Transverse shrinkage in maritime pine juvenile wood

Summary This paper reports experimental results concerning the transverse shrinkage variability within and between trees of two samples composed of 17 eleven-year-old and 20 twenty-year-old maritime pine trees harvested in two stands at the Forest Research Centre of INRA Pierroton in Aquitaine. The within tree variations are divided into a height effect and a radial effect, both related to the occurrence of juvenile wood. It is shown that the tangential shrinkage and the anisotropic ratio between radial and tangential dimensional variations are increasing from the top to the base of the stems (+14.9% and +16.9%, respectively), and that this effect is independent of the tree. The variations from the pith outward are also significant for these parameters (+25.0% for at and –9.5% for the ratio) and for the radial shrinkage (+37.2% ), but in this case, the amplitude of the effect is depending on a tree effect. The relationship between shrinkage and density is also studied, showing poorly significant correlation when considering each sampling positions independently.