How to Use sapwood in a Sentence

sapwood

noun
  • These girdling roots cause compression of the stem and sapwood.
    — Rebecca Jepsen, The Mercury News, 28 Aug. 2019
  • There are also grades available containing some sapwood, which will be a bit cheaper.
    — Popular Mechanics Editors, Popular Mechanics, 29 May 2021
  • The construction-common and deck-common grades of redwood decking are both streaked with sapwood and contain knots.
    — Joseph Truini, Popular Mechanics, 7 June 2020
  • Researchers have successfully used a 1-cubic-inch block of pine sapwood as a water filter.
    — Popular Science, 2 Nov. 2020
  • This can also occur when trees are planted too deep, as adventitious (growing sideways from the stem) roots grow against the stem and squeeze the sapwood.
    — Rebecca Jepsen, The Mercury News, 28 Aug. 2019
  • The sapwood’s structure already performs a filtering action in the living wood, screening out air bubbles from the tree sap.
    — Popular Science, 2 Nov. 2020
  • The evaluation assesses the tree’s vigor, the thickness of its sapwood shell, its disease stresses, the state of the roots and the like.
    — Adrian Higgins, idahostatesman, 17 Jan. 2018
  • When accounting for the missing sapwood (nine rings for Baltic oak), this means the trees were felled in 1625 or later.
    — Aoife Daly, Discover Magazine, 15 Mar. 2022
  • The discoloration extends into the tissue as far as the sapwood, which contains the functioning vascular tissue.
    — oregonlive, 23 Jan. 2022
  • Such wounds usually do not knit back together, even if the branch is secured back into place; the tissues that the interrupted sapwood kept alive will dry out and die on the growth past the break.
    — Miri Talabac, baltimoresun.com, 24 Feb. 2022
  • Entering tree branches through wounds caused by any number of actions, the Hypoxylon fungus grows into sapwood, where decay begins.
    — Sallie Lee, AL.com, 2 Aug. 2017
  • So, to find out if this is the cause, to verify the infection, go outside to your tree, and cut into the light-colored sapwood of a dying branch, and look for greenish-black streaks and discoloration.
    — Steve Bender, Southern Living, 15 Oct. 2025
  • First, the woodpeckers drill through the resinous sapwood, stopping occasionally to let the sap build up on the exterior, which forms a protective plate around the two-to-three-inch-wide entry hole.
    — National Geographic, 17 Sep. 2020
  • Use a water repellent on all exterior redwood, especially for sapwood-containing grades.
    — Popular Mechanics Editors, Popular Mechanics, 29 May 2021
  • Aspens have a reputation for being especially fire-resistant because of the amount of water in their tissues, which can exceed 100 percent of the weight of their dry sapwood.
    — New York Times, 16 Mar. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sapwood.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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