Thread: A wood id quiz, just for fun

Originally Posted by timboz

Was spill the beans a pun? I'll go for Brisbane Wattle (Acacia fimbriata)

Timboz

Originally Posted by NCArcher

Prickly Acacia. Acacia nilotica.

Timboz& NC, you're not paying attention - I said it isn't a wattle!

Ok, the answer is........ Leucaena leucocephala, & I'm sorry for the botanical name stuff, but it's an introduced shrub/tree, and hasn't yet acquired a common name here that I'm aware of (or at least one that's printable!).

I put this up for a couple of reasons, but the main one is to make the point that you simply cannot identify a tree from bark or even good pictures of the wood (which mine weren't, particularly, I'll admit). Some of the questions that should have been asked were "where was this wood collected?", and "is it a native or an impor/" and "can you show us the flowers or fruits?"

Several of the suggestions were perfectly reasonable - the bark & wood are consistent with several species of Acacias that I know. The leaves are consistent with the few wattles that retain their leaves, like Silver wattle (A. mearnsii) & Brisbane goldenwattle (A. fimbriata), but the bark doesn't quite match either of those. The bark could match more than a dozen different trees that I'm aware of, and probably a hundred others that I don't know, so it's of very little help on its own.

So thanks to all those who gave an opinion.....
Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Ok, the answer is........ Leucaena leucocephala, & I'm sorry for the botanical name stuff, but it's an introduced shrub/tree, and hasn't yet acquired a common name here that I'm aware of (or at least one that's printable!).

Not familiar with tree at all, but IBIS calls it Coffee Bush, Lead tree and Sneaky Tree amongst other common names, I think the last one applies here

Originally Posted by dai sensei

Not familiar with tree at all, but IBIS calls it Coffee Bush, Lead tree and Sneaky Tree amongst other common names, I think the last one applies here

Leucaena is grown out here for stock feed. It's planted in rows and is supposed to be kept sawn to a level where the cattle can keep it low and stop it going to seed - but some farmers have let it go and the Lands Dept have a job keeping it under control. Basically the cockies love it and forestry want it declared a weed! I scored a good sized piece a few years back from a tree that was planted 40 odd years ago but got diseased and had to come down - very pretty but still haven't used it - and probably couldn't find it if I wanted to

Mimosa?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimosa

Originally Posted by Cliff Rogers

Mimosa?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimosa

Did you fall asleep again Cliff

Originally Posted by dai sensei

Did you fall asleep again Cliff

I think he is still overseas.

Originally Posted by dai sensei

Not familiar with tree at all, but IBIS calls it Coffee Bush, Lead tree and Sneaky Tree amongst other common names, I think the last one applies here

Neil, no reason for you to know it, really, as it's not likely to ever be a commercial timber tree! It's usually a spindly, tree-ish tall shrub, round these parts, but I had a couple of grand-daddy examples in my yard (which I didn't recognise for what they were, at first). When I did, the larger got the attentions of the chainsaw pretty smartly. That was several years ago, & this one was a bit harder to get down without taking out a fence, but it finally got its comeuppance a couple of days ago.

As TTIT says, it was introduced as a stock feed, and like so many 'good ideas', it wasn't all good, and the plant has become a pest in quite a few spots. Given the prolific way it seeds, I suspect it will become an even bigger pest before it's all over. It's in the legume family, so it is a nitrogen fixer & can flourish in poor soils. The leaves are very high in protein, which is what makes it good for the mooers to munch on. There is quite a story to its use as a stock food in Aus. Briefly, the plant contains two nasty toxins, which caused a deal of bother until some special rumen bacteria (from Hawaiian goats!) were brought in. These bugs destroy the toxins in the rumen. Once Bossie has this bug established in her tummy, she can be safely let loose on the Leucaena leaves....

