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-The Project Gutenberg eBook, American Forest Trees, by Henry H. Gibson,
-Edited by Hu Maxwell
-
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
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-
-
-
-
-Title: American Forest Trees
-
-
-Author: Henry H. Gibson
-
-Editor: Hu Maxwell
-
-Release Date: February 18, 2013  [eBook #42124]
-
-Language: English
-
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-***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN FOREST TREES***
-
-
-E-text prepared by Greg Bergquist, Harry Lamé, and the Online Distributed
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42124 ***
 
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@@ -23781,362 +23746,4 @@ Oxydendrum arboreum
 Page xiv: Tilia amerciana to Tilia americana, Robinia neomexicana to
 Robinia neo-mexicana, Salix sessifolia to Salix sessilifolia.
 
-
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+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42124 ***
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook, American Forest Trees, by Henry H. Gibson,
-Edited by Hu Maxwell
-
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-
-
-
-Title: American Forest Trees
-
-
-Author: Henry H. Gibson
-
-Editor: Hu Maxwell
-
-Release Date: February 18, 2013  [eBook #42124]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-
-***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN FOREST TREES***
-
-
-E-text prepared by Greg Bergquist, Harry Lamé, and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
-available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
-(http://archive.org/details/americana)
-
-
-
-Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
-      file which includes the original illustrations.
-      See 42124-h.htm or 42124-h.zip:
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42124/42124-h/42124-h.htm)
-      or
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42124/42124-h.zip)
-
-
-      Images of the original pages are available through
-      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
-      http://archive.org/details/americanforestt00gibs
-
-
-Transcriber's note:
-
-      Text printed in italics in the original work are represented
-      here between underscores, as in _text_.
-
-      Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPITALS.
-
-      The oe ligature is represented by [oe].
-
-      More Transcriber's notes may be found at the end of this text.
-
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: HENRY H. GIBSON]
-
-
-AMERICAN FOREST TREES
-
-by
-
-HENRY H. GIBSON
-
-Edited by Hu Maxwell
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Hardwood Record
-Chicago
-1913
-
-Copyright 1913 by
-Hardwood Record
-Chicago, Ill.
-
-The Regan Printing House
-Chicago.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-The material on which this volume is based, appeared in Hardwood Record,
-Chicago, in a series of articles beginning in 1905 and ending in 1913,
-and descriptive of the forest trees of this country. More than one
-hundred leading species were included in the series. They constitute the
-principal sources of lumber for the United States. The present volume
-includes all the species described in the series of articles, with a
-large number of less important trees added. Every region of the country
-is represented; no valuable tree is omitted, and the lists and
-descriptions are as complete as they can be made in the limited space of
-a single volume. The purpose held steadily in view has been to make the
-work practical, simple, plain, and to the point. Trees as they grow in
-the forest, and wood as it appears at the mill and factory, are
-described and discussed. Photographs and drawings of trunk and foliage
-are made to tell as much of the story as possible. The pictures used as
-illustrations are nearly all from photographs made specially for that
-purpose. They are a valuable contribution to tree knowledge, because
-they show forest forms and conditions, and are as true to nature as the
-camera can make them. Statistics are not given a place in these pages,
-for it is no part of the plan to show the product and the output of the
-country's mills and forests, but rather to describe the source of those
-products, the trees themselves. However, suggestions for utilization are
-offered, and the fitness of the various woods for many uses is
-particularly indicated. The prominent physical properties are described
-in language as free as possible from technical terms, and yet with
-painstaking accuracy and clearness. Descriptions intended to aid in
-identification of trees are given; but simplicity and clearness are held
-constantly in view, and brevity is carefully studied. The different
-names of commercial trees in the various localities where they are
-known, either as standing timber or as lumber in the yard and factory,
-are included in the descriptions as an assistance in identification. The
-natural range of the forest trees, and the regions where they abound in
-commercial quantities, are outlined according to the latest and best
-authorities. Estimates of present and future supply are offered, where
-such exist that seem to be authoritative. The trees are given the common
-and the botanical names recognized as official by the United States
-Forest Service. This lessens misunderstanding and confusion in the
-discussion of species whose common names are not the same in different
-regions, and whose botanical names are not agreed upon among scientific
-men who mention or describe them. The forests of the United States
-contain more than five hundred kinds of trees, ranging in size from the
-California sequoias, which attain diameters of twenty feet or more and
-heights exceeding two hundred, down to indefinite but very small
-dimensions. The separating line between trees and shrubs is not
-determined by size alone. In a general way, shrubs may be considered
-smaller than trees, but a seedling tree, no matter how small, is not
-properly called a shrub. It is customary, not only among botanists, but
-also among persons who do not usually recognize exact scientific terms
-and distinctions, to apply the name tree to all woody plants which
-produce naturally in their native habitat one main, erect stem, bearing
-a definite crown, no matter what size they may attain.
-
-The commercial timbers of this country are divided into two classes,
-hardwoods and softwoods. The division is for convenience, and is
-sanctioned by custom, but it is not based on the actual hardness and
-softness of the different woods. The division has, however, a scientific
-basis founded on the mechanical structures of the two classes of woods,
-and there is little disagreement among either those who use forest
-products or manufacture them, or those who investigate the actual
-structure of the woods themselves, as to which belong in the hardwood
-and which in the softwood class.
-
-_Softwoods_--The needleleaf species, represented by pines, hemlocks,
-firs, cedars, cypresses, spruces, larches, sequoias, and yews, are
-softwoods. The classification of evergreens as softwoods is erroneous,
-because all softwoods are not evergreen, and all evergreens are not
-softwoods. Larches and the southern cypress shed their leaves yearly.
-Most other softwoods drop only a portion of their foliage each season,
-and enough is always on the branches to make them evergreen. Softwoods
-are commonly called conebearers, and that description fits most of them,
-but the cedars and yews produce fruit resembling berries rather than
-cones. Though the needleleaf species are classed as softwoods, there is
-much variation in the absolute hardness of the wood produced by
-different species. The white pines are soft, the yews hard, and the
-other species range between. If there were no other means of separating
-trees into classes than tests of actual hardness of wood, the line
-dividing hardwoods from softwoods might be quite different from that now
-so universally recognized in this country.
-
-_Hardwoods_--The broadleaf trees are hardwoods. Most, but not all, shed
-their foliage yearly. It is, therefore, incorrect to classify deciduous
-trees as hardwoods, since it is not true in all cases, any more than it
-is true that softwoods are evergreen. Live oaks and American holly are
-evergreen, and yet are true hardwoods. In a test of hardness they stand
-near the top of the list.
-
-There are more species of hardwoods than of softwoods in this country;
-but the actual quantity of softwood timber in the forests greatly
-exceeds the hardwoods. Nearly two hundred species of the latter are
-seldom or never seen in a sawmill, while softwoods are generally cut and
-used wherever found in accessible situations.
-
-As in the case of needleleaf trees, there is much variation in actual
-hardness of the wood of different broadleaf species. Some which are
-classed as hardwoods are softer than some in the softwood list. It is
-apparent, therefore, that the terms hardwood and softwood are commercial
-rather than scientific.
-
-Palm, cactus, and other trees of that class are not often employed as
-lumber, and it is not customary to speak of them as either hardwoods or
-softwoods.
-
-_Sapwood and Heartwood_--Practically all mature trees contain two
-qualities of wood known as sap and heart. The inner portion is the
-heartwood, the outer the sap. They are usually distinguished by
-differences of color.
-
-The terms are much used in lumber transactions and are well understood
-by the trade. The two kinds of wood need be described only in the most
-general way, and for the guidance and information of those who are not
-familiar with them. Differences are many and radical in the relative
-size and appearance of the two kinds of wood in different species, and
-even between different trees of the same species. No general law is
-followed, except that the heartwood forms in the interior of the tree,
-and the sapwood in a band outside, next to the bark. In the majority of
-cases young trees have little heartwood, often none. It is a development
-attendant on age, yet age does not always produce it. Some mature trees
-have no heartwood, others very little.
-
-The two kinds of wood belong to needleleaf and broadleaf trees alike;
-but palms, owing to their manner of growth, have neither. Their size
-increases in height rather than in diameter. With palms, the oldest wood
-is in the base of the trunk, the newest in the top; but in the ordinary
-timber tree the oldest wood is in the center of the trunk, the youngest
-in the outside layers next the bark. It is the oldest that becomes
-heartwood, and it is, of course, in the center of the tree. The band of
-sapwood is of no certain thickness, but averages much thicker in some
-species than in others. The sapwood of Osage orange is scarcely half an
-inch thick, and in loblolly pine it may be six inches or more.
-
-Heartwood is known by its color. The eye can detect no other difference
-between it and the surrounding band of sapwood. There is no fundamental
-difference. The heart was once sapwood, and the latter will sometime
-become heartwood if the tree lives long enough. As the trunk increases
-in size and years, the wood near the heart dies. It no longer has much
-to do with the life of the tree, except that it helps support the weight
-of the trunk. The heartwood is, therefore, deadwood. The activities of
-tree life are no longer present. The color changes, because mineral and
-chemical substances are deposited in the wood and fill many of the
-cavities. That process begins at the center of the trunk and works
-outward year by year, forming a pretty distinct line between the living
-sapwood and the dead and inert heartwood.
-
-For some reason, the heartwood of certain species is prone to decay.
-Sycamore is the best example. The largest trunks are generally hollow.
-The heart has disappeared, leaving only the thin shell of sapwood, and
-this is required not only to maintain the tree's life and activities,
-but to support the trunk's weight. In most instances the substances
-deposited in the heartwood, and associated with the coloring matter,
-tend to preserve the wood from decay. For that reason heart timber lasts
-longer than sap when exposed in damp situations. The dark and variegated
-shades of the heartwood of some species give them their chief value as
-cabinet and furniture material. The sapwood of black walnut is not
-wanted by anybody, for it is light in color and is characterless; but
-when the sap has changed to heart, and its tones have been deepened by
-the accumulation of pigments, it becomes a choice material for certain
-purposes. The same is true of many other timbers, notably sweet and
-yellow birch, black cherry, and several of the oaks.
-
-It sometimes happens that when sapwood is transformed into heart, a
-physical change, as well as a coloring process, affects it. Persimmon
-and dogwood are examples, and hickory in a less degree. The sapwood of
-persimmon and dogwood makes shuttles and golf heads, but after the
-change to heartwood occurs, it is considered unsuitable. Handle makers
-and the manufacturers of buggy spokes prefer hickory sapwood, but use
-the red heartwood if it is the same weight as the sap.
-
-_Annual Rings_--The trunks of both hardwoods and softwoods are made up
-of concentric rings. In most instances the eye easily detects them. They
-are more distinct in a freshly cut trunk than in weathered wood, though
-in a few instances weathering accentuates rather than obliterates them.
-A count of the rings gives the tree's age in years, each ring being the
-growth of one year. An occasional exception should be noted, as when
-accident checks the tree's growth in the middle of the season, and the
-growth is later resumed. In that case, it may develop two rings in one
-year. A severe frost late in spring after leaves have started may
-produce that result; or defoliation by caterpillars in early summer may
-do it. Perhaps not one tree in a thousand has that experience in the
-course of its whole life. Trees in the tropics where seasons are nearly
-the same the year through, seldom have rings. Imitations of mahogany are
-sometimes detected by noting clearly marked annual rings. It is
-difficult for the woodfinisher to obliterate the annual rings, but some
-of the French woodworkers very nearly accomplish it.
-
-No law of growth governs the width of yearly rings, but circumstances
-have much to do with it. When the tree's increase in size is rapid,
-rings are broad. An uncrowded tree in good soil and climate grows much
-faster than if circumstances are adverse. Carolina poplar and black
-willow sometimes have rings nearly three-fourths of an inch broad, while
-in the white bark pine, which grows above the snow line in California,
-the rings may be so narrow as to be invisible to the naked eye.
-
-There is no average width of yearly rings and no average age of trees. A
-few (very few) of the sequoias, or "big trees" of California, are two
-thousand years old. An age of six or seven centuries appears to be about
-the limit of the oldest of the other species in this country, though an
-authentic statement to that effect cannot be made. There are species
-whose life average scarcely exceeds that of men. The aspen generally
-falls before it is eighty; and fire cherry scarcely averages half of
-that. Of all the trees cut for lumber, perhaps not one in a hundred has
-passed the three century mark. That ratio would not hold if applied to
-the Pacific coast alone.
-
-_Spring and Summerwood_--These are not usual terms with lumbermen and
-woodworkers, but belong more to the engineer who thinks of physical
-properties of timber, particularly its strength. Yet, sawmill and
-factory men are well acquainted with the two kinds of wood, but they are
-likely to apply the term "grain" to the combination of the two.
-
-Spring and summerwood make the annual ring. Springwood grows early in
-the season, summerwood later. In fact, it usually is the contrast in
-color where the summerwood of one season abuts against the springwood of
-the next which makes the ring visible. The inside of the ring--that
-portion nearest the heart of the tree--is the springwood, the rest of
-the ring is the summerwood. The former is generally lighter in color.
-Sometimes, and with certain species, the springwood is much broader than
-the other. The summerwood may be a very narrow band, not much wider than
-a fine pencil mark, but its deeper color makes it quite distinct in most
-instances. In other instances, as with some of the oaks, the summerwood
-is the wider part of the annual ring. The figure or "grain" of southern
-yellow pine is largely due to the contrast between the dark summerwood
-and light springwood of the rings. The same is true of ash, chestnut,
-and of many other woods.
-
-_Pores_--Wood is not the solid substance it seems to be when seen in the
-mass. If magnified it appears filled with cavities, not unlike a piece
-of coral or honeycomb; but to the unaided eye only a few of the largest
-openings are visible, and in some woods like maple, none can be seen.
-The large openings are known as pores. They are so prominent in some of
-the oaks that in a clean cut end or cross section they look like pin
-holes. Very little magnifying is required to bring them out distinctly.
-A good reading glass is sufficient.
-
-Pores belong to hardwoods only. The resin ducts in some softwoods
-present a similar appearance, but are far less numerous. All pores are,
-of course, situated in the annual rings, but in different species they
-are differently located as to spring and summerwood. In some woods the
-largest pores are in the springwood only and therefore run in rings.
-Such woods are called "ring porous," and the oaks are best examples. In
-other species the pores are scattered through all parts of the ring in
-about the same proportion, and such woods are called "diffuse porous,"
-as the birches. Softwoods have no pores proper, and are classed
-"non-porous."
-
-_Medullary Rays_--A smoothly-cut cross section of almost any oak, but
-particularly white oak and red oak, exhibits to the unaided eye narrow,
-light-colored lines radiating from the center of the tree toward the
-bark like spokes of a wheel. They are about the breadth of a fine pencil
-mark, and are generally a sixth of an inch or less apart. They are among
-the most conspicuous and characteristic features of oak wood, and are
-known as medullary or pith rays.
-
-Oak is cited as an example because the rays are large and prominent, but
-they are present in all wood, and constitute a large part of its body.
-They vary greatly in size. In some woods a few are visible unmagnified;
-but even in oak a hundred are invisible to the naked eye to one that can
-be seen. Some species show none until a glass is used. Some pines have
-fifteen thousand to a square inch of cross section, all of which are so
-small as to elude successfully the closest search of the unaided eye.
-
-The medullary rays influence the appearance of most wood. They determine
-its character. Oak is quarter-sawed for the purpose of bringing out the
-bright, flat surfaces of these rays. The prominent flecks, streaks, and
-patches of silvery wood are the flat sides of medullary rays. In cross
-section, only the line-like ends are seen, but quarter-sawing exposes
-their sides to view.
-
-That explains in part why some species are adapted to quarter-sawing and
-others are not. If no broad rays exist in the wood, as with white pine,
-red cedar, and cottonwood, quarter-sawing cannot add much to the wood's
-appearance.
-
-_Grain_--The grain of wood is not a definite quality. The word does not
-mean the same thing to all who use it. It sometimes refers to rings of
-yearly growth, and in that sense a narrow-ringed wood is fine grained,
-and one with wide rings is coarse grained. A curly, wavy, smoky, or
-birdseye wood does not owe its quality to annual rings, yet with some
-persons, all of these figures are called grain. The term sometimes
-refers to medullary rays, again to hardness, or to roughness. Some
-mahogany is called "woolly grained" because the surface polishes with
-difficulty. The pattern maker designates white pine as "even grained",
-because it cuts easily in all directions. The handle maker classes
-hickory as "smooth grained", because it polishes well and the sole idea
-of the maker is smoothness to the touch. There are other grains almost
-as numerous as the trades which use wood. In numerous instances "figure"
-is a better term than "grain." Feather mahogany, birdseye birch, burl
-ash, are figures rather than grains. There is no authority to settle and
-decide what the real meaning of grain is in wood technology. It has a
-number of meanings, and one man has as much authority as another to
-interpret it in accordance with his own ideas, and the usage in his
-trade. It is a loose term which covers several things in general and
-nothing in particular.
-
-_Weight_--The weight of wood is calculated from different standpoints.
-It has a green weight, an air-dry weight, a kiln-dry weight, and an
-oven-dry weight. All are different, but the differences are due to the
-relative amounts of water weighed. Sawlogs generally go by green weight;
-yard lumber by air-dry or partly air-dry weight; while the wood used in
-ultimate manufacture, such as furniture, is supposed to be kiln-dry.
-
-The absolute weight of wood, with all air spaces, moisture, and other
-foreign material removed, is about 100 pounds per cubic foot, which is
-1.6 times heavier than water; but that is not a natural form of wood. It
-is known only in the laboratory.
-
-The actual wood substance of one species weighs about the same as
-another. Dispense with all air spaces, all water, and all other foreign
-substance, and pine and ebony weigh alike. It is apparent that the
-different weights of woods, as between cedar and oak for example, are
-due chiefly to porosity. The smaller the aggregate space occupied by
-pores and other cavities, the heavier the wood. That accounts for the
-differences in weights of absolutely dry woods of different kinds,
-except that a small amount of other foreign material may remain after
-water has been driven off. Florida black ironwood is rated as the
-heaviest in the United States, and it weighs 81.14 pounds per cubic
-foot, oven-dry. The lightest in this country is the golden fig which is
-a native of Florida also. It weighs 16.3 pounds per cubic foot,
-oven-dry. When weights of wood are given, the specimen is understood to
-be oven-dry, unless it is stated to be otherwise: it is a laboratory
-weight, calculated from small cubes of the wood. Such weights are always
-a little less than that of the dryest wood of the same kind that can be
-obtained in the lumber market.
-
-_Moisture in Wood_--The varying weights of the same wood indicate that
-moisture plays an important part. No man ever saw absolutely dry wood.
-If heated sufficiently to drive off all the moisture, the wood is
-reduced to charcoal and other products of destructive distillation.
-
-The pores and other cavities in green timber are more or less filled
-with water or sap. This may amount to one-third, one-half, or even more,
-of the dry weight of the wood. The water is in the hollow vessels and
-cell walls. A living tree contains about the same quantity of water in
-winter as in summer, though the common belief is otherwise. It is
-misleading to say that the sap is "down" in one season and "up" in
-another, although there is more activity at certain times than in
-others. Strictly speaking, there is a difference between the water in a
-tree, and the tree's sap; but in common parlance they are considered
-identical. What takes place is this: water rises from the tree's roots,
-through the wood, carrying certain minerals in solution. Some of it
-reaches the leaves in summer where it mixes with certain gases from the
-air, and is converted into sap proper. Most of the surplus water, after
-giving up the mineral substance held in solution, is evaporated through
-the leaves into the air; but the sap, starting from the leaves which act
-as laboratories for its manufacture, goes down through the newly-formed
-(and forming), layer of wood just beneath the bark, and is converted
-into wood. This newly-formed wood is colorless at first. It builds up
-the annual ring, first the springwood very rapidly, and then the
-summerwood more slowly.
-
-The force which causes water to rise through the trunk of a tree is not
-fully understood. It is one of nature's mysteries which is yet to be
-solved. Forces known as root pressure, capillary attraction, and
-osmosis, are believed to be active in the process, but there seems to be
-something additional, and no man has yet been able to explain what it
-is.
-
-The seasoning of wood is the process of getting rid of some of the
-water. As soon as lumber is exposed to air, the water begins to escape.
-Long exposure to dry air takes out a large percentage of the moisture
-which green wood holds, and the lumber is known as air-dry. But some of
-the original moisture remains, and air at climatic temperature is unable
-to expel it. The greater heat of a drykiln drives away some more of it,
-but a quantity yet remains. The lumber is then kiln-dry. Greater heat
-than the drykiln's is secured in an oven, and a little more of the
-wood's moisture is expelled; but the only method of driving all the
-moisture out is to heat the wood sufficiently to break down its
-structure, and reduce it to charcoal.
-
-Wood warps in the process of drying unless it seasons equally on all
-sides. It curls or bends toward the side which dries most rapidly. Dry
-wood may warp if exposed to dampness, if one side is more exposed and
-receives more moisture than another. It curls or bends toward the dryer
-side.
-
-Warping is primarily due to the more rapid contraction or expansion of
-wood cells on one side of the piece than on the other. Saturated cells
-are larger than dry ones.
-
-Moisture in wood affects its strength, the dryer the stronger, at least
-within certain limits. Architects and builders carefully study the
-seasoning of timber, because it is a most important factor in their
-business. The moisture which most affects a wood's strength is that
-absorbed in the cell walls, rather than that contained in the cell
-cavities themselves.
-
-Some woods check or split badly in seasoning unless attended with
-constant care. Checking is due chiefly to lack of uniformity in
-seasoning. One part of the stick dries faster than another, the dryer
-fibers contract, and the pull splits the wood. The checks may be small,
-even microscopic, or they may develop yawning cracks such as sometimes
-appear in the ends of hickory and black walnut logs. Greenwood checks
-worse in summer than in winter, because the weather is warmer, the
-wood's surface dries faster, and the strain on the fibers is greater.
-Phases of the moon have no influence on the seasoning, checking,
-warping, or lasting properties of timber.
-
-_Stiffness, Elasticity, and Strength_--Rules for measuring the stiffness
-of timber are involved in mathematical formulas; but the practical
-quality of stiffness is not difficult to understand. Wood which does not
-bend easily is stiff. If it springs back to its original position after
-the removal of the force which bends it, the wood is elastic. The
-greatest load it can sustain without breaking, is the measure of its
-strength. The load required to produce a certain amount of bending is
-the measure of its stiffness. Flexibility, a term much used by certain
-classes of workers in wood, is the opposite of stiffness. A brittle wood
-is not necessarily weak. It may sustain a heavy load without breaking,
-but when it fails, the break is sudden and complete. A tough wood
-behaves differently, though it may not be as strong as a brittle one.
-When a tough wood breaks, the parts are inclined to adhere after they
-have ceased to sustain the load. Hickory is tough, and in breaking, the
-wood crushes and splinters. Mesquite is brittle, and a clean snap severs
-the stick at once.
-
-Builders of houses and bridges, and the manufacturers of articles of
-wood, study with the greatest care the stiffness, elasticity, strength,
-toughness, and brittleness of timber. Its chief value may depend upon
-the presence or absence of one or more of these properties. Take away
-hickory's toughness and elasticity and it would cease to be a great
-vehicle and handle material. Reduce the stiffness and strength of
-longleaf pine and Douglas fir and they would drop at once from the high
-esteem in which they are held as structural timbers. Destroy the
-brittleness of red cedar and it would lose one of the chief qualities
-which make it the leading lead pencil wood of the world.
-
-There are recognized methods of measuring these important physical
-properties of woods, but they are expressed in language so technical
-that it means little to persons who are not specialists. For ordinary
-purposes, it is unnecessary to be more explicit than to state a certain
-wood is or is not strong, stiff, tough and elastic. Some species possess
-one or more of these properties to double the degree that others possess
-them. Different trees of the same species differ greatly, and even
-different parts of the same tree. Most tables of figures which show the
-various physical properties of woods, give averages only, not absolute
-values.
-
-_Hardness_--In some woods hardness is considered an advantage, but not
-in others. If sugar maple were as soft as white pine, it would not be
-the great floor material it is; and if white pine were as hard as maple,
-pattern makers would not want it, door and sash manufacturers would get
-along with less, and it would not be the leading packing box material in
-so wide a region.
-
-It is generally the summer growth in the annual rings which makes a wood
-hard. The summerwood is dense. A given bulk of it contains more actual
-wood substance and less air and water than the springwood. For the same
-reason, summerwood gives weight, and a relationship between hardness and
-weight holds generally. It may be added that strength goes with weight
-and hardness, but it is not a rule without apparent exceptions.
-
-Some woods possess twice or three times the hardness of others. Among
-some of the hardest in the United States are hickory, sugar maple,
-mesquite, the Florida ironwoods, Osage orange, locust, persimmon, and
-the best oak and elm. Among the softest species are buckeye, basswood,
-cedar, redwood, some of the pines, spruce, hemlock, and chestnut.
-
-The hardness of wood is tested with a machine which records the pressure
-required to indent the surface. The condition of the specimen, as to
-dryness, has much to do with its hardness. So many other factors
-exercise influence that nothing less than an actual test will determine
-the hardness of a sample. A table of figures can show it only
-approximately and by averages.
-
-_Cleavability_--Wood users generally demand a material which does not
-split easily, but the reverse is sometimes required. Rived staves must
-come from timbers which split easily. Many handles are from billets
-which are split in rough form and are afterwards dressed to the required
-size and shape. In these instances, splitting is preferable to sawing,
-because a rived billet is free from cross grain.
-
-The cleavability of woods differs greatly. Some can scarcely be split.
-Black gum is in that list, and sycamore to a less extent. Young trees of
-some species split more readily than old, while with others, the
-advantage is with the old. Young sycamore may generally be split with
-ease, but old trunks seem to develop interlocked fibers which defy the
-wedge. A white oak pole is hard to split, but the old tree yields
-readily. Few woods are more easily split than chestnut. With most
-timbers cleavage is easiest along the radial lines, that is, from the
-heart to the bark. The flat sides of the medullary rays lie in that
-plane. Cleavage along tangential lines is easy with some woods. The line
-of cleavage follows the soft springwood. Green timber is generally, but
-not always, more easily split than dry. As a rule, the more elastic a
-wood is, the more readily it may be split.
-
-_Durability_--In Egypt where climatic conditions are highly favorable,
-Lebanon cedar, North African acacia, East African persimmon, and
-oriental sycamore have remained sound during three or four thousand
-years. In the moist forests of the northwestern Pacific coast, an alder
-log six or eight inches in diameter will decay through and through in a
-single year. No wood is immune to decay if exposed to influences which
-induce it, but some resist for long periods. Osage orange and locust
-fence posts may stand half a century. Timber from which air is excluded,
-as when deeply buried in wet earth or under water, will last
-indefinitely; but if it is exposed to alternate dampness and dryness,
-decay will destroy it in a few years.
-
-It is apparent that resistance to decay is not a property inherent in
-the wood, but depends on circumstances. However, the ability to resist
-decay varies greatly with different species, under similar
-circumstances. Buckeye and red cedar fence posts, situated alike, will
-not last alike. The buckeye may be expected to fall in two or three
-years, and the cedar will stand twenty. Timbers light in weight and
-light in color are, as a class, quick-decaying when exposed to the
-weather.
-
-The rule holds in most cases that sapwood decays more quickly than heart
-when both are subject to similar exposure. The matter of decay is not
-important when lumber and other products intended for use are in dry
-situations. Furniture and interior house finish do not decay under
-ordinary circumstances, no matter what the species of wood may be; but
-resistance to decay overshadows almost any other consideration in
-choosing mine timbers, crossties, fence posts, and tanks and silos.
-
-Decay in timber is not simply a chemical process, but is due primarily
-to the activities of a low order of plants known as fungi, sometimes
-bacteria. The fungi produce thread-like filaments which penetrate the
-body of the wood, ramifying in and passing from cell to cell, absorbing
-certain materials therein, and ultimately breaking down and destroying
-the structure of the wood. Both air and dampness are essential to the
-growth of fungus. That is the reason why timbers deep beneath ground or
-water do not decay. Air is absent, though moisture is abundant; while in
-the dry Egyptian tombs, air is abundant but moisture is wanting, fungus
-cannot exist, and consequently decay of the wood does not occur. Nothing
-is needed to render timber immune to decay except to keep fungus out of
-the cells. Some of the fungus concerned in wood rotting is microscopic,
-while other appears in forms and sizes easily seen and recognized.
-
-Timber may be protected for a time against the agencies of decay by
-covering the surface with paint, thereby preventing the entrance of
-fungus. By another process, certain oils or other materials which are
-poisonous to the insinuating threads of fungus, are forced into the
-pores of the wood. Creosote is often used for this purpose. Attacks are
-thus warded off, and decay is hindered. The preservative fluid will not
-remain permanently in wood exposed to weather conditions, but the period
-during which it affords protection and immunity extends over some years;
-but different woods vary greatly in their ability to receive and retain
-preservative mixtures.
-
-The better seasoned, the less liable is timber to decay, because it
-contains less moisture to support fungi. It is generally supposed that
-timber cut in the fall of the year is less subject to decay than if
-felled in summer. If it is so, the reason for it lies in the fact that
-fungus is inactive during winter, and before the coming of warm weather
-the timber has partly dried near the surface, and fungi cannot pass
-through the dry outside to reach the interior. Timber cut in warm
-weather may be attacked at once, and before cold weather stops the
-activities of fungus it has reached the interior of the wood and the
-process of rotting is under way. When the agents of decay have begun to
-grow in the wood, destruction will go on as long as air and moisture
-conditions are favorable.
-
-The bluing of wood is an incipient decay and is generally due to fungus.
-Some kinds of wood are more susceptible to bluing than others. Though
-boards may quickly season sufficiently to put a stop to the bluing
-process before it has actually weakened the material, the result is more
-or less injurious. The wood's natural color and luster undergo
-deterioration; it does not reflect light as formerly, and seems dead and
-flat.
-
-Decay affects sapwood more readily than heart. The reason may be that
-sapwood contains more food for fungus, thereby inducing greater
-activity. The sapwood is on the outside of timbers and is often more
-exposed than the heart. In some instances greater decay may be due to
-greater exposure. Another reason for more rapid decay of sapwood than
-heart is the fact that the pores of the heartwood are more or less
-filled with coloring matter deposited while the growth of the tree was
-in progress. The coloring matter, in many cases, acts as a preservative;
-it shuts the threads of fungus out. Sometimes the sapwood of a dead tree
-or a log is totally destroyed while the heart remains sound. This often
-happens with red cedar and sometimes with black walnut, yellow poplar,
-and cherry. Occasionally a tree's bark is more resistant to decay than
-its wood. Paper birch and yellow birch logs in damp situations
-occasionally show this. What appears to be a solid fallen trunk, proves
-to be nothing more than a shell of bark with a soft, pulpy mass of
-decayed wood within.
-
-
-
-
-WHITE PINE
-
-[Illustration: WHITE PINE]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE PINE[1]
-
-(_Pinus Strobus_)
-
-    [1] The following 12 species are usually classed soft pines: White
-    Pine (_Pinus strobus_); Sugar Pine (_Pinus lambertiana_); Western
-    White Pine (_Pinus monticola_); Mexican White Pine (_Pinus
-    strobiformis_); Limber Pine (_Pinus flexilis_); Whitebark Pine
-    (_Pinus albicaulis_); Foxtail Pine (_Pinus balfouriana_); Parry Pine
-    (_Pinus quadrifolia_); Mexican Pinon (_Pinus cembroides_); Pinon
-    (_Pinus edulis_); Singleleaf Pinon (_Pinus monophylla_); Bristlecone
-    Pine (_Pinus aristata_).
-
-
-The best known wood of the United States has never been burdened with a
-multitude of names, as many minor species have. It is commonly known as
-white pine in every region where it grows, and in many where the living
-tree is never seen, except when planted for ornament. The light color of
-the wood suggests the name. The bark and the foliage are of somber hue,
-though not as dark as hemlock and many of the pines. The name Weymouth
-pine is occasionally heard, but it is more used in books than by
-lumbermen. It is commonly supposed that the name refers to Lord Weymouth
-who interested himself in the tree at an early period, but this has been
-disputed. In Pennsylvania it is occasionally called soft pine to
-distinguish it from the harder and inferior pitch pine and table
-mountain pine with which it is sometimes associated. It is the softest
-of the pines, and the name is not inappropriate. In some regions of the
-South, where it is well known, it is called northern spruce pine in
-recognition of the fact that it is a northern species which has followed
-the Appalachian mountain ranges some hundreds of miles southward. There
-is no good reason for this name when applied to white pine. It should be
-remembered, however, that no less than a dozen tree species in the
-United States are sometimes called spruce pine. Cork pine is a trade
-name applied more frequently to the wood than to the living tree. It is
-the wood of old, mature, first class trunks, as nearly perfect as can be
-found. Pumpkin pine is another name given to the same class of wood. It
-is so named because the grain is homogeneous, like a pumpkin, and may be
-readily cut and carved in any direction. It is the ideal wood for the
-pattern maker, but it is now hard to get because the venerable white
-pines, many hundred years old, are practically gone.
-
-The northern limit of the range of white pine stretches from
-Newfoundland to Manitoba, more than 1800 miles east and west across the
-Dominion of Canada, and southward to northern Georgia, 1200 miles in a
-north and south direction. But white pine does not grow in all parts of
-the territory thus delimited. It attained magnificent development in
-certain large regions before lumbering began, and in others it was
-scarce or totally wanting. Its ability to maintain itself on land too
-thin for vigorous hardwood growth gave it a monopoly of enormous
-stretches of sandy country, particularly in the Lake States. It occupied
-large areas in New England and southern Canada; developed splendid
-stands in New York and Pennsylvania; and it covered certain mountains
-and uplands southward along the mountain ranges across Maryland, West
-Virginia, and the elevated regions two or three hundred miles farther
-south.
-
-A dozen or more varieties of white pine have been developed under
-cultivation, but they interest the nurseryman, not the lumberman. In all
-the wide extension of its range, and during all past time, nature was
-never able to develop a single variety of white pine which departed from
-the typical species. For that reason it is one of the most interesting
-objects of study in the tree kingdom. True, the white pine in the
-southern mountains differs slightly from the northern tree, but
-botanically it is the same. Its wood is a little heavier, its branches
-are more resinous and consequently adhere a longer time to the trunk
-after they die, resulting in lumber with more knots. The southern wood
-is more tinged with red, the knots are redder and usually sounder than
-in the North.
-
-It is unfortunately necessary in speaking of white pine forests to use
-the past tense, for most of the primeval stands have disappeared. The
-range is as extensive as ever, because wherever a forest once grew, a
-few trees remain; but the merchantable timber has been cut in most
-regions. The tree bears winged seeds which quickly scatter over vacant
-spaces, and new growth would long ago, in most cases, have taken the
-place of the old, had not fires persistently destroyed the seedlings. In
-parts of New England where fire protection is afforded, dense stands of
-white pine are coming on, and in numerous instances profitable lumber
-operations are carried on in second growth forests. That condition does
-not exist generally in white pine regions. Primeval stands were seldom
-absolutely pure, but sometimes, in bodies of thousands of acres, there
-was little but white pine. Generally hardwoods or other softwoods grew
-with the pine. At its best, it is the largest pine of the United States,
-except the sugar pine of California. The largest trees grew in New
-England where diameters of six or more feet and heights exceeding 200
-feet were found. A diameter of four and five feet and a height of 150
-feet are about the size limits in the Lake States and the southern
-mountains. Trees two or three feet through and ninety and 120 tall are a
-fair average for mature timber.
-
-The wood of white pine is among the lightest of the commercial timbers
-of this country, and among the softest. While it is not strong, it
-compares favorably, weight for weight, with most others. It is of rather
-rapid growth, and the rings of annual increase are clearly defined, and
-they contain comparatively few resin ducts. For that reason it may be
-classed as a close, compact wood. It polishes well, may be cut with
-great ease, and after it is seasoned it holds its form better than most
-woods. That property fits it admirably for doors and sash and for
-backing of veneer, where a little warping or twisting would do much
-harm.
-
-The medullary rays are numerous but are too small to be easily seen
-separately, and do not figure much in the appearance of the wood. The
-resin passages are few and small, but the wood contains enough resin to
-give it a characteristic odor, which is not usually considered injurious
-to merchandise shipped in pine boxes. The white color of the wood gives
-it much of its value. Though rather weak, white pine is stiff, rather
-low in elasticity, is practically wanting in toughness, has little
-figure, and when exposed to alternate dryness and dampness it is rated
-poor in lasting properties; yet shingles and weather boarding of this
-wood have been known to stand half a century. The sapwood is lighter in
-color than the heart, and decays more quickly.
-
-As long as white pine was abundant it surpassed all other woods of this
-country in the amount used. It was one of the earliest exports from New
-England, and it went to the West Indies and to Europe. England attempted
-to control the cutting and export of white pine, but was unsuccessful.
-At an early period the rivers were utilized for transporting the logs
-and the lumber to market, and that method has continued until the
-present time. Spectacular log drives were common in early times in New
-England, later in New York and Pennsylvania, and still later in Michigan
-and the other Lake States. Many billions of feet of faultless logs have
-gone down flooded rivers. The scenes in the woods and the life in lumber
-camps have been written in novels and romances, and the central figure
-of it all was white pine.
-
-There are a few things for which this wood is not suitable; otherwise
-its use has been nearly universal in some parts of this country. It went
-into masts and matches, which are the largest and smallest commodities,
-and into almost every shape and size of product between. Most of the
-early houses and barns in the pine region were built of it. Hewed pine
-was the foundation, and the shingles were of split and shaved pine. It
-formed floors, doors, sash, and shutters. It was the ceiling within and
-the weather boarding without. It fenced the fields and bridged the
-streams. It went to market as rough lumber, and planing mills turned it
-out as dressed stock in various forms. It has probably been more
-extensively employed by box makers than any other wood, and though it is
-scarcer than formerly, hundreds of millions of feet of it are still used
-annually by box makers. Scores of millions of feet yearly are demanded
-by the manufacturers of window shade rollers, though individually the
-roller is a very small commodity. In this, as for patterns and many
-other things, no satisfactory substitute for white pine has been found.
-
-As a timber tree, it will not disappear from this country, though the
-days of its greatest importance are past. Enormous tracts where it once
-grew will apparently never again produce a white pine sawlog. The
-prospect is more encouraging in other regions, and there will always be
-a considerable quantity of this lumber in the American market, though
-the high percentage of good grades which prevailed in the past will not
-continue in the future.
-
-White pine belongs in the five needle group, that is, five leaves grow
-in a bundle. They turn yellow and fall in the autumn of the second year.
-The cones are slender, are from five to eleven inches in length, and
-ripen and disperse their seeds in the autumn of the second year.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN WHITE PINE
-
-[Illustration: WESTERN WHITE PINE]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN WHITE PINE
-
-(_Pinus Monticola_)
-
-
-The silvery luster of the needles of this tree gives it the name silver
-pine, by which many people know it. It appears in literature as mountain
-Weymouth pine, the reference being to the eastern white pine (_Pinus
-strobus_), which is sometimes called Weymouth pine. Finger-cone pine is
-a California name; so are mountain pine and soft pine. In the same state
-it is called little sugar pine, to distinguish it from sugar pine
-(_Pinus lambertiana_), which it resembles in some particulars but not in
-all. It is thus seen that California is generous in bestowing names on
-this tree, notwithstanding it is not abundant in any part of that state
-and is unknown in most parts.
-
-The botanical name means "mountain pine," and that describes the
-species. It does best among the mountains, and it ranges from an
-altitude of from 4,000 feet to 10,000 on the Sierra Nevada mountains.
-Sometimes trees of very large size are found near the upper limits of
-its range, but the best stands are in valleys and on slopes at lower
-altitudes. Its range lies in British Columbia, Montana, Idaho,
-Washington, Oregon, and California. In the latter state it follows the
-Sierra Nevada mountains southward to the San Joaquin river.
-
-This species has been compared with the white pine of the East oftener
-than with any other species. The weights of the two woods are nearly the
-same, and both are light. Their fuel values are about the same. The
-strength of the eastern tree is a little higher, but the western species
-is stiffer. The woods of both are light in color, but that of the
-eastern tree is whiter; both are soft, but again the advantage is with
-the eastern tree. The western pine generally grows rapidly and the
-annual rings are wide; but, like most other species, it varies in its
-rate of growth, and trunks are found with narrow rings. The summerwood
-is thin, not conspicuous, and slightly resinous. The small resin
-passages are numerous. The heartwood is fairly durable in contact with
-the soil.
-
-The western white pine has entered many markets in recent years, but it
-is difficult to determine what the annual cut is. Statistics often
-include this species and the western yellow pine under one name, or at
-least confuse one with the other, and there is no way to determine
-exactly how much of the sawmill output belongs to each. The bulk of
-merchantable western white pine lumber is cut in Idaho and Montana. The
-stands are seldom pure, but this species frequently predominates over
-its associates. When pure forests are found, the yield is sometimes
-very high, as much as 130,000 feet of logs growing on a single acre.
-That quantity is not often equalled by any other forest tree, though
-redwood and Douglas fir sometimes go considerably above it.
-
-The western white pine's needles grow in clusters of five and are from
-one and a half to four inches long. The cones are from ten to eighteen
-inches long. The seeds ripen the second year. Reproduction is vigorous
-and the forest stands are holding their own. Trees about one hundred and
-seventy-five feet high and eight feet in diameter are met with, but the
-average size is one hundred feet high and from two to three feet in
-diameter, or about the size of eastern white pine.
-
-The wood is useful and has been giving service since the settlement of
-the country began, fifty or more years ago. Choice trunks were split for
-shakes or shingles, but the wood is inferior in splitting qualities to
-either eastern white pine or California sugar pine, because of more
-knots. The western white pine does not prime itself early or well. Dead
-limbs adhere to the trunk long after the sugar pine would shed them. In
-split products, the western white pine's principal rival has been the
-western red cedar. The pine has been much employed for mine timbers in
-the region where it is abundant. Miners generally take the most
-convenient wood for props, stulls, and lagging. A little higher use for
-pine is found among the mines, where is it made into tanks, flumes,
-sluice boxes, water pipes, riffle blocks, rockers, and guides for stamp
-mills. However, the total quantity used by miners is comparatively
-small. Much more goes to ranches for fences and buildings. It is
-serviceable, and is shipped outside the immediate region of production
-and is marketed in the plains states east of the Rocky Mountains, where
-it is excellent fence material.
-
-A larger market is found in manufacturing centers farther east. Western
-white pine is shipped to Chicago where it is manufactured into doors,
-sash, and interior finish, in competition with all other woods in that
-market. It is said to be of frequent occurrence that the very pine which
-is shipped in its rough form out of the Rocky Mountain region goes back
-finished as doors and sash. When the mountain regions shall have better
-manufacturing facilities, this will not occur. In the manufacture of
-window and hothouse sash, glass is more important than wood, although
-each is useless without the other. The principal glass factories are in
-the East, and it is sometimes desirable to ship the wood to the glass
-factory, have the sash made there, and the glazing done; and the
-finished sash, ready for use, may go back to the source of the timber.
-
-The same operation is sometimes repeated for doors; but in recent years
-the mountain region where this pine grows has been supplied with
-factories and there is now less shipping of raw material out and of
-finished products back than formerly. The development of the fruit
-industry in the elevated valleys of Idaho, Montana, Washington, and
-Oregon has called for shipping boxes in large numbers, and western white
-pine has been found an ideal wood for that use. It is light in weight
-and in color, strong enough to satisfy all ordinary requirements, and
-cheap enough to bring it within reach of orchardists. It meets with
-lively competition from a number of other woods which grow abundantly in
-the region, but it holds its ground and takes its share of the business.
-
-Estimates of the total stand of western white pine among its native
-mountains have not been published, but the quantity is known to be
-large. It is a difficult species to estimate because it is scattered
-widely, large, pure stands being scarce. Some large mills make a
-specialty of sawing this species. The annual output is believed to reach
-150,000,000 feet, most of which is in Idaho and Montana.
-
-MEXICAN WHITE PINE (_Pinus strobiformis_) is not sufficiently abundant
-to be of much importance in the United States. The best of it is south
-of the international boundary in Mexico, but the species extends into
-New Mexico and Arizona where it is most abundant at altitudes of from
-6,000 to 8,000 feet. The growth is generally scattering, and the trunks
-are often deformed through fire injury, and are inclined to be limby and
-of poor form. The best trees are from eighty to one hundred feet high,
-and two in diameter; but many are scarcely half that size. The lumbermen
-of the region, who cut Mexican white pine, are inclined to place low
-value on it, not because the wood is of poor quality, but because it is
-scarce. It is generally sent to market with western yellow pine.
-Excellent grades and quality of this wood are shipped into the United
-States from Mexico, but not in large amounts. An occasional carload
-reaches door and sash factories in Texas, and woodworkers as far east as
-Michigan are acquainted with it, through trials and experiments which
-they have made. It is highly recommended by those who have tried it.
-Some consider it as soft, as easy to work, and as free from warping and
-checking as the eastern white pine. In Arizona and New Mexico the tree
-is known as ayacahuite pine, white pine, and Arizona white pine. The
-wood is moderately light, fairly strong, rather stiff, of slow growth,
-and the bands of summerwood are comparatively broad. The resin passages
-are few and large. The wood is light red, the sapwood whiter. The leaves
-occur in clusters of five, are three or four inches long, and fall
-during the third and fourth years. The seeds are large and have small
-wings which cannot carry them far from the parent tree.
-
-PINON (_Pinus edulis_). This is one of the nut pines abounding among the
-western mountains, and it is called pinon in Texas, nut pine in Texas
-and Colorado, pinon pine and New Mexican pinon in other parts of its
-range, extending from Colorado through New Mexico to western Texas. It
-has two and three leaves to the cluster. They begin to fall the third
-year and continue through six or seven years following. The cones are
-quite small, the largest not exceeding one and one-half inches in
-length. Trees are from thirty to forty feet high, and large trunks may
-be two and one-half feet in diameter. The tree runs up mountain sides to
-altitudes of 8,000 or 9,000 feet. It exists in rather large bodies, but
-is not an important timber tree, because the trunks are short and are
-generally of poor form. It often branches near the ground and assumes
-the appearance of a large shrub. Ties of pinon have been used with
-various results. Some have proved satisfactory, others have proved weak
-by breaking, and the ties occasionally split when spikes are driven. The
-wood's service as posts varies also. Some posts will last only three or
-four years, while others remain sound a long time. The difference in
-lasting properties is due to the difference in resinous contents of the
-wood. Few softwoods rank above it in fuel value, and much is cut in some
-localities. Large areas have been totally stripped for fuel. Charcoal
-for local smithies is burned from this pine. The wood is widely used for
-ranch purposes, but not in large quantities. The edible nuts are sought
-by birds, rodents, and Indians. Some stores keep the nuts for sale. The
-tree is handicapped in its effort at reproduction by weight, and the
-small wing power of the seeds. They fall near the base of the parent
-tree, and most of them are speedily devoured.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SUGAR PINE
-
-[Illustration: SUGAR PINE]
-
-
-
-
-SUGAR PINE
-
-(_Pinus Lambertiana_)
-
-
-This is the largest pine of the United States, and probably is the
-largest true pine in the world. Its rival, the Kauri pine of New
-Zealand, is not a pine according to the classification of botanists; and
-that leaves the sugar pine supreme, as far as the world has been
-explored. David Douglas, the first to describe the species, reported a
-tree eighteen feet in diameter and 245 feet high, in southern Oregon. No
-tree of similar size has been reported since; but trunks six, ten, and
-even twelve feet through, and more than 200 high are not rare.
-
-The range of sugar pine extends from southern Oregon to lower
-California. Through California it follows the Sierra Nevada mountains in
-a comparatively narrow belt. In Oregon it descends within 1,000 feet of
-sea level, but the lower limit of its range gradually rises as it
-follows the mountains southward, until in southern California it is
-8,000 or 10,000 feet above the sea. Its choice of situation is in the
-mountain belt where the annual precipitation is forty inches or more.
-The deep winter snows of the Sierras do not hurt it. The young trees
-bear abundant limbs covering the trunks nearly or quite to the ground,
-and are of perfect conical shape. When they are ten or fifteen feet tall
-they may be entirely covered in snow which accumulates to a depth of a
-dozen feet or more. The little pines are seldom injured by the load, but
-their limbs shed the snow until it covers the highest twig. The
-consequence is that a crooked sugar pine trunk is seldom seen, though a
-considerable part of the tree's youth may have been spent under tons of
-snow. Later in life the lower limbs die and drop, leaving clean boles
-which assure abundance of clear lumber in the years to come.
-
-The tree is nearly always known as sugar pine, though it may be called
-big pine or great pine to distinguish it from firs, cedars, and other
-softwoods with which it is associated. The name is due to a product
-resembling sugar which exudes from the heartwood when the tree has been
-injured by fires, and which dries in white, brittle excrescences on the
-surface. Its taste is sweet, with a suggestion of pitch which is not
-unpleasant. The principle has been named "pinite."
-
-The needles of sugar pine are in clusters of five and are about four
-inches long. They are deciduous the second and third years. The cones
-are longer than cones of any other pine of this country but those of the
-Coulter pine are a little heavier. Extreme length of 22 inches for the
-sugar pine cone has been recorded, but the average is from 12 to 15
-inches. Cones open, shed their seeds the second year, and fall the
-third. The seeds resemble lentils, and are provided with wings which
-carry them several hundred feet, if wind is favorable. This affords
-excellent opportunities for reproduction; but there is an offset in the
-sweetness of the seeds which are prized for food by birds, beasts and
-creeping things from the Piute Indian down to the Douglas squirrel and
-the jumping mouse.
-
-Sugar pine occupies a high place as a timber tree. It has been in use
-for half a century. The cut in 1900 was 52,000,000 feet, in 1904 it was
-120,000,000; in 1907, 115,000,000, and the next year about 100,000,000.
-Ninety-three per cent of the cut is in California, the rest in Oregon.
-Its stand in California has been estimated at 25,000,000,000 feet.
-
-The wood of sugar pine is a little lighter than eastern white pine, is a
-little weaker, and has less stiffness. It is soft, the rings of growth
-are wide, the bands of summerwood thin and resinous; the resin passages
-are numerous and very large, the medullary rays numerous and obscure.
-The heart is light brown, the sapwood nearly white.
-
-Sugar pine and redwood were the two early roofing woods in California,
-and both are still much used for that purpose. Sugar pine was made into
-sawed shingles and split shakes. The shingle is a mill product; but the
-shake was rived with mallet and frow, and in the years when it was the
-great roofing material in central and eastern California, the shake
-makers camped by twos in the forest, lived principally on bacon and red
-beans, and split out from 200,000 to 400,000 shakes as a summer's work.
-The winter snows drove the workers from the mountains, with from eight
-to twelve hundred dollars in their pockets for the season's work.
-
-The increase in stumpage price has practically killed the shake maker's
-business. In the palmy days when most everything went, he procured his
-timber for little or nothing. He sometimes failed to find the surveyor's
-lines, particularly if there happened to be a fine sugar pine just
-across on a government quarter section. His method of operation was
-wasteful. He used only the best of the tree. If the grain happened to
-twist the fraction of an inch, he abandoned the fallen trunk, and cut
-another. The shakes were split very thin, for sugar pine is among the
-most cleavable woods of this country. Four or five good trees provided
-the shake maker's camp with material for a year's work.
-
-Some of the earliest sawmills in California cut sugar pine for sheds,
-shacks, sluiceboxes, flumes among the mines; and almost immediately a
-demand came from the agricultural and stock districts for lumber. From
-that day until the present time the sugar pine mills have been busy. As
-the demand has grown, the facilities for meeting it have increased. The
-prevailing size of the timber forbade the use of small mills. A saw
-large enough for most eastern and southern timbers would not slab a
-sugar pine log. From four to six feet were common sizes, and the
-lumberman despised anything small.
-
-In late years sugar pine operators have looked beyond the local markets,
-and have been sending their lumber to practically every state in the
-Union, except probably the extreme South. It comes in direct competition
-with the white pine of New England and the Lake States. The two woods
-have many points of resemblance. The white pine would probably have lost
-no markets to the California wood if the best grades could still be had
-at moderate prices; but most of the white pine region has been stripped
-of its best timber, and the resulting scarcity in the high grades has
-been, in part, made good by sugar pine. Some manufacturers of doors and
-frames claim that sugar pine is more satisfactory than white pine,
-because of better behavior under climatic changes. It is said to shrink,
-swell, and warp less than the eastern wood.
-
-Sugar pine has displaced white pine to a very small extent only, in
-comparison with the field still held by the eastern wood, whose annual
-output is about thirty times that of the California species. Their uses
-are practically the same except that only the good grades of sugar pine
-go east, and the corresponding grades of white pine west, and therefore
-there is no competition between the poor grades of the two woods. The
-annual demand for sugar and white pine east of the Rocky Mountains is
-probably represented as an average in Illinois, where 2,000,000 feet of
-the former and 175,000,000 of the latter are used yearly.
-
-While there is a large amount of mature sugar pine ready for lumbermen,
-the prospect of future supplies from new growth is not entirely
-satisfactory. The western yellow pine is mixed with it throughout most
-of its range, and is more than a match for it in taking possession of
-vacant ground. It is inferred from this fact that the relative positions
-of the two species in future forests will change at the expense of sugar
-pine. It endures shade when small, and this enables it to obtain a start
-among other species; but as it increases in size it becomes intolerant
-of shade, and if it does not receive abundance of light it will not
-grow. A forest fire is nearly certain to kill the small sugar pines, but
-old trunks are protected by their thick bark. Few species have fewer
-natural enemies. Very small trees are occasionally attacked by mistletoe
-(_Arceuthobium occidentale_) and succumb or else are stunted in their
-growth.
