: Back in the late 1990s I was invited on a agro-forestry tour of parts of
: China for a few weeks with folks from the Chinese Academy of Forestry. The
: tour was sponsered by the International Tree Crops Association. Our main
: guide was a forest geneticist whose main emphasis was Paulonia. The
: Chinese plant it all over the place, often along roads. It grows very
: fast, you can feed the leaves to livestock, and they have been making
: furniture out of it for quite awhile.

That would be very consistant with what I read on those sites I visited. And the site in Florida said they had been in business quite a while and that the wood has been in use in the US for some time. ???

: I have never seen or heard of large-scale plantings in the western US. You
: would be hard pressed to get long logs (>10 m) from the trees I saw,
: but you should be able to get kayak length pieces if you wanted.

: We visited one Paulowina furniture factory that was a fully integrated
: manufacturing facility. It started with piles of 3 meter long logs which
: were hand loaded onto a cart, pushed over to a small bandsaw, milled into
: boards which were put back on the cart the log came on, pushed over the
: the woodshop where they were put through planers and joiners and then made
: into dressers and chests of drawers with pictures of Snoopy and Woodstock
: on them. There was a frightening lack of shop safety equipment, but the
: whole operation was pretty amazing. Didn't see any boats being built...

: You might try contacting: International Tree Crops Institute
: Box 1272
: Winters, California 95694

: I'll poke around and see if I can find any western US sources...

Thanks Scott
One of the sources I read stated that they had plantations in the US, but gave only regions. NW, NE, S and I talked to a friend this evening that used to live in Virginia/W.Virginia and he said that it was out there a few years ago.
he was not crazy about it, ( lack of color or figure ... said poplar was beautiful in comparison )
The sites I saw mentioned that the tall ( 70-80' ) trees were not too good as they had few growth rings and far apart. But the shorter ones used for landscape grew to approx. 30' and were more suited for boat material.

I've heard good and bad, now I'd like to see and try it out.
Nothing like first hand experience!!

I'll keep checking as well and see if there's any good info out there on possible dealers.

Rehd