My ever-enthusiastic daughter thought I should know about a craft class being taught at the North Home Folk School in Grand Marais: hand-carved spoons made from buckthorn wood.

The news did, indeed, capture my attention. I’ve written about this non-native, invasive woody plant many times, and have suggested that it sure would be dandy if someone discovered a good use for buckthorn. Could the answer be wood spoons?

A few weeks after her phone call, I wrapped up my first four hand-carved buckthorn spoons with some fancy paper and presented them as my wedding gift to newlyweds Amber (my daughter) and Mark for their August 7 wedding. The card said, “From the Cliff Folk School.”

Although I still have several chunks of buckthorn in my un-carved inventory of wood, I’ve also experimented with spoons carved from white ash, cherry, pagoda dogwood and elm. Woods still to try: maple, red oak, bur oak, hickory, black ash.

Carving my first dozen spoons has given me a greater appreciation for the unique qualities of different types of wood. It also got me thinking about the many wood terms often overheard (and misused) in conversations: hardwood, softwood, sapwood, heartwood, soft vs. hard maple, etc.

I’m not a wood-carving expert and discussing the nature of wood can get complicated very quickly so I will try to keep technical terms to a minimum.

The two primary classes of trees are gymnosperms (trees that produce seed outside of a seed pod; also called conifers) and angiosperms (trees that produce seeds enclosed in an ovary, or pod; also called deciduous).

Gymnosperms (e.g., spruce, pine, fir) are classified as softwoods, while angiosperms (e.g., oak, maple, birch, hickory) are hardwoods.

This classification system can lead to confusion in wood terminology. Based on this system, balsa wood, the lightweight material used to make old-fashioned model airplanes, is classified a hardwood even though it is a much softer wood than some softwoods, such as fir. At the same time, many people use the terms “soft maple” to describe silver maple (acer saccharinum) and “hard maple” for sugar maple (acer saccharum). Is it any wonder folks get confused?

How about the terms sapwood and heartwood? Sapwood refers to the living, outer layer of the tree that transports nutrients to and from the crown of the tree. Heartwood is the hard, central part of the trunk of a tree consisting of the old and matured wood. It supports the tree as a structure but has no role in the tree’s growth. Heartwood generally differs in color from the outer layers.

Considerable variation in hardness exists within the family of hardwoods, as I discovered in my recent spoon-making efforts. I made a spoon out of pagoda dogwood and was surprised at how soft the wood is. The hardest domestic species, according to the USDA, are (in order, hardest first) hickory, pecan, hard maple, white oak, beech, red oak, yellow birch, green ash, black walnut, soft maple, cherry, hackberry, gum, elm, sycamore, alder, yellow poplar, cottonwood, basswood and aspen.

The hardest wood I’ve encountered so far is buckthorn. It is also the most beautiful.

One of the reasons Amber’s message triggered such a “why didn’t I think of that?” response is because I had seen buckthorn wood samples several years ago. Somebody had sawn and finished cross sections of large buckthorn stems into coasters. The color range in a piece of buckthorn, particularly if it includes a branch joint or other irregularity, can range from dark maroon to red, orange and yellow. For one recent buckthorn spoon, I selected a section of trunk that enabled the scoop end to be carved from the intersection where two branches joined the trunk. The coloring and grain in this piece is spectacular.

I have carved all of my spoons with tools I had on hand in my workshop. I am quite certain my initial offerings would have been easier to make using tools designed for the purpose. I’m thinking about taking a finished spoon to a wood-carving store and asking the sales person what tools I would need to carve such a spoon. I have a hunch that the tools he or she would recommend wouldn’t include any of the tools I have been using (except for sandpaper). I further suspect that these cool tools will require a bank loan to finance their purchase.

Another concern is what I will do for wood inventory once my buckthorn wood supply runs out. I could start a buckthorn plantation but then I’d probably have to guard it around the clock to protect it from raids by the buckthorn-eradication vigilantes.

They’re out there, you know.