Carya spp of the family Juglandaceae, the walnut family
Principally C. aquatica, C. cordiformis, C. floridana, C. illinoinensis, C. myristicaeformis, C. pallida, and C. texana BUT ... you may find ANY of those listed as hickory as well as pecan. As far as I can tell, there are NO Carya species that are listed as pecan that are not also listed as hickory (but there are several that are listed as hickory but not as pecan)
Pecan frequently cannot be distinguished from hickory and in fact the two are often mixed indiscriminately in lumber yards and simply sold as hickory.
my samples --- the color is a little hard to capture on this species, but these shots are pretty accurate:
both sides of a sample plank of pecan / Carya illinoinensis
end grain and end gran closeup of the piece directly above
both sides of a sample plank listed as pecan / Carya illinoinensis with accurate color --- I am not particularly familiar with this wood, but based on the little I do know, I judge this sample plank to be of poor quality and probably not well representative of the species. This poor quality was common in the samples I got from the IWCS.
A later note: further experience with this wood has confirmed my belief that this IWCS sample looks like crap and is NOT representative of pecan wood as it generally looks.
end grain and end grain closeup of the sample plank directly above
both sides of a plank
closeup of the plank above
plank and end grain --- this was cut from the larger plank above and sanded down for the pics
end grain closeup of the piece directly above
veneer
veneer sheet and two closeups
veneer sheet and closeup
pecky veneer sheet and closeup --- not a very good example of "pecky" in general but apparently about average for pecky in this species
web pics:
flat cut, quartersawn, and end grain
planks
bowl blank and turning stock
plank that seems too orange to me
plank that is much darker than my experience of pecan but I cannot say with any authority that it is not a correct color
planks and closeup
planks, all from the same vendor
crotch scales
All of the pics in this section were submitted by James Taglienti, whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site.
James provided excellent pics so enlargements are available on all of them.
a set of planks shown both dry and wet ... some of the other pics here are closeups of some of these.
spalted bookmatched pair shown dry ... these are the bottom 2 planks in the top two pics
dry / wet closeups
dry / wet closeups
end grain (wet) of spalted planks
this is the top two planks from the top two pics, dry
heartwood with wormy sap (this is not from the top two pics)
wormy plank (not from top two pics)
All of the pics in this section were submitted by James Taglienti, whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site.
James provided excellent pics so enlargements are available on all of them.
this was just listed as a plank, but it appears to be spalted
spalted
veneer
veneer, both from the same vendor
"pecky" veneer
bowl blank
bowls
bowl and vase
bowl --- color is outside my experience of pecan
spalted pecan bowls --- I'm guessing the first one either has some red stain applied, or else is very incorrectly portrayed