-
-    MEXICAN PINON (_Pinus cembroides_) is known also as nut pine, pinon
-    pine and stone-seed Mexican pinon. It is one of the smallest of the
-    native pines of this country. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet
-    high and a few inches in diameter, but in sheltered canyons in
-    Arizona it sometimes attains a height of fifty or sixty feet with a
-    corresponding diameter. It reaches its best development in northern
-    Mexico and what is found of it in the United States is the species'
-    extreme northern extension, in Arizona and New Mexico at altitudes
-    usually above 6,000 feet. It supplies fuel in districts where
-    firewood is otherwise scarce, and it has a small place as ranch
-    timber. The wood is heavy, of slow growth, the summerwood thin and
-    dense. The resin passages are few and small; color, light, clear
-    yellow, the sapwood nearly white. If the tree stood in regions
-    well-forested with commercial species, it would possess little or no
-    value; but where wood is scarce, it has considerable value. The
-    hardshell nuts resemble those of the gray pine, but are considered
-    more valuable for food. They are not of much importance in the
-    United States, but in Mexico where the trees are more abundant and
-    the population denser, the nuts are bought and sold in large
-    quantities. Its leaves are in clusters of three, sometimes two. They
-    are one inch or more in length, and fall the third and fourth years.
-    Cones are seldom over two inches in length. The species is not
-    extending its range, but seems to be holding the ground it already
-    has. It bears abundance of seeds, but not one in ten thousand
-    germinates and becomes a mature tree.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WHITEBARK PINE
-
-[Illustration: WHITEBARK PINE]
-
-
-
-
-WHITEBARK PINE
-
-(_Pinus Albicaulis_)
-
-
-This interesting and peculiar pine has a number of names, most of which
-are descriptive. The whiteness of the bark and the stunted and recumbent
-position which the tree assumes on bleak mountains are referred to in
-the names whitestem pine in California and Montana, scrub pine in
-Montana, whitebark in Oregon, white in California, and elsewhere it is
-creeping pine, whitebark pine, and alpine whitebark pine. It is a
-mountain tree. There are few heights within its range which it cannot
-reach. Its tough, prostrate branches, in its loftiest situations, may
-whip snow banks nine or ten months of the year, and for the two or three
-months of summer every starry night deposits its sprinkle of frost upon
-the flowers or cones of this persistent tree. It stands the storms of
-centuries, and lives on, though the whole period of its existence is a
-battle for life under adverse circumstances. At lower altitudes it fares
-better but does not live longer than on the most sterile peak. Its range
-covers 500,000 square miles, but only in scattered groups. It touches
-the high places only, creeping down to altitudes of 5,000 or 6,000 feet
-in the northern Rocky Mountains. It grows from British Columbia to
-southern California, and is found in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon,
-Nevada, Arizona, and California. Its associates are the mountain
-climbers of the tree kingdom, Engelmann spruce, Lyall larch, limber
-pine, alpine fir, foxtail pine, Rocky Mountain juniper, knobcone pine,
-and western juniper. Its dark green needles, stout and rigid, are from
-one and one-half to two and one-half inches long. They hang on the twigs
-from five to eight years. In July the scarlet flowers appear, forming a
-beautiful contrast with the white bark and the green needles. In August
-the seeds are ripe. The cones are from one and one-half to three inches
-long. The seeds are nearly half an inch long, sweet to the taste. The
-few squirrels and birds which inhabit the inhospitable region where the
-whitebark pine grows, get busy the moment the cones open, and few
-escape. Nature seems to have played a prank on this pine by giving wings
-to the seeds and rendering their use impossible. The wing is stuck fast
-with resin to the cone scales, and the seed can escape only by tearing
-its wing off. The heavy nut then falls plumb to the ground beneath the
-branches of its parent. It might be supposed that a tree situated as the
-whitebark pine is would be provided with ample means of seedflight in
-order to afford wide distribution, and give opportunity to survive the
-hardships which are imposed by surroundings; but such is not the case.
-The willow and the cottonwood which grow in fertile valleys have the
-means of scattering their seeds miles away; but this bleak mountain tree
-must drop its seeds on the rocks beneath. In this instance, nature seems
-more interested in depositing the pine nuts where the hungry squirrels
-can get them, than in furnishing a planting place for the nuts
-themselves--therefore, tears off their wings before they leave the cone.
-The battle for existence begins before the seeds germinate, and the
-struggle never ceases. The tree, in parts of its range, survives a
-temperature sixty degrees below zero. Its seedlings frequently perish,
-not from cold and drought, but because the wind thrashes them against
-the rocks which wear them to pieces. Trees which survive on the great
-heights are apt to assume strange and fantastic forms, with less
-resemblance to trees than to great, green spiders sprawling over the
-rocks. Trees 500 years old may not be five feet high. Deep snows hold
-them flat to the rocks so much of the time that the limbs cannot lift
-themselves during the few summer days, but grow like vines. The growth
-is so exceedingly slow that the new wood on the tips of twigs at the end
-of summer is a mere point of yellow. John Muir, with a magnifying glass,
-counted seventy-five annual rings in a twig one-eighth of an inch in
-diameter. Trunks three and one-half inches in diameter may be 225 years
-old; one of six inches had 426 rings; while a seventeen-inch trunk was
-800 years old, and less than six feet high. Such a tree has a spread of
-branches thirty or forty feet across. They lie flat on the ground. Wild
-sheep, deer, bear, and other wild animals know how to shelter themselves
-beneath the prostrate branches by creeping under; and travelers,
-overtaken by storms, sometimes do the same; or in good weather the
-sheepherder or the hunter may spread his blankets on the mass of limbs,
-boughs, and needles, and spend a comfortable night on a springy
-couch--actually sleeping in a tree top within two feet of the ground. In
-regions lower down, the whitebark pine reaches respectable tree form.
-Fence posts are sometimes cut from it in the Mono basin, east of the
-Sierra Nevada mountains. In the Nez Perce National Forest trees forty
-feet high have merchantable lengths of twenty-four feet. Similar growth
-is found in other regions. In its best growth, the wood of whitebark
-pine resembles that of white pine. It is light, of about the same
-strength as white pine, but more brittle. The annual rings are very
-narrow; the small resin passages are numerous. The sapwood is very thin
-and is nearly white. Men can never greatly assist or hinder this tree.
-It will continue to occupy heights and elevated valleys.
-
-BRISTLECONE PINE (_Pinus aristata_) owes its name to the sharp bristles
-on the tips of the cone scales. It is known also as foxtail pine and
-hickory pine. The latter name is given, not because of toughness, but
-on account of the whiteness of the sapwood. It is strictly a high
-mountain tree, running up to the timber line at 12,000 feet, and seldom
-occurring below 6,000 or 7,000 feet. It maintains its existence under
-adverse circumstances, its home being on dry, stony ridges, cold and
-stormy in winter, and subject to excessive drought during the brief
-growing season. Trees of large trunks and fine forms are impossible
-under such conditions. The bristlecone pine's bole is short, tapers
-rapidly and is excessively knotty. The species reaches its best
-development in Colorado. Though it is seldom sawed for lumber, it is of
-much importance in many localities where better material is scarce. In
-central Nevada many valuable mines were developed and worked by using
-the wood for props and fuel. Charcoal made of it was particularly
-important in that region, and it was carried long distances to supply
-blacksmith shops in mining camps. Railways have made some use of it for
-ties. Though rough, it is liked for fence posts. The resin in the wood
-assists in resisting decay, and posts last many years in the dry regions
-where the tree grows. Ranchmen among the high mountains build corrals,
-pens, sheds, and fences of it; but the fibers of the wood are so twisted
-and involved that splitting is nearly impossible, and round timbers only
-are employed. The bristlecone pine can never be more important in the
-country's lumber supply than it is now. It occupies waste land where no
-other tree grows, and it crowds out nothing better than itself. It
-clings to stony peaks and wind-swept ridges where the ungainly trunks
-are welcome to the traveler, miner, or sheepherder who is in need of a
-shed to shelter him, or a fire for his night camp. In situations exposed
-to great cold and drying winds, the bristlecone pine is a shrub, with
-little suggestion of a tree, further than its green foliage and small
-cones. The needles are in clusters of five. They cling to the twigs for
-ten or fifteen years. The seeds are scattered about the first of
-October, and the wind carries them hundreds of feet. They take root in
-soil so sterile that no humus is visible. Young trees and the small
-twigs of old ones present a peculiar appearance. The bark is chalky
-white, but when the trees are old the bark becomes red or brown.
-
-    FOXTAIL PINE (_Pinus balfouriana_) owes its name to the clustering
-    of its needles round the ends of the branches, bristling like a
-    fox's tail. The needles are seldom more than one and one-half inches
-    in length, and are in clusters of fives. They cling to the branches
-    ten or fifteen years before falling. The cones are about three
-    inches long, and are armed with slender spines. The tree is strictly
-    a mountain species and grows at a higher altitude than any other
-    tree in the United States, although whitebark pine is not much
-    behind it. It reaches its best development near Mt. Whitney,
-    California, where it is said to grow at an altitude of 15,000 feet
-    above sea level. It has been officially reported at Farewell Gap, in
-    the Sierra Nevada mountains, at an altitude of 13,000. At high
-    altitudes it is scrubby and distorted, but in more favorable
-    situations it may be sixty feet high and two in diameter. On high
-    mountains it is generally not more than thirty feet high and ten
-    inches in diameter. It is of remarkably slow growth, and
-    comparatively small trees may be 200 or 300 years old. The wood is
-    moderately light, is soft, weak, brittle. Resin passages are few and
-    very small. The wood is satiny and susceptible of a good polish, and
-    would be valuable if abundant. The seeds are winged and the wind
-    scatters them widely, but most of them are lost on barren rocks or
-    drifts of eternal snow. The untoward circumstances under which the
-    tree must live prevent generous reproduction. It holds its own but
-    can gain no new foothold on the bleak and barren heights which form
-    its environment. The dark green of its foliage makes the belts of
-    foxtail pines conspicuous where they grow above the timber line of
-    nearly all other trees. Its range is confined to a few of the
-    highest mountains of California, particularly about (but not on) Mt.
-    Shasta and among the clusters of peaks about the sources of Kings
-    and Kern rivers. Those who travel and camp among the highest
-    mountains of California are often indebted to foxtail pine for their
-    fuel. Near the upper limit of its range it frequently dies at the
-    top, and stands stripped of bark for many years. The dead wood,
-    which frequently is not higher above the ground than a man's head,
-    is broken away by campers for fuel, and it is often the only
-    resource.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LONGLEAF PINE
-
-[Illustration: LONGLEAF PINE]
-
-
-
-
-LONGLEAF PINE
-
-(_Pinus Palustris_)
-
-
-Longleaf is generally considered to be the most important member of the
-group of hard or pitch pines in this country[2]. It is known by many
-names in different parts of its range, and outside of its range where
-the wood is well known.
-
-    [2] There is no precise agreement as to what should be included in
-    the group of hard pines in the United States, but the following
-    twenty-two are usually placed in that class: Longleaf Pine (_Pinus
-    palustris_), Shortleaf Pine (_Pinus echinata_), Loblolly Pine
-    (_Pinus tæda_), Cuban Pine (_Pinus heterophylla_), Norway Pine
-    (_Pinus resinosa_), Western Yellow Pine (_Pinus ponderosa_),
-    Chihuahua Pine (_Pinus chihuahuana_), Arizona Pine (_Pinus
-    arizonica_), Pitch Pine (_Pinus rigida_), Pond Pine (_Pinus
-    serotina_), Spruce Pine (_Pinus glabra_), Monterey Pine (_Pinus
-    radiata_), Knobcone Pine (_Pinus attenuata_), Gray Pine (_Pinus
-    sabiniana_), Coulter Pine (_Pinus coulteri_), Lodgepole Pine (_Pinus
-    contorta_), Jack Pine (_Pinus divaricata_), Scrub Pine (_Pinus
-    virginiana_), Sand Pine (_Pinus clausa_), Table Mountain Pine
-    (_Pinus pungens_), California Swamp Pine (_Pinus muricata_), Torry
-    Pine (_Pinus torreyana_).
-
-The names southern pine, Georgia pine, and Florida pine are not well
-chosen, because there are other important pines in the regions named.
-Turpentine pine is a common term, but other species produce turpentine
-also, particularly the Cuban pine. Hard pine is much employed in
-reference to this tree, and it applies well, but it describes other
-species also. Heart pine is a lumberman's term to distinguish this
-species from loblolly, shortleaf, and Cuban pines. The sapwood of the
-three last named is thick, the heartwood small, while in longleaf pine
-the sap is thin, the heart large, hence the name applied by lumbermen.
-In Tennessee where it is not a commercial forest tree, it is called
-brown pine, and in nearly all parts of the United States it is spoken of
-as yellow pine, usually with some adjective as "southern," "Georgia," or
-"longleaf." The persistency with which Georgia is used as a portion of
-the name of this tree is due to the fact that extensive lumbering of the
-longleaf forests began in that state. The center of operations has since
-shifted to the West, and is now in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
-The tree has many other names, among them being pitch pine and fat pine.
-These have reference to its value in the naval stores industry. The name
-longleaf pine is now well established in commercial transactions. It has
-longer leaves than any other pine in this country. They range in length
-from eight to eighteen inches. The needles of Cuban pine are from eight
-to twelve inches; loblolly's are from six to nine; and those of
-shortleaf from three to five.
-
-Longleaf pine's geographic range is more restricted than that of
-loblolly and shortleaf, but larger than the range of Cuban pine.
-Longleaf occupies a belt from Virginia to Texas, following the tertiary
-sandy formation pretty closely. The belt seldom extends from the coast
-inland more than 125 miles. The tree runs south in Florida to Tampa bay.
-It disappears as it approaches the Mississippi, but reappears west of
-that river in Louisiana and Texas. Its western limit is near Trinity
-river, and its northern in that region is near the boundary between
-Louisiana and Arkansas.
-
-Longleaf attains a height of from sixty to ninety feet, but a few trees
-reach 130. The diameters of mature trunks range from one foot to three,
-usually less than two. The leaves grow three in a bundle, and fall at
-the end of the second year. They are arranged in thick, broom-like
-bunches on the ends of the twigs. It is a tree of slow growth compared
-with other pines of the region. Its characteristic narrow annual rings
-are usually sufficient to distinguish its logs and lumber from those of
-other southern yellow pines. Its thin sapwood likewise assists in
-identification. The proportionately high percentage of heartwood in
-longleaf pine makes it possible to saw lumber which shows little or no
-sapwood. It is difficult to do that with other southern pines.
-
-The wood is heavy, exceedingly hard for pine, very strong, tough,
-compact, durable, resinous, resin passages few, not conspicuous;
-medullary rays numerous, not conspicuous; color, light red or orange,
-the thin sapwood nearly white. The annual rings contain a large
-proportion of dark colored summerwood, which accounts for the great
-strength of longleaf pine timber. The contrast in color between the
-springwood and the summerwood is the basis of the figure of this pine
-which gives it much of its value as an interior finish material,
-including doors. The hardness of the summerwood provides the wearing
-qualities of flooring and paving blocks. The coloring matter in the body
-of the wood protects it against decay for a longer period than most
-other pines. This, in connection with its hardness and strength, gives
-it high standing for railroad ties, bridges, trestles, and other
-structures exposed to weather.
-
-Longleaf pine is as widely used as any softwood in this country. It
-serves with hardwoods for a number of purposes. It has been a timber of
-commerce since an early period, and was exported from the south Atlantic
-coast long before the Revolutionary war; but it was later than that when
-it came into keen competition with the Riga pine of northern Europe. It
-has since held its own in the European markets, and its trade has
-extended to many other foreign countries, particularly to the republics
-of South and Central America, Mexico, and the West Indies.
-
-It did not attain an important position in the commerce of this country
-until after the Civil war, but it had a place in shipbuilding before
-that time, and it has held that place. The builders of cars employ large
-quantities for frames and other parts of gondolas, box cars, and
-coaches. Over 175,000,000 feet were so used in 1909 in Illinois. It is
-the leading car building timber in this country. Its great strength,
-hardness, and stiffness give it that place.
-
-It is scarcely less important as an interior wood for house finish. It
-is not so much its strength as its beauty that recommends it for that
-purpose. Its beauty is due to a combination of figure and color.
-Splendid variety is possible by carefully selecting the material.
-Manufacturers of furniture, fixtures, and vehicles are large users of
-longleaf pine. In these lines its chief value is due to strength.
-
-In the naval stores industry in this country, it is more important than
-all other species combined. For a century and a half it has supplied
-this country and much of the rest of the world. The principal
-commodities made from the resin of this tree are spirits of turpentine
-and rosin. These two articles are produced by distilling the resin which
-exudes from wounds in the tree. The distillate is spirits of turpentine,
-the residue is rosin. The manufacture of naval stores has destroyed tens
-of thousands of trees in the past; but better methods are now in use and
-loss is less. Georgia and South Carolina were once the center of naval
-stores production; but it has now moved to Louisiana and Florida.
-
-The supply of longleaf pine has rapidly decreased during the past twenty
-years, and though the end is not yet at hand, it is approaching. Young
-trees are not coming on to take the place of those cut for lumber. They
-grow slowly at best, and a new forest could not be produced in less than
-a hundred years. Both protection and care have been lacking. Fire
-usually kills seedlings in their first or second year. The result is
-that many extensive tracts where longleaf pine once grew in abundance
-have few young and scarcely any old trees now. As far as can be
-foreseen, this valuable timber will reach its end when existing stands
-have been cut.
-
-CUBAN PINE (_Pinus heterophylla_). The Cuban pine has several local
-names; slash pine in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi; swamp
-pine in Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi; meadow pine in Florida and
-Mississippi; pitch pine in Florida; and spruce pine in Alabama. Its
-range is confined to the coast region from South Carolina to Louisiana,
-from sixty to one hundred miles inland. It is the only pine in the
-extreme south of Florida. The wood is heavy, hard, very strong, tough,
-compact, durable, resinous, the resin passages few but conspicuous, rich
-dark orange color, the sapwood often nearly white. The annual ring is
-usually more than half dark colored summerwood. The Cuban pine grows
-rapidly, quickly appropriates vacant ground, and the species is
-spreading. Its needles, from eight to twelve inches long, fall the
-second year. The wood possesses nearly the strength, hardness, and
-stiffness of longleaf pine, and the trunks are as large. The two woods
-which are so similar in other respects differ in figure, owing to the
-wider annual rings of the Cuban pine. The sapwood of the latter species
-greatly exceeds in thickness that of longleaf pine. For that reason it
-is often mistaken for loblolly pine. Cuban pine never goes to market
-under its own name, but is mixed with and passes for one of the other
-southern yellow pines.
-
-SAND PINE (_Pinus clausa_). This tree is generally twenty or thirty feet
-high, and eight or twelve inches in diameter. Under favorable conditions
-it attains a height of sixty or eighty feet and a diameter of two. The
-leaves are two or three inches long, and fall the third and fourth
-years. Its range is almost wholly in Florida but extends a little over
-the northern border. It grows as far south as Tampa on the west coast,
-and nearly to Miami on the east. It is not much cut for lumber because
-of its small size and generally short, limby trunk. In a few localities
-shapely boles are developed, and serviceable lumber is made. It is a
-poor-land tree, as its name implies. The cones adhere to the branches
-many years, and may be partly enclosed in the growing wood.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SHORTLEAF PINE
-
-[Illustration: SHORTLEAF PINE]
-
-
-
-
-SHORTLEAF PINE
-
-(_Pinus Echinata_)
-
-
-In the markets the lumber of this species is known as yellow pine,
-southern yellow pine, and sap pine, and in some localities the term
-shortleaf is used. The latter is descriptive, and can be easily
-understood when reference is made to the living tree, because its short
-needles distinguish it from its associates in the pine forest; but in
-speaking of lumber only, the reference to the leaves has less meaning,
-particularly to one who is not acquainted with the tree's appearance.
-Its wood so closely resembles that of Cuban and loblolly pine that they
-are not easily distinguished by sight alone. In the East the name
-Carolina pine or North Carolina pine is much used, but it is not often
-heard west of the Allegheny mountains. Referring to the manner and
-locality of its growth it is called slash pine in North Carolina and
-Virginia, old-field pine in Alabama and Mississippi, and poor-field pine
-in Florida. Its tendency to take possession of abandoned ground has
-given it these names. It is occasionally called pitch pine in Missouri.
-That name would not distinguish it in most parts of the South where
-several species of pitch pine grow. In some regions it is known as
-spruce pine, but the name is not based on any characteristic of the
-living tree or of its wood. In North Carolina and Alabama, and in
-literature, it is sometimes known as rosemary pine, but that name
-applies rather to fine timber cut from any southern yellow pine, than to
-this species in particular. In Delaware it is known as shortshat and in
-Virginia as bull pine. To those who are familiar with the tree's
-appearance, the name shortleaf pine is most accurate in definition.
-
-The commercial range of shortleaf pine has contracted to a considerable
-extent since the settlement of the country. It once grew as far north as
-Albany, New York, and from fifty to a hundred years ago it was lumbered
-in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia in regions where it has now
-ceased to exist, or is found only as scattered trees. Its geographical
-range is now usually given from New York to Florida, west to Missouri
-and Oklahoma and northeastern Texas. It is important in lumber
-operations in North Carolina and southward, and westward to the limits
-of its range. The tree reaches its largest size and attains its finest
-stands west of the Mississippi river. In average size it exceeds
-longleaf pine. It may reach a height above 100 feet and a trunk diameter
-of three or four. Squared timbers of large size were formerly exported
-from Virginia and North Carolina. Similar sizes cannot now be procured
-there.
-
-Shortleaf pine varies greatly in the quality and amount of sapwood. It
-is normally a thick sap tree, but midway between loblolly and longleaf.
-The young tree increases rapidly in size until it is from six to ten
-inches in diameter, and the yearly rings are wide. The rate of growth
-then decreases and during the rest of its life the rings are narrow.
-This feature is often of assistance in identifying southern yellow pine
-logs or large timbers which contain the heart and also the sap. Wide
-rings near the heart, followed by narrow ones, and a thick sapwood are
-pretty good evidence that the timber--if a southern yellow pine--is
-shortleaf pine. The rule is not absolute; for a high authority on timber
-has said that no infallible rule can be laid down for distinguishing by
-sight alone the woods of the four southern yellow pines--longleaf,
-shortleaf, Cuban, and loblolly.
-
-The wood of shortleaf pine is strong, heavy, hard, and compact; very
-resinous, resin passages large and numerous; medullary rays numerous,
-conspicuous; color, orange, the sapwood nearly white. The thoroughly
-seasoned wood weighs thirty-eight pounds per cubic foot. It is about
-five pounds heavier than loblolly pine, five pounds lighter than
-longleaf, and nearly nine pounds lighter than Cuban pine. There is so
-great a variation in weight of shortleaf pine that only general averages
-have value.
-
-Shortleaf pine is not as strong as longleaf, and is not so extensively
-employed in heavy structural work, but in certain other lines it has the
-advantage of longleaf. It is softer, and door and sash makers like it
-better. It is easier to work, and when manufactured into doors and
-interior finish many consider it superior to longleaf. The wide rings of
-annual growth in the heartwood show fine contrast in color, and when
-these are developed by stains and fillers, the grain or figure of the
-wood is very pleasing. Where hardness is not an essential, it is much
-used for floors. It is in great demand by builders of freight cars, but
-less for frames and heavy beams than for siding and decking. Car
-builders in Illinois bought 77,000,000 feet of it in 1909. That was
-nearly half of the entire quantity of this wood used in the state. The
-second largest users in Illinois were manufacturers of sash, doors,
-blinds, and general millwork. If the whole country is considered, this
-is probably the largest use of the wood. Makers of boxes and crates in
-the South employ large quantities.
-
-The depletion of shortleaf forests has progressed rapidly, but in the
-absence of reliable statistics it is impossible to give figures by
-decades or years. In 1880 an estimate placed the amount west of the
-Mississippi at 95,000,000,000 feet. That was probably less than half of
-the country's supply at that time. In 1911 the Commissioner of
-Corporations estimated that the combined remaining stand of loblolly
-and shortleaf pine in the South was 152,000,000,000 feet. It is doubtful
-if half of it was shortleaf. In that case, there was less shortleaf pine
-in the entire South in 1911 than there was west of the Mississippi river
-thirty years before.
-
-Rapid decrease in total stand of a species does not necessarily imply
-exhaustion. The cut will fall off as scarcity pinches. In the case of
-shortleaf pine, an influence is active which will bring good results in
-the future. This pine reproduces with vigor. Its small triangular seeds
-are equipped with wings which carry them into vacant areas where they
-quickly germinate if they fall on mineral soil. The seedling trees
-suffer much from fire, but their power of resistance is fairly good, and
-dense new growth is coming on in many localities. A good many years are
-required to bring a seedling to maturity, but it will reach sawlog size
-sometime, and there is no question but that the market will welcome it.
-
-The shortleaf pine is peculiar among eastern softwoods in one respect.
-Stumps will sprout. That occurs oftener west of the Mississippi than
-east. However, the tree's ability to send up sprouts from the stump is
-of little practical value, since the sprouts seldom or never develop
-into merchantable trees. In that respect it differs from the other
-well-known sprouting softwood of this country, the California redwood,
-whose numerous sprouts grow into large trunks.
-
-SPRUCE PINE (_Pinus glabra_). This is one of the softest and the whitest
-of the hard pines of this country. Nothing but its scarcity stands in
-the way of its becoming an important timber tree. The best of it is a
-satisfactory substitute for white pine in the manufacture of doors. It
-grows rapidly, and the wide rings contain a high percentage of light
-colored springwood, though there is enough summerwood of darker color to
-give the dressed lumber a character. It weighs about the same as
-northern white pine, but is weaker. In South Carolina and Florida it is
-called white pine, but the name spruce is more general. It is known also
-as kingstree, poor pine, Walter's pine, and lowland spruce pine. Its
-range is restricted to southern South Carolina, northern Florida and
-southern Alabama and Mississippi, and northeastern Louisiana. Its leaves
-are from one and a half to three inches in length, grow two in a bundle,
-and fall the second and third years. Large and well-formed trunks attain
-a height of from eighty to 100 feet and a diameter from two to nearly
-three. It reaches its best development in northwestern Florida, and its
-light, symmetrical trunks have long been in use there as masts for small
-vessels. It is too scarce to attract much attention from lumbermen, but
-they are well acquainted with its good qualities, and some of them take
-pains to keep the lumber separate from associated pines, and sell it to
-manufacturers of doors and interior finish. The bark bears considerable
-resemblance to spruce, which probably accounts for the name of the tree.
-
-    TABLE MOUNTAIN PINE (_Pinus pungens_). The French botanist, Michaux
-    the younger, has been criticized for the statement which he made
-    more than a hundred years ago that this species was confined to a
-    certain flat-topped mountain in the southern Appalachian ranges, and
-    he called it table mountain pine. It lacked much of being confined
-    within the narrow limits where it was discovered. It grows in New
-    Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West
-    Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. Its
-    other names are prickly pine, hickory pine, and southern mountain
-    pine. It supplies timber in all parts of its range, but, except in
-    very restricted localities, it is not abundant. The lumber in the
-    market is seldom distinguished from other pines, but some of the
-    Tennessee mills sell it separately to local customers. The wood is
-    medium light, rather strong (about like _Pinus rigida_, or pitch
-    pine, which it resembles in other respects), is less stiff than
-    white pine, and is resinous. The thick sapwood is nearly white, the
-    heartwood brown. It is not a durable timber in contact with the
-    ground. Its fuel value is low. Its needles grow in clusters of two,
-    and are generally less than two inches long. The cones which are in
-    clusters of from three to eight, and from two to three and a half
-    inches long, are armed with stout, curved hooks. The cones shed
-    their seeds irregularly during two or three years, and sometimes
-    hang on the trees for twenty years. In open ground this pine
-    occasionally produces fertile seeds when only a few feet high. Its
-    forest form and open-ground form are quite different. In thick woods
-    the tree is tall, with good bole, but in open ground it is only
-    twenty or thirty feet high, and is covered with limbs almost to the
-    ground.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LOBLOLLY PINE
-
-[Illustration: LOBLOLLY PINE]
-
-
-
-
-LOBLOLLY PINE
-
-(_Pinus Tæda_)
-
-
-Few trees have more names than this. The names, however, may be
-separated into groups, one group referring to the foliage, another to
-the situations in which the tree grows, and a third to certain
-characters or uses of the wood. Names descriptive of the leaves are
-longschat pine, longshucks pine, shortleaf pine, foxtail pine, and
-longstraw pine. The names which refer to locality or situation are
-loblolly pine, old-field pine, slash pine, black slash pine, Virginia
-pine, meadow pine and swamp pine. Names which refer to the character of
-the wood or of the standing tree are torch pine, rosemary pine,
-frankincense pine, cornstalk pine, spruce pine, and yellow pine. Not one
-of these names is applied to the tree in its entire range, and it has
-several names other than those listed. Sap pine is widely applied to the
-lumber, because the tree's sapwood is very thick, sometimes amounting to
-eighty per cent of a trunk. It has borne the name old-field pine for a
-hundred and fifty years in Virginia, and the name suggests a good deal
-of history. Some of the improvident early Virginia tobacco growers
-neglected to fertilize their fields, and the land wore out under
-constant cropping, and was abandoned. The pine quickly took possession,
-for the fields which were too far exhausted to produce tobacco or corn
-were amply able to grow dense stands of loblolly pine, and the farmers
-noticing this, called it old-field pine. It has been taking possession
-of abandoned fields in Virginia and North Carolina ever since, and the
-name still applies. The tree grows from New Jersey to Florida, west to
-Texas, north to Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia, but it does not
-cover the whole territory thus outlined. It is very scarce near its
-northern limit. There is evidence that the range of loblolly has
-extended in historic times, not into new or distant regions, but outside
-the borders which once marked its range. Since white men in Texas
-stopped the Indians' grass fires, the pine has encroached upon the
-prairie. Early writers in Virginia and North Carolina spoke of pine as
-scarce or totally wanting, except on the immediate coast. It is now
-found from one hundred to two hundred miles inland, and many sawmills
-now cut logs which have grown in fields abandoned since the
-Revolutionary war. This has occurred on the Atlantic coast rather than
-west of the Appalachian ranges of mountains. Virginia has more sawmills
-than any other state, and many of them are working on loblolly pine
-which has grown in the last hundred years.
-
-The tree bears seeds abundantly and scatters them widely. It is
-vigorous, grows with great rapidity, and is able to fight its way if it
-finds conditions in any way favorable. Turpentine operators have not
-found the working of loblolly pine profitable, and this has relieved it
-of a drain which has done much to deplete the southern forests of
-longleaf pine.
-
-Loblolly's leaves are from six to nine inches long, and fall the third
-year. This species, in common with other southern yellow pines, is
-disposed to grow tall, clear trunks, with a meager supply of limbs and
-foliage at the top. The lumber sawed from trunks of that kind is clear
-of knots. No other important forest tree of the United States comes as
-nearly being a cultivated tree as the loblolly pine. This is
-particularly true in the northeastern part of its range, in North
-Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. Though nature has done the actual
-planting, men provided the seed beds by giving up old fields to that
-use; and many of the stands are as thick and even as if they had been
-planted and cared for by regular forestry methods. Trees are from eighty
-to one hundred feet tall, and from two to four in diameter, some very
-old ones being a little larger.
-
-The annual rings of loblolly pine are broad, with good contrast between
-the spring and summer growth. The wood is light, not strong, brittle,
-not durable, very resinous, the resin passages are few and not
-conspicuous; medullary rays are numerous and obscure; color, light
-brown, the thick sapwood orange or nearly white. When this tree is of
-slow growth it is lighter, less resinous, and has thinner sapwood. It is
-sometimes known as rosemary pine.
-
-The use of loblolly pine lumber was greatly stimulated when the custom
-of drying it in kilns became general. It is largely sapwood and dries
-slowly in air. Its market is found in all eastern and central parts of
-the United States, and it is exported to Europe and Central and South
-America. It is a substantial material for many common purposes and its
-use is very large on the Atlantic coast. In quantity it exceeds any
-other species in the wood-using industries of Maryland, and all others
-combined in North Carolina. It is not as often employed in heavy
-structural timbers as longleaf pine, but in the market of which
-Baltimore is the center, much use is made of it for that purpose. It is
-ten pounds a cubic foot lighter than longleaf, has about three-fourths
-of the strength, and nearly four-fifths of longleaf's elasticity. It is
-thus seen to be considerably inferior to it as a structural timber where
-heavy loads must be sustained; but builders use it for many purposes in
-preference to or on an equality with longleaf. It is fine for interior
-finish and doors. Railroads employ large quantities in building freight
-cars, much for crossties, and bridge builders find many places for it.
-It is not a long lasting wood when exposed to weather, unless it has
-been treated with creosote to preserve it from decay. It is one of the
-most easily treated woods.
-
-In North Carolina and Virginia loblolly tobacco hogsheads are common;
-and box factories within easy reach of it use much. A list of its uses,
-compiled from reports of factory operations in Maryland, will give an
-idea of the range it covers: Basket bottoms, beer bottle boxes, boats,
-cart bodies, crates, flooring, frames for doors and windows, fruit
-boxes, interior finish, nail kegs, oyster boxes, seats for boats, siding
-for houses, staves for slack cooperage, store fixtures, wagon beds,
-balusters, brackets, chiffoniers, mantels, molding, picture frames,
-stair railing, sash, scrollwork, sideboards, tables.
-
-The amount of loblolly pine timber in this country is not known. No
-other important species comes so near growing as much as is cut from
-year to year. It covers 200,000 square miles with stands ranging from
-little or nothing in some parts to 20,000 feet per acre in others, or
-more in exceptional cases. The area of fully stocked loblolly pine is
-believed to be as large now as it ever was. Before the Civil war it was
-predicted that its period of greatest production was over; but large
-tracts are now being logged on which the pine seeds had not been sown in
-1860.
-
-POND PINE (_Pinus serotina_). Sargent's table of weights of woods shows
-this to be the heaviest pine of the United States; but, as his
-calculations were made from a single sample which grew in Duval county,
-Florida, further data should be secured before his figures, 49.5 pounds
-per cubic foot, are accepted as an average weight for the species. It is
-rated in strength about equal to longleaf and Cuban pine. Its structure
-shows a large percentage of dense summerwood in the yearly ring. The
-leaves are in clusters of three, rarely four, and are six or eight
-inches long, and fall in their third and fourth years. The name suggests
-that the cones are tightly closed, and that they adhere tenaciously to
-the twigs on which they grow. This is found true. The principal
-impression made on a person who sees the pond pine for the first time is
-that it is overloaded with cones, and that it must be a prolific seeder.
-Better acquaintance modifies the latter part of that impression. It is
-overloaded with cones, but most of them are many years old, and have
-long been seedless, although most of the trees have the seed crops of
-two years on the branches at one time. Enough seed is shed to perpetuate
-the species, but too little to insure an aggressive spread into
-surrounding vacant ground. The pond pine may reach a diameter of three
-feet and a height of eighty, but that is twice the average size. The
-wood is very resinous, and is brittle.
-
-    SCRUB PINE (_Pinus virginiana_). This tree is often called Jersey
-    pine because it is a prominent feature of the landscapes in the
-    southern part of that state where it has spread extensively since
-    the settlement of the country. Its short needles have been
-    responsible for several of its names, among them being shortshuck
-    pine in Maryland and Virginia, shortshat pine in Delaware,
-    shortleaved pine in North Carolina, and spruce pine and cedar pine
-    in some parts of the South. In Tennessee it is known as nigger pine,
-    and in some parts of North Carolina as river pine. The range is
-    fairly well outlined by the above discussion of its names. It grows
-    from New York to South Carolina, and west of the mountains it is
-    found in northern Alabama and middle Tennessee, in Kentucky and West
-    Virginia. It reaches its largest size in southern Indiana where it
-    is sometimes 100 feet high and three in diameter. It is there a
-    valuable tree for many purposes, but is not abundant. Its average
-    size is small in the eastern states, usually not over fifty feet
-    high, and often little more than half of that. Few trunks east of
-    the Allegheny mountains are more than eighteen inches in diameter.
-    The name scrub pine is an index to the opinions held by most people
-    regarding this tree. It is often considered an encumbrance rather
-    than an asset; yet statistics of wood-using industries hardly
-    justify that view. Millions of feet of it are employed annually in
-    each of the states of New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and North
-    Carolina, for boxes, slack cooperage, and common lumber. The wood is
-    moderately strong, but is not stiff. It is medium light, soft,
-    brittle, with summerwood narrow and very resinous. Its color is
-    light orange or yellow, the thick sapwood ivory white. The needles
-    are from one and a half to three inches long, and fall in the third
-    and fourth years. Cones are two or three inches long, and scatter
-    their seeds in autumn. The wings are too small to carry the seeds
-    far, yet the tree succeeds in quickly spreading into surrounding
-    vacant spaces. Cones adhere to the branches three or four years. Tar
-    makers and charcoal burners utilized scrub pine in New Jersey,
-    northeastern Maryland and southeastern Pennsylvania a century and a
-    half ago. The tree seems to be as abundant now as it ever was.
-    Unless it occupies very poor land--which it generally does--the
-    growth is liable to be suppressed and crowded to death by broadleaf
-    trees before the stands become very old. As a species, it is weak in
-    self-defense, and it owes its survival to its habit of retreating to
-    poor soils where enemies cannot follow. It may be said of it as the
-    Roman historian Tacitus said of certain men: "The cowards fly the
-    farthest, and are the longest survivors."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-NORWAY PINE
-
-[Illustration: NORWAY PINE]
-
-
-
-
-NORWAY PINE
-
-(_Pinus Resinosa_)
-
-
-Early explorers who were not botanists mistook this tree for Norway
-spruce, and gave it the name which has since remained in nearly all
-parts of its range. It is called red pine also, and this name is
-strictly descriptive. The brown or red color of the bark is instantly
-noticed by one who sees the tree for the first time. In the Lake States
-it has been called hard pine for the purpose of distinguishing it from
-the softer white pine with which it is associated. In England they call
-it Canadian red pine, because the principal supply in England is
-imported from the Canadian provinces.
-
-Its chief range lies in the drainage basin of the St. Lawrence river,
-which includes the Great Lakes and the rivers which flow into them.
-Newfoundland forms the eastern and Manitoba the western outposts of this
-species. It is found as far south as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,
-northern Ohio, central Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. It conforms
-pretty generally to the range of white pine but does not accompany that
-species southward along the Appalachian mountain ranges across West
-Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Where it was left to
-compete in nature's way with white pine, the contest was friendly, but
-white pine got the best of it. The two species grew in intermixture, but
-in most instances white pine had from five to twenty trees to Norway's
-one. As a survivor under adversity, however, the Norway pine appears to
-surpass its great friendly rival, at least in the Lake States where the
-great pineries once flourished and have largely passed away. Solitary or
-small clumps of Norway pines are occasionally found where not a white
-pine, large or small, is in sight.
-
-The forest appearance of Norway pine resembles the southern yellow
-pines. The stand is open, the trunks are clean and tall, the branches
-are at the top. The Norway's leaves are in clusters of two, and are five
-or six inches long. They fall during the fourth or fifth year. Cones are
-two inches long, and when mature, closely resemble the color of the
-tree's bark, that is, light chestnut brown. Exceptionally tall Norway
-pines may reach a height of 150 feet, but the average is seventy or
-eighty, with diameters of from two to four. Young trees are limby, but
-early in life the lower branches die and fall, leaving few protruding
-stubs or knots. It appears to be a characteristic that trunks are seldom
-quite straight. They do not have the plumb appearance of forest grown
-white pine and spruce.
-
-The wood of Norway pine is medium light, its strength and stiffness
-about twenty-five per cent greater than white pine, and it is moderately
-soft. The annual rings are rather wide, indicating rapid growth. The
-bands of summerwood are narrow compared with the springwood, which gives
-a generally light color to the wood, though not as light as the wood of
-white pine. The resin passages are small and fairly numerous. The
-sapwood is thick, and the wood is not durable in contact with the soil.
-
-Norway pine has always had a place of its own in the lumber trade, but
-large quantities have been marketed as white pine. If such had not been
-the case, Norway pine would have been much oftener heard of during the
-years when the Lake State pineries were sending their billions of feet
-of lumber to the markets of the world.
-
-Because of the deposit of resinous materials in the wood, Norway pine
-stumps resist decay much better than white pine. In some of the early
-cuttings in Michigan, where only stumps remain to show how large the
-trees were and how thick they stood, the Norway stumps are much better
-preserved than the white pine. Using that fact as a basis of estimate,
-it may be shown that in many places the Norway pine constituted
-one-fifth or one-fourth of the original stand. The lumbermen cut clean,
-and statistics of that period do not show that the two pines were
-generally marketed separately. In recent years many of the Norway stumps
-have been pulled, and have been sold to wood-distillation plants where
-the rosin and turpentine are extracted.
-
-At an early date Norway pine from Canada and northern New York was
-popular ship timber in this country and England. Slender, straight
-trunks were selected as masts, or were sawed for decking planks thirty
-or forty feet long. Shipbuilders insisted that planks be all heartwood,
-because when sapwood was exposed to rain and sun, it changed to a green
-color, due to the presence of fungus. The wood wears well as ship
-decking. The British navy was still using some Norway pine masts as late
-as 1875.
-
-The scarcity of this timber has retired it from some of the places which
-it once filled, and the southern yellow pines have been substituted. It
-is still employed for many important purposes, the chief of which is car
-building, if statistics for the state of Illinois are a criterion for
-the whole country. In 1909 in that state 24,794,000 feet of it were used
-for all purposes, and 14,783,000 feet in car construction.
-
-For many years Chicago has been the center of the Norway pine trade. It
-is landed there by lake steamers and by rail, and is distributed to
-ultimate consumers. The uses for the wood, as reported by Illinois
-manufacturers, follow: Baskets, boxes, boats, brackets, casing and
-frames for doors and windows, crating, derricks for well-boring
-machines, doors, elevators, fixtures for stores and offices, foot or
-running boards for tank cars, foundry flasks, freight cars, hand rails,
-insulation for refrigerator cars, ladders, picture moldings, roofing,
-sash, siding for cattle cars, sign boards and advertising signs, tanks,
-and windmill towers.
-
-As with white pine, Norway pine has passed the period of greatest
-production, though much still goes to market every year and will long
-continue to do so. The land which lumbermen denuded in the Lake States,
-particularly Michigan and Wisconsin, years ago, did not reclothe itself
-with Norway seedlings. That would have taken place in most instances but
-for fires which ran periodically through the slashings until all
-seedlings were destroyed. In many places there are now few seedlings and
-few large trees to bear seeds, and consequently the pine forest in such
-places is a thing of the past. The outlook is better in other
-localities.
-
-The Norway pine is much planted for ornament, and is rated one of the
-handsomest of northern park trees.
-
-    PITCH PINE (_Pinus rigida_). The name pitch pine is locally applied
-    to almost every species of hard, resinous pine in this country. The
-    _Pinus rigida_ has other names than pitch pine. In Delaware it is
-    called longleaved pine, since its needles are longer than the scrub
-    pine's with which it is associated. For the same reason it is known
-    in some localities as longschat pine. In Massachusetts it is called
-    hard pine, in Pennsylvania yellow pine, in North Carolina and
-    eastern Tennessee black pine, and black Norway pine in New York. The
-    botanical name is translated "rigid pine," but the rigid refers to
-    the leaves, not the wood. Its range covers New England, New York,
-    Pennsylvania, southern Canada, eastern Ohio, and southward along the
-    mountains to northern Georgia. It has three leaves in a cluster,
-    from three to five inches long, and they fall the second year. Cones
-    range in length from one to three inches, and they hang on the
-    branches ten or twelve years. The wood is medium light, moderately
-    strong, but low in stiffness. It is soft and brittle. The annual
-    rings are wide, the summerwood broad, distinct, and very resinous.
-    Medullary rays are few but prominent; color, light brown or red, the
-    thick sapwood yellow or often nearly white. The difference in the
-    hardness between springwood and summerwood renders it difficult to
-    work, and causes uneven wear when used as flooring. It is fairly
-    durable in contact with the soil.
-
-    The tree attains a height of from forty to eighty feet and a
-    diameter of three. This pine is not found in extensive forests, but
-    in scattered patches, nearly always on poor soil where other trees
-    will not crowd it. Light and air are necessary to its existence. If
-    it receives these, it will fight successfully against adversities
-    which would be fatal to many other species. In resistance to forest
-    fires, it is a salamander among trees. That is primarily due to its
-    thick bark, but it is favored also by the situations in which it is
-    generally found--open woods, and on soil so poor that ground litter
-    is thin. It is a useful wood for many purposes, and wherever it is
-    found in sufficient quantity, it goes to market, but under its own
-    name only in restricted localities. Its resinous knots were once
-    used in place of candles in frontier homes. Tar made locally from
-    its rich wood was the pioneer wagoner's axle grease, and the
-    ever-present tar bucket and tar paddle swung from the rear axle.
-    Torches made by tying splinters in bundles answered for lanterns in
-    night travel. It was the best pine for floors in some localities.
-    It is probably used more for boxes than for anything else at
-    present. In 1909 Massachusetts box makers bought 600,000 feet, and a
-    little more went to Maryland box factories. Its poor holding power
-    on spikes limits its employment as railroad ties and in
-    shipbuilding. Carpenters and furniture makers object to the numerous
-    knots. Country blacksmiths who repair and make wagons as a side
-    line, find it suitable for wagon beds. It is much used as fuel where
-    it is convenient.
-
-    TORREY PINE (_Pinus torreyana_), called del mar pine and Soledad
-    pine, is an interesting tree from the fact that its range is so
-    restricted that the actual number of trees could be easily known to
-    one who would take the trouble to count them. A rather large
-    quantity formerly occupied a small area in San Diego county,
-    California, but woodchoppers who did not appreciate the fact that
-    they were exterminating a species of pine from the face of the
-    earth, cut nearly all of the trees for fuel. Its range covered only
-    a few square miles, and fortunately part of that was included in the
-    city limits of San Diego. An ordinance was passed prohibiting the
-    cutting of a Torrey pine under heavy penalty, and the tree was thus
-    saved. A hundred and fifty miles off the San Diego coast a few
-    Torrey pines grow on the islands of Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa, and
-    owing to their isolated situation they bid fair to escape the
-    cordwood cutter for years to come. Those who have seen this tree on
-    its native hills have admired the gameness of its battle for
-    existence against the elements. Standing in the full sweep of the
-    ocean winds, its strong, short branches scarcely move, and all the
-    agitation is in the thick tufts of needles which cling to the ends
-    of the branches. Trees exposed to the seawinds are stunted, and are
-    generally less than a foot in diameter and thirty feet high; but
-    those which are so fortunate as to occupy sheltered valleys are
-    three or four times that size. The needles are five in a cluster.
-    The cones persist on the branches three or four years. The wood is
-    light, soft, moderately strong, very brittle; the rings of yearly
-    growth are broad, and the yellow bands of summerwood occupy nearly
-    half. The sapwood is very thick and is nearly white.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN YELLOW PINE
-
-[Illustration: WESTERN YELLOW PINE]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN YELLOW PINE
-
-(_Pinus Ponderosa_)
-
-
-The range of western yellow pine covers a million square miles. Its
-eastern boundary is a line drawn from South Dakota to western Texas. The
-species covers much of the country between that line and the Pacific
-ocean. It is natural that it should have more names than one in a region
-so extensive. It is best known as western yellow pine, but lumbermen
-often call it California white pine. The standing timber is frequently
-designated bull pine, but that name is not often given to the lumber.
-Where there is no likelihood of confusing it with southern pines, it is
-called simply yellow pine. The name heavy-wooded pine, sometimes applied
-to the lumber in England, is misleading. When well seasoned it weighs
-about thirty pounds per cubic foot, and ordinarily it would not be
-classed heavy. In California it is called heavy pine, but that is to
-distinguish it from sugar pine which is considerably lighter. The color
-of its bark has given it the name Sierra brownbark pine. The same tree
-in Montana is called black pine.
-
-The tree has developed two forms. Some botanists have held there are two
-species, but that is not the general opinion. In the warm, damp climate
-of the Pacific slope the tree is larger, and somewhat different in
-appearance from the form in the Rocky Mountain region. The same
-observation holds true of Douglas fir.
-
-The wood of western yellow pine is medium light, not strong, is low in
-elasticity, medullary rays prominent but not numerous; resinous, color
-light to reddish, the thick sapwood almost white. The annual rings are
-variable in width, and the proportionate amounts of springwood and
-summerwood also vary. It is not durable in contact with the ground.
-
-The wood is easy to work and some of the best of it resembles white
-pine, but as a whole it is inferior to that wood, though it is
-extensively employed as a substitute for it in the manufacture of doors,
-sash, and frames. It is darker than white pine, harder, heavier,
-stronger, almost exactly equal in stiffness, but the annual rings of the
-two woods do not bear close resemblance.
-
-The tree reaches a height of from 100 to 200 feet, a diameter from three
-to seven. It is occasionally much larger. Its size depends much on its
-habitat. The best development occurs on the Sierra Nevada mountains in
-California and the best wood comes from that region, though certain
-other localities produce high-grade lumber.
-
-Western yellow pine holds and will long hold an important place in the
-country's timber resources. The total stand has been estimated at
-275,000,000,000 feet, and is second only to that of Douglas fir, though
-the combined stand of the four southern yellow pines is about
-100,000,000,000 feet larger. It is a vigorous species, able to hold its
-ground under ordinary circumstances. Next to incense cedar and the giant
-sequoias which are associated with it in the Sierra Nevada mountains, it
-is the most prolific seed bearer of the western conifers, and its seeds
-are sufficiently light to insure wide distribution. It is gaining ground
-within its range by taking possession of vacant areas which have been
-bared by lumbering or fire. In some cases it crowds to death the more
-stately sugar pine by cutting off its light and moisture. It resists
-fire better than most of the forest trees with which it is associated.
-On the other hand, it suffers from enemies more than its associates do.
-A beetle (_Dendroctonus ponderosæ_), destroys large stands. In the Black
-Hills in 1903 its ravages killed 600,000,000 feet.
-
-This splendid pine has run the gamut of uses from the corral pole of the
-first settler to the paneled door turned out by the modern factory. It
-has almost an unlimited capacity for usefulness. It grows in dry regions
-of the Rocky Mountains where it is practically the only source of wood
-supply; and it is equally secure in its position where forests are
-abundant and fine. It has supplied props, stulls, and lagging for mines
-in nearly every state touched by its range. Without its ties and other
-timbers some of the early railroads through the western mountains could
-scarcely have been built. It has been one of the leading flume timbers
-in western lumber and irrigation development. It fenced many ranches in
-early times and is still doing so. It is used in general construction,
-and in finish; from the shingle to the foundation sill of houses. It
-finds its way to eastern lumber markets. Almost 20,000,000 feet a year
-are used in Illinois alone. Competition with eastern white pine is met
-in the Lake States because, grade for grade, the western wood is
-cheaper, until lower grades are reached. The western yellow pine, in the
-eastern market, is confused with the western white pine of Idaho and
-Montana (_Pinus monticola_) and separate statistics of use are
-impossible.
-
-The makers of fruit boxes in California often employ the yellow pine in
-lieu of sugar pine which once supplied the whole trade. It is also used
-by coopers for various containers, but not for alcoholic liquors.
-
-The leaves are in clusters of twos and threes, and are from five to
-eleven inches long. Most of them fall during the third year. The cones
-are from three to six inches long, and generally fall soon after they
-reach maturity.
-
-    COULTER PINE (_Pinus coulteri_) is also known as nut pine, big cone
-    pine, and long cone pine. It is a California species, scarce, but of
-    much interest because of its cones. They are larger than those of
-    any other American pine and are armed with formidable curved spines
-    from half an inch to an inch and a half in length. The cones are
-    from ten to fourteen inches long. The tree is found on the Coast
-    Range mountains from the latitude of San Francisco to the boundary
-    between California and Mexico. It thrives at altitudes of from 3,000
-    to 6,000 feet. It never occurs in pure stands and the total amount
-    is small. It looks like the western yellow pine, but is much
-    inferior in size. Trunks seldom attain a length of fifteen feet or a
-    diameter of two. There is no evidence that Coulter pine is
-    increasing its stand on the ground which it already occupies, or
-    spreading to new ground. The wood is light, soft, moderately strong,
-    and very tough. The annual rings are narrow and consist largely of
-    summerwood. The heartwood is light red, the thick sapwood nearly
-    white. It is a poor tree for lumber, and it has been little used in
-    that way, but has been burned for charcoal for blacksmith shops, and
-    much is sold as cordwood. The leaves of Coulter pine are in clusters
-    of three, and they fall during the third and fourth years.
-
-    CALIFORNIA SWAMP PINE (_Pinus muricata_) clearly belongs among minor
-    species listed as timber trees. It meets a small demand for skids,
-    corduroy log roads, bridge floors, and scaffolds in the redwood
-    logging operations in California. It is scattered along the Pacific
-    coast 500 miles, beginning in Lower California and ending a hundred
-    miles north of San Francisco. It is known as dwarf marine pine,
-    pricklecone pine, bishop pine, and obispo pine. The last name is the
-    Spanish translation of the English word bishop. The largest trees
-    seldom exceed two feet in diameter, and a height of ninety feet. The
-    average size is little more than half as much. The wood is very
-    strong, hard, and compact, and the annual growth ring is largely
-    dense summerwood. Resin passages are few, but the wood is resinous,
-    light brown in color, and the thick sapwood is nearly white. The
-    needles are in clusters of two, and are from four to six inches
-    long. They begin to fall the second year. Some of the trees retain
-    their cones until death, but the seeds are scattered from year to
-    year. Under the stimulus of artificial conditions in the redwood
-    districts this pine seems to be spreading. Its seeds blow into
-    vacant ground from which redwood has been removed, and growth is
-    prompt. The seedlings are not at all choice as to soil, but take
-    root in cold clay, in peat bogs, on barren sand and gravel, and on
-    wind-swept ridges exposed to ocean fogs. Its ability to grow where
-    few other trees can maintain themselves holds out some hope that its
-    usefulness will increase.
