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More fun categorization confusions: You know those two softwoods mentioned in the video, Eastern Red Cedar and Northern White Cedar? Taxonomically, neither of them are in the "cedar" genus and are not even in the same genus as *each other*. Eastern Red Cedar is in the juniper genus and Northern White Cedar is in the thuja genus.
It's a shame in this age of scientific progress & discovery, that society has to cling to old mistaken names because that's what somebody started calling it 300 years ago and it's saddled with the "official" name still, because of "tradition" even though we know better now. Still I can hope that perhaps someday we'll all decide the practice is no longer worth it, and start to change things. Wood be a lot less confusing after that.
In German, we classify them as "leaf trees" and "needle trees" (literal translation),, which usually corresponds to the scientific categorization (at least from my non-botanist point of view)
It's the same in Swedish (and probably the other Scandinavian languages). I've always thought the English terminology is stupid, since the really soft woods are called "hard woods".
I mean it's pretty accurate, depending what you consider a leaf or a tree. I mean cypress trees have structures that look more like leaves and welwitschia's leaves can't really be called needles, or frankly can they be called trees. And there are some odd trees. Anyone know the name of those trees that seem to almost entirely consist of spiky scales, all up the stem and along the branches, it's not a scale tree as far as I know, i believe i've seen it grouped together in a carboniferous or paleozoic, i think, plant section in my local botanical garden, together with horsetails, redwoods and other gymnosperms, as well as ferns.
@@willowarkan2263, I think there are fewer exceptions with the leaf/needle distinction, but that may only be the case for the common species in northern Europe.
Also, hardness doesn't always equal strength. Pine furniture gets dinged up through normal wear and tear, but some types of pine are very hard to break.
@@Bacopa68 Yea, need to factor in elastic modulus too, and crushing strength too, good example is Spruce Pine has JH of 700 lbf, Aromatic Red Cedar has 900. But Spruce Pine got better Elastic than Cedar.
@@kylefagan9585 Funny; when MLB players switched from ash to maple bats there were a lot of splintered bats. Something to do with wood grain; there's two separate directions where maple is weak, vs only the traditional "along the grain" for ash.
So it _was_ based on hardness, but then scientists found that the harder wood tended to share other properties, so "hardwood" changed its definition to be based on those properties than from... being hard. So then when a "hardwood" was discovered that was softer than the types of wood previously categorised as "softwood," rather than just accepting that the families only sometimes correlate with hardness and and use "hardwood" and "softwood" to distinguish based on hardness, they instead said "Nope. 'Hardwood' is not defined by hardness even if it used to be, so this soft wood is officially a hardwood." Let's be honest, if you actually care about the genetic properties, then you should be familiar with "angiosperm" and "gymnosperm." The people who care about the type of wood that don't know those terms are likely to be carpenters or others who care more about the wood as a material, in which case the hardness is an actual concern.
Also here the usual and now incorrect translation for "hardwood" was "madeira de lei", lt. "Law (protected) wood". But since these were codified by law, it addresses specific trees and they all have in common the fact they're hard, slow growing and quite aesthetically pleasing, so supply-demand drove many of those to extinction or the brink of it. I'd be miffed to import some elusive "hardwood" and find it is balsa planks
It's the same reason strawberries aren't berries but banana's are. Scientific berries and actual berries are often not the same. Botanists need to stop co-opting naming categorizes that already exist.
As someone who works with wood, I was always taught that softwoods have an open grain structure (you can see the grain pores in the cuts), while a hardwood has a closed grain structure, so you generally can't see holes or pores in the cuts
Wesley Tarr you sure it was rune? I thought it looked a bit more like adamantine. Edit:yeah, I think you are right, I just had my luminosity a bit low...
Separating into hardwood and softwood still makes sense in carpentry as hardwoods are typically more homogeneous than softwoods which usually have a stronger contrast between early growth and late growth rings.
It's still useful in almost every situation, he gave one example of a hardwood being softer than softwood and tried to use that to prove the terminology is wrong. It's just an exception, and for carpenters, fire wood, and cooking, hard vs soft wood still matters.
Another factor which might affect how hard/soft the wood is, is how far it is from the center of the trunk, heartwood is right on the center and sapwood is nearer to the outer layer of the trunk, so heartwood is stronger than sapwood.. And quarter sawn Vs flat sawn also has differences in strength and stability..
@@bobbygetsbanned6049the metrics you are thinking of (hardness, structure, composition, etc.) are absolutely useful, no doubt about it. the problem is that "hardwood" does not refer to any of those metrics at all. it is a genetic classification, and as such is only useful to people studying the biology and phylogeny of trees. if you want to talk about the hardness of the wood, do that. if you want to talk about the grain structure, do that. if you want to talk about composition, do that. trying to lump everything into one term only serves to make the term vague at best and wildly inaccurate at worst.
