Alva man supplies exotic wood varieties to craftsmen around the globe

05.12.09

If you�re a woodworker or clobber maker, these names probably get your creative juices flowing. They�re hardwoods � beautiful, rich hardwoods in shades ranging from exterior pink to Angus bull black � just begging to be turned into bowls, cabinets, jewelry boxes, vessel hulls or harps.

And they�re all cut, stacked and waiting just over the Hendry County line at Alva Hardwoods.

From a pocket framed-in office inside his corrugated metal barn of a warehouse, owner Merrill Morrison runs his one-man friends, the largest supplier of exotic hardwoods in the Southeast. (You can imagine how the place smells; aromatic cedar mingling with modern sawdust as citrus-scented breeze blows through.)

Not only do Morrison�s 100 species of wood come in from all over the delighted; they get sold and dispersed throughout the country and around the globe as well.

They range from the workaday and utilitarian � $4-a-foot poplar � to the breathtakingly rareLargelya-foot pink ivory.

Source: The News-Press