Wood Flashcards
(40 cards)
Softwood
- A type of tissue found in conifers
Hardwood
- Only dicotyledon class of flowering plants
Angiosperm
- Flowering plant
Gymnosperm
- Conifers
- Cone-bearing seed plants
Divisions of trees
- Angiosperms
- Gymnosperms
Classes of Angiosperms
- Dicotyledon (eudicot)
- Monocotyledon
What is wood made from?
- Accumulation of cell walls of the secondary xylem in conifers and dicot flowering plants
What is Xylem and Phloem?
- xylem and phloem are vascular tissue
- Xylem conducts water upwards
- Phloem conducts organic constituents
- Can be secondary or primary
What is secondary growth?
- In diameter of plant (girth)
- Cambium (lateral meristem)
- Produce phloem toward outside of plant, xylem toward inside
- Monocots don’t have secondary growth
What is primary growth?
- Apical
- Produces leaves, non-woody stems, roots
What is the accumulation of xylem tissue?
Wood
Annual ring of xylem is what?
- Formed in one growing season
- Tree rings
- Dendrochronology to get age of tree by annual accumulation of xylem rings
- Springwood cells larger than later season cells
Types of xylem cells
- tracheid cells, long and thin with tapered ends
- Vessel elements, short wide cells, align to form pipe-like vessels
What happens when xylem cells form secondary cell walls?
- Cell walls harden with cell death
- Still work in conduction
What type of xylem cells do conifers mostly have?
- Tracheid
- Makes wood more uniform
What type of xylem cells do angiosperms mostly have?
- Dicots have more of both types
- Makes more variety wood
Where does the property of wood come from?
- Lignification of secondary xylem walls
- Thickening of cell wall by lignin gives hardness
Lignin
- Polymers of lignin subunits, many variations in final structure
- Phenolic compounds
- Up to 40% of plant organic material
- One of the most abundant organic substances in nature
Importance of lignin
- Strengthens around fibrous polysaccharide cell wall
- Allows plant to become large, tall, upright structures
- Evolutionarily, adaptation of form in successful transition from aquatic to terrestrial habitat
Why are there different types of wood?
- Polymerization of phenolic subunits is ‘random’
- Final polymers not uniform in result
- Wood from different sources have different characteristics
What makes wood harder?
- More lignification
- Breakdown of random polymerization of subunits is difficult, makes wood durable
BC temperate rainforest
- Few species of trees but large numbers of each (softwoods)
Tropical rainforest
- Many diverse trees, interspersed (hardwoods)
Where is the main source of hardwood in the world?
- Tropical Asia