How does Balsa Wood grow?
By this article to more about the balsa wood. There is no such thing as
entire forests of balsa trees. They grow singly or in very small, widely
scattered groups in the jungle. For hundreds of years, balsa was actually
considered a weed tree. They reproduce by growing hundreds of long seed pods,
which eventually open up and, with the help of the wind, scatter thousands of
new seeds over a large area of the jungle. Each seed is airborne on its own
small wisp of down, similar to the way dandelion seeds spread. The seeds
eventually fall to the ground and are covered by the litter of the jungle. There
they lay and accumulate until one day there is an opening in the jungle canopy
large enough for the sun's rays to strike the jungle floor and start the seeds
growing. Wherever there is an opening, made either by a farmer or by another
tree dying, balsa will spring up as thick as grass. A farmer is often hard put
to keep his food plot clear of balsa rectangle . As the
new balsa trees grow, the strongest will become predominate and the weaker trees
will die. By the time they are mature, there may be only one or two basa trees
to an acre of jungle.
The perfect nurse!
Nature evidently designed the balsa tree to be a "nurse tree" which would
protect the sloweroeicoqmb -growing species of trees from the scorching jungle
sun during their critical early years. For instance, in an area of the jungle
that has been ravaged by a tropical storm or other natural disaster, the balsa
trees will quickly sprout and begin to shoot up to impressive heights in a very
short time. Their fast growth, and the extra large leaves they have in their
early years, provide shade to the young seedlings of the slower-growing forest
giants. By the time the seedlings are established enough to take care of
themselves, the balsa tree is beginning to die. Undoubtably, the balsa tree's
rapid growth, fast spreading crown of first very large and gradually smaller
leaves, and it's relatively short life span were intended to make it the
"perfect nurse" in the jungle ecosystem.
Why is Balsa Wood so light?
The secret to balsa wood's lightness can only be seen with a microscope. The
cells are big and very thin walled, so that the ratio of solid matter to open
space is as small as possible. Most woods have gobs of heavy, plastic-like
cement, called lignin, holding the cells together. In balsa, lignin is at a
minimum. Only about 40% of the volume of a piece of balsa is solid substance. To
give a balsa tree the strength it needs to stand in the jungle, nature pumps
each balsa cell full of water until they become rigid - like a car tire full of
air. Green balsa wood typically contains five times as much water by weight as
it has actual wood substance, compared to most hardwoods which contain very
little water in relation to wood substance. Green bass polywood must
therefore be carefully kiln dried to remove most of the water before it can be
sold. Kiln drying is a tedious two week process that carefully removes the
excess water until the moisture content is only 6%. Kiln drying also kills any
bacteria, fungi, and insects that may have been in the raw balsa wood.
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