Re: Hybrid Poplars
I bought a few bundles of them about 15+ years ago to plant here at the farm. At the time, they were available from the forestry centre where i usually get my seedlings, so i decided to try a few. Another local farm put in quite a lot of them -- perhaps about 10 acres.
It's interesting that in the article which you posted, the main end use seems to be for ethanol production. Having seen the growth habit of these poplars, i can see how they might be suitable. For firewood, i'd have to say that they don't seem suited to that use.
Here and at the above-mentioned farm, these poplars grew zillions of small branches from the main trunk. The bottom of the trunk is pretty substantial, but the trees didn't really grow so tall as I would have expected. There is a lot of regular poplar -- Quaking Aspen -- that grows on my property (was the dominant species for a number of years), and I would say that, for wood, those poplar grew faster and with fewer small branches, and grew tall and strait, so could be used for some kind of lumber as well. They also looked better as trees as they were just normal trees, whereas all of the Hybrid poplars I've seen were really weird looking (also seemed very prone to that black fungal disease).
Not sure about using poplar as firewood. Up here, it is considered too "green". I've burned it a bit, but it definitely makes creosote in the stove pipes and is not nice smelling when it burns -- and produces smoke like a smudge fire (basically somewhat unpleasant). After watching various trees grow here at the farm over the past 30 years, i'd almost have to say that White birch and maybe even Black cherry come close to rivalling the aspen as being fast growing if one wanted to produce quick biomass. Both of them slow down a bit once they get started, so won't put on the rapid later growth of an aspen (i have a "grove" of aspens at the back of my yard that all came up after transplanting one there about 28 years ago. it is long gone, but there are about 15 x 30-40 ft. tall aspen that grew up from its roots, and a few have already been felled and burnt up as they got the typical poplar fungus). The thing about the white birch and black cherry is that, although they may be slower growing, they make pretty decent firewood and burn pretty clean compared to poplar. They're not nearly so good as maple or oak, but still pretty decent.
Anyhow, getting back to the hybrid poplar -- i'm pretty sure it was discontinued at the forestry centre. Perhaps it grows better further south, but for up here, i don't think it turned out to be anything near what it was cracked up to be.
~croc |
