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	Featured Wood What Wood Is This? Hint: Unusual for a genus in the Sapindaceae to have vessel-ray parenchyma pits that have reduced borders and are horizontally elongate. Other species in this genus, which is native to temperate Northern Hemisphere, have vessel-ray parenchyma pits similar to intervessel pits. Some species grown as ornamental trees, and Wikipedia mentions that seeds were traditionally eaten, after leaching, by the Jomon people of Japan over about 4 millennia, until 300AD. [ more ]

The InsideWood project integrates wood anatomical information from the literature and original observations into an internet-accessible database useful for research and teaching. The InsideWood database contains brief descriptions of fossil and modern woody dicots (hardwoods) from more than 200 plant families, and is searchable by an interactive, multiple-entry key. This wood anatomy web site has over 35,000 images showing anatomical details.
Note: Gymnosperm woods (softwoods) are not included.

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Support InsideWood by buying a 2012 Calendar "Plants With a Past. Inside Ancient Woods." Calendar features photomicrographs of fossil woods and gives dates for Arbor Days around the world.

Support the International Association of Wood Anatomists by buying the photobook "Beauty In Wood."

The descriptions use features from the International Association of Wood Anatomists (IAWA) List of Features for Hardwood Identification (IAWA Committee 1989). We recommend that database users obtain a copy of this booklet from the IAWA. Download order form (1 MB pdf)

To use the multiple-entry key for wood identification effectively and to interpret the database content correctly, users need to be familiar with the microscopic anatomy of hardwoods at the level of university courses in plant anatomy or wood science. If you don't have this background, visit the course materials section of Wood Anatomy Links for help.

The InsideWood Working Group (IWG): This site is a project of the Libraries and the Department of Wood and Paper Science, at North Carolina State University (NCSU), Raleigh, NC, USA. The project benefits from collaboration with the Micromorphology Group, Jodrell Laboratory, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, U.K. and the National Herbarium of the Netherlands, and CSIRO Forestry and Forest Products, Australia.

Support: This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Grants BRC 0237368 and DBI 0518386 to NCSU, Elisabeth Wheeler, Shirley Rodgers, and Kathy Brown, Principal Investigators.

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