All About Balsa Wood Trees

WHERE DOES BALSA WOOD COME FROM?

Balsa trees grow naturally in the humid rain forests of Central and South America. Its natural range extends south from Guatemala, through Central America, to the north and west coast of South America as far as Bolivia. However, the small country of Ecuador on the western coast of South America, is the primary source of model aircraft grade balsa in the world. Balsa needs a warm climate with plenty of rainfall and good drainage. For that reason, the best stands of balsa usually appear on the high ground between tropical rivers. Ecuador has the ideal geography and climate for growing balsa trees. The scientific name for balsa wood is ochroma lagopus. The word balsa itself is Spanish meaning raft, in reference to its excellent floatation qualities. In Ecuador it is known as Boya, meaning buoy.

HOW DOES BALSA WOOD GROW?

There is no such thing as entire forests of balsa trees. They grow singly or in very small, widely scattered groups in the jungle. For hundreds of years, balsa was actually considered a weed tree. They reproduce by growing hundreds of long seed pods, which eventually open up and, with the help of the wind, scatter thousands of new seeds over a large area of the jungle. Each seed is airborne on its own small wisp of down, similar to the way dandelion seeds spread.

The seeds eventually fall to the ground and are covered by the litter of the jungle. There they lay and accumulate until one day there is an opening in the jungle canopy large enough for the sun's rays to strike the jungle floor and start the seeds growing. Wherever there is an opening, made either by a farmer or by another tree dying, balsa will spring up as thick as grass.

A farmer is often hard put to keep his food plot clear of balsa. As the new balsa trees grow, the strongest will become predominate and the weaker trees will die. By the time they are mature, there may be only one or two balsa trees to an acre of jungle.



HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE A BALSA TREE TO GROW?

Balsa trees grow very rapidly (like all pesky weeds). Six months after germination, the tree is about 1-1/2 inches in diameter and 10 - 12 feet tall. In 6 to 10 years the tree is ready for cutting, having reached a height of 60 to 90 feet tall and a diameter of 12 to 45 inches. If left to continue growing, the new wood being grown on the outside layers becomes very hard and the tree begins to rot in the center. Unharvested, a balsa tree may grow to a diameter of 6 feet or more, but very little usable lumber can be obtained from a tree of this size. The balsa leaf is similar in shape to a grape leaf, only a lot bigger. When the tree is young, these leaves measure a much as four feet across. They become progressively smaller as the tree grows older, until they are about 8 - 10 inches across. Balsa is one of the few trees in the jungle which has a simple leaf shape. This fact alone makes the balsa tree stand out in the jungle.



THE PERFECT NURSE!

Nature evidently designed the balsa tree to be a "nurse tree" which would protect the slower-growing species of trees from the scorching jungle sun during their critical early years. For instance, in an area of the jungle that has been ravaged by a tropical storm or other natural disaster, the balsa trees will quickly sprout and begin to shoot up to impressive heights in a very short time. Their fast growth, and the extra large leaves they have in their early years, provide shade to the young seedlings of the slower-growing forest giants. By the time the seedlings are established enough to take care of themselves, the balsa tree is beginning to die. Undoubtedly, the balsa tree's rapid growth, fast spreading crown of first very large and gradually smaller leaves, and it's relatively short life span were intended to make it the "perfect nurse" in the jungle ecosystem.

HOW ARE BALSA TREES HARVESTED?

While nature intended the balsa tree to be a short lived nursemaid, mankind eventually discovered that it was an extremely useful resource. The real start of the balsa business was during World War I, when the allies were in need of a plentiful substitute for cork. The only drawback to using balsa was, and still is, the back breaking work that is necessary to get it out of the jungle. Because of the way the individual balsa trees are scattered throughout the jungles, it has never been possible to use mass production logging procedures and equipment. The best way to log balsa trees is to go back to the methods of Paul Bunyan -- chop them down with an axe, haul them to the nearest river by ox team, tie them together into rafts, and then float the rafts of balsa logs down the river to the saw mill.