-
-    MONTEREY PINE (_Pinus radiata_). This scarce and local species is
-    restricted to the California coast south of San Francisco, and to
-    adjacent islands. Under favorable circumstances it grows rapidly and
-    promises to be of more importance as a lumber source in the future
-    than it has been in the past. It is, however, somewhat particular as
-    to soil. It must have ground not too wet or too dry. If these
-    requirements are observed, it is a good tree for planting. Its
-    average height is seventy or ninety feet, diameter from eighteen to
-    thirty inches. Trunks six feet in diameter are occasionally heard
-    of. The wood is light, soft, moderately strong, tough, annual rings
-    very wide and largely of springwood; color, light brown, the very
-    thick sapwood nearly white. The leaves are from four to six inches
-    long, in clusters of two and three, and fall the third year. Cones
-    are from three to five inches long. The lumber is too scarce at
-    present to have much importance, but its quality is good. In
-    appearance it resembles wide-ringed loblolly pine, and appears to be
-    suitable for doors and sash, and frames for windows and doors. Its
-    present uses are confined chiefly to ranch timbers and fuel. If it
-    ever amounts to much as a lumber resource, it will be as a planted
-    pine, and not in its natural state.
-
-    JACK PINE (_Pinus divaricata_) is a far northern species which
-    extends its range southward in the United States, from Maine to
-    Minnesota, and reaches northern Indiana and Illinois. It grows
-    almost far enough north in the valley of Mackenzie river to catch
-    the rays of the midnight sun. It must necessarily adapt itself to
-    circumstances. When these are favorable, it develops a trunk up to
-    two feet in diameter and seventy feet tall; but in adversity, it
-    degenerates into a many-branched shrub a few feet high. The average
-    tree in the United States is thirty or forty feet tall, and a foot
-    or more in diameter. Its name is intended as a term of contempt,
-    which it does not deserve. Others call it scrub pine which is little
-    better. Its other names are more respectful, Prince's pine in
-    Ontario, black pine in Wisconsin and Minnesota, cypress in Quebec
-    and the Hudson Bay country, Sir Joseph Banks' pine in England, and
-    juniper in some parts of Canada. "Chek pine" is frequently given in
-    its list of names, but the name is said to have originated in an
-    attempt of a German botanist to pronounce "Jack pine" in dictating
-    to a stenographer. The tree straggles over landscapes which
-    otherwise would be treeless. It is often a ragged and uncouth
-    specimen of the vegetable kingdom, but that is when it is at its
-    worst. At its best, as it may be seen where cared for in some of the
-    Michigan cemeteries, it is as handsome a tree as anyone could
-    desire. The characteristic thinness and delicacy of its foliage
-    distinguish it at once from its associates. The peculiar green of
-    its soft, short needles wins admiration. The wood is light, soft,
-    not strong; annual rings are moderately wide, and are largely
-    composed of springwood. The thin bands of summerwood are resinous,
-    and the small resin ducts are few. The thick sapwood is nearly
-    white, the heartwood brown or orange. It is not durable.
-
-    Jack pine can never be an important timber tree, because too small;
-    but a considerable amount is used for bed slats, nail kegs,
-    plastering lath, barrel headings, boxes, mine props, pulpwood, and
-    fuel. Aside from its use as lumber and small manufactured products,
-    it has a value for other purposes. It can maintain its existence in
-    waste sands; and its usefulness is apparent in fixing drifting dunes
-    along some of the exposed shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.
-    It lives on dry sand and sends its roots several feet to water; or,
-    under circumstances entirely different, it thrives in swamps where
-    the watertable is little below the surface of the ground. It fights
-    a brave battle against adversities while it lasts, but it does not
-    live long. Sixty years is old age for this tree. It grows fast while
-    young, but later it devotes all its energies to the mere process of
-    living, and its increase in size is slow, until at a period when
-    most trees are still in early youth, it dies of old age, and the
-    northern winds quickly whip away its limbs, leaving the barkless
-    trunk to stand a few years longer.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LODGEPOLE PINE
-
-[Illustration: LODGEPOLE PINE]
-
-
-
-
-LODGEPOLE PINE
-
-(_Pinus Contorta_)
-
-
-The common name of this tree was given it because its tall, slender,
-very light poles were used by Indians of the region in the construction
-of their lodges. They selected poles fifteen feet long and two inches in
-diameter, set them in a circle, bent the tops together, tied them, and
-covered the frame with skins or bark. The poles were peeled in early
-summer, when the Indians set out upon their summer hunt, and were left
-to season until fall, when they were carried to the winter's camping
-place, probably fifty miles distant. Tamarack is a common name for this
-pine in much of its range; it is likewise known as black pine, spruce
-pine, and prickly pine. Its leaves are from one to two inches long, in
-clusters of two. The small cones adhere to the branches many
-years--sometimes as long as twenty--without releasing the seeds, which
-are sealed within the cone by accumulated resin. The vitality of the
-seeds is remarkable. They don't lose their power of germination during
-their long imprisonment.
-
-The lodgepole pine has been called a fire tree, and the name is not
-inappropriate. It profits by severe burning, as some other trees of the
-United States do, such as paper birch and bird cherry. The sealed cones
-are opened by fire, which softens the resin, and the seeds are liberated
-after the fire has passed, and wing their flight wherever the wind
-carries them. The passing fire may be severe enough to kill the parent
-tree without destroying or bringing down the cones. The seeds soon fall
-on the bared mineral soil, where they germinate by thousands. More than
-one hundred thousand small seedling trees may occupy a single acre. Most
-of them are ultimately crowded to death, but a thick stand results. Most
-lodgepole pine forests occupy old burns. The tree is one of the slowest
-of growers. It never reaches large size--possibly three feet is the
-limit. It is very tall and slender. A hundred years will scarcely
-produce a sawlog of the smallest size.
-
-The range of this tree covers a million square miles from Alaska to New
-Mexico, and to the Pacific coast. Its characters vary in different parts
-of its range. A scrub form was once thought to be a different species,
-and was called shore pine.
-
-The wood is of about the same weight as eastern white pine. It is light
-in color, rather weak, and brittle, annual rings very narrow, summerwood
-small in amount, resin passages few and small; medullary rays numerous,
-broad, and prominent. The wood is characterized by numerous small knots.
-It is not durable in contact with the ground, but it readily receives
-preservative treatment. In height it ranges from fifty to one hundred
-feet.
-
-The government's estimate of the stand of lodgepole pine in the United
-States in 1909 placed it at 90,000,000,000 feet. That makes it seventh
-in quantity among the timber trees of this country, those above it being
-Douglas fir, the southern yellow pines (considered as one), western
-yellow pine, redwood, western hemlock, and the red cedar of Washington,
-Oregon, and Idaho.
-
-Lodgepole pine has been long and widely used as a ranch timber in the
-Far West, serving for poles and rails in fences, for sheds, barns,
-corrals, pens, and small bridges. Where it could be had at all, it was
-generally plentiful. Stock ranges high among the mountains frequently
-depend almost solely upon lodgepole pine for necessary timber.
-
-Mine operators find it a valuable resource. As props it is cheap,
-substantial, and convenient in many parts of Colorado, New Mexico,
-Wyoming, and Montana. A large proportion of this timber which is cut for
-mining purposes has been standing dead from fire injury many years, and
-is thoroughly seasoned and very light. It is in excellent condition for
-receiving preservative treatment.
-
-Sawmills do not list lodgepole pine separately in reports of lumber cut,
-and it is impossible to determine what the annual supply from the
-species is. It is well known that the quantity made into lumber in
-Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho is large. Its chief market is
-among the newly established agricultural communities in those states.
-They use it for fruit and vegetable shipping boxes, fencing plank,
-pickets, and plastering lath.
-
-Railroads buy half a million lodgepole pine crossties yearly. When
-creosoted, they resist decay many years. Lodgepole pine has been a tie
-material since the first railroads entered the region, and while by no
-means the best, it promises to fill a much more important place in the
-future than in the past. It is an ideal fence post material as far as
-size and form are concerned, and with preservative treatment it is bound
-to attain a high place. It is claimed that treated posts will last
-twenty years, and that puts them on a par with the cedars.
-
-In Colorado and Wyoming much lodgepole was formerly burned for charcoal
-to supply the furnaces which smelted ore and the blacksmith shops of the
-region. This is done now less than formerly, since railroad building has
-made coal and coke accessible.
-
-In one respect, lodgepole pine is to the western mountains what loblolly
-pine is to the flat country of the south Atlantic and other southern
-states. It is aggressive, and takes possession of vacant ground.
-Although the wood is not as valuable as loblolly, it is useful, and has
-an important place to fill in the western country's development. Its
-greatest drawback is its exceedingly slow growth. A hundred years is a
-long time to wait for trees of pole size. Two crops of loblolly sawlogs
-can be harvested in that time. However, the land on which the lodgepole
-grows is fit only for timber, and the acreage is so vast that there is
-enough to grow supplies, even with the wait of a century or two for
-harvest. The stand has increased enormously within historic time, the
-same as loblolly, and for a similar reason. Men cleared land in the
-East, and loblolly took possession; fires destroyed western forests of
-other species and lodgepole seized and held the burned tracts.
-
-If fires cease among the western mountains, as will probably be the case
-under more efficient methods of patrol, and with stricter enforcement of
-laws against starting fires, the spread of lodgepole pine will come to a
-standstill, and existing forests will grow old without much extension of
-their borders.
-
-JEFFREY PINE (_Pinus jeffreyi_) is often classed as western yellow pine,
-both in the forest and at the mill. Its range extends from southern
-Oregon to Lower California, a distance of 1,000 miles, and its width
-east and west varies from twenty to one hundred and fifty miles. It is a
-mountain tree and generally occupies elevations above the western yellow
-pine. In the North its range reaches 3,600 feet above sea level; in the
-extreme South it is 10,000 feet. The darker and more deeply-furrowed
-bark of the Jeffrey pine is the usual character by which lumbermen
-distinguish it from the western yellow pine. It is known under several
-names, most of them relating to the tree's appearance, such as black
-pine, redbark pine, blackbark pine, sapwood pine, and bull pine. It
-reaches the same size as the western yellow pine, though the average is
-a little smaller. The leaves are from four to nine inches long, and fall
-in eight or nine years. The cones are large, and armed with slender,
-curved spines. The seeds are too heavy to fly far, their wing area being
-small. It is a vigorous tree, and in some regions it forms good forests.
-Some botanists have considered the Jeffrey pine a variety of the western
-yellow pine.
-
-    GRAY PINE (_Pinus sabiniana_), called also Digger pine because the
-    Digger Indians formerly collected the seeds, which are as large as
-    peanuts, to help eke out a living, is confined to California, and
-    grows in a belt on the foothills surrounding the San Joaquin and
-    Sacramento valleys. Its cones are large and armed with hooked
-    spines. When green, the largest cones weigh three or four pounds.
-    Leaves are from eight to twelve inches long, in clusters of two and
-    three, and fall the third and fourth years. The wood is remarkable
-    for the quickness of its decay in damp situations. It lasts one or
-    two years as fence posts. A mature gray pine is from fifty to
-    seventy feet high, and eighteen to thirty inches in diameter. Some
-    trees are much larger. It is of considerable importance, but is not
-    in the same class as western yellow and sugar pine. The wood is
-    light, soft, rather strong, brittle. The annual rings are generally
-    wide, indicating rapid growth. Very old gray pines are not known. An
-    age of 185 years seems to be the highest on record. The wood is
-    resinous, and it has helped in a small way to supply the Pacific
-    coast markets with high-grade turpentine, distilled from roots. It
-    yields resin when boxed like the southern longleaf pine. There are
-    two flowing seasons. One is very early, and closes when the weather
-    becomes hot; the other is in full current by the middle of August.
-    It maintains life among the California foothills during the long
-    rainless seasons, on ground so dry that semi-desert chaparral
-    sometimes succumbs; but it is able to make the most of favorable
-    conditions, and it grows rapidly under the slightest encouragement.
-    The seedlings are more numerous now than formerly, which is
-    attributed to decrease of forest fires. The tree has enemies which
-    generally attack it in youth. Two fungi, _Peridermium harknessi_,
-    and _Dædalia vorax_, destroy the young tree's leader or topmost
-    shoot, causing the development of a short trunk. The latter fungus
-    is the same or is closely related to that which tunnels the trunk of
-    incense cedar and produces pecky cypress.
-
-    Gray pine has been cut to some extent for lumber, but its principal
-    uses have been as fuel and mine timbers. Many quartz mines have been
-    located in the region where the tree grows; and the engines which
-    pumped the shafts and raised and crushed the ore were often heated
-    with this pine. Thousands of acres of hillsides in the vicinity of
-    mines were stripped of it, and it went to the engine house ricks in
-    wagons, on sleds, and on the backs of burros. In two respects it is
-    an economical fuel for remote mines: it is light in weight, and
-    gives more heat than an equal quantity of the oak that is associated
-    with it.
-
-    CHIHUAHUA PINE (_Pinus chihuahuana_) is not abundant, but it exists
-    in small commercial quantities in southwestern New Mexico and
-    southern Arizona. Trees are from fifty to eighty feet high, and from
-    fifteen to twenty inches in diameter. The wood is medium light,
-    soft, rather strong, brittle, narrow ringed and compact. The resin
-    passages are few, large, and conspicuous; color, clear light orange,
-    the thick sapwood lighter. The tree reaches best development at
-    altitudes of from 5,000 to 7,000 feet. When the wood is used, it
-    serves the same purposes as western yellow pine; but the small size
-    of the tree makes lumber of large size impossible. The leaves are in
-    clusters of three, and fall the fourth year. The cones have long
-    stalks and are from one and a half to two inches long.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-TAMARACK
-
-[Illustration: TAMARACK]
-
-
-
-
-TAMARACK
-
-(_Larix Laricina_)
-
-
-There are three species of tamarack or larch in the United States, and
-probably a fourth is confined to Alaska. One has its range in the
-northeastern states, extending south to West Virginia and northwestward
-to Alaska. Two are found in the northwestern states. Other species are
-native of the eastern hemisphere, and some of them have been planted to
-some extent in this country. A species of Europe is of much importance
-in that country. The tamaracks lose their leaves in the fall and the
-branches are bare during the winter. The name tamarack or larch should
-be applied only to trees of the genus _larix_. This rule is not observed
-in some parts of the West where the noble fir (_Abies nobilis_) is
-occasionally called larch by lumbermen. It is not entitled to that name,
-and confusion results from such use.
-
-The larches are easily identified. They have needle leaves like those of
-pines and firs, but they are differently arranged. They are produced in
-little brush-like bundles, from twelve to forty leaves in each, on all
-the shoots, except the leaders. On these the leaves occur singly. The
-little brushes are so conspicuous, and so characteristic of this genus,
-including all its species, that there should be little difficulty in
-identifying the larches when the leaves are on. In winter, when the
-branches are bare, there are other easy marks of identification.
-
-The little brushes are interesting objects of study. Botanists tell us
-that the excrescence or bud-like knob from which the leaves grow is
-really a suppressed or aborted branch, with all its leaves crowded
-together at the end. If it were developed, it would bear its leaves
-singly, scattered along its full length, as they occur on the leading
-shoots. The warty appearance of the branches in winter is a very
-convenient means of identification when the leaves are down.
-
-The cones of larches mature in a single season, and often hang on the
-trees several years. They are conspicuous in winter when the branches
-are bare of foliage. The adhering cones are generally seedless after the
-first season, since they quickly let their winged seeds go. The male and
-female flowers are produced singly on branches of the previous year.
-
-The eastern and northern larch (_Larix laricina_) has a number of names.
-It is commonly known as tamarack in the New England states and in New
-York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan,
-Minnesota, Ohio, and in Canada. The name larch is applied in practically
-all the regions where it grows, but it is not used as frequently as
-tamarack. Hackmatack, which was the Indian name for the tree in part of
-its eastern range, is still in use in Maine, New Hampshire,
-Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, and Ontario.
-Nurserymen call it American larch to distinguish it from other larches
-on the market, particularly the European larch. Michaux, an early French
-botanist who explored American forests, called it American larch (_Larix
-americana_), and the name which he gave has been retained by many
-scientists to this day. In the Canadian provinces north of the Great
-Lakes, and also in Maine and New Brunswick, it is frequently called
-juniper, but without good reason, for it has little of the appearance
-and few of the qualities of the junipers. In some localities it is
-called black larch, and in others red larch. The first name refers to
-the color of its bark, the last to the leaves when about to fall, for
-they then change to a brown or reddish color. They fall in the autumn,
-and the branches are bare until the next spring. Some of the New York
-Indians observed that peculiarity of the tree which they thought should
-be an evergreen like the balsam and pines with which it was often
-associated, and they named it kenehtens, meaning "the leaves fall".
-Indians did not, as a rule, give separate names to tree species, and
-when they did so, it was because of food value, or from some peculiarity
-which could not fail to attract the notice of a savage.
-
-The tamarack's geographical range is remarkable. It is said to be best
-developed in the region east of Manitoba, but it extends southward into
-West Virginia and northward to the land of the midnight sun. It
-maintains its place almost to the arctic snows, and the willow is about
-the only tree that pushes farther north. It is found from Newfoundland
-and Labrador far down toward the mouth of the Mackenzie river, north of
-the arctic circle. It grows on dry land as well as wet, but is oftenest
-found in cold swamps, particularly in the southern part of its range.
-Silted-up lakes are favorite situations, and on the made-land above old
-beaver dams.
-
-Tamarack forests frequently stand on ground so soft that a pole may be
-thrust ten feet deep in the mud. The moist, monotonous sphagnum moss
-generally furnishes ground cover in such places. A tamarack swamp in
-summer is cool and pleasant--provided there is not too much water on the
-ground--but in winter a more desolate picture can scarcely be imagined.
-The leafless trees appear to be dead, and covered with lifeless cones;
-but the first warm days bring it to life.
-
-The average height of tamarack trees is from forty to sixty feet,
-diameter twenty inches or less. Leaves are one-half or one and a half
-inches long; cones one-half or three-quarter inches, and bright chestnut
-brown at maturity. They fall when two years old. The winged seeds are
-very small. The tree is neither a frequent nor abundant seeder. The
-foliage is thin, and is not sufficient to shut much sunlight from the
-ground.
-
-The wood is heavy, hard, very strong, and is durable in contact with the
-soil. The growth is slow, annual rings narrow, summerwood occupies
-nearly half the ring, and is dark-colored, resinous, and conspicuous;
-resin passages few and obscure; medullary rays numerous and obscure;
-color of wood light brown, the sapwood nearly white.
-
-The uses of tamarack go back to prehistoric times. The Indians of Canada
-and northeastern United States drew supplies from four forest trees when
-they made their bark canoes. The bark for the shell came from paper
-birch, threads for sewing the strips of bark together were tamarack
-roots, resin for stopping leaks was a product of balsam fir, and the
-light framework of wood was northern white cedar.
-
-The roots which best suited the Indian's purpose came from trees which
-grew in soft, deep mud, where lakes and beaver ponds had silted up. Such
-roots are long, slender, and very tough and pliant, and may be gathered
-in large numbers, particularly where running streams have partly
-undermined standing trees.
-
-White men likewise made use of tamarack roots in boat building, but the
-roots were different from what the Indians used. "Instep" crooks were
-hewed for ship knees. These were large roots, the larger the better.
-Trees which produced them did not grow in deep mud, for there the roots
-did not develop crooks. The ship knee operator hunted for tamarack
-forests growing on a soft surface soil two or three feet deep, underlaid
-by stiff clay or rock which roots could not penetrate. In situations
-like that the roots go straight down until they reach the hard stratum,
-and then turn at right angles and grow in a horizontal direction. The
-turning point in the root develops the crook of which the ship knee is
-made.
-
-Tamarack is seldom of sufficient size for the largest ship knees. Such
-were formerly supplied by southern live oak; and in that case crooks
-formed by the union of trunk and large branches were as good as those
-produced by the union of trunk and large roots.
-
-Tamarack is still employed in the manufacture of boat knees, but not as
-much as formerly. Steel frames have largely taken the place of wood in
-the construction of ship skeletons. Boat builders use tamarack now for
-floors, keels, stringers, and knees.
-
-Tamarack has come into much use in recent years. Sawmills cut from it
-more than 125,000,000 feet of lumber a year. Fourteen states contribute,
-but most of the lumber is produced in Minnesota, Michigan, and
-Wisconsin. Railroads in the United States buy 5,000,000 or more
-tamarack ties a year, which reduced to board measure amount to over
-150,000,000 feet. Fence posts and telegraph poles come in large numbers
-from tamarack forests.
-
-The wood is stiff and strong, its stiffness being eighty-four per cent
-of that of long leaf pine, and its strength about eighty per cent.
-Unusual variations in both strength and stiffness are found. One stick
-of tamarack may rate twice as high as another.
-
-The wood-using factories of Michigan consume nearly 20,000,000 feet of
-this wood yearly. It is made into boxes, excelsior, pails, tanks, tubs,
-house finish, refrigerators, windmills, and wooden pipes for waterworks
-and for draining mines.
-
-There is little likelihood that the supply of tamarack will run short in
-the near future. While it is not in the first rank of the important
-trees in this country, it is useful, and it is fortunate that it
-promises to hold its ground against fires which do grave injury to
-northern forests. In the swamps where the most of it is found the ground
-litter is too damp to burn. The tree does not grow rapidly, but it
-usually occupies lands which cannot be profitably devoted to
-agriculture, and it will, therefore, be let alone until it reaches
-maturity.
-
-Tamarack is a familiar tree in parks, and it grows farther south than
-its natural range extends. It is not as desirable a park tree as
-hemlock, spruce, fir, the cedars, and some of the pines, because its
-foliage is thin in summer and wanting in winter. It is in a class with
-cypress. In the early spring, however, while its soft green needles are
-beginning to show themselves in clusters along the twigs, its delicate
-and unusual appearance attracts more attention than its companion trees
-which are always in full leaf and for that reason are somewhat
-monotonous.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN LARCH
-
-[Illustration: WESTERN LARCH]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN LARCH
-
-(_Larix Occidentalis_)
-
-
-This is a magnificent tree of the Northwest, and its range lies
-principally on the upper tributaries of the Columbia river, in Idaho,
-Montana, and British Columbia, but it occurs also among the Blue
-Mountains of Washington and Oregon. It is the largest member of the
-larch genus, either in the old world or the new. The finest trees are
-250 feet high with diameters of six or eight feet, but sizes half of
-that are nearer the average. The trunk is of splendid form. In early
-life it is limby, but later it prunes itself, and a long, tapering bole
-is developed with a very small crown of thin foliage. No other tree of
-its size, with the possible exception of old sequoias, has so little
-foliage in proportion to the trunk.
-
-The result is apparent in the rate of growth after the larch has passed
-its youth. Sometimes such a tree does not increase its trunk diameter as
-much in seventy-five years as a vigorous loblolly pine or willow oak
-will in one year. The trunk of a tree, as is well known, grows by means
-of food manufactured by the leaves and sent down to be transformed into
-wood. With so few leaves and a trunk so large, the slowness of growth is
-a natural consequence. Though the annual rings are usually quite narrow,
-the bands of summerwood are relatively broad. That accounts for the
-density of larchwood and its great weight. It is six per cent heavier
-than longleaf pine, and is not much inferior in strength and elasticity.
-The leaves are from one to one and three-quarter inches long, the cones
-from one to one and a half inches, and the seeds nearly one-quarter inch
-in length. They are equipped with wings of sufficient power to carry
-them a short distance from the parent tree.
-
-The bark on young larches is thin, but on large trunks, and near the
-ground, it may be five or six inches thick. When a notch is cut in the
-trunk it collects a resin of sweetish taste which the Indians use as an
-article of food.
-
-The western larch reaches its best development in northern Idaho and
-Montana on streams which flow into Flathead lake. The tree prefers moist
-bottom lands, but grows well in other situations, at altitudes of from
-2,000 to 7,000 feet. The figures given above on the wood's weight,
-strength, and stiffness show its value for manufacturing purposes. Its
-remoteness from markets has stood in the way of large use, but it has
-been tried for many purposes and with highly satisfactory results. In
-1910 sawmills in the four western states where it grows cut 255,186,000
-feet. Most of this is used as rough lumber, but some is made into
-furniture, finish, boxes, and boats. The wood has several names, though
-larch is the most common. It is otherwise known as tamarack and
-hackmatack, which names are oftener applied to the eastern tree; red
-American larch, western tamarack, and great western larch.
-
-Some of the annual cut of lumber credited to western larch does not
-belong to it. Lumbermen have confused names and mixed figures by
-applying this tree's name to noble fir, which is a different tree. If
-the fir lumber listed as larch were given its proper name, it would
-result in lowering the output of larch as shown in statistical figures.
-In spite of this, however, larch lumber fills an important place in the
-trade of the northern Rocky Mountain region.
-
-There is little doubt that it will fill a much more important place in
-the future, for a beginning has scarcely been made in marketing this
-timber. The available supply is large, but exact figures are not
-available. Some stands are dense and extensive, and the trees are of
-large size and fine form. It is not supposed, however, that there will
-be much after the present stand has been cut, because a second crop from
-trees of so slow growth will be far in the future. Sudworth says that
-larch trees eighteen or twenty inches in diameter are from 250 to 300
-years old, and that the ordinary age of these trees in the forests of
-the Northwest is from 300 to 500 years; while larger trees are 600 or
-700. Much remains to be learned concerning the ages of these trees in
-different situations and in different parts of its range. It is
-apparent, however, that when a period covering two or three centuries is
-required to produce a sawlog of only moderate size, timber owners will
-not look forward with much eagerness to a second growth forest of
-western larch.
-
-The value of the wood of western larch has been the subject of much
-controversy. In the tables compiled for the federal census of 1880,
-under direction of Charles S. Sargent, its strength and elasticity were
-shown to be remarkably high. The figures indicate that it is about
-thirty-nine per cent stronger than white oak and fifty-one per cent
-stiffer. This places it a little above longleaf pine in strength and
-nearly equal to it in stiffness or elasticity. Engineers have expressed
-doubts as to the correctness of Sargent's figures. They believe them too
-high. The samples tested by Sargent were six in number, four of them
-collected in Washington and two in Montana.
-
-The wood of western larch is heavier than longleaf pine, and
-approximately of the same weight as white oak. It is among the heaviest,
-if not actually the heaviest, of softwoods of the United States. Sargent
-thus described the physical properties of the wood: "Heavy, exceedingly
-hard and strong, rather coarse grained, compact, satiny, susceptible of
-a fine polish, very durable in contact with the soil; bands of small
-summer cells broad, occupying fully half the width of the annual growth,
-very resinous, dark-colored, conspicuous resin passages few, obscure;
-medullary rays few, thin; color, light bright red, the thin sapwood
-nearly white." The wood is described by Sudworth: "Clear, reddish brown,
-heavy, and fine grained; commercially valuable; very durable in an
-unprotected state, differing greatly in this respect from the wood of
-the eastern larch."
-
-The seasoning of western larch has given lumbermen much trouble. It
-checks badly and splinters rise from the surface of boards. It is
-generally admitted that this is the most serious obstacle in the way of
-securing wide utilization for the wood. The structure of the annual ring
-is reason for believing that there is slight adhesion between the
-springwood and that of the late season. Checks are very numerous
-parallel with the growth rings, and splinters part from the board along
-the same lines. Standing timber is frequently windshaken, and the cracks
-follow the rings.
-
-All of this is presumptive evidence that the principle defect of larch
-is a lack of adhesion between the early and the late wood. If that is
-correct, it is a fundamental defect in the growing tree, and is inherent
-in the wood. No artificial treatment can wholly remove it. It should not
-be considered impossible, however, to devise methods of seasoning which
-would not accentuate the weaknesses natural to the wood.
-
-The form of the larch's trunk is perfect, from the lumberman's
-viewpoint, and its size is all that could be desired. It is amply able
-to perpetuate its species, though it consumes a great deal of time in
-the process. Abundant crops of seeds are borne, but only once in several
-years. It rarely bears seeds as early as its twenty-fifth year, and
-generally not until it passes forty; but its fruitful period is long,
-extending over several centuries. The seeds retain their vitality
-moderately well, which is an important consideration in view of the
-tree's habit of opening and closing its cones alternately as the weather
-happens to be damp or dry. The dispersion of seeds extends over a
-considerable part of the season, and the changing winds scatter them in
-all directions. Many seeds fall on the snow in winter to be let down on
-the damp ground ready to germinate during the early spring. The best
-germination occurs on mineral soil, and this is often found in areas
-recently bared by fire. Lodgepole pine contends also for this ground;
-but the race between the two species is not swift after the process of
-scattering seeds has been completed; for both are of growth so
-exceedingly slow that a hundred years will scarcely tell which is
-gaining. In the long run, however, the larch outstrips the pine and
-becomes a larger tree. If both start at the same time, and there is not
-room for both, the pine will kill the larch by shading it. The latter's
-thin foliage renders it incapable of casting a shadow dense enough to
-hurt the pine. The best areas for larch are those so thoroughly burned
-as to preclude the immediate heavy reproduction of lodgepole pine.
-
-Much of the natural ranges of larch and lodgepole pine lie in the
-national forests owned by the government, and careful studies have been
-made in recent years to determine the requirements, and the actual and
-comparative values of the two species. It has been shown that larch is
-one of the most intolerant of the western forest trees. It cannot endure
-shade. Its own thin foliage, where it occurs in pure stands, is
-sufficient to shade off the lower limbs of boles, and produce tall,
-clean trunks; but if a larch happens to stand in the open, where light
-is abundant, it retains its branches almost to the ground. It is more
-intolerant, even, than western yellow pine, which so often grows in
-open, parklike stands.
-
-ALPINE LARCH (_Larix lyallii_) never grows naturally below an altitude
-of 4,000 feet, and near the southern border of its range it climbs to
-8,000, where it stands on the brink of precipices, faces of cliffs, and
-on windswept summits. It is too much exposed to storms, and has its
-roots in soil too sterile to develop symmetrical forms. It is found in
-Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. The finest trees are sometimes
-seventy-five feet high and three or four in diameter, but the average
-height ranges from forty to fifty, with diameters of twenty inches or
-less. Its leaves are one and a half inches or less in length; cones one
-and a half inches long, and bristling with hair; seeds one-eighth of an
-inch long with wings one-fourth inch; wood heavy, hard, and of a light,
-reddish brown color. It is seldom used except about mountain camps where
-it is sometimes burned for fuel or is employed in constructing corrals
-for sheep and cattle. It is impossible for lumbermen ever to make much
-use of it, because it is scarce and hard to get at.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED CEDAR
-
-[Illustration: RED CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-RED CEDAR
-
-(_Juniperus Virginiana_)
-
-
-This widely distributed tree is called red cedar in New Hampshire,
-Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey,
-Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
-Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri,
-Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and
-Ontario; cedar in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, South Carolina,
-Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, and Ohio; savin in Massachusetts, Rhode
-Island, New York, Pennsylvania and Minnesota; juniper in New York and
-Pennsylvania; juniper bush in Minnesota; cedre in Louisiana.
-
-The names as given above indicate the tree's commercial range. It
-appears as scattered growth and in doubtful forms outside of that range,
-particularly in the West where several cedars closely resemble the red
-cedar, yet differ sufficiently from it to give them places as separate
-species in the lists of some botanists. They are so listed by the United
-States Forest Service; and the following names are given: Western
-Juniper, Rocky Mountain Juniper, One Seed Juniper, Mountain Juniper,
-California Juniper, Utah Juniper, Drooping Juniper, Dwarf Juniper, and
-Alligator Juniper. These species are not of much importance from the
-lumberman's viewpoint, yet they are highly interesting trees, and in
-this book will be treated individually.
-
-The red cedar grows slowly, and thrives in almost any soil and situation
-except deep swamps. It is often classed as a poor-land species, yet it
-does not naturally seek poor land. That it is often found in such
-situations is because it has been crowded from better places by stronger
-trees, and has retreated to rocky ridges, dry slopes, and thin soils
-where competitors are unable to follow. The trees often stand wide apart
-or solitary, yet they can grow in thickets almost impenetrable, as they
-do in Texas and other southern states. It is an old-field tree in much
-of its range. Birds plant the seeds, particularly along fence rows. That
-is why long lines of cedars may often be seen extending across old
-fields or deserted plantations.
-
-The extreme size attained by this cedar is four feet in diameter, and
-one hundred in height, but that size was never common, and at present
-the half of it is above the average. That which reaches market is more
-often under than over eighteen inches in diameter. The reddish-brown and
-fibrous bark may be peeled in long strips. Stringiness of bark is
-characteristic of all the cedars, and typical of red cedar.
-
-The wood is medium light and is strong, considering that it is very
-brittle. Tests show it to be eighty per cent as strong as white oak. The
-grain is very fine, even, and homogeneous, except as interfered with
-by knots. The annual rings are narrow, the summerwood narrow and
-indistinct; medullary rays numerous but very obscure. The color
-is red, the thin sapwood nearly white. The heart and sap are
-sometimes intermingled, and this characteristic is prominent in the
-closely-related western species of red cedar. The wood is easily worked,
-gives little trouble because of warping and shrinking, and the heart is
-considered as durable as any other American wood. It has a delicate,
-agreeable fragrance, which is especially marked. This odor is
-disagreeable to insects, and for that reason chests and closets of cedar
-are highly appreciated as storage places for garments subject to the
-ravages of the moth and buffalo bug. An extract from the fruit and
-leaves is used in medicine, while oil of red cedar, distilled from the
-wood, is used in making perfume. Cedar has a sweet taste. It burns
-badly, scarcely being able to support a flame; it is exceedingly
-aromatic and noisy when burning and the embers glow long in still air.
-Some of the bungalow owners in Florida buy cedar fuel in preference to
-all others for burning in open fireplaces.
-
-Its representative uses are for posts, railway ties, pails, sills, cigar
-boxes, interior finish and cabinet making, but its most general use is
-in the manufacture of lead pencils, for which its fine, straight grain
-and soft texture are peculiarly adapted. The farther south cedar is
-found, the softer and clearer it is. In the North, in ornamental trees,
-it is very hard, slow-growing, and knotty. It shows but a small
-percentage of clear lumber. In eastern Tennessee there were considerable
-quantities of red cedar brake that were for years considered of little
-value. About the only way the wood was employed a few years ago was in
-fence rails and posts, fuel, and charcoal. Of late people in localities
-where cedar grows in any abundance have awakened to its value, and cedar
-fences are rapidly disappearing, owing to the high prices now paid for
-the wood, and the excellent demand. On no other southern wood has such
-depredation been practiced. Because of its lightness and the ease with
-which it can be worked, it has been used for purposes for which other
-and less valuable woods were well adapted. On account of its slow
-growth, its complete exhaustion has often been predicted, but a second
-growth has appeared which, though much inferior to the virgin timber,
-can be used in many ways to excellent advantage. Instead of the huge
-piles of cedar flooring, chest boards, and smooth railings of the old
-days, one now sees at points of distribution great piles of knotty,
-rough poles, ten to forty feet long, which years ago would have been
-discarded. Today they represent bridge piling, the better and smoother
-among them being used for telephone and telegraph poles.
-
-Middle Tennessee has produced more red cedar than any other part of the
-United States, but the bulk of production has been confined to a few
-counties, which produce a higher class and more aromatic variety of wood
-than that found elsewhere. A century ago these counties abounded in
-splendid forests of cedar. The early settlers built their cabins of
-cedar logs, sills, studding, and rafters; their smoke houses were built
-of them; their barns; even the roofs were shingled with cedar and the
-rooms and porches floored with the sweet-scented wood. Not many years
-ago trees three feet or more in diameter were often found, but the days
-are past when timber like that can be had anywhere.
-
-Although the most general use at the present time is for lead pencils,
-few people who sharpen one and smell the fragrant wood, stop to wonder
-where it came from. One would smile were it suggested to him that
-perhaps his pencil was formerly part of some Tennessee farmer's worm
-fence. The best timber obtained now is hewn into export logs and shipped
-to Europe, particularly Germany, where a great quantity is converted
-into pencils. The red wood is made into the higher grades and the sap or
-streaked wood is used for the cheaper varieties and for pen holders. The
-smaller and inferior logs are cut into slats, while odds and ends,
-cutoffs, etc., are collected and sold by the hundred pounds to pencil
-factories. There are many such factories in the United States now, as
-well as in Europe, and pencil men are scouring the cedar sections to buy
-all they can. The farmer who has a red cedar picket or worm fence can
-sell it to these companies at a round price. Pencil men are even going
-back over tracts from which the timber was cut twenty-five years ago,
-buying up the stumps. When the wood was plentiful lumbermen were not
-frugal, and usually cut down a tree about two feet above the ground,
-allowing the best part of it to be wasted.
-
-The German and Austrian pencil makers foresaw a shortage in American red
-cedar, and many years ago planted large areas to provide for the time of
-scarcity. The planted timber is now large enough for use, but the wood
-has been a disappointment. It does not possess the softness and
-brittleness which give so high value to the forest cedar of this
-country. As far as can be seen, when present pencil cedar has been
-exhausted, there will be little more produced of like grade. It grows so
-slowly that owners will not wait for trees to become old, but sell them
-while young for posts and poles.
-
-One of the earliest demands for red cedar was for woodenware made of
-staves, such as buckets, kegs, keelers, small tubs, and firkins.
-Material for the manufacture of such wares was among the exports to the
-West Indies before the Revolutionary war. The ware was no less popular
-in this country, and the home-made articles were in all neighborhoods in
-the red cedar's range. Scarcity of suitable wood limits the manufacture
-of such wares now, but they are still in use.
-
-Cedar was long one of the best woods for skiffs and other light boats,
-and it was occasionally employed in shipbuilding for the upper parts of
-vessels. A little of it is still used as trim and finish, particularly
-for canoes, motor boats, and yachts.
-
-The early clothes chest makers selected clear lumber, because it could
-be had and was considered to be better; but modern chest manufacturers
-who cannot procure clear stock, make a merit of necessity, and use
-boards filled with knots. The wood is finished with oils, but the
-natural colors remain, and the knots give the chest a rustic and
-pleasing appearance.
-
-    SOUTHERN RED JUNIPER (_Juniperus barbadensis_) so closely resembles
-    the red cedar with which it is associated that the two were formerly
-    considered the same species, and most people familiar with both
-    notice no difference. However, botanists clearly distinguish the
-    two. The southern red cedar's range is much smaller than the
-    other's. It grows from Georgia to the Indian river, Florida, in
-    swamps. It is found in the vicinity of the Apalachicola river,
-    forming dense thickets. Its average size is much under that of the
-    red cedar, but its wood is not dissimilar. It has been used for the
-    same purposes as far as it has been used at all. One of the largest
-    demands upon it has been for lead pencils. Those who bought and sold
-    it, generally supposed they were dealing in the common red cedar.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR
-
-[Illustration: NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR
-
-(_Thuja Occidentalis_)
-
-
-This tree is designated as northern white cedar because there is also a
-southern white cedar, (_Chamæcyparis thyoides_) and the boundaries of
-their ranges approach pretty closely. The name _occidentalis_, meaning
-western, applied to the northern white cedar is employed by botanists to
-distinguish it from a similar cedar in Asia, which is called
-_orientalis_, or eastern.
-
-The American species has several names, as is usual with trees which
-grow in different regions. It is called arborvitæ in Maine, Vermont,
-Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
-Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois,
-Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Ontario. White cedar is a name
-often used in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island,
-Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina,
-Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ontario. In Maine, Vermont, and New
-York it is called cedar. In New York, and where cultivated in England,
-American arborvitæ is the name applied to it. The Indians in New York
-knew it as feather-leaf. In Delaware the name is abridged to vitæ.
-
-The tree has been widely planted, and under the influence of cultivation
-it runs quickly into varieties, of which forty-five are listed by
-nurserymen. It is a northern species which follows the Appalachian
-mountains southward to North Carolina and Tennessee. It grows from New
-Brunswick to Manitoba, and is abundant in the Lake States.
-
-The bark of arborvitæ is light brown, tinged with red on the branchlets;
-it is thin, and cracks into ridges with stringy, rough edges; the
-branchlets are very smooth.
-
-In general appearance the tree is conical and compact, with short
-branches; it attains a height of from twenty-five to seventy feet, and a
-diameter of from one to three feet. It thrives best in low, swampy land,
-along the borders of streams.
-
-The wood of arborvitæ is soft, brittle, light and weak; it is very
-inflammable. The fact that it is durable, even in contact with the soil,
-permits its use for railway ties, telegraph poles, posts, fencing,
-shingles and boats. However, the trunk is so shaped that it is seldom
-used for lumber, but oftener for poles and posts, the lower section
-being flattened into ties. A cubic foot of the seasoned wood weighs
-approximately nineteen pounds. The heartwood is light brown, becoming
-darker with exposure; the sapwood is thin and nearly white, with fine
-grain.
-
-The northern white cedar varies greatly in size and shape, depending on
-the soil, climate, and situation. Though it is usually associated with
-swamps in the North, it adapts itself to quite different situations. It
-grows in narrow, rocky ravines, on stony ridges, and it clings to the
-faces of cliffs, or hangs on their summits as tenaciously as the western
-juniper of the Sierra Nevada mountains. However, little good timber is
-produced by this species on rocky soils. Trees in such situations are
-short, crooked, and limby.
-
-The wood of the northern white cedar possesses a peculiar toughness
-which is seen in its wearing qualities. A thin shaving, such as a
-carpenter's plane makes, may be folded, laid on an anvil, and struck
-repeatedly with a hammer, without breaking. It is claimed for it that it
-will stand a severer test of that kind than any other American wood.
-Toughness and wearing qualities combined make it an admirable wood for
-planking and decking for small boats. Its exceptionally light weight is
-an additional factor as a boat building material. The Indians knew how
-to work it into frames for bark canoes. Its lightness appealed to them;
-but the ease with which they could work it with their primitive tools
-was more important. It is a characteristic of the wood to part readily
-along the rings of annual growth. The Indian was able to split canoe
-ribs with a stone maul, by pounding a cedar billet until it parted along
-the growth rings and was reduced to very thin slats.
-
-The property of this cedar which appealed to the Indians is disliked by
-the sawmill man. It is hard to make thin lumber that will hang together.
-The tendency to part along the growth rings develops wind-shake while
-the tree is standing. About nine trees in ten are so defective from
-shake that little good lumber can be made from them. It is a common
-saying, which probably applies in certain localities only, that a
-thousand feet of white cedar must be sawed to get one hundred feet of
-good lumber.
-
-It is good material for small cooperage such as buckets, pails, and
-tubs, and has been long used for that purpose in the northern states.
-
-It was once laid in large quantities for paving blocks. Hundreds of
-miles of streets of northern cities were paved with round blocks sawed
-from trunks of trees from five to ten inches in diameter. They were not
-usually treated with chemicals to prevent decay, but they gave service
-ranging from six to twelve years. They are less used now than formerly.
-Southern yellow pine has largely taken the cedar's place as paving
-material. Much northern cedar has been used in the manufacture of bored
-pipe for municipal waterworks, shops, salt works, paper mills, and other
-factories.
-
-The early settlers of New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania made a
-rheumatism ointment by bruising the leaves and molding them with lard.
-This is probably not made now, but pharmacists distill an oil from twigs
-and wood, and make a tincture of the leaves which they use in the
-manufacture of pulmonary and other medicines.
-
-There is little likelihood that northern white cedar will ever cease to
-be a commercial wood in this country. It will become scarcer, but its
-manner of growth is the best guarantee that it will hold its place. It
-lives in swamps, and the land is not in demand for any other purpose.
-
-    ONE-SEED JUNIPER (_Juniperus monosperma_) is also called naked-seed
-    juniper. Its range lies in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and
-    Arizona. It attains its greatest development in the bottoms of
-    canyons in northern Arizona. It is a scrawny desert tree which lives
-    in adversity but holds its ground for centuries, if fire does not
-    cut its career short. Its growth is too scattered to attract
-    lumbermen, and the form of its trunk is uninviting. It may reach a
-    height of forty or fifty feet, and a diameter of three, but that is
-    above the average in the best of its range. The desert Indians make
-    the most of one-seed juniper. They weave its stringy bark into
-    sleeping mats, rough blankets, and saddle girts. They make cords and
-    ropes of it for use where great strength is not required, such as
-    leashes for leading dogs, strands with which to tie bundles on the
-    backs of their squaws, and cords for fastening their wigwam poles
-    together. They likewise weave the bark into pokes and pouches for
-    storing and carrying their dried meat and mesquite beans. The
-    juniper berries are an article of diet and commerce with the
-    Indians, who mix them with divers ingredients, pulp them in stone
-    mortars, and bake them in cakes which become the greatest delicacy
-    on their bill of fare. White men, when driven to it by starvation,
-    have sustained life by making food of the berries. A small quantity
-    of one-seed juniper reaches woodworkers in Texas. The lumber is
-    short and rough. The numerous knots are generally much darker than
-    the body of the wood. That is not necessarily a defect, for in
-    making clothes chests, the striking contrast in color between the
-    knots, and the other wood gives the article a peculiar and
-    attractive appearance. The trunks are sharply buttressed and deeply
-    creased. Sometimes the folds of bark within the creases almost reach
-    the center of the tree. The sapwood is thin, the heartwood irregular
-    in color. Some is darker than the heartwood of southern red cedar,
-    other is clouded and mottled, pale yellow, cream-colored, the shade
-    of slate, or streaked with various tints. The wood can be
-    economically worked only as small pieces. It takes a soft and
-    pleasing finish. It is a lathe wood and shows to best advantage as
-    balusters, ornaments, grill spindles and small posts, Indian clubs,
-    dumb-bells, balls, and lodge gavels. It has been made into small
-    game boards with fine effect, and it is an excellent material for
-    small picture frames. Furniture makers put it to use in several
-    ways, and it has been recommended for small musical instruments
-    where the variegated colors can be displayed to excellent advantage.
-    At the best it can never be more than a minor species, because it is
-    difficult of access in the remote deserts, and it is not abundant.
-
-    MOUNTAIN JUNIPER (_Juniperus sabinoides_) is a Texas tree, occupying
-    a range southward and westward of the Colorado river. It has several
-    local names, rock cedar being a favorite. This name is due to the
-    tree's habit of growing on rocky ridges and among ledges where soil
-    is scarce. It is called juniper cedar, and juniper. Under the most
-    favorable circumstances the tree may attain a height of 100 feet and
-    a diameter of two, but it nearly always grows where conditions are
-    adverse, and its size and form change to conform to circumstances.
-    It is often small and ragged. Its lead-colored bark is apt to
-    attract attention on account of its woeful appearance, hanging in
-    strings and tatters which persistently cling to the trunk in spite
-    of whipping winds. When the tree is cut for fuel, or for any other
-    purpose, the ragged bark is occasionally pulled off and is tied in
-    bales or bundles to be sold for kindling. When the mountain juniper
-    is taken from its native wilds and planted where environments are
-    different, it sometimes assumes fantastic forms. It has been planted
-    for ornament on the low, flat coast in the vicinity of the Gulf of
-    Mexico, and though it lives and grows, it often takes on a peculiar
-    appearance. The trunks resemble twisted and interwoven bundles of
-    lead-colored vines, buttressed, fluted, and gnarled. The branches
-    lose their upright position, and hang in careless abandon, with
-    drooping festoons. In winter the wind whips most of the foliage from
-    them. The leaves become brittle and may be easily brushed from the
-    twigs by a stroke of the hand. Some of the planted trees have trunks
-    so deeply creased as to be divided in two separate stems. This very
-    nearly happens with some of the wild trees among the western
-    mountains. The sapwood of mountain juniper is very thin. The average
-    tree cannot be profitably cut into lumber of the usual dimensions
-    because of the odd-shaped and irregular trunk. It lends itself more
-    economically to the manufacture of articles made up of small pieces.
-    Some of the wood is extremely beautiful, having the color and figure
-    of French walnut; but there is great difference in the figure and
-    color, and the wood of one tree is not a sure guide to what another
-    may be. Boards a foot wide, or even less, may show several figures
-    and colors. Some pieces suggest variegated marble; others are like
-    plain red cedar; some are light red in color, others have a tinge of
-    blue. It varies greatly in hardness, even in the same tree. Part of
-    it may be soft and brittle enough for lead pencils; another part may
-    be hard and tough. Clothes chests have been made of it, of most
-    peculiar appearance--resembling crazy quilts of subdued colors.
-    Sometimes the heartwood and the sapwood are inextricably mixed, both
-    being found in all parts of the trunk from the heart out. On the
-    whole, the tree can never have much importance as a source of
-    lumber, but it is a most interesting member of the cedar group.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SOUTHERN WHITE CEDAR
-
-[Illustration: SOUTHERN WHITE CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-SOUTHERN WHITE CEDAR
-
-(_Chamæcyparis Thyoides_)
-
-
-This tree is called southern white cedar to distinguish it from northern
-white cedar or arborvitæ. When there is little likelihood of confusion,
-the name white cedar is applied locally in different parts of its range
-from Massachusetts to Florida. It is a persistent swamp tree and on that
-account has been called swamp cedar; but that name alone would not
-distinguish it from the northern white cedar, for both grow in swamps;
-but it does separate it from red cedar which keeps away from swamps. The
-ranges of the two are side by side from New England to Florida. Post
-cedar is a common name for it in Delaware and New Jersey, because of the
-important place it has long filled as fence material; but again, the
-name does not set it apart from red cedar or northern white cedar, for
-both are used for posts. The only name thus far applied, which clearly
-distinguishes it from associated cedars, is southern white cedar. Its
-range extends northward to Maine, but the tree's chief commercial
-importance has been in New Jersey and southward to North Carolina, very
-near the coast. Somehow, it seems to skip Georgia where no one has
-reported it for many years, though there is historical evidence that it
-once grew in that state. It grows as far west as Mississippi, but is
-scarce.
-
-The small leaves remain green two years and then turn brown but adhere
-to the branches several years longer. The fruit is about one-fourth inch
-in diameter, and the small seeds are equipped with wings.
-
-The wood is among the lightest in this country. It is only moderately
-strong and stiff. The tree usually grows slowly. Fifty years may be
-required to produce a fence post, but under favorable conditions results
-somewhat better than that may be expected. The summerwood of the yearly
-ring is narrow, dark in color, and conspicuous, making the counting of
-the rings an easy matter. The medullary rays are numerous but thin. When
-the sap is cut tangentially in very thin layers it is white and
-semi-transparent, presenting somewhat the appearance of oiled paper. The
-heartwood is light brown, tinged with red, growing darker with exposure.
-The wood is easily worked, and is very durable in contact with the soil.
-Fence posts of this wood have been reported to stand fifty years, and
-shingles are said to last longer. Trees reach a height of eighty feet
-and diameter of four; but such are of the largest size. Great numbers
-are cut for poles and posts which are little more than a foot in
-diameter. Few forest trees grow in denser stands than this. It often
-takes possession of swamps, crowds out all other trees, and develops
-thickets so dense as to be almost impenetrable. Southern white cedar is
-cut in ten or twelve states, but the annual supply is not known, because
-mills generally report all cedars as one, and the regions which produce
-this, produce one or more other species of cedar also. It has held its
-place nearly three hundred years, and much interesting history is
-connected with it. A considerable part of the Revolutionary war was
-fought with powder made from white cedar charcoal burned in New Jersey
-and Delaware. However, that was by no means the earliest place filled by
-this wood.
-
-Two hundred years ago in North Carolina John Lawson wrote of its use for
-"yards, topmasts, booms, bowsprits for boats, shingles, and poles." It
-was cut for practically the same purposes in New Jersey at an earlier
-period, and 160 years ago Gottlieb Mittelberger, when he visited
-Philadelphia, declared that white cedar was being cut at a rate which
-would soon exhaust the supply. But that prophecy, like similar
-predictions that oak and red cedar were about gone, proved not well
-founded. Seventy years after the imminent exhaustion of this wood was
-foretold, William Cobbett, an English traveler, declared with evident
-exaggeration that "all good houses in the United States" were roofed
-with white cedar shingles.
-
-After boat building, the first general use of the southern white cedar
-was for fences and farm buildings, and doubtless twenty times as much
-went to the farms as to the boat yards. In all regions where the wood
-was convenient, little other was employed as fencing material, and many
-of the earliest houses in New Jersey and some in Pennsylvania were
-constructed almost wholly of this wood. Small trees which would split
-two, three, and four rails to the cut, were mauled by thousands to
-enclose the farms. The bark soon dropped off, or was removed, and the
-light rails quickly air-dried, and decay made little impression on them
-for many years. The larger trunks were rived for shingles or were sawed
-into lumber. About 1750 the use of round cedar logs for houses and barns
-began to give way to sawed lumber. It was an ideal milling timber, for
-the logs were symmetrical, clear, and easily handled. North Carolina
-sawmills were at work on this timber many years before the Revolution.
-It was acceptable material for doors, window frames, rafters, and
-floors, but especially for shingles which were split with frow and
-mallet, and were from twenty-four to twenty-seven inches long. They were
-known in market as juniper shingles and sold at four and five dollars a
-thousand. About 1750 builders in Philadelphia were criticized because
-they constructed houses with no provision for other than white cedar
-roofs; the walls being too weak for heavier material which would have to
-be substituted when cedar could be no longer procured. Philadelphia was
-not alone in its preference for cedar roofs. Large shipments of shingles
-were going from New Jersey to New York, and even to the West Indies
-earlier than 1750.
-
-Southern white cedar is said to have been the first American wood used
-for organ pipes. The resonance of cedar shingles under a pattering rain
-suggested this use to Mittelberger when he visited America, and he tried
-the wood with such success that he pronounced it the best that he knew
-of for organ pipes.
