Wood is a structural tissue/material found as xylem in the stems and roots of trees and other woody

plants. It is an organic material – a natural composite of cellulosic fibers that are strong in tension and
embedded in a matrix of lignin that resists compression. Wood is sometimes defined as only the
secondary xylem in the stems of trees,[1] or more broadly to include the same type of tissue elsewhere,
such as in the roots of trees or shrubs. In a living tree, it performs a mechanical-support function,
enabling woody plants to grow large or to stand up by themselves. It also conveys water
and nutrients among the leaves, other growing tissues, and the roots. Wood may also refer to other
plant materials with comparable properties, and to material engineered from wood, woodchips,
or fibers.

Wood has been used for thousands of years for fuel, as a construction material, for
making tools and weapons, furniture and paper. More recently it emerged as a feedstock for the
production of purified cellulose and its derivatives, such as cellophane and cellulose acetate.

As of 2020, the growing stock of forests worldwide was about 557 billion cubic meters.[2] As an
abundant, carbon-neutral[3] renewable resource, woody materials have been of intense interest as a
source of renewable energy. In 2008, approximately 3.97 billion cubic meters of wood were harvested.
[2]
Dominant uses were for furniture and building construction.[4]

Wood is scientifically studied and researched through the discipline of wood science, which was initiated
since the beginning of the 20th century.

History

A 2011 discovery in the Canadian province of New Brunswick yielded the earliest known plants to have
grown wood, approximately 395 to 400 million years ago.[5][6]

Wood can be dated by carbon dating and in some species by dendrochronology to determine when a
wooden object was created.

People have used wood for thousands of years for many purposes, including as a fuel or as
a construction material for making houses, tools, weapons, furniture, packaging, artworks, and paper.
Known constructions using wood date back ten thousand years. Buildings like the longhouses
in Neolithic Europe were made primarily of wood.

Recent use of wood has been enhanced by the addition of steel and bronze into construction.[7]

The year-to-year variation in tree-ring widths and isotopic abundances gives clues to the prevailing
climate at the time a tree was cut.[8]

Physical properties
 Diagram of secondary growth in a tree showing idealized
vertical and horizontal sections. A new layer of wood is added in each growing season, thickening the
stem, existing branches and roots, to form a growth ring.

Growth rings

See also: Dendrochronology § Growth rings

Wood, in the strict sense, is yielded by trees, which increase in diameter by the formation, between the
existing wood and the inner bark, of new woody layers which envelop the entire stem, living branches,
and roots. This process is known as secondary growth; it is the result of cell division in the vascular
cambium, a lateral meristem, and subsequent expansion of the new cells. These cells then go on to form
thickened secondary cell walls, composed mainly of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin.

Where the differences between the seasons are distinct, e.g. New Zealand, growth can occur in a
discrete annual or seasonal pattern, leading to growth rings; these can usually be most clearly seen on
the end of a log, but are also visible on the other surfaces. If the distinctiveness between seasons is
annual (as is the case in equatorial regions, e.g. Singapore), these growth rings are referred to as annual
rings. Where there is little seasonal difference growth rings are likely to be indistinct or absent. If the
bark of the tree has been removed in a particular area, the rings will likely be deformed as the plant
overgrows the scar.

If there are differences within a growth ring, then the part of a growth ring nearest the center of the
tree, and formed early in the growing season when growth is rapid, is usually composed of wider
elements. It is usually lighter in color than that near the outer portion of the ring, and is known as
earlywood or springwood. The outer portion formed later in the season is then known as the latewood
or summerwood.[9] There are major differences, depending on the kind of wood. If a tree grows all its life
in the open and the conditions of soil and site remain unchanged, it will make its most rapid growth in
youth, and gradually decline. The annual rings of growth are for many years quite wide, but later they
become narrower and narrower. Since each succeeding ring is laid down on the outside of the wood
previously formed, it follows that unless a tree materially increases its production of wood from year to
year, the rings must necessarily become thinner as the trunk gets wider. As a tree reaches maturity its
crown becomes more open and the annual wood production is lessened, thereby reducing still more the
width of the growth rings. In the case of forest-grown trees so much depends upon the competition of
the trees in their struggle for light and nourishment that periods of rapid and slow growth may alternate.
Some trees, such as southern oaks, maintain the same width of ring for hundreds of years. On the whole,
as a tree gets larger in diameter the width of the growth rings decreases.

