Pamela Johnson, age 12, of San Manuel, Arizona, for her question:

Does rosewood came from rose bushes?

Roses grow in fairly slim canes that tend to get stiff and woody with age. But the wood is too weak to make a chair leg and never wide enough to make a top for a handsome rosewood cabinet. Precious rosewood does not come from a rose bush, but it has a faint scent of roses in full bloom. This is how it came to be called rosewood. Actually it is cut from several different tropical trees. Most of it comes from Brazilian trees of the pea family. In Australia, they cut handsome rosewood from a native acacia tree.

All these rosewoods are used to make the very finest furniture. The scent of roses is strongest when it is freshly cut, but it often lingers on for many years. The most valuable pieces of furniture are made entirely from rosewood. But often the precious wood is cut in thin slices and used as surface shines to show its mottled designs of rich reddish and purplish browns, accented with gleaming black.