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Rainforest trees

 

Many of the trees have straight trunks and smooth thin barks with leaves and branches only in the top quarter. Most are evergreen and grow all year. Tree; in the Emergent and Canopy layers often have raise root 'buttresses' to aid support as root systems are shallow and spreading. Most of the nutrients occur in the top 10cm of the rainforest soil so the tree would fall over without this support.

Wood from rainforest trees

As trees from Tropical regions grow all year round the wood is short grained as there is no distinct annual rings.

Wood from rainforest trees are usually a dark red brown. This colour has been very popular for centuries for making furniture. Rainforest wood is usually hard with few knots. A knot is the area of wood where the side branch comes from the main trunk. Rainforest trees from the Emergent layer have few side branches, so wood from these trees contain few knots. Knots are seen when the timber is cut into planks. Timber knots cause problems for furniture makers as the wood is likely to split in this area. Furniture makers also look for woods that do not swell or shrink. Shrinkage in wood can cause cracking. Rainforest woods such as mahogany shrink very little and are therefore ideal.

So in comparison with beech, mahogany is favoured because of:

deep rich red colour

no annual rings, fine grained wood

no or few knots

little shrinkage

We import approximately 90% of wood for furniture, doors, window frames, tables, chairs, cabinets, cupboards and bed frames. Much of this wood comes from the rainforests of Malaysia and Brazil. Softwoods such as Piranha Pine which is used for shelving, kitchens etc comes from Brazil.

Plywood and chipboard, which are used to build furniture and wall panels are often made of rainforest woods. 0nly trees that the world market wants e.g. teak, mahogany, balsa and meranti are exported. Out of 100 trees felled only 2 will be exported. This is because the world market only buys the trees that there is public demand for. Some of the remaining felled trees are sold for local use, while the rest is burnt or left damaged.