-
-Coopers were among the early users of white cedar. The "cedar coopers of
-Philadelphia" were famous in their day. They used this wood and also red
-cedar (_Juniperus virginiana_), and their wares occupied an important
-place in domestic and some foreign markets. Small vessels prevailed,
-such as pails, churns, firkins, tubs, keelers, piggins, noggins, and
-kegs. The ware was handsome, strong, durable, and light in weight. Oil
-merchants, particularly those who dealt in whale oil which was once an
-important commodity, bought tanks of southern white cedar. It is a dense
-wood and seepage is small.
-
-A peculiar superstition once prevailed, and has not wholly disappeared
-at this day, that white cedar possessed powerful healing properties. It
-was thought that water was purified by standing in a cedar bucket, and
-even that a liquid was improved by simply running through a spigot of
-this wood. Some eastern towns at an early period laid cedar water mains,
-partly because the wood was known to be durable, and partly because it
-was supposed to exercise some favorable influence upon the water flowing
-through the pipes. It was even believed that standing trees purified the
-swamps in which they grew. Vessels putting to sea from Chesapeake bay,
-sometimes made special effort to fill their water casks with water from
-the Dismal swamp, where cedars grew abundantly in the stagnant lagoons.
-
-About 100 years ago it was found that whole forests of cedar had been
-submerged in New Jersey during prehistoric times, and that deep in
-swamps the trunks of trees were buried out of sight. No one knows how
-long the prostrate trees had lain beneath the accumulation of peat and
-mud, but the wood was sound. Mining the cedar became an important
-industry in some of the large swamps, and it has not ended yet. The wood
-is sound enough for shingles and lumber, though it has been buried for
-centuries, as is proved by the age of the forests which grew over the
-submerged logs. Sometimes a log which has lain under water hundreds of
-years, rises to the surface by its own buoyancy when pressure from above
-is removed. This is remarkable and shows how long a time this cedar
-resists complete waterlogging. The wood of green cedar has a strong
-odor, and that characteristic remains with the submerged trunks.
-Experienced men who have been long engaged in mining the timber, are
-able to tell by the odor of a chip brought to the surface from a deeply
-submerged log whether the wood is sufficiently well preserved to be
-worth recovering and manufacturing. Trunks six feet in diameter have
-been brought to the surface. Few if any living white cedars of that size
-exist now.
-
-Many of the early uses of southern white cedar have continued till the
-present time, but in much smaller quantities. Fence rails are no longer
-made of it; shingles and cooperage have declined. On the other hand, it
-now has some uses which were unknown in early times, such as telephone
-and telegraph poles, crossties, and piling for railroad bridges and
-culverts.
-
-The supply of southern white cedar is not large, and it is being cut
-faster than it is growing. The deep swamps where it grows protect white
-cedar forests from fire, and for that reason it is more fortunate than
-many other species. Not even cypress can successfully compete with it
-for possession of water soaked morasses. It does not promise great
-things for the future, for it will never be extensively planted. Its
-range has been pretty definitely fixed by nature to deep swamps near the
-Atlantic coast. Within those limits it will be of some importance for a
-long time. Where it finds its most congenial surroundings, little else
-that is profitable to man will grow. This will save it from utter
-extermination, because much of the land which it occupies will never be
-wanted for anything else.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-INCENSE CEDAR
-
-[Illustration: INCENSE CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-INCENSE CEDAR
-
-(_Libocedrus Decurrens_)
-
-
-In California and Oregon this tree is known as white cedar, cedar, and
-incense cedar; in Nevada and California it is called post cedar and
-juniper, and in other localities it is red cedar and California post
-cedar. It is a species of such strong characteristics that it is not
-likely to be confused with any other. Though different names may be
-applied to it, the identity of the tree is always clear.
-
-Its range extends north and south nearly 1,000 miles, from Oregon to
-Lower California. It is a mountain species, and it faces the Pacific
-ocean in most of its range. In the North it occupies the western slope
-of the Cascade mountains in southern Oregon and northern California; and
-it grows on the western slope of the Sierras for five hundred miles, at
-altitudes of from 4,000 to 8,000 feet, where it is mixed with sugar
-pine, western yellow pine, white fir, and sequoias.
-
-It is a fine, shapely tree, except that the butt is much enlarged. It
-has the characteristic form of a deep swamp tree, but it has nothing to
-do with swamps. Its best development is on the Sierra Nevada mountains,
-where swamps are few, and the incense cedar avoids them. It occupies dry
-ridges and slopes, but not sterile ones. It must have as good soil as
-the sugar pine demands. Its height when mature ranges from seventy-five
-to 125 feet, diameter four feet from the ground, from three to six feet,
-but some trees are larger. It is not a rapid grower, but it maintains
-its vigor a long time. As an average, it increases its diameter an inch
-in from seven to ten years.
-
-The wood is dense. It contains no pores large enough to be seen with an
-ordinary reading glass. The medullary rays are so small as to be
-generally invisible to the naked eye, but when magnified they are shown
-to be thin and numerous. The summerwood forms about one-fourth of the
-annual ring. The wood is nearly as light as white pine, is moderately
-strong, is brittle, straight grained, the heartwood is reddish, the
-thick sapwood nearly white. It is an easy wood to work, and in contact
-with the soil it is very durable.
-
-The incense cedar is the only representative of its genus in the United
-States. It has many relatives in the pine family, but no near ones. Its
-kin are natives of Formosa, China, New Zealand, New Guinea, and
-Patagonia.
-
-The name incense cedar refers to the odor of the wood rather than of the
-leaves. Those who work with freshly cut wood are liable to attacks of
-headache, due to the odor; but some men are not affected by it.
-
-The forest grown tree is of beautiful proportions. Unless much crowded
-for room, it is a tall, graceful cone, the branches drooping slightly,
-and forming thick masses. In the Sierra Nevada mountains, within the
-range of this cedar, the winter snows are very heavy. It is not unusual
-for two or three feet of very wet snow to fall in a single day. The
-incense cedar's drooping branches shed the snow like a tent roof, and a
-limb broken or seriously deformed by weight of snow is seldom seen. Deer
-and other wild animals, when surprised by a heavy fall of snow, seek the
-shelter of an incense cedar, if one can be found, and there lie in
-security until the storm passes.
-
-It is a tree which does fairly well in cultivation, and several
-varieties have been developed. It lives through the cold of a New
-England winter. Its cones are about three-fourths inch in length, and
-ripen in the autumn.
-
-Incense cedar has filled an important place in the development of the
-great central valley of California, where it has supplied more fence
-posts than any other tree. Posts of redwood have been its chief
-competitor, but generally the region has been divided, and each tree has
-supplied its part. The redwood's field has been the coast, the cedar's
-the inland valley within reach of the Sierras. It has been nothing
-unusual for ranchmen to haul cedar posts on wagons forty or fifty miles.
-
-The manufacture of posts from incense cedar has entailed an enormous
-waste of timber. The thick sapwood is not wanted, and in the process of
-converting a trunk into posts, the woodsman first splits off the sap and
-throws it away. In trunks of small and medium size, the sapwood may
-amount to more than the heartwood, and is a total loss.
-
-The tree's bark is thick and stringy, and it is generally wasted; but in
-some instances it is used as a surface dressing for mountain roads. It
-wears to pieces and becomes a pulpy mass, and it protects the surface of
-the road from excessive wear, and from washing in time of heavy rain.
-
-Approximately one-half of the incense cedar trees, as they stand in the
-woods, are defective. A fungus (_Dædalia vorax_) attacks them in the
-heartwood and excavates pits throughout the length of the trunks. The
-galleries resemble the work of ants, and as ants often take possession
-of them and probably enlarge them, it is quite generally believed that
-the pits are due to ants. The excavations are frequently filled with
-dry, brown dust, sometimes packed very hard and tight. The cedar thus
-affected resembles "pecky cypress," and it is believed that the same
-species of fungus, or a closely related species, is responsible for the
-injury to both cypress in the South and incense cedar on the Pacific
-coast. It is not generally regarded by users of cedar posts that the
-honey-combed condition of the wood lessens the service which the post
-will give, unless by weakening it and causing it to break, or by
-rendering it less able to hold the staples of wire fences, or nails of
-plank and picket fences.
-
-Post makers often prefer fire-killed timber. If a tree is found with the
-sapwood consumed, as is not unusual, it is nearly always free from
-fungous attack. The reason it stands through the fire which burns the
-sapwood off, is that the heart is sound--if it were not sound, the whole
-tree would be consumed.
-
-The wood of the incense cedar is serviceable for many purposes. The
-rejection of the sapwood by so many users is the most discouraging
-feature. The heart, when free from fungus, is a fine, attractive
-material that does not suffer in comparison with the other cedars,
-though it may not equal some of them for particular purposes. Tests show
-it fit for lead pencils, and recent purchases of large quantities have
-been made by pencil makers. Clothes chests and wardrobes are
-manufactured from this wood on the assumption that the odor will keep
-moths out of furs and other clothing stored within. It has been used for
-cigar boxes, but has not in all instances proven satisfactory. The odor
-of the wood is objected to by some smokers. Another objection and a
-somewhat peculiar one, has been filed against incense cedar as a cigar
-box material. It is claimed that the boxes are attacked voraciously by
-rats which gnaw the wood, to which they are doubtless attracted by the
-odor.
-
-Sawmills turn out incense cedar lumber which is worked into frames for
-doors and windows, and doors are made of it, and also interior finish.
-Shipments of inch boards are sold in New York and Boston, and exports go
-to London, Paris, and Berlin.
-
-The long period during which incense cedar has been used and wasted, has
-reduced the supply in most regions, but there is yet much in the forest.
-It is never lumbered separately, but only in connection with pine and
-fir; but post makers have always gone about picking trees of this
-species and passing by the associated species.
-
-ALLIGATOR JUNIPER (_Juniperus pachyphl[oe]a_) is so named from its bark
-which is patterned like the skin of an alligator. It is called
-oak-barked cedar in Arizona, mountain cedar in Texas, and
-checkered-barked juniper in other places. Its range lies in southwestern
-Texas, about Eagle pass and Limpia mountains, and westward on the desert
-ranges of New Mexico and Arizona, south of the Colorado plateau, and
-among the mountains of northern Arizona. Its range extends southward
-into Mexico. It is one of the largest of the junipers, but only when
-circumstances are wholly favorable. It is then sixty feet high, and four
-or five feet in diameter; but it is generally small and of poor form for
-lumber, because of its habit of separating into forks near the ground.
-It does best at elevations of from 4,000 to 6,000 feet in bottoms of
-canyons and ravines. The grayish green color of the foliage is due to
-the conspicuous white glands which dot the center of each leaf. The
-berries are small and blue, of sweetish taste which does not
-particularly appeal to the palate of civilized man, but the Indians of
-the region, whose normal state is one of semi-starvation, eat them with
-relish. The line separating heartwood from sap in alligator juniper is
-frequently irregular and vague, and like some of its kindred junipers of
-the West, patches of sap are sometimes buried deep in the heartwood,
-while streaks of heartwood occur in the sap. This heartwood is usually
-of a dirty color, suggesting red rocks and soil of the desert where it
-grows. Small articles which can be made of wood selected for its color
-are attractive. They may be highly polished, and the surface takes a
-satiny finish; but the wood does not show very well in panel or body
-work where wide pieces are used. The best utilization of alligator
-juniper appears to lie in small articles. It is fine for the lathe, and
-goblets, napkin rings, match safes, and handkerchief boxes are
-manufactured from the wood in Texas. Its rough uses are as fence posts
-and telephone poles. It is durable in contact with the soil.
-
-CALIFORNIA JUNIPER (_Juniperus californica_) is called white cedar,
-juniper, sweet-fruited juniper, and sweet-berried cedar. Its range is in
-California south of Sacramento, among the ranges of the coast mountains,
-and the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Its height runs from twenty to
-forty feet, diameter one to two. The leaves fall in the second or third
-year. This tree is of poor form and size for lumber. Trunks frequently
-divide into branches near the ground. The wood resembles that of other
-western junipers, and usually the fine color which distinguishes the red
-cedar of the East is wanting, and in its stead is a dull brown, tinged
-with red. The wood is soft and durable, and is strongly odorous. The
-sapwood is thin and is nearly white. Fuel and fence posts are the most
-important uses of the California juniper. Indians eat the berries raw or
-dry them and pound them to flour.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN RED CEDAR
-
-[Illustration: WESTERN RED CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN RED CEDAR
-
-(_Thuja Plicata_)
-
-
-In the eastern markets the lumber from this tree is usually called
-western cedar without further description, but that name does not always
-sufficiently identify it. There are other western cedars, notably
-incense and yellow; but they have not generally appeared in eastern
-markets. Western red cedar is the name given it when the purpose is to
-separate it from other western cedars. It is the only red cedar in the
-far West, except the scarce junipers which are totally unknown as its
-competitors in lumber centers. Gigantic cedar is a name which takes size
-into account. It is the largest of American cedars. Trunks fifteen feet
-in diameter and 200 feet high are sometimes seen, but the usual size is
-100 high, from two to four in diameter. Canoe cedar is a name bestowed
-upon this western tree for the same reason that canoe wood is one of the
-yellow poplar's names in the East. It is one of the best woods for
-dugout canoes. Botanists have called the tree giant arborvitæ, but the
-name never got beyond books. When the people of Washington and Oregon
-speak of cedar without a qualifying term, they mean this species. It is
-widely known as shingle wood or shingle cedar, because more shingles are
-made of it than of all other kinds of timber in the United States
-combined.
-
-The western red cedar's range covers 300,000 square miles, not counting
-regions of small or scattered growth. For a timber tree, that range is
-large, but not nearly as large as some others. It exceeds one-hundred
-fold the commercial range of redwood, and probably a thousand fold that
-of Port Orford cedar, but its range is not one-third that of the eastern
-red cedar, though in total quantity of available lumber it surpasses the
-eastern tree a hundred fold. Its range begins in Alaska on the north,
-and follows the coast to northern California, and extends eastward into
-Idaho. The best development occurs in the regions of warm, moist Pacific
-winds, but not in the immediate fog belts. The largest quantity of this
-wood, and probably the largest trees also, are in Washington. Abundant
-rainfall is essential to western red cedar's development. It would be
-difficult to approximate the amount of the remaining stand. This cedar
-does not form pure forests, and estimates of so many feet per acre or
-square mile cannot be based on fairly exact information as may be done
-with redwood, and some of the southern pines. Though the drain upon the
-cedar forests is heavy, it is generally believed there is enough of this
-species to meet demands for a long period of years.
-
-Nature made ample provision for the spread and perpetuation of this
-tree. The seeds are fairly abundant, are light, have good wing power,
-and are great travelers in search of suitable places to germinate and
-take root. The tree's greatest enemy is fire. The cedar's bark is thin,
-even when trunks are mature, and a moderate blaze often proves fatal to
-large trees; but small ones, with all their branches close to the
-ground, have no chance when the fire burns the litter among them. Some
-tree seeds germinate readily on soil bared by fire--such as lodgepole
-pine, wild red cherry, and paper birch--but the western red cedar's do
-not, if the humus is sufficiently burned to lessen the soil's capacity
-to retain moisture. For that reason, this cedar seldom follows fire, and
-the result is that it constantly loses ground. Under normal conditions,
-it is not exacting in its requirements; but anything that disturbs
-natural conditions is more likely to harm than help this cedar. In that
-respect it is like beech and hemlock, which suffer when forest
-conditions are disturbed.
-
-Trunks are large but not shapely. They are generally fluted, and greatly
-swelled at the base. These deformities develop rather late in the tree's
-life; at least, they are not prominent in young timber. Western cedar
-poles of large size are beautiful in outline; but when maturity
-approaches, the trunk grows faster near the ground than some distance
-above; the annual rings are wider near the base than twenty feet above,
-resulting in great enlargement near the ground. At the same time ribs
-and creases slowly develop, and by the time the tree is old, it is as
-ungainly as one of the giant sequoias. Its appearance is hurt by
-characteristics other than the swelled base and the buttresses. While
-the tree is small, the limbs ascend, and maintain a graceful upright
-position. Toward middle life they begin to droop, and the limbs of old
-trees hang down the trunks--the reverse of their attitude in early life.
-
-The western red cedar lives to an old age, from 600 to 1,000 years. The
-oldest are liable to be hollow near the ground. The tree is remarkable
-for what happens after it falls. Often the trunk crashes down in a bed
-of moss, which in a few years buries it from sight. The moss holds so
-much water that the buried log is constantly too wet for fungous attack.
-Consequently decay does not take place. Fallen trees have lain for
-hundreds of years--as much as 800 having been claimed in one
-instance--and at the end of that time they are sound enough for
-shingles. The position of living trees growing upon buried logs
-furnishes the key to the length of time since the trunks fell. The long
-period during which the moss-buried wood has remained sound has led to
-the claim that western red cedar is the most enduring wood in America.
-Such is not necessarily the case. A good many others would probably last
-as long if protected in the same way.
-
-Western red cedar is strong and stiff but falls from twenty to thirty
-per cent below white oak in these factors. It is light, and the texture
-of the wood is rather coarse. The springwood and summerwood are
-distinct, the latter constituting one-half or less of the annual ring.
-The medullary rays are numerous and obscure. The wood's color is dull
-brown, tinged with red. The thin sapwood is nearly white.
-
-The ease with which western red cedar may be worked led the Indians to
-use it in their most ambitious woodcraft. The gigantic totem poles which
-have excited the curiosity and admiration of travelers near the coast in
-Alaska and southward have nearly all been of this wood. Some of them are
-the largest single pieces of wood carving in the world. Trunks three or
-four feet in diameter and forty or fifty feet long have been hewed and
-whittled in weird, uncouth, and fantastic forms, decorated with eagle
-heads, bear mouths, and with various creatures of the forest or sea, or
-from the realms of imagination. Before the northern Pacific coast
-Indians procured tools from white men they executed their carving by
-means of bone, stone, shell, and wooden tools, assisted by fire.
-
-The making of canoes was in some ways a work more laborious for the
-Indians than the manufacture of totem poles. Their canoes were dugouts
-of all sizes, from the small trough which carried one or two persons, to
-the enormous canoe which carried fifty warriors with all their
-equipment. Such a canoe, now in the National Museum at Washington, D.
-C., is fifty-nine feet long, seven feet, three inches deep at the bow,
-five feet three inches at the stern, and three feet seven inches in the
-middle, and eight feet wide. It was made on Vancouver island, and is
-capable of carrying 100 persons. The capacity of the canoe is
-thirty-five tons. Civilized man has produced no vessel with lines more
-perfect than are seen in some of these canoes made by savages; but all
-the canoes are not alike: some are crude and clumsy. It is claimed that
-large cedar canoes of Indian manufacture were early carried from the
-Pacific coast by fur traders, and New York and Boston shipbuilders took
-them as models in constructing the celebrated clipper ships which
-formerly sailed between New York and San Francisco.
-
-The Indians formerly made much use of western red cedar bark which they
-twisted into ropes and cords, braided for mats, wove for cloth, used in
-making baskets, roofing wigwams, constructing fish nets and bird snares,
-ladders for climbing cliffs, and they even pulped the inner bark by
-pounding it in mortars, and mixed it with their food.
-
-White men have put western red cedar to many uses, as shingles, lumber,
-cooperage, poles, posts, piles, car siding and roofing, boat building
-from skiffs to ships, and general furniture and interior finish.
-
-WESTERN JUNIPER (_Juniperus occidentalis_) is a high mountain tree with
-all the characteristics belonging to that class of timber. The trunks
-are short and strong, the limbs wide-spreading, the wood of slow growth,
-and dense. The tree attains a diameter of ten inches in about 130 years.
-Trunks ten feet in diameter have been reported, but trees that large
-would be hard to find now. John Muir said that the western juniper lives
-2,000 years, and that the tree is never uprooted by wind. The trunk is
-usually short, six or eight feet being a fair average, and very knotty.
-However, when a block of clear wood is found, it is high class, the
-heaviest of the cedars, straight grain, soft, compact, brittle. The
-summerwood is so narrow that it resembles a fine, black line. The
-medullary rays are numerous and very obscure. The wood is slightly
-aromatic, splits easily, works nicely, and in color is brown, tinged
-with red. In appearance, the sapwood suggests spruce. The average height
-of the trees is from twenty-five to forty-five feet, diameter two to
-four feet. The range of this tree is in Idaho, eastern Oregon, and
-through the Cascades and Sierras to southern California. It seldom
-occurs below an altitude of 6,000 feet, and ascends to 10,000 or more.
-On the highest summits it is deformed and stunted. Its fruit is eaten by
-Indians, and it furnishes fuel for mountain camps and ranches, timber
-for mines, and sometimes a little lumber. The crooked limbs and trunks
-are made into corral fences where better material cannot be had. The
-wood has been found suitable for lead pencils, but that of proper
-quality is too scarce to attract manufacturers. Other names for this
-tree are juniper cedar, yellow cedar, western cedar, western red cedar,
-and western juniper. Some of these names are applied to other species of
-the same region.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PORT ORFORD CEDAR
-
-[Illustration: PORT ORFORD CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-PORT ORFORD CEDAR
-
-(_Chamæcyparis Lawsoniana_)
-
-
-Port Orford cedar of the northwestern coast is an interesting member of
-the cedar group with a very limited range. Specimens are found
-throughout an area of about 10,000 square miles, but the district
-moderately heavily timbered does not exceed 300 or 400 miles in area. It
-lies near Coos bay in southwestern Oregon. The tree is found as far
-south in California as the mouth of Klamath river, and it was once
-reported on Mt. Shasta, but it is very scarce there if it exists at all.
-In the best of its range Port Orford cedar runs 20,000 feet to the acre,
-and a single acre has yielded 100,000 feet. Trees run from 135 to 175
-feet in height and three to seven in diameter. The largest on record
-were about 200 feet high and twelve in diameter. Few trees of any
-species have smaller leaves. They often are only one-sixteenth of an
-inch in length. They die the third year and change to a bright brown.
-The cones are about one-third of an inch in diameter. Two or four seeds
-lie under each fertile cone scale, and ripen in September and October.
-The seeds are one-eighth inch in length, and are winged for flight. The
-bark of the tree is much thicker than of most cedars, being ten inches
-near the base of large trees. This ought to protect the trunks against
-fire but it falls short of expectations. About sixty years ago much of
-the finest timber was killed by a great fire which swept the region.
-Some of the dead trunks stood forty years without exhibiting much
-evidence of decay, and those that fell remained sound many years.
-
-The whole history of this interesting tree, from its first announced
-discovery by white men until the present time, is embraced in the memory
-of living men. It had not been heard of prior to 1855. Though fire and
-storm have destroyed large quantities, it has been estimated that
-4,000,000,000 feet of merchantable timber remain, an average of 15,000
-feet per acre for an area of 400 square miles. The wood is moderately
-light, is nearly as strong as white oak, and falls only sixteen per cent
-below it in stiffness. The annual rings are generally narrow, but
-distinct. The summerwood is narrow, but dark in color in the heartwood.
-The medullary rays are numerous and obscure. The wood abounds in odorous
-resin. The odor persists long after the wood has ceased to be fresh.
-Workmen in mills where this cedar is cut, and on board of vessels
-freighted with it, are sometimes seriously affected by the odor. It is
-reputed to repel insects, and is made into clothes chests, wardrobes,
-and shelves, with the expectation that moths will be kept at a distance.
-Several other cedars bear similar reputations.
-
-One of the first uses to which the people of the Pacific coast put Port
-Orford cedar was boat building. The industry was important at Coos bay
-at an early day, and vessels constructed there sailed the seas thirty or
-forty years. Trunks of this cedar turn out a high percentage of clear
-lumber. The wood takes a good polish, and is manufactured into
-furniture, doors, sash, turnery, and matches. The latter article is
-esteemed by many persons for the peculiar odor of the burning wood. It
-has been found practicable to finish this cedar in imitation of
-mahogany, oak, and several other cabinet woods. In its natural state it
-sometimes bears some resemblance to yellow pine, and sometimes to
-spruce, there being considerable variation in the appearance of wood
-from different trees. When the visible supply of Port Orford cedar has
-been cut, the end will be reached, for not much young growth is coming
-on. Sixty-eight varieties of Port Orford cedar are recognized in
-cultivation.
-
-YELLOW CEDAR (_Chamæcyparis nootkatensis_) describes this tree quite
-well. The small twigs are of that color, and so is the heartwood. Many
-give it the name yellow cypress. Others know it as Alaska cypress,
-Alaska ground cypress, Nootka cypress, or Nootka sound cypress. The name
-of the species, _nootkatensis_, was given it by Archibald Menzies, a
-Scotch botanist who discovered it on the shore of Nootka sound in
-Alaska.
-
-Yellow cedar's geographic range extends from southeastern Alaska to
-Oregon, a distance of 1,000 miles. It does not usually go far inland,
-and consequently the range is narrow in most places. North of the
-international boundary the tree seldom reaches an altitude of more than
-2,000 or 3,000 feet, but in Washington and Oregon it is occasionally met
-with at elevations of 4,000 and 5,000 feet. The species reaches its best
-development on the islands off the coast of southern Alaska and British
-Columbia, where the air is moist, the winds warm in winter, the rainfall
-abundant, and the snowfall often deep. Well developed trees under such
-circumstances are from ninety to 120 feet high, from two to six in
-diameter. The blue-green leaves remain active two years, and then die,
-but they do not usually fall until a year later. The presence of the
-dead leaves on the twigs tones down the general color of the tree
-crowns.
-
-The cones are about half an inch long and have four, five, or six
-scales. From two to four seeds lie beneath each scale until September or
-October when they ripen and escape. Their wings are large enough to
-carry them away from the immediate vicinity of the parent tree, and
-reproduction under natural conditions is generally good. Yellow cedar is
-abundant within its range, but nature has circumscribed its range, and
-it shows no disposition to pass the boundary line.
-
-The bark is thin and exhibits cedar's characteristic stringiness. It is
-shed in thin strips.
-
-The wood is moderately light, and is strong and stiff. It is probably
-the hardest of the cedars, and the grain is so regular that high polish
-is possible. Under favorable circumstances trees grow with fair
-rapidity, but when conditions are unfavorable, as on high mountains
-where summers are short and winters severe, growth is remarkably slow,
-and twenty years or more may be required for one inch increase in trunk
-diameter. The wood of such trees is hard, dense, and strong.
-
-The grain of yellow cedar is usually straight. The bands of summerwood
-are narrow, the annual rings are indistinct, and an attempt to count
-them is often attended with considerable difficulty. The wood is easily
-worked, satiny, susceptible of a beautiful polish, and possesses an
-agreeable resinous odor. The heartwood is bright, clear yellow, and the
-thin sapwood is a little lighter in color. In common with all other
-cedars, yellow cedar resists decay many years. Logs which have lain in
-damp woods half a century remain sound inside the sapwood. Sometimes
-fallen timber in that region is quickly buried under deep beds of moss
-which preserves it from decay much longer than if the logs lie exposed
-to alternate dampness and dryness.
-
-Statistics of sawmill operations in the Northwest do not distinguish
-between the different cedars, and the cut of yellow cedar is unknown. It
-is considerable, but of course not to be compared with the more abundant
-western red cedar. Statistics of uses are as meager as of the lumber
-output. In Washington the factories which use wood as raw material
-report only 7,500 feet of yellow cedar a year. Doubtless much more than
-that is used, but under other names. There is no occasion to disguise
-this wood under other names. It has a striking individuality and
-deserves a place of its own. In some respects it is one of the best
-woods of the Pacific Northwest. In nearly every situation where it has
-been tried, it has been found satisfactory. Its rich yellow presents a
-fine appearance in furniture and interior finish, and the polish which
-it takes surpasses that possible with any other cedar, with the probable
-exception of some of the scarce, high mountain junipers. It has been
-used for pyrography and patterns, two hard places to fill, and for which
-few woods are suitable. Indians long ago in Alaska learned that it was
-the best material for boat paddles which their forests afforded. It
-possesses the requisite stiffness and strength, and it wears to a
-smoothness almost like ebony. Boat factories have many uses for the
-wood, decking, railing, and interior finish being among the most
-important. It is said to be a satisfactory substitute for Spanish cedar
-in the manufacture of cigar boxes, but its use for that purpose is not
-yet large.
-
-It is said that occasional exports of this wood go to China where it is
-finished in imitation of scarce and expensive woods of that country.
-
-Yellow cedar is a wood with a future. Its splendid properties cannot
-fail to give it a place of no small importance in factories and in
-general building operations. The supply has scarcely yet been touched,
-but it cannot much longer remain an undeveloped asset. It is apparently
-a high-class cooperage material, but it does not seem to have been used
-much if at all in that industry. The same might be said of it for doors.
-It is heavier than spruce, white pine, and redwood, but where weight is
-not a matter for objection, it ought to equal them in all desirable
-qualities.
-
-In much of its range it is generally exempt from forest fire injury,
-because its native woods are nearly always too wet to burn.
-
-    ROCKY MOUNTAIN JUNIPER (_Juniperus scopulorum_) is scattered over
-    the mountains from Dakota and Nebraska to Washington and British
-    Columbia, and southward to western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
-    Except near the Pacific coast, it is usually found at altitudes
-    above 5,000 feet. It clings closely to dry, rocky ridges where it
-    attains a height of thirty or forty feet, and a diameter of three
-    feet or less. The trunk usually divides near the ground into several
-    stems. The bright blue berries ripen the second year. The wood
-    resembles that of red cedar, and is used in the same way, as far as
-    it is used at all. It is not a source of lumber. A little is sawed
-    occasionally on mountain mills, and the lumber is used locally in
-    house building, particularly for window and door frames; but sawlogs
-    are short, and because of their poor form, the output of lumber is
-    negligible. Some of it finds its way into Texas where it is
-    manufactured into clothes chests and wardrobes, and these are sold
-    as red cedar. A choice mountain juniper log, with large, sound
-    heartwood, produces lumber with a delicate grain and is more
-    attractive than red cedar when made into chests and boxes. By habit
-    of growth, it includes patches of white sapwood in the darker
-    heartwood. When these are sawed through in converting the logs into
-    boards, the islands of white wood scattered over the surface produce
-    a unique effect not wanting in artistic value. Some of the other
-    western junipers possess similar characteristics. Sometimes patches
-    of bark are also found imbedded in the interior of the trees.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED SPRUCE
-
-[Illustration: RED SPRUCE]
-
-
-
-
-RED SPRUCE
-
-(_Picea Rubens_)
-
-
-In New York the tree is called yellow spruce, while in foreign
-literature it is known as North American red spruce. The tree is
-sometimes difficult to distinguish from black spruce (_Picea nigra_),
-the main points of difference in the appearance of the two trees being
-the size and shape of the cones and of the staminate blossoms. The cones
-of red spruce are larger than those of black, and they mature and drop
-from the branches during their first winter, while those of the latter
-named species frequently remain on the trees for several seasons.
-Certain eminent botanists incline to the belief that the two are
-different varieties of one species, inasmuch as even the timber of red
-spruce bears a close resemblance to that of the black spruce. Other
-botanists dispute this theory, saying that the trees are entirely
-different in appearance; that the red spruce is a light olive-green,
-while black spruce is inclined to a darker olive with perhaps a purplish
-tinge, so that when seen together they have no resemblance in point of
-color. They further say that the cones are not only different in size
-but that the scales are quite unlike in texture, those of black spruce
-being much thinner and more brittle. The same authorities maintain that
-the tiny twigs of red spruce are more conspicuous on account of their
-reddish tinge.
-
-Generally speaking the principal spruce growth of northern New England
-and New York is black spruce, although interspersed with it in some
-localities is a considerable quantity of red spruce. On the contrary the
-chief stand of spruce in West Virginia, Virginia, western North
-Carolina, and eastern Tennessee and the other high altitudes over the
-South Carolina line, is largely red spruce. This botanical analysis of
-the two species of wood is based entirely on the authority of botanists,
-but from the viewpoint of the average lumberman there is absolutely no
-difference between red and black spruce and none in the physics of the
-two woods except that which rises from varying conditions of growth as
-soil, rainfall, altitude or latitude, or general environment. The larger
-spruce of West Virginia and the mountain region farther south, has
-certain qualities of strength and texture, combined with a large
-percentage of clear lumber that is not approximated by the spruce of New
-England and the British maritime provinces. In shape the tree is
-pyramidal, with spreading branches. It reaches a height of from seventy
-to a hundred feet. Its bark is reddish brown, slightly scaly. The twigs
-are light colored when young and are covered with tiny hairs. The leaves
-are thickly clustered along the branches, and are simple and slender,
-pointed at the apex. They become lustrous at maturity. The staminate
-flowers are oval, bright red in color; the pistillate ones are oblong,
-with thin rounded scales. The fruit of the red spruce is a cone, from
-one to two and a half inches in length; it is green when young, turning
-dark with age, and falling from the branches when the scales open. The
-seeds are dark brown, and winged.
-
-Formerly spruce was little thought of for lumber and manufacturing
-purposes in this country, though some use was made of it from the
-earliest settlements in the regions where it grew. White pine could
-generally be had where spruce was abundant, and the former wood was
-preferred. As pine became scarce, spruce was worked in for a number of
-purposes. The tree's form is all that a sawmill man could desire. The
-trunk has more knots than white pine, for the reason that limbs are a
-longer time in dying and in dropping off; but knots are small and
-generally sound. By careful culling, a moderate amount of clear lumber
-may be obtained. The wood is light, soft, narrow-ringed, strong in
-proportion to its weight, elastic, and its color is pale with a slight
-tinge of red, the sapwood whiter and usually about two inches thick. The
-contrast between heart and sapwood is not strong. The medullary rays are
-numerous, but small and obscure. The summerwood is thin and not
-conspicuous. It is the wood's red tinge which gives the tree its
-commercial name.
-
-It is believed that the yearly cut of red spruce in the United States
-for lumber is about 500,000,000 feet, one-half of which comes from West
-Virginia and southward, where this species reaches its highest
-development; and the pulpwood cut in the same region is about one-tenth
-as much in quantity. The long fiber and white color of spruce make it
-one of the most satisfactory woods for pulp in this country. Red spruce
-is only one of several species of spruce which contribute to the supply.
-The total output of spruce pulpwood in the United States yearly is
-equivalent to about 1,000,000,000 feet of lumber.
-
-Red spruce lumber has a long list of uses. Much flooring is made of it,
-and it wears well, but not as well as hard pine from the South. It is
-more used for shipping boxes in the northeastern part of the United
-States than any other wood, except white pine. Its good stenciling
-qualities recommend it. Manufacturers of sash, doors, and blinds find it
-excellent material, combining lightness, strength, and small tendency to
-warp, shrink, or swell. Coopers make buckets, tubs, kegs, and churns of
-it; manufacturers of refrigerators use it for doors and frames; and
-makers of furniture use it for many interior parts of bureaus, tables,
-and sideboards. Textile mills use spruce clothboards as center pieces
-round which to wind fabrics; and a further use in mills is for bobbins.
-It has many places in boat building, notably as spars and yards; and
-for window and door frames.
-
-The makers of piano frames employ red spruce for certain parts; but as
-material for musical instruments its most important use is as sounding
-boards. All the commercial spruces are so used. Wood for this purpose
-must be free from defects of all kinds, and of straight and even grain.
-The sounding board's value lies in its ability to vibrate in unison with
-the strings of the instrument. Spruce has no superior for that place.
-
-Red spruce bears abundance of seeds, the best on the highest branches.
-The seeds are winged, and the wind scatters them. They germinate best on
-humus. In spruce forests, clumps of seedlings are often seen where logs
-have decayed and fallen to dust. Seedlings do not thrive on mineral
-soil, and for that reason red spruce makes a poor showing where fires
-have burned. It does not spread vigorously in old fields as white pine
-does. It must have forest conditions or it will do little good. For that
-reason it does not promise great things for the future. It grows very
-slowly, and land owners prefer white pine, where that species will grow.
-If spruce is to be planted, most persons prefer Norway spruce (_Picea
-excelsa_) of Europe. It grows faster than native spruces. It is the
-spruce usually seen in door yards and parks.
-
-    BLACK SPRUCE (_Picea mariana_) grows much farther north than red
-    spruce, but the two species mingle in a region of 100,000 square
-    miles or more northward of Pennsylvania and in New England and
-    southern and eastern Canada. Black spruce grows from Labrador to the
-    valley of the Mackenzie river, almost to the arctic circle. It is
-    found as far south as the Lake States where it constitutes the
-    principal spruce of commerce. In some of the swamps of northern
-    Minnesota and in the neighboring parts of Canada it is little more
-    than a shrub, and trees three or four feet high bear cones. On
-    better land in that region the tree is large enough for sawlogs. It
-    passes under several names, among which are double spruce, blue
-    spruce, white spruce, and water spruce. The common name black spruce
-    probably refers to the general appearance of the crown. The small
-    cones (the smallest of the spruces) adhere to the branches many
-    years, and give a ragged, black appearance to the tree when seen
-    from a distance. The wood is as white as other spruces. Trees vary
-    greatly in size. The best are 100 feet high and two and a half feet
-    in diameter; but the average size is about thirty feet high and
-    twelve inches in diameter. That size is not attractive to lumbermen;
-    but cutters of pulpwood find it valuable and convenient, and much of
-    it is manufactured into paper. The wood weighs 28.57 pounds per
-    cubic foot, and is moderately strong, and high in elasticity. It is
-    pale yellow-white with thin sapwood. In Manitoba, lumber is sawed
-    from black spruce, and it is cut also in the Lake States, but it is
-    preferred for pulp. It gives excellent service as canoe paddles.
-    Spruce chewing gum is made of resinous exudations from this tree,
-    and is an article of considerable importance. Spruce beer is another
-    by-product which has long been manufactured in New England and the
-    eastern Canadian provinces. It was made in Newfoundland three
-    hundred years ago and has been bought and sold in the markets of
-    that region ever since. Fishing vessels carry supplies of the
-    beverage on long voyages as a preventive of scurvy. The beer is
-    made by boiling leaves and twigs, and adding molasses to the
-    concoction which is allowed to pass through mild fermentation.
-    Foresters will probably never pay much attention to black spruce
-    because other species promise more profit. It is little planted for
-    ornamental purposes, as it does not grow rapidly, is of poor form,
-    and the accumulation of dead cones on the branches gives it a poor
-    appearance. Besides, planted trees do not live long.
-
-    WHITE SPRUCE (_Picea canadensis_) is of more importance in Canada
-    than in the United States, because more abundant. It is one of the
-    most plentiful timber trees of Alaska, and it is found west to
-    Bering strait and north of the arctic circle. It is said to approach
-    within twenty miles of the Arctic ocean. Its eastern limit is in
-    Labrador, its southern in the northern tier of states from Maine to
-    Idaho. A little of this species is cut for lumber in northern New
-    England and in upper Michigan, and westward, just south of the
-    Canadian line. The light blue-green foliage gives the tree its name.
-    It is known by other names as well, single spruce, bog spruce, skunk
-    spruce, cat spruce, double spruce, and pine. Some of its names are
-    due to the odor of its foliage. The largest trees are 100 feet high
-    and three in diameter, but most are smaller. Having a range so
-    extensive, and in climates and situations so different, the tree
-    naturally varies greatly in size and form. The wood of
-    well-developed trees is white and handsome, the thin, pencil-like
-    bands of summerwood having a slightly darker tone than the
-    springwood. The two parts of the annual ring possess different
-    degrees of hardness. The springwood is softer than the summerwood.
-    The medullary rays are numerous, and the surface of quarter-sawed
-    lumber has a silvery appearance, due to the exposed flat surfaces of
-    the rays. In the markets, no distinction is made between white
-    spruce lumber, and that cut from other species. The uses of the
-    different species are much the same. As a pulpwood, white spruce is
-    in demand wherever it is available. The largest output in the United
-    States comes from northern New England. The tree is often planted
-    for ornamental purposes in Europe and in northern states. When grown
-    in the open, the crown is pyramidal, like that of balsam fir. It
-    does not thrive where summers are warm and dry.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SITKA SPRUCE
-
-[Illustration: SITKA SPRUCE]
-
-
-
-
-SITKA SPRUCE
-
-(_Picea Sitchensis_)
-
-
-This is largest of the spruces. In height and in girth of trunk no other
-approaches it. The moist, warm climate of the north Pacific slope is its
-favorite home, though its range extends far northward along the islands
-and coast of Alaska. Toward the extreme limit of its habitat it loses
-its splendid form and size and degenerates into a sprawling shrub. The
-limit of the species southward lies in Mendocino county, California. Its
-range in a north and south direction is not less than 2,000 miles; but
-east and west the growth covers a mere ribbon facing the sea. It climbs
-some of the British Columbia mountains, 5,000 feet, but it prefers the
-low, wet valleys and flatlands, or the rainy and snowy slopes set to
-catch the sea winds. There it is at its best, and the largest trunks are
-200 feet high, fifteen feet in diameter, and about 850 years old. All
-sizes less than this are found. It is not easy to name an average size
-when variation runs from giants to dwarfs; but in regions where this
-spruce is cut for lumber, the average height of mature trees is about
-125 feet, with a diameter of four feet.
-
-Tideland spruce is one of its names. That has reference to its habit of
-sticking close to the sea. Its other names are Menzies' spruce, great
-tideland spruce, and western spruce. The last may be considered its
-trade name in lumber markets, for it is seldom called anything else when
-it is shipped east of the Rocky Mountains. The name is appropriate,
-except that other spruces grow in the West, and are equally entitled to
-the name. This applies particularly to Engelmann spruce of the northern
-Rocky Mountain region; but its lumber and that cut from Sitka spruce are
-not liable to be confused in the mind of anyone who is acquainted with
-the two woods. The name Sitka refers to the town of that name in Alaska.
-
-The leaves of this species are usually less than one inch in length, and
-in color are light yellowish green. They stand out like bristles on all
-sides of the twigs. Cones are from two to four inches long, and hang by
-short stems, usually at the ends of twigs. They ripen the first year,
-release their seeds, which fly away on small but ample wings, and the
-cones drop during the fall and winter. Sitka spruce bark is generally
-less than half an inch in thickness. Trunks which grow in forests prune
-themselves well, and are usually clear of limbs from forty to eighty
-feet. The bases of trees which grow on wet land are much enlarged like
-cypress and tupelo, and lumbermen frequently cut above the swell,
-leaving from 1,000 to 5,000 feet or more of lumber in the stump. Sitka
-spruce's characteristic root system is shallow; but on mountain sides
-where soil is dry, roots penetrate deep in search of moisture.
-
-The wood of this spruce varies greatly in color, but it is usually a
-very pale brown, with the faintest tinge of red. It is a little heavier
-than white pine, considerably weaker, and with less elasticity. The size
-of the trunks, with their freedom from limbs, insures a high percentage
-of clear lumber when Sitka spruce is manufactured. The tree grows
-slowly, the annual rings are narrow, and the bands of summer growth are
-comparatively broad, to which fact the rather dark color of the wood of
-the spruce is due.
-
-Sitka spruce is an important source of lumber. The total cut in
-Washington, Oregon, and California in 1910 was about 255,000,000 feet.
-It is below red spruce in quantity of sawmill cut, but above all other
-spruces in the United States. The people of the Pacific coast use much
-of it at home, but large quantities are shipped to markets in eastern
-states, and some to foreign countries. Nearly 4,000,000 feet were bought
-by Illinois manufacturers in 1909, in addition to what was used rough in
-the state. The commodities manufactured of this spruce in Illinois
-indicate with a fair degree of accuracy the uses made of the wood in
-most parts of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and north of
-the Ohio river and the Potomac. Among articles so manufactured in
-Illinois are playground apparatus, porch and stair balusters, doors,
-blinds, sash and frames, poultry brooders, sounding boards for pianos
-and other musical instruments, parts of mandolins and guitars, pipes for
-organs, cornice brackets, store and office fronts, decking and spars for
-boats, wagon beds and windmill wheel slats, refrigerators and cold
-storage rooms, ironing boards and other wooden ware.
-
-Twenty times as much Sitka spruce is made into finished commodities in
-Washington as in Illinois. That is to be expected, since Washington is
-the home of the tree and the center of supply. A partial list of its
-uses in that state will show that the wood is liked at home. Douglas fir
-was the only wood bought in larger amounts by Washington manufacturers.
-They made 55,429,000 feet of it into boxes, and coopers employed
-12,000,000 more. The next largest users were pulpmills, while 2,000,000
-feet went into sounding boards, many of which were for shipment abroad.
-Other users were basket makers, and the manufacturers of furniture,
-fixtures, finish, caskets, veneer, trunks, pulleys, vehicles, boats, and
-patterns. Sitka spruce decays quickly when exposed to rain and weather.
-
-Sitka spruce can be depended upon for the future. Though it grows slowly
-it may be expected to keep growing. Its range lies in regions generally
-too wet for woods to burn, and it will suffer less from forest fires
-than trees of inland regions. It is an abundant seeder, and its favorite
-seedbed is moss, muck, decayed wood, and wet ground litter of various
-kinds. For the first few years seedlings are sensitive to frost, but not
-in later life.
-
-Sitka spruce is often planted as an ornamental tree in western Europe,
-and occasionally in the middle Atlantic states. The New England climate
-is too severe for it.
-
-ENGELMANN SPRUCE (_Picea engelmanni_) was named for Dr. George
-Engelmann. It has other names. In Utah it is called balsam, white spruce
-in Oregon, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho, mountain spruce in Montana,
-Arizona spruce farther south, while in Idaho it is sometimes known as
-white pine. That name is misleading, for Idaho has a species of white
-pine (_Pinus monticola_). In eastern markets the wood is known as
-western spruce; but that, also, is indefinite, for Sitka spruce is also
-a western species and is found in the same markets as Engelmann spruce.
-This tree's range extends from Yukon territory to Arizona, fully 3,000
-miles. It is a mountain species and is found in elevated ranges. In the
-southern part of its habitat it ascends mountains to heights of nearly
-12,000 feet. It grows in the Cascade mountain ranges in Washington and
-Oregon. The species' best development occurs in British Columbia. At its
-best, trees are 150 feet high and four or five in diameter; but every
-size less than that occurs in different parts of its range, down to a
-height of two or three feet for fully matured trees. Such are found on
-lofty and sterile mountains where frost occurs practically every night
-in summer, and winter snows bury all objects for months at a time.
-Though the stunted spruce trees may be only two or three feet high,
-their branches spread many feet, and lie flat on the rocks. Though such
-situations are exceedingly unfavorable to tree growth, the stunted
-spruces survive sometimes for two hundred years, and during that long
-period may not grow a trunk above five inches in diameter and four feet
-high. The Engelmann spruce is naturally a long-lived tree, and large
-trunks are 500 or 600 years old; and trees ordinarily cut for lumber are
-300 or 400 years old. When the tree is young, its form is symmetrical,
-the longest branches being near the ground, the shortest near the top;
-but in crowded stands the trunk finally clears itself. Engelmann spruce
-lumber is usually full of small knots, each of which represents a limb
-which was shaded off as the tree advanced in age. The wood is lighter
-than white pine, and is the lightest of the spruces, the weight being
-21.49 pounds per cubic foot. It is not strong, and it rates low in
-elasticity. The wood is pale yellow, tinged with red. The thick sapwood
-is hardly distinguishable from the heart. It would be difficult to
-compile a list of this tree's uses, because in markets it hardly ever
-carries its right name. It is used for fuel and charcoal in the region
-of its growth; also as farm timber, and as props and lagging in mines.
-When it goes to market, it is manufactured into doors, window frames,
-sash, interior finish for houses, and for purposes along with other
-spruces. Large quantities of this wood will be accessible when lumbermen
-penetrate remote mountain regions where it grows. It may be expected to
-increase in importance. It is occasionally planted in eastern states as
-an ornament.
-
-    BLUE SPRUCE (_Picea parryana_) is found among mountains in Colorado,
-    Utah, and Wyoming, from 6,500 to 10,000 feet above sea level. It
-    attains a height of 150 feet and a diameter of three under favorable
-    circumstances, but its usual size is little more than half of that.
-    Its name is given on account of the color of its foliage, but it has
-    other names, among them being Parry's spruce, balsam, white spruce,
-    silver spruce, Colorado blue spruce, and prickly spruce, the last
-    name referring to the sharp-pointed leaves which are an inch or more
-    in length. Cones are three inches long, and usually grow near the
-    top of the tree. It is not unusual for blue spruce trees to divide
-    near the ground in three or four branches. In its youth,
-    particularly in open ground, blue spruce develops a conical crown.
-    The wood is lighter than white pine, is soft, weak, and pale brown
-    or nearly white in color. The sapwood is hardly distinguishable from
-    the heart. This is a valuable tree for ornamental planting; but in
-    later years it loses its lower limbs, and becomes less desirable.
-
-    WEEPING SPRUCE (_Picea breweriana_) is of little commercial
-    importance because of scarcity. It grows among the mountains of
-    northern California and southern Oregon, at elevations of from 4,000
-    to 8,000 feet above sea level. The leaves are an inch or less in
-    length, the cones from two to four inches long. They fall soon after
-    they scatter their seeds. This tree is named on account of its
-    drooping branchlets, some of which hang down eight feet. The wood
-    seems not to have been investigated, but its color is pale yellowish
-    to very light brown, and the annual rings are rather narrow. The
-    tree ought to be valuable for ornamental planting, but nurseries
-    have experienced much difficulty in making it grow. It grows on high
-    and dry mountains where few ever see it, but refuses to become
-    domesticated or to grace eastern parks.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CYPRESS
-
-[Illustration: CYPRESS]
-
-
-
-
-CYPRESS
-
-(_Taxodium Distichum_)
-
-
-The name cypress has been used quite loosely in this country and the old
-world, and botanists have taken particular care to explain what true
-cypress is. It is of no advantage in the present case to join in the
-discussion, and it will suffice to give the American cypresses according
-to the authorized list published by the United States Forest Service.
-Two genera, one having two and the other six species, are classed as
-cypress. These are Bald Cypress (_Taxodium distichum_), Pond Cypress
-(_Taxodium imbricarium_), Monterey Cypress (_Cupressus macrocarpa_),
-Gowen Cypress (_Cupressus goveniana_), Dwarf Cypress (_Cupressus
-pygmæa_) Macnab Cypress (_Cupressus macnabiana_), Arizona Cypress
-(_Cupressus arizonica_), and Smooth Cypress (_Cupressus glabra_). The
-first two grow in the southern states, and the others in the Far West.
-Bald cypress, which is generally known simply as cypress in the region
-where it grows, is more important as a source of lumber than are all the
-others combined. It probably supplies ninety-nine per cent of all
-cypress sold in this country. Its range is from southern Delaware to
-Florida, westward to the Gulf coast region of Texas, north through
-Louisiana, Arkansas, eastern Mississippi and Tennessee, southeastern
-Missouri, western Kentucky and sparsely in southern Illinois and
-southwestern Indiana. It is a deep swamp tree, and it is never of much
-importance far from lagoons, inundated tracts, and the low banks of
-rivers. Water that is a little brackish from the inwash of tides does
-not injure the tree, but the presence of a little salt is claimed by
-some to improve the quality of the wood. It is lumbered under
-difficulties. The deep water and miry swamps where it grows best must be
-reckoned with. Some of the ground is not dry for several years at a
-time. Neither felling nor hauling is possible in the manner practiced in
-the southern pineries. Owing to the great weight of the green wood, it
-will not float unless killed by being girdled for a year or more in
-advance of its being felled. In the older logging operations, cypress
-was girdled and snaked out to waterways and floated to the mills. Lately
-many cypress operations are carried on by the building of railroads
-through the swamps, which are largely on piling and stringers, although
-occasionally earth fills are utilized. The usual size of mature cypress
-ranges from seventy-five to 140 feet in height and three to six in
-diameter.
-
-The wood is light, soft, rather weak, moderately stiff, and the grain is
-usually straight. The narrow annual rings indicate slow growth. The
-summerwood is comparatively broad and is slightly resinous; medullary
-rays are numerous and obscure. The wood is light to dark brown, the
-sapwood nearly white. At one time specimens of the wood in the markets
-of the world were known as black or white cypress, according as they
-sank or floated. Much of the dark cypress wood is now known as black
-cypress in the foreign markets, where it is employed chiefly for tank
-and vat building. Individual specimens of the wood in some localities
-are tinted in a variety of shades and some of the natural designs are
-extremely beautiful.
-
-The wood is reputed to be among the most durable in this country when
-exposed to soil and weather. Some of it deserves that reputation, but
-other does not. Well-authenticated cases are cited where cypress has
-remained sound many years--in some instance a hundred or more--when
-subjected to alternate dampness and dryness. Such conditions afford
-severe tests. In other cases cypress has been known to decay as quickly
-as pine.
-
-Historical cases from the old world are sometimes cited to show the
-wonderful lasting properties of cypress. Doors and statues, exposed more
-or less to weather, are said to have stood many centuries. The evidence
-has little value as far as this wood is concerned. In the first place,
-the long records claimed are subjects for suspicion; and in the second
-place, it was not the American cypress that was used--and probably no
-cypress--but the cedar of Lebanon.
-
-Sound cypress logs have been dug from deep excavations near New Orleans,
-and geologists believe they had lain there 30,000 years. That would be a
-telling testament to endurance were it not that any other wood
-completely out of reach of air would last as long.
-
-The estimated stand of cypress in the South is about 20,000,000,000
-feet. The annual cut, including shingles, exceeds 1,000,000,000 feet.
-New growth is not coming on. The traveler through the South occasionally
-sees a small clump of little cypresses, but such are few and far
-between. It was formerly quite generally believed that cypress in deep
-swamps, where old and venerable stands are found, was not reproducing,
-and that no little trees were to be seen. It was argued from this, that
-some climatic or geographic change had taken place, and that the present
-stand of cypress would be the last of its race. More careful
-investigation, however, has shown that the former belief was erroneous.
-Seedling cypresses are found occasionally in the deepest swamps.
