The microscope reveals that wood is composed of minute units called cells. According to estimates, 1 cubic metre (about 35 cubic feet) of spruce wood contains 350 billion–500 billion cells. The basic cell types are called tracheids, vessel members, fibres, and parenchyma. Softwoods are made of tracheids and parenchyma, and hardwoods of vessel members, fibres, and parenchyma. A few hardwood species contain tracheids, but such instances are rare. Tracheids are considered a primitive cell type that gave rise, through evolution, to both vessel members and fibres.

The wood of softwood species is composed predominantly of tracheids. These cells are mainly longitudinal, or axial—their long axis runs parallel to the axis of the trunk (vertical in the standing tree). Axial parenchyma is present in certain softwood species, but radial parenchyma is always present and constitutes the rays, sometimes together with radial tracheids.

In hardwoods the proportion of constituent cell types—vessel members, fibres, and parenchyma—depends mainly on species. Vessel members and fibres are always present and axially oriented; axial parenchyma is seldom absent. Rays in hardwoods are made entirely of radial parenchyma cells.

Axial tracheids of softwoods are the longest cells of wood; they average 3–5 mm (about 0.12–0.2 inch) in length and are seldom more than 1 cm (about 0.4 inch). Fibres are shorter, usually 1–2 mm (0.04–0.08 inch). Vessel members vary widely in length, from 0.2 to 1.3 mm (0.008 to 0.05 inch), mainly between earlywood and latewood of ring-porous hardwoods. Diameters range, in general, from about 0.01 to 0.5 mm (0.0004 to 0.02 inch); the narrowest are fibres, and the largest are vessel members of earlywood.

All the above cells are tubelike. Tracheids and fibres have closed ends. Vessel members have ends wholly or partly open; in wood tissue, vessel members are connected end to end to form vertical pipelike stacks (vessels) of indeterminate length. The characteristic pores visible in the transverse section of hardwoods are actually vessel members. Axial tracheids in softwood species and vessel members in hardwood species are the principal water-conducting cells. Although fibres in hardwood trees may also participate in conduction, their main function is to provide mechanical support.

Parenchyma cells are bricklike in shape and very small, with a length of 0.1–0.2 mm (about 0.004–0.008 inch) and a width of 0.01–0.05 mm (0.0004–0.002 inch). They are mainly concerned with the storage of food and its transport (horizontally in the case of radial parenchyma). Radial tracheids somewhat resemble parenchyma in shape and length, although their shape can be more irregular.

Almost all wood cells, even in living trees, are dead—that is, devoid of protoplasm and nucleus. The exceptions are a few layers of young cells produced during current growth by the cambium and by parenchyma cells located in sapwood. Cambium derives by differentiation of cells of the apical meristem, generative tissue that comprises the growing tips (stem, branches, and roots) of the plant and is responsible for primary growth, or growth in length. Cambium is considered to be lateral meristem; by producing new wood and bark, it carries out secondary growth, or growth in diameter. Microscopic observation of thin transverse sections shows the cambium to be a one-cell-wide layer of dividing initials and of a small but varying number of undifferentiated derivative cells, which together form the cambial zone. Further division and differentiation of the derivative cells gives rise to wood and bark.

Observed microscopically, the cells of wood appear to be composed of cell wall and cell cavity; in dead cells the cavity is empty. Gaps of various shapes, called pits, are often seen in great numbers in the cell walls. Pits serve as passages of communication between neighbouring cells and come in pairs—one in each of the adjoining cell walls—separated by a membrane. Other microscopic features are tyloses, plugs comprising various plant materials that obstruct the vessel members of hardwoods and that form mainly when sapwood is transformed to heartwood. Under the microscope, the resin canals of softwoods are revealed to be not cells but tubular spaces between cells, lined with specialized parenchyma; they also are plugged in heartwood.

Ultrastructure and chemical composition

Polarization microscopy, X rays, electron microscopy, and other techniques provide information regarding the structure of cell walls and other features hidden to light microscopes. Cell walls are crystalline. They are composed of a thin, outer primary wall and a much thicker secondary wall, the latter made of three layers. The smallest visible building units of cell walls are the microfibrils, which appear stringlike under the electron microscope, about 10–30 nanometres (billionths of a metre) in diameter and of indeterminate length. The orientation and weaving of microfibrils varies; this makes possible the distinction of three layers (called S₁, S₂, and S₃), with the microfibrils having an axial direction in the middle (S₂) layer and a generally transverse direction in the outer layers. The inner surface of cell walls is covered by a warty layer. Pit membranes vary in structure; in softwood tracheids they possess a central thickening (torus), whereas in other cell types they are made of randomly arranged microfibrils.

Chainlike cellulose molecules, which constitute the microfibrils, provide the skeleton of wood. Noncellulosic constituents (hemicelluloses, lignin, and pectic substances) are located among microfibrils but do not form microfibrils. Cellulose is mostly concentrated in the secondary cell wall, and lignin in the middle lamella, the layer that separates the walls of adjacent cells. Quantitatively, cellulose and the other chemical constituents are contained in wood in the following proportions (in percentage of the oven-dry weight of wood): cellulose 40–50 percent (about the same in softwoods and hardwoods), hemicelluloses 20 percent in softwoods and 15–35 percent in hardwoods, lignin 25–35 percent in softwoods and 17–25 percent in hardwoods, and pectic substances in very small proportion. In addition, wood contains extractives (gums, fats, resins, waxes, sugars, oils, starches, alkaloids, and tannins) in various amounts (usually 1–10 percent but sometimes 30 percent or more). Extractives are not structural components but inclusions in cell cavities and cell walls; they can be removed without changing the wood structure (see the section Extractives).

Variation of structure and defects

Because of differences in cellular composition and arrangement, the structure of wood varies among species. This variation influences appearance and properties and makes for a wide choice of woods for different uses, and it provides the basis for wood identification. Variation also exists among trees of the same species (because of environmental and genetic influences) and within a single tree. Characters that vary within a tree are mainly cell length, proportion of latewood, angle of microfibrils, and proportion of cellulose. In most woods, from the pith outward, their values all increase progressively and rapidly until, after a number of growth rings (20 or more), they attain a “typical” level; in the outer rings (200th and beyond) of very old trees, they decrease again. The atypical wood near the pith is called juvenile wood, having been produced in the earliest stages of tree development. Another source of variation is the progressive formation of heartwood from sapwood by deposition of extractives and structural changes.

Relatively more important from the practical point of view is variation caused by the presence of defects such as knots, spiral grain, compression and tension wood, shakes, and pitch pockets. Knots are caused by inclusion of dead or living branches. Because branches are indispensable members of a living tree, knots are largely unavoidable, but they can be reduced by silvicultural means, such as spacing of trees and pruning. Spiral grain is the spiral arrangement of cells with respect to the tree axis. Compression and tension wood are structural abnormalities in trees (softwoods and hardwoods, respectively) that are caused to deviate from their normal, vertical position by wind or other forces. Shakes are separations of wood tissue, and pitch pockets (in softwoods with resin canals) are separations filled with resin. Defects, depending on their kind and extent, can adversely affect the appearance, strength, dimensional stability, and other properties of wood.