Freshly sawn heartwood has a butter yellow to brown yellow color, sometimes with dark brown zones, darkening to golden brown to dark brown. The light-colored sapwood is 50 to 100 mm wide and clearly distinguishable from the heartwood. By preventing thread deviations and reaction wood, deformations can occur, even after drying. Typical for iroko is that the wood quality can vary greatly between the supplied batches. Iroko bears a vague resemblance to teak in appearance and is therefore sometimes referred to as iroko teak, African teak and kambala teak, which are incorrect, misleading names. The trunks sometimes contain very hard, chalky substances that can occur in the form of large stones and can have a very detrimental effect on processing.