Knots

A knot on a tree trunk

As a tree grows, lower branches often die, and their bases may become overgrown and enclosed by
subsequent layers of trunk wood, forming a type of imperfection known as a knot. The dead branch may
not be attached to the trunk wood except at its base and can drop out after the tree has been sawn into
boards. Knots affect the technical properties of the wood, usually reducing tension strength,[10] but may
be exploited for visual effect. In a longitudinally sawn plank, a knot will appear as a roughly circular
"solid" (usually darker) piece of wood around which the grain of the rest of the wood "flows" (parts and
rejoins). Within a knot, the direction of the wood (grain direction) is up to 90 degrees different from the
grain direction of the regular wood.

In the tree a knot is either the base of a side branch or a dormant bud. A knot (when the base of a side
branch) is conical in shape (hence the roughly circular cross-section) with the inner tip at the point in
stem diameter at which the plant's vascular cambium was located when the branch formed as a bud.

In grading lumber and structural timber, knots are classified according to their form, size, soundness, and
the firmness with which they are held in place. This firmness is affected by, among other factors, the
length of time for which the branch was dead while the attaching stem continued to grow.
 Wood knot in vertical section

Knots materially affect cracking and warping, ease in working, and cleavability of timber. They are
defects which weaken timber and lower its value for structural purposes where strength is an important
consideration. The weakening effect is much more serious when timber is subjected to forces
perpendicular to the grain and/or tension than when under load along the grain and/or compression.
The extent to which knots affect the strength of a beam depends upon their position, size, number, and
condition. A knot on the upper side is compressed, while one on the lower side is subjected to tension. If
there is a season check in the knot, as is often the case, it will offer little resistance to this tensile stress.
Small knots may be located along the neutral plane of a beam and increase the strength by preventing
longitudinal shearing. Knots in a board or plank are least injurious when they extend through it at right
angles to its broadest surface. Knots which occur near the ends of a beam do not weaken it. Sound knots
which occur in the central portion one-fourth the height of the beam from either edge are not serious
defects.

— Samuel J. Record, The Mechanical Properties of Wood[11]

Knots do not necessarily influence the stiffness of structural timber; this will depend on the size and
location. Stiffness and elastic strength are more dependent upon the sound wood than upon localized
defects. The breaking strength is very susceptible to defects. Sound knots do not weaken wood when
subject to compression parallel to the grain.

In some decorative applications, wood with knots may be desirable to add visual interest. In applications
where wood is painted, such as skirting boards, fascia boards, door frames and furniture, resins present
in the timber may continue to 'bleed' through to the surface of a knot for months or even years after
manufacture and show as a yellow or brownish stain. A knot primer paint or solution (knotting), correctly
applied during preparation, may do much to reduce this problem but it is difficult to control completely,
especially when using mass-produced kiln-dried timber stocks.

Heartwood and sapwood

"Heartwood" redirects here. For other uses, see Heartwood (disambiguation).

"Sapwood" redirects here. For the missile also called "SS-6 Sapwood", see R7 Semyorka.

See also: Trunk (botany)

Heartwood (or duramen[12]) is wood that as a result of a naturally occurring chemical transformation has
become more resistant to decay. Heartwood formation is a genetically programmed process that occurs
spontaneously. Some uncertainty exists as to whether the wood dies during heartwood formation, as it
can still chemically react to decay organisms, but only once.[13]

The term heartwood derives solely from its position and not from any vital importance to the tree. This is
evidenced by the fact that a tree can thrive with its heart completely decayed. Some species begin to
form heartwood very early in life, so having only a thin layer of live sapwood, while in others the change
comes slowly. Thin sapwood is characteristic of such species as chestnut, black locust, mulberry, osage-
orange, and sassafras, while in maple, ash, hickory, hackberry, beech, and pine, thick sapwood is the
rule.[14] Some others never form heartwood.

