....Does this "bow" somehow effect the suitability of the wood so that the grain will not lie straight in the finished stock?....
I would go with the thought that the blank was originally sawn straight. It didn't grow that way. The chance that a blank was sawn from the log for best grain layout may be luck at best. Maybe, you can check the edge grain to estimate if the grain will run off of the finished stock in a way that you would rather it not do, but if so, it was probably already cut that way.
