Australia’s silky oak has some oak-like qualities, but the Queensland native is not a true oak. Australian silky oak is from the species Cardwellia sublimis and often goes by the commercial name lacewood, because of the lace-like figure found in some logs. Additional genera share the name silky oak, among them the species Grevillea robusta.
The Encyclopedia of Wood offers an explanation. “The name ‘silky oak’ is given to a number of different genera and species in Australia and New Zealand. The name originally referred to Grevillea robusta, a native of Southern Queensland, which also occurs in New South Wales. Cardwellia sublimis, from north Queensland, has similar characteristics and became known as silky oak and northern silky oak.” Grevillea robusta also has been introduced in East Africa, Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Brazil and the United States in Hawaii, California and Florida.
One of the most common species in Eastern Australia, the Grevillea robusta is a fast-growing evergreen tree with a single main trunk, growing to 5–40 m (20–100 ft) tall. The bark is dark grey and furrowed. Its leaves are fern-like, 10–34 cm (4–10 in) long, 9–15 cm (4–6 in) wide and divided with between 11 and 31 main lobes. Each lobe is sometimes further divided into as many as four, each one linear to narrow triangular in shape. It loses many of its leaves just before flowering.
The flowers are arranged in one-sided, "toothbrush"-like groups, sometimes branched, 12–15 cm (5–6 in) long. The carpel (the female part) of each flower has a stalk 21–28 mm (0.8–1 in) long. The flowers are glabrous and mostly yellowish orange, or sometimes reddish. Flowering occurs from September to November and the fruit that follows is a glabrous follicle.
Before the advent of aluminium, Grevillea robusta timber was widely used for external window joinery, as it is resistant to wood rot. It has been used in the manufacture of furniture, cabinetry, and fences and in earlier times, even railway carriages. Owing to declining populations, felling has been restricted. In more recent times it has been used for side and back woods on guitars made by Larrivée and others, because of its tonal and aesthetic qualities.
It is one of my favourite timbers and I always taken any available opportunity to collect it, be it though old broken furniture or newly felled tress making way for new property developments. Even though it really isn’t a true oak, it is still a joy to work with.
