Wood Encyclopedia
Search and identify wood species from around the world — with origin, Janka hardness, grain and color, working properties, common uses, and how to tell them apart.
Ceylon Oak
Extremely hard, heavy South Asian hardwood (kusum) with fine even grain and medium-to-dark brown color, used for tool handles, crushers, and turnery.
Hardwood
Holm Oak
A dense, very hard evergreen Mediterranean oak with fine grain and gleaming rays — pale pink to light tan, heavy, and tough to work but exceptionally wear-resistant.
Hardwood
Nux Vomica
A hard, dense, close-grained brown hardwood from the South Asian strychnine tree, whose bitter alkaloid-laden timber is used for tool handles, implements, and turnery.
Tropical & Exotic
Tropical/Exotic Hardwood
A general category for dense tropical hardwoods; this sample shows pale tan-to-cream heartwood with a distinct dark bark layer and clear growth structure.
Tropical & Exotic
European Hardwood (Unknown)
An unidentified temperate hardwood sampled in the Czech Republic, showing reddish-brown heartwood, a darker outer ring, and clear medium-spaced growth rings.
Hardwood
Stained or Treated Hardwood
Not a single species but any hardwood whose natural color has been altered by stain, dye, or a preservative or protective treatment.
Hardwood
Catalpa
A lightweight, unusually decay-resistant native hardwood with coarse ring-porous grain and a warm tan-to-gray-brown color.
Hardwood
Nigerian Hardwood (possibly Direm)
A cream-to-warm-tan West African hardwood from Nigeria, tentatively identified as Direm, with prominent rays and reddish-brown vessel highlights.
Hardwood
Unknown Specimen (c00750)
An unidentified medium-to-dark brown hardwood specimen with moderate grain; documented from a real sample but not matched to a confirmed species.
Hardwood
Hemp Palm
The fibrous stem of the cold-hardy windmill palm — not a true wood but a monocot with bundled fibers set in soft tissue, light tan with a dark speckled fiber pattern.
Tropical & Exotic
Pyrenean Oak
A warm golden-toned Iberian white oak with prominent ring-porous grain and bold ray fleck — a hardy, medium-dense European oak used for furniture, flooring, and cooperage.
Hardwood
Engineered Wood
A broad family of manufactured boards built from wood fibers, particles, or veneers bonded with adhesives — uniform, stable, and free of a single natural species.
Engineered
Pin Oak
A ring-porous red-oak-group hardwood — pale tan with reddish undertones, coarse open grain and bold rays, sold and worked as red oak.
Hardwood
Oriental Plane
A golden-brown Mediterranean hardwood famous for its dazzling ray fleck — the classic 'lacewood' figure on the quartered face.
Hardwood
Black Cherry
A prized eastern North American hardwood with silky straight grain that ages from pale pinkish-tan to a warm reddish-brown.
Hardwood
English Walnut
European hardwood prized for warm brown heartwood and superb figure; the classic gunstock, furniture and veneer walnut.
Hardwood
African Ebony
Dense, jet-black West African hardwood with an extremely fine grain, prized for instrument parts, inlay, and fine turning.
Tropical & Exotic
Black Alder
A pale tan-cream, light and soft European hardwood with even growth rings — easy to work, quick to turn and carve, and long the wood of choice under water.
Hardwood
Lignum Vitae
A dense, oily, self-lubricating South American hardwood with bold light-and-dark striping — the tough, waxy stand-in traded as lignum vitae.
Tropical & Exotic
Wenge
Dark brown-to-black Central African hardwood with a bold black-and-tan striped figure, coarse texture, and high density — a favorite for flooring and accents.
Tropical & Exotic
Fig
The soft, pale, lightweight wood of the common fig tree — an orchard hardwood rarely milled for lumber, valued mainly for small turnery and carving.
Hardwood
Tree of Heaven
Pale cream-to-tan ring-porous hardwood from a fast-growing invasive tree — ash-like grain, light, satiny, and essentially free where it grows.
Hardwood
Jack Wood
Heavy, tough South/Southeast Asian hardwood in warm tan to light brown, valued for its strength, durability and heavy structural and joinery work.
Hardwood
Red Oak
The workhorse of American hardwoods — a strong, ring-porous, coarse-grained oak with bold rays, a reddish cast, and open pores you can see with the naked eye.
Hardwood