text: Uses The dense, lustrous wood ranges in colour from reddish to pure black. It is generally cut into small billets or logs with its sharply demarcated bright yellow-white sapwood left on to assist in the slow drying so as to prevent cracks developing. Good quality  "A" grade African blackwood commands high prices on the commercial timber market. The timber is used mainly because of its machinability, density, dimensional stability, and moisture repellence. Those properties are particularly valued when used in woodwind instruments, principally clarinets, oboes, transverse flutes, piccolos, recorders, Highland pipes, and Northumbrian pipes. The Deering Banjo Company uses blackwood ("grenadilla") to construct the tone ring in its John Hartford-model banjo because it weighs less than brass or bronze tone rings, and that the wood "plays in" (improves in tone) with use. Furniture makers from ancient Egypt on have valued this timber. A story states that it has even been used as ballast in trading ships and that some enterprising Northumbrian pipe makers used old discarded blackwood ballast to great effect. The German knife companies Wüsthof, Böker and J. A. Henckels sell knives with blackwood handles due to the wood's moisture repellent qualities.
  Due to overuse, the mpingo tree is severely threatened in Kenya and is needing attention in Tanzania and Mozambique.  The trees are being harvested at an unsustainable rate, partly because of illegal smuggling of the wood into Kenya, but also because the tree takes upwards of 60 years to mature.
  African blackwood is often cited as one of the most expensive woods in the world, along with sandalwood, pink ivory, agarwood and ebony.
  Relation to other woods
  African blackwood is no longer regarded as ebony, a name now reserved for a limited number of timbers yielded by the genus Diospyros; these are more of a matte appearance and are more brittle.
  The genus Dalbergia yields other notable timbers, widely known as palisanders (true rosewoods), such as Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra), Dalbergia cearensis, cocobolo (Dalbergia retusa) and several others.
  Names
  Other names by which the tree is known include babanus and grenadilla, which appear as loanwords in various local English dialects.
  Conservation
  There are multiple organisations involved in the conservation of African blackwood: the Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative, the African Blackwood Conservation Project, and Daraja Music Initiative (formerly Clarinets for Conservation).