Lignum vitae wood can also be used to brew a tea. Other names for lignum vitae include palo santo (Spanish for "holy wood") Aura palo santo and "bastard greenheart" (not to be confused with true greenheart "Chlorocardium rodiei", a popular wood in shipbuilding, cabinetry, and woodturning but a completely different timber). Lignum vitae is also one of the numerous hard, dense woods loosely referred to as "ironwood". Lignum vitae is hard and durable, and is also the densest wood traded (density: 1.23 g/cm); it will easily sink in water. On the Janka Scale of Hardness, which measures hardness of woods, lignum vitae
Walter Janka exile in Mexico, where together with Paul Merker and Alexander Abusch he founded the "Free Germany" (""Freies Deutschland"") movement. In Mexico he ran the publishing business "El Libro Libre", which also employed the exiled German writer Anna Seghers. In 1946 Janka took on the leadership of the Mexican section of the German Communist party (KPD). After the end of the Second World War Janka returned, in April 1947, to what was Soviet occupation zone, later to become German Democratic Repbulic in 1949. In 1947 he married his long-standing partner, a translator called Charlotte (Lotte) Scholz. The couples' two children, André