The wood weighs 36.83 pounds per cubic foot. It is straight-grained, the medullary rays are numerous but not prominent, the pores diffuse but small, and the summerwood forms only a narrow band, like a line. The annual rings do not produce much figure, but wood has another kind of figure, the kind that characterizes English and Circassian walnuts, smoky, cloudy, shaded series of rings, independent of the growth rings. They have no definite width or constant color, but the color is usually deeper than the body of the wood. This figure is one of the most prized properties of red gum. It is that which makes the wood the closest known imitator of Circassian walnut. All red gum is not figured, and that which is figured may be worked in a way to conceal or make little use of the figure. It shows best in rotary cut veneer and tangentially sawed lumber. Various woods are imitated with red gum. It is stained or painted to look like oak, cherry, mahogany, and even maple. Some trees have thin sapwood, and others are all sapwood. This peculiarity sometimes leads to misunderstandings in lumber transactions. A buyer specifies red gum, expecting to get red heartwood, but the seller delivers lumber cut from the red gum tree, though light colored sapwood may predominate. Properly speaking, the name is applied to the tree as a whole and does not refer to any particular color of wood in the tree. The term “red” is said to have referred originally to the color of autumn leaves, and not to the wood. The fruit of red gum is a bur, midway in appearance and size between the sycamore ball and the chestnut bur. It hangs on the tree until late in winter. The resin which exudes from wounds in the bark is of much commercial importance and is shipped from New Orleans and Mexican ports. Near the northern limit of the species’ range the trees yield little resin, but it is abundant farther south. In the southern states it is used locally as chewing gum. It is known commercially as copalm balm.