soft wood, soft-wood
Also as one word.
[soft a.]
1. a. Wood which is relatively soft or easily cut; esp. coniferous trees or their timber. Also attrib.
| 1832 Planting (L.U.K.) 77 The..discriminating characters of hard and of soft woods. 1857 Gray First Less. Bot. 147 In soft woods, such as White-Pine and Basswood. 1884 Bower & Scott De Bary's Phaner. 478 Of the forms of vessels,..the reticulately thickened are present exclusively or principally in succulent soft woods. 1905 Terms Forestry & Logging (U.S. Dept. Agric.) 48 Softwood..As applied to trees and logs, needle-leafed, coniferous... Softwood..A needle-leafed, or coniferous, tree. 1914 Moon & Brown Elem. Forestry 218 Many of our hardwoods are much softer in their wood structure than certain conifers or so-called softwoods. 1930 Observer 26 Jan. 20/4 Every year in Finland, Sweden and Russia millions of pine trees are felled and shipped to London... The trade name for such timber is softwood. 1968 J. Arnold Shell Bk. Country Crafts xxxi. 321 Yew, though as hard and heavy as oak, is classified as a soft⁓wood. 1977 J. L. Harper Population Biol. Plants iv. 94 In some hardwood and softwood forests in Maine the buried seed population diverges remarkably in species composition from that of the vegetation. |
b. Sap-wood, alburnum.
| 1842 Loudon Suburban Hort. 21 In woody stems of several years' growth..the more recent exterior layers are known as soft wood or alburnum. |
2. A species of the West Indian bully-tree.
| 1864 Grisebach Flora Brit. W. Ind. 787/2 Soft-wood, black, Myrsine læta. |