Exotic Wood eucalyptus

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EUCALYPTUS

Eucalyptus spp.
Eucalyptus spp. of the family Myrtaceae

There are a large number of eucalyptus varieties. The woods on this page are mostly, I am confident, from a small number of these, but I have no idea which. This wood is commonly available, particularly in veneer form, in the USA but it is sold simply as "eucalyptus" with no botnanical designation. Many eucalyptus varieties are distinctive enough that they are listed separately on this site (e.g. river red gum).

Vastly complicating the naming among the eucalyptus varieties is the fact that English speaking settlers to Australia named various eucalyptus varieties for familiar trees such as ash, oak, maple, walnut, and so forth, even though there was no botanical relationship between the native tree and the name used.

my samples --- colors are accurate throughout (with caveats as noted)

small plank and end grain --- the black blotch on the left is a rust spot from a nail hole. This was contributed to the site by Leo Frilot, who sent it to me for identification. Thanks Leo.

end grain closeup of the piece directly above --- the color is slightly too rich, but is MORE accurate than the distance pics which I now realize are a little too washed out

This plank was found in a lot of red cedar by John Saxon of The Cedar Store. It emphatically isn't red cedar but neither John nor I could figure out what it was. It spent a while on the mystery wood page, then I sent a piece to the USDA lab and they identified it as eucalyptus, at which point I had a "DOH!" moment since I should have seen that myself.

a smaller piece, and end grain, cut from the plank above

end grain closeup of hte piece directly above

both sides of a mottle-figured plank; pics submitted by Neal Kuwabara. This mottle is sharp enough to where if it were a little more regular it would probably be better called razor mottle --- some vendors would call it razor mottle as is.

pomelle figure veneer; color is accurate. Although this was sold to me as "pomelle figure" it really looks more curly than pomelle. This is one of the woods where the "figure" is variously represented as "mottled", "pomelle", beeswing", "curly", and just "figured", with little to no consistancy among dealers. Beeswing generally has a very strong mottle, but is a term that is subject to mis-application for this species, although the species DOES have a true beeswing figure available.

mottled veneer

figured veneer with a nice golden color although it's not really quite as golden as the first pic makes it look. The 2nd piece shows the color more accurately. The 2nd piece was sold as beeswing figure, and I consider that to be a valid representation of this figure.

three pieces of "figured" veneer that really don't have any figure to speak of, just a wildly optimistic description by a vendor. Actually some of the veneer from this lot had a little more figure than these, but not much.

this is the same three pieces as directly above, but shown all together just to emphasize the color difference.

bee's wing veneer --- the color on these is too brown --- the actual wood is definitely more yellow than is shown here --- about like the pomelle piece shown at the top of the page.

red eucalyptus veneer with accurately shown brick red color. Not listed as figured, but has an obvious mottle figure which is common to eucalyptus in general.

burl veneer --- color is correct despite the weirdness of the background color (which should be white)

web pics

planks

both sides of a plank not even listed as figured, although it obviously is, and very nicely so.

fiddleback planks

fiddleback pen blanks

curly plank

both sides of a mottled plank

plank that has undoubtedly been moistened for the pic and even then, I'm not sure about the intensity of the color

figured planks that have been moistened for the picture --- actual color is visible on the edge grain

burl

veneer

veneer --- although not so marked, this looks like what is normally sold as pomelle veneer

pomelle veneer that looks more like what is normally sold as a burl veneer. See down below on this page for a lot more pics of burl veneer.

pomelle veneer

pomelle veneer sheets and a closeup

pomelle veneer, all from the same vendor

pomelle veneer sheet closeups with both levels of enlargement available. These are both from the same vendor as those directly above.

veneer with a figure listed as "blistered pomelle"

veneer, not marked as anything in particular, but clearly is what is normally sold as bee's wing veneer

figured veneer

quartersawn figured veneer

ribbon stripe veneer

all of these sheets were listed as bee's wing veneer but as you can see, some of them are a really strong bee's wing pattern and some of them are more of a plain mottle.

bee's wing veneer from a vendor whose pics make most woods look green, regardless of the actual color of the wood

"blush" eucalyptus (same as "red" ?)

red eucalyptus --- 1st pic is a plank, 2nd is veneer (and this wasn't even listed as "red" eucalyptus, although it obviously is)

red eucalyptus, bee's wing veneer --- I had previously not seen this wood and so had a statement here that I wasn't sure about the color, but I was informed by Shane Dohnt (who sells such wood in Australia) that the colors are indeed accurate, and then more recently I obtained some of the veneer myself (see my own samples above; mine isn't bee's wing but does have a mottle figure) and it has a brick red color which is not a vibrant as the wood in this pic but which lends creedance to this color (not that I don't believe Shane anyway).