From viewpoint of chemical element and microstructure of wood, this paper makes a discussion on thermal diffusivity of wood and two theoretical expressions of thermal diffusivity for the choral and radial directions were derived. The thermal diffusivities of the choral and radial directions for about 20 species of trees were calculated with the derived theoretical expressions and compared with the experimental values. The average error of the theoretical values of thermal diffusivity was 7.5% for choral direction and 6.2% for radial direction.