Category :    Light Hardwoods

Species

General Characteristics

Sapwood light pink in colour and distinct from heartwood; colour of heartwood pink-brown, gold-brown or red-brown, weathering to darker shades; often streaked with darker-coloured layers: planed surface generally without significant lustre; growth ring figure on tangential surface and stripe figure on radial surface; texture moderately fine and even and occasionally on the coarse side; grain shallowly interlocked; moderately hard to cut across grain; air dry density on an average 672 kg/m³ (42 lb/ft³); not durable in contact with the ground or exposed positions and sapwood very perishable even in protected situations.

Structure

Growth rings distinct, produced by terminal layers of wood parenchyma. Vessels with simple perforation; medium-sized; few or moderately few in number; as solitary interspersed with radial pairs and multiples of generally 2 to 4 (occasionally up to 5) in a series and occasional clusters; sometimes the solitary vessels and sometimes the radial groups predominating; evenly distrib¬uted without any arrangement; tyloses gener¬ally absent; deposits common.
Wood parenchyma as vasicentric, tending to the aliform type and irregularly spaced (apotracheal) terminal bands.

Other Features

Burning splinter test : Splinter bums to ash.
Froth test: Negative.

Uses