What the World Needs Now Is Square Trees

We already have square watermelons:

There are such watermelons on our market. the peasants place a box out the melon when they are growing. then the the outlay formed.

just for convievent transport.

about 30 some odd years ago, I recall reading something about a some place in centeral american had a small groove of about 16 trees that was realitivly square,

they thought is was a mutation and were going to cuttings off of it to try to reproduce it.

that was the last heard of it.

Square trees do grow in Panama. I do not know how many. They are a big tourist attraction here, but not being a tourist, I have not yet visited them...

Regarding square trees in Panama- I have also heard absolutely nothing about the quality of the wood. We have normal round wood trees that are absolutely useless for anything other than blocking a road when they fall...

probally a weed..........

Such a tree would be catastrophic to woodpeckers. They'd starve to death while trying to decide on which of the 4 sides to peck.

Who the heck wrote this? It might be more convenient to have all 16" square fir trees, but in general I think not. Storage is only an issue in the huge sawmills, not the smaller ones that dot the countryside. What about veneer? Try putting a square log on a lathe. And what about quarter-sawn lumber? At least in this part of the world, where we have a lot of hardwood sawmills, very little of the round trees gets wasted. Slab wood gets sold as low-cost firewood. And, in areas where selective cutting is done, the size of the logs varies greatly, so you'd lose a lot of the square efficiency.

This might be a great solution for the mega-lumber companies, but it's no good for the rest of the world. And, do we want to have those genes out there in the forest?

Storage and waste, but nowadays everything gets used.

they never though about the taper to the logs.

Why don't they develop trees that are already 2 x 4's and loose leaf notebooks and toilet paper and eliminate the paper and saw mills all together.....doh, now i'm talking stupid.

I know it's more efficient, but in my short lifetime I've seen tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, and bananas go from really delicious to cardboard in the name of economy and convenience.

I agree, I love seeds in my tomatoes.

And I love seeds in watermelons, but I only found one this past summer. I drove almost 30 miles for that and paid $8!

Like one of the comments said, how are you gonna hug it ?!

Why not just learn to build things with round trees?

A dumb idea.

Very little of the tree is gone to waste. The bulk of the log goes to lumber or veneer and the chips go to the pulp mill for paper and any other drop is burnt for heat or power.

Contrary to what many think, the logging and lumber industries are very efficient and waste little. Once an area is clear cut you can get a permit to go in and collect fire wood (of which I am sitting on 6 cord of beautiful fire wood), then they clean up the slash and replant. For every tree taken down they replant many more (I don't know the multiple but it far exceeds 1:2).

Travis

As stated no need for square logs, but I've always wondered why some furniture co. has not trained young trees to produce the curved grain wood for furniture parts.

I guess to much long term thinking in a disposable/disposed world.

Brad

like birdseye maple

And bent chair/table legs

The above from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_species

Mind you, bamboo is not a tree, but a perennial woody-stemmed grass, although some species may grow 40 metres or more tall.

Square peas are nearly available on a commercial basis.

Kind Regards....

Good info, Sparky. I found a supplier, and they have some nice pics etc.

As I recall, Marks and Spencers tried selling grey peas once (tinned ones have artificial colour added), but the public weren't too keen.