The Wood Key

Red spruce (Picea rubens) from the northeastern United States and eastern Canada, creamy white with a hint of yellow or red and a consistently straight grain — "Adirondack" names a mountain range inside its natural range, not a separate species.

as dealers write itAdirondack Spruce · Torrefied Adirondack · Torrefied Adirondack Spruce · Master Grade Adirondack Spruce · Bear Claw Adirondack Spruce · Master Grade Adirondack · Torrefied Bearclaw Adirondack Spruce

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Picea sitchensis, from a narrow coastal band running from southcentral Alaska to northern California; cream to pale yellow, sometimes faintly pink, and the species where bearclaw figure most often turns up.

as dealers write itSitka Spruce · Torrefied Sitka · Bearclaw Sitka Spruce · Sinker Sitka Spruce · Bear Claw Sitka Spruce · Torrefied Sitka Spruce · Baked Sitka Spruce

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An unqualified spruce top: the dealer named the wood but not the species, and Picea covers Sitka, red, Engelmann and Norway spruce, which are not easy to tell apart by colour.

as dealers write itSpruce · Torrefied Spruce · Bearclaw Spruce

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Picea engelmannii, from British Columbia and Alberta south through the western United States to Arizona and New Mexico; cream to almost white with an occasional hint of red.

as dealers write itEngelmann Spruce · Bearclaw Engelmann Spruce · Torrefied Englemann Spruce

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Picea × lutzii, a natural hybrid of Sitka and white spruce that arises only where the two ranges overlap, in coastal south-central Alaska and coastal British Columbia; it reads visually as Sitka — cream to pale yellow, sometimes with a faint pinkish cast, fine and even in texture with consistently straight grain.

as dealers write itLutz Spruce · Bear Claw Lutz Spruce

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Picea glauca — the name North American forestry still uses, though Kew now treats it as a synonym of Picea laxa — growing right across the boreal forest from Alaska and the Yukon east to Newfoundland and south into the northern United States; creamy white with a hint of yellow, fine and even in texture, with consistently straight grain and little colour contrast between sapwood and heartwood.

as dealers write itWhite Spurce · Quilted White Spruce

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A statement of origin rather than of species: Alaska grows Picea sitchensis along the coast and P. glauca across the interior, so the label narrows the forest but not the tree.

as dealers write itAlaskan Spruce · Bearclaw Alaskan Blue Sitka Spruce

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as dealers write itColorado Blue Spruce

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In the timber trade “cedar” is attached to more than a dozen species across divergent genera, few of them true cedars (Cedrus); on a guitar soundboard it is almost always western red cedar, Thuja plicata, while the Spanish cedar of classical necks is Cedrela odorata, a mahogany relative.

as dealers write itCedar

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Thuja plicata, from southern Alaska down the Pacific coast to northern California with a disjunct inland population from southeastern British Columbia into western Montana; heartwood reddish to pinkish brown with random darker streaks and bands, straight-grained and coarse-textured — despite the name it is a Cupressaceae and not a true cedar (Cedrus).

as dealers write itWestern Red Cedar · Ancient Orcas Island Cedar · Red Cedar

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Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, a cypress rather than a true cedar, native only to a narrow strip of southwest Oregon and northwest California; light yellowish brown heartwood passing into a pale yellow-brown to near-white sapwood with no clear boundary, over an exceptionally straight grain of fine, uniform texture.

as dealers write itPort Orford Cedar

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Callitropsis nootkatensis — also published as Chamaecyparis, Cupressus and Xanthocyparis nootkatensis — from the coastal mountains of southern Alaska south through British Columbia to northwest California; light yellow heartwood with whitish to pale yellow sapwood that barely reads as separate, straight-grained and of uniform fine texture, darkening with exposure to light; a cypress, not a true cedar.

as dealers write itAlaskan Cedar · Alaskan Cedar

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Sequoia sempervirens, from a coastal strip about 450 miles long running from the extreme southwest corner of Oregon into southern Monterey County, California; light pinkish to deep reddish brown.

as dealers write itSinker Redwood · Redwood · Flamed Redwood · Tunnel 13 Redwood · Curly Redwood

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Cupressus sempervirens, native to the eastern Mediterranean and east to Iran and introduced long ago across the western Mediterranean including Spain, where most guitar stock is cut; pale yellowish to pinkish brown heartwood that shifts toward light tan with time, over a lighter, clearly demarcated sapwood, with straight grain broken by small knots.