Heartwood is often visually distinct from the living sapwood and can be distinguished in a cross-section
where the boundary will tend to follow the growth rings. For example, it is sometimes much darker.
Other processes such as decay or insect invasion can also discolor wood, even in woody plants that do
not form heartwood, which may lead to confusion.

Sapwood (or alburnum[15]) is the younger, outermost wood; in the growing tree it is living wood,[16] and
its principal functions are to conduct water from the roots to the leaves and to store up and give back
according to the season the reserves prepared in the leaves. By the time they become competent to
conduct water, all xylem tracheids and vessels have lost their cytoplasm and the cells are therefore
functionally dead. All wood in a tree is first formed as sapwood. The more leaves a tree bears and the
more vigorous its growth, the larger the volume of sapwood required. Hence trees making rapid growth
in the open have thicker sapwood for their size than trees of the same species growing in dense forests.
Sometimes trees (of species that do form heartwood) grown in the open may become of considerable
size, 30 cm (12 in) or more in diameter, before any heartwood begins to form, for example, in second
growth hickory, or open-grown pines.
 Cross-section of an oak log showing growth rings

No definite relation exists between the annual rings of growth and the amount of sapwood. Within the
same species the cross-sectional area of the sapwood is very roughly proportional to the size of the
crown of the tree. If the rings are narrow, more of them are required than where they are wide. As the
tree gets larger, the sapwood must necessarily become thinner or increase materially in volume.
Sapwood is relatively thicker in the upper portion of the trunk of a tree than near the base, because the
age and the diameter of the upper sections are less.

When a tree is very young it is covered with limbs almost, if not entirely, to the ground, but as it grows
older some or all of them will eventually die and are either broken off or fall off. Subsequent growth of
wood may completely conceal the stubs which will remain as knots. No matter how smooth and clear a
log is on the outside, it is more or less knotty near the middle. Consequently, the sapwood of an old tree,
and particularly of a forest-grown tree, will be freer from knots than the inner heartwood. Since in most
uses of wood, knots are defects that weaken the timber and interfere with its ease of working and other
properties, it follows that a given piece of sapwood, because of its position in the tree, may well be
stronger than a piece of heartwood from the same tree.

Different pieces of wood cut from a large tree may differ decidedly, particularly if the tree is big and
mature. In some trees, the wood laid on late in the life of a tree is softer, lighter, weaker, and more even
textured than that produced earlier, but in other trees, the reverse applies. This may or may not
correspond to heartwood and sapwood. In a large log the sapwood, because of the time in the life of the
tree when it was grown, may be inferior in hardness, strength, and toughness to equally sound
heartwood from the same log. In a smaller tree, the reverse may be true.

Color

The wood of coast redwood is distinctively red.

In species which show a distinct difference between heartwood and sapwood the natural color of
heartwood is usually darker than that of the sapwood, and very frequently the contrast is conspicuous
(see section of yew log above). This is produced by deposits in the heartwood of chemical substances, so
that a dramatic color variation does not imply a significant difference in the mechanical properties of
heartwood and sapwood, although there may be a marked biochemical difference between the two.

Some experiments on very resinous longleaf pine specimens indicate an increase in strength, due to
the resin which increases the strength when dry. Such resin-saturated heartwood is called "fat lighter".
Structures built of fat lighter are almost impervious to rot and termites, and very flammable. Tree
stumps of old longleaf pines are often dug, split into small pieces and sold as kindling for fires. Stumps
thus dug may actually remain a century or more since being cut. Spruce impregnated with crude resin
and dried is also greatly increased in strength thereby.

