“Can You Believe it Comes from Trees” Exhibit at the Cradle of Forestry

Take a look around you. You're likely surrounded by wood

products! Maybe it's the table you're sitting at, or the beams in the walls, or maybe even the

paper you're reading this on. It's no secret that wood, and the trees they come from, are an

extremely valuable natural resource. However, there are many unexpected forest products that

you may use that you never knew contained wood!

Cellulose, the powdered wood pulp obtained by chemical treatment and mechanical processing

of natural renewable wood, is an organic fiber that is used in a wide variety of industries. In Ice

cream and parmesan cheese, the cellulose provides stability for foods and is entirely safe to

eat! Cellulose is also utilized in different toothpastes, paints, and gels.

The rosin from hard pines, like those found in Western North Carolina, is utilized in numerous

different manufacturing processes. Notably, different types of ink use tree rosin, meaning both

the paper and the ink printed on it are tree products! Tree rosin is also utilized to create some

forms of chewing gum!

The number of useful things we get from trees and wood products is incredible, and if you want

to learn more about unique forest products, visit the Project Learning Tree "Can You Believe it

Comes from Trees" Exhibit at the Cradle of Forestry in America. Project Learning Tree is an

initiative of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and its work is to advance environmental

education, forest literacy, and career pathways using trees and forests as windows on the

world.

This interactive exhibit helps to convey just how much we depend on trees in our daily lives,

and more specifically, which individual tree parts we can thank for them! Visitors can play a

matching game where they try to organize the Tree Product Cards into the tree parts

responsible for them, including wood, bark, cellulose, sap, fruits and seeds, leaves, and roots.

Stop by the Cradle of Forestry between 10 AM and 5 PM to see the exhibit located in the

Discovery Center, and walk the three miles of paved trails at America's birthplace of forestry.

The exhibit will be available to the public until November 13th, when the Cradle of Forestry

closes for the winter.

Special thanks to Project Learning Tree and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative for allowing the

Cradle of Forestry to showcase this unique exhibit.

For more information about this exhibit and other upcoming programs, visit

www.gofindoutdoors.org.

Community event in Pisgah Forest, NC 28768.