Some coral trees are used widely in the
tropics and
subtropics as street and park trees, especially in drier areas. In some places, such as
Venezuela,
bucarés are used as
shade trees for
coffee or
cocoa crops. In the
Bengal region, they are used for the same purpose in
Schumannianthus dichotoma plantations.
E. lanceolata in particular is considered highly suitable as "frame" tree for
vanilla vines to grow up on.
Native Hawaiians made a number of items from
wiliwili wood because of its low density, such as
mouo (
fishing net floats),
ama (
outrigger canoe floats, and extremely long
papa hee nalu (
surfboards) called
olo.
Olo, which averaged , were exclusively ridden by
alii (royalty). The wood was sometimes used for the
waa (hull) of outrigger canoes intended to be used near-shore, for recreation, or for training. The shiny orange-red
seeds were strung into
lei. The conspicuous, even dramatic coral trees are widely used as
floral emblems. cockspur coral tree (
E. crista-galli) is the national flower of
Argentina and
Uruguay. The coastal coral tree (
E. afra) is the official city tree of
Los Angeles,
California, where it is referred to simply as the "coral tree". The state trees of
Mérida and
Trujillo in
Venezuela are
bucaré ceibo (
E. poeppigiana) and purple coral tree (
bucaré anauco, E. fusca), respectively.
Yonabaru, Okinawa as well as the
Okinawa Prefecture,
Quanzhou,
Fujian Province and
Pathum Thani Province have the Indian coral tree (
E. variegata) as floral emblems. Known as
thong lang in
Thailand, the latter species is also one of the
thong ("trees") referred to in the name of
Amphoe Chom Thong, Chiang Mai Province. In a similar vein,
Zumpahuacán in
Mexico derives its name from
Nahuatl tzompahuacá, "place of the
Erythrina americana". In
Hinduism, the
mandāra tree in
Indra's garden in
Svarga is held to be
E. stricta. The same motif is found in
Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, where the mandāravā (
Tib. man dā ra ba) growing in
Sukhāvatī is identified as an Indian coral tree (
E. variegata). The concept of the
Five Trees of
Paradise is also found in Christian
Gnosticism. Though as none of the trees is identified as an
Erythrina here, the concept might not be as directly related to the Asian religions as some presume. is
tetrahydroisoquinoline alkaloid from
Erythrina mulungu, studied for possible
anxiolytic properties. The seeds of at least one-third of the species contain potent
erythrina alkaloids, and some of these are used for medicinal and other purposes by indigenous peoples. They are all toxic to some degree, however, and the seeds of some can cause fatal poisoning. The chemical compounds found in plants in this genus include
alkaloids such as
scoulerine,
erysodin,
erysovin (namely in
E. flabelliformis), and the putative
anxiolytic erythravine (isolated from
Mulungu,
E. mulungu).
Erysodienone is a precursor in the
biosynthesis of many of these alkaloids.
As food Root tubers of
Erythrina species have been traditional food for
aborigines of the
Northern Territory of Australia. In
Vietnam, people use the leaves of
E. variegata to wrap
nem chua (a kind of fermented pork wrapped in banana leaves). ==Selected species==