Lignum vitae wood can also be used to brew a tea. Other names for lignum vitae include palo santo (Spanish for "holy wood") Aura palo santo and "bastard greenheart" (not to be confused with true greenheart "Chlorocardium rodiei", a popular wood in shipbuilding, cabinetry, and woodturning but a completely different timber). Lignum vitae is also one of the numerous hard, dense woods loosely referred to as "ironwood". Lignum vitae is hard and durable, and is also the densest wood traded (density: 1.23 g/cm); it will easily sink in water. On the Janka Scale of Hardness, which measures hardness of woods, lignum vitae
Meyer hardness test test is that it is less sensitive to the applied load, especially compared to the Brinell hardness test. For cold worked materials the Meyer hardness is relatively constant and independent of load, whereas for the Brinell hardness test it decreases with higher loads. For annealed materials the Meyer hardness increases continuously with load due to strain hardening. Based on Meyer's law hardness values from this test can be converted into Brinell hardness values, and vice versa. The Meyer hardness test was devised by Eugene Meyer of the Materials Testing Laboratory at the Imperial School of Technology, Charlottenburg, Germany, circa 1908.