Square trees

[Ethan Tapper]

This is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. Not to far off from what some timber companies got down the pipe, though, I’ll bet.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3018/whatever-happened-to-that-plan-to-grow-square-trees

[dlskidmore]

Well, at least it’s using normal properties of wood, not genetic enginnering or injected chemicals. Both techniques though would take so much labor and/or unusual equiptment that it’s not really of interest outside the art community. If this was doable with a reasonably small set of affordable tools, I could see this method of extracting the pulp from a living cambium, and bending the cambium into the desired shape to regrow could be an interesting sculpture method. There are already techniques for some living wood sculpture, this greatly increases the options for sharp bends in the work.

[Ethan Tapper]

You’re right, there are scarier things out there… I guess I don’t much like the idea of farming trees, though, particularly franken-trees. I think increasing the yield and efficiency of our forests will have more to do with responsible management than with figuring out how to get around nature in the long run. I look at what farming has become over the last thirty years or so and am thankful that growing wood hasn’t become as much like that (yet).

[dlskidmore]

As much as enviromentalists refer to killing trees when you print things out: What percentage of the paper pulp comes from lumber waste and worst-first forest care, and what percentage comes from perfectly good trees felled just for paper pulp?

[Author]

Posts