• Medium-sized, tall hardwood tree.
• Grows to 40m on favourable sites, with good form.
• Bark is grey and fibrous up to the upper limbs.
• Upper limbs are smooth and whitish, giving it the name ‘silvertop’.

Colour

• Heartwood is pale brown, and may have pinkish tints.

Grain

• Close-grained, usually straight.
• Texture is medium and even.

• Construction: structural plywood, framing, general building construction, decking and flooring.

• Density: 860kg/m³ at 12% moisture content; about 1.2m³ of seasoned sawn timber per tonne.
• Strength groups: S2 unseasoned, (SD2) seasoned (brackets indicate provisional value).
• Stress grades: F11, F14, F17, F22, (unseasoned); F17, F22, F27, F34 (seasoned) when visually stress-graded according to AS 2082—2000: Timber—Hardwood—Visually stress-graded hardwood for structural purposes.
• Joint groups: J3 unseasoned, JD2 seasoned.
• Shrinkage to 12% MC: about 10.0% (tangential), 6.0% (radial).
• Unit shrinkage: not available.
• Durability above-ground: Class 3 (life expectancy 7–15 years).
• Durability in-ground: Class 3 (life expectancy 5–15 years).
• Lyctine susceptibility: untreated sapwood not susceptible to lyctid borer attack.
• Termite resistance: not resistant.
• Preservation: sapwood readily impregnates with preservative.
• Seasoning: some collapse and checking occurs.
• Hardness: hard (rated 2 on a 6-class scale) to indent and work with hand tools.
• Machining: not hard to work.
• Fixing: no difficulties using standard fittings and fastenings.
• Gluing: glues well.
• Finishing: readily accepts paint, stain and polish.

General characteristics

• Sapwood: pale brown, not easily differentiated from the heartwood.
• Heartwood: pale brown to brown, may have pink tints.
• Texture: medium to open, slightly interlocked grain.

Wood structure

• Vessels: small to medium, mostly solitary, usually forms oblique arrangements, forms growth rings with vessel numbers reducing in the latewood.
• Parenchyma (soft tissue): none visible through hand lens.
• Rays: very fine.

Other features

• Burning splinter test: match-size splinter burns to charcoal leaving no ash.

• Boland, DJ, Brooker, MIH, Chippendale, GM, Hall, N, Hyland, BPM, Johnston, RD, Kleinig, DA and Turner, JD 2006, Forest trees of Australia, 5th ed., CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Australia.
• Bootle, K 2005, Wood in Australia: Types, properties and uses, 2nd ed., McGraw-Hill, Sydney.
• Ilic, J 1991, CSIRO atlas of hardwoods, Crawford House Press, Bathurst, Australia.
• Queensland Government, DAF 2018, Construction timbers in Queensland: Properties and specifications for satisfactory performance of construction timbers in Queensland. Class 1 and Class 10 buildings, Books 1 & 2, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Brisbane.
• Standards Australia, 2000, AS 2082—2000: Timber—Hardwood—Visually stress-graded for structural purposes, Standards Australia International, Strathfield, NSW.