as dealers write itAncient Cypress · Sinker Cypress · Cypress

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Pinus spp. — the dealer wrote only “pine”, with no species attached, and the genus holds roughly 113 species native across the Northern Hemisphere, so neither range nor appearance can be narrowed until the piece is identified.

as dealers write itPine

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Dalbergia latifolia, native to India, Nepal and Java and widely planted across South and Southeast Asia; golden through deep purplish brown with darker streaks, over a sharply demarcated pale sapwood.

as dealers write itEast Indian Rosewood · Indian Rosewood · Figured East Indian Rosewood · Curly East Indian Rosewood · Maple & Rosewood · Master Grade East Indian Rosewood

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Dalbergia nigra, endemic to Brazil's Atlantic forest; chocolate through reddish and purplish brown with dark streaks that sometimes web across the plate, against a sharply lighter sapwood.

as dealers write itBrazilian Rosewood

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Dalbergia tucurensis, from Mexico and Central America; yellowish brown through deep orange to dark brown, streaked or plain, over a light yellow sapwood.

as dealers write itGuatemalan Rosewood

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Dalbergia stevensonii, whose small natural range is centred on Belize rather than Honduras; light brown to deep purplish brown — brownish-mauve most often — sometimes with darker stripes.

as dealers write itHonduran Rosewood

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A group name rather than a species: at least four Madagascan Dalbergia sold under one label; light yellow-brown through orange to reddish brown, often with black spider-web streaking.

as dealers write itMadagascar Rosewood · Madrose

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The dealer wrote "rosewood" and stopped — the one place in this key where we are recording what is not known, since the wood could be any of a dozen Dalbergia or one of several unrelated woods the trade also calls rosewood.

as dealers write itRosewood

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Dalbergia spruceana, from southern Venezuela through northern and northeastern Brazil to Bolivia; orange to reddish brown with darker contrasting streaks over a lighter yellowish sapwood, and close enough to Brazilian rosewood in both face and end grain that the two are hard to separate by eye.

as dealers write itAmazon Rosewood

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Dalbergia palo-escrito, endemic to Mexico and recorded from San Luis Potosí and Querétaro south through Morelos and Guerrero to Oaxaca; brown, yellow and purple heartwood carrying wavy, almost black streaks against a clearly differentiated sapwood — the written-on look the Spanish name describes.

as dealers write itPalo Escrito · Palo Escrito Rosewood

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Machaerium scleroxylon, from Bolivia and neighbouring Brazil and Paraguay — a Machaerium and not a Dalbergia, so not a true rosewood, and the same wood the trade sells as pau ferro, morado and Bolivian rosewood; reddish orange through dark violet-brown with contrasting black streaking, over a pale yellow sapwood clearly demarcated from the heart.

as dealers write itSantos Rosewood

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Dalbergia tucurensis, from southern Mexico through Central America — the same species the trade also sells as Guatemalan rosewood and Yucatan rosewood, the names marking origin rather than any botanical difference; yellowish brown through deep orange-brown to dark brown, streaked or plain, over a light yellow sapwood distinct from the heartwood.

as dealers write itPanama Rosewood

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A trade label rather than a species: Dalbergia oliveri is sold as Asian rosewood alongside Burmese and Laos rosewood, D. cochinchinensis goes by the same name as often as by Siamese rosewood, and the label alone cannot decide which Dalbergia is in front of you.

as dealers write itAsian Rosewood

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Dalbergia retusa — the same species sold as cocobolo, so “Nicaraguan rosewood” records where a board was bought rather than a distinct wood; it grows on the Pacific side of the Central American isthmus from Panama to southwestern Mexico, and runs yellow, orange and red into brown with black or purple streaks against very pale sapwood, lightest when freshly cut and darkening afterwards.

as dealers write itNicaraguan Rosewood

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Dalbergia maritima, from eastern Madagascar; a vivid magenta to reddish purple with darker violet-black streaks, darkening with age toward deep purple or near black — and the name collides, since “bois de rose” is also used for Aniba rosaeodora, the South American tree distilled for rosewood oil, and for Dalbergia decipularis, Brazilian tulipwood.

as dealers write itBois de Rose

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Dalbergia retusa, from the drier half of the Central American isthmus between Panama and Mexico; yellow, orange and red shading into brown with black or purple streaks, and it darkens after cutting.

