A West African hardwood tree or the dye made from its red heartwood, used historically for coloring textiles.
From the Wolof or Mandinka word for the tree, combined with English 'wood.' The tree (Baphia nitida) produces a distinctive red dye that became valuable in the European cloth trade during the 16th-18th centuries.
Camwood was so valuable that it became one of the earliest trade commodities between West Africa and Europe—European merchants would sail across the Atlantic specifically to get this deep red dye before synthetic dyes were invented!
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