Acacia Springvale, New Teak Wood - 0.5 kg Seeds

Acacia crassicarpa, marketed in India as 'Acacia Springvale' or 'new teak wood' after its high-yielding Springvale provenance, is a fast-growing tropical timber tree. It forms a straight, clean bole with leathery, sickle-shaped phyllodes, yellow flower spikes and thick woody pods, and tolerates poor, acidic and seasonally wet soils.

It is grown for short-rotation timber, plywood, pulpwood and fuelwood, and its strong, reddish-brown heartwood is used as an affordable substitute for slower-growing hardwoods, which is why it is promoted as a 'new teak'. As a nitrogen-fixing pioneer it also rehabilitates degraded land, making it popular in commercial farm-forestry and agroforestry woodlots.

• Family: Fabaceae (Leguminosae)
• Native region: northern Australia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia
• Mature height: 20-30 m
• Growth rate: very fast

The hard-coated seeds germinate readily after a hot-water treatment: pour near-boiling water over them and soak as it cools for 12-24 hours. Sow the swollen seeds about 1 cm deep in a light nursery medium; germination follows in roughly 7-14 days. Raise the seedlings in poly bags and plant out with the onset of the monsoon.