The logging team usually consists of two native Ecuadorians, each armed with a broad Spanish axe, a machete, and a long pole sharpened like a chisel on one end for removing the bark from the downed trees. Because of the hilly terrain, an ox team may only be able to drag two logs to the river per day. At the saw mill the raw balsa is first rough cut into large boards, the carefully kiln dried, and finally packed into bales for shipment to the U.S. via ocean freighter. Final cutting and finishing of our model aircraft balsa is done right here at the factory. As a result of the balsa tree's fast growth cycle, both the quality and lightness of the lumber obtained from a balsa tree can vary enormously depending upon the tree's age at the time of cutting.

WHY IS BALSA WOOD SO LIGHT?

The secret to balsa wood's lightness can only be seen with a microscope. The cells are big and very thin walled, so that the ratio of solid matter to open space is as small as possible. Most woods have gobs of heavy, plastic-like cement, called lignin, holding the cells together. In balsa, lignin is at a minimum. Only about 40% of the volume of a piece of balsa is solid substance. To give a balsa tree the strength it needs to stand in the jungle, nature pumps each balsa cell full of water until they become rigid - like a car tire full of air. Green balsa wood typically contains five times as much water by weight as it has actual wood substance, compared to most hardwoods which contain very little water in relation to wood substance. Green balsa wood must therefore be carefully kiln dried to remove most of the water before it can be sold. Kiln drying is a tedious two week process that carefully removes the excess water until the moisture content is only 6%. Kiln drying also kills any bacteria, fungi, and insects that may have been in the raw balsa wood.

HOW LIGHT IS KILN DRIED BALSA WOOD?

Finished balsa wood, like you find in model airplane kits, varies widely in weight. Balsa is occasionally found weighing as little as 4 lbs. per cu. ft. On the other hand, you can also find balsa which will weigh 24 lbs or more per cu. ft. However, the general run of commercial balsa for model airplanes will weigh between 6 and 18 pounds per cu. ft. Eight to twelve pound balsa is considered medium or average weight, and is the most plentiful. Six pound or less is considered "contest grade", which is very rare and sometimes even impossible to obtain.

IS BALSA THE LIGHTEST WOOD IN THE WORLD?

No! Most people are surprised to hear that botanically, balsa wood is only about the third or fourth lightest wood in the world. However, all the woods which are lighter than balsa are terribly weak and unsuitable for any practical use. The very lightest varieties don't really resemble wood at all, as we commonly think of it, but are more like a tree-like vegetable that grows in rings, similar in texture to an onion. It is not until balsa is reached that there is any sign of real strength combined with lightness. In fact, balsa wood is often considered the strongest wood for its weight in the world. Pound for pound it is stronger in some respects than pine, hickory, or even oak.

Riobamba - Slide Show

Riobamba is a city in central Ecuador. It is the capital of Chimborazo Province, in the Chambo River Valley in the Andes Mountains, near the volcano of Chimborazo. It is an important road junction on the main railroad from Quito to Guayaquil. Riobamba is the trade center of the surrounding cattle-ranching area.

Manufactured products include textiles, handicrafts, leather goods, beer, and dairy products. A colorful Native American marketplace is in the city.

Also located in the city is a university-level polytechnic school (1969). Founded about 1534, Riobamba was destroyed by earthquake in 1797 and rebuilt 14 km (9 mi) from the original site. Population (1996 estimate) 114,322.

The images for this slide show were collected from various sources, most of them fairly recent. They should give you an idea of the flavor of this small city. I hope you enjoy it.

Text from Microsoft Encarta

Riding the bus to Quito from Shellmera

It was raining again. We piled all ten bags onto the church steps and waited for the Quito bus to come by. For two hours we waited in drizzly Shellmera, a small town on the outskirts of the Ecuadorian jungles. Late buses and rain are a daily occurrence.

