Amazing how much you can learn about mango trees at the Kaka‘ako Farmers Market here in Honolulu. While vegetable shopping this morning, I stopped to chat with Jen Homcy about Foundwood, her woodworking company that creates cutting boards out of reclaimed local hardwood. She took the time to share some knowledge about the wood she uses, including how the curl gets in the curly mango.
I had heard that curly wood from koa and mango trees are prized by woodworkers in Hawai‘i for its beautiful colors and textures that look like gentle ripples or wrinkles inside the wood. However, I didn’t know how curly wood gets curly. “Stress,” explained Jen, which could be anything from drought to injury. This rare variation in how the tree grows yields wood which is much more valuable than its non-curly counterpart.
In addition to being curly, another mango-wood cutting board had a pattern which I hadn’t seen before. Dark, linear outlines like these, which in this piece seem to draw a map of some archipelago more tightly clustered than Hawai‘i, can occur when moisture seeps into the wood. This can occur after the tree is felled, and can even be encouraged by storing boards close together so that they dry more slowly.
We also talked about other mango and tree facts (for example, that the fruiting season for different locally grown varieties spans much of the year here).
If you want to know more about Jen and the local trees whose wood she salvages and works with, do drop by the Ward Street farmers’ market on a Saturday or visit her website. Thanks, Jen, for talking trees with me!
urban plant research 
pretty wood!
Isn’t it? Are there trees that grow curly or wavy in your area?
By the way, this is the woodworker I told you about, who I read about in Edible Hawaii magazine.
Great wood, but one comment on the curly and color. Although lore paints the picture of how wood gets its curly grain it is not so simple to explain. Curly wood can be created by reaction of the tree to various growing conditions. But this is not usually linked to stress. A crotch or branch in the tree for example will yield reaction wood and thus give figured grain. The dark color of the curly is undulating tighter grain and thus will loo darker. Little to do with moisture “seeping” into the wood. In fact once logs are cut into wood the cells shed moisture I don’t know of any definitive literature stating that curly wood comes from stress. But it does make for a great tale.
Hi Wood Worker Network. Thank you for the clarification. If my description above is less than scientific, the fault is entirely mine and not Jen’s; I’m sure she was trying her best to give me the short version of the curly wood story while also working a busy farmer’s market stand.
The dark lines that I thought were created by moisture — can you tell us any more about those? I wasn’t referring to the repeating darker color within the curly pattern, but the very small, thin, sharp and dark black outlines in the middle of the second cutting board shown. Do you know such patterns? I didn’t understand the whole explanation but Jen did say you can encourage this appearance by letting the wood dry more slowly.