You can use balsa wood for real airplanes too, it's a pretty decent substitute for the hexagonal grid structure that exists inside the shell of the wing of a high end airplane. It has a lot of strength on one plane, and almost none perpendicular to it, so when used with precision it can be quite strong Oh man I love that little ending where you try to bury the idea and they just grow back. Fantastic visual wordplay, would have been a poignant end :P We should just split the terms hardwood and softwood into two categories. Hardtrunk and hardwood, and softtrunk and softwood. Hardwood refers to when the wood itself is hard, hardtrunk refers to when the living tree itself is hard. So balsa would be hardtrunk softwood. It's intuitive, simple, and removes the confusion
I live in the US and honestly I never even knew what “hardwood” and “softwood” meant until watching this video! I’ve always used deciduous for angiosperms and either coniferous or evergreen for gymnosperms! Needle trees and leaf trees would be much easier to remember though I’ve only heard the term “hardwood” when talking about hardwood flooring, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as softwood flooring
In Europe I believe everywhere "hardwood" and "softwood" are purely carpentry/engineering terminologies (meaning balsa is 1000% softwood), while for biological categorization we use "needle tree" or "leaf tree" (or something similar depending on the language).
The hardwood softwood classification as it exists is very helpful for mycology as most softwood has antifungal sap so most mushrooms that grow around then are symbiotic while mushrooms that grow around hardwoods eat the decaying material.
My woodworking teacher was laughing his ass off when we did a kahoot to celebrate the final day of the program and he gave us the question “True or False: the softest wood is a hardwood” and then when most of the class got it wrong he just went “Yeah balsa is a hardwood because it’s from an angiosperm” and we were all like “SO WHY DO THEY CALL THEM A HARDWOOD” and he was like “Ask someone else” well I guess my questions were answered.
never really been interested in trees but i was so surprised and impressed from the quality of the information! Everything i could want in a definite explanation and so neat it really made my nerd senses tingle.
I can't speak to their other videos, but this videos had its share of problems. For one, Eastern Red Cedar (really a juniper) isn't even close to being the hardest softwood. It's harder than ~80% of gymnosperms though. The hardest is probably Pacific Yew which is about as hard as hickory. It's also not particularly slow growing, but is much harder than the slow growing pines
Hardwoods are both the easiest and toughest woods to chuck depending on their density soooo it definitely changes the math on how much wood a woodchuck can chuck!
Love that in RuneScape, the distinction between hardwood and softwood is "Is exclusively used to make planks for Construction" and "Is not exclusively used to make planks for Construction." Teak and Mahogany are correctly categorized as hardwood, but Oak, Willow, and Maple are all incorrectly called "softwood." The only true softwood trees in the game are, funnily enough, the most difficult trees to cut: Yew and Redwood, and also pine trees which are actually modeled as spruce/fir trees but are treated as standard nameless trees
I've never really encountered this terminology. Where I grew up we classified the types of trees into Deciduous (or the hardwood group) and Evergreen (or the softwood group). Obviously this doesn't carry very well into climates where Broad-leaf trees stay green year round, but it definitely cleared up any confusion.
This helped clear up a standing confusion of mine. I live in the pacific northwest, and in addition to softwood conifers, we have red alders. I was surprised to find out that alders were classified as hardwoods, given my experience with how soft the wood is! Indeed, I just referenced the janka hardness chart on wikipedia, and alder is softer than douglas fir. Thanks for helping me resolve this conflict between nomenclature and personal experience :)
I had a similar experience with the quaking aspens of Utah... but I was looking at a forest service map that labled them simply as "hardwoods", and trying to figure out what trees were being referred to.
I've only heard of hardwood/softwood refer to... well the hardness or softness of wood We'd use deciduous/evergreen to distinguish between angio/gymnosperm
Larches and dawn redwoods are both deciduous, where things like bamboo (in my personal opinion, tree refers to a growth pattern that bamboo, palms, conifers and oaks all fit into, considering what is believed to be quite literally the most basal angiosperm, is itself a tree, and that certain monocots have regained secondary growth in anomalous ways) and eucalyptus are evergreen.
If some hardwoods are soft, would it be *hard* to differentiate between them? Maybe the naming is something we should *leaf* to botanists. Then if we see a soft-wooded three, we can avoid *bark-ing up the wrong tree* .
The resin-hardened heartwood of longleaf and slash pines is probably harder than any hardwood. You don't get that from fresh sawn live trees but the dead standing ones that the sapwood has rotted off of are almost as hard as a rock.
I loved the video, and it clarified the answer to a question I have had for years, but I was continually distracted by your Dr. Who scarf throughout the video.
