 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2004-07-30 19:42
I have just had a very enjoyable several hours with NEW friends in the EarlyFlute Yahoogroup concerning identification and general info re: the "heavy/dense" woods from which our best insts. are made, notably "our" grenadilla, rosewoods and cocobolo. I recall several earlier discussions we have had here [somewhere in our archives?] . Among us so far we have found only a few literature references, and I have posted there some info from a USDA Forest Service booklet on Tropical Woods, and called Rendall's Ch 2 to their attention. So, does anyone here or on Early Clarinet know of additional references of/to this important material-of-construction, to assist them [and us]. TKS, Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2004-07-30 20:08
TKS much GBK, I was counting on you! [4 min. WOW] I had seen the "conservation" site earlier. The Braun info is GREAT, and new to us. I'll call this to E F's attention immediately, and read it carefully myself! Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2004-07-30 20:30
GBK -
Interesting that the Blackwood Conservation site says the tree is endangered, and the Braun site says it's regrowing faster than it's being harvested.
Ken Shaw
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Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2004-07-30 20:49
I did a report over african blackwood in a political/economic anthropology class last semester. My report may not be of much use because it focused more on how local populations used the wood and how the international trade in blackwood affected their lives/local economies. It was interesting though.
I believe that the main concern is that the tree is being harvested out of commercial viability. Trees which are overly curved or have imperfections don;t work well for making instruments, so the trees which are straight and imperfection-free are being harvested faster than they can regenerate. The "imperfect" trees (those which can't be used in manufacturing instruments) aren't being "over-harvested", but if unusable trees reproduce, you just get more unusable trees, which is of no use to people interested in harvesting it for commercial purposes. Many botanists fear this will lead to genetic "erosion" in the mpingo, because imperfect trees are being allowed to remain and produce at a rate far quicker than the dwindling "perfect trees"... This is slightly over-simplified... As I said, my report was more anthropological, so I focused as little on the science as possible (just enough to support my anthropological arguments). Most of my information came from two places...
The Mpingo Conservation Project. Working out of Cambridge University, this group studies the tree and has several annual reports which are downloadable from their website. http://www.mpingoconservation.org/
There was also a valuable report issued by Flora and Fauna International, which can be downloaded here. http://www.globaltrees.org/downloads/IntTradeAfBWood.pdf
If you are interested in general information about what trees are used for what instruments, there is a WONDERFUL poster available at the following link that shows all kinds of trees, where they grow, and what parts of instruments they are used for... http://www.soundwood.org/content.php3?pageID=54
I also got a lot of information from the ABCP webpage, the link for which is found in an above post..
Hope this was helpful,
DH
theclarinetist@yahoo.com
Post Edited (2004-07-30 20:50)
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2004-07-30 21:00
Jen Shaw mentioned: "Interesting that the Blackwood Conservation site says the tree is endangered, and the Braun site says it's regrowing faster than it's being harvested."
This is not necessarily a conflict of facts.
Regards,
John
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2004-07-30 21:06
Thank you, DH, the cl'ist, very interesting "look" at our subject. Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2004-07-31 14:20
Out of an abundance of curiousity, I made a few "quickie" patent searches, finding that the wood terms, Dalbergia, nigra [rosewood] and melanoxylon [grenadilla] had very few pertinent mentions in the pats since 1976. The most interesting [to me] was a "synthetic rosewood" which "sounded like" a [decolorized?] then dyed walnut with some discussion of the scaracity of natural rosewoods. Incidentally there is one [US] patent to a Braun of Germany, possibly related to the Braun site linked by GBK. Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: hans
Date: 2004-07-31 16:02
DH,
Re: "if unusable trees reproduce, you just get more unusable trees", it seems conceivable that a tree could grow in a different configuration from its ancestor as a result of environmental factors.
To help me understand your statement, I was wondering if you might know how Grenadilla trees reproduce and if you could expand on it.
