Anatomy of European and North American Woods — An Interactive Identification Key
Abstract
Xylology, or wood anatomy, is definitely an important ancillary science: various disciplines rely on wood identification, such as materials science, plant ecophysiology, or archaeobotany. An interactive identification key has been created basing on the work of well-known wood anatomists as Gréguss, Grosser, Schweingruber, Richter and others, as well as on own research.
The key uses the DELTA system by Dallwitz et al. which is currently available from the website http://delta-intkey.com. It comprises about 320 deciduous and about 100 coniferous taxa. It focuses on woods of both commercial and non-commercial importance, and has a special focus on the needs of archaeobotanists. They often have to deal with wood in bad condition or with completely altered properties (as in subfossil or charred wood). This identification key is flexible enough to meet these needs, and offers custom subsets of identification characters.
It is still under development, as there are still taxa to be included, and errors to be corrected. Though most taxa are only identifiable to genus level by their wood anatomy, in this key also species are included in order to illustrate the presence of infrageneric variability (or its absence), and because diagnostic wood anatomical features are usually described for a certain species.
It has to be pointed out that there are also other interactive wood identification keys, all with their own strengths, and specific applications:
- Wood anatomy of Central European species (Schoch et al. 2004): http://www.woodanatomy.ch/
- Commercial Timbers (Richter & Dallwitz 2000 onwards): http://delta-intkey.com/
- InsideWood database (InsideWood 2004 onwards): http://insidewood.lib.ncsu.edu/search/
File (1)
Content uploaded by Andreas G. Heiss
Author content
... Created in 2000, this system includes 426 wood taxa [33] and provides an interactive identification key for the common non-commercial wood species of Europe and North America. It includes 325 hardwood species and 101 softwood species (native and introduced) with 145 features and 15 sets. ...
Wood identification is an important tool in many areas, from biology to cultural heritage. In the fight against illegal logging, it has a more necessary and impactful application. Identifying a wood sample to genus or species level is difficult, expensive and time-consuming, even when using the most recent methods, resulting in a growing need for a readily accessible and field-applicable method for scientific wood identification. Providing fast results and ease of use, computer vision-based technology is an economically accessible option currently applied to meet the demand for automated wood identification. However, despite the promising characteristics and accurate results of this method, it remains a niche research area in wood sciences and is little known in other fields of application such as cultural heritage. To share the results and applicability of computer vision-based wood identification, this paper reviews the most frequently cited and relevant published research based on computer vision and machine learning techniques, aiming to facilitate and promote the use of this technology in research and encourage its application among end-users who need quick and reliable results.
... Species identification was carried out using an Olympus BX53M metallurgical microscope with a magnification range of 50x to 500x, assisted by standard identification literature (e. g., Schweingruber, 1978, Schweingruber, 1990 and an interactive identification key (Heiss, 2000(Heiss, -2009. For further details of wood-anatomical literature used in this project, see also Section 3.4.2. ...
The Late Bronze Age site of Prigglitz-Gasteil provides a wealth of proxies for the reconstruction of wood use, past vegetation, and forest management at a copper production site. In this paper we have combined charcoal analyses from domestic contexts, an investigation of mining timbers found in the backfill of the opencast copper ore mine, and a preliminary study of a pollen profile from the nearby Saubachgraben mire. The com-plementary information from these different contexts allowed a reconstruction of the impact of settlement and mining activities on the natural mixed forest around the site, chiefly composed of beech, spruce, and fir. Forest clearing affected mainly spruce. Despite the dominance of spruce among the conifers, however, fir wood was exclusively selected for the production of mining timbers, which were used to support the opencast mine walls or for water management constructions. The gathering of firewood for domestic hearths and metal workshop furnaces followed the principle of least effort, leading to a secondary succession with pioneer spe-cies in the immediate surroundings of the mining settlement. The investigated wood and charcoal finds indi-cated a systematic and selective use of the wood species occurring in the surrounding forest. At the current state of the investigations, there is no evidence of scarcity or shortage in the wood supply.