This video actually wasn't the best on the topic. For one the hardest softwood is pacific yew which is about as hard as hickory. And Eastern Red Cedar is not significantly slow growing yet harder than gymnosperms that are
As a woodworker, hardwood and softwood are commonly used to describe if lumber came from connifers like pine, or decidious species like oak. The two categories often require different techniques and materials to shape, bond, and finish.
highly anecdotal observation, but I've noticed I come across a lot more recently fallen trees in the hardwood forests where I live now, than in the softwood forests where I grew up. I've been wondering if it's something to do with wood hardness, or forest maintenance, or just my own attention
Why hardwoods are the softest woods? _flashes back to the people who name the trees_ biologist 1: Okay Sir the people are asking to put trees into different groups and give them different names because they're sick of calling every tree a tree, they say it's boring and undescriptive. Professor: *Give trees a bunch of names* Ok so there are going to be 2 groups, hardwood, and softwood. The hardwood are ones that grow from seed that have a shell of some protection around them and trees that grow from a naked seed are softwoods, this is because armor is hard, and naked people are soft and the naked ladies are sexy. biologist 2: Wait what? Professor: *Cough Cough* So again it doesn't matter how hard the wood actually is, it only matter if the seed of the tree has armor or is naked. biologist 3: But Sir wouldn't they think us scientists suck at naming stuff because astronomist name stars by slamming a typewriter and we are naming trees off of nothing, shouldn't we just put the trees in different groups depending on how much force it takes to break the wood? Professor: Nonsense!!! Science is supposed to be confusing, we don't want any aliens stealing our work do we? All the biologists in the room: YES! YES! Sir.
here is a tip for you if you own a RV . RVs have alot of Balsa wood in some of the walls and so on and clam all hardwood construction , this is why when if water should get inside the RV well fall part in just days or weeks and look so bad as thats there way if turn over in the fleet
The hardest softwood is probably Pacific Yew, with a hardness of ~1600 to ~1700 lbf. That's harder than over 50% of hardwoods and as hard as hickory. Eastern Red Cedar (ERC, _Juniperus virginiana_ ) isn't even the hardest juniper, nevermind softwood, with the Alligator Juniper being 1160lbf; in the range of most oaks. Junipers are unusual in having unusually hard wood for gymnosperms. Interestingly the hard junipers, and yews, follow the hardness to density ratio of angiosperms while the soft ones follow the hardness to density ratio of gymnosperms. Angiosperms get harder with smaller increases in density than most gymnosperms. However, there is only data on a few junipers but the ones there is data on are mostly hard. It is interesting that almost all of the hardest gymnosperms occur in the clade that consists of Taxaceae and Cupressaceae Also ERC's growth rate isn't even that slow. It has a medium growth rate like some faster growing pines but slows when they gets older. It is harder than significantly slower growing gymnosperms. Junipers--like ERC--also have highly developed animal distribution methods which may explain their species richness and wide distribution. Edit: fixed italics and added more information
On the topic of gymnosperms, yew has very dense and hard wood, yet should be classified within the other "softwoods". I'd be surprised if it's wood was as soft as the other "softwoods" or even cedar?
Wait I'm confused, The title of the video contradicts the Video itself. You are pointing out the inaccuracies of the used terminology, but then used that same inaccuracies to make the opposite claim? You even admit the average HW is harder than the average SF, so is this based on the medium? on the exception? All this video pointed out was that Hardwoods have a bigger gamut of hardness and softwoods are contained in a smaller gamuts on the soft side but because hardwoods contain both the hardest and softest kinds of woods therefore hardwoods are softer?
@@sailor5853 Yes. that's what I said. I could even say it in another way, "the premise of the subject does not correlate with the substance" regardless of how its said. the contextualization of the video is directly contradicted by the actual information provided
@@yonatanbeer3475 Yes, that's what I said. I just said gamut instead of 'range of hardness'. That information does not correlate with the premise set up by the video. Ffs read the comments, most people think hardwoods are softer than softwood now. Which is inaccurate
remember that trees have independently evolved a ton of times so a chestnut tree and an oak tree while very similar in a lot of ways their last common ancestor was a small shrub
I would like to point out, that this is probably problem in English, but in Czech hardwood means only that the wood is hard. We call angiosperms "krytosemené" meaning that they cover their seeds.
Not really, Holly is not the same as Holy, holly is a different plant and the actual literal translation would be something like Holy Stick not Hollywood nor Holly wood not even Holy wood
@@luizfellipe3291 yeah no worries, i just wanted to make the distinction because i think that holy stick is a funnier name haha, and im also not a native speaker, hi from mexico o/
This wasn't the case in my community growing up, for example maple trees sent considered a hardwood. I wasn't a lumberjack or anything special but did my fair share curing firewood and buying it from people. Vedio was plesnt tho and I like your content!
I know about hardwood and softwood term in youtube... Because when I was in school, biology books always use gymnosperm and angiosperm term so softwood and hardwood term isn't well known in my country...
4 роки тому+3
i know my hardwood when i see it, cus i've seen something
The difference in the hardness of softwood isn't because of the thickness of the cellwall but instead the numbers of cell per yearring. Softwood generats nearly always the same number of late cells wich have a smaller lumen (center of the cell) but varies in the numer of early cells wich have more lumen.
