Comparative Study Of The Deterioration In Phoebe And Cinnamomum Wood

Both Phoebe and Cinnamomum have been often utilized not only for pillars but also for otherwooden artifacts. Both species belongs to the same family, Lauraceae. It is commonly said thatPhoebe is durable compared to the other species. However, there are no scientific data to proveit. We compared the durability of both Phoebe and Cinnamomum by the different techniques ofstructural analysis to give a scientific account. The results are as follows:(1) Examination with polarized light demonstrated that secondary cell wall of C. camphora,cellulose, which occurs in undegraded walls as crystalline units,highly ordered in parallelaligned fibrils, lost its typical birefringence, indicating their disintegration. As for Phoebe sp.,birefringence feature is obvious in all cell walls. The extent of lignin degradation in the fiberwall also becomes distinct, as indicated by the loss of fluorescence in some cells of C.camphora. However, there is almost no deterioration of the cell wall in Phoebe sp.(2) The cell walls of C. camphora were deteriorated heavily, for the fiber cell walls weredetached from compound middle layer (CML), and the secondary wall showed many pores.Further, the cell wall remains filled the lumens completely and the shape of most cells has beendeformed greatly, while CML was intact. To the contrary, the cell wall of Phoebe sp. did notshow any deterioration, just like intact cell walls.(3) The different deteriorated types of C. camphora with different X-ray diffraction intensity,shows that the cellulose in crystalline region was lost in some degree, the stronger birefringencewith more intensive diffracted intensity. But all Phoebe sp. kept high diffracted intensity, whichis equivalent to the control of both Phoebe sp. and C. camphora. Compared to the crystallinityof present wood, the value decreased nearly half percentage for C. camphora, but nearly nodecrease of the crystallinity in Phoebe sp.(4) A Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopic study of changes in C. camphora andPhoebe sp. both present wood and archaeological wood. The relative changes in intensities ofspectral bands associated with carboghydrates and lignin as a result of deterioration ofarchaeological wood. For C.camphora archaeological wood, almost no cellulose orhemi-cellulose left and most lignin kept after deterioration while almost no cellulose and lignindeteriorated except for hemi-cellulose for Phoebe sp.(5) Phoebe sp. was much more durable than C. camphora by comparing the weight loss inwatersaturated condition. Whatever the size of the samples, the weight loss of C. camphora wasmuch higher than Phoebe sp. because of soft-rotted in the wet buried environment.