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Where to send wood for ID

Hello Steve......

I don't have an answer as to where to send a sample to be identified.......but, if you can manage a photograph, I'd bet there are some here on your own forum who would find making the attempt an interesting challenge! 😀

I suppose it would be appropriate to offer the following link:

http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/indextotal.htm

The owner of this site has spent a lot of effort to post photos of woods on this site, and although it may, or may not help you in your effort......it might be of help to someone else who reads this thread.

good luck!

otis of cologne
 
Steve - The US Forest Service Center For Wood Anatomy Research used to do wood identification for the public. They stopped for a while last year (I forget the reason why), but were supposed to start up again.

I just tried getting to their website, but it's down. They seem to be having a real hard time keeping their website up lately. Anyway, do a search on "Center for Wood Anatomy" and "Wood Identification" tomorrow and maybe they will be back up.

Ed
 
Steve - You can try emailing to the addresses below for additional information. I don't know if the addresses are still any good, but it can't hurt to try. They used to do 5 free id's a year and really like to get a chunk 1" x 3" x 6" along with any other available info (location, bark, foliage, whatever). They don't guarantee exact species, but even if you only found out the genus or sub genus you would be a lot better of than you are now.


woodidentification@fs.fed.us

rmiller1@wisc.edu

acwieden@wisc.edu

Ed
 
If you only have the wood, this won't work. If you have bark and foliage or leaves, a local nurseryman may be able to identify it. I've used that method to identify some shrubs on my property, as well as some gift wood from friends.

On another occasion, found wood suspected of being invasive non-native was helped to identify/verify by e-mail pictures to an expert at our Department of Environmental Protection, even though it wasn't in that category after all. Telephone calls, possibly long-distance, may be needed to establish e-mail address(es).

County extension services of UT, or TA&M, may also be consulted as above.

Joe
 
I just bought a book called The Woodbook. It has complete plates on American woods. Around $40. You can try to see it at a local library. It is published by Taschen. Beautiful book.
 
Steve I've had pretty good success using Bruce Hoadley's book Identifying wood, and Wood Identification and Use by Terry Porter. By using both books I can narrow it down most of the time. I'm definitely not an expert here and some of the woods I've "identified" could be something else. Quite often around here I have at least a fair idea of where the wood came from. This helps narrow it down to a region at least and often eliminates woods that might look similar but come from different parts of the world.
 
The book shows all the wood in three views, not just folage. They have the transverse, radial, and tangential sections of all American species. Cool book.
 
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