Thing is though, whichever type of natural wood gets densified and processed into 'super wood', it doesn't seem to have too significant an impact upon the strength or other mechanical properties of the finished material. Hence, the scientists' maximization of the factors by which all of the wood's mechanical properties were enhanced, by deliberately using the treatment on bog-standard balsa wood, the lightest, softest and weakest hardwood they could find; using naturally stronger, denser woods does apparently create stronger and denser superwood, but the enhancement factor presumably isn't quite as dramatic. And it's also extremely important to note that the increased structural strength of superwood (and the thermal insulation properties of nanowood) comes from the catalytic conversion of natural anisotropic cellulose fibers, aligned in parallel, into anisotropic nano-cellulose fibers through hydrogen bonding. This means that it'll only work if the wood's cellular structure is naturally anisotropic to begin with, and that, critically, it wouldn't work on softwood species; only hardwood timbers would be able to be engineered into superwood. Which massively diminishes any hopes of a Canada, Russia, (even greater) US or Scandinavian wank scenario; but greatly improves the chances of a Brazil and/or Kongo-wank scenario.
Still, once they cottoned onto the fact that the weakest and softest hardwoods' properties get enhanced the most ITTL, you'd suspect that the imports and exports of exotic hardwoods, like those in the Kingdom of Kongo's rainforests, may well become less lucrative rather than more so; with the demand and impetus shifting towards the development and harvesting of the cheapest, easiest, fastest growing trees they can find to engineer superwood from, rather than the strongest or the most workable timbers. Eucalyptus plantations, for example, could well be far more lucrative and widespread ITTL than IOTL. Especially in places like California, where Eucalyptus trees were introduced by the first wave of immigrants from Australia to the United States, during the California Gold Rush, in the hope that they'd provide a lucrative renewable source of timber for construction, furniture making and railroad ties. However, it was soon found that the young trees being harvested in California were far inferior in quality to the timber being harvested in Australia from centuries-old tree, often splitting and warping during harvest, which swiftly doomed the California eucalyptus industry IOTL. ITTL though, if the technology exists to process and engineer it into super-wood instead? Don't count a California-wank scenario out. You'd certainly have a fair few more Australian Americans than you do today, that's for sure, and the Australian-American community getting relatively richer far quicker, rather than languishing in poverty. And if there are more of them, more widely planted, these Eucalyptus trees, and other similarly fast-growing invasive trees planted for lumber, are markedly more likely to escape such timber plantations and run amok than IOTL as well.
And coincidentally, the fastest growing hardwood tree in the world's Paulownia tomentosa, aka as the princesstree, foxglove-tree, or kiri; possessing an evolutionary adaptation that allows it to use C4 Carbon Fixation in the photosynthetic process, in the same manner as grasses, enabling it to grow up to 6m in its first year, and as much as 30cm in three weeks. Dubbed the 'aluminum of timber', Paulownia wood's not only the fastest growing hardwood, but the lightest known timber other than balsa, and has the highest strength to weight ratio of any wood, roughly 20% higher than that of balsa wood. It's also naturally a very good insulator, with a high temperature resistance and fire resistance, giving it an ignition temperature of approximately 400ºC, almost double that of most other hardwoods- if that carries through after the engineering process, one can imagine how important that might be. And while it's originally native to Central and Western China, it's the most widely planted, and possesses the greatest importance and cultural significance, in the home islands of Japan- where this fast-growing tree's traditionally planted at the birth of a girl, maturing when she does, before being cut down when she's eligible for marriage and carved into wooden articles for her dowry, with the carving of kiri wood respected as an art form in Japan. In legend, it's also said that this is the only tree that the Fenghuang will ever land on, and only when a good ruler is in power. All of which sounds like great set-up and imagery to lend itself towards a Japan-wank scenario, wouldn't you agree?