... Anatomické štruktúry na plochách v transverzálnej, radiálnej a tangenciálnej rovine, ktoré sme získali odlomením, sme bez ďalšej preparácie pozorovali v odrazenom svetle pod mikroskopom Zeiss AxioLab A1 pri maximálnom zväčšení 200x. Pre zistenie taxónu sme použili štandardný atlas (Schweingruber 1990), porovnávaciu zbierku driev tretej autorky (MH) a internetový kľúč na identifikáciu semenných rastlín (Heiss 2009 Reimer et al. 2020). ...
In the article we present preliminary results of research of a logboat housed in the Žitný Ostrov Museum in Dunajská Streda. According to our research the boat comes from the 3rd century or later part of the last third of 1st millennium cal BCE. It is the earliest chronometrically dated vessel countrywide and the second specimen of Late Iron Age logboats known from Slovak and Czech Republics.
... No que respeita ao estudo antracológico, os fragmentos de carvão de dimensões superiores a 2mm foram analisados segundo metodologia standard: seccionamento manual nos planos transversal, radial e tangencial, identificação de caracteres anatómicos e posterior comparação com atlas anatómicos de referência (e.g. Schweingruber, 1990;Vernet & alii, 2001) e a ferramentas interativas digitais de apoio à identificação das espécies (Heiss, 2002). Esta observação foi realizada com recurso a uma lupa binocular e um microscópio ótico de luz refletida. ...
... O diagnóstico foi efetuado com recurso a atlas anatómicos (e.g. Schweingruber, 1990a;1990b;Gale e Cutler, 2000;Vernet et al., 2001; Akkemik e Yaman, 2012) e a ferramentas interativas de apoio à identificação das espécies (Heiss, 2002). Para a identificação de fragmentos de Ericales recorreu-se ao estudo específico de P. Queiroz e C. Van der Burgh (1989), sendo que, no caso do género Erica optou-se pela utilização dos tipos morfológicos definidos por J. Tereso (2007). ...
O povoado da Quinta de Crestelos (Mogadouro) foi intervencionado no âmbito das medidas de minimização do Aproveitamento Hidroelétrico do Baixo Sabor. Na área mais elevada deste povoado, uma crista alongada, foram identificados 8 horrea com cronologias balizadas entre o séc. I a.C. e II d.C. Durante a escavação da área, foram efetuadas recolhas de sedimentos com vista à realização de um estudo arqueobotânico. Este tinha como objetivo de fornecer informações relativamente à utilização destas estruturas.
Os contextos amostrados, compreendendo várias unidades estratigráficas dentro e fora das estruturas de armazenagem, revelaram uma grande diversidade de elementos vegetais carbonizados. Não obstante a identificação de grandes momentos de remobilizações de sedimento e reestruturações a que a crista do sítio da Quinta de Crestelos foi sujeita, os resultados obtidos permitiram concluir que a área foi amplamente utilizada como espaço de armazenagem e que o trigo de grão nu terá sido o cultivo mais frequente, seguido do milho-miúdo. Foram recuperados também grãos de cevada e grainhas de uva, entre outros vestígios. Quanto à antracologia, entre as espécies mais frequentes contaram-se o medronheiro, Quercus de folha perene, esteva, freixo e pinheiro-bravo. Algumas das madeiras terão mesmo sido utilizadas na edificação das estruturas de armazenagem.
... Seeds and charcoals were identified in comparison to the reference collection at The University of Queensland and published sources (e.g. Schweingruber et al. 2006;Heiss 2009). Images and chemical analysis, the latter to understand the preservation process of mineralised remains, used a Hitachi SU3500 Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) operated at 25 kV accelerating voltage, in low vacuum mode at 60 Pa pressure, using an Oxford X-Max SDD energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDS) with AZtec software for elemental analysis. ...
