• Aspen trees grow in the Rocky Mountain region.1933 aspen tree carving image by mavrick from Fotolia.com
  
  Quaking Aspen (Populus Temuloides) is found throughout the Colorado Rockies. This particular species of aspen grows up to 120-feet tall and 4 feet in diameter. Typically the quaking aspen grows straight and tall with no curves of any kind. Aspen wood properties make it great for use in making match sticks because aspen wood burns slowly and shredded aspen also is used to make packing and stuffing material called excelsior. Finally, aspen wood studs make up the majority of wood you find in pallet construction
  
  

Color

• Aspen wood is classified as a white hardwood. The heartwood has a white to creamy appearance. This heartwood blends into the sap wood which has an even whiter quality to it. The blending occurs with no demarcation. Usually the heartwood in a tree has a darker meat then the sap wood but in the case of the aspen this does not occur. Water flows through the outer rings of the tree or the layer underneath bark. This layer is called the sapwood. The heartwood of a tree keeps the tree rigid. As sapwood matures it forms the heartwood and becomes the backbone of the tree.
  
  

Moisture Content

• According to the Wood Handbook published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), quaking aspen has a moisture content of 95 percent. The amount of water in wood is determined by weighing a green sample before it is dried and then reweighing it after it has dried. The oven figure is subtracted from the green weight and then divided by the oven dried weight to get the moisture content. This moisture rating will vary depending upon the time of year the tree was cut down. If the aspen tree was taken during the summer then expect the moisture to be in the 70 percent range, which is lower then average.
  
  

Shrinkage

• Shrinkage in wood determines the usage of the wood. Any wood with a high shrinkage rate will not be used in decorative projects such as the manufacture of furniture or wood flooring. According to the USDA the quaking aspen ratio of radial-tangential shrinkage is relatively high. Radial and tangential shrinkage are dimensional changes. Therefore the shrinkage radially occurs perpendicular to the growth rings and the tangential shrinkage occurs along the curvature of the growth rings. The formation of tension wood has a high occurrence in quaking aspen. Tension wood comes from high stress like deep snows or winds and thus the tree forms tension wood to survive. The high formation of tension wood leads to a variety of drying defects such as longitudinal distortions. This type of distortions means that aspen wood is good for making paper and cardboard but not furniture or buildings.