can someone fill me in here?

[chevytaHOE5674]

Up here aspen gets used for paper pulp and sawed into low quality pallet stock. Red pine is sawed in construction dimensional lumber.

 

[Zackman1801]

yeah thats where our red pine goes, but even those mills are getting edgy about taking it, they would rather take stuff thats too good to go in the pulp pile but isnt quite good enough to send to the mill. Like white pine, or hardwoods, they will take the red pine but its not at the top of their list.

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

Their are some mills in the area that saw 100% red pine. Biewer lumber for instance does almost 100% red pine.

 

[sesmith]

Heh.
I bought some of those 20 years ago. They came in the mail, could have been from the same outfit.

Yes, they grow fast. Yes, they are cheap. They also sprout up everywhere and are nearly impossible to get rid of. They are shallow-rooted and do blow down.

In this case, the "hybrid" they are referring to is the tendency of the tree to be somewhat spreading (for shade) rather than columnar like a typical Lombardy Poplar.

Mine seem to be getting attacked by some kind of beetle, and the wood then rots from the inside. I took one down last weekend, and have two more to go.

I have been getting some good advice on killing off the stumps and suckers in the homeowner forum, so hopefully, they will not grow back.

I put in a row of hybrid poplars from Gurney nursery in the early 80's. They grew fast and looked great on my property line, but they're short lived. After 20 years they all died within a year of each other. I never had much problem with root sprouts until the year they died. They then sent up massive amounts of sprouts. I cut them all down and tried transplanting the sprouts to replace the line of trees. Maybe I did it at the wrong season or something, but the sprouts didn't survive the transplanting (did it in the fall). The mower took care of the sprouts in the lawn. I got 6 full cords of wood out of that row...burned it in the wood stove that year. I was glad when I got through it all as it was some of the crappiest wood I ever burned. It burned ok, just didn't put out the heat of the better hardwoods, and don't expect the fire to last through the night! But free heat is free heat

 

[wilbilt]

Maybe I did it at the wrong season or something, but the sprouts didn't survive the transplanting (did it in the fall).

All I have to do is stick a sprout in the ground here, and it will grow. Heck, they even grow from just lying on the ground!

After dealing with them for 20 years, they are ugly, nasty and practically worthless, IMHO.

 

[PB]

Yeah I know a professor friend of mine that is working on it as we speak. The work looks promising.

There some pretty big drawbacks to the varieties that are available now. It takes A LOT of energy and chemicals to break down the cellulosic fibers in the tree. The current research is focused on genetic engineering of the cell walls that will allow for them to be more easily broken down. We are at least 5 years from seeing a feasible crop just in test plots.

Hey Zackman, those trees (along with the hybrid locusts) were developed for erosion control. The roots go deeper than grass and will hold a bank more effectively in rain and snow. They grow fast, sometimes up to 8' a year, but are very short lived. Some don't even make it to the 15 year mark, but as someone mentioned they sprout up quickly. If they are planted in a place that already has a healthy population of trees, there is no way they can out compete the trees already there.