It is well known that the porosity and adsorption capacity in a carbon depends on the nature of precursor, pyrolysis and activation conditions and the ash content. The studies on carbon prepared from the dry and wet babbool wood were under taken to ascertain the effect of initial state of precursor on the development of porosity in the resulting activated carbon. The characterization and adsorption studies carried out shows the presence of mainly mesoporosity in the carbon prepared from dry wood while more of microporosity was observed in the activated carbon prepared from wet wood. The results on porosity in both the cases have been compared and correlated with their processing conditions.