• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.525-534
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• 2017

The study aims to observe the cellular anatomical properties of Dahurian larch and Japanese larch for the species identification. In addition, other factors - the ring width, tracheid length, density, and strength - were compared and analyzed to clarify their physical and mechanical properties. To the end, three Dahurian larch trees and three Japanese larch trees by each diameter class were collected as specimens from Jeongseon-eup, Jeongseon-gun, Gangwon-do, to conduct a stem analysis. It was found that the average stand age, average diameter at breast height, and average tree height of three Dahurian larch trees and Japanese larch trees were 74 years and 51 years, 442 mm and 352 mm, and 26.1 m and 20.8 m, respectively. The cellular anatomical difference between Dahurian larch and Japanese larch can be usually found by spiral thickening, considering that it doesn't occur in Dahurian larch at all, while rarely does in the ray tracheids of Japanese larch. However, in this study, spiral thickening was not observed in the radial section of Japanese larch. The average annual growth diameters measured at 1.2 m-height of Dahurian larch and Japanese larch were 5.167 mm and 5.954 mm, respectively. Meanwhile, arboreal growth of Japanese larch was observed to be higher than that of Dahurian larch. In the physical properties test, it was measured that the latewood proportion and oven-dry density of Dahurian larch with low annual diameter growth were higher than those of Japanese larch, while the mechanical properties of Dahurian larch wood were measured 2-7% higher than those of Japanese larch wood. The data obtained from this study are expected to be used as the basic reference for species identification between Dahurian larch and Japanese larch by DNA analysis.