees File:Toona calantas (Philippine mahogany) seeds - 7.jpeg, Fruit and seeds File:Toona calantas (Philippine mahogany) - 4.jpeg, The seeds contained in a capsule

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q5504141 calantas Data deficient plants Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Taxa named by Elmer Drew Merrill Taxa named by Robert Allen Rolfe