ring porous page


RING POROUS OAK
(the live oaks, from both the red and white groups, are diffuse porous and are with the domestic diffuse porous species)

NOTE: unless otherwise specifically stated, all of the images shown on this
page are of 1/4" square end grain cross sections shown at 12X with the top
of the image towards the bark and the bottom towards the pith so that
earlywood is towards the bottom of the growth rings and latewood is towards the top

to see all species with links to their anatomy page go here: species links

general characteristics of oak end grain: strong rays combined with the classic ring porous look make oak one of the easiest woods to identify

One reliable, but sometimes quite difficult (at the level of shop work and a 10X loupe), way to tell red oak and white oak apart is by the fact that most pores in white oak show tyloses and those in red oak seldom do. Tyloses is a shiny substance and the pores that are clogged with it look a bit like tiny little round windows that have been smashed up and glued back together with the pieces crooked. It is difficult on my own white oak samples below to tell that there is tyloses (even though there is) because I fine-sand my samples rather than using razor cuts and the images are not as clear at that level of detail as I would like. SO ... to clearly show what the tyloses looks like in white oak, I found a couple of pics on the Internet and use them here to show what the tyloses looks like and the difference between that and red oak which has no tyloses (the clogging in some of the red oak pores in both the pic here and the ones below in my own red oak samples is rarely tyloses). My best guess is that all of these pics are shown at about 20X

white oak with tyloses red oak (scant tyloses)




STILL NEEDED ON THIS PAGE: comments on each species





RED OAK GROUP


     

     

 

     

     

           

     

 

     

       

     

     

     

     

     

     

 

     

   

   

     

     

 


     

   

     

   

     

   

     

   

     

     

     

   




WHITE OAK GROUP


     

     

     

 
old growth white oak / Quercus alba --- This piece is not representative of the species but I included it as an interesting look at a particular kind of ring porous wood, namely very high ring count wood. This tree grew so slowly that the tiny amount of late growth at the end of each year is swamped by the large pore of the single ring of pores in the next year's early growth so you see almost nothing but a mass of pores. Because of the very high density of pores, this piece is remarkably light for oak

     

     

       

   

     

     

     

 

     

     

   

     

   

   

   

   

   

   

     

     

     

     

   




GROUP UNKNOWN
(I don't know which group, red or white, these belong in)