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Yikes. Messy.
We use the word "Jakaranda" in Swedish, and just for fun, I looked it up in the Swedish-language version of Wikipedia, which has it as trade name for a range of hardwoods used in fine woodworking. The highest quality supposedly comes from Jacaranda brasiliana and J. mimosifolia, but wood from the Dalbergia and Machaerium species are also sold as "Jakaranda". It also states that Dalbergia nigra is also known as "riojakaranda", i e "Rio Jacaranda", which kind of works with "Brazilian Rosewood".
Seriously, looking at it from the lumber trader's viewpoint, it makes sense to lump several similar species together under a single trade name. It would make them less dependent on a single supply chain and ensure a steady stock of "the same" wood. If the lumber trade used the same blanket terms globally is another matter, though.
I don't know, but my luthier says that the only way to tell (what he calls) "brazilian rosewood" is by how it smells when you work on it. I don't normally deal with super-high-end guitars (out of my price range - especially these days), but there have been a few random cases of rosewood fretboards being quite fragrant when I've cleaned them up, and not always in higher-end guitars. I'm kind of wondering if the Japanese manufacturers necessarily could always tell the various specii apart themselves, or just went with good-looking pieces of the wood their lumber supplier sold to them as "jacaranda"? In other words, do we even know if the term "Jacaranda" as used by Japanese luthiers denotes a single type of wood?
The truth, as always, is out there, I guess.
putting the 'umbrella term' Jacaranda aside a term as you say is likely used to describe multiple species of dalbergia and Lord knows possibly what else, it would seem that so called 'experts' have some major difficulties in discerning true D nigra samples.
The link I posted in my earlier post #16 states that in a specific study there were over 1/3 false positives for D nigra when assessing differing genus dalbergia lumbers.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2794071/Just think that if some yahoo at your friendly customs office 'decided' that your guitar/whatever item contained some amount of D nigra when it was actually Indian or Madagascar rosewood and confiscated your purchase?
The article in the link is the most informative article that I have read to date on the subject of discerning the difference between true D nigra (Brazilian) and other genus dalbergia (non Braz) samples.
The article certainly looks a lot further down the Brazilian road than anything I have ever read before.
Great info for those that are truly interested.
Now, as far as the term 'Jacaranda' being used in the lumber trade my own belief is more aligned with your opinion; the term is likely used for trade supply chain issues and basically has no regard as far as species.
That is a personal opinion and nothing else but I don't believe there will ever be a definitive explanation of the use of the term 'Jacaranda' to pen point any particular species.
I believe that will always be a mystery.
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