as dealers write itCocobolo

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Dalbergia melanoxylon, from the dry savannas across sub-Saharan Africa — Senegal and Mali east to Eritrea and Ethiopia, south through Tanzania to Angola, Mozambique and northern South Africa; heartwood usually black or near-black with little discernible grain, occasionally showing a dark brown or purplish cast, against a very thin, sharply demarcated pale yellow sapwood.

as dealers write itAfrican Blackwood

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Cordia dodecandra, native from central Mexico south through Belize and Guatemala and on Cuba; medium to dark brown, sometimes with a green or purple cast, crossed by near-black growth-ring bands that form its characteristic spider-web or landscape figure, with sharply paler yellowish sapwood that is often deliberately left in the piece.

as dealers write itZiricote

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An unqualified "mahogany" can be Swietenia from tropical America or Khaya from West Africa — different genera on different continents, and where a listing says which, we file the specific wood instead.

as dealers write itMahogany · Flame Mahogany · Figured Mahogany · Quilted Mahogany · Fiddleback Mahogany · Ribbon Mahogany · Bear Claw Mahogany · Master Grade Mahogany · Torrefied Mahogany

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Swietenia macrophylla, growing from Mexico through Central America into Brazil, Bolivia and Peru; pale pinkish to reddish brown, darkening with age, often with ripple marks across flatsawn faces.

as dealers write itHonduran Mahogany · Sinker Mahogany · Figured Honduran Mahogany · "The Tree" Mahogany · Curly Honduran Mahogany · Fiddleback Honduran Mahogany · Quilted Honduran Mahogany · Flamed Honduran Mahogany

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Swietenia mahagoni, native to south Florida and the Greater Antilles, and the original mahogany of the trade rather than the S. macrophylla sold today as “genuine mahogany”; heartwood ranging from pale pinkish brown to a darker reddish brown, grain straight, interlocked, irregular or wavy, medium and uniform in texture.

as dealers write itCuban Mahogany

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Swietenia macrophylla, native from southern Mexico through Central America and into the Amazon basin of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil — “Brazilian” names one end of a much wider range rather than a separate wood; heartwood pale pinkish brown to darker reddish brown that deepens with exposure, medium and uniform in texture.

as dealers write itBrazilian Mahogany

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Swietenia macrophylla — “Peruvian” names where the log was cut, not a separate wood, the same big-leaf mahogany also sold as Honduran, Brazilian or genuine mahogany; pale pinkish brown to darker reddish brown, darkening with age, with wild-grown stock generally darker than plantation timber.

as dealers write itPeruvian Mahogany

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Swietenia macrophylla, growing from Mexico through Central America into Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Brazilian Amazon; pale pinkish brown to darker reddish brown, darkening with age, with grain that runs straight, interlocked, irregular or wavy over a uniform medium texture — the same species the trade also sells as Honduran, big-leaf and genuine mahogany.

as dealers write itSouth American Mahogany

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Khaya spp., a tropical African genus and no relation to the American Swietenia, of which four species carry the trade; heartwood pale pink to deeper reddish brown, sometimes streaked with medium to dark reddish brown, grain straight to interlocked with a medium to coarse texture, and it darkens with age.

as dealers write itAfrican Mahogany

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Entandrophragma cylindricum, a tree of West and Central African rainforest from Guinea and Sierra Leone east to Uganda; pale yellow to whitish sapwood against a heartwood that is pinkish when freshly cut and darkens to reddish brown, with interlocked grain that reads as a regular stripe, most pronounced on quartersawn faces.

as dealers write itSapele · Quilted Sapele

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Acer — big-leaf maple on the American side, sycamore maple in Europe; near-white to light golden or reddish brown, and the genus where curly, quilted and birdseye figure are most often found.

as dealers write itMaple · Flamed Maple · Quilted Maple · Figured Maple · Flame Maple · Birdseye Maple · Curly Maple · Spalted Maple · Fiddleback Maple · Torrefied Flame Maple

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Juglans — black walnut in eastern North America, English walnut across Europe and southwest Asia, claro in California; pale through dark chocolate brown with darker streaks and sometimes a grey or purple cast.

as dealers write itWalnut · Figured Walnut · Flamed Walnut

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Juglans hindsii × J. regia, a Californian cross between the native black walnut and the introduced Persian walnut, arising where the two grow together in and around old orchards; light gold and honey through reddish brown to near-chocolate, frequently with darker streaks and curly, rippled or feathered grain — “Bastogne” is a timber-trade label for one of these “Paradox” hybrids, not a botanical name.

