Advantages and disadvantages of cork and hardwood
The difference is from the degree of hardness.
Hardwood has high hardness and wear resistance. The wood products are durable and beautiful.
Soft wood is soft and the pattern is not obvious.
Cork consists of a number of flat cells arranged in a radiation. The cell cavity often contains resin and tannin compounds, and the cells are filled with air. Therefore, cork often has color, soft texture, elasticity, impermeability, and is not easily affected by chemicals, and is a poor conductor of electricity, heat and sound.
Hard wood is solid but slow to grow, and the wooden structure is fine and firm. Generally, such wood is very heavy. These woods are hard and fine, with lustrous color and beautiful patterns. They are excellent materials for furniture. Because hardwood is rare, it is usually expensive.
Cork-Larch Map: Hardwood-oak hardwood is not necessarily a hard material (more dense), and cork is not necessarily a soft material (less dense). For example, balsa is one of the lightest and least dense woods in the world, and it is considered hardwood. In fact,
The difference between hardwood and softwood is related to plant reproduction. All trees are propagated by producing seeds, but the structure of the seeds is not the same. Hardwood trees are angiosperms, and the seeds produced by such plants have some kind of coating. This kind of coating may be a fruit like apple or a nut like acorn.
On the other hand, cork is a gymnosperm. The seeds of these plants are not coated and fall directly to the ground. Pine trees belong to this type of plant, and their seeds grow in hard pine cones. In conifers such as pine trees, these seeds are scattered into the wind once they mature. This allows the seeds of plants to spread more widely.
Most of the time, the trees of the angiosperm will deflate when the weather is cold, while the trees of the gymnosperms will flourish all year round. Therefore, it is also appropriate to say that evergreen trees are softwoods and deciduous trees are hardwoods.
The term hardwood/cork does have some meaning. Long green trees do tend to be less dense than deciduous trees and are therefore easier to cut; most hardwoods tend to be denser and therefore stronger. However, as the classification of balsa wood shows, there is no minimum weight requirement for hardwood.
