The holm oak is a plant belonging to the Fagaceae family, widespread in the countries of the Mediterranean basin, and located up to 600 m above sea level, even higher in Southern Italy. It’s one of the evergreen oaks, and can reach a thousand years old.
Being tannin-rich, the holm oak wood is very difficult to machine. The holm oak is generally an evergreen tree with a trunk that is rarely straight, single or divided at the base, with a height up to 20-25 meters. The bark is smooth and grey when young, eventually become hard and dark almost blackish, finely cracked in small persistent patches of almost square shape.
The wood is diffuse porous, the heartwood (darker coloured wood placed in the central part of the trunk) is reddish in colour while sapwood is light. It is a hard, compact and heavy wood, which is hard to work with and to mature.
Photo gallery