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Did it take that long to approve the video?
vote trump or else the antifa will be freed
It’s very hard to pick between dumpster fire and dumpster fire
Good thing that i am not of age and don’t live in America
I want to donate. But my parents would not allow it. I'm Indian.
@@daleonions9593 no
More fun categorization confusions: You know those two softwoods mentioned in the video, Eastern Red Cedar and Northern White Cedar? Taxonomically, neither of them are in the "cedar" genus and are not even in the same genus as *each other*. Eastern Red Cedar is in the juniper genus and Northern White Cedar is in the thuja genus.
oh, just like most "berries" are not "berries" at all?
@@666Tomato666 Or like how many vegetables are actually fruits.
And how white and black rhinos are both grey. I hate it.
Heart your comment MinuteEarth, so it goes on the top.
It's a shame in this age of scientific progress & discovery, that society has to cling to old mistaken names because that's what somebody started calling it 300 years ago and it's saddled with the "official" name still, because of "tradition" even though we know better now.
Still I can hope that perhaps someday we'll all decide the practice is no longer worth it, and start to change things. Wood be a lot less confusing after that.
In German, we classify them as "leaf trees" and "needle trees" (literal translation),, which usually corresponds to the scientific categorization (at least from my non-botanist point of view)
It's the same in Swedish (and probably the other Scandinavian languages). I've always thought the English terminology is stupid, since the really soft woods are called "hard woods".
The terms hardwood (Hartholz) and softwood (Weichholz) are still used in German as well, though. And in exactly the same way as in English.
I mean it's pretty accurate, depending what you consider a leaf or a tree. I mean cypress trees have structures that look more like leaves and welwitschia's leaves can't really be called needles, or frankly can they be called trees. And there are some odd trees. Anyone know the name of those trees that seem to almost entirely consist of spiky scales, all up the stem and along the branches, it's not a scale tree as far as I know, i believe i've seen it grouped together in a carboniferous or paleozoic, i think, plant section in my local botanical garden, together with horsetails, redwoods and other gymnosperms, as well as ferns.
@@willowarkan2263, I think there are fewer exceptions with the leaf/needle distinction, but that may only be the case for the common species in northern Europe.
@@TheGlassgubben i mean there's treeferns, which are leafy, but we are hitting the definition of a tree again.
The “softwood isn’t always softer than hardwood” is the first thing you learn in materials engineering
Also, hardness doesn't always equal strength. Pine furniture gets dinged up through normal wear and tear, but some types of pine are very hard to break.
@@Bacopa68 Yea, need to factor in elastic modulus too, and crushing strength too, good example is Spruce Pine has JH of 700 lbf, Aromatic Red Cedar has 900. But Spruce Pine got better Elastic than Cedar.
Maple is really, really hard to break.
@@kylefagan9585 Funny; when MLB players switched from ash to maple bats there were a lot of splintered bats. Something to do with wood grain; there's two separate directions where maple is weak, vs only the traditional "along the grain" for ash.
LOVE the Runescape reference. Someone on the MinuteEarth team spent a few too many hours cutting down Oaks outside of Draynor Village...
I think the title should say 'Why SOME hardwoods are the softest woods'
Yes.
But that’s not as interesting as a title
Or “Why the softest woods are hardwoods”
@@declaniii6324 its not as click batey
Yea the title is trash
So it _was_ based on hardness, but then scientists found that the harder wood tended to share other properties, so "hardwood" changed its definition to be based on those properties than from... being hard. So then when a "hardwood" was discovered that was softer than the types of wood previously categorised as "softwood," rather than just accepting that the families only sometimes correlate with hardness and and use "hardwood" and "softwood" to distinguish based on hardness, they instead said "Nope. 'Hardwood' is not defined by hardness even if it used to be, so this soft wood is officially a hardwood."
Let's be honest, if you actually care about the genetic properties, then you should be familiar with "angiosperm" and "gymnosperm." The people who care about the type of wood that don't know those terms are likely to be carpenters or others who care more about the wood as a material, in which case the hardness is an actual concern.
Scientists are such morons
Also here the usual and now incorrect translation for "hardwood" was "madeira de lei", lt. "Law (protected) wood". But since these were codified by law, it addresses specific trees and they all have in common the fact they're hard, slow growing and quite aesthetically pleasing, so supply-demand drove many of those to extinction or the brink of it.
I'd be miffed to import some elusive "hardwood" and find it is balsa planks
It's the same reason strawberries aren't berries but banana's are. Scientific berries and actual berries are often not the same. Botanists need to stop co-opting naming categorizes that already exist.
@@ulti_mages9200 guinea pig
Not from guinea
Not a pig
Science
Stop using logic, this is the way scientists can feel important.
I like RuneScape
Quest man good :)
Ok
The legend is here.
the biggest quest cape owner ever, since pretty much everyone owes theirs to this legend right here
POG
As someone who works with wood, I was always taught that softwoods have an open grain structure (you can see the grain pores in the cuts), while a hardwood has a closed grain structure, so you generally can't see holes or pores in the cuts
Oak has huge pores though
The Runescape reference made me happy :)
Same!!