-Probably cypress which has not been disturbed by man is reproducing as
-well now as at any time in the past. The tree lives three or four
-centuries, and if it leaves one seedling to take its place it has done
-its part toward perpetuating the species. Fire, the mortal enemy of
-forests, seldom hurts cypress, because the undergrowth is not dry enough
-to burn.
-
-The uses of cypress are so nearly universal that a list is impossible.
-In Illinois alone it is reported for seventy-eight different purposes.
-There is not a state, and scarcely a large wood-using factory, east of
-the Rocky Mountains which does not demand more or less cypress.
-
-The tree is graceful when young, but ragged and uncouth when old. Though
-a needleleaf tree, it yearly sheds its foliage and most of its twigs.
-The fruit is a cone about one inch in diameter; and the seed is equipped
-with a wing one-fourth inch long and one-eighth inch wide.
-
-When cypress stands in soft ground which most of the time is under
-water, the roots send up peculiar growths known as knees. They rise from
-a few inches to several feet above the surface of the mud, and extend
-above the water at ordinary stages. They are sharp cones, generally
-hollow. It is believed their function is to furnish air to the tree's
-roots, and also to afford anchorage to the roots in the soft mud. When
-the water is drained away, the knees die.
-
-Cypress is widely planted as an ornament, and a dozen or more varieties
-have been developed in cultivation.
-
-    POND CYPRESS (_Taxodium imbricarium_) so closely resembles bald
-    cypress with which it is associated that the two were once supposed
-    to be the same. Pond cypress averages smaller and its range is more
-    circumscribed. The name pond cypress, by which it is popularly known
-    in Georgia, indicates the localities where it is oftenest found. It
-    is the prevailing cypress in the Okefenoke swamp in southeastern
-    Georgia. The general aspect of the foliage and fruit is the same as
-    of bald cypress. No detailed examination of the wood seems to have
-    been made, but in general appearance it is like the other cypress.
-    It is said that little of it ever gets to sawmills because it grows
-    in situations where logging is inconvenient.
-
-    MONTEREY CYPRESS (_Cupressus macrocarpa_). This tree has only one
-    name and that is due to its place of growth on the shores of
-    Monterey bay, California. Its range is more restricted than that of
-    any other American softwood. It does not much exceed 150 acres,
-    though the trees are scattered in a narrow strip for two miles along
-    the coast. They approach so close the breakers that spray flies over
-    them in time of storm. Trees exposed to the sweep of the wind are
-    gnarled and of fantastic shapes. Their crowns are broad and flat
-    like an umbrella, but ragged and unsymmetrical in outline. That form
-    offers least resistance to wind, and most surface to the sun. The
-    trees take the best possible advantage of their opportunities. Tall
-    crowns would be carried away by wind; and the flat tops, with a mass
-    of green foliage, catch all the sunlight possible. They need it, for
-    they grow in fog, and sunshine is scarce. Sheltered trees develop
-    pyramidal tops. It is widely planted in this and other countries,
-    and when conditions are favorable, it is graceful and symmetrical.
-    The largest trees are from sixty to seventy feet tall, others are
-    five or six in diameter; but the tallest trees and the largest
-    trunks seldom go together. The cones are an inch or more in length,
-    and each contains about 100 seeds. The leaves fall the third and
-    fourth years. Wood is heavy, hard, strong, and durable, but is too
-    scarce to be of value as lumber, even if the trunks were suitable
-    for sawlogs. The Monterey cypress is of peculiar interest to
-    botanists and also to physical geographers. The few trees on the
-    shore of Monterey bay appear to be the last remnant of a species
-    which was once more extensive. The ocean is eating away the coast at
-    that point. Fragments of hills, cut sheer down from top to the
-    breakers beneath, are plainly the last remnants of ranges which once
-    extended westward, but have been washed away by the encroaching
-    waves. No one knows how much of the former coast has been destroyed.
-    Apparently the former range of the cypress was principally on land
-    now swallowed up by the encroaching ocean. A mere fringe of the
-    trees--a belt about 200 yards wide along the beach--remains, and the
-    sea is undermining them one by one and carrying them down. So
-    rapidly is the undermining process going on that many large roots of
-    some of the trees are exposed to view.
-
-    ARIZONA CYPRESS (_Cupressus arizonica_), as its name implies, is an
-    Arizona tree. It forms considerable forests in the eastern, central,
-    and southern parts of the state, and is found also in Mexico. It
-    grows at elevations up to 6,000 feet. Because of the small
-    population in the region where this cypress grows, it has never been
-    much used, but the size of the trees and the character of the wood
-    fit it for many purposes. Its growth is often quite rapid, and the
-    timber is soft, light, and with well-defined summerwood. Its usual
-    color is gray, but occasionally faint streaks of yellow appear. The
-    leaves fall during the fourth and fifth years; cones are small and
-    flat; and the small seeds are winged. It is believed by persons
-    familiar with Arizona cypress that it will attain considerable
-    importance when the building of railroads and the settlement of the
-    country make the forests accessible. The wood is durable in contact
-    with the soil.
-
-    SMOOTH CYPRESS (_Cupressus glabra_) ranges in Arizona and is not
-    believed to have or to promise much importance as a source of lumber
-    supply. Its name was given on account of the smoothness of the bark.
-    It is one of the latest species to be given a place among the
-    cypresses, and was described and named by George B. Sudworth of the
-    United States Forest Service.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BALSAM FIR
-
-[Illustration: BALSAM FIR]
-
-
-
-
-BALSAM FIR
-
-(_Abies Balsamea_)
-
-
-Balsam fir is the usual name applied to this tree in New England, New
-York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ontario. The
-shorter name balsam suffices in some parts of that region, and
-particularly in New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Because it is
-common north of the international boundary, the name Canada balsam has
-been given it in some regions. In Delaware it is known as balm of
-Gilead, but that name belongs to a tree of the cottonwood group,
-(_Populus balsamifera_) which is a broadleaf species. In New York and
-Pennsylvania a word of distinction is added, and it is called balm of
-Gilead fir. Toward the southern limit of its range it is spoken of as
-fir pine and blister pine. New York Indians knew the tree as blisters.
-They referred to the pockets under the bark of young trees and near the
-tops of mature trunks, in which resin collected. The name balsam refers
-to that characteristic also, as does the word balm. In some parts of
-Canada the tree is known as silver pine, and as silver spruce. The
-secretion of resin in bark blisters is a characteristic of several firs.
-
-The list of names and the locality of their use indicate fairly well the
-geographical range of balsam fir. Its northern limit forms a line across
-eastern Canada from Labrador to Hudson bay. From Hudson bay its northern
-boundary trends northwestward and reaches the vicinity of Great Bear
-lake. In the United States it grows westward to Minnesota and southward
-to Pennsylvania. It is cut for lumber in eleven states.
-
-In a range so large and including situations so various, it is natural
-that the tree should vary greatly in size. In the Lake States the common
-height is fifty or sixty feet, and the diameter is twelve or fifteen
-inches. Young balsam firs grow vigorously when the ground is suitable
-and their tops receive sufficient light. In lumbered regions in the Lake
-States, this fir gets a foothold in the shade of a dense growth of paper
-birch and other quickly-growing species; and in a few years the pointed,
-intensely green spires of the balsams may be seen piercing the canopy of
-other young tree tops, and shooting above into the light. This is
-accomplished after a struggle of some years in the shade; but the firs
-ultimately win their way upward, and in a few years they shade to death
-most of their broadleaf associates. If they are in competition with
-northern white cedar or tamarack, they are not always successful in
-winning first place.
-
-The leaves of balsam fir are from one-half to one and one-fourth inches
-long. They are green and lustrous above and silver white below, the
-whiteness due to stomata on their undersides. On young twigs the leaves
-bristle out on all sides and are very numerous and crowded together, but
-on older branches the leaves are more scattered, due to the dropping of
-some of them. It is their habit to adhere to the stems about eight
-years.
-
-The leaves of balsam fir possess a pleasing and characteristic odor
-which is turned to account in a practical way. The small needles are
-stripped from the branches in large quantities, cleaned, dried, and are
-used for stuffing sofa pillows, cushions, and other kinds of upholstery.
-The odor persists a long time. Much of the collecting of the needles is
-done in summer as a pastime by summer campers in the northern woods. The
-needles are sufficiently tough to stand much wear in pillows, and they
-are still odorous when long use has ground them to powder.
-
-The cones of balsam fir follow the fashion of all species of fir, and
-stand erect on the branches. Seeds are one-fourth inch in length and are
-winged. The wood is of approximately the same weight as white pine, but
-it falls considerably below white pine in strength and stiffness. It is
-of moderately rapid growth when conditions are favorable, and the annual
-ring has a fair proportion of summerwood. The yearly rings are quite
-distinct. The medullary rays are numerous, and for a softwood they are
-prominent. When a log is quarter-sawed, and the surfaces of the boards
-are planed, the wood presents a silvery appearance, but it is too
-monotonous to be very attractive. The heartwood is pale brown, streaked
-with yellow, the thick sapwood much lighter in color. It is perishable
-in contact with the soil.
-
-Pulp manufacturers are the largest users of balsam fir. About three per
-cent of all the pulpwood cut in the United States in 1910 was from this
-species. Its use is on the increase, or appears to be; but recent
-statistics relating to this wood cannot be safely compared with returns
-for former years, because the custom of mixing fir with spruce and other
-pulpwoods formerly prevailed in New England, and it was then not
-possible to determine exactly how much fir reached the market. At the
-present time fir goes under its own name, and the output exceeds 132,000
-cords, which is equivalent to 105,000,000 feet, board measure, yearly.
-
-Eleven states contribute to the balsam fir lumber cut, but most is
-supplied by Maine, Minnesota, Vermont, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The
-total for 1910 was 74,580,000 feet. Much of it is employed in rough form
-for fences and buildings, while other is further manufactured by planing
-mills and factories. Car builders employ it in several ways. It serves
-as doors, siding, lining, and roofing for freight cars. It is not a
-durable wood when exposed to weather. The largest reported use of the
-wood in New England is by box makers. Massachusetts alone works nearly
-15,000,000 feet a year into crates and shipping boxes. Its uses in the
-Lake States are more varied. The makers of berry, fruit, and vegetable
-baskets draw supplies from the wood. Some of the product is of thin
-split slats, and other of veneer or sawed material.
-
-The light weight and white color of balsam fir make it acceptable to the
-manufacturers of excelsior. The product is employed in packing
-merchandise for shipment, and to a small extent in upholstery. The wood
-fills a rather important place in the woodenware industry, where its
-white color and light weight constitute its most important
-recommendations. It is sawed into staves for pails and tubs.
-
-Though balsam fir has little figure and its appearance is rather common,
-it finds its way to planing mills and woodworking shops where it is made
-into ceiling, newel posts, molding, railing, spindles, chair-boards, and
-other interior finish.
-
-The most widely known commercial product manufactured from this tree is
-Canada balsam. Strictly speaking, it is not a manufactured article
-except what is done in nature's laboratory, and the product is the resin
-stored under bark blisters. The resin is transparent, and is employed by
-microscopists in mounting objects for examination. Little machinery or
-apparatus is used in removing the viscid fluid from the pockets in the
-bark. With a knife the thin, soft blister is slit and the resin is
-scraped out. All kinds of claims of medicinal virtue are made for balsam
-resin in the region where the tree grows; but the treatment in most
-cases effects cures--if any cures are really effected--by appeals to
-faith and the imagination.
-
-Balsam fir owes a large part of its importance to its abundance. It is
-not exactly a swamp tree, but it does best in damp situations where the
-ground is moist and cool in summer. Only in periods of protracted
-drought does the ground litter become sufficiently dry to burn fiercely,
-and to that fact is due much of the promise of future supply of balsam
-fir. That which grows on the dry uplands may fall prey to forest fires,
-but that in the damp flats, associated with northern white cedar and
-tamarack, will hold its ground and continue to supply demand.
-
-Balsam fir has an importance which can not be wholly measured in feet,
-pounds, cords, or dollars. Many of the choicest Christmas trees which in
-December go by tens of thousands to the cities, are of this tree. Its
-form is almost perfect, being conical, broad near the bottom, and
-running to a sharp apex. The deep green of the needles, which retain
-their color from two weeks to a month after the trunk is severed, gives
-balsam Christmas trees much of their popularity. The trees are cut from
-Maine to Michigan, and many are shipped across the international
-boundary from Canada. The custom of cutting Christmas trees is often
-condemned as a waste of resources. It has been argued that the
-destruction in one month of 1,000,000 young trees is equivalent to the
-destruction of 500,000,000 feet of lumber, because, if allowed to reach
-maturity, they would yield that much lumber. That argument does not take
-into consideration the fact that not one of the young trees in ten would
-reach maturity if left to the course of nature.
-
-When Gifford Pinchot was United States forester, a protest against the
-cutting of Christmas trees was formally laid before him. It was
-generally believed that he would declare that the waste ought to be
-stopped and would set his disapproval on the practice; but he did
-nothing of the sort. He declared that the forests are for the use of the
-people and that they can serve in no better way than by supplying every
-child in the land with a Christmas tree once a year.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-FRASER FIR
-
-[Illustration: FRASER FIR]
-
-
-
-
-FRASER FIR
-
-(_Abies Fraseri_)
-
-
-The people who are acquainted with this interesting and somewhat rare
-tree have seen to it that it does not want for names. Some of these
-names are both definitive and descriptive, while others are neither.
-Tennessee, North Carolina, and West Virginia furnish the names. Within
-the tree's range in Tennessee and North Carolina it is often known as
-balsam without any qualifying word, and that is quite sufficient, for no
-other fir or balsam grows within its range. In the same region it is
-called balsam fir. That is the common name of its northern relative, but
-there is little likelihood of confusing the two species, for their
-ranges do not overlap much, if they touch at all, which they probably do
-not. In Tennessee the name is reversed and instead of balsam fir it is
-fir balsam. It is likewise known as double fir balsam, but why "double"
-is added to the name is not clear. Similar mystery attaches to the name
-"single spruce," which is applied to the balsam fir in the interior of
-British America. The southern Appalachian tree is called she balsam and
-she balsam fir. These names have no scientific basis, and they appear to
-have originated in a desire to distinguish this tree from the red spruce
-with which it is associated. The spruce is called "he balsam."
-Artificial names like these are not necessary to distinguish red spruce
-from Fraser fir, as very slight acquaintance should enable anybody to
-tell one from the other at sight, and to see clearly that they are not
-of the same species. Mountain balsam, a North Carolina name for this
-fir, is well taken, for it is distinctly a mountain species. The name
-healing balsam is given in acknowledgment of the supposed medicinal
-properties of the resin which collects in blisters or pockets under the
-bark of young trees and near the tops of old. In West Virginia, where
-this tree reaches the northern limits of its habitat, it is called
-blister pine, on account of the resin pockets. In the same region it is
-called stackpole pine, because farmers who mow mountain meadows use
-straight, very light poles cut from this fir round which to build
-haystacks.
-
-This tree is decidedly an inhabitant of the high, exposed localities,
-being found entirely in the upper elevations of the southern Appalachian
-mountains, either forming extensive pure stands or growing in the
-company of red spruce (_Picea rubens_), with a scattering of various
-stunted hardwoods, as birch, mountain ash, cherry and usually with an
-undergrowth of rhododendron.
-
-Fraser fir's range extends from the high mountains of North Carolina,
-where it grows 6,000 feet above sea level, northward into West
-Virginia, within a few miles of the Maryland line, at an altitude of
-3,300 feet. The tree is not found in all regions between its northern
-and southern limits. Its best development is in the southern part of its
-range.
-
-On the upper limits of its habitat the tree presents a decidedly
-picturesque appearance, being gnarled and twisted and plainly showing
-the results of its long struggle for life and development. It is always
-noticeable that on the exposed side the limbs are so short as to be
-almost missing and on the opposite side they grow out straight and long,
-appearing to fly before the wind. These limbs are sometimes of as great
-a girth for five or six feet of their length as any part of the main
-stem, and have a singular look, seeming to be all out of proportion to
-the rest of the tree. The older trees are vested in a smooth,
-yellowish-gray, mossy bark, which is quite different from that of the
-balsam fir. The bark is thin, about one-fourth of an inch on young
-trunks, and half an inch near the ground on old ones. The leaves are
-usually half an inch long, sometimes one inch, and their lower sides are
-whitish, which tint is due to abundant white stomata. In that respect
-they resemble leaves of balsam fir and hemlock.
-
-The cones, like those of other species of fir, stand erect on the
-branches, and average about two and a half inches in length. They are
-smoother than the cones of most pines. They mature in September. The
-winged seeds average one-eighth inch in length, and are fairly abundant.
-The Fraser fir grows as tall as balsam fir, from forty to sixty feet,
-and the trunk diameter is greater, being sometimes thirty inches, though
-half of that is nearer an average. When of pole size, that is, from five
-to eight inches in diameter, Fraser fir is often tall, straight and
-shapely. Its form, however, depends upon the situation in which it
-grows. If in the open, it develops a relatively short trunk and a broad,
-pyramidal crown. This fir differs from balsam fir in its choice of
-situation. The latter, though not exactly a swamp tree, prefers damp
-ground, while Fraser fir flourishes on slopes and mountain tops.
-
-On the mountains of western North Carolina fir grows in mixture with red
-spruce. Sometimes the fir is fifty per cent of the stand, but usually it
-is less, and frequently not more than fifteen per cent. Few fir trees in
-that locality are two feet in diameter. They grow with fair rapidity in
-their early years, but decline in rate as age comes on. It may be
-observed in traveling through the stands of mixed spruce and fir among
-the high ranges of the southern Appalachian mountains that the
-proportion of spruce is much higher in old stands than in young. That is
-due to the greater age to which spruce lives. Trees of that species
-continue to stand after the firs have died of old age. On the other
-hand, fir outnumbers spruce in many young stands. That is because fir
-reproduces better than spruce, and grows with more vigor at first. In
-stands of second growth the fir often predominates. It depends to some
-extent upon the conditions under which the second growth has its start.
-Fir does not germinate well if the ground has been bared by fire and the
-humus burned. Consequently, old burns do not readily grow up in fir. The
-best stands occur where the natural conditions have not been much
-disturbed further than by removing the growth. Fortunately conditions on
-the summit and elevated slopes of the southern Appalachians do not favor
-destructive forest fires. Rain is frequent and abundant, and the shade
-cast by evergreen trees keeps the humus too moist for fire. To this
-condition is due the comparative immunity from fire of the high mountain
-forests of fir and spruce. Sometimes, however, fires sweep through fine
-stands with disastrous results. The destruction is more serious because
-no second forest of evergreens is likely on tracts which have been
-severely burned.
-
-A report by the State Geological Survey on forest conditions in western
-North Carolina, issued in 1911, predicted that spruce and fir forests
-aggregating from 100,000 to 150,000 acres among the high mountain
-ranges, will become barren tracts, because of the destructive effect of
-fires stripping the ground of humus.
-
-The cutters of pulpwood in the southern Appalachian mountains take
-Fraser fir wherever they find it, mix it with spruce, and the two woods
-go to market as one. Statistics show the annual cut of both, but do not
-give them separately. The output of spruce, including fir, south of
-Pennsylvania, in 1910 was 115,993 cords, equivalent to about 80,000,000
-feet, board measure. Most of it was red spruce, but some was fir, and in
-North Carolina probably twenty-five per cent was of that species. The
-total pulpwood cut in that state was 14,509 cords of the two woods
-combined, and probably 3,800 cords were Fraser fir.
-
-The wood of Fraser fir is very light. An air dry sample from Roan
-mountain, N. C., weighed 22.22 pounds per cubic foot. That is lighter
-than balsam fir, which is classed among the very light woods. It is
-stronger than balsam fir by twenty-five per cent. The wood is soft,
-compact and the bands of summerwood in the annual rings are rather broad
-and light colored and are not conspicuous. The medullary rays are thin
-but numerous. The color is light brown, the sapwood mostly white.
-
-This wood is not of much commercial value except for pulp. It is not
-abundant, and it is not suited to many purposes. It is suitable for
-boxes, being light in weight and moderately strong; but other woods
-which grow in the same region are as good in all respects and are more
-abundant, and will be used in preference to fir for that purpose. The
-decrease in area on account of fires, and in quantity because of
-pulpwood operations, indicates that forest grown Fraser fir has seen its
-best days. On the other hand, the United States Forest Service has
-acquired tracts of land on the summits of the mountains where this
-species has its natural home, and the growth will be protected from
-fires and from destructive cutting, and there is no danger that the
-species will be exterminated.
-
-It is an interesting tree. It contributes to the pleasure of tourists
-and campers among the southern mountains. The fragrance of its leaves
-and young branches add a zest to the summer camp. The traveler who is
-overtaken in the woods by the coming of night, prepares his bed of the
-boughs of this tree and of red spruce and sleeps soundly beneath an
-evergreen canopy. Pillows and cushions stuffed with fir needles carry
-memories of the mountains to distant cities.
-
-In one respect this tree of the high mountains is like the untamed
-Indians who once roamed in that region: it refuses to be civilized. The
-tree has been planted in parks in this country and in Europe, but it
-does not prosper. Its form loses something of the grace and symmetry
-which it exhibits in its mountain home, and its life is short. Those who
-wish to see Fraser fir at its best must see it where nature planted it
-high on the southern mountains.
-
-    ARIZONA CORK FIR (_Abies arizonica_) very closely resembles forms of
-    the alpine fir, and may not be a separate species. Sudworth was
-    unable to distinguish its foliage and cones from those of alpine
-    fir, but the bark is softer. Its range is on the San Francisco
-    mountains in Arizona. It is very scarce, and only local use of its
-    wood is possible.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-NOBLE FIR
-
-[Illustration: NOBLE FIR]
-
-
-
-
-NOBLE FIR
-
-(_Abies Nobilis_)
-
-
-This tree's name is justified by its appearance when growing at its best
-in the forests of the northwest Pacific coast. It is tall, shapely, and
-imposing. It often exceeds a height of 250 feet, and a trunk diameter of
-six feet. It is sometimes eight feet in diameter. No tree is more
-shapely and symmetrical. When grown in dense stands the first limb may
-be 150 feet from the ground, and from that point to the base there is
-little taper. It over-reaches so many of its forest companions that it
-is sometimes designated locally as bigtree; but it is believed that
-lumber is never so spoken of, and that the name applies to the standing
-tree only. The Indians of the region where it grows call it tuck-tuck,
-but information as to the meaning of these words is not at hand. In
-northern California, and probably still farther north, this species is
-often called red fir, feather-cone red fir, or bracted red fir. The
-color of the heartwood and the appearance of the cone, doubtless are
-responsible for these names. There is a tendency in the fir-growing
-regions of the West to call all firs either white or red, depending upon
-the color of the heartwood. There are ten or more species of fir west of
-the Rocky Mountains, and to the layman they all look much alike, but to
-botanists they are interesting objects of study.
-
-The range of noble fir covers parts of three states, but the whole of no
-one. Its northern limit is in Washington, its southern in northern
-California, and it follows the mountains across western Oregon. It often
-forms extensive forests on the Cascade mountains of Washington. It is
-most abundant at elevations of from 2,500 to 5,000 feet in southwestern
-Washington and northwestern Oregon. On the eastern and northern slopes
-of those mountains it is of smaller size and is less abundant. Like
-several other of the extraordinarily large western trees, it keeps
-pretty close to the warm, moist coast of the Pacific.
-
-The shining, blue-green color of the leaves is a conspicuous
-characteristic of noble fir as it appears in the forest. They vary in
-length from an inch to an inch and a half. They usually curl, twist, and
-turn their points upward and backward, away from the end of the branch
-which bears them. The cones, following the fashion of firs, stand
-upright on the twigs, and are conspicuous objects. They are four or five
-inches in length, which is rather large for firs, but not the largest.
-The seeds are half an inch long, and are winged. They are well provided
-with the means of flight, but many of them never have an opportunity to
-test their wings, for the dextrous Douglas squirrel cuts the cones from
-the highest trees, and when they fall to the ground he pulls them apart
-with his feet and teeth, and the seeds pay him for his pains. If cones
-ripen on the trees and the released seeds sail away, there are birds of
-various feather waiting to receive them. Consequently, the noble fir
-plants comparatively few seeds. Their ratio of fertility is low at best,
-but that is partly compensated for by the large numbers produced.
-
-Thick stands of noble fir are not common. It generally is found, a few
-trees here and there, mixed with other species. Sawmills find it
-unprofitable to keep the lumber separate from other kinds. It does not
-pay to do so for two reasons. Extra labor is required to handle it in
-that way, and there is a prejudice against fir lumber. It does not
-appeal to buyers. For that reason some operators have called this timber
-Oregon larch, and have sent it to market under that name. That is a
-trick of the trade which has been put into practice many times and with
-many woods. The purpose in the instance of noble fir was to pass it for
-the larch which grows in the northern Rocky Mountain region. The two
-woods are so different that no person acquainted with one would mistake
-it for the other. A recent government report of woods used for
-manufacturing purposes in Washington does not list a foot of noble fir.
-The inference is that it must be going to factories under some other
-name, for it is incredible that this wood should be put to no use at all
-in the region of its best development.
-
-Noble fir is of slow growth, and the large trunks are very old, the
-oldest not less than 800 years. The summerwood forms a narrow, dark band
-in the annual ring. Medullary rays are numerous, but very thin and
-inconspicuous. The wood possesses little figure. It weighs twenty-eight
-pounds per cubic foot, which is four pounds less than the average
-Douglas fir. It is very low in fuel value, as softwoods usually are
-which have little resin. It is very weak, and it bends easily. It is
-soft, easily worked, and polishes well. This is one of its most valuable
-qualities. It is deficient in a number of properties which are desirable
-in wood, but partly makes up for them in its ability to take a smooth
-finish. It is pale brown, streaked with red, the sapwood darker. In that
-particular it is unusual, for most softwoods have sap lighter in color
-than the heart.
-
-It has been already pointed out that difficulty is met when an attempt
-is made to list the uses of noble fir, because it loses its name before
-it leaves the sawmill yard and takes the name of some other wood, and
-those who put it to use often do so without knowing what the wood really
-is. It is known that some of it is manufactured into house siding. It
-works nicely and looks well, but since it is liable to quick decay it
-must be kept well painted when it is exposed to weather. It serves as
-interior finish, and this seems to be one of its best uses. It is so
-employed for steamboats and for houses, and many shipments of it have
-been made to boat builders on the Atlantic coast. It is used for
-shipping boxes, and its light color fits it for that purpose, as the
-wood shows painting and stenciling to good advantage.
-
-European nurseries have propagated noble fir with success, but it does
-not do so well in the eastern part of the United States, though it lives
-through winters as far north as Massachusetts. It is not known to have
-been planted for other than ornamental purposes. Unless it would grow
-much faster in plantations than in its wild state, it will be too long
-in maturing to make it attractive to the timber planter.
-
-    WHITE FIR (_Abies concolor_). The whiteness of the wood and the
-    silver color of the young branches give this species its name, but
-    it is not the sole possessor of that name, but shares it with three
-    other firs. In California, Idaho, and Utah it is called balsam fir.
-    The branches and upper parts of the trunk where the bark is thin,
-    are covered with blisters which contain white resin. In Utah it is
-    known as white balsam, as silver fir in some parts of California,
-    and as black gum in Utah. The reason for that name is not apparent,
-    unless it refers to the black bark on old trees. It has several
-    other names which are combinations of white and silver with some
-    other term. Its range is mostly in the Sierras and in the Rocky
-    Mountain ranges, extending from southern Colorado to the mountains
-    of California, north through Oregon, and south through New Mexico
-    and Arizona. The immense proportions are reached only in the Sierra
-    growth, those trees in the Rockies being hardly above ordinary size.
-    In its free growth the tree is reputed to be the only one of its
-    genus found in the arid regions of the Great Basin, and similar
-    localities in Arizona and New Mexico. It is not distinguished by all
-    botanists from the similar species, _Abies grandis_.
-
-    White fir attains a height of 250 feet and a diameter of six in some
-    instances, but the average size of mature trees among the Sierra
-    Nevadas is 150 feet tall and three or four in diameter. In the Rocky
-    Mountain region the tree is smaller. It grows from 3,000 to 9,000
-    feet above sea level. The leaves are long for the fir genus, and
-    vary from two to three inches. The tree's bark is black near the
-    base of large trunks but of less somber color near the top. Near the
-    base of large trees the bark is sometimes six inches thick. The wood
-    of this species is light and soft. Carpenters consider it coarse
-    grained, by which they mean that it does not polish nicely. It is
-    brittle and weak. The rings of annual growth are generally broad,
-    with the bands of darker colored summerwood prominent. In lumber
-    sawed tangentially, rings produces distinct figure, but it is not
-    generally regarded as pleasing. The medullary rays are prominent for
-    a softwood, but quarter-sawing does not add much to the wood's
-    appearance. It decays quickly in alternate wet and dry situations.
-    Trees are apt to be affected with wind shake, and the wood's
-    disposition to splinter in course of manufacture has prejudiced many
-    users against it. However, it has some good qualities. The wood is
-    free from objectionable odor, and this qualifies it as box material.
-    Fruit shippers can use it without fear of contaminating their wares.
-    It is light in color, and stenciling looks well on it. Its weight is
-    likewise in its favor.
-
-    Trees of this species seldom occur in pure stands of large extent,
-    but are scattered among forests of other kinds. Sawmills cut the fir
-    as they come to it, but seldom go much out of their way to get it.
-    The United States census for 1910 showed that 132,327,000 feet of
-    white fir lumber were cut in the whole country, but as several
-    species pass by that name it is not possible to determine how much
-    belonged to the one under discussion, but probably about half, as
-    that much was credited to California where this tree is at its best.
-    The fir does not suffer in comparison with trees associated with it.
-    Its trunk does not average quite as large as the pines, yet larger
-    than most of the cedars; but in height it equals the best of its
-    associates, and in symmetrical form, and beauty of color of foliage,
-    it must be acknowledged superior. The dark intensity of its green
-    crown when thrown against the blue summer skies of the Sierras forms
-    a picture which probably no tree in the world can surpass and few
-    can equal. Its cones suffer from the depredations of the ever-hungry
-    Douglas squirrel which is too impatient to wait for nature's slow
-    process to ripen and scatter the seeds; but he climbs the trunks
-    which stand as straight as plummet lines two hundred feet or more,
-    and clinging to the topmost swaying branches, clips the cone stems
-    with his teeth, and the cone goes to the ground like a shot. A
-    person who will stand still in a Sierra forest in late summer, where
-    firs abound, will presently hear the cones thumping the ground on
-    all sides of him. If his eyes are good, and he looks carefully, he
-    may see the squirrels, silhouetted against the sky on far-away tree
-    tops, seeming so small in the distance that they look the size of
-    mice; yet the Douglas squirrel is about the size of the eastern red
-    squirrel. He does not always let the cones fall when he cuts their
-    stems, but sometimes carries them down the long trunk to the ground,
-    then goes back for another. The squirrel hoards the cones for
-    winter, but does not neglect to fully satisfy his appetite while
-    about the work. A single hoard--carefully covered with pine needles
-    as a roof against winter snow--may contain five or ten bushels of
-    cones, which are not all fir cones, but these predominate in most
-    hoards.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-GRAND FIR
-
-[Illustration: GRAND FIR]
-
-
-
-
-GRAND FIR
-
-(_Abies Grandis_)
-
-
-In California, Oregon, and Idaho this tree is called white fir, but it
-has several other names, silver fir and yellow fir in Montana and Idaho.
-In California some know it as Oregon fir, western white fir, and great
-California fir. Grand fir is more a botanist's than a lumberman's name.
-
-The range extends from British Columbia to Mendocino county, California,
-and to the western slopes of the continental divide in Montana. The
-coastal growth lies in a comparatively narrow strip. In the mountains an
-altitude of 7,000 feet is sometimes reached, the soil and moisture
-requirements, however, being the same. The largest trees are found in
-bottom lands near the coast where trunks 300 feet tall and six feet in
-diameter are found, but the average is much less. In mountain regions at
-considerable altitudes a height of 100 feet and a diameter of two or
-three is an average size. The leaves are about an inch and a half in
-length, occasionally two and a half. They are arranged in rows along the
-sides of the long, flexible branches. Cones are from two to four inches
-long, and bear winged seeds three-eighths of an inch long, the wings
-being half an inch or more in length. The bark of old trunks may be two
-inches thick, but generally is thinner. It is unfortunate that the wood
-of the large western firs lacks so many qualities which make it
-valuable. It is generally inferior to the woods of Douglas fir, western
-hemlock, Sitka spruce and the western cedars, sugar pine, and western
-yellow pine. The wood of grand fir is light, soft, weak, brittle, and
-not durable in contact with the soil. Its light color and the abundance
-of clear material in the giant trunks are redeeming features. These
-ought to open the way for much use in the future. It cannot find place
-in heavy construction, because it is not strong enough. That shuts it
-from one important place for which it is otherwise fitted. Box makers
-find it suitable, as all fir woods are, and large demand should come
-from that quarter. Trunks that will cut from 15,000 to 20,000 feet of
-lumber that is practically clear, and of good color, and light in
-weight, are bound to have value for boxes and slack cooperage. Trees
-grow with fair rapidity. Annual rings are usually broad, and the bands
-of summerwood are wide and distinct. This guarantees a certain figure in
-lumber sawed tangentially, but it is not a figure to compare in beauty
-with some of the hardwoods, or even with Douglas fir, or the southern
-yellow pines. It ought to be a first class material for certain kinds
-of woodenware, particularly for tubs, pails, and small stave vessels,
-and as far as it has been used in that way it has been satisfactory.
-It cannot be recommended for outside house finish, such as
-weather-boarding, cornice, and porch work, because of its susceptibility
-to decay; but it meets requirements for plain interior finish, and tests
-have shown it to be good material for cores or backing over which to
-glue veneers of hardwood.
-
-While the eastern states have not yet wakened up to the fact that this
-tree is of value in ornamental planting, its decorative qualities in
-open stands have been recognized for some time in eastern Europe, where
-trees of considerable size, promising to attain almost primeval
-proportions, are already flourishing.
-
-RED FIR (_Abies magnifica_) is the largest fir in America. At its best
-it attains a height of 250 feet and a diameter of ten, but that size is
-rare. It has several names, magnificent fir, which is a translation of
-its botanical name; redbark fir, California red fir, and golden fir. The
-reference to red which occurs in its several names, is descriptive of
-its heartwood. Its range lies on the Cascade mountains of southern
-Oregon, and along the entire length of the western slope of the Sierra
-Nevadas in California. It is common in southern Oregon and sometimes
-forms nearly pure forests at elevations of 5,000 or 7,000 feet. It is
-plentiful in the Sierra Nevada ranges at altitudes of from 6,000 to
-9,000 feet. In southern California it ascends 10,000 feet. On old trees
-the limbs, regularly whorled in collars of five, are usually pendulous
-or down-growing and are regularly and precisely subdivided into branches
-and twigs, the short, stiff blue-green leaves, which persist for ten
-years, closely covering the upper side of the latter. Its cones are the
-largest of the firs, are dark purple in color and grow erect on the
-branches.
-
-The cones are six or eight inches long, and three or four in diameter.
-They present a fine appearance as they stand erect on the branches. The
-seeds are large, but their strong wings are able to carry them away from
-the immediate presence of the parent tree. The wings are extremely
-beautiful, and flash light with the colors of the rainbow. Old trees are
-protected by hard, dark-colored bark five or six inches thick. A forest
-fire may pass through a stand of old firs without burning through the
-bark, but young trees are not so protected, and are liable to be killed.
-
-A study of the wood of the red fir reveals rather more favorable
-qualities than the other firs afford. Sap and heartwood are more easily
-distinguished than in the other species, the sapwood being much lighter
-in color than the reddish heart. Contrary to the general rule among the
-firs, this wood possesses considerable durability, especially when used
-for purposes which bring it in contact with the soil. It is, however,
-light, soft and weak, but has a close, fine grain and compact structure.
-Seasoning defects, such as checking and warping, are liable to occur
-unless properly guarded against. It weighs 29.30 pounds per cubic foot,
-or nearly three pounds less than Douglas fir. It is used for rough
-lumber, packing boxes, bridge floors, interior house finish, and fuel.
-
-SHASTA RED FIR (_Abies magnifica shastensis_) is pronounced by George B.
-Sudworth to be only a form of red fir (_Abies magnifica_) and not a
-separate species. The principal difference is in the cones. The Shasta
-form was discovered on the mountain of that name in northern California
-in 1890 by Professor J. G. Lemmon. It was supposed to be confined to
-that locality, but was subsequently found on the Cascade mountains in
-Oregon, and also at several points in northern California. It was later
-found in the Sierras five hundred miles south of Mount Shasta.
-
-    LOVELY FIR (_Abies amabilis_) is known by a number of names, red
-    fir, silver fir, red silver fir, lovely red fir, amabilis fir, and
-    larch. The last name is applied to this tree by lumbermen who have
-    discovered that fir lumber sells better if it is given some other
-    name. The range of this species extends from British Columbia
-    southward in the Cascade mountains through Washington to Oregon. It
-    is the common fir of the Olympic mountains and there reaches its
-    best development, sometimes a height of 250 feet and a diameter of
-    five or six; but the average, even in the best part of its range, is
-    much under that size, while in the northern country, and high on
-    mountains, it is a commonplace tree, averaging less than 100 feet
-    high, and scarcely eighteen inches in diameter. When this fir stands
-    in open ground, the whole trunk is covered with limbs from base to
-    top; but in dense stands, the limbs drop off, and a clean trunk
-    results.
-
-    Some of the largest trees rise with scarcely a limb 150 feet, and
-    above that is the small crown. The bark of young trees is covered
-    with blisters filled with resin. The bark is thin and smooth until
-    the tree is a century or more old, after which it becomes rougher,
-    and near the base may be two and a half inches thick. It is of very
-    slow growth, and a century hardly produces a trunk of small sawlog
-    size. The leaves are dark green above, and whitish below. They are
-    much crowded on the twigs, those on the underside rising with a
-    twist at the base, and standing nearly erect. They are longer than
-    those on the twig's upper side. The purple cones are conspicuous
-    objects on the tree, are from three and a half to six inches long,
-    and bear abundance of seeds which are well dispersed by wind.
-    However, the reproduction of this tree is not plentiful. The species
-    holds its own, and not much more. When artificial reforestation
-    takes place in this country, if that time ever comes, lovely fir
-    will receive scant consideration, because of its discouragingly slow
-    growth. It ranks with lodgepole pine in that respect. Nature can
-    afford to wait two hundred years for a forest to mature, but men
-    will not plant and protect when the prospect of returns is so
-    remote. The wood is light, weak, moderately stiff and hard. The
-    heartwood is pale brown, the sap nearly white. The summerwood
-    appears in thin but well-marked bands in the annual rings, and the
-    medullary rays are large enough to show slightly in quarter-sawed
-    lumber. Growing as it does, interspersed with really valuable woods,
-    the lovely fir is not highly thought of from a commercial
-    standpoint. However, it is exploited in conjunction with the other
-    species and turned into lumber and general structural material. A
-    considerable quantity finds a market as interior finish and other
-    millwork. It has many of the properties which fit it for the
-    manufacture of packing boxes, particularly those intended for dried
-    fruit and light merchandise. It bears considerable resemblance to
-    spruce. The utilization of this and similar species of western fir
-    for pulp has been suggested, but little has been done. It has been
-    planted ornamentally in parts of Europe, but there is no comparison
-    between the decorative appearance of this fir and its associated
-    species, the others which are in cultivation being much superior.
-    Removal from the old habitat militates greatly against its natural
-    beauty and reduces it to the level of the ordinary.
-
-    ALPINE FIR (_Abies lasiocarpa_) is so called because it thrives on
-    high mountains and in the far North. It grows in southern Alaska, up
-    to latitude 60°, and southward to Oregon and Colorado. Its other
-    names are balsam, white balsam, Oregon balsam, mountain balsam,
-    white fir, pumpkin tree, down-cone, and downy-cone subalpine fir. It
-    grows from sea level in Alaska up to 7,000 feet or more in the
-    South. It is not abundant, and not very well known. However, its
-    slender, spirelike top distinguishes it from all associates and it
-    may be recognized at long distances by that characteristic. It
-    endures cold at 40 degrees below zero, and summer climate at 90
-    degrees. Trees are usually small, and the trunks are covered with
-    limbs to the ground. On high mountains the lower limbs often lie
-    flat on the ground, and the twigs sometimes take root. Under very
-    favorable circumstances this fir may reach a height of 160 feet and
-    a diameter of four, but the usual size is less than half of it, even
-    when conditions are fair, while on bleak mountains mature trees may
-    be only three or four feet high, with most of the limbs prostrate.
-    The sprawling form of growth makes the tree peculiarly liable to be
-    killed by fire. The bark is thin, smooth, and flinty; and in color
-    it is ashy gray or chalky white. Leaves are one and a half inches or
-    less long; the purple cones from two to four inches. Trees bear
-    cones at about twelve years of age. The seeds are equipped with
-    violet or purplish wings, and they fly far enough to find the best
-    available places to plant themselves. The wood is narrow-ringed,
-    light, soft, and in color from pale straw to light yellowish-brown.
-    It is fairly straight grained, and splits and works easily; but
-    trunks are very knotty. Its best service in the past has consisted
-    in supplying fuel to mining camps and mountain stock ranges.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-DOUGLAS FIR
-
-[Illustration: DOUGLAS FIR]
-
-
-
-
-DOUGLAS FIR
-
-(_Pseudotsuga Taxifolia_)
-
-
-During one hundred and ten years, from 1803 until the present time,
-botanists and others have proposed and rejected names for this tree. It
-has been called a fir, pine, and spruce, with various combinations, but
-the name now seems to be fixed. Laymen have disputed almost as much as
-botanists as to what the tree should be named. It has been called red
-fir, Douglas spruce, Douglas fir, yellow fir, spruce, fir, pine, red
-pine, Puget Sound pine, Oregon pine, cork-barked Douglas spruce, and
-Douglas tree. More than a dozen varieties are distinguished in
-cultivation.
-
-The range of Douglas fir covers most of the Rocky Mountain region in the
-United States and northward to central British Columbia; on the coast
-from the latitude of southern Alaska to the Sierra Nevada mountains in
-central California. It reaches its maximum development in western
-Washington and Oregon, particularly between the Cascade mountains and
-the Pacific ocean. In these Cascade forests, stands are found which
-yield from 50,000 to 100,000 feet per acre, and mills in that region cut
-the longest timbers in the world, some two feet square and 100 feet
-long.
-
-Two forms of Douglas fir are recognized by botanists, not essentially
-different except in size and habit of growth. One is the finely
-developed form on the Pacific coast where the climate is warm and the
-air moist. The other is the Rocky Mountain form which is smaller and
-shows the effect of cold, dryness, and other adverse circumstances. When
-the seeds of the two forms are planted in nurseries, where they enjoy
-identical advantages, the coast form outgrows the other in Europe, but
-the Rocky Mountain form thrives best in the eastern part of the United
-States.
-
-Douglas fir needles are from three-quarters to one and a quarter inches
-long, and of a dark, yellow-green color. They remain on the twigs about
-eight years. Cones are from two to four and a half inches long, and are
-borne on long stems. The seeds, which ripen in August, are of light,
-reddish-brown color with irregular white spots on the lower side; are
-about a quarter of an inch long, and are provided with wings. Trees of
-this species in the moist climate of the Pacific slope average much
-larger than those in the mountains farther east. The largest are 300
-feet high, occasionally more, and from eight to ten in diameter. The
-average among the Rocky Mountains is from eighty to 100 feet high, and
-two to four in diameter. Young trees are slender with crowded branches.
-In thick stands the lower limbs die and the trunks remain bare, except
-an occasional small branch. Douglas fir at its best grows in thick
-stands, with crowns forming a canopy so dense that sunlight can scarcely
-reach the ground. The result of this is that other species have little
-show where Douglas fir prevails.
-
-The bark of large trunks attains a thickness of eight or ten inches near
-the base. Young bark contains blisters filled with resin, similar to
-those of balsam and other species of fir.
-
-The wood is light red or yellow, the sap much whiter. Lumbermen
-recognize two kinds of wood, yellow and red. The former is considered
-more valuable. Both may come from the same trunk, and the reason for the
-difference in color and quality is not well understood. It cannot be
-attributed to soil or climate, or to the age of the tree, and it does
-not seem to depend upon rate of growth. The bands of summerwood are
-broad and quite distinct. A few scattered resin ducts are visible under
-a magnifying glass of low power. The medullary rays are numerous, rather
-large, frequently yellow, conspicuous when wood is split radially. The
-wood's average weight is given by Sargent at 32.14 pounds per cubic
-foot, yet some specimens exceed forty pounds. It is hard, strong, and
-stiff. In mechanical properties it rates about the same as longleaf pine
-of the South. Elaborate tests have been made to determine which of these
-woods is the better for heavy construction, and neither appears to win
-over the other. In one respect, however, Douglas fir has a clear
-advantage over its southern rival: it may be had in much larger pieces.
-No other commercial wood of the world equals it in that particular. The
-Douglas fir flagstaff at the Kew gardens in England was 159 feet long,
-eight inches in diameter at the top, more than three feet at the base.
-The extraordinary size of squared beams cut from this species has led to
-great demand for it for heavy construction in Europe and this country.
-The pines from the Baltic sea region of northern Europe, which held
-undisputed place in heavy work during centuries, has now yielded that
-place to Douglas fir and longleaf pine.
-
-No other single species in the United States or in the world equals the
-annual sawmill cut of Douglas fir. The four species of southern yellow
-pines, if counted as one, surpass it; but singly, not one comes up to
-it. In 1910 the lumber cut from this fir amounted to 5,203,644,000 feet,
-which exceeded one-eighth of the total lumber cut in the United States.
-The importance of such a timber tree can scarcely be estimated. The
-available supply in the western forests is very large and will last many
-years, even if the demand for more than 5,000,000,000 feet a year
-continues to be met.
-
-The timber is exported to practically every civilized nation in the
-world. Shipbuilding creates a heavy demand. Some of the leading European
-nations use it as deck lining for battleships, and except mahogany and
-teak, it is said to have no equal for that purpose. Its cheapness gives
-it a decided advantage over those woods.
-
-Every important lumber market in the United States handles Douglas fir,
-and its uses are so many that it would be easier to list industries
-which do not use it than those which do. It is manufactured into more
-than fifty classes of commodities, in Illinois alone. Among these are
-boats, railroad cars, electrical apparatus, farm machinery, laundry
-supplies, ladders, refrigerators, musical instruments, fixtures for
-offices, stores, and banks, and sash, doors, and blinds. This list of
-uses shows that its place in the country's industries includes much more
-than rough construction. It may be stained in imitation of valuable
-foreign and domestic woods, including walnut, mahogany, and oak. The
-natural grain and figure of the wood may be deepened and improved by
-stains, and this is much done by manufacturers of interior finish,
-panels, and store and office fixtures. There is practically no limit to
-the size of panels which may be cut in single pieces. It is easy to
-procure planks large enough for whole counter tops.
-
-The best grain of Douglas fir is not brought out by quarter-sawing. The
-figures desired are not those produced by the medullary rays, but by the
-rings of annual growth. Therefore, the sawyer at the mill cuts his best
-logs--if intended for figured lumber--tangentially, as far as possible.
-In the state of Washington, which leads all other states in the
-production of Douglas fir, its chief use as a manufactured product is
-for doors, sash, and blinds, and the annual consumption in that industry
-exceeds 50,000,000 feet. It is cut in veneers, and it is likewise used
-as corewood to back veneers. Crossarms for telegraph and telephone poles
-demand 35,000,000 feet yearly in Washington alone, and many thousands of
-poles are of this wood. It is third among the crosstie woods of the
-United States, the combined cut of oaks standing first, and the pine
-second. It is rapidly taking high position as material for large water
-pipes and for braces, props, stulls, and lagging in mines and for paving
-blocks for streets.
-
-    BRISTLECONE FIR (_Abies venusta_) is pronounced by George B.
-    Sudworth to be "the most curious fir tree in the world." It is found
-    almost exclusively in Monterey county, California, but a few trees
-    grow outside of that circumscribed area. It has been called Santa
-    Lucia fir, because it was once supposed to exist only in canyons of
-    Santa Lucia mountains, but its range is now known to be more
-    extensive. Monterey county, California, is of peculiar interest to
-    dendrologists. Three species of trees are either confined to that
-    area, or have their best development there. They are Monterey
-    cypress (_Cupressus macrocarpa_), Monterey pine (_Pinus radiata_),
-    and bristlecone fir. All are peculiar trees: the cypress because of
-    its ragged form and extremely limited range, the pine because of
-    its exceedingly rapid growth when given a chance, and the fir,
-    because of its peculiar form of crown, odd appearance of cone, and
-    extraordinary weight of wood. No reason is apparent why that
-    particular point on the California coast should have brought into
-    existence--or at least should have gathered to itself--three
-    peculiar tree species. Bristlecone fir is well named from the
-    bristles an inch long covering the cone. The leaves, too, are
-    peculiar, bearing much resemblance to small willow leaves. Their
-    upper sides are deep yellow-green and the under sides silvery. The
-    largest leaves are two inches long, cones three inches. They ripen
-    in August, and soon afterwards scatter their seeds. The tree is not
-    a prolific seeder, and it is believed that its range is becoming
-    smaller. Bristlecone's form of crown has been compared to an Indian
-    club, the large end on the ground and the handle pointing upward.
-    Trees from sixty to eighty feet high have such "handles" twenty or
-    thirty feet long. That peculiarity of shape makes the tree
-    recognizable among associated species at a distance of several
-    miles. The recorded weight of the wood is 42.27 pounds per cubic
-    foot, which is nearly twice the weight of some other firs. The wood
-    is moderately soft, but very firm. Few uses for it have been
-    reported. Trunks are very knotty, and are too few in number to be of
-    importance as a source of lumber. The tree has been planted
-    successfully for ornament in the south of Europe.
-
-    BIGCONE SPRUCE (_Pseudotsuga macrocarpa_) is of the same genus as
-    Douglas fir and bears much resemblance to it, but is smaller, and
-    its range lies wholly outside that of its northern relative. It is a
-    southern California species, occupying mountain slopes and canyons
-    in Santa Barbara and San Diego counties. It is found from 3,000 to
-    5,000 feet above sea level. Trees average forty or fifty feet in
-    height and two or three in diameter. The leaves are approximately of
-    the same size as those of Douglas fir; but the cones are much
-    larger, hence the name by which the tree is known. It is called
-    hemlock as often as spruce. The cones are from four to seven inches
-    long, hang down, and usually occupy the topmost branches of trees.
-    The winged seeds are half an inch long. The bark is six inches or
-    less in thickness. The wood is inferior in most ways to that of
-    Douglas fir, lighter, weaker, and less elastic. Its color is reddish
-    brown. It has never contributed much lumber to the market and never
-    will. Its range is local and the form of the tree is not of the
-    best. An occasional log reaches a sawmill, but the principal demand
-    is for fuel.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BIGTREE
-
-[Illustration: BIGTREE]
-
-
-
-
-BIGTREE
-
-(_Sequoia Washingtoniana_)
-
-
-Botanists have had a hard time giving this tree a Latin name which will
-meet the requirements of technical classification, but an English name
-acceptable everywhere was early found for it--bigtree. No fewer than a
-dozen names have been proposed by botanists. Most of them attempt to
-express the idea of vastness or grandeur; but the simple English name
-comes directly to the point and ends the controversy as far as the
-common name is concerned.
-
-Everything connected with this tree is interesting. Geologically, it is
-as old as the yellow poplar. There were five species of sequoias in the
-northern hemisphere, in Europe and America, before the ice age. They
-grew in the North, nearly to the Arctic circle, at a time when the
-climate of those regions was milder than it is now. The later advance of
-the ice southward overwhelmed three species of bigtrees, and pushed two
-survivors into the region which is now California. These are the bigtree
-and the redwood. It is not known how long ago it was that the ice sheet
-did its destructive work, but it antedated human history, and the
-gigantic trees have been in California since that time.
-
-Long after the ice age ceased generally in North America it continued
-among the high Sierras of California, and the bigtrees to this day give
-a hint of it in the peculiar outlines of their range. They are scattered
-north and south along the face of the Sierra Nevada mountains in
-California, a distance of 260 miles, and at elevations from 4,500 to
-8,000 feet.
-
-The aggregate of the total areas is about fifty square miles. The stand
-is not continuous, but consists of "groves," that is, isolated stands
-with wide intervals between, where no trees of this species are found.
-The arrangement suggests that the bigtree forest was cut in sections by
-glaciers which descended from the high mountains to the plains, a
-distance of one hundred miles or more, crossing the belt of sequoias at
-right angles. The glaciers withdrew thousands of years ago, and their
-tracks down the mountain slopes have long been covered by forests; but
-the bigtree groves, for some unknown reason, never spread into the
-intervening spaces, but today are separated by wide tracts in which not
-a seedling or an old trunk or log of that species is to be found. This
-is one of the mysteries which add interest to those wonderful trees--why
-they cannot extend their range beyond the circumscribed limits which
-they occupied thousands of years ago.
-
-It was claimed for a long time and was quite generally believed that
-bigtrees were not reproducing, that there "were no little bigtrees."
-That was conclusively disproved by Fred G. Plummer, geographer of the
-United States Forest Service, who made a scientific study of a small
-grove, measured the trees, and actually counted and classified them. His
-work showed that there were in the area which he investigated:
-
-  Trees containing 100,000 to 120,000 feet each        2
-  Trees containing 80,000 to 100,000 feet each        13
-  Trees containing 60,000 to 80,000 feet each         49
-  Trees containing 40,000 to 60,000 feet each        112
-  Trees containing 20,000 to 40,000 feet each        251
-  Trees containing less than 20,000 feet each        353
-  "Little bigtrees"                                2,682
-                                                   -----
-                                            Total  3,462
-
-Bigtree is distantly related to southern cypress, and the shapes of very
-old trees of both species bear some resemblance. Bigtree leaves do not
-fall annually as those of bald cypress do. They are from one-eighth to
-one-fourth of an inch long, and on the leading shoots they may be half
-an inch in length. Cones are from two to three and a half inches long,
-and they ripen their seeds the second year, but the empty cones may
-adhere to the branches several years. The seeds are a quarter of an inch
-long, and have wings sufficient to carry them a hundred yards or more.
