It is light colored and extremely tight grain, very hard wood. Wood engraving requires special tools like your metal engraving burins and similar. If you use your woodcut tools with this stuff, you will surely ruin the blades. It is useful for inserts to achieve a high degree of fine detail. More expensive than birch and pine, comes in various widths.
Boards join very well without gaps.
Frankly, I'm sold on maple. It is harder to cut than cherry and working through the occassional knot is like engraving metal. Clearing larger areas takes patience, a very large very sharp knife with a mallet and frequent resharpening. It holds a very fine detail and does not splinter. A hardwood, readily available with very open and pronounced grain.