Crossword-Solution: SOFTWOODS 9 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 16

Structure of Wood The softwoods are made up chiefly of tracheids, or vertical cells closed at the ends, and of the relatively short parenchyma cells of the medullary rays which extend radially from the heart of the tree.

Among the woodsmen, the woods of broad-leaved trees are known as "hardwoods," though poplar is as soft as pine, and the "coniferous woods" are known as "softwoods," notwithstanding the fact that yew ranks high in hardness even when compared with "hardwoods." Both in the number of different kinds of trees or species and still more in the importance of their product, the conifers and broad-leaved trees far excel the palms and their relatives.

These are generally classed as "softwoods," and are more extensively scattered and more generally used than any other class of timber, and are simple and regular in structure.

The sapwood of pine, spruce, fir, cedar, cypress, and the like softwoods is especially liable to injury by ambrosia beetles, while the heartwood is sometimes ruined by a class of round-headed borers, known as "sawyers." Yellow poplar, oak, chestnut, gum, hickory, and most other hardwoods are as a rule attacked by species of ambrosia beetles, sawyers, and timber worms, different from those infesting the pines, there being but very few species which attack both.

This can be accomplished with most of the softwoods, but not as a rule with the hardwoods, as they are injured by the temperature necessary.