as dealers write itBastogne Walnut · Bastogne Walnut

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Juglans hindsii, native to the Central Valley and inner north Coast Ranges of California; heartwood pale brown to dark chocolate with darker streaking and frequent grey, purple or reddish casts against a near-white sapwood — much lumber sold as claro is the rootstock trunk of orchard trees top-grafted with English walnut, so the most highly coloured material comes from around the graft union.

as dealers write itFigured Claro Walnut · Claro Walnut · Curly Claro Walnut

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Juglans regia, native from eastern Türkiye through to the western Himalaya and cultivated across Europe long enough that Italian, English, French, European, Circassian and Persian walnut all name this one species by provenance rather than by botany; pale brown to dark chocolate brown with darker streaks and sometimes a grey, purple or reddish cast, over nearly white sapwood.

as dealers write itItalian Walnut

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Acacia koa, which grows naturally nowhere but the Hawaiian Islands; medium gold to reddish brown, commonly banded and ribbon-streaked, and frequently curly.

as dealers write itKoa · Figured Koa · Flamed Koa · Curly Koa · Striped Koa

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Umbellularia californica, which grows from southwest Oregon south through California into northern Baja California; light orange-brown through grey to olive, sometimes darkly streaked, with a pale and usually well-defined sapwood, and frequently curly, mottled or burled — a laurel, unrelated to the true myrtles (Myrtus), and also sold as Oregon myrtle.

as dealers write itMyrtle / Myrtlewood · Figured Myrtle · Flamed Myrtlewood · Tiger Myrtle · Figured Myrtlewood · Laurelwood · Myrtlewood

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Quercus spp. — the dealer recorded only “oak”, with no species named, and the genus runs to some 477 accepted species; absent a species, all that can honestly be said is that oak heartwood is light to medium brown, reddish-cast in the red oaks and olive-cast in the whites, with prominent ray fleck on quartersawn faces.

as dealers write itBog Oak · Tiger Oak

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Agathis australis, endemic to the northern North Island of New Zealand; pale yellowish white to golden brown with sapwood barely distinguishable from heartwood, straight-grained and fine-textured, often with the shimmering figure known there as “whitebait” — ancient or swamp kauri is the same species, subfossil logs recovered from bogs, not a separate tree.

as dealers write itAncient Kauri · Figured Kauri

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Taxus baccata, European yew, native from the Azores and northwest Africa across Europe to the Caucasus and northern Iran; a thin band of pale yellow or tan sapwood runs hard against an orangish brown heartwood, sometimes darker brown or purplish and darkening further with age — that abrupt light-against-dark boundary is the wood's signature, and knots and irregular grain are common.

as dealers write itEnglish Yew · Yew

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Diospyros celebica, endemic to Sulawesi in Indonesia and found wild nowhere else; a yellow to reddish brown body crossed by darker brown and black stripes, with sharply demarcated pale gold sapwood and grain that runs straight to interlocked.

as dealers write itMacassar Ebony · Striped Ebony

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Diospyros malabarica, native from the Indian subcontinent through Indo-China and the Malay archipelago though nearly all timber now entering the trade is cut in Laos; pale straw to creamy off-white carrying bold black streaks that vary unpredictably from board to board, with straight to wavy grain and a fine, even texture — also sold as black-and-white ebony.

as dealers write itPale Moon Ebony

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An unqualified “ebony” means Diospyros, a genus of nearly 800 species of which only a minority yield the black heartwood the word implies, and in this corpus it is overwhelmingly a fingerboard wood that reaches the soundbox only rarely.

as dealers write itEbony · Gabon Ebony · Figured Ebony

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Diospyros mun, given by Kew as native from Cambodia to southern Vietnam although the timber reaches the trade as Vietnamese and Lao; medium brown, often with a reddish cast and dark brown to black streaking throughout, very fine and uniform in texture, and a sharply demarcated pale yellow to white sapwood.

as dealers write itMun Ebony

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Diospyros virginiana, from the central and eastern United States; almost all of what gets cut is white to pale yellowish-brown sapwood that darkens with age, the dark brown to black heartwood forming only a narrow central core often under an inch across — it sits in Diospyros, the same genus as the tropical ebonies.

