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Amboyna
A rare, exotic hardwood that grows in Southeast Asia and has a fragrant aroma. It can vary in color from yellow to golden brown to red, and is generally considered excellent for both turning and finishing. Don Mogelefsky of the Exotic Wood Group says "You might think of Amboyna as 'the burl with the swirl.' Thanks in part to its wavy grain, Amboyna Burl is figured with numerous, captivating swirls." His site offers an impressive variety of amboyna burl and other exotics.

African Blackwood
The heartwood is very dark, ranging in color from a dark purple, to bluish black to dark brown, all of which colors convert to black with age. Black streaks are common and sometimes it is charcoal gray with black grain. The the thin sapwood is yellowish to white and is sharply demarcated from the heartwood.This African and S.E. Asian tree has an extensive range on the African continent. It can be found throughout East and Central Africa, in the savanna regions of the Sudan southward to Mozambique, then westward to Angola and northward to Nigeria and Senegal. Countries of origin include Angola, Central African Republic, India, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

Bloodwood
The heartwood colour varies from grey-red to deep rich blood red (thus the name), with a golden lustre and variegated yellow and red stripes. It reportedly does not change much with age. SOURCES: Brazil, French Guiana, and Surinam
Uses: fine furniture, and inlay work and also used as an accent wood for fancy box making as well as for billiard cue butts, drum sticks, xylophones, organ pipes, turnery, and marquetry. Selected logs are sliced for decorative veneers.

Bocote
COLOR: reports on color are all over the map, but the one that fits my experience is "ranges from tan to golden brown to pale golden yellow, with irregular dark brown streaks". Other reports say the streaks can be red, or green, or some say black, and that the heartwood is variously "tobacco" colored, dark brown, nearly white, red, and red brown, take your pick.
SOURCES: Central America and the West Indies, including Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica. Mostly, it is from Mexico. One report cited Northern Florida.

Aromatic Cedar
Juniperus virginiana of the family Cupressaceae, the cypress family

The more technically correct name is Eastern redcedar (NOT "red cedar" but redcedar) but lumber stores are far more likely to call it aromatic red cedar, so that's what I call it. To further confuse things, it isn't really a cedar at all, but as is indicated by the genus name (Juniperus) it is variety of juniper which is part of the cypress family.

A somewhat brittle, albeit relatively soft, wood that works quite well if you can avoid chipout, this is the wonderfully aromatic wood that people put in closets and dresser drawers to make things smell good and to drive out moths, which don't like the smell.

Cocobolo
COLOR: the heartwood is a mix of brilliant colors ranging from deep reds to an attractive mix of streaks and markings of red, black, purple, yellow and orange. I've seen pieces that were almost pure orange with very dark streaks (one of my samples in the pictures) and other pieces are very dark purple, looking almost exactly like Brazilian Rosewood (another of my samples in the pictures). The heartwood frequently contains violet and light purple when freshly cut, but this deepens to an orangish brown with shades of purple in a matter of days. Sapwood is pale, almost white, not very attractive and clearly demarcated from the heartwood as you can see in many of my sample pics. The amount of figure and contrasting color varies so widely from tree to tree that an inexperienced person could be forgiven for finding it hard to believe that two pieces are of the same type wood.

Gabon Ebony
COLOR: the blackest wood in existance, although it can have subtle lighter colored streaks and in some cases can have as much contrast as its sister wood, Macassar Ebony, although that is rare. Generally it has an almost uniformly black heartwood with yellowish white sapwood. SOURCES: central to southern Africa and S.E. Asia
USES: piano keys, musical instruments, turnery, inlay, novelties, billiard cues, brush backs, luxury furniture, tool handles, and knife handles. An outstanding contrast wood for laminations, marquetry, fancy articles and inlay.