TTIT - the wood looks interesting, but I noticed it's moderately soft & very brittle, when green. I kept a good chunk of the last tree, out of curiosity, which ought to be plenty dry enough to work by now. I'll chop some up in the coming weeks & see what it's like to work with, & if I get it done in a reasonable time, I'll add a few more pics of something made from it to this thread. But don't hold your breath, "a few weeks" can be anything from 4 to 52, nowadays....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by Cliff Rogers

Mimosa?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimosa

You wuz close, Cliff, they are cousins, but not the same species. So, no cigar for you.....

I have some if you'd like to try it.

That series of posts is a very good example of your point about recognition id Ian. I used to run the plant id counter at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney. It was very common for someone to bring in a fragment or just a description "it has green leaves ..." And to be dismayed when our response was that we needed flowers, fruit, etc. to give a full id. Some of our people (not me, I use a botanical key) were amazingly intuitive, but a guess is still a guess without the full information required. The same goes for timber, with some significant exemptions for the blindingly obvious ones, though many on the forums continue to amaze me with their knowledge and recognition skills.
Cheers
David


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by Xanthorrhoeas

I used to run the plant id counter at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney. It was very common for someone to bring in a fragment or just a description "it has green leaves ..."

One of those suckers was probably me, during the late 80s - but at least it was a pic of the flower.

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

One of those suckers was probably me, during the late 80s - but at least it was a pic of the flower.

Brett, even a pic of a flower is often a big advance over a bit of bark or wood!

David, yes, I was trying to hammer home the theme that I frequently bang on about.

You used the term 'intuition' where I think those in my trade use "pattern recognition". We all use it in our daily lives, it saves time and most of the time is highly accurate, as long as what we are looking at is from the subset of things we are familiar with. The more woods & trees you know, the better you are at coming up with the 'right' name, or knowing that there are too many possibilities to be confident, when the information is limited. There are also some people who are what I call "gifted observers", they look at something & see every subtle aspect, where most of us only see half of the clues, so much of what seems like intuition may be just keener observation. Knowing just what to look for is important, too, which is where 'training' comes in.

So pattern recognition is useful, but you have to be careful because it falls down when we see a similar pattern, but the object is actually something that is not within our experience. Realising something is new to you is often a very big step towards getting an accurate diagnosis. If you are very familiar with all of the common trees or other plants in your area, you don't need a lot of clues to accurately identify them, because you are tuned-in to the subtleties that separate those that are similar, and your brain makes up its mind about the most likely id without 'thinking' - that's pattern recognition! But when faced with an unknown, particularly an unknown which is out-of-context, like a non-native tree, pattern-recognition can fail miserably. Superficial information like a picture of its wood will nail down very few species with any certainty. Adding the bark will cut down the possibilities, and knowing the provenance of a tree & whether it's been planted there or is a native of the area can narrow things down a lot more. By drip-feeding the information I had, I got exactly the sorts of responses I expected to make my point. The less information provided, the wider the choices. Seeing the leaves eliminated quite a few choices, for example, it ruled out most of the more common wattles in this area, because they have broad, parallel-veined "leaves", not the complex leaves I showed. But it still left several possibilities (particularly when I deliberately avoided any clues to scale in my pics! ).

OK, here endeth the lesson, I promise to go back to the shed & stay quiet for a while......

Cheers,

Did I say it looked like Mimosa yet?

Originally Posted by IanW

OK, here endeth the lesson, .....

so what did I learn Ian ? And how is it related to oranutangs ?

Now that one knows the exact identity of the tree, to what degree do I trust the written description of it when this description varies so much ? sometimes opposing accounts.

So to be certain of its qualities I better just experiment with it myself and reach my own conclusions……. After all these experiments I'll know what I can and can't do with the tree with confidence ….. spose I'll focus on these first hand learned important things so much that I eventually forget the scientific name….. and never really bother memorising any other quantitive values as mostly their only real value is…… to get along with and impress people that memorise scientific names and written quantities

still enjoy seeing pictures of your finds Ian….. its fun trying to guess (its common names) .

cheers big ears
Jake