Wood ID No2.

[TheGreenMan]

This one has been named as ‘tamarind’ by the person who sent it to me, but they are not absolutely certain.

I can’t find any pics on the Web of the various species of tamarind or tamrind wood, trees yes, wood no.

The wood dust irritates the mucus membranes of the mouth and causes some lung irritation too.

This peeled stick is about 4.5cm (1 ¾”):

End grain with pith:

Transverse cell structure:

A small cut trimmed off one end to show the tangential grain and pores:

Ideas, anyone?

Best regards,
Paul.

 

[mace242]

Don't know much about wood id but found this site when looking. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/specialcollections/forestry/hough/common.html seems to be useful - anybody want to comment?

 

[Singeblister]

it looks like it could be "Lace wood" they also call it something else but I cant remember the name , a lot of woods I use for knife making have different names depending on where you buy them , Its hard to tell though without seeing it cut up , looks like you will need to quarter saw it to get a nice grain ( for knife scales ) depends what your going to use it for , good luck with the ID

 

[TheGreenMan]

Don't know much about wood id but found this site when looking. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/specialcollections/forestry/hough/common.html seems to be useful - anybody want to comment?

That's a nice resource, thanks! Some lovely pics.

it looks like it could be "Lace wood" they also call it something else but I cant remember the name , a lot of woods I use for knife making have different names depending on where you buy them , Its hard to tell though without seeing it cut up , looks like you will need to quarter saw it to get a nice grain ( for knife scales ) depends what your going to use it for , good luck with the ID

I'm reluctant to cut it, SB, for now, at least. The only way I know of identifying a species for sure from a piece of timer is to ID the cell structure from a prepared cross-section (transverse cut). The problem is finding the microphotographs of large numbers of species. Without access to a suffiently large database it's a bit of a struggle. Even with the relatively low quality of the photos, it should be possible to ID it if a match in a database can be found...I've been googling for days, now

Cheers both,
Paul.

 

[jojo]

It looks like this wood:

http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/tambran,%20wild.htm, particularly the end grain picture. If you click on the pics you can see magnified images.

This is the best site I have found so far with lots of pics of a lot of different wood:
http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/#letterL

 

[TheGreenMan]

It's interesting that the wild tambran is a member of the pea family, as are the various species of the tamarind. If it can be established that the transverse cell structure of the pea family have a similar one to that of the sample I have, and the one you found at the link you posted (great find by the way, thanks), we could be on to something.

Cheers,
Paul.

 

[TheGreenMan]

...as are the various species of the tamarind...

Actually that’s incorrect, there is only one plant that is the tamarind and that is Tamadrindus indica L, though it does have a number of botanical synonyms:

Tamarindus occidentalis Gaertu
Tamarindus officinalis Hook
Tamarindus umbrosa Salisb

What complicates the matter of confirming the wood sample as tamarind or not, is that there are a number of other plants that have common names that include ‘tamarind’ in them, and different species have the same common name. They are:

1. Cow tamarind, Rain Tree, (Albizia saman)

2. Cow tamarind, Rain Tree, Monkey Pod (Samanea saman) – confusingly, this could actually be the identity of the wood in my ‘Wood ID No1’ thread!

3. False Tamarind (Lysiloma latisliquum)

4. Wild-tamarind (Lysiloma latisliquum)

Tamarindus indica – Red indicates where the plant is Native. Yellow indicates where the plant has been Naturalised or Introduced:

Albizia saman - Colour key as above:

This one’s turning out to be a bit of a brain burster, well, for a non-botanist it is. It might be that both the woods in the ‘Wood ID No1’ and ‘Wood ID No2’ threads could correctly be called by their English common names as ‘Cow Tamarind’ or ‘Rain Tree’, yet both are entirely different species.

Best regards,
Paul.

 

[TheGreenMan]

It looks like this wood:
http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/tambran, wild.htm,

It appears that Pithecellobium arborem is a botanical snynonym for the species Cojoba arborea.

Cojoba arborea – Red shows where the plant is Native:

As it doesn’t appear to have made it to SE Asia I think we can rule this one out, but thanks anyway that's a really useful site, and thanks for taking the time, jojo.

Cheers,
Paul.

 

[Jodie]

Have you tried contacting the Sustainable Uses Group at Kew (formerly the Centre for
Economic Botany) - http://www.kew.org/scihort/ecbot/ecbot-enqs.html or Dr. Pieter Baas
who gave a fab lecture on wood anatomy at that lovely economic botany course I did
in Leiden. I shan't post details up here but PM me if you're still pursuing your tamarind
and don't find him via Google.

The only other thing I can think of is for me to note the contact details of the organisation
behind some freakishly detailed carvings in wood and other material that's on display
at the Apothecaries house; I'm going there in a couple of weeks so could check - they
might be wood nerds. They made a lot of "whimsies" and startlingly lovely they are too.

 

[TheGreenMan]

Thanks for this very useful post, Jo.

I’ve had Kew at the back of my mind for a few days now, but haven’t had time to look. That URL looks very promising. And the good doctor is exactly the kind of person I need to contact, with what I imagine to be his intimate knowledge of SE Asia’s botany, and specifically his expertise as a wood anatomist.

Over the past few days I’ve made some fairly feeble attempts to locate a web-based searchable picture library of wood cell structures, but with no luck so far. I feel that without access to something of that sort I can’t really take this much further on my own. The number of tree species alone is quite overwhelming, not to mention total plant species.

Delving into the serious side of amateur botany has proven to be a very ‘steep learning curve’, as they say, that’s left me feeling like my melon is going to explode, unless I take a rest or at least slow down a little, or chop some wood . I simply can’t absorb the amount of information I’m bombarding myself with, it's such a vast subject.

If you do make contact with any wood nerds that have interesting info, please do let us know. It may not be relevant to this particular ID session, but they may know of useful resources on the subject in general.

Thanks,
Paul.

 

[Landy_Dom]

I did a forestry degree an Bangor university in Norh Wales. Now I was never any good at wood ident, but there were plenty of staff there who were real anoraks at it. loads of samples of the wierd and wonderful too..... might be worth ringing or emailing thier wood science dept?

Dom.

 

[TheGreenMan]

Thanks, Dom, you've given me another useful lead to follow, when I have time to get round to it. A very welcome suggestion, thanks again.

Kind regards,
Paul.