A two-by-four milled from a 50-year old pine tree that grew up a forestry plantation can hold up a house — and those trees grow faster and are harvested more economically than trees in natural old-growth forests.
But woodworkers can easily distinguish wood created by plantation trees versus old-growth forests.
The favorite wood of my woodworking friend, Walter Tschinkel, comes from trees that grew in old-growth, long-leaf pine forests of Florida. Until the early 1900s, those open, airy forests originally covered over 90 million acres of the coastal plains.
Their dense heartwood — the trunks' inner core — was saturated with resin to fend off insect attacks, which created the unique wood qualities that Walter treasures.
The lamps he makes from thin slices of that wood feel good in his hands and create the warm, honeyed light that’s emotionally calming to the people who sit in its glow.
But today, due to logging and conversion of forest to farming land, a mere 3% of that forest remains, occurring now only as tiny isolated fragments. Today’s plantation trees have wide growth rings and lack any resinous heartwood. Walter says, “Second-growth wood is to the real thing as Formica is to marble.”
He and other woodworkers now get old-growth wood by salvaging beams and joists from dismantled buildings that were constructed over a century ago.
So, although plantations supply us with needed lumber, there are many values that only old-growth forests can provide — one is the sense of aesthetics they offer us.
I picture Walter in his workshop, finding quiet delight working that old pinewood — the odor of turpentine, the little piles of sticky sawdust, and the feel of history in his hands.