What Runescape reference?
So many good memories...
Yup Dragon Woodcutting axe and Rune Full Helm, and a Bronze Woodcutting axe and Bronze Full Helm.
Wesley Tarr you sure it was rune? I thought it looked a bit more like adamantine.
Edit:yeah, I think you are right, I just had my luminosity a bit low...
Separating into hardwood and softwood still makes sense in carpentry as hardwoods are typically more homogeneous than softwoods which usually have a stronger contrast between early growth and late growth rings.
Retiring one terminology doesn't mean another can't be used.
Yeah so you can go take a hike pal!
It's still useful in almost every situation, he gave one example of a hardwood being softer than softwood and tried to use that to prove the terminology is wrong. It's just an exception, and for carpenters, fire wood, and cooking, hard vs soft wood still matters.
Another factor which might affect how hard/soft the wood is, is how far it is from the center of the trunk, heartwood is right on the center and sapwood is nearer to the outer layer of the trunk, so heartwood is stronger than sapwood..
And quarter sawn Vs flat sawn also has differences in strength and stability..
@@bobbygetsbanned6049the metrics you are thinking of (hardness, structure, composition, etc.) are absolutely useful, no doubt about it. the problem is that "hardwood" does not refer to any of those metrics at all. it is a genetic classification, and as such is only useful to people studying the biology and phylogeny of trees.
if you want to talk about the hardness of the wood, do that. if you want to talk about the grain structure, do that. if you want to talk about composition, do that. trying to lump everything into one term only serves to make the term vague at best and wildly inaccurate at worst.
You can use balsa wood for real airplanes too, it's a pretty decent substitute for the hexagonal grid structure that exists inside the shell of the wing of a high end airplane. It has a lot of strength on one plane, and almost none perpendicular to it, so when used with precision it can be quite strong
Oh man I love that little ending where you try to bury the idea and they just grow back. Fantastic visual wordplay, would have been a poignant end :P
We should just split the terms hardwood and softwood into two categories. Hardtrunk and hardwood, and softtrunk and softwood. Hardwood refers to when the wood itself is hard, hardtrunk refers to when the living tree itself is hard. So balsa would be hardtrunk softwood. It's intuitive, simple, and removes the confusion
Wow, never thought I's see a 2007scape reference here.
Yeah I keep coming across UA-camrs who use the hit splats and graphics that I had know idea would know the game
Did a double take when I saw that dragon axe lol
is it 2007scape or is it OSRS? Only the price of party hats will tell lol
@@jek__ Aren't they the same thing?
Love the osrs reference
Look at the member with his dragon axe... I’m not jealous :3
What is orsr
@@ghostgambler5221 Old School Runescape
1v1 me in wildy noob
The osrs reference is real
In Norwegian, we call them "needle trees" and "leaf trees". Up until recently, I thought English did, too. Solves the whole issue.
I live in the US and honestly I never even knew what “hardwood” and “softwood” meant until watching this video! I’ve always used deciduous for angiosperms and either coniferous or evergreen for gymnosperms! Needle trees and leaf trees would be much easier to remember though
I’ve only heard the term “hardwood” when talking about hardwood flooring, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as softwood flooring
Agathis robusta
Checkmate, Norway.
@@tieck4408 explain?
In German too. In french, soft wood are called "conifères" (coniferous)
Ive never heard Softwood as an american, id call them "Evergreens"
Tree-mendous: I see you, dad joke.
Let’s not even start about going out on a limb..
richard hall here before it blows up
You missed a couple more puns ;)
Ances-tree
@@MinuteEarth we WOOD have thought it would go away now. But I guess old habits die HARD
MinuteEarth yeah like a building that built it really likes the island con-Crete
Now if only Stardew Valley didn't require you to have a stronger axe to shop down hardwood!
First reply
Justin is making a comeback after this pandemic
who needs an axe when you got
a shovel
yep
Well, it kinda doesn't. Gold is one of the softest metals, and you can chop down hardwood with it.
In Europe I believe everywhere "hardwood" and "softwood" are purely carpentry/engineering terminologies (meaning balsa is 1000% softwood), while for biological categorization we use "needle tree" or "leaf tree" (or something similar depending on the language).
Or logging. Pretty sure my father would laugh and suggest you try making a pallet out of it if you told him that balsa was a softwood.
Conifer and deciduous
Scientists are dumb
@@MikehMike01 youre just too dumb to understand what theyre talking about
Conifer And Broadleaf
"Tree-mendous" hit me like an anvil falling on my head.
Knowing this you'd think we "wood" have retired the soft wood hard wood terminology by now, but some habits die hard.
Timbeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
that must've hit hard
Lol i made it 70 likes, hate me, mwahahahaha
The anvil WOOD be HARD to escape
The hardwood softwood classification as it exists is very helpful for mycology as most softwood has antifungal sap so most mushrooms that grow around then are symbiotic while mushrooms that grow around hardwoods eat the decaying material.
eh, there are a lot of symbionts around hardwoods too
I appreciate the accuracy in the Doctor Who scarf. I'm knitting one right now so I recognise the pattern fairly well.
My woodworking teacher was laughing his ass off when we did a kahoot to celebrate the final day of the program and he gave us the question “True or False: the softest wood is a hardwood” and then when most of the class got it wrong he just went “Yeah balsa is a hardwood because it’s from an angiosperm” and we were all like “SO WHY DO THEY CALL THEM A HARDWOOD” and he was like “Ask someone else”
well I guess my questions were answered.
These RS bots are getting out of control ..
What is an RS bot?
Runescape bots. Always chopping my magic trees.
WC levels?
@@njames6002 ...waits a few second for all the noobs to reply... 120 here.
@@njames6002 only 35 rip
never really been interested in trees but i was so surprised and impressed from the quality of the information! Everything i could want in a definite explanation and so neat it really made my nerd senses tingle.
I love Minute Earth! They inspired my sci-fi/futurist channel!!
Shameless self promotion
@@rmmva you're right...
I can't speak to their other videos, but this videos had its share of problems. For one, Eastern Red Cedar (really a juniper) isn't even close to being the hardest softwood. It's harder than ~80% of gymnosperms though. The hardest is probably Pacific Yew which is about as hard as hickory.
It's also not particularly slow growing, but is much harder than the slow growing pines
When they say, "how much wood can a woodchuck chuck?" are they talking about a softwoodchuck or a hardwoodchuck?
Hardwoods are both the easiest and toughest woods to chuck depending on their density soooo it definitely changes the math on how much wood a woodchuck can chuck!
Eek
i think it's probably referring to a mediumwoodchuck, or maybe even a bothwoodchuck
Love that in RuneScape, the distinction between hardwood and softwood is "Is exclusively used to make planks for Construction" and "Is not exclusively used to make planks for Construction." Teak and Mahogany are correctly categorized as hardwood, but Oak, Willow, and Maple are all incorrectly called "softwood." The only true softwood trees in the game are, funnily enough, the most difficult trees to cut: Yew and Redwood, and also pine trees which are actually modeled as spruce/fir trees but are treated as standard nameless trees
As a Forester, I am happy that you provided the right information 😁😁
I've never really encountered this terminology. Where I grew up we classified the types of trees into Deciduous (or the hardwood group) and Evergreen (or the softwood group). Obviously this doesn't carry very well into climates where Broad-leaf trees stay green year round, but it definitely cleared up any confusion.
so pines are hardwood and spruce are softwood despite both not dropping their leaves?
this is the video I didn't know I needed but now that it exists, I realize I've been waiting for ALL my LIFE
Whatever animator who put Runescape in this, give that guy a raise.
This helped clear up a standing confusion of mine. I live in the pacific northwest, and in addition to softwood conifers, we have red alders. I was surprised to find out that alders were classified as hardwoods, given my experience with how soft the wood is! Indeed, I just referenced the janka hardness chart on wikipedia, and alder is softer than douglas fir. Thanks for helping me resolve this conflict between nomenclature and personal experience :)
I had a similar experience with the quaking aspens of Utah... but I was looking at a forest service map that labled them simply as "hardwoods", and trying to figure out what trees were being referred to.
I've only heard of hardwood/softwood refer to... well the hardness or softness of wood
We'd use deciduous/evergreen to distinguish between angio/gymnosperm
Larches and dawn redwoods are both deciduous, where things like bamboo (in my personal opinion, tree refers to a growth pattern that bamboo, palms, conifers and oaks all fit into, considering what is believed to be quite literally the most basal angiosperm, is itself a tree, and that certain monocots have regained secondary growth in anomalous ways) and eucalyptus are evergreen.
Life is a beautiful thing and you should cherish the moments of nature like this one
If some hardwoods are soft, would it be *hard* to differentiate between them? Maybe the naming is something we should *leaf* to botanists. Then if we see a soft-wooded three, we can avoid *bark-ing up the wrong tree* .
heyy i love your channel and have been here for 4 or 5 years
Thank you for being a longtime viewer 💚
Love the runescape reference
The resin-hardened heartwood of longleaf and slash pines is probably harder than any hardwood. You don't get that from fresh sawn live trees but the dead standing ones that the sapwood has rotted off of are almost as hard as a rock.
Lol Rune helms and dragon axes
ill sub...these are the channels that deserve recognition
Your videos are awesome. Keep it up minute earth.
Dilip Adithya you didn’t like say first wow you cool
This helped me alot in my science fair project, thank you minute earth
Interviewer: So, do you want to make sense?
Trees: Ice cream.
Much love, your friends at Rev Media!!
did i have a stroke
am i dreaming
help
(i'm joking of course)
Jeans.
