experienced green wood worker here: i make a lot of spoons. fruit woods are hard to carve but make lovely spoons. popular easy woods are alder & birch. softwoods aren't usually much good for green woodwork - they're just too soft. i've carved a bunch of different woods and very rarely had anything crack while drying, spoons are just so small that the warping is negligible. even using heartwood & sapwood in the same spoon (pretty colours!) is very unlikely to crack.