A shaft-like room at the Middle Bronze Age site of Büklükale in central Turkey preserved a rich archaeobotanical assemblage of charred and mineralised plant remains, dominated by fruits, spices and nuts mixed with probable bread and wood charcoals. The remains were recovered in association with numerous ceramic vessels, jewellery and exotic artefacts. We combine identification and analysis of the seeds and wood charcoals contained in this deposit with studies of Old Assyrian and Hittite textual records to investigate the circumstances of the assemblage’s formation and its significance for further understanding trade and plant consumption in Bronze Age Anatolia. We present the earliest archaeobotanical example in the region of rare and exotic plant species being consumed in the context of one or more social gatherings, including those possibly linked to ceremonial or ritual events. This offers new insights into the role of plants in the economic and social life of the southwest Asian Bronze Age, as well as the role of commensality and feasting in early states.
... L'anthracologie appliquée à l'Europe de l'ouest bénéficie grandement des publications remarquables de C. Jacquiot (1955), C. Jacquiot et al. (1973), P. Greguss (1959) et plus récemment de F.H. Schweingruber (1978 ;. À cela s'ajoutent deux bases de données anatomiques interrogeables par internet, celle de W. Schoch et al. (2004) et celle de A. Heiss (2009). Un seul atlas publie du matériel carbonisé pour la flore du sud-ouest de l'Europe (Vernet et al., 2001). ...
Interactions between human societies and vegetation since Prehistoric period up to the present time represents for archaeobotanists a vast ield of investigation, with numerous archaeological and historical implications. hree disciplines: palynology, anthracology and palaeoethnobotany are here under review, in a tentative for summarizing 40 years of research in France. For each of them, we present their historical background, main topics and applications, major contributions and new exploratory ields. At the scale of the metropolitan territory, the available data are now dense enough for attempting large-scale reconstructions of the past vegetation, exploring the difusion of taxa on networks running at a continental range as well as micro-localized observations on plant diversity. hese new developments call for an increase of multiproxies and multi-contexts approaches and the implementation of databases and sophisticated processing tools, which represent a major condition for present and future collective projects.
... The collection of 488 wood samples from exposed tree bases and trunks was carried out according to a detailed map of trees (Hulík, 2008) in 2008. The samples were identified using a reflected-light microscope (Nikon Eclipse 80i) with 200-500× magnification, using standard identification keys (Schweingruber, 1990;Heiss, 2000). ...
A unique remnant of forest dating back to the period 9733–7897 yr BC and consisting of hundreds of tree bases was discovered in the Czech Republic. We aimed to reveal the complex disturbance history of this (sub)fossil forest using dendrochronology, and to describe its detailed plant species composition changes using palaeobotanical techniques. Analysing such Early Holocene forest dynamics should help us understand the ability of the forest community to actively adapt to climate change and generally to understand the role of dynamic instability in ecosystem evolution. We anatomically identified woody species in 488 samples, and determined the ages, growth suppressions, releases and fire scars in 116 well preserved tree ring series using a modern boundary line approach. This image of the forest structure and dynamics was supplemented with analyses of pollen spectra and plant macrofossils in excavated profiles. In order to achieve accurate dating, we dated 87 samples using ¹⁴C and synchronized tree ring series, and compared them with an existing Pinus sylvestris chronology. The developmental trajectory of the forest was unique, and did not match the general trend of postglacial pine growth in central Europe. Palaeobotanical proxies indicated that during the circa 2000 years the forest persisted, this Early-Holocene ecosystem passed through several phases, reflected in the species composition of the vegetation as well as in habitat conditions. Nevertheless, the dominance of pine and the complex fine-scale disturbance regime were relatively robust and did not change fundamentally. Low-severity fires and short-term changes in soil moisture regime were crucial disturbance agents in the ecosystem. Stand-replacing disturbances were not found up to the gradual collapse of the forest around 8300 yr BC, replaced by a swamp community. The disturbance regime was relatively stable, suggesting a mitigating effect of changing climate due to the predominance of pine in the forest.
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