Regards,
Hans
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Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2004-07-31 21:09
As I said, I don't know too much about plant reproduction, but the principles of evolution would dictate that the offspring of an entity (the tree in this case) will be likely to share the same characteristics of the parent entity. The passing of characteristic would be subject to the laws of inheritance. I'm not sure how trees go about fertilizing each other and reproducing, so I can't speak to the exact processes that occur during tree reproduction, but it's safe to say that if more curvy trees are available to reproduce than straight trees, the future generations will contain a higher percentage of curvy trees. This will, of course, be subject to the process of natural selection (which I'm not too familiar with on this particular tree). Assuming both trees are equally selected for reproduction by environmental circumstances, the ratio of straight-curvy trees should stay about the same throughout time. When the straight trees become less available for reproduction (because they are being cut down), and curvy trees are allowed to continue reproducing at their normal rate, the ratio will slowly change so that subsequent generations contain a higher percentage of curvy trees. The term genetic "erosion" is, of course, a little loaded. We consider the species to be "eroding" because less trees are commercially available. However, if I was a mpingo tree, I would consider being curvy a positive attribute, because it would directly increase my chances of not being cut down by commercial loggers. Curviness in the tree may offer other disadvantages, though I can't go into much detail on this subject since it wasn't of particular interest to my research (that information may be available at the link listed below however, if you are interested).
There are doubtless environmental factors affecting a trees characteristics. Attributes such as height and weight in humans are significantly affected by diet, but there are genetic components to these characteristics as well. The tree's genetic predisposition towards straight or curviness is what is of interest in this case. Hopefully this was a better explanation. I didn't want to bore anyone with too much evolutionary science stuff...
The concept is discussed on the African Blackwood Conservation Project website. You will find it in Paragraph 13 at the following link http://www.blackwoodconservation.org/tree.html, although they don't really offer any details (but at least this shows that I didn't just make it up! haha)
Don Hite
theclarinetist@yahoo.com
Post Edited (2004-07-31 21:12)
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Author: Phat Cat
Date: 2004-08-01 12:30
There is some fuzzy biology above.
(1) In order for the “laws of inheritance” to be relevant to the “curviness” of the mpingo tree, you must establish that there is a genetic encoding for curviness. That is, there must be one or more genes that specifically predispose an individual tree to be more or less curvy. While this may well be the case, you cannot assume it a priori. For example, curviness could simply be due to a limited water supply in the tree’s microclimate.
(2) Assuming that a genetic encoding has been established, in order to invoke the “principles of evolution”, by which I assume you mean natural selection, you must establish that a tree’s amount of curviness provides a specific survival benefit. In such a case, over time trees that have acquired this trait through random genetic mutation will tend to predominate within the environment in which it confers benefit.
(3) If, as you state, trees are selected equally based on the amount of curviness, then evolution is not relevant. In fact, unless the trait is a secondary characteristic of another trait that does confer survival advantage, it will disappear over time if it has a genetic basis. For example, check your tail bone.
(4) Harvesting of trees is not natural selection. It is just as easy for this un-natural selection to cause a preponderance of the trees considered desirable by humans. Look at what we’ve done to the dog species.
Genetic erosion can be understood more simply. It takes nature eons to produce genetic diversity through the interaction of random mutation and natural selection. When human activity eliminates a large portion of a species within a few generations, the genetic variation of that species is drastically reduced. This, in turn, means that the species diversity is also drastically lowered, providing a more uniform population that is less able to survive changes in its environment. Only the genetic outliers survive big changes.
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Author: Selphie
Date: 2004-08-01 12:42
Couldn't the 'curvier' trees be used to make 'EcoWood' and 'Greenline' type instruments as the wood is powdered during the process anyway.
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Author: hans
Date: 2004-08-01 15:32
It was interesting to read, in DH's links, that the price of grenadilla has not varied much from 1991 to 2000; in fact, it was 12% lower in 1999 than in 1991. If there is a supply problem, as I've read elsewhere, there must be other factors affecting the normal supply/demand system.
Phat Cat,
I'm afraid I don't understand your analogy: "Harvesting of trees is not natural selection. It is just as easy for this un-natural selection to cause a preponderance of the trees considered desirable by humans. Look at what we’ve done to the dog species", since dogs with desirable traits are not killed/harvested but are encouraged to reproduce. Perhaps I'm missing something?
