The history of Pernambuco encompasses the history since 1534 of the modern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, whose name has represented different entities at different times: a captaincy, a province, an independent Republic (briefly) and a state. Pernambuco was a distortion of Tupi para-nã (wide river) + mbuka (hollow or broken), referring to the coastal reefs; it came to mean the place where the Brazilwood tree (Caesalpinia echinata) was found, and by derivation its wood, now called Brazilwood or jacaranda. Brazilwood trees, source of a brilliant red dye, grew in abundance on the Atlantic coast of Brazil, and were the chief trading commodity of precolonial and early colonial times.