Author: Dutchy
Date: 2005-06-17 21:39
Plant material (wood, dead flowers, celery stalks, etc.) rots because of bacteria and fungi. The bacteria and fungi that cause plant material to rot require moisture to do so. In the absence of moisture, nothing happens. This is why you can dry flowers and keep them for years--as long as they're dry, the bacteria and fungi can't get started. But once they're wet, the bacteria and fungi spring to life and begin to grow and multiply, feeding on the plant material.
http://www.extremehowto.com/xh/article.asp?article_id=60234
<<< Unfortunately, wood rots. Unless kept dry and in the right environment, wood, being a natural material, eventually decays. How long it takes and how badly it rots depends on a lot of factors. The first factor is the type of wood, and most important, whether or how the wood is protected from moisture. Keep wood dry, and in the right environment it can last for many centuries.
--snip--
An obviously wet or damp location is easy to spot; other areas require a bit more effort. The term “dry-rot” has been bandied about for years, but it's basically a misnomer. Wood doesn't rot if it's dry. >>>
It doesn't make any difference whether you keep wood permanently dry, or let it get wet and then dry it out. Every time the wood is wet, you have the potential for those rotting bacteria and fungi to be growing, just a bit.
Apply this principle to the bathroom floor next to your leaky bathtub--every time water gets under the linoleum and the plywood subfloor is wet, it's going to be rotting. Slowly, yes, but it's definitely rotting. And when and if the plywood manages to dry out, it stops rotting temporarily, but the spores are always there, waiting to spring into life at the application of more moisture. And after enough years of this, even though the plywood was allowed to dry out intermittently, you're still eventually going to have a rotted bathroom floor that will need to be replaced.
So, to me, common sense says that a reed is made of wood, and like a plywood subfloor (or like a stem of dried flowers), every time it's wet, it's being exposed to the possibility for bacteria and fungi to begin growing on it and rotting it, and the same way I wouldn't tolerate leaving my bathroom floor wet 24/7, I wouldn't expect to leave my reed wet 24/7 without ill effects eventually
Also, it is a scientific fact that saliva contains enzymes that will digest and break down things. You're not supposed to feed babies their baby food directly out of the jar, because when you dip the spoon back into the jar, you're getting baby saliva in the remainder of the food, and when you take it out of the fridge the next day, the rest of the baby food will be a disgusting slimy mess, because the saliva enzymes that came off the spoon will have been digesting the half-jar full of Pureed Lamb all night.
So it seems to me that I wouldn't want to leave my very expensive oboe reed with saliva on it 24/7--I'd want to rinse it off and let it dry out. Which I do.
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