Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The older, nonliving central wood of a tree or shrub, usually darker and harder than the younger sapwood.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The central wood in the trunk of an exogenous tree; duramen.
  • noun The Tasmanian ironwood, Notelæa ligustrina, the hard, close-grained wood of which is used for turning.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The hard, central part of the trunk of a tree, consisting of the old and matured wood, and usually differing in color from the outer layers. It is technically known as duramen, and distinguished from the softer sapwood or alburnum.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The wood nearer the heart of a stem or branch, different in color from the sapwood

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the older inactive central wood of a tree or woody plant; usually darker and denser than the surrounding sapwood

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Fortunately, he accepted me as his Ph.D. student and I began to explore the neoflavonoids found in a piece of heartwood from a Brazilian tree.

    Richard J. Roberts - Autobiography 1994

  • Libby also checked his method by determining the age of heartwood from the trunks of redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens), and of Douglas firs

    Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1960 - Presentation Speech 1964

  • The heartwood is a red or pinkish color, the sapwood, which is considerable, is a creamy white.

    Seasoning of Wood

  • Wood heavy, hard, strong, mostly light colored except in old heartwood, which is reddish.

    Studies of Trees Jacob Joshua Levison

  • GIBSON: They're a nice, knot-free heartwood, meaning that there's no outer layer of sapwood on it.

    CNN Transcript Jun 6, 2005 2005

  • GIBSON: They're a nice, knot-free heartwood, meaning that there's no outer layer of sapwood on it.

    CNN Transcript Jul 9, 2005 2005

  • The stairs were of the same beautiful distressed heartwood pine as the upstairs floors and fastened down with fancy bronze button nails.

    Bird Cloud Annie Proulx 2011

  • For the left side of the ‘volume’ mature wood was selected and for the right side sapwood, while the fore-edge was made from heartwood; the top surface incorporated cross-sections from branches of various ages while the bottom surface showed a section through the trunk …

    A 2009

  • The heartwood tongue and groove pattern lends itself to the soft nature if the interior design.

    Scenic Villa Design in Switzerland by GD Architectes 2009

  • The stairs were of the same beautiful distressed heartwood pine as the upstairs floors and fastened down with fancy bronze button nails.

    Bird Cloud Annie Proulx 2011

Comments

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  • The older, nonliving central wood of a tree or woody plant, usually darker and harder than the younger sapwood. Also called duramen.

    August 7, 2007