What type of wood does Genesis say was used for Noah's Ark?

Genesis says Noah's Ark was made from gopher wood. The phrase appears in Genesis 6:14, where Noah is told to make the Ark from this wood and cover it with pitch inside and out.

The identity of gopher wood is uncertain. “Gopher” appears only in this biblical passage, making it a hapax legomenon, a word recorded just once in a text. Scholars and translators have proposed that it could refer to a particular kind of wood, a construction method, or an older term whose meaning was later lost.

Common guesses such as cedar, cypress, and pine are interpretations rather than certain answers. Some English translations preserve the wording as “gopher wood,” while others use “wood of cypress” or similar wording. The safest canonical answer to the Genesis question is therefore the traditional phrase “gopher wood,” not a confidently identified modern tree species.