Balsa

One of the fastest-growing trees in the world yields the lightest commercial timber – Ecuador supplies over 90 per cent of the world’s balsa.

Balsa is a fast-growing tree of the mallow family, reaching 30 m in height and growing as much as several metres a year in favourable conditions. It has large, roundish leaves and big, creamy-white flowers that open at night and are pollinated by bats and kinkajous, among others. The fruits are elongated capsules filled with fluffy, woolly fibre. Balsa wood is exceptionally light yet stiff and strong for its weight, so it is used to build models and surfboards and as the core of wind-turbine blades.

Significance in the country

For decades Ecuador has met more than 90% of world demand for balsa wood, mainly from plantations in the coastal lowlands. In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl built the Kon-Tiki raft from Ecuadorian balsa logs, and the wind-turbine boom of 2019–2020 set off a wave of illegal felling of wild trees in the Amazon.

Where it grows

Plantations lie mainly in the coastal lowlands – in Los Ríos (around Quevedo), Guayas, Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, Esmeraldas and Cotopaxi; it also grows wild in the Amazonian forests of Pastaza and Morona-Santiago.

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