Description

Swietenia macrophylla, big-leaf mahogany, is a large, emergent tropical forest tree of the family Meliaceae, native to the tropical forests of Central America, the Amazon basin, and northern South America. Listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List due to historical over-exploitation for its prized timber, the large winged seeds — dispersed by wind from hanging capsules — have been commercially marketed in Southeast Asia (particularly in Malaysia, Indonesia, and China) and more recently in India as ‘sky fruit’ or ‘sugar badam,’ attributed with metabolic health and blood sugar-related traditional applications. The seeds contain terpenoids including swietenine and swietenolide. While phytochemical research from Southeast Asia has investigated the seeds’ metabolic effects in animal models, traditional documentation specifically for the Indian subcontinent is limited, and claims should be approached with ethnobotanical caution.