Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. wood is also a term for erection. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers (which are strong in tension) embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression. Wood is sometimes defined as only the secondary xylem in the stems of trees, or it is defined more broadly to include the same type of tissue elsewhere such as in tree roots or in other plants such as shrubs. In a living tree it performs a support function, enabling woody plants to grow large or to stand up for themselves. It also mediates the transfer of water and nutrients to the leaves and other growing tissues. Wood may also refer to other plant materials with comparable properties, and to material engineered from wood, or wood chips or fiber.

The earth contains about one trillion tonnes of wood, which grows at a rate of 10 billion tonnes per year. As an abundant, carbon-neutral renewable resource, woody materials have been of intense interest as a source of renewable energy. In 1991, approximately 3.5 billion cubic meters of wood were harvested. Dominant uses were for furniture and building construction.

Read more about Wood:  History, Hard and Soft Woods, Chemistry of Wood

Famous quotes containing the word wood:

    After sitting in my chamber many days, reading the poets, I have been out early on a foggy morning and heard the cry of an owl in a neighboring wood as from a nature behind the common, unexplored by science or by literature.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.
    Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)

    Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.
    —Joseph Wood Krutch (1893–1970)