Macassar Ebony
COLOR: Highly variable in color and grain contrast. Dark brown with black stripes to mostly black with slightly lighter brown or even salmon colored stripes. Some pieces are light chocolate brown with fairly widely spaced black streaks; others are almost pure black with only some showing of a dark brown background. Sapwood is light gray. This is not what most people think of when they think of ebony since it is usually nowhere near being pure black. It can be a very attractive wood due to the striking alternation of black and brown or it can be more murky when the brown is nearly black and the distinction between black and brown is fuzzy. SOURCES: Sri Lanka and southern India

Mun Ebony
This South East Asian wood, also known as Vietnamese ebony, is very strong, hard, and dense with irregular grain and fine texture. The color is dark green to black striping on a tan background. It is an excellent turning wood and finishes to a high natural polish due to the density.

Goncalo Alves
Goncalo alves is commonly called tigerwood which underscores the wood’s often dramatic, contrasting color scheme. The name kingwood is often listed as a common name for this wood.
It belongs to the Sumac and Cashew (Anacardiaceae) family, which includes some 600 species around the world. Relatives of the tree include the tropical cashew, pepper trees, mangoes and pistachio trees.
SOURCES: Central and Latin America; Brazil is a major exporter of the wood, but it also comes from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Columbia, Costa rica, Ecuador, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Lacewood
Roupala brasiliense (also reported as Roopola brasillensis) of the family Proteaceae [the same family as Australian silky oak], which is from South America and is properly called South American lacewood or Brazilian lacewood. It is also called leopardwood, but it is NOT the wood that is normally meant by the name "leopardwood"Lacewood is a somewhat splintery wood, best known for the very highly distinctive, large, ray flakes that occur in quartersawn cuts. As discussed in the box above, there are several species (not all even related, botanically) that are all sold with this common name and that in fact all look very similar to the naked eye.

Lignum Vitae

COMMON NAMES:   Lignum vitae, Guayacan, Palo santo, ironwood
SOURCE:    West Indes, Central America, northern South America
DESCRIPTION:    One of the hardest and heaviest woods (three times as hard as oak), lignum vitae is most commonly used for mallet heads, bearings and rollers.
Lignum vitae is reddish brown when freshly cut, with pale yellow sapwood. As it oxidizes, the color turns to a deep green, often with black details. The grain is highly interlocked, making it difficult to work with edge tools, but it machines well and takes a high polish. It is a remarkably good wood for turning.

African Olive
There are at least 3 other olive varieties: African Olivewood (O. capensis), East African Olive (O. hochstetteri) and something called Elgon olive, for which I have seen 5 different botanical names (O. Ferruguinea, Osmanthus welwitschii, Steganthus welwitschii, Linociera welwitschii, Mayepea welwitschii --- so much for the precision and uniqueness of botanical names).

Also called Mediteranean olive, European olive, Spanish olive, etc, depending on the local of origin, this is a very attractive and expensive wood used primarily for ornamental items because the small size of the tree limits production.

Orange Osage
COMMON NAMES: Osage orange, bois d’arc, bodark, bowdark, bow wood, hedge apple, mock orange, prairie hedgeplant, yellowwood, Osage

The trees originally grew in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, and the tree takes its name and its identity from its early use for making archery bows and war clubs by the Osage Indians, who occupied the area.
COLOR: vivid lemon-yellow to yellowish-orange color, sometimes greenish yellow. Over time the color will mellow from a bright yellow to a more golden yellow or honey/tan. Outstanding for contrast in laminations.

Padauk
COMMON NAMES: African padauk, Angola paduak, barwood, bosulu, burma padauk, camwood, comwood, corail, African coralwood.
COLOR: Heartwood colors are variously described as including rich red, blood red, brick red, purple red, reddish orange, pinkish red, and sometimes with dark streaks, and my experience supports all of that. Sapwood is pale beige.
SOURCES: "Central and West Africa" is most commonly mentioned, but I've also seen specific references to Cameroon, Zaire, Angola, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Nigeria, and at least one source mentioned India as well and I've seen one reference to South America and one to Asia.