I loved the video, and it clarified the answer to a question I have had for years, but I was continually distracted by your Dr. Who scarf throughout the video.
This video actually wasn't the best on the topic. For one the hardest softwood is pacific yew which is about as hard as hickory. And Eastern Red Cedar is not significantly slow growing yet harder than gymnosperms that are
I've never heard hardwood used as a way to define an angiosperm, it's only been to say that the wood is harder (sturdier) than most wood
Something like ironwood or yew yeah
As a woodworker, hardwood and softwood are commonly used to describe if lumber came from connifers like pine, or decidious species like oak. The two categories often require different techniques and materials to shape, bond, and finish.
I needed this video. Seriously been wondering about wood properties in terms of sustainable forestry and timber
Omg I have never been this early
Love your videos ❤
Hope I can watch instantly once you post
Not early
OMG THE RUNESCAPE REFERENCE
I love this channel 10 times more now
highly anecdotal observation, but I've noticed I come across a lot more recently fallen trees in the hardwood forests where I live now, than in the softwood forests where I grew up. I've been wondering if it's something to do with wood hardness, or forest maintenance, or just my own attention
loved the runescape reference with the rune helmet and dragon hatchet
Why hardwoods are the softest woods?
_flashes back to the people who name the trees_
biologist 1: Okay Sir the people are asking to put trees into different groups and give them different names because they're sick of calling every tree a tree, they say it's boring and undescriptive.
Professor: *Give trees a bunch of names* Ok so there are going to be 2 groups, hardwood, and softwood. The hardwood are ones that grow from seed that have a shell of some protection around them and trees that grow from a naked seed are softwoods, this is because armor is hard, and naked people are soft and the naked ladies are sexy.
biologist 2: Wait what?
Professor: *Cough Cough* So again it doesn't matter how hard the wood actually is, it only matter if the seed of the tree has armor or is naked.
biologist 3: But Sir wouldn't they think us scientists suck at naming stuff because astronomist name stars by slamming a typewriter and we are naming trees off of nothing, shouldn't we just put the trees in different groups depending on how much force it takes to break the wood?
Professor: Nonsense!!! Science is supposed to be confusing, we don't want any aliens stealing our work do we?
All the biologists in the room: YES! YES! Sir.
Really interesting.....(p:s is great)
Thank you. best explanation yet
This would explain a lot, actually.
Pratchett would have approved
@@falnica YES! 😁
Your comment brings "Unseen University" to mind.
here is a tip for you if you own a RV . RVs have alot of Balsa wood in some of the walls and so on and clam all hardwood construction , this is why when if water should get inside the RV well fall part in just days or weeks and look so bad as thats there way if turn over in the fleet
HEY I LOVE YOU GUYS
The Janka hardness scale, as opposed to the Jenga hardness scale, used when one makes towers from their sticks.
One describes the hardness of a given piece of wood, the other describers the hardness to put said pieces on top of each other.
I wanna meet the tree that can break a dragon hatchet. THAT would be some serious wood.
You can start out with these 3 woods,
Snake Wood
Ironwood
Lignum vitae
I loved your spanish pronunciation on Palo Santo!
Imagine chopping oaks with a D Axe while wearing a rune full helm
Good old days
The hardest softwood is probably Pacific Yew, with a hardness of ~1600 to ~1700 lbf. That's harder than over 50% of hardwoods and as hard as hickory. Eastern Red Cedar (ERC, _Juniperus virginiana_ ) isn't even the hardest juniper, nevermind softwood, with the Alligator Juniper being 1160lbf; in the range of most oaks. Junipers are unusual in having unusually hard wood for gymnosperms. Interestingly the hard junipers, and yews, follow the hardness to density ratio of angiosperms while the soft ones follow the hardness to density ratio of gymnosperms. Angiosperms get harder with smaller increases in density than most gymnosperms. However, there is only data on a few junipers but the ones there is data on are mostly hard.
It is interesting that almost all of the hardest gymnosperms occur in the clade that consists of Taxaceae and Cupressaceae
Also ERC's growth rate isn't even that slow. It has a medium growth rate like some faster growing pines but slows when they gets older. It is harder than significantly slower growing gymnosperms. Junipers--like ERC--also have highly developed animal distribution methods which may explain their species richness and wide distribution.
Edit: fixed italics and added more information
I can’t seem to find hard wood jokes
They're hard to find.
Thanks a bunch! Never understood the concept of hard/softwood
Watching this video while I cut mahogany trees in OSRS, what are the odds.
Pretty likely considering you’ll be cutting logs to 99, and there is a finite amount of UA-cam videos.
Here in Sweden we use "Löv träd" and "Barr träd" which mean: Leaf trees, and needle-like leaf trees, cause we have a word for that
Why is a baby chopping a tree-
On the topic of gymnosperms, yew has very dense and hard wood, yet should be classified within the other "softwoods". I'd be surprised if it's wood was as soft as the other "softwoods" or even cedar?
