Heartwood Synonyms

The wood when young is white, but old heartwood is yellow or brownish.

The heartwood varies in colour from dark brown to pale yellowishbrown; hard, close-grained, and little liable to split accidentally, it is, for a hard wood, easy to work.

A variety of the spruce, abounding in some parts of Nor way, produces a red heartwood, not easy to distinguish from that of the Norway B pine (Scotch fir), and imported with it into England as "red deal" or "pine."

The larch, from its lofty straight trunk and the high quality of its wood, is one of the most important of coniferous trees; its growth is extremely rapid, the stem attaining a large size in from sixty to eighty years, while the tree yields good useful timber at forty or fifty; it forms firm heartwood at an early age, and the sapwood is less perishable than that of the firs, rendering it more valuable in the young state.

The timber has a rich red heartwood similar in color to mahogany and is seldom stained.