Introduction

• Published in: Mahogany p. 1
• Main Author: Jennifer L. Anderson
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Harvard University Press 17.09.2012
• Subjects: Aerial parts; Agricultural products; Agriculture; Applied arts; Arts; Biocenosis; Biological sciences; Biology; Botany; Business; Business economics; Cabinetry; Commercial forests; Commercial production; Commodities; Dendrology; Ecology; Forest products; Forestry; Forests; Furniture making; Hardwoods; Manual arts; Plant architecture; Plant communities; Plant morphology; Plant physiology; Plant products; Population ecology; Production factors; Production output; Secondary xylem; Silvicultural practices; Silviculture; Synecology; Timber; Tree felling; Tree trunks; Trees; Vascular tissues; Wood; Wood structure; Woodworking; Xylem
• ISBN: 0674048717; 9780674048713

In 1748, Pehr Kalm, a protégé of the famous Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, embarked on a three-year tour of North America to identify valuable trees that might thrive in chilly Scandinavia. Travelling from the Eastern Seaboard to the Appalachian frontier, he was deeply impressed with the land’s vast forests as well as the prodigious quantities of high-quality timber its inhabitants consumed and exported. Yet after visiting the well-furnished homes of many people along the way, including such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia and Cadwallader Colden in New York, he reported that colonial Americans exchanged their native timber for “true