Hi all,
I stumbled across this earlier on while looking for the density for Barberry.
It's a large spreadsheet of wood densities, and by large I mean ~16500 species. It looks like it might be quite useful as it's not based on suitability of wood for lumber or anything, just a list of densities of wood, that's it.
The density is in g/cm3, if you multiply by 1000 or just remove the decimal point and everything to the left, then you get kg/m3. I added another column in my copy to calculate kg/m3 based off the g/cm3 column which makes it easy to read.
If you click on the link, the spreadsheet will automatically download onto your computer, so don't click on it if you're not OK with that (but it seems perfectly safe and legitimate to me). Also, if this is somehow against the rules, please just delete the post, but I hope I'm OK, it's essentially just a download link for a spreadsheet of wood data.
http://datadryad.org/bitstream/handle/10255/dryad.235/GlobalWoodDensityDatabase.xls?sequence=1It mentions you should make contact if you want to use it in a publication, but has no mention of private/non commercial use, and it is freely available on the internet, so I can only assume that private viewing is permitted (if someone knows otherwise, let me know so I can delete this post). It might be produced by Leeds University going off the contact email address, but I don't know.
Anyway, looks very useful, it even has many New Zealand native species. I often have trouble finding densities for shrubby, non-timber species too, so could be good there.
It's worth mentioning that of course wood densities will vary greatly based on a number of factors, but still probably a decent guide to go off and you can do your own specific gravity tests on a wood sample if you really want to anyway.
Another Note: It uses scientific names, so if you only know the common name, google it, and choose the wikipedia link, it will have all the taxonomy details on the right, and if you click on the genus, it usually gives a massive list at the bottom of the page which will tell you all the species.