Purpleheart
At its best, the purple is a brilliant vibrant color that makes this wood widely used in jewlery and where strong colors and/or strong contrast is desired. Sometimes it is more of a deep purple, and that can also be of great interest, depending on your taste and the application. At times, it is a brownish or grayish purple that is not especially attractive.
SOURCES: Central America and tropical South America including Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Columbia, Costa Rica, French Guiana, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela.

Redheart
Alternate common names include chakte kok. The wood is dull pink to moderately bright red and fades severly with long exposure to UV. There is sometimes a purple area at the juncture between the heartwood and the sapwood. I assume, but cannot yet say for sure, that a UV blocking finish would prevent all or most of the fading. This wood has a fine to medium texture and works very easily.

Honduran Rosewood
Dalbergia stevensonii of the family Leguminosae (subfamily Papilionoideae), the legume or pea family

Also called Honduras rosewood, this hard, heavy, true rosewood grows in Belize (British Honduras). Although somewhat less variagated in color and grain than some rosewoods, it IS a rosewood and is attractive and works and polishes quite well. Its color, generally some shade of purple, remains stable over time.

Sapele
COMMON NAMES: aboudikro (Ivory Coast), assi, assie libuyu (Zaire), lifari, m'boyo, muyovu (Uganda), penkwa (Ghana), sapele mahogany, sapelewood, sapeli, sapelii (Cameroon), sapelli, sappelli, scented mahogany,COLOR: heartwood is brown or light reddish brown to dark reddish brown and sapwood is pale yellow or gray-pink or cream colored and distinct from heartwood. Heartwood is frequently very similar to mahogany in color and texture. One report says the heartwood is pink when freshly cut, but it matures to a red-brown or purple-brown color.

Snakewood
Snakewood comes from a smallish, relatively rare tree found in the forests of Central and South America and is reportedly is somewhat brittle and difficult to work, but worth the effort. It is very rare in general and fully figured pieces are even more rare and very expensive. It is also available in unfigured form, usually at a greatly reduced price. It is a very hard, dense, wood that turns VERY nicely and polishes to a VERY high gloss (glass-like) and does not suffer from the brittleness of the figured sections.

Tamboti
Botanical Name: Spirostachys africana

Color: Mostly medium to light dark brown with darker stripes resembling a rosewood
Wood: A distinctly attractive wood with wavy to figured grain patterns. Hard and dense with excellent turning and polishing properties.
Typical Uses: Boxes, musical instruments, joinery, flooring, cabinetry, fine furniture
Source Region: Angola, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe

Tulipwood
COMMON NAMES: bois de rose, Brazilian tulipwood, jacaranda rosa, pau de fuso, pau rosa, pinkwood
COLOR: Heartwood is cream colored to salmon colored but dominated by stipes of red, violet, purple and rose --- generally the red streaking dominates. The sapwood is yellow to yellowish white. Heartwood color fades with age. This is a strikingly beautiful wood.
SOURCES: all reports agree on northeastern Brazil as the primary source, some also say Central and Latin America; Brazil, Colombia, Guyana and Venezuela

Zebrawood
COLOR: This is a wood which cannot be confused with any other. The name is inescapable --- the grain pattern looks very much like zebra stripes although the darker stripes are much thinner than the lighter stripes. For a wood which sometimes looks even more like zebra stripes, see Macassar Ebony. The dark stripes range from dark brown to almost black and the lighter portion ranges from light tan to golden yellow.
SOURCES: West Africa from Gabon, Cameroon, and Congo --- gregarious, sometimes in pure stands along riverbanks.

Yellowheart
satinwood, pequia setim, lima orana, limao-rana, pau setim, boxwood, canary wood or sateen. The name "yellowheart" is very commonly used for it in the U.S.
COLOR: heartwood is a bright yellow colour, darkening a little on exposure to sunlight and there is little differentiation between heartwood and sapwood, or between spring and summer growth rings. The colour is very consistent across the wood.
SOURCES: confined to non-inundated lands of the lower Amazon region in the State of Para, Brazil