Exotic Wood pecan

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

240 woods on a poster (24"x36")

www.woodposter.com

open main page here

PECAN

Carya spp.
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

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.