Soft Hardwood Trees

The wood of hardwood trees has more cell types and less air spaces.

Soft hardwood trees. Soft maple boxelder acer negundo red maple acer rubrum silver maple acer saccharinum european maple sycamore maple acer pseudoplatanus marblewood marmaroxylon racemosum marri red gum corymbia calophylla meranti shorea spp merbau ipil intsia bijuga mopane colophospermum mopane oak quercus white oak. The trees have broad leaves rather than needle like leaves. Trees with broad flat leaves as opposed to coniferous or needled trees. On the other hand softwood comes from coniferous trees which we call evergreens.

And while generally speaking the average hardwood is a good deal harder and more durable than the average softwood there are examples of deciduous hardwoods that are much softer than the hardest softwoods. In fact about 40 percent of american trees are in the hardwood category. On the other hand there are many exceptions to this rule. Classifying wood as either a hardwood or softwood comes down to its physical structure and makeup and so it is overly simple to think of hardwoods as being hard and durable compared to soft and workable softwoods.

A few well known hardwood species are oak maple and cherry but many. Other soft hardwoods. They produce a fruit or nut and often go dormant in the winter. Some softwoods however can be very hard.

America s forests contain hundreds of different hardwood tree species. Unlike hardwoods softwoods do not have pores but instead contain linear tubes known as tracheids which supply nutrients for growth. These trees will not shed their leaves during winter and they bear cones or uncovered seeds that fall to the ground and germinate. White oak quercus alba.

Wood hardness varies among the hardwood species and some are actually softer than some softwoods. Deciduous perennial plants which are normally leafless for some time during the year. Hardwoods are hard because their structure tends to be denser than softwoods. Hardness can be said to be a function of the wood s density and hardwood trees are generally denser than softwood trees.

This happens to be generally true but there are exceptions such as in the cases of wood from yew trees a softwood that is relatively hard and wood from balsa trees a. Hardwood trees take a longer time to grow than softwood trees. In general hardwoods have more wood cells and less air per square inch than softwoods. Tracheids perform the same function as the pores in hardwood trees and also produce sap which protects the trees from pests and transports water and other essential elements necessary for growth.