Sat, 04 Jan 2003 06:40:24 +0000 Martin Rand wrote:

On Fri, 03 Jan 2003 12:47:50 -0600, Archimedes Plutonium
wrote:

[snip]
Question: does hickory grow in England? I am remembering that the
trebuchet
was built with oak timbers. If hickory grows in England, why did they
not
use hickory timbers for their trebuchets.


No native Hickory in England. Half a dozen species have been planted
in parks and collections, introduced at various times since the 17th
century. They are all uncommon; probably the commonest is Bitternut
(Carya cordiformis). On the other hand, one species of Walnut (Juglans
regia) is quite commonly planted at least in the South.

BTW Ash (Fraxinus excelsior) was traditionally often used here for
tool handles. Machine parts were often made of Hornbeam (Carpinus
betulus) where it was available, for reasons made obvious by its name.

--
Martin (off-duty)
Chandlers Ford, Hampshire

Yes, what I am trying to communicate to PvR, is that evolution had to
have
played some major role as to why hickory wood and ash wood are more
shock resistant than oak. Something environmental must have played some
major role in the fashioning of a wood that is superior to shock.

Ash wood also seems to be shock resistant to a high degree and both
ash and hickory seem to form the same "physics of weight bearing" for
their trunks and limbs.

Now elm is a tough wood in that it has cross-threading to enable it to
spread out as a pitcher silhouette. But oak takes the prize in that its
limbs can run parrallel to the ground for long distances.

I do not see anything of the environment of Southern USA that would
Evolutionarily Select for a highly shock resistant tree wood of hickory
and
ash.

Except for one possibility. That Oaks and elms were so dominant that
the only selective gain the ash and hickory could muster was to grow
taller and skinner than oak and elm. But to grow tall and skinny they
had to have a wood more shock resistant to the winds than their
crowding out neighbors of oak and elm.

Hickory and ash superior shock resistance does not form from a fluke of
nature but has to have some sort of competitive environmental answer as
to why create a wood genetics that possess superior shock.

Archimedes Plutonium,
whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies