Constitution of a glucomannan from white spruce.

Besides the extractives, which in certain species of woods can be very considerable, the three main components of wood are cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Cellulose is a linear polymer consisting or B-D-glucopyranose residues linked together by (1 4) glycosidic bonds. In native celluloses, no less than 5,000 such residues are probably present in an average cellulose macromolecule, corresponding to a weight-average degree of polymerization of 10,000 if the ratio between number and weight-average values is assumed to be the usual 1:2