Paulownia Tree Trials in Eastern Kansas

Abstract

Paulownia [Paulownia tomentosa (Thunb.)], one of the fastest growing trees (Larson, 1981), has been grown in the southern United States for commercial production. Other names include princess tree, royal paulownia, and empress tree. It is a member of the Bignonia family and has enormous sized leaves (Johnson, 1973; Carpenter and Graves, 1981). This species was introduced into the USA in the early 1830's and has escaped cultivation in many areas and now proliferates throughout much of the southeast. It originally came from mainland China and is grown extensively in Japan, which is now the largest consumer of this commercial wood species. It is a short grown (rotation) species that is harvested at about 12 years. The United States exports large amounts of paulownia wood to Japan where it has been used for centuries primarily for furniture, which accounts for 75% of all imported logs. Wooden chests of drawers termed Tansu are made from this wood and nearly every Japanese home would have a Tansu of solid paulownia (Larson, 1981). It is a light wood, and chemical and physical properties indicate that it is not desirable for pulping, but good only for specialty wood products (Lee, 1981; Olson and Carpenter, 1985). Trees grow exceedingly fast on a variety of sites including hard, relatively infertile soils (Beckjord and McIntosh, 1983). Much has been written about nursery production and plantation culture of this species in the southeastern eastern United States (Stringer, 1986; Beckjord, 1982), but its potential in other areas has not been studied. This report presents a summary of our efforts to evaluate the suitability of establishing paulownia at four locations and its limit of latitude in the eastern part of Kansas.