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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/html/anniversary/features/0904_wood06.html

 

The Future

If the current demand for wood flooring continues, future consumers will surely have even more choices, from an ever-changing lineup of sources. Increasingly, solid wood will be considered simply as one form of a natural resource that can be chipped, peeled, ground, sliced, or otherwise disassembled and then reassembled with adhesives and various other ingredients.

	Orderly rows of Lyptus seedlings rise on a plantation in South America. It takes only about 15 years for the trees, a hybrid of two eucalyptus species, to be ready for harvesting. Photo: Courtesy of Weyerhauser

Wood from sustainable forests, grown and harvested under carefully managed conditions, will be one source of new flooring material. One example is Lyptus, a natural hybrid of two eucalyptus species being grown on plantations in Brazil. According to Craig Anderson of Weyerhaeuser, which imports Lyptus flooring, 120-foot trees can be harvested about 15 years after planting; by comparison, red oak takes about 40 years to reach merchantable size, cherry 80 years. In the future, look for calculated hybridization to yield other options for fast-growing, renewable