what makes the structure of gymnosperms trees to produce soft wood?
Answers
All trees reproduce by producingseeds, but the seed structure varies. In general, hardwood comes from a deciduous tree which loses its leaves annually and softwood comes from a conifer, which usually remains evergreen. Hardwoods tend to be slower growing, and are therefore usually more dense.
Hardwoods or Angiosperms have a more complex structure. The main feature seperating them from Softwoods or Gymnosperms are the water-conducting cells, vessels or pores and tracheids, plus more or less thick-walled and tightly-packed wood fiber cells, lacking in softwoods. Softwoods are composed essentially of water-conducting cells in the form of tracheids and medullary rays.
The hardness and weight of wood is connected to the density of cells, the amount of lignin contained in the cell walls and the percentage of tiny air spaces or pores within the cell walls.The weight is mainly determined by cellulose and lignin in the cell walls around the billions of individual cells.Lignin especially, imparts great strength and hardness to the wood.
On average , Angiosperms tend to be more denser and harder than Gymnosperms because the cells are more tightly-packed (denser) , there are less and smaller air spaces within the cell walls, the cell walls contain more lignin and the presence of wood fiber cells more or less tightly packed and lignified.The slower growth rate of most hardwoods compared to softwoods seems to result in a finer, more denser structure as well.
In the end there is a great variation in hardness in both hardwoods and softwoods with the range in density in hardwoods completely including that of softwoods.