Did Neil Armstrong say "I'm gonna go out on a LEM here" when he was about to land on the moon?
No
I like the new illustration style
Wait I'm confused, The title of the video contradicts the Video itself. You are pointing out the inaccuracies of the used terminology, but then used that same inaccuracies to make the opposite claim? You even admit the average HW is harder than the average SF, so is this based on the medium? on the exception?
All this video pointed out was that Hardwoods have a bigger gamut of hardness and softwoods are contained in a smaller gamuts on the soft side but because hardwoods contain both the hardest and softest kinds of woods therefore hardwoods are softer?
The title is inconsistent with the video, but there is not the same inconsistency in the explanation provided.
@@sailor5853 Yes. that's what I said.
I could even say it in another way, "the premise of the subject does not correlate with the substance"
regardless of how its said. the contextualization of the video is directly contradicted by the actual information provided
Not all hardwoods are harder than all softwoods. There are soft hardwoods and vice versa.
@@yonatanbeer3475 Yes, that's what I said.
I just said gamut instead of 'range of hardness'. That information does not correlate with the premise set up by the video. Ffs read the comments, most people think hardwoods are softer than softwood now.
Which is inaccurate
So in other words... a clickbait?
Red ceder is an excellent option for making boats as it has tremendous weight to strengthen ratio.
The hardest wood is called Quebracho, which literally means "axe breaker" in Spanish, with a Janka hardness about 4500 lb
Holy shit!
Actually... the hardest wood is a form of ironwood from Australia coming in at 5,060 lbf
What a Twist!
remember that trees have independently evolved a ton of times so a chestnut tree and an oak tree while very similar in a lot of ways their last common ancestor was a small shrub
MinuteEarth vids are always so interesting!
Hardwoods are the softest woods
Ah yes, the irony is strong with this one. And nice Runescape reference, what a man of culture
I would like to point out, that this is probably problem in English, but in Czech hardwood means only that the wood is hard. We call angiosperms "krytosemené" meaning that they cover their seeds.
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
― Daniel J. Boorstin
those puns really ruffled my leaves, especially those 3 in under 10 seconds at 2:58
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
-Richard P. Feynman
Yesss literally the first thing I thought of when seeing this video was Runescape. Glad a reference made it in.
Next thing you’re gonna tell me is that Hexagons are the bestagons.
Love the scarf man.
2:49
🔻Palo Santo🔻
Holy Wood
Not really, Holly is not the same as Holy, holly is a different plant and the actual literal translation would be something like Holy Stick not Hollywood nor Holly wood not even Holy wood
Wait... Holy with 1 L is actually a thing?
Uuuuhhm sorryyy (not a native speaker)
@@luizfellipe3291 yeah no worries, i just wanted to make the distinction because i think that holy stick is a funnier name haha, and im also not a native speaker, hi from mexico o/
holly is pronounced "ha-lee"
holy is "ho-lee", the same as holey(meaning with holes in [it])
hello. I love your videos MinuteEarth!
Hardwood is the softest wood.
Ironic isn't it.
Scooby did you and the gang find the guy that ate the bat?
This wasn't the case in my community growing up, for example maple trees sent considered a hardwood. I wasn't a lumberjack or anything special but did my fair share curing firewood and buying it from people. Vedio was plesnt tho and I like your content!
In Minecraft, trees are all soft.
You can punch them.
They also don't fall.
Your not wrong, Your right
It would be cool to continue this video by making a part two about how old growth vs new growth fit in to hardness with hard and soft wood.
"I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these 'how' and 'why' questions. Occasionally, I find an answer."
― Stephen Hawking
I know about hardwood and softwood term in youtube...
Because when I was in school, biology books always use gymnosperm and angiosperm term so softwood and hardwood term isn't well known in my country...
i know my hardwood when i see it, cus i've seen something
The difference in the hardness of softwood isn't because of the thickness of the cellwall but instead the numbers of cell per yearring. Softwood generats nearly always the same number of late cells wich have a smaller lumen (center of the cell) but varies in the numer of early cells wich have more lumen.
I know I’m not first but this is still cool
I did not miss that old school RuneScape reference there. Nice.
Why can’t I find a “hardwood”/“softwood” joke in the comments
Edit: or hardness scale jokes
Love the woodcutting runescape reference
"Why is the wood not hard?"
-That's what she said
Sorry I've been binging The Office 😂
Nice video. Lil fact check: Australia has the hardest wood. The Australian Buloke has a Janka rating of 5060lbf.
0:26 also another example of ugh English is the fact northern eastern South America is a grammatically correct sentence
"It's like smart TV for your smartTV" - I think that's the best way I've ever heard anyone put it hahaha!
"Ranks softest to hardest, balls, wood"
I'm gonna pretend I did not hear that.
Balsa
0:35 how did the axe not break on the part connecting it to the handle? Thats some good hardwood