Since the latewood of a growth ring is usually darker in color than the earlywood, this fact may be used
in visually judging the density, and therefore the hardness and strength of the material. This is
particularly the case with coniferous woods. In ring-porous woods the vessels of the early wood often
appear on a finished surface as darker than the denser latewood, though on cross sections of heartwood
the reverse is commonly true. Otherwise the color of wood is no indication of strength.

Abnormal discoloration of wood often denotes a diseased condition, indicating unsoundness. The black
check in western hemlock is the result of insect attacks. The reddish-brown streaks so common in
hickory and certain other woods are mostly the result of injury by birds. The discoloration is merely an
indication of an injury, and in all probability does not of itself affect the properties of the wood.
Certain rot-producing fungi impart to wood characteristic colors which thus become symptomatic of
weakness. Ordinary sap-staining is due to fungal growth, but does not necessarily produce a weakening
effect.

Water content

Water occurs in living wood in three locations, namely:

 in the cell walls

 in the protoplasmic contents of the cells

 as free water in the cell cavities and spaces, especially of the xylem

Equilibrium moisture content in wood.

In heartwood it occurs only in the first and last forms. Wood that is thoroughly air-dried
(in equilibrium with the moisture content of the air) retains 8–16% of the water in the cell walls, and
none, or practically none, in the other forms. Even oven-dried wood retains a small percentage of
moisture, but for all except chemical purposes, may be considered absolutely dry.
The general effect of the water content upon the wood substance is to render it softer and more pliable.
A similar effect occurs in the softening action of water on rawhide, paper, or cloth. Within certain limits,
the greater the water content, the greater its softening effect. The moisture in wood can be measured by
several different moisture meters.

Drying produces a decided increase in the strength of wood, particularly in small specimens. An extreme
example is the case of a completely dry spruce block 5 cm in section, which will sustain a permanent
load four times as great as a green (undried) block of the same size will.

The greatest strength increase due to drying is in the ultimate crushing strength, and strength at elastic
limit in endwise compression; these are followed by the modulus of rupture, and stress at elastic limit in
cross-bending, while the modulus of elasticity is least affected.[11]

Structure

Magnified cross-section of black walnut, showing the vessels, rays (white

Wood is a heterogeneous, hygroscopic, cellular and anisotropic (or more specifically, orthotropic)
material. It consists of cells, and the cell walls are composed of micro-fibrils of cellulose (40–50%)
and hemicellulose (15–25%) impregnated with lignin (15–30%).[17]

In coniferous or softwood species the wood cells are mostly of one kind, tracheids, and as a result the
material is much more uniform in structure than that of most hardwoods. There are no vessels ("pores")
in coniferous wood such as one sees so prominently in oak and ash, for example.

The structure of hardwoods is more complex.[18] The water conducting capability is mostly taken care of
by vessels: in some cases (oak, chestnut, ash) these are quite large and distinct, in others
(buckeye, poplar, willow) too small to be seen without a hand lens. In discussing such woods it is
customary to divide them into two large classes, ring-porous and diffuse-porous.[19]

In ring-porous species, such as ash, black locust, catalpa, chestnut, elm, hickory, mulberry, and oak,
[19]
the larger vessels or pores (as cross sections of vessels are called) are localized in the part of the
growth ring formed in spring, thus forming a region of more or less open and porous tissue. The rest of
the ring, produced in summer, is made up of smaller vessels and a much greater proportion of wood
fibers. These fibers are the elements which give strength and toughness to wood, while the vessels are a
source of weakness.[20]

In diffuse-porous woods the pores are evenly sized so that the water conducting capability is scattered
throughout the growth ring instead of being collected in a band or row. Examples of this kind of wood
are alder,[19] basswood,[21] birch,[19] buckeye, maple, willow, and the Populus species such as aspen,
cottonwood and poplar.[19] Some species, such as walnut and cherry, are on the border between the two
classes, forming an intermediate group.[21]

Earlywood and latewood

In softwood