Thread: Brushbox

Hardwood vs Softwood.

Basically, softwoods are the cone-bearing plants, hardwoods are mostly anything else.

It has to do with the arrangement of cells in the plant.

When the end grain is looked at under a microscope:

Hardwood has cells of many different sizes, so viewed end-on the end grain looks like the end of a pile of pipes of all different sizes - there is no regular pattern in it.

The cells in Softwood are pretty well of the same size, so viewed end-on under a hand lens, the end grain looks like a chessboard..

I did a bit of searching on google for simple images, and couldn't find any.

Here's a US forest service summary that's reasonable and not too big that shows the difference between hardwood and softwood.
http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplrn/fplrn004.pdf

Cheers,

eddie