-The trees bear abundance of seeds, in proportion to the small number of
-branches. Though shapely and well clothed with limbs when young, the
-crown contracts with age, and consists of a few enormous, crooked limbs,
-almost destitute of twigs and small branches. One of these trees may
-actually bear more twigs when the trunk is only a foot in diameter than
-will be on the same trunk when it is fifteen or twenty feet in diameter.
-The old tree trunks are often without limbs to a height of 100 or 150
-feet.
-
-The Douglas squirrel is the bigtree's greatest enemy. In proportion to
-size, this little creature probably eats ten times as many tree seeds as
-the most ravenous hog that roams the forest. One of the first things
-that impresses a visitor in a grove of bigtrees is the rich brown of the
-bark of some of the trunks. All are not brown alike, or at all seasons.
-The trees on which the seed harvest is ready are the brownest, thanks to
-the sharp claws, the tireless energy, and keen appetite of the Douglas
-squirrel. He goes up and down the trunks for three square meals a day
-among the clusters of cone-bearing branches two hundred or three hundred
-feet above, and makes several extra trips for exercise; and at each
-scratch of his briery foot he kicks off scales of bark, until the whole
-trunk is "scratched raw." The detached scales of bark accumulate in a
-mound about the base of the tree, where they have been so accumulating
-for centuries. It is fortunate that those old trees have bark from one
-to two feet thick. They can afford to be scratched for a month or two
-each year.
-
-These are the heaviest trees in America, notwithstanding their wood is
-light. It weighs less than northern white cedar. The largest bigtree
-trunks weigh more than 2,000,000 pounds. In order to stand at all, they
-must stand plumb. It is a provision of nature that the old trees are
-almost branchless, otherwise the wind would force them out of plumb and
-they would go down. It has been claimed that the overthrow of one of
-these giants is always brought about by one of two causes. The
-development of larger limbs on one side than on another unbalances them;
-or the wash of gullies undermines the roots on one side, and draws the
-tree that way. It is currently believed that no bigtree ever dies from
-natural causes.
-
-A good deal of pure fiction has been published regarding the size and
-age of the largest of these trees. They are old enough and large enough
-without drawing upon the imagination. The tree's base is greatly
-enlarged, but tapers rapidly the first few feet. There is little doubt
-that some of the trunks are over forty feet in diameter, one foot above
-ground, but that is not a fair measurement. The point should be five or
-six feet at least. Measured thus, about twenty-five feet inside the bark
-would represent the largest. With the bark added, the diameter would be
-nearly thirty feet. Probably not one tree in fifty, taking them as they
-occur in the whole range and counting veterans only, is fifteen feet in
-diameter five feet from the ground.
-
-There is also some extravagant guessing as to height. Too many tourists
-measure with the unaided eye, or accept a guidebook's figures. An
-authentic height of 365 feet--the measurement of a fallen trunk--is
-probably the greatest. Very few reach three hundred feet. Many
-unreliable figures have been published concerning the age of bigtrees.
-One thing can be accepted without question; size is no proof of age, in
-comparing one tree with another; neither is the number of annual rings
-in a block cut from the side of a tree a reliable factor to determine
-age. The only sure way to determine the age of one of these trees is by
-counting all the rings from the pith to bark. Care should be taken not
-to count the same ring twice, as may be done when the wood is curly.
-John Muir counted 4,000 rings in a bigtree stump. It is believed that no
-higher age is backed by the evidence of yearly rings. It was twenty-four
-feet in diameter. The count of another of like size made it 2,200 years
-old; and of still another of the same size placed its age at 1,300
-years. The Forest Service has made accurate measurement and record of
-every ring of growth in a tree that was over twenty-four feet in
-diameter, and it is shown that during certain periods of years the tree
-grew three or four times as rapidly as during other periods.
-
-The wood of bigtree is very light, soft, moderately strong, brittle,
-summerwood thin and dark rendering the rings of annual growth easily
-seen; the medullary rays are thin, numerous, and very obscure. The wood
-is light to dark red, the thin sapwood nearly white; it works easily,
-splits readily, and polishes well. It is very durable in contact with
-the soil. Trunks lie in the woods long periods before decay seriously
-attacks them; but forest fires hollow them, and finally burn them up.
-Enormous depressions are found in the forest where logs once lay, but
-which disappeared long ago, judging by the size of trees which have
-since grown in the depressions. The interior of some large trunks which
-have been worked up on sawmills showed the scars of forest fires
-centuries ago. The annual rings which covered one such scar showed that
-the burning took place 1,700 years ago.
-
-Not much can be said for the commercial uses of bigtree. Many a species
-of insignificant size is much more useful. Considerable quantities have
-been cut by sawmills. The waste is great, heavy trunks crushing badly in
-fall. Logs are so large that many of them are split with gunpowder to
-facilitate handling them. Some of the wood has been exported for lead
-pencils; other has been used for fence posts, shingles, and grapevine
-stakes, while the soft bark has been worked into novelties.
-
-    MACNAB CYPRESS (_Cupressus macnabiana_) is a California tree of
-    limited range and little commercial value. It grows in Napa, Lake,
-    Mendocino, and Trinity counties; is often little more than a
-    branching shrub, but the largest specimens may be thirty feet high
-    and fifteen inches in diameter. The wood is light, soft, and usually
-    of slow growth. The medullary rays are numerous but thin, and the
-    bands of summerwood are distinct. The cones are generally less than
-    one inch long, and the seeds have narrow wings. The foliage is
-    grayish which is due to white glands in the leaves. Forest foliage
-    is fragrant. The tree is known as white cedar, Shasta cypress, and
-    California mountain cypress.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-REDWOOD
-
-[Illustration: REDWOOD]
-
-
-
-
-REDWOOD
-
-(_Sequoia Sempervirens_)
-
-
-This tree's color is responsible for its name. It is sometimes spoken of
-as coast redwood to distinguish it from bigtree which grows in the
-interior of California. In European markets it is known as California
-redwood to distinguish it from other redwoods growing in distant parts
-of the world. Its botanical name, _Sequoia sempervirens_, means
-evergreen sequoia. The other species of sequoia is also evergreen. In
-reality, the coast redwood is less of an evergreen than the bigtree is,
-because the leaves of redwood turn brown two years before they fall, but
-there are always plenty of green leaves on the branches. The leaves are
-from one-quarter to one-half inch in length.
-
-The geographical range of redwood covers about 6,000 square miles, but
-the commercial range is scarcely one-fifth as much. The redwood belt
-extends 500 miles along the Pacific coast from southern Oregon to
-central California. It varies from ten to thirty miles in width. It is
-strictly a fog belt tree, and grows poorly outside the region of ocean
-fog, which seldom reaches an altitude more than 2,800 feet above sea
-level. Where fog is thick and frequent, and soil is moist and otherwise
-suitable, redwood forests have grown in such luxuriance that no species
-in this country exceeds it. Stands running much over 100,000 feet per
-acre are frequent, and it is said 1,000,000 feet have been cut from a
-single acre.
-
-Redwood cones are one inch or less in length. They ripen in one season.
-Seeds are quite small, and are equipped with wings. The bark is thick,
-but is much thinner than the bark of bigtrees, though it is in great
-ridges like the bark of that species. The habits of the two species, as
-to form of crown, are similar. Young redwoods, particularly if they grow
-in the open, develop symmetrical and conical crowns which they retain
-until the trunks are a foot or more in diameter. Lower limbs die and
-fall off after that, and old trees have crowns so small that it would
-seem impossible that they could supply the wood-building material for
-trunks so large. That the growth should be slow under such circumstances
-is to be expected. The ages of mature trees vary from 500 to 800 years,
-but an extreme age of 1,373 years is on record. The average is,
-therefore, considerably below that of bigtrees.
-
-Redwoods grow as tall as bigtrees, but do not equal them in diameter of
-trunk, though trees twenty feet in diameter occur.
-
-A noticeable feature of the forests is that, in a given stand, nearly
-all trees are of the same height, irrespective of size of trunk. The
-crowns go up to the light and when they reach the common level of
-others, and secure a share of light, they show no disposition to go
-higher. The doctrine which they silently put into practice is to live
-and let others live. That habit makes it possible for redwoods to grow
-in very dense stands, which they could not do if a few trees domineered
-over the others, and appropriated the light to themselves.
-
-When old age overtakes the giant redwoods, they exhibit the first
-symptoms of weakened vitality by dying at the top. Most trees over five
-hundred years old are "stag-headed." From that period they die slowly,
-but usually survive two or three hundred years after the visible signs
-of approaching death strike them.
-
-Redwood has an advantage over nearly all other needle-leaf trees in that
-it propagates by both seeds and sprouts. Few softwoods send up sprouts
-from stumps or roots. Redwoods of large size are produced that way, and
-the stumps of very old trees send up many vigorous shoots. Sometimes a
-ring of large trees surrounds a depression in the ground where the
-parent tree grew, died, and decayed.
-
-Sprouts are of course confined to the immediate proximity of the parent
-tree, but redwood seeds are scattered by the wind over vacant spaces.
-This results in dense stands where other conditions are favorable, but
-the species has never been able to establish itself far inland or high
-on mountains.
-
-In 1880 the Federal census made a rough estimate of the available
-redwood, and placed it at 25,825,000,000 feet. More than twenty years
-later, with heavy cutting all the time, private estimates placed the
-remaining stand at over 50,000,000,000 feet. The second estimate was
-unquestionably nearer correct than the first. The stand of no important
-timber tree in this country is more easily estimated than redwood. The
-forests are compact, the trees large, the trunks similar in form, and
-the well-timbered area is comparatively small. Redwood has been called
-the most important timber tree of the Pacific coast. The title probably
-confers too much, though the tree's importance is beyond question. The
-annual cut of Douglas fir is nearly ten times as large as of redwood,
-and the supply still in the forests is much greater than that of
-redwood. The cut of western yellow pine likewise exceeds the output of
-redwood, and the remaining supply is larger. The cut of western red
-cedar, including shingles, is about the same, and the remaining stand of
-cedar is very large. Western hemlock, too, exists in large quantity, and
-its importance as a source of timber supply may be equal to redwood.
-
-Redwood is frequently referred to as one of the lightest in this
-country. Its weight per cubic foot, oven-dry, is 26.2 pounds. On the
-same basis, white pine is 24, southern white cedar 20.7, northern white
-cedar 19.7, and bigtree 18.2. There are woods in Florida lighter than
-any of these. Redwood is very soft, yet it dulls tools quickly. It is
-moderately strong, a little below white pine; it is brittle, again
-ranking below white pine; it splits and works easily and polishes well.
-Few, if any woods surpass this one in splitting properties. Boards
-twelve feet long and a foot wide may be rived from selected logs, and
-they present surfaces nearly as smooth as if cut with a saw. However,
-curly and wavy redwood is not uncommon, and that, too, splits well, but
-the surface is not smooth. The width of annual rings varies, usually
-wide in young timber and narrow in old. The bands of summerwood are
-narrow and clearly defined. The surface of redwood lumber absorbs water
-quickly, yet, for some reason, creosote and other preservatives can be
-forced into the wood only with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, it
-is not necessary to treat this timber to prevent decay, for, in almost
-any position, it wears out before it rots. Shingles, and window and door
-frames of the old barracks buildings at Eureka, California, remained in
-place until fifty years of wind and driven sand wore them away.
-Railroads use the wood for ties until they wear out, not until they rot
-out. Farmers near some of the California railroads gather up the
-rejected worn ties by thousands and use them for fence posts. When
-redwood is employed as city paving blocks it is wear and not decay that
-puts them out of commission.
-
-The medullary rays of redwood are thin and very obscure, but numerous.
-Few woods show them to less advantage in quarter-sawing. The lack of
-luster in the surface of polished panels is well known. The wood's
-beauty is in its sameness and richness of color. Except curly specimens
-and burls, the wood may be said to have no figure, though in planks cut
-tangentially, the contrast of spring and summerwood displays some figure
-in a modest way. It is possible to wash much of the coloring matter out
-of the wood, if it is first chipped fine. It washes from the surface by
-ordinary exposure to weather. Red rainwater runs from a roof of new
-redwood shingles, and weatherboarding, posts, and picket fences fade
-perceptibly in a few months. This coloring matter when washed out in
-large amounts in the process of paper making has been manufactured into
-fuel gas.
-
-A complete list of the uses of redwood is not practicable, for this
-material goes into most of the large wood-using factories of this
-country, and much is exported--nearly 60,000,000 feet annually going to
-foreign countries. It has been much employed in California cities and
-towns for picket fences, and as posts for wire and plank fences. It is,
-next to western red cedar, the most important shingle wood of the
-Pacific coast. One western railroad alone had in its tracks 12,000,000
-redwood ties at one time. Builders of tanks, flumes, and water pipes
-procure some of their best material, and large quantities of it, from
-redwood sawmills. Few woods are more universally found in furniture
-factories.
-
-    GOWEN CYPRESS (_Cupressus goveniana_) follows the California coast
-    from Mendocino county, California, to San Diego, and ascends
-    mountains to the height of 3,000 feet in some localities. At its
-    best it is fifty feet high and two feet in diameter; but it extends
-    as a shrub over many sandy tracts. Specimens no more than a foot
-    high sometimes bear cones. The Gowen cypress sheds its leaves the
-    third and fourth years. Cones are from one-half to one inch long,
-    and each bears about 100 seeds. The wood is light, soft, weak, light
-    brown in color, the thick sapwood nearly white. The medullary rays
-    are numerous but obscure. The wood is used for posts and other ranch
-    purposes. Woodpeckers attack the trunks, picking holes through the
-    bark to suck the juice from the cambium layer beneath.
-
-    DWARF CYPRESS (_Cupressus pygmæa_) was formerly supposed to be a
-    stunted form of Gowen cypress. The ranges of both lie in the same
-    region, on the coast of California in Mendocino county. The average
-    height of dwarf cypress is from ten to twenty feet, with trunk
-    diameter from six to twelve inches; but in peat swamps and on
-    sterile sands it may not exceed three or four feet in height. It
-    bears abundant cones at that size, and sometimes a tree no more than
-    a foot high has mature cones. They ripen the second year, but remain
-    a long time on the branches. The trees thrive in the most forbidding
-    places, and are sometimes the only occupants of bogs or sand dunes.
-    The wood is necessarily of little value, because of the small size
-    of trees. There seems to be no record of a dwarf cypress over sixty
-    years of age; but it is believed that much older trees have fallen
-    victims to fire.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-HEMLOCK
-
-[Illustration: HEMLOCK]
-
-
-
-
-HEMLOCK
-
-(_Tsuga Canadensis_)
-
-
-Seven hemlocks are known in the world, four of them in America. Two of
-these are in the East, two in the West. The eastern species are the
-Canadian and Carolinian. The former is _Tsuga canadensis_, the latter
-_Tsuga caroliniana_. The western species are, mountain hemlock (_Tsuga
-mertensiana_), and western hemlock (_Tsuga heterophylla_). The word
-_tsuga_ is Japanese and means hemlock.
-
-The hemlock lumber in eastern markets is practically all from one
-species, which is known as hemlock in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
-Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
-Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
-Kentucky, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Ontario. In Vermont,
-Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, North
-Carolina, South Carolina; in England it is called hemlock spruce; spruce
-tree in Pennsylvania and West Virginia; spruce pine in Pennsylvania,
-Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia; to the New York Indians it
-was known as oh-neh-tah, which being interpreted means "greens on the
-stick."
-
-The range of hemlock extends east and west more than fifteen hundred
-miles, from Nova Scotia to western Wisconsin; south to Delaware and
-southern Michigan, and along the Appalachian mountains to northern
-Alabama and Georgia. The original quantity of timber was enormous, for
-large areas were covered with dense stands. The largest trees are found
-near the southern part of its range, among the mountains of Tennessee
-and North Carolina; but the bulk of the timber has always been in the
-North. It thrives best in well drained soil, but it likes cool
-situations and often develops dense forests on northern slopes or in
-deep ravines; but it maintains a foothold on ridges, on the banks of
-streams, and around the borders of swamps.
-
-The cones are very small, about a half inch in length, growing singly
-from the lower side of the branchlet. Their scales are rounded and thin,
-light brown in color. The seeds are winged and even when ripe the cones
-do not spread apart perceptibly. The seeds escape, however, slowly
-during the winter following their maturity. They are very small, and
-their wings distribute them a hundred feet or more. The seeds germinate
-best on leaf mold, but the seedling takes several years to thrust its
-roots deep into the mineral soil. During that time, growth is very slow.
-A seedling five years old may not exceed five inches in height; but when
-its roots have developed, growth is fairly rapid. The distribution of
-seeds is often facilitated by the activities of red squirrels, and
-perhaps other small mammals, which climb the trees in winter and tear
-the cones apart to get at the seeds. Many of the seeds are devoured, but
-more escape and fly away on the winter winds.
-
-Hemlock leaves are narrow and about half an inch long. Examined closely,
-particularly with a magnifying glass, rows of white dots extend from end
-to end on the under side. Small as these white points are separately,
-when seen in the aggregate they change the color of the whole crown of
-the tree. This is illustrated by looking at a hemlock from a
-distance--the upper sides of the leaves on the drooping twigs being then
-visible and the tree's aspect dark green. Approach the tree, and look up
-from its base--the under side of the leaves being then visible--and the
-dark color changes to a light silvery tint. The whiteness is due to the
-white spots on the leaves. The spots are stomata (mouths), and are parts
-of the chemical laboratory which carries on the tree's living processes.
-All tree leaves have stomata, but all are not arranged in the same way
-and are not visible alike. Few trees have them as prominent as the
-hemlocks.
-
-Hemlock attains a height from sixty to 100 feet and a diameter from two
-to four. When it grows in the open, it is one of the handsomest and most
-symmetrical evergreens of any country. Its dark, dense foliage will
-permit scarcely any sunlight to filter through. When forest-grown, it
-loses its lower limbs. In the forester's language, they are "shaded
-off," and long, smooth trunks are developed; but the stubs from which
-the branches fall remain buried deep inside the smoothest bole, and the
-saws will find them when the logs are converted into lumber.
-
-Reference has been made to hemlock's slow growth during the seedling's
-first four or five years. That takes place in the dense shade of the
-hemlock forest. If the seed falls on open ground, in full sunlight, the
-chance is that it will not germinate; but if it does, the seedling is
-doomed to an early death. It cannot endure strong light. This fact is of
-great importance, for it means the end of hemlock forests. When a stand
-is cut and the sunshine reaches the ground, no seedlings bring on a new
-forest. White pine seeds grow in open ground, in old fields, in burnt
-woods, wherever they reach soil, but hemlock must scatter its seeds in
-cool, deep shade or they will do little good. Strong, vigorous, and
-healthy as hemlock trees are, they are killed more easily than almost
-any other. Cut a few trees from the center of a mature hemlock clump,
-and the chance is that several trees next to the open space thus made
-will die. The unusual light proves too much for their roots which had
-always been cool and damp; but when young hemlocks are protected until
-they get a start, they thrive nicely in the open.
-
-The wood of hemlock is light, soft, not strong, brittle, coarse and
-crooked grained, difficult to work, liable to windshake, splinters
-badly, not durable. The summerwood of the annual ring is conspicuous;
-and the thin medullary rays are numerous. The color of hemlock heartwood
-is light brown, tinged with red, often nearly white. The sapwood is
-darker. Lumbermen recognize two varieties, red and white, but botanists
-do not recognize them.
-
-The physical characters of hemlock are nearly all unfavorable, yet it
-has become a useful and widely used wood. It is largely manufactured
-into coarse lumber and used for outside work--railway ties, joists,
-rafters, sheathing, plank walks, laths, etc. It is rarely used for
-inside finishing, owing to its brittle and splintery character. Clean
-boards made into panels or similar work and finished in the natural
-color often present a very handsome appearance, owing to the peculiar
-pinkish tint of the wood, ripening and improving with age.
-
-With the growing scarcity of white and Norway pine, hemlock has become
-the natural substitute for these woods for many purposes. It has never
-been conceded that hemlock possesses the intrinsic merit of either of
-the northern pines for structural purposes, but it has proven a suitable
-substitute for a variety of uses, notably for framing and sheathing of
-medium priced structures.
-
-In 1910 hemlock lumber was cut in twenty-one states, the total output
-exceeding 2,500,000,000 feet. Only four species or groups of species
-exceeded it in amount. They were southern yellow pines, Douglas fir, the
-oaks, and white pine. The principal cut of hemlock lumber was in the
-following states in the order named: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania,
-West Virginia, New York, Maine, Vermont, Virginia, New Hampshire,
-Tennessee, and North Carolina. Ten other states produced smaller
-amounts.
-
-Hemlock possesses remarkable holding power on nails and spikes, and that
-is one reason for its large use for railroad ties. It does not easily
-split, and there is no likelihood that spikes will work loose; but the
-wood decays quickly in damp situations, and unless given preservative
-treatment, hemlock ties do not last long. They are pretty soft anyway,
-and where traffic is heavy, rails cut them badly.
-
-Manufacturers of boxes and crates use much hemlock. The annual use for
-that purpose in Massachusetts is about 27,000,000 feet, in Michigan
-practically the same quantity, in Illinois 34,000,000, and varying
-quantities in many other states. Michigan converts nearly 100,000,000
-feet a year into flooring and other planing mill products, and Wisconsin
-and other hemlock states follow it in lesser amounts. The wood is
-employed by car builders, slack coopers, manufacturers of
-refrigerators, silos, and farm implements; but the largest demand comes
-from those who use the rough lumber.
-
-Hemlock bark is the most important tanning material in this country. It
-has long been used by leather makers who generally mix it with some
-other bark or extract because leather tanned with hemlock alone has a
-redder color than is desired.
-
-Large areas of hemlock forests have been cut for the bark alone.
-Formerly the wood was of so little value that it was cheaper to leave it
-in the forest than to take it out. The peelers worked in early summer,
-cutting trees and removing the bark in four-foot lengths, which was
-measured by the cord, though often sold by weight. Care was taken that
-the bark be removed from the slashings before the dry weather of autumn,
-for fire was to be expected then, and anything combustible in the woods
-at that time was likely to be lost. The tracts on which bark peelers
-worked were called "slashings," and they were fire traps of the worst
-kind with their tangled masses of tops and branches.
-
-Large quantities of hemlock bark are still peeled every summer, but the
-practice is less destructive than formerly. The trunks are worth taking
-out, and when the fire comes late in the season it consumes little
-valuable hemlock. A permanent decline in the annual production of this
-wood has not yet begun, but it must soon set in, for the demand cannot
-be indefinitely met.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN HEMLOCK
-
-[Illustration: WESTERN HEMLOCK]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN HEMLOCK
-
-(_Tsuga Heterophylla_)
-
-
-When this wood began to go to market, its promoters found difficulties
-in securing a trial for it in eastern states, because of its name. The
-eastern hemlock was known to be a substantial wood, but a rough one with
-many faults linked with its virtues. It was naturally supposed that the
-western hemlock had all the faults of its eastern relative with possibly
-some of the good qualities left out; and there was general hesitancy to
-put the new comer to a trial. That caused a movement among western
-lumbermen to sell their hemlock under some other name. They were
-confident the wood had only to be given a trial and it would win its
-way, after which the name would make little difference. Accordingly, it
-was started to market under the name of Alaska pine, although Alaska has
-no pine large enough for good lumber. Other lumbermen thought it
-advisable to choose a name less likely to excite suspicion, and they
-called it Washington pine. Others designated it as spruce, and still
-others as fir. It was more likely to pass for fir than for pine or
-spruce.
-
-The lumber is now generally known as western hemlock, but in California
-some call it hemlock spruce or California hemlock spruce. In Idaho,
-Washington, and Oregon the name hemlock usually suffices; while western
-hemlock spruce, and western hemlock fir, and Prince Albert's fir are
-names used in speaking of lumber and of the tree in the forest.
-
-Western hemlock's range extends north and south a thousand miles, from
-southern Alaska to California south of San Francisco. It grows from the
-Pacific coast eastward to Montana, five hundred miles or more. It
-ascends to altitudes of 6,000 feet, but it is not at its best on high
-mountains, but in the warm, damp region near the coast in Washington and
-Oregon. Trees 200 feet high and eight or ten in diameter are found, but
-the average size is much less.
-
-The leaves of western hemlock are dark green and very lustrous above.
-The flowers are yellow and purple. Cones are one inch or less in length,
-and the small seeds are equipped with wings which carry them some
-distance from the base of the parent tree. The seeds will germinate and
-develop a root system without touching mineral soil. Their ability to do
-so assists them greatly in maintaining the tree's position in the damp
-climate where this hemlock reaches its best development. The ground in
-the forest, with all objects that lie upon it, is often covered with wet
-moss a foot or more thick. The seeds of most trees would inevitably
-perish if they fell upon such a bed of moss; but the seeds of western
-hemlock germinate, and the rootlets strike through the moss until they
-reach the soil beneath, and seedling trees are soon growing vigorously.
-Seeds often germinate in the moss on logs and stumps, but the roots
-strike for the ground, and generally reach it. In this habit the western
-hemlock resembles the yellow birch of the East whose seeds seem to
-germinate best on mossy logs and stumps.
-
-Western hemlock has one of the bad habits of its eastern relative: it
-does not prune itself very well, even in dense forests, and the lumber
-is apt to be knotty, but the knots are usually sound, though dark in
-color.
-
-The wood of western hemlock is moderately light, but twenty per cent
-heavier than eastern hemlock; stronger than the wood of other American
-hemlocks, and nearly twenty-five per cent stronger than the eastern
-commercial species, and nearly fifty per cent stiffer. It is tough and
-hard, but has little of the flinty texture of other hemlocks. Its color
-is pale brown, tinged with yellow, the thin sapwood nearly white. It is
-fairly durable in contact with the soil. Its growth is usually rapid,
-and trees live to a great age. Some of the largest are said to reach 800
-years. The summerwood often constitutes half of the yearly ring, and is
-dark yellow. The medullary rays are numerous and rather prominent. When
-cut radially, the appearance, size, and arrangement of the exposed
-medullary rays suggest those of sugar maple when exposed in the same
-way.
-
-The annual sawmill output of western hemlock is about 170,000,000 feet.
-The largest market for it is in the region where it grows, and it is
-used as rough lumber for ranch purposes and for buildings in towns; but
-a considerable quantity is further manufactured. About one-fourth of the
-entire sawmill output goes to the factories of Idaho, Washington, and
-Oregon. A list of the wood's principal uses in those states shows its
-intrinsic value. The largest quantity is demanded by box factories. The
-wood's nail-holding power commends it for that use, but of no less
-importance is its strength. Eighty-three per cent of all the wood used
-for boxes in Washington is western hemlock. Cooperage calls for much of
-this wood also. Fruit and vegetable barrels are made of it. Its place in
-furniture manufacture corresponds to that of the other hemlock in the
-East. The pulp business is not very extensive on the Pacific coast, but
-western hemlock is a respectable contributor. It is suitable for burial
-boxes, and probably ranks about third among the woods within its range,
-those used in larger amounts being Sitka spruce and western red cedar.
-It is coming into use as interior finish, particularly as door and
-window frame material. Fixture manufacturers employ it for drawers and
-shelves. It is made into flooring, ceiling, molding, and wainscoting.
-Door makers use a little of it as core material over which to glue
-veneers. It is made into veneer, but of the cheaper sorts, such as are
-suitable for crates and berry boxes.
-
-The Pacific coast is so abundantly supplied with excellent softwoods
-that only those of good quality have any chance in the local markets.
-The fact that western hemlock has won and is holding an important place
-in active competition with such woods as western red cedar, yellow
-cedar, Sitka spruce, and Douglas fir, is proof that it is valuable
-material. It is winning its way in the central part of the United States
-also, but not as rapidly as it has won in the West.
-
-The bark of western hemlock is rated high as a tanning material. The
-bark on young trees is thin, but as the trunks increase in size and age
-the bark thickens. It is richer in tannin than the bark of eastern
-hemlock, but is not so extensively used because the demand is less on
-the Pacific coast.
-
-The future of the western hemlock is fairly well assured. Its range is
-extensive and varied, and lumbermen will be a long time in cutting the
-last of the present stand. Reproduction is satisfactory. It will be
-important in future forestry, when people will grow much of the timber
-they need; but this tree will stick pretty close to the range where
-nature planted it.
-
-MOUNTAIN HEMLOCK (_Tsuga mertensiana_) is a near relative of western
-hemlock, and occupies the same geographical ranges but higher on the
-mountains. Near Sitka, Alaska, it occurs at sea level, but southward it
-rises higher until on the Sierra Nevada mountains in California it is
-10,000 feet above sea level. It is one of the timber line trees in many
-parts of its range, though it is nowhere above all others. It is a
-difficult matter to state what its average size is. That depends upon
-the particular region considered. At its best it is 100 feet high or
-even more; at its poorest it sprawls on the rocks like a shrub.
-Specimens of fair size are from twenty-five to sixty feet high, and ten
-to twenty inches in diameter. Cones vary in size fully as much as the
-trunks. Some are one-half inch in length, others are three inches. The
-leaves vary no less, some being a one-twelfth inch long, others one
-inch. The leaves stand out on all sides of the twig, and fall during the
-third and fourth years. They are bluish-green. The seeds fall in
-September and October, and are provided with large wings. The wood is
-light in weight, soft, and pale reddish-brown. The mountain hemlock is
-nearly always spoken of as spruce by persons who are not botanists. The
-arrangement of the leaves on the twigs gives the impression that it is a
-spruce, and among the names by which it is known in its native region
-are Williamson's spruce, weeping spruce, alpine spruce, hemlock spruce,
-Patton's spruce, and alpine western spruce. There is little prospect
-that this tree will ever become important as a source of lumber. It is
-nowhere very abundant, and what timber there is generally stands so
-remote from mills that little of it will ever be taken out. Botanists
-and mountain travelers who have made the acquaintance of the mountain
-hemlock in the wildness of its natural surroundings have spoken and
-written much in its praise. It has been called the loveliest
-cone-bearing tree of the American forest. That praise, however, applies
-only when the tree is at its best, with its broad, pyramidal crown,
-balanced and proportioned with geometrical accuracy, outlined against a
-background of rocks, peaks, snow, or sky. Its other form, prostrate and
-angular where the tree occurs on cold, bleak mountains, has never
-inspired praise from anybody, though its defiance of the elements and
-its persistence in spite of adversity, cannot but challenge the
-admiration of all who like a fair and square fighter. There are many
-intermediate forms. On mountains facing the Pacific, and at altitudes of
-6,000 or 7,000 feet, the young hemlocks are buried under deep snow weeks
-or months at a time. They are pressed down by the weight of tons, and it
-might be supposed that not a whole branch would be left on them, and
-that the main stems would be deformed the rest of their lives. But when
-the early summer sun melts the snow, the young trees spring back to
-their former faultless forms, without a twig missing or a twisted
-branch.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN YEW
-
-[Illustration: WESTERN YEW]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN YEW
-
-(_Taxus Brevifolia_)
-
-
-The Pacific yew is an interesting tree, useful for many minor purposes,
-but it is not procurable in large quantities. Its north and south range
-covers more than 1,000 miles, from Alaska to central California; while
-the species occurs from the Pacific coast eastward to Montana. It
-approaches sea level on some of the Alaskan islands, and toward the
-southern part of its range it reaches an altitude of 8,000 feet.
-
-In Idaho it is called mountain mahogany, but apparently without good
-reason. Its color may bear some resemblance to that wood, but it is
-different in so many particulars that the name is not appropriate. The
-names western yew and Pacific yew are used interchangeably. Sometimes it
-bears the simple name yew; but since there is a yew in Florida, and
-another in Europe, it is well to give the western species a name which
-will distinguish it from others. The northwestern Indians called it
-"fighting wood," which was the best description possible for them to
-give. They made bows of it, and it was superior to any other wood within
-their reach for that purpose. In fact, if they could have picked from
-all the woods of the United States they could scarcely have found its
-equal. It is very strong, though in elasticity its rating is under many
-other woods. It is of interest to note that five hundred or more years
-ago, the European yew (a closely related but different species) had
-nearly the same name in England that the northwestern Indians gave the
-western yew. It was called "the shooter yew," because it was the bow
-wood of that time, and "bow staves," which were rough pieces to be
-worked out by the bow makers, were articles of commerce. The search for
-it was so great, and so long-continued, that yew trees were well-nigh
-exterminated in the British Isles. It was, next to oak, and possibly
-above oak, the most indispensable wood in England at that time. It is
-instructive to observe that Indians who used the bow found the western
-yew as indispensable in their life as the English armies found the
-European yew at a time when the bow was the best weapon.
-
-The northwestern Indians put this remarkable wood to other uses. They
-made spears of it, and sometimes employed them as weapons of war, but
-generally as implements of the chase, particularly in harpooning salmon
-which in summer ascend the northwestern rivers from the Pacific ocean in
-immense schools. The Indians whittled fishhooks of yew before they were
-able to buy steel hooks from traders. Some of those unique hooks are
-still in existence, and speak well of the inventive genius of the wild
-fisherman of the wilderness. A proper crook was selected where a branch
-joined the trunk, and serviceable fish hooks were made without any cross
-grain. They were strong enough to hold the largest fish that ascended
-the rivers. Sometimes a bone barb was skillfully inserted. The Indians
-found a further use for this wood as material for canoe paddles. It is
-so strong that handles can be made small and blades thin without passing
-the limit of safety. The manufacture of boat paddles from yew continues.
-
-More is used for fence posts than for any other one purpose. It is one
-of the most durable woods known where it must resist conditions
-conducive to decay. The name yew is said to be derived from a word in a
-north Europe language meaning everlasting. Yew fence posts are not named
-in statistics, and it is impossible to quote numbers. Their use is
-confined to the districts where they grow.
-
-The manufacturers of small cabinets draw supplies from this wood, but
-the fact is not mentioned in Pacific states wood-using statistics. It is
-particularly liked for turnery, such as small spindles used in furniture
-and in grill work. It takes an exceptionally fine polish, and the wood's
-great strength makes the use of slender pieces practicable. Experiments
-have shown that this wood may be stained with success, but its natural
-color is so attractive that there is little need of staining unless the
-purpose is to imitate some more costly wood. If stained black it is an
-excellent substitute for ebony.
-
-Western yew figures little in lumber output. It is not listed in the
-markets. The few logs which reach sawmills are never again heard of, but
-probably most of the lumber is disposed of locally to those who need it.
-The tree is not of good form for saw timber. Burls are said to make
-beautiful veneer. Trunks are seldom round, but usually grow lopsided.
-Most of them are too small for sawlogs. The largest are seldom two feet
-in diameter, and generally not half that large. They are short and
-branched, the tree often dividing near the ground in several stems. The
-average tree is scarcely thirty feet high, but a few are twice that. Its
-growth is very slow. A six-inch trunk is seventy-five or 100 years old,
-and the largest sizes are from 200 to 350 years. It is evident,
-therefore, that efforts to grow western yew for commercial purposes will
-be few. Wild trees will be occasionally cut as long as they last, and
-they will probably last as long as any of their associates, for they are
-scattered sparingly over several hundred thousand square miles of
-country, and some of it rough and almost inaccessible. The best
-development of the species is in western Oregon, Washington, and British
-Columbia.
-
-The leaves of western yew are one-half or five-eighths inch long. The
-fruit consists of red pulp enclosing a hard seed. Birds devour it
-eagerly. The fruit is not poisonous, as the yew berries of the Old World
-are. It ripens in September and falls in October. The wood is fine
-grained, clear rose red, becoming gradually duller on exposure. It
-weighs 39.83 pounds per cubic foot. Its fuel value is high.
-
-FLORIDA YEW (_Taxus floridana_) is extremely local in its range, and
-small in size. Few trees are more than twenty-five feet high and one
-foot in diameter. They are bushy and of poor form for manufacturing. The
-only reported use is as fence posts. The wood's durability fits it for
-that place. The species is found in Gadsden county, Florida. The leaves
-are one inch or less in length; flowers appear in March, and the fruit
-ripens in October. The wood is moderately heavy, hard, and
-narrow-ringed, for the trees grow slowly. Its color is dark, tinged with
-red, the thin sapwood being whiter. There is little prospect that the
-wood of this yew will ever be more important than it is now. It is often
-spoken of locally as savin, which name is likewise given to the red
-cedar (_Juniperus virginiana_), which is abundant in this yew's range.
-
-CALIFORNIA NUTMEG (_Tumion californicum_) is an interesting tree which
-ranges over a considerable portion of California, but is at its best in
-Mendocino county and the coast region north of San Francisco. It occurs
-also on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, in central
-California, at altitudes up to 5,000 feet. It receives its name from the
-resemblance of its seeds to nutmegs. Their surface is shriveled, but
-they do not have the nutmeg odor. The wood and the leaves, when bruised,
-give off an odor not altogether pleasing. On account of this, the tree
-has been called stinking cedar. In some localities it is called yew, and
-in others California false nutmeg, and coast nutmeg. Trees are generally
-small, with trunks of irregular form. The crown is open and usually
-extends to the ground; but in crowded situations, a rather shapely bole
-is developed, and the crown is small. The usual size of the tree does
-not exceed a height of fifty feet and a diameter of twenty inches. More
-trees are below than above that size; but in extreme cases the tree may
-reach a height of eighty-five feet and a diameter of four. The leaves in
-form and size resemble the foliage of yew, but their points are stiff
-and sharp, and if approached carelessly they will wound like cactus
-thorns. The fruit is an inch or more in length, a pulpy substance
-surrounding the seed. The wood possesses properties which ought to make
-it valuable, though reported uses are strictly local, such as small
-cabinet work and skiff making. It is bright lemon, yellow, rather hard,
-takes good polish, is of slow growth, with bands of summerwood thin but
-distinct, and medullary rays small, numerous, and obscure. Its weight is
-29.66 pounds per cubic foot; it is not stiff or strong. It cannot attain
-high place as a manufacturing material, because it is too scarce, but
-it possesses a beauty which must bring it recognition as a fine
-furniture, finish, and novelty wood. A few sawlogs go to mills in the
-region north of San Francisco, but the lumber is probably mixed with
-other kinds and it goes to market without a name. It ought to be put to
-a better use.
-
-FLORIDA TORREYA (_Tumion taxifolium_) is often called Chattahoochee pine
-in the region where it grows. That name is generally given to the tree
-when planted for ornament in yards, parks, and along streets of towns in
-northwestern Florida. It is known also as stinking cedar, stinking
-savin, and fetid yew. These names are generally applied to the
-forest-grown tree, particularly by those who cut it for fence posts,
-which is its principal use. Its range is local, being confined largely,
-if not wholly, to Gadsden county, Florida, where it grows on limestone
-soil. It can never have much importance as a commercial timber, because
-it is too scarce. In fact, it is in danger of extermination. Post
-cutters never spare it, and its range being so limited, there is not
-much hope for it. The interesting and beautiful tree is making a game
-fight for life. Many seedlings appear in the vicinity of old trees,
-while stumps, and even prostrate trunks, send up sprouts which, if let
-alone, grow to tree size. Sprouts on logs and stumps send roots to the
-ground as the seedling yellow birch does in damp northern woods. The
-yew-like leaves of Florida torreya are one and a half inch or less in
-length. The tree blooms in March and April, and the drupe-like fruit, an
-inch or more in length, is ripe by midsummer. The tree is from forty to
-sixty feet in height, and one to two feet in diameter. It is clothed in
-whorls of limbs, beginning near the ground, and tapering to the top. The
-wood is clear, bright yellow, the thin sapwood of lighter color; soft,
-easily worked, and susceptible of fine polish. It is very durable in
-contact with the soil. The green wood, and the bruised leaves and
-branches give off an odor suggesting the tomato vine. The texture and
-color of the wood indicate that it is well suited for fine cabinet work,
-but it is not a figured wood.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE OAK
-
-[Illustration: WHITE OAK]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE OAK
-
-(_Quercus Alba_)
-
-
-Oaks belong to the beech family, that is, the "foodtrees,"[3] though
-most acorns are too bitter and contain too much tannin to be edible;
-some may be eaten, and for that reason the ancients classed them among
-the food trees. "Quercus," which is the name of the genus, means oak in
-the language of northwestern Europe. The name white oak nearly always
-suffices, but in Arkansas it is often called stave oak because it is the
-best stave timber in that region. It could with equal reason be called
-stave oak nearly anywhere, for it is excellent material for tight
-cooperage. Formerly it was sometimes called Baltimore oak, because many
-of the staves of export were shipped from that city. That name, however,
-belonged more to post oak (_Quercus minor_) than to white oak, because
-the fine staves which went out of Chesapeake bay in the export trade,
-were largely post oak. It matters little now, for the name Baltimore oak
-is not much used, and white oak may be said to have only one trade name.
-After the wood is dressed, it has different names referring to the style
-of finish and not to the wood itself.
-
-    [3] The oaks of this country, which number more than fifty species,
-    have been classified in different ways, depending upon the purpose
-    in view. In the present treatment they will be divided in two
-    general groups, white oaks and black oaks. No effort will be made to
-    draw hard and fast lines, because it is not necessary. Oaks which
-    ripen their acorns in one year are listed as white oaks; those with
-    two year acorns, as black oaks. This is a botanical rather than a
-    lumberman's classification; yet lumbermen recognize it in a general
-    way. White oak (_Quercus alba_) is clearly entitled to head the list
-    of white oaks, and red oak (_Quercus rubra_) should occupy a similar
-    position with regard to the black oak group. In numbers, the white
-    oaks and black oaks are nearly equally divided, one authority giving
-    twenty-seven species of white oak and twenty-five of black oak in
-    the United States; but botanists differ as to exact numbers of each.
-    The following species are usually classed as white oaks: White oak
-    (_Quercus alba_), valley oak (_Quercus lobata_), Brewer oak
-    (_Quercus breweri_), Sadler oak (_Quercus sadleri_), Pacific post
-    oak (_Quercus garryana_), Gambel oak (_Quercus gambelii_), post oak
-    (_Quercus minor_), Chapman oak (_Quercus chapmani_), bur oak
-    (_Quercus macrocarpa_), overcup oak (_Quercus lyrata_), swamp white
-    oak (_Quercus platanoides_), cow oak (_Quercus michauxii_), chestnut
-    oak (_Quercus prinus_), chinquapin oak (_Quercus acuminata_), dwarf
-    chinquapin oak (_Quercus prinoides_), Durand oak (_Quercus
-    breviloba_), Rocky Mountain oak (_Quercus undulata_), California
-    blue oak (_Quercus douglasii_), Engelmann oak (_Quercus
-    engelmanni_), Rocky Mountain blue oak (_Quercus oblongifolia_),
-    Arizona white oak (_Quercus arizonica_), Toumey oak (_Quercus
-    toumeyi_), netleaf oak (_Quercus reticulata_), California scrub oak
-    (_Quercus dumosa_), live oak (_Quercus virginiana_), Emory oak
-    (_Quercus emoryi_).
-
-White oak grows in all the states east of the Mississippi river, and it
-crosses that stream two or three hundred miles in some places. It
-reaches eastern Nebraska and eastern Kansas, and runs southward through
-Oklahoma to the Brazos river, Texas. It is scarce in the northern parts
-of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Its total range covers an area of
-more than 1,000,000 square miles. Like all other important timber trees,
-it has regions where the species is best developed. The finest original
-stands of white oak were found in the upper Ohio valley, beginning in
-Indiana. The timber in many other districts was, and in some still is,
-very good, such as southern Michigan, eastern Arkansas, some of the
-Appalachian valleys and slopes, and in certain places along the upper
-tributaries of streams flowing into the Atlantic ocean.
-
-This tree is in the very front rank in economic importance, and it has
-held that place since the earliest settlements in this country. No
-forest tree was more evenly distributed than white oak over the eastern
-half of the United States. It did not form pure forests of large extent,
-as some of the pines did, but white oaks were within reach of almost
-every part of the country. Conditions have greatly changed. The
-establishment of farms where woods originally occupied the whole
-country, lessened the abundance of oak long before lumbermen made it a
-commodity; and since then, the cutting of billions of feet of it has
-depleted or exhausted the supply in many regions. Still, white oak is as
-widely dispersed as ever. It has not been completely exterminated in any
-extensive region. White oak of as high grade goes to market now as ever
-in the past, but in smaller amounts, and the lower grades go in
-proportionately larger quantities. In other words, prime white oak has
-passed its best day. A hundred years of use and abuse in states west of
-the Alleghany mountains, and two hundred years in some of the regions
-east, have reduced original forests to remnants. But with all that,
-white oak remains undisputed king of American hardwoods.
-
-At its best, white oak attains a height of 125 feet and a diameter of
-six, but that size is unusual. A diameter of three feet and a height of
-100 is above the average. The leaves are peculiar in that they hang on
-the branches until late winter, sometimes dropping only in time to give
-place to the new crop. They turn brown after the first hard frost. In
-some sections of the Appalachian region white oak coppice (sprout
-growth) is known as "red brush," because of the adherence of the brown
-leaves during winter. The leaves of some other species have the same
-habit.
-
-The wood of white oak is very strong, stiff, heavy, and durable when
-exposed in all kinds of weather. Scarcely any other wood which can be
-had in merchantable quantities equals white oak in these qualities. It
-rates high in fuel value, and 6,000 pounds of dry wood when burned,
-leaves about 245 pounds of ashes. The color of the heartwood is light
-brown; the sapwood is thin; medullary rays are numerous and large; pores
-large; summerwood broad and dense.
-
-The medullary rays of no wood in this or any other country are more
-utilized to commercial advantage than those of white oak. Quarter-sawing
-is for the purpose of bringing them out. They are the bright streaks,
-clearly visible to the naked eye in the end of an oak log, radiating
-from the center outward like the spokes of a wheel. Many are too thin to
-be visible without a magnifying glass. By quarter-sawing, the rays are
-cut edgewise and appear as bright streaks or patches, often called
-"mirrors," on the surface of boards. The woodworker knows how to finish
-the boards and treat them with fillers to bring out the figures.
-
-White oak is a porous wood. Some of the pores are large enough to be
-visible without a glass, and twenty times as many more can be seen only
-when magnified. The direction of the pores is up and down the trunk of
-the tree, and they are seen to best advantage in the end of a stick,
-although they are always more or less visible on the side of a board
-when the cutting is a little across the grain. The pores thus cut
-diagonally across are taken advantage of by the finisher who works
-stains and fillers into them, and changes their natural color, thereby
-accentuating the wood's figure.
-
-The possibilities of white oak are almost infinite. It is good for
-nearly anything for which any wood is used. It is not the best for
-everything, but does well for most. Hickory is more resilient, ironwood
-is stronger, locust more durable, white pine warps and checks less; but
-white oak has so many good qualities in a fair degree that it can afford
-to fall below the highest in some, and still rank above competitors on
-general averages. It ranks high in shipbuilding, general construction,
-furniture manufacturing, finish and fixtures, the making of agricultural
-implements, car building, vehicle stock, cooperage, and many more.
-
-It is one of the most important of American veneer woods. It is sawed
-very thin, and is glued upon cores of other wood, thus becoming the
-covering or outside part. The purpose of using oak veneer instead of the
-solid wood is twofold. First, it goes farther, and second, a well-built
-article with veneer outside and a core of other woods which stand well,
-is superior to a solid oak article, except in cases where great strength
-is the object sought, or where deep carving is desired.
-
-The continued use of white oak is assured. It is not necessary to seek
-new uses for it. The demand is as great as the supply can meet, but the
-supply is not assured for the distant future. There will always be some
-white oak in the country; but the best has been or is being cut. The
-tree grows slowly, and good quarter-sawed white oak cannot be cut from
-young trees. An age of about 150 years is necessary. Most good white oak
-lumber today is cut from trees 200 or more years old. When the present
-supply of venerable oaks has been exhausted, prime oak lumber will be
-largely a thing of the past. Fortunately, that time has not yet arrived.
-About eighty years are required to grow a white oak of crosstie size.
-Those who will grow oak for market in the future will probably not wait
-much longer than eighty years to cut their trees, and the result will be
-a scarcity of mature trunks for lumber and veneer.
-
-    DURAND OAK (_Quercus breviloba_). In some parts of Alabama,
-    Mississippi, and Louisiana this tree goes to the lumber yard as
-    white oak, and no one is injured by the substitution, for it is
-    heavy, hard, and strong, and is of good color. The wood weighs 59.25
-    pounds per cubic foot, which places it above the average weight of
-    white oak. It is said to be less tough than white oak. The tree
-    varies greatly in different parts of its range which extends from
-    central Alabama across Texas and into Mexico. It is known as white
-    oak, Texas white oak, shin oak, pin oak, and basket oak. Its best
-    development is in the eastern part of its range where trees eighty
-    or ninety feet high are common; but in Texas the average is scarcely
-    thirty feet high and one in diameter. Westward in Texas it becomes
-    shrubby, and forms extensive thickets of brush.
-
-    CHAPMAN OAK (_Quercus chapmani_) is put to little use, because
-    trunks are too small. They are seldom more than a foot in diameter,
-    and are often little more than shrubs. The tree grows in the pine
-    barrens near the coast from South Carolina to Florida, and it is
-    found also in great abundance, but generally of small size, on the
-    west coast of Florida from Tampa to the Apalachicola river.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BUR OAK
-
-[Illustration: BUR OAK]
-
-
-
-
-BUR OAK
-
-(_Quercus Macrocarpa_)
-
-
-This splendid oak was named by Michaux, a French traveler and botanist
-who visited many parts of eastern and southeastern United States more
-than a century ago. The botanical name _macrocarpa_, means "large
-fruit." The bur oak bears small acorns in the North, and very large ones
-in the South. They are sometimes two inches long and one and a half
-inches wide, and "large-fruit" oak is an appropriate name for the tree
-in the South, but would not be near the northern limit of its range.
-
-It is known in different regions as bur oak, mossy cup oak, overcup oak,
-scrub oak, and mossy cup white oak. Bur oak is a name suggested by the
-acorn which has a fringe round the cup like a bur. This is the oak which
-gave name to James Fenimore Cooper's book, "Oak Openings" a romance of
-early days in Michigan. Oak openings were areas where fires had killed
-the old timber, and a young growth had sprouted from stumps and roots,
-or had sprung up from seeds buried in the ground beyond the reach of the
-fire. Some of those tracts were very large, and they were not confined
-to any one state. They existed in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
-Dakota, and elsewhere. Bur oak, because it is a vigorous species, was
-able to take possession of such burned areas, to the exclusion of most
-others.
-
-Few American oaks have a wider range. It extends from Nova Scotia to
-Manitoba, and in the United States is found in most states east of the
-Rocky Mountains. It extends farther west and northwest than any other
-commercial oak of the Atlantic states. In a range of so great
-geographical extent the bur oak finds it necessary to adapt itself to
-many kinds of land. It prefers low tracts where water is sufficient but
-not excessive, but it grows well in more elevated situations, provided
-the soil is fertile. It is not a poor-land tree. In the primeval forests
-it attained largest size in Indiana and Illinois. The largest trees were
-from 150 to 170 feet high and four to seven in diameter. Sizes varied
-from that extreme down to the other extreme near the outskirts of its
-range where the growth was stunted. Large quantities of very fine logs
-have been cut from trunks from two to four feet in diameter, and forty
-to sixty feet to the limbs.
-
-The leaves of bur oak are from six to twelve inches long, simple and
-alternate; the petioles are thick with flattened and enlarged bases; the
-leaves are wedge-shaped at the base, and have from five to seven long,
-irregular lobes, the terminal one very large and broad. They are dark
-green in color, and are smooth and shiny above, silvery white and
-pubescent below. The edge of the leaf is notched somewhat like chestnut,
-but the teeth or notches are not so sharp.
-
-The twigs are provided with corky wings, or flattened keels of bark,
-along their sides. Some of the wings are an inch or more wide. They are
-apt to escape notice when the tree is in leaf, but in the winter the
-bare twigs look rough and ragged.
-
-The weight of bur oak is approximately the same as white oak, and the
-two woods are much the same in strength and elasticity. The bands of
-summerwood are broad and dense, and the springwood is filled with large
-pores. The medullary rays are broad, but not numerous in comparison with
-white oak. They are sufficiently conspicuous to show well in
-quarter-sawing.
-
-Bur oak nearly always goes to market as white oak, or simply as oak, and
-it is difficult to ascertain all the uses found for it. Some factories
-which make furniture, finish, vehicles, and other articles that figure
-in the country's trade, attempt to identify the woods they use. That is
-done as carefully in Michigan as anywhere else, though comparatively few
-of the factories carry out the plan even in that state where many of the
-best wood-using establishments of the country are located. In a report
-issued in 1912 which gave statistics collected from more than eight
-hundred Michigan factories, bur oak received separate consideration. The
-uses there are doubtless representative, and will hold throughout the
-country wherever bur oak is fairly abundant. It is listed as baseboards,
-billiard table rims, bookcases, clay working machines, filing cabinets,
-furniture, hand sleds, hay balers, interior finish, molding, tinplate
-boxes, wagon sills, work benches. The amount of wood used in the state
-was nearly 900,000 feet, according to the reports; but it certainly does
-not include all. What it does show, however, is that bur oak is one of
-the substantial woods of that region, and that it possesses properties
-which fit it for many important places in the country's industries.
-
-Bur oak contributes to the output of cooper shops. Slack coopers class
-it with many other hardwoods for the manufacture of barrels for
-vegetables and various other commodities, while the makers of barrels
-for liquids put bur oak in with white oak.
