Exotic Wood marblewood

WOOD ID POSTER:
co-created by, and sponsored by, HobbitHouse

240 woods on a poster (24"x36")

www.woodposter.com

open main page here

MARBLEWOOD

botanical name uncertain

There are at least 19 species that have the common name "marblewood", of which the two that seem to be most often used are

(1) Zygia racemosa (syn. Marmaroxylon racemosum, Pithecellobium racemosum) of the family Leguminosae (aka Fabacea) (subfamily Mimosoideae), the legume or pea family
(2) Diospyros marmorata of the family Ebenaceae

I find those two species to be indistinguishable. This is a very distinctive, rare, and expensive wood. It looks somewhat like zebrawood but is almost always trivially easy to distinguish from it.

When I started this site, I was only aware of Zygia racemosa as marblewood and I did not list any botanical name with the pics, so now there are numerous pics here with no botanical name that are all PROBABLY Zygia racemosa. Others are as specified with the pics.

There is a closely related wood, tiger caspi (Zygia cataractae of the family Fabaceae), also of South America, that is remarkably similar in appearance and there could easily be some confusion between the two although marblewood appears to be the much more readily available of the two.

I have never encountered this wood in veneer form

my samples:

both sides of a sample plank listed as angelim rajado / Marmaroxylon racemosum

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

planks and closeup (pics have a little too much green --- see directly below)

plank and end grain --- this piece was cut from one of the larger pieces directly above and the color in these pics is more accurate than the ones above.

end grain closeup of the piece directely above

web pics

planks

planks, all from the same vendor --- these pics appear to be slightly washed out; I suspect that the actual wood color is somewhat more rich than what these show