Research on 3 Simple Wood Identification Methods Based on IAWA

The IAWA (International Association of Wood Anatomists) lists 3 method for rapid identification of hardwood species, including foaming test, chrome azurol-s test, and burning ashes test. The purpose of this study is to report the results obtained from the three test methods of 56 materials. The results showed that 9 out of 56 broad-leaf materials had foaming reaction, 15 species were weakly positive, and 32 species were negative. Only 6 of the 56 species of materials showed a positive chrome-blue color reaction. In burning ashes test, there are 10 species of bright white ashes, 14 species burning a tan ashes, 12 species burn into other color of ash, 19 species of coal ash, only 1 species is burning into charcoal. These 3 simple wood identification methods can effectively identify tree species, and provide a basis for identifying imported logs and similar tree species in the field.