What are those Georgians thinking?

[RynSmith]

Maybe they think it will shade out the kudzu?  I wonder if Magicman would want some for his tree farm...  :D

Georgia researchers work to build a better tree

University of Georgia researchers are working to produce faster-growing sweetgum trees by growing embryogenic sweetgum cultures in bioreactors.

[pineywoods]

Brought to us by the same folks who brought us kudzu  :(

[Ron Wenrich]

Biomass is my guess.  They did the same thing up here with hybrid poplar, thinking it was going to be a crop with a future.  Short time rotations and copice for yield.  That was in the '70s and the market turned out to be non-existent.  Sometimes they have this "build it and they will come" mentality.  Current group is thinking biofuels. 

[Magicman]

It is actually a cross between Sweetgum and Pecan which was devised by our own WDH.  He was attempting to sweeten up the Devil and create an Angel.     smiley_angel02_wings  The problem was that his Angel had too short of wings and could not fly.   The resulting failure was renamed and the rest is history.  poston-smiley

[RynSmith]

I just knew WDH would be involved in this somehow!

You are correct, Ron, it is biomass related.  There are hybrid poplar plantations over here that are mostly being piled and burned; surprisingly enough it wasn't the best use for farmland...   :

[WDH]

Researchers have to research something  .

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

  The resulting failure was renamed and the rest is history.  poston-smiley

smiley_curtain_peek

[Rockn H]

It could be for plywood too.  If I'm not mistaken, sweetgum is the veneer being used as the center core in the GP plywood mills in Georgia. 

[WDH]

Yes, and yellow poplar.