as dealers write itPersimmon

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Guibourtia demeusei, G. pellegriniana and G. tessmannii — three separate West Central African species traded under the one name, growing from southern Nigeria and Cameroon through Equatorial Guinea and Gabon into the Congo basin; pinkish red to darker reddish brown with purple or black streaks, sharply demarcated from a pale straw sapwood, frequently figured, and darkening toward reddish brown after cutting.

as dealers write itBubinga · Quilted Bubinga

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Millettia laurentii, from west-central Africa — Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and the two Congos; medium brown with a reddish or yellowish cast and nearly black streaks, very coarse in texture, the alternating dense and open bands reading as a fine dark stripe — near-identical panga panga (Millettia stuhlmannii) is routinely sold under the same name.

as dealers write itWenge

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Cordia elaeagnoides of Mexico's seasonally dry Pacific slope, with allied Central American Cordia entering shipments under the same name; yellowish to golden brown with dramatic dark brown to almost black stripes and swirls, strongest on flatsawn faces, an oily or waxy surface feel, and it darkens with age.

as dealers write itBocote

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Terminalia superba, from tropical West and Central Africa; light yellowish to golden brown deepening with age, over a pale sapwood that is not clearly demarcated — “black” limba names the stock carrying grey to nearly black streaks and veins and “white” limba, or korina, the plain stock, both cut from the same tree.

as dealers write itBlack Limba

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Lonchocarpus castilloi, from the lowland tropical forests of Belize, Guatemala and southeastern Mexico; light brown to darker reddish brown crossed by thin light-coloured parenchyma lines, with a distinctly contrasting yellow sapwood and grain that may run straight, irregular or interlocked over a coarse texture.

as dealers write itMachiche

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One word for two trees in different families — Sassafras albidum of eastern North America, and Tasmania's Atherosperma moschatum — and a figured back is far more likely the Tasmanian, whose dark heart streaking against pale sapwood arises from fungal activity in the standing tree.

as dealers write itSassafras

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Olneya tesota, confined to the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, southeastern California and northwestern Mexico; heartwood orangish yellow through dark red and brown with violet to black streaking — some pieces nearly all black — set against a narrow yellow sapwood, fine and even in texture, and the grain is often wild or gnarled because the tree is small.

as dealers write itDesert Ironwood

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Brosimum rubescens, from tropical South America — Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas and into Panama; a bright, vivid red with straight to slightly interlocked grain and fine texture, a pale yellowish sapwood seldom present in imported stock, and it darkens toward brownish red with exposure to light.

as dealers write itBloodwood

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Coulteria platyloba — long catalogued as Caesalpinia platyloba — from Mexico south through Guatemala to Costa Rica; bright orange to golden brown heartwood that deepens to a redder orange after cutting, over pale white to yellow sapwood, with straight to sometimes interlocked grain and a fine, even texture.

as dealers write itChakte Viga

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Cherry in instrument work is normally Prunus serotina, black cherry, from eastern North America, with European shops instead using Prunus avium, wild cherry; light pinkish brown when freshly cut and darkening to a medium reddish brown on exposure to light, straight-grained and fine-textured, with a narrow band of pale yellowish sapwood standing well clear of the heartwood.

as dealers write itCherry

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Acer pseudoplatanus, native from Europe east to the western Caucasus and not native to Britain at all — Derbyshire names an English provenance, not a variety — and it is the sapwood that is used: near white to light golden or reddish brown, fine and even in texture, straight to wavy in grain and sometimes curly or quilted; British “sycamore” is this maple, not the North American sycamore (Platanus).

as dealers write itDerbyshire Sycamore

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Granadillo is a name, not a botanical unit: it is applied to timbers from several genera of the legume family — Platymiscium and more than one Dalbergia among them — so a listing that says only “granadillo” has not yet named the wood.

as dealers write itGranadillo

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Swartzia cubensis, from southern and Gulf-coast Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and western Cuba; heartwood dark reddish brown to nearly black, sometimes with a strong purple cast and often curly or wavy, fine and even in texture and sharply demarcated from a pale yellowish-white sapwood — sold as “Mexican royal ebony” but not an ebony, which is to say not a Diospyros at all.

as dealers write itKatalox

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Maclura pomifera, native only to the Red River drainage of northeast Texas, southeast Oklahoma and southwest Arkansas but planted and naturalised as hedgerow across much of the United States; bright golden yellow when freshly cut, darkening under ultraviolet light to a medium brown, with straight grain and a fine to medium texture.

