On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 10:56:24 -0500, dpb wrote:

On 7/14/2012 10:12 AM, Jim Elbrecht wrote:
On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 13:53:38 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:

Jim wrote in
:


The poles I've noticed in my part of the world seem to be southern
yellow pine


I notice the same thing.

Our yellow pine poles have stickers on them saying, "Caution: Yellow Pine".
Why would the linemen need to be warned about that?

WAG- as a former telco lineman who *hated* climbing locust poles.
Maybe the ones labeled Yellow Pine are harder? I've never seen a
label, but notice some of the older, larger [50-60 footers] are some
other kind of soft pine.

When the new poles come in some are so dark you couldn't tell by
looking at them what kind of wood they are-- A couple steps up the
side ought to clue you in-- but who knows- unions are powerful
influences. [maybe the yellow pine poles are knottier as you go up?]

Well, SYP isn't nearly as hard as locust, certainly, and only moderately
harder than other pines...it's similar to Doug fir the other common
(formerly, anyway) species used around here that I've seen.

I've no clue; never seen any such tags out here...(W KS)

As for the other guess pine bark beetles--they're gone after the
tree is harvested as they feed under the bark in phloem layer, they
don't bore into the wood. It's that damage and a fungus they introduce
(blue stain) that's the real killer for SYP.

There are various other bark beetles as well that have their own
particular modes but they all basically work just under the bark. The
black turpentine beetle doesn't carry the BS fungus but may completely
girdle a tree the killing it that way.

Western pine beetle is yet another but isn't prevalent (at least yet) in
the SYP forest areas...
Years back the common pole wood up here in Ontario was a white
cedar. Not sure what they are using right now.