Q.What is wood botanically?

Step 1. Recall the everyday meaning of 'wood'. In common usage, 'wood' refers to the hard, dense material that makes up a tree's trunk and branches, used for timber, furniture and fuel.

Step 2. Give the precise botanical identity. Botanically, this hard material is secondary xylem - the complex tissue produced by the vascular cambium on its inner face, consisting of an axial system of tracheary elements (vessels/tracheids), fibres and wood parenchyma, plus a radial system of xylem rays.

Step 3. Note its variability and classification. Wood is not uniform: it is classified as porous (hard) wood, which contains vessels (typical of most dicotyledons, e.g. Morus rubra), or non-porous (soft) wood, which lacks vessels (typical of gymnosperms); by season of formation into spring/early wood and autumn/late wood, whose alternation over a year forms an annual ring; and by age/function into pale, conducting sapwood and dark, non-conducting heartwood. …

State the precise botanical identity of wood (secondary xylem) and briefly note …

• Answering only with the everyday description ('the hard part of a tree') without naming it as secondary xylem. …