An immediate and broad distinction that can be made between types of trees (and wood) is the label of hardwood or softwood. This is somewhat of a misnomer, as the label is actually just a separation between angiosperms (flowering plants such as maple, oak, or rosewood), and conifers (cone-bearing trees such as pine, spruce, or fir).
Hardwoods (angiosperms) have broad-leaved foliage, and tend to be deciduous—that is, they lose their leaves in the autumn. (However, many tropical hardwood species exist which are evergreen—they maintain their leaves year-round.) Additionally, hardwood trees tend to have a branched or divided trunk, referred to as a dendritic form.
Softwoods (conifers) tend to have needle or scale-like foliage, though in some uncommon instances, they can have rather broad, flat leaves, such as Kauri (Agathis australis). Most softwood trees are evergreen, however, some conifers such as larch or cypress lose their foliage in the autumn, (hence the common name “bald-cypress”).
Softwoods tend to have a single, dominant, straight trunk with smaller side branches, referred to as an excurrent form—this cone-shaped growth form helps trees in temperate climates shed snow. Again, there are several conifers that are an exception to this growth form, such as Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani).
The confusion in labels arises in that the wood of angiosperms is not always hard (a glaring example is Balsa, which is technically classified as a hardwood), while the wood of conifers is not necessarily always soft, (an example of a relatively hard softwood would be Yew). However, as a rule of thumb, hardwoods are of course generally harder than softwoods, and the label is still useful to distinguish between two broad groups of trees and certain characteristics of their wood.
