The thing about trees is that there are a lot of different kinds of them. A recent study found something more than 60,000 different species in the world, and this does not even include plants we think of as trees, but that are secretly something else (like all the species of palm tree, which are more closely related to grasses than oaks). My local lumberyard stocks wood from a tiny percentage of the world’s trees, but still felt overwhelming. Pine, oak, cedar, maple, walnut, poplar—I just wanted to make a…