-
-The future of bur oak does not promise much after the trees which now
-remain have been cut. That does not mean that the species will become
-extinct, for that is improbable; but when the mature trees which
-developed during two or three hundred years of forest conditions have
-passed away, there is not much prospect of others being left to grow to
-the age and size which will make them valuable as lumber. Woodlot
-owners will not wait much longer than the seventy-five or one hundred
-years required to grow trees of crosstie size. Railroads pay good prices
-for this wood, for it lasts well, holds spikes in a satisfactory manner,
-and is strong and hard. As far as can be seen, bur oak will fare in the
-future about like white oak; that is, few trees will be left standing
-long enough to attain large size, because it will pay better to cut them
-while comparatively small.
-
-    CALIFORNIA BLUE OAK (_Quercus douglasii_) receives its name from the
-    color of its foliage in spring and early summer in the valleys and
-    on the rolling foothills of central California. Later in the summer,
-    when the dry season is on, the leaves lose some of their blue, on
-    account of age, but more from an accumulation of dust; but even then
-    the form of the tree, from its habit of growing in open formation
-    like an old apple orchard, presents an attractive picture. It is
-    often associated with the valley oak, which is larger and more
-    stately, but the blue oak loses nothing by the contrast. It is
-    occasionally called rock oak, but for what reason is not clear. It
-    is known, too, as mountain white oak, or simply white oak, and as
-    blue oak. Its range covers central California from Mendocino to the
-    Mojave desert, and from the immediate coast inland through the
-    valleys to the Sierras, and upward to an altitude of 4,000 feet
-    where the tree degenerates into a shrub which has neither beauty nor
-    utility. The species reaches its best development in the Salinas
-    valley from twenty to sixty miles from the coast. There the largest
-    trees are found, and also some that have assumed peculiar forms. In
-    positions exposed to the never-ceasing sea winds which sweep up the
-    valleys, the blue oaks lie prone like logs, their tops pointing away
-    from the wind. They grew in that unnatural position, having been
-    pressed flat by the wind since they were seedlings. This oak's ashen
-    gray bark harmonizes well with the dry summer grass and dull sand
-    and gravel which surround it during the hot period. The branches are
-    often covered with green-gray lichens which somewhat modify the
-    aspect of the tree under close inspection. The leaves are irregular
-    in form. Some closely resemble leaves of the eastern white oak,
-    while others are almost or quite without lobes. During the growing
-    season the acorns are deep green, but when approaching maturity they
-    change to a chestnut-brown. They vary in shape as much as the
-    leaves. Some are almost eggshaped, bulging out above the cup which
-    seems too small; but all of them do not assume that form, but may be
-    short and symmetrical, or very long and slender. Woodpeckers store
-    these acorns in large numbers, and they search out peculiar places
-    for their hoards. A knot hole in the weatherboarding of an old barn,
-    granary, or school house is considered ideal, though when the acorns
-    are so disposed of, they are out of reach of the woodpecker forever.
-    Another method is to peck holes just large enough for an acorn in
-    fence posts or dead tree trunks, and hammer the acorns tightly in,
-    small end first. The surfaces of dead trees are sometimes absolutely
-    covered with such holes, each with its acorn. The woodpecker's
-    purpose is to wait until the acorns become infested with larvæ. He
-    has no intention of eating the acorn itself.
-
-    California blue oaks range in height from shrubs to trees of ninety
-    feet, with diameters of three or four feet. The average height is
-    about forty-five and the diameter two or less. The trunk frequently
-    divides a few feet from the ground into large limbs. That form
-    excludes the wood from sawmills, and only in rare cases does any of
-    it find its way there. The lumber is of poor quality, brittle,
-    black, and otherwise defective. The sapwood is white and thick. A
-    cubic foot weighs 55.64 pounds, or nearly ten more than eastern
-    white oak. It is weak, and is low in elasticity. The annual rings
-    are often nearly invisible, because the pores are scattered evenly
-    and do not form bands. The medullary rays are broad, in the heart
-    black, in the sapwood white. If the wood were otherwise suitable,
-    pleasing effects might be produced by quarter-sawing, but as far as
-    known, no attempts have been made to do this. Now and then a
-    suitable log might be found. The importance of this oak lies in its
-    fuel value. It rates above white oak in theoretical tests, but it is
-    heavier in ash, and in practice it hardly measures up to white oak.
-    It grows slowly and is destined to disappear as a source of fuel
-    supply. Reproduction has nearly ceased in most parts of its range,
-    due largely to the perseverance of hogs in eating the acorns.
-    Cordwood cutters have stripped the last tree from large areas where
-    much once grew. This oak never forms forests. The trees seldom grow
-    as close together as apple trees in an orchard.
-
-    GAMBEL OAK (_Quercus gambelii_) was destined by nature to occupy an
-    inferior place in the country's timber resources. It occupies a
-    region of stunted vegetation among the dry mountains and plateaus of
-    the Southwest, and except where it grows in better situations than
-    usual, it is too small to be properly called a tree. It is at its
-    best among the mountains of southeastern Arizona where it grows in
-    canyons that can maintain a little damp soil. There it occasionally
-    reaches a height of thirty feet and a diameter of a foot or less. In
-    most other parts of its range it is simply a tangled, sprawling
-    thicket of brush, covering the dry, rocky mountain ridges, and along
-    the bases of cliffs. It is found from Colorado to western Texas, and
-    westward into Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. The leaves are small,
-    thick, firm, and hairy, typical of desert foliage which must husband
-    the scant water supply. The acorns are pretty large for a tree so
-    stunted, and they are tempting bait for birds and rodents of the
-    region. The acorns are sweet. If this oak's reproduction depended on
-    acorns alone it is doubtful if it would hold its ground in the face
-    of perpetual adversity; but its roots send up distorted and stunted
-    sprouts which cover the ground, affording hiding places for the few
-    acorns which escape their hungry enemies. Man puts this oak to few
-    uses. It affords a pretty good class of fuel for camp fires, but
-    cordwood cutters cannot make much out of it. In rare instances
-    frontier ranches use a few of the unshapely poles for corral fences,
-    but only as a case of last resort. The names bestowed upon the tree
-    by those who know it best are uncomplimentary. They call it shin
-    oak, pin oak, scrub oak, mountain oak, and Rocky Mountain oak.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-FORKED-LEAF WHITE OAK
-
-[Illustration: FORKED-LEAF WHITE OAK]
-
-
-
-
-FORKED-LEAF WHITE OAK
-
-(_Quercus Lyrata_)
-
-
-The leaf gives this tree its name in the best part of its southern
-range. The tree bears much resemblance to the bur oak on the one hand,
-and swamp white oak on the other. The names by which it is known in
-different regions indicate as much.
-
-In North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi,
-Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Illinois it is commonly known as
-overcup; in Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and
-Missouri it is called the swamp post oak; the name water white oak is
-applied to it in Mississippi and parts of South Carolina; swamp white
-oak in Texas; forked-leaf white oak among lumbermen in several of the
-southern states. The last name scarcely describes the leaf, for no one
-is apt to notice any fork, unless his attention is called to it. The
-fact is, the name forked-leaf oak is applied oftener to the turkey oak
-(_Quercus catesbæi_) than to this one. However, since the ranges of the
-two species are not the same, misunderstandings in practice are not apt
-to arise as to which is meant when the forked leaf is referred to. The
-fact that turkey oak belongs in the black oak group, ripening its acorns
-in two years, and this one is a white oak with one year acorns, is of
-further assistance in keeping the species separate.
-
-The range of the forked-leaf white oak is from Maryland, along the
-Potomac river near the District of Columbia, southward to parts of
-Florida; westward through the Gulf states to the Trinity river in Texas;
-throughout Arkansas, sections of Missouri, central Tennessee, southern
-Illinois and Indiana.
-
-It shows preference for river swamps, and small deep depressions in rich
-bottom lands where moisture is always abundant. It has never amounted to
-much in the Atlantic states, and its best development is found in the
-moist, fertile valley of Red river in Louisiana, and in certain parts of
-Arkansas and Texas. Its geographical range is pretty large, but as a
-timber tree it is confined to a comparatively restricted region west of
-the Mississippi. Good trees are found in other parts of its range.
-Lumbermen do not find it in extensive forests or pure stands, but
-isolated trees or small groups occur with other hardwoods.
-
-This species of oak grows occasionally to a height of 100 feet, though
-its average is about seventy feet. It has a trunk two to three feet in
-diameter, which spreads out after attaining a height of fifteen or
-twenty feet, into small, often pendulous branches, forming a symmetrical
-round top. The branchlets are green, slightly tinged with red; covered
-with short hairs when first appearing, becoming grayish and shiny during
-their first winter, eventually turning ashen gray or brown.
-
-The bark is three-quarters or one inch thick, light gray in color,
-shedding in thick plates, its surface being divided into thin scales.
-The winter buds are about one-eighth of an inch long and have light
-colored scales. The staminate flowers grow in long, slender, hairy
-spikes from four to six inches long; the calyx is light yellow and
-hairy. The pistillate flowers are stalked and are also covered with
-hairs.
-
-The fruit of forked-leaf white oak is often on slender, fuzzy stems,
-sometimes an inch or more in length, but is often closely attached to
-the twig that bears it; the acorn is about one inch long, broad at the
-base, light brown and covered with short, light hairs, and usually
-almost entirely enclosed in the deep, spherical cup, which is bright
-reddish-brown on its inside surface, and covered on the outside with
-scales; thickened at the base, becoming thinner and forming an irregular
-edge at the margin of the cup. The cup often almost completely envelopes
-the acorn. The fruit then looks somewhat like a rough, nearly spherical
-button.
-
-This oak's leaves are long and slender, and are divided in from five to
-nine lobes. When the leaves unfold they are brownish green and hairy
-above and below; at maturity they are thin and firm, darker green and
-shiny on the upper surface, silvery or light green and hairy below; from
-seven to eight inches long, one to four inches broad; in autumn turning
-a beautiful bright scarlet or vivid orange.
-
-Commercially this wood is a white oak, and it is seldom or never sent to
-market under its own name. There are no statistics of cut at the mills
-or of stand in the forests. Lumbermen take the tree when they come to it
-in the course of their usual operations, but never go out of their way
-to get it. Though rather large stands occur in certain southern regions,
-and scattering trees are found in large areas, the total quantity in the
-country is known to be too small to give this tree an important place as
-a source of lumber. Neither is there expectation that the future has
-anything in store for this particular member of the tribe of oaks. The
-wood rates high in physical properties; is strong as white oak, if not
-stronger, tough, stiff, hard, and heavy. In contact with the ground it
-is very durable. The heartwood is rich, dark brown, the sapwood lighter.
-
-It may be said, generally, that since it goes to market as white oak,
-and its buyers never object, it possesses the essential properties of
-that wood, and is used in the same way as far as it is used at all.
-
-ARIZONA WHITE OAK (_Quercus arizonica_) is the common and most generally
-distributed white oak of southern New Mexico and Arizona where it
-covers the hillsides and occurs in canyons at altitudes from 5,000 to
-10,000 feet above sea level. It occasionally ascends nearly or quite to
-the summits of the highest peaks. The form of the tree varies greatly,
-as might be expected from a range extending from one to two miles above
-sea level. On the dry, windswept summits the tree degenerates into a
-shrub, with stiff, harsh branches. Lower down, in canyons and in other
-situations where moisture may be had and the soil is fertile, trunks are
-fifty or sixty feet high and three or four in diameter; but these are
-not the usual sizes even in the best of the tree's range, for it cannot
-be classed as a timber tree.
-
-The hardships of the desert have stunted it, and its form is rough. It
-is important for fuel, and this has been its chief use. The region where
-it occurs is thinly settled, and demand for lumber is small, but
-stockmen build corrals and fences to enclose sheep and cattle, and the
-Arizona white oak supplies some of the rough poles and posts for that
-purpose. The wood is heavy, hard, strong, and the heartwood is almost
-black, but the sapwood is lighter. The grain and figure of the wood are
-not attractive, and what little may be sawed into lumber in the future
-will be rather low-grade. The branches are crooked and when cut into
-cordwood the ricks are so open that it is a common saying in the region
-that "you can throw a dog through." The wood burns well, and the demand
-for fuel is large, in proportion to the population of the country.
-
-The leaves of this oak are sometimes slightly lobed, and are sometimes
-nearly as smooth as willow leaves. They are light red and covered with
-hair when they unfold in the spring, but when mature they are dark
-green, and shiny. Acorns are one inch or less in length, and rather
-slender. They are very bitter, and wild animals are inclined to let them
-alone, unless pressed by hunger, and then eat them sparingly. This
-insures good reproduction, provided other conditions are favorable.
-Though cordwood cutters may strip the large trees from the hills and
-canyons, scrub growth may be expected to continue, particularly on high
-mountains, and in ravines where roads cannot be built.
-
-    NETLEAF OAK (_Quercus reticulata_) will never attract lumbermen in
-    this country, but sometime they may send to the Sierra Madre
-    mountains of Mexico to procure it. In that region it is a tree large
-    enough for lumber; but the portion of its range overlapping on the
-    United States lies in southern Arizona and New Mexico among
-    mountains from 7,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level. Conditions are
-    unfavorable and the netleaf oak shows it by its stunted size and
-    rough form. The wood is hard, heavy, dark brown in color, with
-    lighter sapwood. The medullary rays are numerous and very broad. The
-    tree seldom exceeds forty feet in height and one foot in diameter.
-    The leaf is netted somewhat like that of the elm. The acorn is
-    usually not more than half an inch in length.
-
-    ROCKY MOUNTAIN OAK (_Quercus undulata_) bears acorns which may be
-    eaten like chestnuts, and not much more may be said for the tree in
-    the way of usefulness to man, though it is the salvation of some of
-    the small mammals of the bleak Texas and New Mexico hills where
-    there is little to eat and few places for concealment from hawks and
-    other enemies. The tree is also called scrub oak and shin oak. It
-    grows in Colorado, New Mexico, western Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and
-    Utah. At its best it rarely exceeds thirty feet high and a foot in
-    diameter, and it often forms a jungle of shrubs through which the
-    traveler must wade waist deep or go miles out of his way to pass
-    round it. Its leaf is one of the smallest of the oaks, and is
-    notched much like the chestnut leaf.
-
-    ALVORD OAK (_Quercus alvordiana_) is little known and will probably
-    never be of much importance. It grows in the region of Tehachapi
-    mountains, the northern border of the Mojave desert, in California,
-    and was named for William Alvord of that state. The leaf is toothed,
-    and the acorn smooth. No record has been found of any use of the
-    wood, and when Sudworth compiled his book, "Forest Trees of the
-    Pacific Slope," he was unable to procure enough leaves, flowers, and
-    fruit to enable him to give a botanical description. It may
-    therefore be regarded as one of the scarcest oaks in the United
-    States, which fact gives it a certain interest.
-
-    SADLER OAK (_Quercus sadleriana_) is one of the minor oaks of the
-    Pacific coast, and is popularly and properly called scrub oak by
-    those who encounter it on high, dry slopes of northern California
-    and southern Oregon mountains, from 4,000 to 9,000 feet above the
-    sea. It forms dense thickets, and passes for an evergreen. Its
-    leaves remain on the branches only thirteen months. The leaves are
-    toothed like those of chestnut. The acorns are matured in one
-    season. The name Sadler oak was given it in honor of a Scottish
-    botanist. Trees are too scarce and too small to have much value,
-    except as a ground cover.
-
-    BREWER OAK (_Quercus breweri_) grows on the west slope of the Sierra
-    Nevada mountains in California, from Kaweah river northward to
-    Trinity mountains. It is often little more than a shrub, and its
-    usefulness to man lies less in the quantity of wood it produces than
-    in the protection the dense thickets, with their network of roots,
-    afford steep hillsides. Gullying in time of heavy rain cannot take
-    place where this oak's matted masses of roots bind the soil. Sprouts
-    rise freely from the roots, and thickets are reproduced in that way
-    rather than from acorns, although in certain years crops of acorns
-    are bountiful. The trunks are too small to make any kind of lumber,
-    but are capable of supplying considerable quantities of fuel.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-POST OAK
-
-[Illustration: POST OAK]
-
-
-
-
-POST OAK
-
-(_Quercus Minor_)
-
-
-Post oak is the most common name for this tree but various sections of
-its range have given it their own names which probably have local
-significance. The following names are in use in the localities denoted:
-post oak in the eastern and Gulf states, Connecticut to Texas, and in
-Arkansas and West Virginia; box white oak in Rhode Island; iron oak in
-Delaware, Mississippi and Nebraska; chêne étoile in Quebec; overcup oak
-in Florida; white oak in Kentucky and Indiana; box oak and brash oak in
-Maryland.
-
-Toward the northern portion of the range of this tree it is small, and
-in early times it was little used except for fence posts. Its durability
-fitted it for that use, and it is said the common name was due to that
-circumstance. The name iron oak was used by shipbuilders who sometimes
-bought small knees made of this wood. Baltimore oak was an early name
-which is not now in use. It was generally applied to white oak, but it
-included some post oak shipped from the Chesapeake bay region.
-
-Post oak is botanically and commercially a white oak and is seldom
-distinguished from the true white oak, _Quercus alba_, in commerce. It
-is seen at its best in the uplands of the Mississippi basin and in the
-Gulf states west of the Mississippi, where it attains a considerable
-size. In the northeastern states and in Florida it is small, becoming
-shrubby in some localities, and more or less of local growth. Limestone
-uplands or dry, sandy or gravelly soils seem to offer the best
-conditions for its existence, where it grows in company with black jack,
-red and white oak, sassafras, dogwood, gums, and red cedar.
-
-The range of growth of post oak extends from New Brunswick south through
-the Atlantic states into Florida; west through the Gulf states and
-throughout the Mississippi river system, growing west brokenly to
-Montana. It is the common oak of central Texas but in the North it is
-rather scarce, becoming more plentiful in the lower Appalachians.
-
-The broad, dense, round-topped crown of the post oak with its peculiar
-foliage make it very noticeable in the woods, even to the casual
-observer. Its dark green looks almost black at a distance. The tree has
-an average height of sixty or eighty feet and is about two feet in
-diameter, but in exceptional cases it reaches one hundred feet in height
-and has a diameter of three feet. It has a moderately thick, dark brown
-bark with a reddish tinge and deep fissures, the broad ridges being
-covered with thin scales. On the branches it becomes much thinner, and
-lighter in color, the branchlets being unfissured and glabrous in the
-second year, although fuzzy at first. They are rather heavy and rounded
-and terminate in short round buds with conspicuous scales. A noticeable
-feature of the tree is the peculiar branching. The limbs are heavy and
-crooked, separating often, with wide angles, forming knees which when
-big enough, have a commercial value.
-
-When the tree is in foliage the tufted appearance of the leaves grouped
-on the ends of the twigs gives it a distinctive look. They bear some
-resemblance to a star, and for that reason some botanists have named the
-species _stellata_. The leaves are five or seven inches long usually,
-but in some cases, especially on young specimens, they are ten or more
-inches long. They are dark, shiny-green and on a short petiole, the
-veins and midrib being heavy and conspicuous. The identification of
-these leaves is easy as they are heavy in texture, are bilaterally
-developed with a large, obtuse lobe on each side about in the middle,
-giving them a maltese cross effect. They are very persistent, staying on
-the tree until the new leaves push them off in the spring.
-
-The form of post oak is not ideal from the lumberman's viewpoint. The
-tree does not prune itself well. Straggling limbs adhere to the trunk
-and prevent the clean bole which often makes white oak so attractive.
-
-The wood weighs 52.14 pounds per cubic foot. The name iron oak referred
-to the weight as well as the strength of the wood. It is rather
-difficult to season, and is inclined to check badly. The medullary rays
-are broad and numerous, and checking is apt to develop along the rays.
-The summerwood occupies about half of the annual ring, and is dense and
-dark colored. Large pores are abundant in the springwood, and smaller
-ones in the summerwood.
-
-Formerly this tree was known in some sections as turkey oak, though the
-name is no longer heard, but is now applied to another oak in the South.
-The acorns are small enough to be eaten by turkeys, and when those game
-birds were wild in the woods they frequented parts of the forests where
-post oaks grew, and hunters knew where to find them. The uses of post
-oak for building and manufacturing purposes are the same as for white
-oak as far as they go, but post oak is not so extensively employed.
-
-The earliest railroads in America were built in the region where post
-oak of excellent quality grew, and it saw service from the first as
-crossties, and car and bridge timbers. It is still used for those
-purposes. Its other important uses are as furniture material, both as
-solid stock and veneer; interior finish and fixtures for offices, banks,
-and stores; musical instruments, including frames, braces, and veneers;
-baskets, crates, and shipping boxes; vehicles, particularly tongues,
-axles, and hounds of heavy wagons; flooring, stair work, balusters.
-
-Post oak will do well on land too gravelly and thin to sustain good
-white oak growth. To that extent the two species are not competitors for
-ground, and post oak is assured a place in future woodlots, but it
-cannot be expected ever to equal white oak in commercial importance,
-while as an ornamental tree it is not usually favored because the shape
-of its crown is not altogether pleasing. Its very dark foliage, however,
-is admired by many and gives the tree an individuality.
-
-SWAMP WHITE OAK (_Quercus platanoides_). This tree's botanical name
-means "broadleaf oak," and that is a good description as far as it goes,
-but it does not apply solely to this species. The characteristic which
-fixes it best in the minds of most people is its preference for low, wet
-soil. Its two common names are swamp oak and swamp white oak, yet it is
-not really a swamp tree, such as the northern white cedar, southern
-white cedar, cypress, and tupelo are. It does not associate with any of
-those trees. It prefers river banks, and does not object to a good deal
-of water about its roots, though it grows nicely in situations out of
-reach of all overflow, and often side by side with silver maple,
-hickory, ash, and several other oaks. The leaf resembles that of
-chestnut oak, and the bark is somewhat like chestnut oak, but the wood
-passes in market for white oak, and is a good substitute for it, though
-the resemblance is not so close that one need be mistaken for the other.
-The tree averages about seventy feet high with a diameter of two feet,
-but much larger trunks are common. The famous "Wadsworth oak," which
-stood on the bank of the Genesee river in western New York, about a mile
-from the village of Geneseo, was a swamp white oak. It had a trunk
-diameter of nine feet, but it was not tall in proportion. It met its
-overthrow by the undermining of the river bank in time of flood. That is
-a common fate for this tree, because of its preference for river banks.
-Its range is from Maine to Wisconsin and Iowa. It follows the mountains
-to northern Georgia; and west of the Mississippi it grows as far south
-as Arkansas. The species is best developed in western New York,
-northwestern Pennsylvania, and along the southern shores of Lakes Erie
-and Michigan.
-
-Trees do not clear themselves of branches on their lower trunks very
-early in life, and lumber more or less knotty results. It is possible,
-however, to cut a fairly large proportion of clear boards. The wood is
-of about the same weight as white oak, and is hard, strong, and tough.
-Its color is light brown, and the thin sapwood is hardly distinguishable
-from the heart. The medullary rays are as large as those of white oak,
-but are few. For that reason, swamp white oak does not give very
-satisfactory results when quarter-sawed. The bright patches are too
-scarce. Neither does it show as many of these rays as chestnut oak. The
-wood is very porous, but the large pores are confined to the springwood,
-while the broad bands of summerwood are dense. The contrast between the
-two parts of annual rings forms a strong, but not particularly handsome
-figure when the lumber is sawed tangentially--that is, from the side of
-the log. The wood finisher can improve this oak's natural appearance by
-employing fillers and stains to lighten shades or deepen tints. The uses
-of this oak are numerous. It is excellent fuel, and is rather low in
-ash; it is weaker and more brittle than white oak; but it is quite
-satisfactory for railroad ties, car building, house finish, furniture,
-some parts of heavy vehicles, certain kinds of cooperage, and for farm
-implements.
-
-    ROCKY MOUNTAIN BLUE OAK (_Quercus oblongifolia_) is named from the
-    blue color of its foliage, though what little lumber is cut from it,
-    is bought and sold as white oak. It is of little importance, yet in
-    the almost timberless mountains of western Texas it supplies some of
-    the urgent wants of a scattered population. It bears willow-like
-    leaves one or two inches long, and less than an inch wide; but on
-    vigorous shoots they are larger. The acorns are very small. Trees
-    seldom exceed thirty feet in height, and a diameter of twenty
-    inches; and often the trunk is divided near the ground in three or
-    four stout, crooked forks. Ordinarily, it is an impossible tree to
-    lumber, but sometimes a few logs find their way to sawmills and a
-    little passable lumber is produced. The wood weighs 58 pounds per
-    cubic foot. It is strong, but when it breaks, it snaps short. The
-    heartwood is darker than in most oaks, and the sapwood is brown. The
-    tree is useful for fuel. Charcoal for local blacksmith shops is
-    manufactured from the wood. It is abundant on many of the sterile
-    slopes and mesas of New Mexico and Arizona, but usually in the form
-    of brush about the heads of canyons.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-COW OAK
-
-[Illustration: COW OAK]
-
-
-
-
-COW OAK
-
-(_Quercus Michauxii_)
-
-
-This oak's acorns are remarkably free from the bitterness due to tannin
-and are therefore pleasant to the taste. Herbivorous animals eat them
-when they are to be had, and the eagerness with which cattle gather them
-in the fall is doubtless the reason for calling the tree cow oak. Hogs
-and sheep are as eager hunters for the acorns as cattle are, and the
-half-wild swine in the southern forests become marketable during the two
-months of the acorn season. Children know the excellency of the cow oak
-acorns, and gather them in large quantities during the early weeks of
-autumn in the South. The tree is widely known as basket oak, and the
-name refers to a prevailing use for the wood in early times, and a
-rather common use yet. Long before anyone had made a study of the
-structure of this wood, it was learned that it splits nicely into long,
-slender bands, and these were employed by basket weavers for all sorts
-of wares in that line. Tens of thousands of baskets were in use before
-the war in the southern cottonfields, and they have not gone out of use
-there yet. It is safe to say that millions of dollars worth of cotton
-has been picked and "toted" in baskets made of this oak. It was natural,
-therefore, that the name basket oak should be given it. Large, coarse
-baskets are still made of splits of this wood, and china and other
-merchandise are packed in them; while baskets of finer pattern and
-workmanship are doing service about the farms and homes of thousands of
-people.
-
-When the structure of wood became a subject of study among
-dendrologists, the secret of the cow oak's adaptability to basket making
-was discovered. The annual rings of growth are broad, and the bands of
-springwood and summerwood are distinct. The springwood is so perforated
-with large pores that it contains comparatively little real wood
-substance. The early basket maker did not notice that but he found by
-experimenting that the wood split along the rings of growth into fine
-ribbons. The splitting occurs along the springwood. Ribbons may be
-pulled off as thin as the rings of annual growth, that is, from an
-eighth to a sixteenth of an inch thick. These are the "splits" of which
-baskets are made. When subjected to rough usage, such as being dragged
-and hauled about cornfields and cotton plantations, such a basket will
-outlast two or three of willow.
-
-The tree is sometimes called swamp white oak, and swamp chestnut oak. It
-bears some resemblance to the swamp white oak (_Quercus platanoides_)
-and some people believe that both are of one species, but of slightly
-different forms. It is not surprising that there should be a conflict of
-names and confusion in identification. The leaf resembles that of the
-chestnut oak, and to that fact is due the belief which some hold that
-the chief difference between the trees is that the chestnut oak
-(_Quercus prinus_) grows on dry land and cow oak in damp situations.
-Botanists make a clear distinction between cow oak and all other
-species, though it closely resembles some of them in several
-particulars.
-
-From the northern limits of its growth in Delaware, where it is not of
-any considerable size, it extends south through the Atlantic states and
-into Florida, west in the Gulf states to the Trinity river in Texas, and
-up the Mississippi valley, including in its range Arkansas, eastern
-Missouri, southern Indiana and Illinois and western Kentucky and
-Tennessee. It is distinctly of the South and may be considered the best
-southern representative of the white oak group. It does best in swampy
-localities where it is found in company with water hickory, sweet
-magnolia, planer tree, water oak, willow oak, red maple, and red and
-black gum.
-
-In general appearance the tree gives the impression of massiveness and
-strength, offset by the delicate, silvery effect of the bark and the
-lining of the foliage. The usual height is sixty or eighty feet, but it
-often exceeds a hundred feet, the bole attaining a diameter of as high
-as seven feet and showing three log lengths clear. The characteristic
-light gray, scaly, white oak bark covers trunk and heavy limbs, which
-rise at narrow angles, forming a rounded head and dividing into stout
-branches and twigs. The winter buds are not characteristic of white oak,
-being long and pointed rather than rounded. They are about a half inch
-in length, scaly, with red hairs and usually in threes on the ends of
-the twigs. The general texture of the leaves is thick and heavy, their
-upper surfaces being dark, lustrous green and the lower white and
-covered with hairs. They are from five to seven inches long with
-petioles an inch in length and of the general outline of the chestnut
-leaf. Their rich crimson color is conspicuous in the fall after turning.
-
-The wood of cow oak is hard, heavy, very tough, strong, and durable. The
-heartwood is light brown, the sapwood darker colored. It weighs 50.10
-pounds per cubic foot, and is not quite up to white oak in strength and
-elasticity. In quarter-sawing it does not equal white oak, because the
-medullary rays, though broad, are not regularly distributed, and the
-surface of the quarter-sawed board has a splotchy appearance, and it is
-not as easy to match figures as with white oak.
-
-Cow oak is one of the most important hardwoods of the South. Its uses
-are much the same as those for white oak farther north. The custom of
-calling it white oak when it goes to market renders the collection of
-statistics of uses difficult. Sawmills seldom or never list cow oak in
-making reports of cut. Factories which further manufacture lumber, after
-it leaves the mill, sometimes distinguish between cow oak and other
-oaks. It has been found suitable material in the South for canthook
-handles where it takes the place of hickory which is more expensive. It
-is reported for that use in considerable quantity in Louisiana. The
-handles are subjected to great strain and violent shocks. The billets
-are split to the proper size, because if they are sawed they are liable
-to contain cross grain which is a fatal defect. The wood is cut in
-dimensions for chair stock and furniture, the better grades usually
-going to furniture factories. Defective logs, short lengths, and odds
-and ends may be worked into chair stock which contains a large
-proportion of small pieces. The making of large plantation baskets of
-this wood is still a fairly large business in Louisiana and Mississippi.
-Braided bottoms of cheap chairs are of the same workmanship as baskets.
-
-Vehicle makers in the South are large users of this wood. It is employed
-in heavy wagons chiefly, and is worked into many parts, including axles,
-bolsters, felloes, hubs, hounds, tongues, reaches, spokes, and
-bedbottoms.
-
-This tree is classed as white oak by coopers who accept it as stave
-material. The amount used is much less than of the true white oak, but
-the exact quantity taken yearly by barrel makers is not known because
-statistics do not list the different white oaks separately. Cow oak
-rives well when a trunk is found clear of knots. The trees are usually
-smaller and less perfect than true white oak in the North.
-
-Railroads accept crossties of this species and they give as long service
-as white oak, are as hard, and hold spikes as well. The wood is accepted
-by car shops for use in repairs and in new work. Trunks are split or
-sawed into fence posts and are used in probably larger numbers than any
-other southern oak.
-
-This tree's future seems fairly well assured. It will further decline in
-available supply, because it is cut faster than it is growing. That is
-the status of all the timber oaks of this country. This one has
-advantage over some of the others in that it occupies wet land which
-will not soon be in demand for agricultural purposes, and young growth
-will be left to develop.
-
-    ENGELMANN OAK (_Quercus engelmanni_) occupies a restricted range in
-    southwestern California where it is generally spoken of as a desert
-    tree; but its rate of growth appears to be much more rapid than is
-    usual with trees in arid situations. It occupies a narrow belt in
-    San Diego county and its range extends into Lower California. It
-    forms about one-third of the stand in Palomar mountains, and is much
-    scarcer in the Cuyamaca mountains. The tree seldom attains a height
-    greater than forty or fifty feet, or a diameter more than twenty or
-    thirty inches. The largest trees are of small value for lumber and
-    in rare instances only, if at all, do they go to sawmills. The
-    trunks fork and each branch forks, until a fairly large bole near
-    the ground is divided among numerous limbs. The tree's chief value
-    is as fuel. It rates high as such. The leaves are bluish-green and
-    are thick with sharp points on their margins. The leaves vary
-    greatly in size, and are largest on young shoots. They remain a year
-    on the tree, and are classed as evergreen. The acorns ripen in one
-    year. This interesting species was named for Dr. George Engelmann,
-    whose name is borne also by Engelmann spruce. The wood is among the
-    heaviest of the oaks, exceeding white oak by more than twelve pounds
-    per cubic foot. It is brittle and weak, and very dark brown. The
-    green wood checks and warps badly in seasoning. The medullary rays
-    are numerous and large, but are so irregularly dispersed that
-    quarter-sawing promises no satisfactory results, even if logs of
-    suitable size could be found. The annual rings are indistinct, owing
-    to no clear line of separation between springwood and summerwood.
-    Pores are numerous, diffuse, and some of them large. The species is
-    entitled to recognition only because it is found in a region where
-    forests are scarce and scrubby, and every trunk has value as fuel,
-    if for nothing else. It affords a cover for hills which otherwise
-    would be barren, and it frequently occurs in fairly dense thickets.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PACIFIC POST OAK
-
-[Illustration: PACIFIC POST OAK]
-
-
-
-
-PACIFIC POST OAK
-
-(_Quercus Garryana_)
-
-
-David Douglas named this tree the Garry oak, in honor of Nicholas Garry
-of the Hudson Bay Company, who furnished valuable assistance to
-botanists and other explorers of early times in the northwestern parts
-of America. This tree is best developed in the neighborhood of Puget
-Sound, the present state of Washington, and at the period of
-explorations in that region by Douglas, who was a Scotchman, the country
-was a sort of "no man's land." It was claimed by both England and the
-United States, and Russia had cast covetous eyes on it as a southern
-extension of her Alaska holdings. England at that time put a good deal
-of dependence in the Hudson Bay Company to get possession of and to hold
-as much country as possible, and Garry's help given to explorers was
-part of a well-laid plan to possess as much of the northwestern country
-as possible. Douglas doubtless had that in mind when he named the oak in
-honor of Garry. It was a witness and perpetual reminder that the Hudson
-Bay Company's strong arms had been stretched in that direction.
-
-The people in California and Oregon often speak of the tree simply as
-white oak, but it is sometimes called Oregon white oak, and more often
-Oregon oak without a qualifying word. When it is spoken of as western
-white oak, which frequently is the case, it is compared with the
-well-known eastern white oak. It bears more resemblance to the eastern
-post oak (_Quercus minor_) and for that reason it has been named Pacific
-post oak. The leaves and twigs, particularly when they are young,
-resemble post oak.
-
-The northern limit of the tree's range crosses southern British
-Columbia. It is found in the lower valley of Frazer river and on
-Vancouver island. It is the only oak tree of British Columbia. Its range
-extends southward to the Santa Cruz mountains in California, but near
-the southern limit of its range it is found chiefly in valleys near the
-coast. It is best developed in western Washington and Oregon. It occurs
-of good size on dry gravelly slopes of low hills; and it ascends the
-Cascade mountains to considerable elevations, but becomes stunted and
-shrubby. It is abundant in northwestern California.
-
-The tree has a height from sixty to a hundred feet; sometimes it attains
-a diameter of three and one-half feet. It carries a broad and compact
-crown, especially when the tree is surrounded by young coniferous growth
-as is the case in its best habitat where natural pruning gets rid of the
-lower limbs and causes an outward and later a pendulous growth of the
-upper part. The limbs are strong and heavy as are the branches and
-twigs. The bark is a grayish-brown with shallow fissures, the broad
-ridges being sometimes broken across forming square plates which are
-covered with the grayish flakes or scales. The buds are long and acute,
-and are coated with a red fuzz. The leaves are from four to six inches
-long and are bilaterally developed, having seven or nine coarse round
-lobes; the sinuses being rounded or rather shallow. The color is a dark
-lustrous green and the texture leathery.
-
-The acorn is rather large being about an inch and a quarter in length
-and usually about half as broad as long; has a shallow cup covered with
-pointed sometimes elongated scales.
-
-This oak is one of the most important hardwoods of the far Northwest. It
-is often compared with the eastern white oak, but its physical
-properties fall below that species in some important particulars. The
-two woods weigh about the same, but the eastern species is stronger and
-more elastic, and is of better color and figure. All oaks season
-somewhat slowly, but the Pacific post oak is hardly up to the average.
-It is a common saying that it must remain two years on the sticks to fit
-it for the shop, but that time may be shortened in many instances.
-Checking must be carefully guarded against.
-
-Some of this oak is exceedingly tough, and when carefully sorted and
-prepared it is excellent material for heavy wagons; but the best comes
-from young and comparatively small trees. When they attain large size
-they are apt to become brash. The tree usually grows rapidly, and is not
-old in proportion to the size of its trunk. An examination of the wood
-shows broad bands of summerwood and narrow, very porous springwood. The
-medullary rays are broad and numerous, and ought to show well in
-quarter-sawed stock; but it does not appear that much quarter-sawing has
-been done.
-
-Practically all of this species cut in the United States is credited to
-Oregon in the census of sawmill output in 1910. The cut was 2,887,000
-feet, and was produced by fourteen sawmills, while in Washington only
-one mill reported any oak, and the quantity was only 4,000 feet. On the
-northwest Pacific coast it comes in competition with eastern oak and
-also with Siberian or Japanese oak.
-
-Basket makers put this wood to considerable use. Young trees are
-selected on account of their toughness. The wood is either split in
-long, thin ribbons for basket weaving, or it is first made into veneer
-and then cut in ribbons of required width. The largest users are
-furniture makers, but boat yards find it convenient material and it
-takes the place of imported oak for frames, keels, ribs, sills, and
-interior finish. It is durable, and it may be depended upon for long
-service in any part of boat construction. Its toughness fits it for ax,
-hammer, and other handles. It is far inferior to hickory, but on the
-Pacific coast it can be had much cheaper. Its strength and durability
-make it one of the best western woods for insulator pins for telephone
-and telegraph lines. It is worked into saddle trees and stirrups.
-
-The scarcity of woods on the Pacific coast suitable for tight cooperage
-gives this oak a rather important place, because barrels and casks made
-of it hold alcoholic liquors. Available statistics do not show the
-quantity of staves produced from this wood, but it is known to be used
-for staves in Oregon.
-
-Much Pacific post oak is employed as rough lumber for various purposes.
-Railroads buy crossties, hewed or sawed from small trunks, and country
-bridges are occasionally floored with thick planks which wear well and
-offer great resistance to decay.
-
-The quantity of this oak growing in the Northwest is not known. It falls
-far below some of the softwoods of the same region, and the area on
-which it is found in commercial amounts is not large. It is holding its
-ground fairly well. Trees bear full crops of acorns frequently, and if
-they fall on damp humus they germinate and grow. The seedlings imitate
-the eastern white oak, and send tap roots deep into the ground, and are
-then prepared for fortune or adversity. It happens, however, that trees
-which bear the most bountiful crops of acorns do not stand in forests
-where the ground is damp and humus abundant, but on more open ground on
-grass covered slopes. Acorns which fall on sod seldom germinate, and
-consequently few seedlings are to be seen in such situations. Open-grown
-trees are poorly suited for lumber, on account of many limbs low on the
-trunks, but they grow large amounts of cordwood.
-
-    CALIFORNIA SCRUB OAK (_Quercus dumosa_) has been a puzzle to
-    botanists, and a hopeless enigma to laymen. Some would split the
-    species into no fewer than three species and three varieties, basing
-    distinctions on forms of leaves and acorns and other botanical
-    differences; but Sudworth, after a prolonged study of this matter,
-    recognized only one species and one variety, but admitted that
-    "California scrub oak unquestionably varies more than all other oaks
-    in the form and size of its leaves and acorns." He thought it might
-    possibly be equalled in that respect by _Quercus undulata_ of the
-    Rocky Mountains. Some of the leaves of California scrub oak are
-    three-fourths of an inch long and half an inch wide, while others
-    may be four inches long. The edges of some leaves are as briery as
-    the leaves of holly, others are comparatively smooth. The shapes and
-    sizes of acorns vary as much as the leaves. Some are long and
-    slender, others short and stocky. This peculiar oak is found only in
-    California, but it shows a disposition to advance as far as possible
-    into the sea, for it has gained a foothold on islands lying off the
-    California coast, and it there finds its most acceptable habitat. It
-    reaches its largest size in sheltered canyons on the islands, and
-    attains a height of twenty or twenty-five feet, and a diameter of a
-    foot or less. It is not large enough to win favor with lumbermen but
-    in its scrubby form it is abundant in many localities. It is
-    scattered over several thousand square miles, from nearly sea level
-    up to 7,000 feet in the mountains of southern California. It is
-    found scattered through the coast range and the Sierra Nevadas from
-    Mendocino county to Lower California, 700 miles or more. It grows
-    from sprouts and from acorns. The leaves adhere to the twigs
-    thirteen months, and fall after the new crop has appeared. The wood
-    is light brown, hard, and brittle. No use is made of it, except to a
-    small extent for fuel. On the mountains it grows in thickets
-    scarcely five feet high, but they cover the ground in dense jungles,
-    and the roots go deep in the ground. The species is valuable chiefly
-    for protection to steep slopes which would otherwise be without much
-    growth of any kind. Being low on the ground, forest fires are
-    particularly destructive to this oak; but its ability to send up
-    sprouts repairs the damage to some extent.
-
-    EMORY OAK (_Quercus emoryi_) grows among the mountains of western
-    Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, attains a height from thirty to
-    seventy feet, and a diameter from one to four. The largest size is
-    found only in sheltered canyons, while on high mountains and in
-    exposed situations the tree degenerates to a shrub. It always has a
-    crop of leaves. The old do not fall until the new appear. In shape,
-    the leaves somewhat resemble those of box elder. The acorns ripen
-    from June to September, the exact time depending upon the tree's
-    situation. Trunks large enough for use are not scarce, but the wood
-    is not of high class. Stair railing and balusters have been made of
-    it in Texas, but the appearance is rather poor. The grain is coarse,
-    the figure common, the color unsatisfactory. The heart is very dark,
-    but the tones are not uniform, and flat surfaces, such as boards and
-    panels, show streaks which are not sufficiently attractive to be
-    taken for figure. Trunks are apt to be full of black knots which mar
-    the appearance of the lumber. The medullary rays are numerous and
-    broad, and in quarter-sawing, the size and arrangement of the
-    "mirrors" are all that could be desired, but they have a decidedly
-    pink color which does not contrast very well with the rest of the
-    wood. The weight of this oak exceeds per cubic foot white oak, by
-    more than ten pounds; but it has scarcely half the strength or half
-    the elasticity of white oak. The springwood is filled with large
-    pores, the summerwood with smaller ones. It rates high as fuel, and
-    that is its chief value. Large quantities are cut for cordwood.
-    Railroad ties are made of it, and more or less goes into mines as
-    props and lagging. Stock ranches make fences, sheds, and corrals of
-    this oak, and live stock eats the acorns. The human inhabitants
-    likewise find the Emory oak acorn crop a source of food. Mexicans
-    gather them in large quantities and sell what they can spare. The
-    market for the acorns is found in towns in northwestern Mexico.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHESTNUT OAK
-
-[Illustration: CHESTNUT OAK]
-
-
-
-
-CHESTNUT OAK
-
-(_Quercus Prinus_)
-
-
-This tree is known as rock oak in New York; as rock chestnut oak in
-Massachusetts and Rhode Island; as rock oak and rock chestnut oak in
-Pennsylvania and Delaware; as tanbark oak and swampy chestnut oak in
-North Carolina and as rock chestnut oak and mountain oak in Alabama.
-
-There is a pretty general disposition to call this tree rock oak. The
-name refers to the hardness of the wood, and is not confined to this
-species. Other oaks are also given that name, and the adjective "rock"
-is applied to two or three species of elm which possess wood remarkable
-for its hardness. Cedar and pine are likewise in the class. In all of
-these classes "rock" is employed to denote hardness of wood. Iron as an
-adjective or ironwood as a noun is used in the same way for a number of
-trees. The name swampy chestnut oak as applied in some parts of the
-South to this tree, is hardly descriptive, for it is less a swamp tree
-than most of the oaks, though it does often grow along the banks of
-streams.
-
-Its distribution ranges from the coast of southern Maine and the Blue
-Hills of eastern Massachusetts southward to Delaware and the District of
-Columbia; along the Appalachian mountains to northern Georgia and
-Alabama; westward to the shores of Lake Champlain and the valley of the
-Genesee river, New York; along the northern shores of Lake Erie and to
-central Kentucky and Tennessee. It is rare and local in New England and
-Ontario, but plentiful on the banks of the lower Hudson river and on the
-Appalachian mountains from southern New York to Alabama. It reaches its
-best development in the region from West Virginia to North Carolina,
-pretty high on the ridges flanking the mountain ranges.
-
-Leaves are alternate, from five to nine inches long, with coarse teeth
-rounded at the top. At maturity, they are thick and firm, yellow-green
-and rather lustrous on the upper surface, paler and usually hairy
-beneath. In the autumn before falling, they turn a dull orange color or
-rusty-brown.
-
-The flowers appear in May and are solitary or paired on short spurs. The
-fruit or acorn is solitary or in pairs, one or two and one-half inches
-long, very lustrous and of a bright chestnut-brown color. The acorn cup
-is thin, downy-lined and covered with small scales. The kernel is sweet
-and edible. The bark of the chestnut oak is thin, smooth, purplish-brown
-and often lustrous on young stems and small branches, becoming a thick,
-dark, reddish-brown, or nearly black on old trunks, and divided into
-broad rounded ridges, separating on the surface into small, closely
-appressed scales. The bark of the tree is so dark in color and so deeply
-furrowed that it has often been mistaken for one of the black oak group,
-although its wavy leaf margins and annual fruit clearly differentiate it
-from those species. The bark of the chestnut oak is thicker and rougher
-on old trunks than on any other oak.
-
-The bark of chestnut oak has long been valuable for tanning. There is
-tannin in the bark of all oaks, and several of them contain it in paying
-quantities, but chestnut oak is more important to the leather industry
-than any other oak. In richness of tannin the tanbark oak of California
-occupies as high a place, but it is not supplying as much material as
-the eastern tree. Statistics showing the annual consumption of tanbark
-and tanning extracts in the United States, do not list the oaks
-separately, but it is well known that chestnut oak far surpasses all
-others in output. Hemlock bark is peeled in large quantities, but
-tanneries occasionally mix chestnut oak bark with it to lighten the deep
-red color imparted to leather when hemlock bark is the sole material
-employed.
-
-Large quantities of chestnut oak timber have been destroyed to procure
-the bark. Fortunately, it is a practice not much indulged in at present,
-because the wood now has value, but it formerly had little. It was then
-abandoned in the forest after the bark was peeled and hauled away. The
-same practice obtained with hemlock years ago. Much chestnut oak is
-still cut primarily for the bark, but the logs are worth hauling to
-sawmills, unless in remote districts.
-
-The chestnut oak is a vigorous tree and grows rapidly in dry soil, where
-it often forms a great part of the forest. It is not as large as the
-white oak or red oak, but is a splendid tree, its bole being very
-symmetrical and holding its size well. It grows usually to a height of
-from sixty to seventy feet and sometimes 100 feet, with a diameter of
-from two to five feet and occasionally as large as seven feet.
-
-The form of the tree shows great variation, depending upon the situation
-in which it grows. Trees in open ground often divide into forks or large
-limbs, and the trunks are short and of poor form. Open-grown trees show
-a decided tendency to develop crooked boles, and unduly large branches.
-No such objection can be urged against it when it grows under forest
-conditions. Trunks are straight and are otherwise of good form.
-
-The wood of chestnut oak differs little from that of white oak in
-weight, strength, and stiffness. It is hard, rather tough, durable in
-contact with the soil, and is darker in color than white oak. It has
-few large, open pores, and requires less filler in finishing than most
-oaks. There are many pores, however, and those in the springwood are
-arranged in bands. The summerwood is broad and distinct, usually
-constituting three-fourths of the annual ring. The medullary rays are as
-broad and numerous as in the best furniture oaks. They are regularly
-arranged, and spaces between them do not vary much in width. The wood
-quarter-saws well.
-
-The wood has the fault of checking badly in seasoning, unless carefully
-attended to. In recent years, these difficulties have been largely
-overcome, both in air seasoning and in the drykiln.
-
-Chestnut oak has a wide range of uses. It is classed as white oak in
-many markets, but few users buy it believing it to be true white oak. It
-is coming year by year to stand more on its own merits. Some sawmills
-which formerly piled it and sold it with other oaks, now keep it
-separate, and some factories which once took it only because it came
-mixed with other oaks, now buy it for special uses, and make high-class
-commodities of it. One of these is mission furniture, which has become
-fashionable in recent years. Chestnut oak possesses good fuming
-properties, and this constitutes much of its value as furniture
-material.
-
-The wood is found in factories where general furniture is made. It is
-largely frame material for furniture though some of it is for outside
-finish. It is employed as frames in Maryland in the construction of
-canal boats, and the annual demand for that purpose is about a quarter
-of a million feet in that state.
-
-One of the most important places for chestnut oak is in the shop which
-makes vehicles. It goes into sills for both heavy and light bodies,
-bolsters, and wagon bottoms. It has become a favorite wagon wood in
-England and in continental Europe, and there passes as white oak, though
-dealers well know that it is not the true white oak. There is no
-indication that demand for it will lessen, for it possesses many
-characters which fit it for vehicle making.
-
-In Michigan more chestnut oak is reported by car builders than by any
-other class of manufacturers, though wagon makers buy it. Car shops use
-about 220,000 feet a year, and work it into hand cars, push cars,
-track-laying cars, and cattle guards.
-
-The large remaining area of timber growth in which chestnut oak appears
-is the Appalachian range through eastern Tennessee and western North
-Carolina, and the fact that it is comparatively plentiful in the forests
-of the Appalachian range will tend to bring it more and more into
-prominence as a factor in the making of wagons, cars, boats, staves, and
-furniture as the other oaks become scarcer.
-
-The probable future of chestnut oak is an interesting problem for
-study. Few steps have yet been taken looking toward providing for
-generations to come. Chestnut oak has been left to take care of itself.
-The trees, produced in nature's way, have been ample to supply all needs
-in the past, and they will be for the near future. Chestnut oak
-possesses some advantages over most of the other oaks. Large trees will
-grow on very poor soil, where most other oaks are little more than
-shrubs. Trees so grown are little more susceptible to disease than if
-produced in good soil, though they develop more slowly and are smaller.
-There are many poor flats and sterile ridges in the chestnut oak's
-range, and they will produce timber of fairly good kind, if the chestnut
-oaks are permitted to have them. Nature gave this tree facilities for
-taking possession. Its acorns will grow without being buried. They do
-not depend on blue jays to carry them to sunny openings or squirrels to
-plant them; but they will sprout where they fall, whether on hard
-gravelly soil or dry leaves; and they at once set about getting the tap
-roots of the future trees into the ground. In many instances the
-chestnut oak's acorns do not wait to fall from the tree before they
-sprout. Like the seed of the Florida mangrove, they are often ready to
-take root the day they touch the ground. The large acorn is stored with
-plantfood which sustains the growing germ for some time, and the ground
-must be very hard and exceedingly dry if a young chestnut oak is not
-soon firmly established, and good for two or three hundred years, if let
-alone.
-
-The forester who may undertake to grow chestnut oaks must exercise great
-care in transplanting the seedlings, or the tap roots will be broken and
-the young trees will die. The best plan is to drop acorns on the ground
-where trees are expected to grow, and nature will do the rest, provided
-birds and beasts leave the acorns alone.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHINQUAPIN OAK
-
-[Illustration: CHINQUAPIN OAK]
-
-
-
-
-CHINQUAPIN OAK
-
-(_Quercus Acuminata_)
-
-
-This tree is known as yellow chestnut oak, chinquapin oak, chestnut oak,
-pin oak, yellow oak, scrub oak, dwarf chestnut oak, shrub oak, and rock
-oak. It should not be confused with _Quercus prinus_, the true chestnut
-oak, although it is commonly known in so many sections of the country by
-the latter name; the names yellow oak, pin oak, and scrub oak are
-likewise applied to many species, so that the only way to accurately
-designate members of this great family is to employ their botanical
-names. However, this species should always be known as the chinquapin
-oak, which is a distinctive term, and not applied to any other.
-
-The bark of this tree is light gray and is broken into thin flakes,
-silvery-white, sometimes slightly tinted with brown, rarely half an inch
-thick. The branchlets are marked with pale lenticels.
-
-The leaves of the chinquapin oak are from five to seven inches long,
-simple and alternate; they have a taper-pointed apex and blunt,
-wedge-shaped or pointed base; are sharply toothed. When unfolding they
-show bright bronze-green above, tinged with purple, and are covered
-underneath with light silvery down; at maturity they become thick and
-firm, showing greenish-yellow on the upper surface and silvery-white
-below. The midrib is conspicuous and the veins extending outward to the
-points of the teeth are well-defined. In autumn the leaves turn orange
-and scarlet and are very showy. The leaves are narrow, hardly two inches
-wide, and more nearly resemble those of the chestnut than do any other
-oak leaves. In their broadest forms they are also similar to those of
-the true chestnut oak, although the difference in the quality and color
-of the bark, and of the leaves, would prevent either tree from being
-mistaken for the other. They are crowded at the ends of the branches and
-hang in such a manner as to show their under surfaces with every touch
-of breeze. This characteristic gives the chinquapin oak a peculiar
-effect of constantly shifting color which is one of its most attractive
-features and which puts the observer in mind of the trembling aspen,
-although the shading and coloring of the oak is much more striking.
