I’m stumped. It looks like an exotic wood. Are you in Hawaii? I’ve never seen anything like it.

No :) . This is an old stick-built kitchen in Philadelphia.

Maybe they used an usual cut of regular oak? The slab drawers serve to enhance the effect.

I was wondering if it was fir plywood?

Are they solid or is it a veneer?

Did someone hand paint some grain on their plain wood fronts?

yeah..my googling tells me it might be fir.

too evenly.. round(elliptical?) for oak. even though also strong grain, etc.

would be nice to hear what others think

Many of the pine floor boards in our previous circa 1910 home had very prominent grain markings like that. We were told it was yellow heart pine. The home was in the northeast. But then again, chispa might be right.

It’s faux bois. Someone got let loose with a graining tool. Probably over old white melamine cabinets.

It could be...but if I were doing that I would at least vertically grain match the drawers. I love the mystery of it. Design CSI. Ha!

I would guess southern yellow pine or fir.

I agree with Sophie. Faux bois.

My in-laws had plywood cabinets just like that - not faux bois.

They could be faux bois, but they are wood underneath.

Did you notice the "hutch" door? I think it might be the basement door.

Poplar?

edited to add, a lot of cabinet makers in the south use solid poplar in kitchen cabinets and then stain or paint as poplar is very hard and the cabs are very durable. There usually isn’t much grain as with oak.

I’ve never seen anything like that.

What is up on the top left ... a dropped ceiling with missing parts?

Pal, you need to go visit this mysterious house and fill us in on the details!

Joseph, I was thinking it had to be plywood because with grain as wonky as some of those panels, it would have warped rather spectacularly if it weren’t ply.

I'm pretty sure it's heart pine, here are some pics of it. Scrool down on the site.https://www.searchencrypt.com/images?eq=90%2F%2BqGe6NpcOciTbNfGXX%2BtuMzUfrSkS9OkL6HO4Byc%3D

I've never seen anything like that either. I like some grain but that's really something right there.

This reminds me of something you would see in Ireland, in a kitchen that was trying (very hard) to be (more) upscale than it ever was back in the '70s/early '80s.

The pattern of the grain looks suspicious to me. That is not a constant grain pattern you can get from solid wood. I suspect the doors have been finished with a grain pattern applied to them. You state they are solid wood, so look on the inside and on the end grain to see if the pattern matches.

The more I look at it I’m thinking it’s quarter sawn something. Maybe even white or red oak. Could be pine but I would think you would still see a few knots. Maybe not if carefully chosen heart pine was used many years ago.

My guess is birch.

Curious... can't wait to find out.

Cocobolo? Tigerwood ? (not the golfer) Bubinga? Beli ? Sapele? African Teak?

Possibly American Elm or Ash?

I agree with Sophie: faux bois, and not that well done, if they intend to fool anyone. But as a faux wood for being faux for faux sake, it is very well done. A better question is "Why?" It reminds me of a project from Trading Spaces.

Kind of looks like Contact Paper, judging by the sheen. Sort of an enlarged picture of real wood, reproduced on contact paper.

It's such a modest kitchen with no other high end finishes, including the hardware, so it's hard to imagine it's any kind of exotic or expensive wood. I thought Contact Paper was an intriguing guess and found something called vinyl door wraps that are similar. Maybe it's something like that.

I work with a lot of Douglas-fir (which is what most people mean by simply "fir", which is how it's labeled for sale). That doesn't look like any fir grain I've ever seen at a lumberyard, sawmill, or logging site. Also, if it was fir, those are HUGE growth rings. To get pieces of fir wide enough to make those doors, you'd need old-growth Doug-fir - which would have much narrower grain with each growth ring closer together. Any fir with grain like that would promptly cup and then delaminate (google "ring shake").

I think it's faux bois. Regardless of the "species" it's attempting to mimic, if you imagine that rings are formed concentrically around the stem and branches, that grain shows a pattern of branching that is highly unlikely to occur in nature.

Ok I'll go back to being an actual forester rather than a forester pretending to be a kitchen expert now.

Based upon the entire house, or remembering the entire house, I did not save the link...I am leaning toward the faux bois. But I think it is probably almost as old as the cabinets themselves, probably late 1950s-1960s

@salex highly unlikely to occur in nature unless maybe it's veneer, so you're looking at a piece around the circumference of the log that has been flattened out...still pretty weird, I agree. It would have to be a very knobby wobbly log. And no knots in it, which are associated with knobs and branches, so little reason for the wood grain to undulate like that. I'm leaning towards artificial.

Are you sure it's not laminate? My mom had her late 50s kitchen cabinets covered w/ a faux wood laminate back in the early 80s - and it's still looking like new today.