Finally, we saw the bus. It was jam packed, careening down the gravel road. The driver took one look at all our bags and almost passed us by. But when we yelled that we were going all the way to Quito, he stopped and let us on.

We squeezed aboard. People were already standing in the aisles. One man gave up his seat when he found out that we were going to the end of the line. The rest of us stood where we could.

After we got underway again, things settled down a bit. Two Quichua Indians were sleeping in one seat. They kept falling on top of each other. They were so comical that the whole bus full of people would roar with laughter as they flopped around. Riding in a bus for hours and hours makes the people inside become comradely and friendly with each other, especially Ecuadorians. They joked and laughed at each other all the time.

My mother began talking with a fellow passenger and he told us why the bus was late. The original driver had been caught driving without a license. The passengers had spent most of their time trying to get him out of jail, and finding another driver.

The roads are very narrow, and at times when you meet another vehicle, you had to back up until a wide enough section of road could be found to pass in. Once when passing another bus, our bus was on the outside edge. I was sitting by the window, and when I looked out, I realized that the outside tires of the double wheel were actually hanging off the edge of the cliff.

Another time, when the rains had washed out a section of the road, we had to drive over what looked like a little river full of large round boulders. We got to just about the middle when the bus started to float. We almost got washed right off the cliff edge, but managed to get to the other side. After that, I always got OFF the bus and crossed the washout by walking through them. I also got off when buses were passing on narrow sections of road.

I almost got sick from the swaying bus and smell of the people, so I went up front behind the driver. It was too hard to stand, so I crouched in the aisle.

The conductor, seeing my uncomfortable position, offered his seat. It wasn't much better. The seat faced the driver who kept leering at me. The scenery was beautiful, but I was too uncomfortable to pay much attention. The driver had a peculiar way of smiling at me, shifting gears, beeping the horn, and making a 90* turn, all at the same time. It was during one of these feats that we met a jeep head on. It hadn't responded to the customary 'beep beep" that announced our approach. Fortunately, the road was wide enough at this point, and we swooped by.

The custom of honking a warning as you approach a curve is an important feature of safe driving on those roads. I road a bus once where the horn had conked out, and believe me, it was scary! We had to inch around corners, and everyone made as much noise as possible.

Every once in a while, the conductor who was up on top with the baggage, would bang on the bus roof as a sign to let someone off. We would screech to a halt, then leave them in the dust, seemingly in the middle of no where.

A couple of bouncing, dusty hours later, we came to a relatively big town. My mother had secured a seat by a window, so I went back and sat by her.

While sitting there, we began talking to a Peace Corp volunteer. He was on his way to a remote mountain village. We shared our banana bread with him. It was the first American food he had eaten for months. He got off at Ambato with twelve hours of bus travel ahead.

In Ambato, we had a half hour rest stop and we changed drivers. Although it was dirty, and smelly, the town of Ambato did have a really unique feature. Public bathrooms. I might mention, that this is the only town where there were bathrooms that we could use. During that long ride, if you had to go and you were a man, it was no problem. Many of the native women would just get off the bus and go behind a bush some where. But I learned heroic bladder control!

The public toilets in Ambato often saved my life, but the were filthy! There were no doors on the facilities anywhere, not even on the stalls. The floors, walls, and seats were always covered with grime. The windows were not screened, glassed in, or anything, and people could (and did) look in at you whenever they wanted. A man sat in front and sold grungy toilet paper by the square.

The cobblestone road is better from Ambato on, and fewer people were in the bus. The man sitting in front of us had a chicken under his seat. It laid an egg on the way, and the egg rolled down the aisle. My father picked it up to return it to the owner, but his thumb went right through it, and the owner told him to throw it out the window.

The people on the bus laughed about the chicken laying the egg for hours. Each time we stopped, they hollered out the window, telling everyone in sight about the chicken, and holding it up so everyone could see her for themselves.

