Ziricote

Kew's Plants of the World Online gives the native range of Cordia dodecandra as central Mexico to Guatemala, plus Belize and Cuba. The tree is 10–20 m tall with a trunk 0.6–1.0 m across. Boards are usually narrow or sold as turning squares, often with pale sapwood included, and the wood is expensive.

Ziricote is recognised by its very distinctive 'spider-webbing' or 'landscape' figure of dark lines over a brown ground, by the sharp boundary between dark heartwood and pale sapwood, and by its high density and good natural lustre. The Wood Database notes that it has very few imitators; only occasional figured Brazilian rosewood shows a similar figure. In Japan it has been used as a substitute for kurogaki (black-figured persimmon wood), which it closely resembles, so shamugaki should not be confused with true kurogaki or ebony of the genus Diospyros.

In Japan, according to the timber importer Maruyone Shokai, the name shamugaki first referred to a persimmon-family wood from Thailand; when that wood declined and was no longer imported, the similar Central American ziricote came to be called shamugaki. In Japan it is used for Buddhist altars, decorative furniture surfaces and ornaments; internationally it is used for furniture, veneer, cabinetry, gunstocks, guitars and turned objects.