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ELDER
It appears that I have this one REALLY wrong. Box elder is NOT the same as elder, being as it is a member of the maple family, which elder is NOT. All of the wood on this page is BOX ELDER (Acer negundo of the family Aceraceae) , not elder (Sambucus spp. of the family Caprifoliaceae).
This is an example of the dangers of common names as opposed to botanical names, because in my ignorance I assumed that box elder, having "elder" as part of its name, was a variant of elder. I'll get this sorted out at some point
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It is widely, and I now find mistakenly, believed that the red in box elder is due entirely to a fungus. Although it is true that a particular fungus is often found along with the red coloration, the CAUSE of the red seems to be any kind of stress in the wood and the red can occur without the fungus. The stress can be human induced, such as nails or wire around the tree, but more often is natural stresses such as that caused by wind. Totally unstressed box elder trees do not develop the red, even if the fungus is present.
my samples:
both sides and both ends of a box elder sample piece --- the pink spot in the corner shows up better in the enlargement
end grain closeup of the piece directly above
planks --- color is correct; the smaller pieces shown directly below are from the upper left plank in this pic, and their color is somewhat more faded than the wood actually is; that is, the color in this pic is more correct than the color in those directly below
a couple of small planks cut from the set above. The color shown is more orange than it should be; actual color is the red shown in the pic directly above. This was the result of my attempting to make the sapwood have a correct off-white color instead of a much more yellowish color that came out of the camera. I almost got the sapwood right (it's actually STILL to yellowish in these pics) but I lost sight of the fact that I had turned the heartwood from the true red of the wood to an orange that is not correct.
end grain of the pieces directly above --- these look much more vibrant in reality than how they appear in this pic (the shift in color to the false orange REALLY makes a difference)
end grain closeups of the pieces directly above
web pics
box elder planks
small pieces with nice color
red box elder
listed as "red heart" box elder --- I'm not sure if this is the same as "red" elder, but it appears to be
box elder burl
box elder spalted burl
box elder "candywood", moistened
box elder slabs
box elder crotch --- there is only a tiny amount of red, which you can see in the upper left in the enlargements
box elder bowl blanks
box elder piece with burl section and figured section
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box elder turning stock
a pair of curly scales and some pen blanks, all of which were labled as box elder but all of which look to me to be more like holly.
box elder "flamed" pen blanks
box elder flamed burl
box elder "flamed" spalted burl
box elder bowl blank
box elder flamed bowl blank
box elder bowls and a vase
bowl made from an unusual (in my experience) piece of wood that is box elder attacked by the ambrosia beetle, so that it contains both the fungus-induced red of box elder and the tan-colored streaks caused by the boring of the beetle. The separate colors can be seem more clearly in the enlargements. There are far more insect-holes than is normal for attackes by the ambrosia beetle, so I assume that this tree suffered multiple attacks by boring insects.
box elder from the BogusColorVendor, so the colors are suspect
burls
both sides of a burl strip and a closeup
box elder planks