InsideWood

InsideWood is an online resource and database for wood anatomy, serving as a reference, research, and teaching tool. Wood anatomy is a sub-area within the discipline of wood science. This freely accessible database is purely scientific and noncommercial. It was actually created by several international researchers, members of the IAWA, mostly botanists, biologists and wood scientists.

Contents
The database contains categorized anatomical descriptions of wood based on the IAWA List of Microscopic Features for Hardwood and Softwood Identification, complemented by a comprehensive set of photomicrographs. As of November 2023, the database contained thousands of wood anatomical descriptions and nearly 66,000 photomicrographs of contemporary woods, along with more than 1,600 descriptions and 2,000 images of fossil woods. Its coverage is worldwide.

Hosted by the North Carolina State University’s library, this digital collection encompasses CITES-listed timber species and other endangered woody plants. Its significance lies in aiding wood identification through a multi-entry key, enabling searches based on the presence or absence of IAWA features. Additionally, it functions as a virtual reference collection, allowing users to retrieve descriptions and images by searching scientific or common names, or other relevant keywords. The whole database contains materials from over 10,000 woody species and 200 plant families.

Initiator for this wood anatomy database has been the American botanist and wood scientist Elisabeth Wheeler.

The database contains two dinstictive menus for specific anatomical features of modern wood species:
 * Softwoods
 * Hardwoods

In nowadays, identifying wood holds significance across several domains and it is of critical importance for commercial, forensic, archaeological, and paleontological applications. Also, timber identification provides new tools needed for the tracking of illegal logging and transportation. It is also important from the economical point of view.