Young, Intresting thoughts, Here is my take on the situation.
Just like in a bow there is no "real" neutral line, but rather an imaginary line at witch point the wood is not under tension but is being compressed. That Invisible hair line neutral zone can change depending on shape and structure of the back of the bow or even the shape of the sides. For example if a bow were to be shaped like a triangle for "Exaggeration purpose" and the wide part was the bottom and the point at the top. Then the neutral plane would sit lower and near the bottom and the most extreme tension on the very top point. We know that if bent it would certainly break from tension failure because of the extreme small defined area for tension strength. And if we invert the situation and made the wide part of the triangle the back of the bow, then the belly would surely crush from being over powered by the wide tension surface. Yes these are extremes for example. Now if we consider that tree branches very in uniform structure as well and also in the angle toward the gravitational pull. That "Neutral zone" would also fluctuate slightly. So certainly there is going to be some natural tension strengths built in as well as compression strengths in other areas.
All those factors are fairly mute because the real challenge that I see, is that on one side your rings are likely to be tighter and denser and on the other side of the stave, they will be more open and less dense. This will likely cause the stave to warp when drying and have a weaker side. If it's a smaller stave like what you show in the pic. If much larger you could certainly get a stave from the side that is more uniform in density. as you look at your pic you can see that the bottom if fairly consistant as well as the Tension side of the limb. but the sides show a slight difference. Would it be noticeable? Maybe not as tight as those rings are..
Dose your head hurt as much as mine now?
