A Note on The Effect of Alcohol-Benzene Extractives on Juvenile Wood Specific Gravity in Red Pine

A 24-millimeter-thick disk specimen was sampled from each of the three 10-year-old trees representing each of the 40 wind-pollinated red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) families. A 12- x 12- x 12-mm cube was cut from the bark side along the east cardinal direction. Smith's maximum moisture content method was used to determine unextracted and extracted specific gravities. Overall mean specific gravity for unextracted and extracted wood specimens was 0.351 and 0.309, a difference of 0.042 being statistically significant at the 1% level. The correlation between unextracted and extracted specific gravities was also statistically significant (r2 = 0.444) at the 1% level. The larger experimental error variance was associated with the presence of alcohol-benzene extractives in the wood, and the need of a larger sample size to obtain the identical degrees of precision was suggested when working with unextracted wood specimens