Identify this wood (if you can)

[David L]

This is a real toughie, I'll poop in my pants if someone gets this one right!!!
By the way, it's not Waterfall Bubinga so don't even go there.

Just to give you a perspective on how tight the figure is this piece of wood is only 5" long and 2 1/4" wide.

David L

[tippie53]

looks like high quilt bubinga ??? Don't tell me if I am right or wrong till someone else guess something.

[SKBarbour]

I'm going with pomelle sapele.

[David L]

Not Bubinga or Sapele!

Daviod L

Must be that Malpe wood you recently invented....

[Ben-Had]

quilted Mahogany

[David L]

Not fantasy Maple, not quilted Hog. Keep trying!

David L

[B. Howard]

Highly figured woods can be tough, especially when you can't see the endgrain or any flat sawn grain or taste the wood (yes, I've been known to taste wood to help discern what it is)......I am going to go on instinct here and say it is a piece of Cherry.

[David L]

Brian is right in so much as that with only a picture one is at a real disadvantage. So many things that can be used to identify a species are not realized, Brian mentioned end grain and taste (doesn't surprise me), but also the smell of the freshly cut sample, the feel of the texture, the weightiness (how heavy it feels in your hands), how hard or soft it is, does it dent easily, and on and on.
This wood is called Xylay Lace, Genus family Fabaceae, sub family Casalpinioideae (it's all Greek to me). It grows mostly in Southeast Asia but can also be found in parts of Africa. My pitiful and scant research shows that it has several cousins (won't list them here). There are also some Afzelias that fall into the Family of Leguminosae, I'm not sure if there is a relation there or it's just a word game, Brian?

David L

[B. Howard]

Actually it's Latin, not Greek ;-)
I don't have any specific data on a wood by that common name, and you did not reference a specific species. It is a member of the cassia group of Legumes (Leguminosae) which makes it a close relative of some of the following; Pernambuco, Honey Locust, Bubinga, Merabu, Zebrawood & Purpleheart to name a few ( Latin omitted for ease of posting). Afzelia quanzensis or Chanfuta as it is known is a close relative as well just as you suspected. While we can only glean so much from the information as to family and sub-family relations, we an deduce that it should be a medium dense hardwood with decent stability after drying with a tendency toward interlocked grain.