Perhaps the only wood that was so famous, it was responsible for the naming of an entire nation.[1] When Portuguese ships discovered the trees on the coast of South America in the sixteenth century, they found that the wood yielded a water-soluble red dye which made for a very valuable and lucrative trading commodity. They named the tree pau brasil (the term pau meaning wood, and brasil meaning red or ember-like). Such a vigorous trade resulted from this wood that early sailors and merchants referred to the land itself as Terra do Brasil, or ‘Land of Brazil,’ and the name stuck.