Hybrid Poplar Plantations for the North American Pulp and Paper Industry - History and Future Outlook, 2005 Engineering, Pulping & Environmental Conference

Poplars, cottonwoods, and aspens, all members of the botanical genus Populus and collectively known as poplars, were among the first trees domesticated in North America by the pulp and paper and match stock industries. The Oxford Paper Company participated in the first poplar hybridization project in the United States in 1925-1927 to develop improved varieties for a plantation supporting their mill in Rumford, Maine (Stout and Schreiner 1933). Controlled hybridization of aspen (P. tremuloides, P. grandidentata) and white poplar (P. alba, P. canescens) began soon thereafter at the Petawawa Forest Experiment Station in Ontario (Heimburger, 1936). Although poplars continue today as the best fit for hardwood plantation management, their cultivation for pulping fibers is limited throughout North America mainly to situations where the manufacture of premium communication papers is constrained by regional shortages in hardwood fiber (Kellison, 2000). Such situations notwithstanding, the future of poplar plantations is largely dependent upon lowering production costs either through improvements in management techniques, yield, and harvesting technology, or the management for higher-value saw timber that provides low-cost residuals for use in making pulping fibers.