red cedar question ?

[la Huerta]

Common Name: AUSTRALIAN RED CEDAR
Botanical Name: Toona ciliata (F.Muell.) Harms...
Texture: Very soft and open textured, easy to work, distinctive odour.


ok, question, i thought australian red cedar was a hardwood and western red cedar was the softwood...is there a hardwood one...?

can someone enlighten me...??

[TTIT]

??? I thought Australian Red cedar was toona australis ???

[SilentButDeadly]

Hardwood and softwood are terms often misused. It certainly doesn't differentiate between soft and hard woods. To use a famous example, balsa is a hardwood.

The term 'softwood' refers to the timber of a coniferous tree (one that reproduces via cones). Western Red Cedar Thuja plicata is a coniferous tree. The term 'hardwood' applys to pretty much every other flowering tree.

[IanW]

The term 'softwood' refers to the timber of a coniferous tree (one that reproduces via cones). Western Red Cedar Thuja plicata is a coniferous tree. The term 'hardwood' applys to pretty much every other flowering tree.

SBD,
'Hardwood' should apply to EVERY flowering tree. The division between them is: Softwoods belong to the Gymnoperm group (non-flowering trees with 'naked' seeds) which includes the likes of Pines, Larches (the only deciduous ones I know of) Spruce, Fir, Redwoods, Western Red Cedar (T. plicata, as pointed out above).

Hardwoods are, as you said, the flowering trees (Angiosperms). Our Australian red cedar (which seems to have had more specific names over the years than a referee at a disputed football game - safer to just call it Toona Sp.!) is very definitely a flowering tree, and therefore a harwood, even though its wood is waaay softer than Cypress (Callitris spp.) which is technically a softwood.

Confused? It is a bit confusing, but the terms are useful in places like Nth America, where most soft-timbered species ARE Gymnosperms, and most hard-timbered species are Angiosperms. Even there, there are exceptions - the wood of the Larch is quite a bit tougher than some of the hardwood species, for example.
And to cap it off, Western Red cedar, although a gymnosperm, ain't really cedar, although it is certainly more closely related to Cedar of Lebanon than our hardwood wot we call 'cedar'.
I think the name comes from "Cedrela", or cigar cedar of central America, which it resembles a lot, & in fact is quite closely related to - both trees are in the same family as 'true' Mahogany. (One of the names the early settlers called our Toona was "bastard mahogany", which showed some understanding of botany, perhaps, but was a bit of a dismissive name for a reasonably useful timber!)

I guess that's more than you ever wanted to know!
Cheers,

[la Huerta]

thanks for the education but it does'nt answer my question, maybe i did'nt explain properly (i tend to do that a lot)... but what i really needed to know was which cedar is the so called Australian cedar, which i had some here once and it was heavy and dence, and which is the softer Australian cedar which is 'soft', i have some of that here now that i picked up by mistake (was covered in old paint and in a oregon pile) it's only a small piece but orange/red/brown and soft like western red cedar , which i use too but never has the red and stronger looking grain that looks like oregon, just soft and smells devine...

see lots of different colors and densities and that's what got me baffled..

could i in fact me using cedar but calling each one the wrong name...

[IanW]

La Huerta,
sorry - when I reread my answer, it does sound a bit pompous. My excuse is that the business of hardwoods and softwoods has come up over and over on this BB, so I sort of waded in.

So, to make a better attempt. You seem to be saying that you've had a couple of pieces of wood, both identified by some means or other as "Australian cedar", but of very different densities and hardness?

There is only one species of "Australian cedar", although it has had its name changed several times. My version of "Forest Trees of Australia" (1989) calls it T. australis, and notes a few previous names. Like any tree, there can be great variation in colour and consistency of the wood - that's normal with any species. But perhaps there's even more variation than usual with this one, because it has such a big range over which it grows. Old trees growing at higher altitudes under less than optimal conditions tend to be denser and harder than younger trees growing in warmer spots where they're well-watered and fed. I've got some treasured scraps from very old table legs that are like Mahogany in density and even colour. I've also got some planks (cut from a tree growing on the Atherton tablelands that was a bit over 600mm diameter - no idea of age, but probably 45-50 yrs max) that are very pale and quite soft, though nowhere near as soft and stringy as some imported Toonas I've worked with!

So both pieces you refer to may well be Toona australis, aka Australian cedar.

Cheers,

[la Huerta]

thanks Ian...that clears things up a bit...

apparently is pretty much non existant these days, but does anyone know where to get the red aus cedar in sydney, i tried Mathews but they only have the 'cut all the good trees down to grow' plantation timbers from malaysia...

...

[AlexS]

Bought some from Trend a while back, but it was much lighter in colour than old stuff that I've used.

[Bruce101]

You might like to try this site link. Haven't used them myself but the web site or email may be worth a try if you're in Syd. Metro Area.

http://www.ironwood.com.au/index2.asp

[mcarthur]

If it's only a plank or so you need, I've got some I could sell - Canberra, 200x50's in 3-5m lengths. I'm keeping most to play with but probably wouldn't notice a plank or so sold/traded to a good home.

Rob

[eddie the eagle]

It's actually now correctly classified as Cedrela Toona, TTIT

They're cleaning up some of the early botanists work, where same genuses of tree were classified as two different ones.

As well the Eucalypt family is now split into half Eucalypt, half something else (Myrtacae(?)) Ian W I'm sure will correct any fallacies.

CHeers,

eddie

[goodwoody]

I have ample red cedar to play with. (You can hate me later) Mine came from Mt Mee near Caboolture. It came from a real mongrel ridge so when we cut it the colour was almost black. It is very dense and dusty. I gave some to Reeves a couple of years ago. He can vouch for the colour ect. I manage to get 450mm x 50mm x 4800mm 12 of , From 2 trees.
The cedar is there but you have to look hard be nice and part with sh_t loads of cash for quality stuff. Damien. (Start hating me Now)

[rsser]

Yeah, the colour varies a lot. Strip down old cedar chests and you'll see why the polishers often added colour and talc to the shellac.

[SilentButDeadly]

It's actually now correctly classified as Cedrela Toona, TTIT

They're cleaning up some of the early botanists work, where same genuses of tree were classified as two different ones.

As well the Eucalypt family is now split into half Eucalypt, half something else (Myrtacae(?)) Ian W I'm sure will correct any fallacies.

Not sure where you scored that name from?

The current scientific name for Red Cedar is Toona ciliata


http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cg...=toona~ciliata

Eucalypts were split into two genera Eucalyptus and Corymbia in the late 90's as I recall. The Casuarinas were also split into two seperate genera at much the same time

[IanW]

Not sure where you scored that name from?

The current scientific name for Red Cedar is Toona ciliata

Yes, SBD, I think Eddie must have a VERY old book. Cedrela was the generic name given to it way back, because they thought it was the same as the Central American Cedrela or 'cigar cedar'. It's been Toona for a very long time. The specific name seems to keep bouncing around, depending where you get your info from.

Name changes are a PITA for those of us who have to keep up with them in our day jobs, and we all whinge about it (one bug important to farmers in this country has had 4 name changes in the last 30 years). However, getting the relatedness or otherwise of things pinned down is very important for all sorts of reasons, so we have to grin and bear it. Things inevitably change as methods are refined. One hopes that things will finally settle down, once the genomic work is done, but it's a big job, and there are a lot of plants and animals and microbes in the world still to be sorted out!

Avagoodone,