Studies On Wood Properties Of Plantation Rattan

Being a group of climbing palms under the subfamily Calamoideae of the family Palmae, rattans are regarded as multiple-purpose plant resources in tropical and sub-tropical forests. One excellent rattan species, Calamus simplicifolius Wei, were selected for the serial studies on wood anatomical, physical and chemical properties to provide scientific information and technical support for the improvement of sustainable utilization of rattan resources. The macroscopic and microscopic structure was described. The results show:Average rattan stem length 17-18cm, average diameter ll-12mm. The diameter decreases and specific gravity increases from top to root. It also indicates the cells become more lignified with age.The length, width, diameter, wall thickness of fiber element and its length-width ratio, its dual wall thickness-diameter ration were 1. 25 mm～1.78mm, 16μm～18μm, 5μm～9μm, 4μm～ 7μm, 80～90, 1. 0～1.5, respectively.At a given height level within trees these morphology feature values decreased from the corpus to bark in radial direction. But fiber length and fiber length-width ratio were excepted and increased gradually form the corpus to bark.Fiber length, fiber width and its length-width ratio increased from the base to the middle part of rattan bole and then decreased to the top of tree in different ways. Fiber diameter increased gradually from the base to the top of rattan tree, wall thickness of fiber element and its dual wall thickness-diameter ratio decreased gradually from the base to top of rattan tree, fiber wall thickness and its dual wall thickness-diameter ration are the smallest. Significant differences were found in wall thickness, diameter, length-width ratio and dual wall thickness-diameter of fiber except length and width of fiber.Radial variation in wood basic density, the maximum appears in the bark. Density increases slowly from corpus to bark. In the axial direction, the density of bark and corpus both decrease from base to top. The shrinkage rate in the base is also large due to large density, being larger in the latter part of drying, while rattan with low density shrinks more in the former part.When the rattan bark is single sanded, the rougher the sander paper is, the rougher the surface of the rattan bark is. Both the single and double sanded rattan corpus are smoother than the control.Using water as the experimental material, the contact angle of the sanded rattan bark is smaller than the control. When using the PU as the experimental material, the contact angle of the sanded rattan bark and corpus are smaller than the contact angle of the sanded rattan bark and corpus using water, and also smaller than the control.