Anatomy of European and North American Woods — An Interactive Identification Key

Xylology, or wood anatomy, is definitely an important ancillary science: various disciplines rely on wood identification, such as materials science, plant ecophysiology, or archaeobotany. An interactive identification key has been created basing on the work of well-known wood anatomists as Gréguss, Grosser, Schweingruber, Richter and others, as well as on own research.

The key uses the DELTA system by Dallwitz et al. which is currently available from the website http://delta-intkey.com. It comprises about 320 deciduous and about 100 coniferous taxa. It focuses on woods of both commercial and non-commercial importance, and has a special focus on the needs of archaeobotanists. They often have to deal with wood in bad condition or with completely altered properties (as in subfossil or charred wood). This identification key is flexible enough to meet these needs, and offers custom subsets of identification characters.

It is still under development, as there are still taxa to be included, and errors to be corrected. Though most taxa are only identifiable to genus level by their wood anatomy, in this key also species are included in order to illustrate the presence of infrageneric variability (or its absence), and because diagnostic wood anatomical features are usually described for a certain species.

It has to be pointed out that there are also other interactive wood identification keys, all with their own strengths, and specific applications:
- Wood anatomy of Central European species (Schoch et al. 2004): http://www.woodanatomy.ch/
- Commercial Timbers (Richter & Dallwitz 2000 onwards): http://delta-intkey.com/
- InsideWood database (InsideWood 2004 onwards): http://insidewood.lib.ncsu.edu/search/

木材学，亦称木质解剖学，无疑是重要的辅助科学：众多学科依赖于木材的鉴定，如材料科学、植物生态生理学或考古植物学。本交互式鉴定关键基于知名的木质解剖学家如Gréguss、Grosser、Schweingruber、Richter等人以及自身的研究成果而创建。该鉴定关键采用Dallwitz等人提出的DELTA系统，目前可通过网站http://delta-intkey.com获取。它包含大约320种落叶树种和约100种针叶树种。它专注于具有商业和非商业重要性的木材，并对考古植物学家的需求给予了特别关注。他们经常需要处理状况不佳的木材或完全改变了性质的木材（如次生化石或炭化木材）。此鉴定关键足够灵活，以满足这些需求，并提供定制的鉴定特征子集。它仍在不断发展之中，因为仍有待纳入的物种和需要纠正的错误。尽管大多数物种只能通过其木质解剖学识别到属的水平，但在此鉴定关键中，也包含了物种，以展示亚属变异（或其缺失）的存在，并且诊断性的木质解剖学特征通常是对某一特定物种进行描述的。必须指出，也存在其他交互式木材鉴定关键，各自具有独特的优势和应用领域：
- 中欧树种木质解剖学（Schoch等人，2004年）：http://www.woodanatomy.ch/
- 商业木材（Richter & Dallwitz自2000年起）：http://delta-intkey.com/
- InsideWood数据库（InsideWood自2004年起）：http://insidewood.lib.ncsu.edu/search/。”
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