There was a family of Quichua Indians crammed into the back, one long bench with about four too many people on it. They were coming home from a wedding, and they were drunk, and happy, and they laughed til they cried, almost rolling on the floor laughing about the chicken and the egg. Pretty soon we were laughing at them too.

Some hours later at Latacunga, the paved section of the Pan American Highway began. Without bumps and hairpin curves the trip became extremely monotonous and most everyone went to sleep. While it was often boring, I spent many hours in pleasant day dreaming on that section of road. This was the part of the highway that went high into the mountains, and over the passes. The hairpin curves and the cliff edges were gone, but the scenery was awesome. It was a tundra like area, too high up for trees, so it was all grasslands, cool, and often either misting, or foggy and eerie.

No one lived up there except for a very few, very poor Indians who lived in sod and grass huts. Many times the fog we passed through was actually a cloud resting on the top of the mountain. Snow capped mountains ringed the area. And if you weren't acclimated to the altitude, you could certainly feel the effects of it here.

Finally, after eight hours of travel, we came down out of the mountain passes, and rolled into the Ecuadorian capital. The quaintly picturesque city of springtime, Quito, where on a clear day you can see eight snow capped mountains.

~remembrances of Shirley Gibson
from an essay written in 1968

Dangerous Roads

Someone emailed me a series of pictures of the "world's most dangerous road" and it reminded me so much of riding the bus in Ecuador, that I thought I would share them here. Most of the pictures in the slide show were taken in Bolivia, but some are from Ecuador.

We would get up at 4 or 5 am and be down at the bus station in Quito before dawn. The long ride would end sometime in the early evening hours in Shellmera where we would often spend the night before flying into the jungle via the small MAF plane.

Sometimes the ride was really scary, sometimes it was just boring and long. Always there was the amazingly beautiful scenery.

Ecuador

Ecuador is the Switzerland of South America. There are snow capped mountains and volcanoes.

The capitol city, Quito, is located on the Equator and is at an altitude of 10 thousand feet above sea level. It is located at the foot of Mount Pichincha, which recently erupted.

Ecuador is divided into three distinctly different area. The Sierra (mountainous areas) with fields of grain and herds of sheep. There is the coast with it's huge banana plantations, rivers, and farms. And on the other side of the Andes Mountains is the Oriente (eastern) part. This is the rain forest and the head waters of the great Amazon.

There are many tribes of native peoples:

• The Cofasin of the lower coastal area
• The Colorado who love red and paint their hair red
• The Quichua of the high sierra. It is among these people that the Lord did a work of grace and thousands of them became christians and found the freedom that is in Christ
• In the Oriente there are the Shuar, the Huaorani, the Quechua, Achuara, and others.

Gladis and I went to Ecuador in the summer of 1950. we were there for over 16 years and then spent 2 years in Colombia.

We labored in the rain forest, or jungle area, with the Shuar. Many people from the embassy asked us why we went to the natives to preach hell fire to them. They were happy in their environment. And so it would seem. But once you live among them, you find that they aren't so happy as it might appear on a sunny day.

They were bound by fear. In fact they had three basic fears:

1. Demonic powers and witchcraft
2. Disease and sickness
3. Death

They had a name for the devil, but no name for God. They already knew about hell, but they didn't know about Jesus who could and would free them from the fear of death.

We established a school for the children, medical help for the sick, and hope for the future. All of a sudden they had a song to sing, peace in their hearts, and help for their illnesses.

They are a very intelligent people. They knew the ways of the jungle, and now they have the Bible in their own language. Women have value, and families are blessed with more children.

Notes from a talk
given by Bill Gibson to the Sertoma Club
El Paso Texas, date unknown

Map of Ecuador

Republic of Ecuador

Straddling the equator, this small nation is richly endowed with snowy Andean peaks towering over emerald-green slopes, rivers winding through tropical jungles, and beyond all this, in the Pacific, lie the Galapagos Islands.