Regards,
Hans
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Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2004-08-01 17:51
Phat Cat...
As I'm not a botanical geneticist, I'm making the assumption that curviness has a genetic basis because the assertion is made on the African Blackwood Conservation Project website (and their assertion is backed up by other research). I cannot verfiy it with my own personal knowledge of genetics, but for the sake of my arguement, I'm assuming the website is correct. I also aknowledged that there are likely environmental factors at play. My intention was only to hopefully explain the "genetic erosion" assertion made the ABCP, so I assumed their premises to be true.
I don't understand how you say that harvesting of trees isn't "natural selection". If some animals have a given traits that makes them MORE likely to be killed by predators, that trait would like be selected out. The fact that the "animals" in this case are trees and that the "predators" are humans doesn't change what's going on. If trees that are curvy are less likely to be cut down, that "provides a specific survival benefit". And your assumption that natural selection must take a long time isn't true. Drastic environmental changes can cause a change in a species' traits very quickly (and in this case, commercial loggers are the "environmental change). Yes, in most cases natural selections takes a long time to create changes in a species, but this is not necessarily the case.
I never meant to claim that all trees that are curvy are equally selected. That's OBVIOUSLY not the case, but in trying to simplify the issues I didn't think it was necessary to discuss every possible other trait which might offer a reproductive advantage/disadvantage (for the tree I wouldn't know what they were anyway). Whenever you discuss the basics of evolution, you usually stick to just a trait or two... This over-simplifies it, but it's easier to make the point this way. I didn't state that the trees are only selected on the basis of their curviness or straightness, but for this discussion those were the only characteristics which seemed relevant.
I too don't see where you are going with the dog analogy. When we domesticate animals (which is just basically us forcing them to evolve) we don't do it by killing the undesirable dogs. We just makes sure the dogs with the most desirable traits to breed together. Domestication would theoretically lead to a more diverse species, not a genetically eroded one.
Your definition of genetic erosion is excellent though. I agree with most of your post, Phat Cat, though I don't think I made many of the errors you say I did. As I said, I'm a student of anthropology, not biology, so my knowledge of advanced genetics is limited (clearly more so than yours). For the sake of keeping this board about music, I'll shut up now! = )
DH
theclarinetist@yahoo.com
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2004-08-01 18:42
theclarinetist wrote:
> If trees that are curvy are less
> likely to be cut down, that "provides a specific survival
> benefit".
Only if that happens before the reproductive cycle. Those things that happen late in the reproductive cycle or after are not selected for or against. Remember, evolution is survival of the species, not survival of the individual.
Which is why evolution doesn't select for longevity ... though it would be nice ...
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2004-08-01 18:44
Since I "kicked-off" this discussion here with some questions, let me say that I have both enjoyed and learned-from all of the posted comments, including the genetics discussions. However, back to music, the 3 patents to Rolffs [can/will provide #'s] on "synthesizing" rosewood and ebony by treatments of black walnut et al woods intrigues me, so I wonder, "have walnut or other US/ European "furniture woods" [beyond the boxwoods] been investigated for clarinet-making uses"? It seems to me that, even of lower density and hopefully not given to cracking, walnut et al might find some uses of value to us. Comments, please. Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2004-08-01 22:26
Also the statement "regrowing faster than it's being harvested" does not conflict with the information in the conservation site that the trees of SUITABLE-grade timber are being harvested so their reproduction is greatly reduced (i.e. becoming endangered), while the UNSUITABLE trees are reproducing prolifically. Rather what is happening to the human species - Gordon ducks for cover!)
I rather suspect that the German site has relatively incomplete, and hence misleading information.
Edit: Sorry, I did not note that the discussion had already gone down this route.
Post Edited (2004-08-01 22:45)
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Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2004-08-01 22:30
I would assume that how long an entity lives directly affects the number of times it can reproduce. Unlike most humans, many other species reproduce many times during their life, some once a year or more.
Remember, I didn't make up the genetic erosion argument... It came directly from the ABCP website. I may not have explained it flawlessly, but (according the experts relied on by the ABCP) it's at risk of occuring nonetheless.
DH
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