as dealers write itOsage Orange

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Guibourtia ehie, from west and west-central tropical Africa — Guinea and Ivory Coast through Ghana and Nigeria to Cameroon, Gabon and Congo; yellowish to reddish brown with darker brown, grey or black stripes and a pale yellow sapwood that is clearly demarcated, the grain straight to slightly interlocked and sometimes curly or mottled — also sold as shedua and amazique.

as dealers write itOvangkol

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Machaerium scleroxylon, from Bolivia through Brazil into Paraguay; reddish orange through dark violet-brown with contrasting near-black streaking and a pale yellow sapwood sharply separated from the heartwood — sold as Bolivian rosewood, morado, Santos rosewood or caviuna, but it is a Machaerium, not a Dalbergia.

as dealers write itPau Ferro

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Pyrus communis, the orchard pear, native from Europe to northern Iraq and planted well beyond it; heartwood a pale pink to light reddish brown that the sapwood barely differs from, fine and uniform in texture, and often steamed to deepen the pink — the timber trade's name for it is “Swiss pear”, which describes the treatment rather than an origin.

as dealers write itFrench Pear

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Paubrasilia echinata, endemic to the Atlantic forest of eastern Brazil, from Rio Grande do Norte and Bahia south into Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro; heartwood yellowish orange to reddish brown, orange-brown when freshly cut and darkening on exposure, sharply demarcated from a whitish-yellow sapwood, with straight or occasionally interlocked grain.

as dealers write itPernambuco

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Eucalyptus robusta, native to a narrow coastal strip of eastern Australia from Rockhampton south to Jervis Bay, and widely planted elsewhere — naturalised and treated as invasive in Hawai'i; pale red when freshly cut, turning orange-red to red-brown, with a band of pale brown sapwood, interlocked grain and sometimes a ribbon stripe on quartersawn faces.

as dealers write itRobusta Eucalyptus

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Tamarindus indica, of long-obscured wild origin — Kew gives the native range as Madagascar and the Comoros — and now planted across the tropics; the boards sold to luthiers are almost always the wide pale-yellow sapwood, commonly spalted into fine dark zone lines, rather than the narrow deep reddish-brown heartwood that forms only in old trees.

as dealers write itSpalted Tamarind

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Liriodendron tulipifera, a magnolia relative and not a true poplar (Populus), growing from southern Ontario through the eastern and central United States to the Gulf Coast; white sapwood against a cream to tan heartwood that is often streaked greenish brown, dark green, purple, blue or black by mineral uptake, straight-grained and uniform in texture, with the colours darkening on exposure to light.

as dealers write itTulip Poplar

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Eucalyptus — “ironbark” is not a species but a bark character shared by several dozen eucalypts of eastern Australia, and “urban” names salvaged municipal stock rather than any particular one of them; heartwood red-brown to dark brown, sapwood near-white to pink-white and distinctly lighter, grain close and usually straight, occasionally interlocked.

as dealers write itUrban Ironbark

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Microberlinia brazzavillensis, from west-central tropical Africa — Gabon, Congo and the Central African Republic; light brown to cream with dark blackish-brown stripes that are wide and erratic on flatsawn faces and narrow and regular on quartered ones, the grain interlocked or wavy over a uniform medium to coarse texture.

as dealers write itZebrawood

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as dealers write itBoonaree

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Samanea saman, native to Central America and northern South America and planted so widely across the tropics that the Hawaiian monkeypod reaching instrument shops is this same introduced species rather than a Hawaiian native; golden to dark brown, sometimes with darker streaks, over a thin yellow-white sapwood clearly demarcated from the heartwood.

as dealers write itMonkey Pod (Albizia Saman)

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Pterocarpus spp. — a genus of roughly 37 species across the tropics, so “padauk” covers at least two different woods: African padauk (P. soyauxii), a vivid reddish orange when cut that darkens substantially to reddish or purplish brown, and Burmese padauk (P. macrocarpus), less red and running pale golden yellow to reddish brown over distinct yellow sapwood.

as dealers write itPadauk

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Brosimum guianense, ranging from southern Mexico through tropical South America though commercial supply comes almost entirely from coastal northeastern South America; reddish brown with contrasting dark brown to black speckles and hieroglyph-like markings — the source of the older trade name letterwood — with straight grain and a fine even texture.

as dealers write itSnakewood

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