Bocote: Black Lines That Ripple Across the Board

Bocote is a tree in the Cordia genus, brought to Woodway from Mexico. It is a wood remembered first for its grain rather than its name. Black lines run densely across a yellowish-brown background, rippling instead of extending straight. Relatively hard and heavy, it is often sought for knife handles, pens, and small craft pieces.

Rippling Lines

When a Bocote live-edge board is laid flat, black lines sweep and bend across the entire board. Thick and thin lines alternate, so the grain density varies even within a single board. When a line meets a knot, it curves around it, creating droplet- or eye-shaped patterns. This is the section people looking for Bocote choose first.

Dark Heartwood and Light Sapwood

Bocote has a pronounced color difference between its heartwood and sapwood. Pale cream-colored sapwood surrounds the dark heartwood crossed by flowing lines, and the boundary between the two colors is distinct. In natural live-edge boards that retain the shape near the bark, sapwood remains like bands along both edges. Viewed from the end of a board, the dark heartwood can also be seen rising in an arch beneath the light sapwood. Preserving this boundary allows one board to hold two colors at once.

Thick, Long Boards

Most of the Bocote that comes into Woodway consists of natural live-edge boards roughly 100–240 mm wide. In a 39 mm-thick board, V-shaped grain builds up in layers toward the center, with the lines continuing along the side. Some boards are more than 1 m long. In one board with an elongated hole through the center, dark grain curves around the opening; another, 1,130 mm long, has dark patterns scattered across one face.

Bocote Turned into Cutting Boards

Bocote is also available as partially finished cutting-board blanks, shaped like handled cutting boards. In some, dark heartwood covers the entire board and the grain stacks in mountain-like layers. In others, heartwood flows downward in curves between the light sapwood, turning the grain into decoration with only a finish. Even when they come from the same tree, the cutting boards can look completely different depending on which section is selected.

The thickness and flow of the lines differ from one Bocote board to the next. Every piece is one of a kind, so the same pattern will not appear again.

BocoteExotic hardwoodsGolden-brown with dark curving figure

Photos: Product photographs from the Woodway Smart Store. Some of the solid-wood pieces shown in the article may have already been sold.