-
-This tree's range extends from northern New York, along Lake Champlain
-and the Hudson river westward through southern Ontario, and southward
-into parts of Nebraska and Kansas; on its eastern boundary it extends as
-far south as the District of Columbia and along the upper Potomac; the
-growth west of the Alleghany mountains reaches into central Alabama and
-Mississippi, through Arkansas and the northern portion of Louisiana to
-the eastern part of Oklahoma and parts of Texas even to the canyons of
-the Guadalupe mountains, in the extreme western part of that state. It
-is a timber tree of much importance in Texas, and in 1910 manufacturers
-reported the use of 1,152,000 feet in that state, largely for making
-furniture and vegetable crates.
-
-The chinquapin oak is named from the form of its leaf. Its acorn bears
-no resemblance to the nut of chinquapin. Trees average smaller in size
-than white oak, but when all circumstances are favorable they compare
-well with any of the other oaks. In the lower Wabash valley, trees of
-this species were found in the original forests 160 feet high and four
-or five in diameter. When it grows in crowded stands it develops a tall,
-symmetrical trunk, clear of limbs; but it is shorter in open growth. The
-base is often much buttressed.
-
-The wood is very heavy, hard, strong, stiff, and durable. In color the
-heartwood is dark, the sapwood lighter. The springwood is narrow and
-filled with large pores, the summerwood broad and dense. Medullary rays
-are less numerous and scarcely as broad as in chestnut oak, which this
-wood resembles. It checks badly in drying, both by kiln and in the open
-air; but when properly seasoned it is an excellent wood for most
-purposes for which white oak is used. It shows fewer figures when
-quarter-sawed than white oak shows, but it is satisfactory for many
-kinds of furniture, particularly when finished in mission style.
-
-Railroads throughout the region where this species is found have laid
-chinquapin oak ties in their tracks for many years and they give long
-service, because they resist decay and are hard enough to stand the wear
-of the rails. In early times in the Ohio valley it helped to fence many
-a farm when the material for such fences was the old style fence rail,
-eleven feet long, mauled from the straightest, clearest timber afforded
-by the primeval forest. It had for companions many other oaks which were
-abundant there, and it was on a par with the best of them. In the first
-years of steamboating on the Ohio river, when the engines used wood for
-fuel, they provided a market for many an old rail fence. The rails were
-the best obtainable fuel, and the chinquapin oak rails in the heaps were
-carefully looked for by the purchasers, because they were rated high in
-fuel value. It is now known that chinquapin oak in combustion develops
-considerably more heat than an equal quantity of white oak.
-
-When southern Indiana and Illinois were furnishing coopers with their
-best staves, chinquapin oak was ricked with white oak, and no barrel
-maker ever complained. The pores in the wood seem large, but in old
-timber which is largely heartwood, the pores become clogged by the
-processes of nature, and the wood is made proof against leakage. That is
-what gives white oak its superiority as stave timber. It has as many
-pores as red oak, but upon close examination under a magnifying glass,
-they are found to be plugged, while red oak's pores are wide open. The
-result is that red oak barrels leak through the wood; those made of
-white oak do not. Chinquapin oak possesses the same properties, which
-account for its reputation as stave material.
-
-The future for chinquapin oak is not quite as promising as that of
-chestnut oak. The former's choice growing place is on rich soil and in
-damp situations. These happen to be what the farmer wants, and he will
-not leave the chinquapin oak alone to grow in nature's method, nor will
-he plant its acorns in places where the trees will interfere with his
-cornfields and meadows. Consequently, the tree is apt to receive scant
-consideration after the original forests have disappeared; while its
-poor cousin, the chestnut oak, will be left to make its way on sterile
-ridges, and may even receive some help from the forester and woodlot
-owner.
-
-    VALLEY OAK (_Quercus lobata_) is often considered to be the largest
-    hardwood of the Pacific coast. Trunk diameters of ten feet have been
-    recorded, and heights more than 100; but such measurements belong
-    only to rare and extraordinary individuals. The average size of the
-    tree is less than half of that. The most famous tree of this species
-    is the Sir Joseph Hooker oak, near Chico, California, though it is
-    not the largest. It is seven feet in diameter and 100 high. It was
-    named by the botanist Asa Gray in 1877. This species is commonly
-    called California white oak, which name would be unobjectionable if
-    it were the only white oak in California. A more distinctive name is
-    weeping oak, which refers to the appearance of the outer branches.
-    It is called swamp oak, but without good reason, though the ground
-    on which it grows is often swampy during the rainy season. The name
-    valley oak is specially appropriate, since its favorite habitat is
-    in the broad valleys of central California. Its range does not go
-    outside that state, neither does the tree grow very high on the
-    mountains. Its range begins in the upper Sacramento valley and
-    extends to Tejon, south of Lake Tulare, a distance north and south
-    of about five hundred miles, while east and west the tree is found
-    from the Sierra foothills to the sea, 150 or 200 miles. Its
-    characteristic growth is in scattered stands. It does not form
-    forests in the ordinary sense. Two or three large trees to the acre
-    are an average, and often many acres are wholly missed. The form of
-    trees, and the wide spaces between them, resemble an old apple
-    orchard, though few apple trees live to attain the dimensions of the
-    valley oak of ordinary size. The best stands were originally in the
-    Santa Clara valley and in the central part of the San Joaquin valley
-    in the salt grass region north of Lake Tulare in Kings and Fresno
-    counties. Most of the largest trees were cut long ago.
-
-    The leaves are lobed like white oak (_Quercus alba_) but are
-    smaller, seldom more than four inches long and two wide. The acorns
-    are uncommonly long, some of them being two and a half inches, sharp
-    pointed, with shallow cups. The wood of this oak is brash and breaks
-    easily. It is far below good eastern oak in strength and elasticity.
-    It weighs 46.17 pounds per cubic foot. The tree grows rapidly, and
-    its wide, clearly defined annual rings are largely dense summerwood.
-    The springwood is perforated with large pores. The color of the wood
-    is light brown, the sapwood lighter. Except as fuel, the uses found
-    for valley oak hardly come up to what might be expected of a tree so
-    large. It is not difficult, or at least was not difficult once, to
-    cut logs sixteen feet long and from three to five in diameter. Such
-    logs ought to make good lumber. The medullary rays indicate that the
-    wood can be quarter-sawed to advantage; yet there is no account that
-    any serious attempt was ever made to convert the valley oak into
-    lumber. The wood has some objectionable properties, but it has
-    escaped the sawmill chiefly because hardwood mills have never been
-    numerous in California, and they have been especially few in the
-    regions where the best valley oaks grow. The tree has been a great
-    source of fuel. It usually divides twenty or thirty feet from the
-    ground into large, wide-spreading branches, tempting to the
-    woodchopper. In central California, twenty or thirty years ago, it
-    was not unusual to haul this cordwood twenty-five miles to market.
-    Stockmen employed posts and rails split from valley oak to enclose
-    corrals and pens on the open plains for holding cattle, sheep, and
-    horses. The acorns are edible, and were formerly an article of food
-    for Indians who gathered them in considerable quantities in the fall
-    and stored them for winter in large baskets which were secured high
-    in the forks of trees to be out of reach of all ordinary marauders.
-    The baskets were made rain proof by roofing and wrapping them with
-    grass. When the time came for eating the acorns, they were prepared
-    for use by hulling them and then pounding them into meal in stone
-    mortars. The hulling was done with the teeth, and was the work of
-    squaws. The custom of eating the acorns has largely ceased with the
-    passing of the wild Indians from their former camping places; but
-    the stone mortars by hundreds remain in the vicinity of former
-    stands of valley oak.
-
-    This splendid tree is highly ornamental, but it has not been
-    planted, and perhaps it will not become popular. Nature seems to
-    have confined it to a certain climate, and it is not known that it
-    will thrive outside of it. It will certainly disappear from many of
-    the valleys where the largest trees once grew. The land is being
-    taken for fields and vineyards, and the oaks are removed. Some will
-    remain in canyons and rough places where the land is not wanted, and
-    one of the finest species of the United States will cease to pass
-    entirely from earth. The largest of these oaks have a spread of
-    branches covering more than one-third of an acre.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LIVE OAK
-
-[Illustration: LIVE OAK]
-
-
-
-
-LIVE OAK
-
-(_Quercus Virginiana_)
-
-
-The history of this live oak is a reversal of the history of almost
-every other important forest tree of the United States. It seems to be
-the lone exception to the rule that the use of a certain wood never
-decreases until forced by scarcity. There was a time when hardly any
-wood in this country was in greater demand than this, and now there is
-hardly one in less demand. The decline has not been the result of
-scarcity, for there has never been a time when plenty was not in sight.
-A few years ago, several fine live oaks were cut in making street
-changes in New Orleans, and a number of sound logs, over three feet in
-diameter, were rolled aside, and it was publicly announced that anyone
-who would take them away could have them. No one took them. It is
-doubtful if that could happen with timber of any other kind.
-
-The situation was different 120 years ago. At that time live oak was in
-such demand that the government, soon after the adoption of the
-constitution, became anxious lest enough could not be had to meet the
-requirements of the navy department. The keels of the first war vessels
-built by this government were about to be laid, and the most necessary
-material for their construction was live oak. The vessels were to be of
-wood, of course; and their strength and reliability depended upon the
-size and quality of the heavy braces used in the lower framework. These
-braces were called knees and were crooked at right angles. They were
-hewed in solid pieces, and the largest weighed nearly 1,000 pounds. No
-other wood was as suitable as live oak, which is very strong, and it
-grows knees in the form desired. The crooks produced by the junction of
-large roots with the base of the trunk were selected, and shipbuilders
-with saws, broadaxes, and adzes cut them in the desired sizes and
-shapes.
-
-When the building of the first ships of the navy was undertaken, the
-alarm was sounded that live oak was scarce, and that speculators were
-buying it to sell to European governments. Congress appropriated large
-sums of money and bought islands and other lands along the south
-Atlantic and Gulf coast, where the best live oak grew. In Louisiana
-alone the government bought 37,000 live oak trees, as well as large
-numbers in Florida and Georgia. In some instances the land on which the
-trees stood was bought.
-
-Ship carpenters were sent from New England to hew knees for the first
-vessels of the navy. The story of the troubles and triumphs of the
-contractors and knee cutters is an interesting one, but too long for
-even a summary here; suffice it that in due time the vessels were
-finished. The history of those vessels is almost a history of the early
-United States navy. Among their first duties when they put to sea was to
-fight French warships, when this country was about to get into trouble
-with Napoleon. They then fought the pirates of North Africa, and there
-one of the ships was burned by its own men to prevent its falling into
-the hands of the enemy. "Old Ironsides," another of the live oak
-vessels, fought fourteen ships, one at a time, during the war of 1812,
-and whipped them all. Another of the vessels was less fortunate. It was
-lost in battle, in which its commander, Lawrence, was killed, whose last
-words have become historic: "Don't give up the ship." Another came down
-to the Civil war and was sunk in Chesapeake bay.
-
-The invention of iron vessels ended the demand for live oak knees. The
-government held its land where this timber grew for a long time, but
-finally disposed of most of it. Part of that owned in Florida was
-recently incorporated in one of the National Forests of that state.
-
-Live oak is a tree of striking appearance. It prefers the open, and when
-of large size its spread of branches often is twice the height of the
-tree. Its trunk is short, but massy, and of enormous strength; otherwise
-it could not sustain the great weight of its heavy branches. Some of the
-largest limbs are nearly two feet in diameter where they leave the
-trunk, and are fifty feet long, and some are seventy-five feet in
-length. Probably the only tree in this country with a wider spread of
-branches is the valley oak of California. The live oak's trunk is too
-short for more than one sawlog, and that of moderate length. The largest
-specimens may be seventy feet high and six or seven feet in diameter,
-and yet not good for a sixteen-foot log. The enormous roots are of no
-use now. When land is cleared of this oak, the stumps are left to rot.
-
-The range of live oak extends 4,000 miles or more northeast and
-southwest. It begins on the coast of Virginia and ends in Central
-America. It is found in Lower California and in Cuba. In southern United
-States it sticks pretty closely to the coastal plains, though large
-trees grow 200 or 300 feet above tide level. In Texas it is inclined to
-rise higher on the mountains, but live oak in Texas seldom measures up
-to that which grows further east. In southern Texas, where the land is
-poor and dry, live oak degenerates into a shrub. Trees only a foot high
-sometimes bear acorns. In all its range in this country, it is known by
-but one English name, given it because it is evergreen. The leaves
-remain on the tree about thirteen months, following the habit of a
-number of other oaks. When new leaves appear, the old ones get out of
-the way.
-
-The wood is very heavy, hard, strong, and tough. In strength and
-stiffness it rates higher than white oak, and it is twelve pounds a
-cubic foot heavier. The sapwood is light in color, the heartwood brown,
-sometimes quite dark. The pores in the sapwood are open, but many of
-them are closed in heartwood. The annual rings are moderately well
-defined. The large pores are in the springwood, and those of the
-summerwood are smaller, but numerous. The medullary rays are numerous
-and dark. Measured radially, they are shorter than those of many other
-oaks. They show well in quarter-sawed lumber, but are arranged
-peculiarly, and do not form large groups of figures; but the wood
-presents a rather flecked or wavy appearance. The general tone is dark
-brown and very rich. It takes a smooth polish. When the wood is worked
-into spindles and small articles, and brightly polished, its appearance
-suggests dark polished granite, but the similitude is not sustained
-under close examination. Grills composed of small spindles and
-scrollwork are strikingly beautiful if displayed in light which does the
-wood justice. Composite panels are manufactured by joining narrow strips
-edge to edge. Selected pieces of dressed live oak suggest Circassian
-walnut, but would not pass as an imitation on close inspection. It may
-be stated generally that live oak is far from being a dead, flat wood,
-but is capable of being worked for various effects. Its value as a
-cabinet material has not been appreciated in the past, nor have its
-possibilities been suspected. It dropped out of notice when shipbuilders
-dispensed with it, and people seem to have taken for granted that it had
-no value for anything else. The form of the trunks makes possible the
-cutting of short stock only; but there is abundance of it. It fringes a
-thousand miles of coast. Many a trunk, short though it is, will cut
-easily a thousand feet of lumber. Working the large roots in veneer has
-not been undertaken, but good judges of veneers, who know what the
-stumps and roots contain, have expressed the opinion that a field is
-there awaiting development.
-
-Published reports of the uses of woods of various states seldom mention
-live oak. In Texas some of it is employed in the manufacture of parquet
-flooring. It is dark and contrasts with the blocks or strips of maple or
-some other light wood. It is turned in the lathe for newel posts for
-stairs, and contributes to other parts of stair work. In Louisiana it is
-occasionally found in shops where vehicles are made. It meets
-requirements as axles for heavy wagons. Stone masons' mauls are made of
-live oak knots. They stand nearly as much pounding as lignum-vitæ. More
-live oak is cut for fuel than for all other purposes. It develops much
-heat, but a large quantity of ashes remains.
-
-The live oak is the most highly valued ornamental tree of the South,
-though it has seldom been planted. Nature placed these oaks where they
-are growing. Many an old southern homestead sits well back in groves of
-live oak. Parks and plazas in towns have them, and would not part with
-them on any terms. Tallahassee, Florida, is almost buried under live
-oaks which in earlier years sheltered the wigwams of an Indian town.
-Villages near the coasts of both the Gulf and the Atlantic in several
-southern states have their venerable trees large enough for half the
-people to find shade beneath the branches at one time. Many fine stands
-have been cut in recent years to make room for corn, cane, and rice.
-
-Many persons associate the live oak with Spanish moss which festoons its
-branches in the Gulf region. The moss is no part of the tree, and
-apparently draws no substance from it, though it may smother the leaves
-by accumulation, or break the branches by its weight. Strictly speaking,
-the beard-like growth is not moss at all, but a sort of pine apple
-(_Dendropogon usenoides_) which simply hangs on the limbs and draws its
-sustenance from water and air. It is found on other trees, besides live
-oak, and dealers in Louisiana alone sell half a million dollars worth of
-it a year to upholsterers in all the principal countries of the world.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED OAK
-
-[Illustration: RED OAK]
-
-
-
-
-RED OAK[4]
-
-(_Quercus Rubra_)
-
-    [4] Red oak belongs to the black oak group. Other species usually
-    listed as black oaks are Pin oak (_Quercus palustris_), Georgia oak
-    (_Quercus georgiana_), Texan red oak (_Quercus texana_), Scarlet oak
-    (_Quercus coccinea_), Yellow oak (_Quercus velutina_), California
-    black oak (_Quercus californica_), Turkey oak (_Quercus catesbæi_),
-    Spanish oak (_Quercus digitata_), Black Jack oak (_Quercus
-    marilandica_), Water oak (_Quercus nigra_), Willow oak (_Quercus
-    phellos_), Laurel oak (_Quercus laurifolia_), Blue Jack oak
-    (_Quercus brevifolia_), Shingle oak (_Quercus imbricaria_),
-    Whiteleaf oak (_Quercus hypoleuca_), Highland oak (_Quercus
-    wislizeni_), Myrtle oak (_Quercus myrtifolia_), California live oak
-    (_Quercus agrifolia_--sometimes classed with white oaks), Canyon
-    live oak (_Quercus chrysolepis_), an evergreen oak with no English
-    name, (_Quercus tomentella_), Price oak (_Quercus pricei_), Morehus
-    oak (_Quercus morehus_), Tanbark oak (_Quercus densiflora_), Barren
-    oak (_Quercus pumila_).
-
-
-When a lumberman speaks of red oak he may mean any one of a good many
-kinds of trees, but when a botanist or forester uses that name he means
-one particular species and no other. For that reason there is much
-uncertainty as to what species is in the lumberman's mind when he speaks
-of red oak. It means more to him than a single species, depending to a
-considerable extent upon the part of the country where he is doing
-business. If he is in the Gulf states, and has in mind a tree which
-grows there, he does not refer to the tree known to botanists as red
-oak. He may mean the Texan or southern red oak (_Quercus texana_), or
-the willow oak (_Quercus phellos_), or the yellow oak (_Quercus
-velutina_), or any one of several others which grow in that region; but
-the typical red oak does not grow farther south than the mountains of
-northern Georgia; and any one who is cutting oak south or southwest of
-there, is cutting other than the true red oak. That does not imply that
-he is handling something inferior, for very fine oak grows there; but in
-an effort to separate the commercial black oaks into respective species,
-it is necessary to define them by metes and bounds of ranges as well as
-to describe them by characteristics of leaves, acorns, and wood. The
-time will probably never come in this country when the sawmill man will
-pile each species of oak separately in his yard, and sell separately;
-but the tendency is in that direction. The twenty-five or more black
-oaks in this country all have some characteristics in common; but they
-are by no means all valuable alike, or all useful for the same purposes.
-For that reason, the demands of trade require, and will require more and
-more as higher utilization is reached, that certain kinds of red oak or
-black oak be sold separately.
-
-What lumbermen call red oaks, speaking in the plural, botanists prefer
-to call black oaks. The difference is only a difference in name for the
-same group of trees. The general dark color of the bark suggests the
-name to botanists, while the red tint of the wood appeals more to the
-lumberman, and he prefers the general name red oaks for the group. They
-mature their acorns the second year, while the trees belonging to the
-white oak group ripen theirs the first year. There are other
-differences, some of which are apparent to the casual observer, and
-others are seen only by the trained eye--often aided by the
-microscope--of the dendrologist. Several of the black oaks have leaves
-with sharp pointed lobes, ending in bristles. This helps to separate
-them from the white oaks, but not from one another, for the true red
-oak, the scarlet oak, the yellow oak, the pin oak, and others, have the
-sharp-pointed lobes on their leaves; while the willow oaks have no lobes
-or bristles on theirs, yet are as truly in the black oak group as any of
-the others. The identification of tree species, particularly when they
-are as much alike as some of the oaks are, is too difficult for the
-layman if he undertakes to carry it along the whole line; but it is
-comparatively easy if confined to the leading woods only. An
-understanding of the geographical range of a certain tree often helps to
-separate it from others. The knowledge that a tree does not grow in a
-particular part of the country, is proof at once that a tree in that
-region resembling it must be something else. If that principal is borne
-in mind it will greatly lessen mistakes in identifying trees. In
-accounts of the black oaks in the following pages, a careful delimiting
-of ranges will be attempted in the case of each.
-
-The range of red oak extends from Nova Scotia and southern New Brunswick
-through Quebec and along the northern shore of Lake Huron, west to
-Nebraska. It covers the Ohio valley and reaches as far south as middle
-Tennessee. It runs south through the Atlantic states to Virginia, while
-among the Appalachian mountains the range is prolonged southward into
-northern Georgia. That is the tree's extreme southern limit. It reaches
-its largest size in the region north of the Ohio river, and among the
-mountain valleys of West Virginia, and southward to Tennessee and North
-Carolina. It is a northern species. Toward its southern limit it meets
-the northern part of the Texan red oak's range (_Quercus texana_). There
-is some overlapping, and in many localities the two species grow side by
-side.
-
-The red oak is known by that name in all parts of its range, but in some
-regions it is called black oak, and in others Spanish oak. The latter
-name properly belongs to another oak (_Quercus digitata_) which touches
-it along the southern border of its range.
-
-The average size of red oak in the best part of its range is a little
-under that of white oak, but some specimens are 150 feet high and six
-feet in diameter. Heights of seventy and eighty feet are usual, and
-diameters of three and four are frequent. The forest grown tree disposes
-of its lower limbs early in life, and develops a long, smooth trunk,
-with a narrow crown. The bark on young stems and on the upper parts of
-limbs of old trees is smooth and light gray. All leaves do not have the
-same number of lobes, and they are sharp pointed, and fall early in
-autumn.
-
-The acorns are bitter, and are regarded as poor mast. Hogs will leave
-them alone if they can find white oak acorns, and squirrels will do
-likewise. The best red oak timber grows from acorns, though stumps will
-send up sprouts. The sprout growth may become trees of fairly large
-size, but they are apt to decay at the butt. The acorn-grown tree is as
-free from defects as the average forest tree. Cracks sometimes develop
-in the trunk, extending up and down many feet. Unless the logs are
-carefully sawed, a considerable loss occurs where these cracks cross the
-boards. Trunks are occasionally bored by worms, as all other oaks may
-be.
-
-Red oak grows rapidly. It will produce small sawlogs in the lifetime of
-a man. It is a favorite tree for crossties, and railroads have made
-large plantings for that purpose. The ties do not last well in their
-natural state, but they are easy to treat with preservatives by which
-several years are added to their period of service. It has been a
-favorite tree with European planters for the past two hundred years; but
-the most of the plantings beyond the sea have been for ornament in parks
-and private grounds.
-
-The principal interest in red oak in this country is due to its value
-for lumber. That interest is of comparatively recent date. Some red oak
-has always been used for rails, clapboards, slack cooperage, and rough
-lumber; but while white oak was cheap and plentiful, sawmill men usually
-let red oak alone. It had a poor reputation, which is now known to have
-been undeserved.
-
-Red oak is lighter than white oak, and it is generally regarded as
-possessing less strength and stiffness. The wide rings of annual growth,
-and the distinct layers of springwood and summerwood, give the basis for
-good figure. To this may be added broad and regular medullary rays which
-are nicely brought out by quarter-sawing. The tone of the wood is red,
-to which fact the name red oak is due. It has large, open pores. A
-magnifying glass is not required to see them in the end of a stick. It
-is said that smoke may be blown through a piece of red oak a foot in
-length. These open pores disqualify the wood for use in tight cooperage.
-Liquids will leak through the pores. Statistics of sawmill output in
-this country do not separate the white and black oaks, and the quantity
-of lumber sawed from any one species is not known. Manufacturers are
-disposed to separate them. Some furniture makers use red oak exclusively
-for certain purposes, and the same rule is followed by makers of other
-commodities.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-TEXAN RED OAK
-
-[Illustration: TEXAN RED OAK]
-
-
-
-
-TEXAN RED OAK
-
-(_Quercus Texana_)
-
-
-The line between red oak (_Quercus rubra_) and Texan red oak is closely
-drawn by botanists, but lumbermen do not recognize much difference
-except toward the extreme ranges of each. Some call one simply red oak
-and the other southern red oak, but that leaves doubtful the timber on a
-large area occupied by both species. Their ranges overlap two or three
-hundred miles in the Ohio valley and on the southern tributaries of the
-Ohio river in Kentucky and Tennessee. A large amount of red oak from
-that region goes to market, and no one knows, and few care, whether it
-is of the northern or southern species. It is usually a mixture of both.
-But outside of the common zone where both trees grow, the woods of the
-two are kept fairly well separate. Thirty years ago Texan red oak
-received slight recognition from botanists. When Charles S. Sargent
-compiled in 1880 a volume of over 600 pages, "Forest Trees of North
-America," for the United States government, and which was published as
-volume 9 of the Tenth Census, he did not so much as accord this tree the
-dignity of a species, but called it a variety of the common red oak. Its
-range and its great importance were little understood at that time.
-Sargent thus described its range: "Western Texas, valley of the Colorado
-river with the species and replacing it south and west, extending to the
-valley of the Neuces river and the Limpia mountains."
-
-Compare that restricted range with that given by the same author
-twenty-five years later in his "Manual of the Trees of North America."
-He gives it thus: "Northeastern Iowa and central Illinois, through
-southern Illinois and Indiana and western Kentucky and Tennessee, to the
-valley of the Apalachicola river, Florida, northern Georgia, central
-South Carolina, and the coast plains of North Carolina, and through
-southern Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana to the mountains of western
-Texas; most abundant and of its largest size on the low bottom lands of
-the Mississippi basin, often forming a considerable part of lowland
-forests; less abundant in the eastern Gulf states; in western Texas on
-low limestone hills and on bottom lands in the neighborhood of streams."
-
-This quotation is given in full because it shows how scientific men
-change their opinions to conform to new evidence. The range of that
-particular species was as wide in 1880 as in 1905, but botanists had not
-yet worked it out. Thus knowledge increases constantly, and year by year
-the resources of American forests are better understood. In this
-instance, what in 1880 was supposed to be a rather insignificant
-variety, occupying a restricted area in Texas, was found by 1905 to be a
-separate species, covering sixteen states in whole or in part. Similar
-progress concerning the forests has been made all over the country, not
-only by botanists but by lumbermen. Trees which were formerly considered
-so nearly alike that no distinctions were made, are now recognized to be
-quite different.
-
-The Texan red oak is frequently called spotted oak. The appearance of
-the bark suggests the name. Large, irregular, whitish patches cover the
-trunks. That peculiarity is not noticeable everywhere and on all trees,
-but is common west of the Mississippi river. The tree is sometimes known
-as Spanish oak in the southwestern part of its range, but the name is
-ill-advised, for the true Spanish oak (_Quercus digitata_) occurs in the
-same region. The most usual name for this species, in nearly all parts
-of its range, is simply red oak.
-
-The Texan red oak varies greatly in size of trees, as is natural in so
-wide a geographical range. Trees have been reported 200 feet high and
-eight feet in diameter; but sizes like that are extraordinary and
-attempts to locate anything approaching them at this day have not been
-successful. The average in the lower Mississippi valley is eighty or
-ninety feet in height, and two or three in diameter. In Texas this size
-is seldom reached, the average not much exceeding half of it.
-
-The leaves of Texan red oak are about half the size of those of the
-northern species. That alone will not serve to separate them, because of
-such great variation. It applies only to averages. The southern trees'
-leaves are from three to six inches long, two to five wide; the northern
-species bears leaves from five to nine inches long and four to six wide.
-The acorns of the two species do not show so much difference in size.
-The states which use Texan red oak in largest amounts are Alabama,
-Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, though some of this wood
-finds its way to northern markets where it passes as red oak without any
-questions. That condition renders very difficult the task of separating
-the woods. It is not so difficult further south where the true red oak
-is seldom seen. Shipments go north, not south. The two red oaks mingle
-in the lumber yards north of the Ohio river, but seldom south of the
-Tennessee river.
-
-Investigations made by the Forest Service of the utilization of woods in
-various states show that factories report the annual use of Texan red
-oak as follows: Louisiana 1,777,000 feet, Mississippi 2,400,000, Texas
-2,814,000, Alabama 5,500,000, and Arkansas 39,301,000. This does not
-include lumber or other forest products used in the rough, or lumber
-shipped out of the respective states.
-
-Texan red oak is heavier than its northern relative, hard, light,
-reddish-brown, much of it of rapid growth, with wide, clearly defined
-annual rings. The medullary rays are prominent, and show well in
-quarter-sawing. The best of the wood is as strong as red oak, and
-compares favorably with it in physical properties.
-
-One of the most exacting uses of wood is for fixtures, such as counters
-in stores, bars in saloons, partitions in banks and counting rooms, and
-standing desks in offices. Extra wide and long pieces are required, and
-they must show satisfactory figure, and be finished to harmonize with
-the interior of the room where they are placed. Texan red oak is
-selected by builders in many southern cities for that class of fixtures,
-and it meets the requirements. It is used also for interior finish and
-furniture, and stair work.
-
-Like most members of the black oak group, the wood is inclined to rot
-quickly in damp situations, but it measures well up to the average of
-the group to which it belongs. It is often employed in the South as
-bridge material, particularly as flooring for wagon bridges, where the
-wood's hardness is its chief recommendation. Much is converted into
-flooring for halls, houses, and factories.
-
-The available supply of this valuable wood in the forests of the South
-is not known, but there is little doubt that it exists in larger
-quantities than any other species of oak within its range. Perhaps in
-total quantity it exceeds red oak (_Quercus rubra_) in the whole United
-States. It is quite generally distributed over an area exceeding 300,000
-square miles, and toward the western part, it is the prevailing oak. The
-future of this oak is assured. It is now cut at a rapid rate, and
-doubtless the annual growth falls short of the yearly demand; but it
-occurs in a range so extensive that scarcity will not come for a long
-period. If the time ever comes in the South when planted timber must be
-depended upon to meet the needs of the people, this oak will fill an
-important place in woodlots. It does not grow as rapidly as willow oak,
-but its range is more extensive, and it possesses certain desirable
-properties not found in willow oak. The acorns are rather poor mast, and
-this is in the tree's favor, for the seed will be left to grow instead
-of being devoured by hogs and small animals of the woods. In that
-respect it has an advantage over cow oak and the other white oaks which
-occupy parts of its range. Their acorns are sought as food by domestic
-and wild animals. Texan red oak prunes itself well when it grows in
-close stands, but is low and limby when it occupies open ground. The
-trunks vary in form, but are inclined to enlarge at the base,
-particularly when they grow in low, damp situations, as many of the best
-do in the South.
-
-    GEORGIA OAK (_Quercus georgiana_) is one of the minor oaks of the
-    South and has not been found outside of Georgia. It grows in the
-    central part of the state on Stone mountain and on a few other
-    granite hills. Whether the species originated there and was never
-    able to work its way down to the more congenial valleys below, or
-    whether it once grew lower down and was crowded to its last retreat
-    by other species, is not known. But an interest attaches to it from
-    the very fact that its range is so restricted and that its habitat
-    is on the sterile summits. Lumbermen care nothing about this tree.
-    Few of them ever saw it or heard of it. The trunk is small, the
-    acorns only from one-third to half an inch long, and the leaves are
-    of a form midway between those of pin oak and turkey oak. The
-    characters of the wood have not been reported, but since there is
-    not enough of it to have any commercial value, the matter is not
-    very important.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW OAK
-
-[Illustration: YELLOW OAK]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW OAK
-
-(_Quercus Velutina_)
-
-
-This tree is known as black oak in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
-New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia,
-North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi,
-Louisiana, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Michigan,
-Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario; quercitron oak in Delaware, South
-Carolina, Louisiana, Kansas and Minnesota; yellow oak in Rhode Island,
-New York, Illinois, Texas, Kansas and Minnesota; tanbark oak in
-Illinois; yellow-bark oak in Minnesota and Rhode Island; spotted oak in
-Missouri; dyer's oak in Texas; and yellow butt oak in Mississippi.
-
-Those who call this tree black oak have in mind the bark which is
-usually quite dark, though all members of this species do not present
-the same appearance in that respect. Some trunks are gray, and in color
-do not greatly differ from white oaks, but would hardly be mistaken for
-them. Tanbark oak, a name occasionally given to this tree, is not
-applied in the region where chestnut oak grows, because it is much
-inferior to chestnut oak as tanning material. It is not only poorer in
-tannin, but the coloring matter associated with the inner bark is
-troublesome to the tanner who is compelled to remove it or neutralize it
-unless he wants his leather given a yellow tone. Dyer's oak is a name
-which refers to the value of the bark for coloring purposes. The
-botanical name _velutina_ refers to the velvety texture of the inner
-bark.
-
-This oak is one of the easiest to identify. The inner layer of the bark
-is yellow. The point of a knife easily reaches it; cutting through a
-deep crack in the bark, and no mistake is possible, for no other oak has
-the yellow layer of bark. The tree may be identified by leaves, flowers,
-and fruit, but the process is not always easy, for other members of the
-black oak group bear more or less resemblance to this one.
-
-The yellow oak's range extends over nearly or quite a million square
-miles. It exceeds the limits of most oaks in its geographical extension.
-It endures severe winters and hot summers. The northern limit of its
-range lies in Maine; it grows westward across southern Canada to
-Minnesota; it extends two hundred miles west of the Mississippi into
-eastern Nebraska and Kansas, and follows that meridian south into Texas.
-It reaches the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi, and is found in
-many localities in all the southern states, and along the foothills of
-the Appalachian ranges. It attains its largest size in the lower Ohio
-valley. The average height is seventy or eighty feet, and its diameter
-two or three feet. In some localities the trees are scrubby and produce
-little merchantable timber.
-
-The growth rings are only moderately wide in the typical yellow oak; the
-ring is divided nearly evenly between springwood and summerwood. The
-former contains two or three rows of large, open pores. The medullary
-rays are fewer and smaller than those commonly found in oaks. A general
-average of the properties of the wood is somewhat difficult to give,
-because of remarkable variation in trees which grow under different
-conditions. In some instances, where the soil is fertile and climate
-favorable, the yellow oak produces a large, clear trunk, with sound
-wood, of good color, and equal to that of red oak; but the reverse is
-often the case--trunks are small and rough, wood hard and brittle, color
-not satisfactory, and strength not up to standard. Sometimes first class
-yellow oak passes without question as good red oak in the finish and
-furniture business, but that is not its usual course. Well developed
-wood is heavy, hard, strong, bright brown, tinged with red, with thin,
-lighter colored sapwood. Its weight is 43.9 pounds per cubic foot.
-
-The uses of yellow oak follow red oak pretty closely, but are not so
-extensive. Figures cannot be given to show the total annual cut of
-yellow oak, but the output is likely much below red oak, though it is
-found over a wider area, and some of it gets into the lumber yards in
-all regions where it grows. It is made into furniture from Maine to
-Louisiana. In cheaper grades of furniture, it may be the outside
-material, but its place is usually as frame stock, to give strength, but
-is not visible in the finished article. An exception to this is found in
-chairs where yellow oak is one of several species which go regularly to
-the sawmills which cut chair stock. Massachusetts snow plow makers use
-it, but of course it fills no such place in the South. In Mississippi,
-Louisiana, and Texas it is bought by manufacturers of agricultural
-machinery. It is worked into cotton gins in Mississippi. Some extra fine
-stands of this oak occur in the Delta region of Mississippi. Frames of
-freight cars are made of it in Louisiana and Texas, and warehouse and
-depot floors are occasionally laid of this lumber. It is floor material
-in Michigan also, but that is of a better class than is required for
-warehouses. It is not infrequently sold as red oak for flooring and
-interior finish. Throughout the whole extent of yellow oak's range it
-finds its way to wagon shops. It is less tough than white oak, but in
-many places, such as bolsters, sandboards, and hounds, it serves as
-well. Warehouse trucks and push cars are of this wood in many instances.
-
-Slack coopers convert this wood into their wares in many regions. The
-pores are too open to permit its use as tight cooperage, where liquids
-are to be contained, but for barrels and kegs of many kinds, as well as
-for boxes, baskets, and crates, it meets all requirements. It is good
-fuel. Many burners of brick and pottery show it preference, and charcoal
-burners make a clean sweep of it when it occurs in the course of their
-operations; though when it is desirable to save the by-products of
-charcoal kilns or retorts, yellow oak is considered less valuable than
-birch, beech, and maple.
-
-The bark of this tree is employed less now than formerly for dyeing
-purposes. Aniline dyes have taken its place. In pioneer times the bark
-was one of the best coloring materials the people had, and every family
-looked after its own supply as carefully as it provided sassafras bark
-for tea, slippery elm bark for poultices, and witch hazel for gargles.
-The oak bark was peeled, dried, and pounded to a powder. The mass was
-sifted, and the yellow particles, being finer than the black bark,
-passed through the screen, and were set apart for the dye kettle, while
-the screenings were rejected. Various arts and sciences were called into
-requisition to add to or take from the natural color which the bark gave
-the cloth. Salts of iron were commonly employed to modify the deepness
-of the yellow.
-
-The acorns of this oak are bitter, and escape the mast hunters. Old
-stumps have little need to send up sprouts, for acorns keep the species
-alive. Yellow oaks are in no immediate danger of extermination. Nature
-plants generously, and the tree can get along on poor soil where the
-farm hunter is not apt to molest it. It has a fairly thick bark, and is
-able to take care of itself in a moderate fire, except when the
-seedlings are quite small. The young tree's tap root is much developed,
-and goes deep for moisture, and the growing sapling flourishes on ground
-where some other species would suffer for water.
-
-    WHITELEAF OAK (_Quercus hypoleuca_). The beauty of this small
-    evergreen oak of the mountains of western Texas, New Mexico, and
-    Arizona, is in its foliage rather than its wood. Large trunks--that
-    is, those twenty inches or more in diameter--are apt to be hollow,
-    but the sound wood is employed in repairing wagons in local shops,
-    and in rough ranch timbers. Its importance will never extend beyond
-    the region where it grows, but in that region it will continue to be
-    used where nothing better can be obtained. The largest trees are
-    sixty feet high, and two in diameter, but few reach those
-    dimensions. It is an arid land oak. It grows at from 4,000 to 6,000
-    feet elevations on mountains and plateaus. The leaves remain
-    thirteen months on the twigs. They are of the willow form, ranging
-    from two to four inches in length and one-half to one in width. The
-    acorns are small and bitter. The strength of this oak is remarkable,
-    if it may be judged by the figures given by Sargent. Two samples of
-    wood procured by himself and Dr. Engelmann on a dry, gravelly ground
-    among the Santa Rita mountains in Arizona, showed breaking strength
-    sixty-one per cent greater than the average given by the same author
-    for white oak. The stiffness of the specimens was a little above
-    white oak, and the weight three pounds more per cubic foot. It
-    should be borne in mind, however, that results derived from a test
-    of only two samples are not a safe basis for concluding that the
-    wood generally will average of so great strength. The annual rings
-    of growth are not clearly marked. The wood is porous, but the pores
-    are not generally arranged in bands, although they occasionally
-    follow that arrangement. The medullary rays are broad and abundant,
-    but are rather short, measured along the radial lines. They are of
-    pink color, a characteristic not unusual with oaks in semi-arid
-    regions. The foliage is doubtless the most valuable characteristic
-    of whiteleaf oak. The leaves are silver white below, and dark green
-    above. When they are agitated by wind the flashing of the different
-    tones and tints in the sunshine presents an attractive picture. It
-    belongs to the willow oak branch of the red oak group, and bears
-    two-year acorns.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SCARLET OAK
-
-[Illustration: SCARLET OAK]
-
-
-
-
-SCARLET OAK
-
-(_Quercus Coccinea_)
-
-
-The name of scarlet oak is in use in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode
-Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North
-Carolina, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan,
-Nebraska, Iowa, and Ontario; red oak is the name in North Carolina,
-Alabama, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Minnesota; black oak in Nebraska,
-Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and Spanish oak in North Carolina.
-
-The name is descriptive of the autumn leaves. Artists dispute among
-themselves whether the leaves are scarlet, red, or crimson. In their
-opinion a good deal of difference exists between these colors, rendering
-it quite incorrect to give one color the name of another. As for the
-artists, they are probably correct in their analysis of colors, but the
-general public knows the tree as scarlet oak, and it will doubtless be
-called by that name by most people who speak of the tree in the woods,
-while those who refer to the wood after it is sawed will speak of it as
-red oak.
-
-The leaves of scarlet oak are rather persistent, and remain on the twigs
-late in the season. The brilliancy of this tree is rendered doubly
-conspicuous, when it is contrasted with the surrounding sombre, winter
-colors.
-
-In appearance the tree is striking for its delicacy of foliage and
-twigs. The crown is always narrow and open, and in forest growth is
-compressed. The height, in good specimens, is about one hundred feet,
-but it often exceeds that size. In diameter it grows as large as four
-feet. The mature bark is dark in color and broken into broad, smooth
-ridges and plates, edged with red. It shows a reddish inner bark when
-cut and this may be relied upon to identify the tree. The leaves are
-four or five inches long; deeply sinused, three or four on a side; long,
-bristle-toothed lobes, broad at the base; acorns bitter, mature in two
-years; sessile, brown; cup closely drawn in at the edge.
-
-Its range comprises the northeastern quarter of the United States.
-Beginning in southern Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, it grows through
-middle New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa to eastern Nebraska.
-Southward it extends along the coast through Virginia and inland along
-the mountains to South Carolina and Georgia. The growth is abundant over
-most of the range, the favorite habitat being dry, gravelly uplands. It
-seems to be most abundant along the northern part of the Atlantic coast
-from Massachusetts to New Jersey, and is less common in the interior,
-and on the prairies skirting the western margins of the eastern forests.
-The average size of the tree is from seventy to eighty feet high and two
-or three in diameter. In many regions it is much smaller, while no very
-large trees have been reported.
-
-The wood is heavy, strong, hard; the layers of annual growth are
-strongly marked by several rows of large, open ducts; the summerwood is
-dense and occupies half the yearly ring; the medullary rays are much
-like those of red oak, though scarcely as broad. They run in straight
-lines radially, and show well in quarter-sawing. The color of the wood
-is light brown or red, the thin sapwood rather darker.
-
-This wood is practically of the same weight as white oak; but it is
-rated considerably stronger and stiffer. A number of writers have listed
-scarlet oak low in fuel value. Theoretically, the fuel values of woods
-are proportionate to their weights, except that resinous woods must be
-compared with resinous, and non-resinous with non-resinous. In practice,
-however, every fireman who feeds a furnace with wood knows that
-different woods develop different degrees of heat, though they may weigh
-the same. Results are modified by various circumstances and conditions,
-and for that reason theory and practice are often far apart in
-determining how much heat a given quantity of wood is good for.
-
-It is difficult to procure exact information regarding the uses of
-scarlet oak. It never goes to market under its own name. An examination
-of wood-using reports from a dozen states within scarlet oak's range
-does not reveal a single mention of this wood for any purpose. It is
-certain, nevertheless, that much goes to market and that it has many
-important uses. It loses its identity and is bought and sold as red oak.
-Under the name of that wood it is manufactured into furniture, finish,
-agricultural implements, cars, boats, wagons and other vehicles, and
-many other articles. One of the most important markets for scarlet oak
-is in chair factories. Its grain is attractive enough to give it place
-as outside material, and its strength fits it for frames and other parts
-which must bear strain. Chair stock mills which clean up woodlots and
-patches of forest where scarlet oak grows in mixture with other species
-of oak, take all that comes, without being particular as to the exact
-kind of oak. Slack coopers follow much the same course. A wood strong
-enough to meet requirements, is generally acceptable. Scarlet oak is
-usually considered unsuitable for tight cooperage, on account of the
-large open pores of the wood, which permit leakage of liquids. It meets
-considerable demand in the manufacture of boxes and crates, particularly
-the latter.
-
-The size and quality of logs which a tree may furnish to a sawmill is no
-measure of its full value. Scarlet oak is far better known as an
-ornamental tree than for its wood. It has been planted in this country
-and in Europe. Its brilliant foliage is greatly admired. No other oak
-equals it, and it compares favorably with sugar maple, black gum, and
-dogwood. It is an ornament to parks and private grounds, though the
-brilliancy of its foliage is seldom exhibited to as good advantage in
-cultivation as in the native forest where contrasts are more numerous,
-and nature does its work unhindered by man. The scarlet oak is not a
-rapid grower, and the form of the tree is not perfectly symmetrical. The
-spring leaves are red, the summer foliage bright, rich green, the autumn
-scarlet--a variety not equalled by many forest trees.
-
-WILLOW OAK (_Quercus phellos_) is named for its leaves which look like
-those of willow. There is a group of such oaks with leaves similar, and
-they are known collectively as willow oaks. The one here described may
-be considered typical of the group.
-
-This oak is apt to present rather a surprising appearance to those who
-have seen nothing but those oaks whose leaves are lobed or cleft. It
-belongs to the red oaks. Like others of this division it has a tendency
-to hybridize, several varieties being known. Willow oak is a denizen of
-the southern Atlantic and southeastern states and favors rich, moist
-soil, either on uplands or on bottoms, along the margins of streams or
-swamps. It does not go inland as far as the foothills of the ranges and
-is found most abundantly in the basin of the lower Mississippi.
-Beginning in New York, the range extends southward into Florida, along
-the Gulf states, touching Texas, up through Arkansas, touching Missouri
-and Kentucky, down through western Tennessee and southern Georgia
-rounding the southern end of the Appalachians.
-
-Young trees have a slender delicate pendant appearance of twigs and
-foliage more typical of the willow than of oak; but in time they become
-more rugged, although the branching and foliage are always more delicate
-than is usual with oaks. The tree attains a height of eighty feet and a
-diameter up to four feet, but usually is about half of this. It is
-clothed in a smooth, brown bark, ridged only in older trees. The leaves
-are about five inches long and narrow in proportion, are of shiny,
-leathery texture, dark above and pale below. The acorns are on short
-stalks, solitary or in pairs, and ripen in two years, are short and
-rounded and in shallow cups.
-
-The weight of willow oak is approximately the same as white oak. It is
-slightly stronger but less elastic. Its annual rings contain broad bands
-of small open ducts parallel to the thin, dark, medullary rays. The wood
-is reddish-brown in color, the thick sapwood darker brown. The fuel
-value is rated the same as white oak, but the wood contains more ash.
-
-Willow oak is much used in the South, but usually under the name red
-oak. Lumbermen seldom speak of it as willow oak. The species is as
-highly developed in Louisiana as anywhere else, and the uses found for
-the wood in that state will probably be found for it wherever the tree
-grows in commercial quantities. A report on the manufacture of wooden
-commodities in Louisiana, published in 1912, listed the following uses
-for willow oak: Agricultural implements, balustrades, bar tops,
-bedsteads, bottoms for wagon beds, bridge approaches and floors, chairs,
-church pews, cot frames, doors, floors, frames, interior finish,
-molding, newel posts, pulpits, railing, screens, slack cooperage,
-stairwork, store fixtures, wagon axles, and other vehicle parts.
-
-These uses coincide nearly with those of red oak, and indicate the
-important position occupied by willow oak in the country's industries.
-Those who handle the wood complain that its seasoning qualities are
-poor, and that care is necessary to bring satisfactory results. It works
-nicely and stands well after the seasoning is accomplished.
-
-Willow oak grows rapidly. It is doubtful if any oak in this country
-surpasses it. It wants damp, rich soil and a warm climate, to do its
-best. Some of the bottom lands in the lower Mississippi valley have
-produced splendid stands of willow oak, the trunks being tall and clear
-of limbs, and the wood sound.
-
-The willow oak is much planted for ornamental purposes in the southern
-states. It manages to keep alive when planted as far north as
-Massachusetts, but the grace of its form is not fully developed much
-north of the Potomac river. It is a common street tree in the South, and
-its airy foliage forms a pleasing contrast with the heavy, dark-green of
-the magnolia.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-TURKEY OAK
-
-[Illustration: TURKEY OAK]
-
-
-
-
-TURKEY OAK
-
-(_Quercus Catesbæi_)
-
-
-The claim that this tree is called turkey oak because turkeys feed on
-the acorns, is not well founded. In common with nearly all members of
-the black oak group, to which this species belongs, the acorns of turkey
-oak are bitter, and unless animals are pressed by hunger they do not eat
-them. It is evident that the shape of the leaves gives this tree its
-name. They bear considerable resemblance to the foot of a turkey. There
-is at least enough similitude to suggest the name, and it is not
-inappropriate. Many people now use the term without thinking of its
-origin, and if asked their opinion say that fondness of turkeys for the
-acorns led to the name.
-
-The tree has other names in different regions. In North Carolina, South
-Carolina, Mississippi, and Florida it is known as scrub oak. The name
-fits it well in certain places, for when it grows on poor soil and in
-adversity, it degenerates into a low, straggling thicket, frequently not
-trees at all, but shrubs. It is called black jack in South Carolina but
-the name belongs to another species (_Quercus marilandica_). In the same
-state it is known as barren scrub oak, because it is very small and is
-found on poor lands popularly known as barrens. Some call it forked-leaf
-black jack, but the name is usually shorter, and forked-leaf, or
-forked-leaf oak, is a name well understood among lumbermen, and the
-people generally over much of the tree's range. Some of the leaves show
-clearly-defined three forks, the middle one longer than the others; but
-in other leaves, often from the same tree, the forks are not so
-regularly outlined. This tree, like many other oaks, exhibits
-considerable variation in the forms of leaves.
-
-There is nothing peculiar in the form and appearance of the acorns. They
-average about one inch long and three-quarters of an inch wide, and sit
-in shallow cups. They mature the second year. The bark of old trees is
-black near the ground, rather rough, and an inch or more thick.
-
-It is difficult to name an average size for turkey oak. The largest
-trunks are three or four feet in diameter and eighty feet high, but the
-trees cut for sawlogs are only fifty or sixty feet high and two in
-diameter, in most of the regions. As previously stated, much of the
-stand is stunted and some of it is only brush. All sizes are found, from
-large, first rate trunks down to shrubs. Large trees which grow in
-forests, prune themselves well and their trunks compare favorably with
-red oaks.
-
-The tree's range has its northeastern limit in North Carolina, and
-extends to Peace Creek, Florida. It is found westward to Louisiana where
-fair-sized timber grows, but in small quantities. It is usually
-considered that its best development is in South Carolina and Georgia,
-but good trees are likely to be found in any part of its range. It is
-distinctly a tree of the South. It was named by Michaux, the well-known
-French botanist who visited the southern states early in the nineteenth
-century, and he named it in honor of Mark Catesby who explored the
-region much earlier and wrote concerning its trees and other natural
-history.
-
-Turkey oak is one of the little-known trees of the South, as far as
-lumbermen are concerned. They know it well enough in the woods, but not
-at sawmills. When cut into logs it ceases to be turkey oak and becomes
-red oak, and under that name it goes to the lumber yard, and later to
-market. Users of red oak lumber do not object to the occasional piece of
-turkey oak mixed with it--if they ever find it out, which few of them
-do. Nevertheless, the consensus of opinion among sawmill men is that
-turkey oak ought to rate below red oak.
-
-Tests of the wood to determine its character and qualities do not
-justify so low an estimate of turkey oak. Sargent found it stronger and
-more elastic than white oak, while a little lighter in weight. It is
-nearly equal to white oak in fuel value. It is hard, compact, and the
-rings of annual growth are marked by several rows of large, open ducts.
-The medullary rays are broad and conspicuous. The color is light brown,
-tinged with red, the sapwood somewhat lighter.
-
-A special investigation of the uses of turkey oak in one of the southern
-states brought out the fact that it meets requirements well and fills a
-place in several wood-using industries in that region. Vehicle makers
-find it satisfactory in a number of places. It is made into bottoms of
-wagon beds, felloes, bolsters, axles, hubs, hounds, tongues, spokes,
-standards, sandboards, and reaches. These constitute nearly all parts of
-heavy vehicles. The wood is made into telegraph brackets, but apparently
-not in large quantities. Car builders employ it for frames and floors.
-It is made into ordinary matched flooring and goes in with other oaks.
-It is used as a general furniture wood, both as outside material, and
-inside frames. It may be quarter-sawed to advantage. It is employed also
-as interior finish, which demands lumber of practically the same grades
-as go into furniture. Mantels of this wood compare favorably with those
-of red oak. Chair makers cut stock from turkey oak. It is not abundant
-anywhere, otherwise it would be of much importance.
-
-The forests of the United States contain so many valuable oaks that a
-scarce and geographically restricted species like turkey oak cannot be
-expected to attract much attention in the future. Nevertheless, it is a
-strong, interesting tree. It takes advantage of every opportunity to
-develop. When an acorn germinates in good soil, and receives sufficient
-light and moisture, it produces a merchantable tree; but in poor soil
-and under unfavorable circumstances it becomes a stunted bush only.
-Woodlots of turkey oak planted in fertile land would probably do as well
-as most of the southern red oaks under like conditions. The tree is not
-apt to get justice, because of the prejudice against it.
-
-CALIFORNIA BLACK OAK (_Quercus californica_) ranges from central Oregon
-southward through the coast region of California nearly to the Mexican
-boundary. It occurs also on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas in
-California. It is not found on the plains or near the sea, but occurs on
-mountain slopes, low summits, elevated valleys, and in canyons. In the
-North, it ranges from 1,500 to 3,000 feet and in the South it ascends to
-9,000 feet. This far western oak bears more resemblance to the yellow
-oak (_Quercus velutina_) of the East than to any other. Trees have been
-reported 100 feet high and four in diameter, but they are scarce.
-Seventy-five feet high and two or three feet in diameter are usual
-dimensions of mature timber. The trees are inclined to be angular in the
-outlines of their crowns. The leaves fall in autumn, but the acorns
-persist two years. They sit deep in their rough cups. The trunk is
-habitually crooked. It leans out of plumb, and lacks the nicely balanced
-poise which adds to the attractiveness of some oaks. The large boles are
-usually hollow, dead at the tops, or otherwise defective. That condition
-is apparently due to old age. Trees stand long after they pass maturity
-and start on their decline. They die by inches, and not infrequently
-they decay and crumble by piecemeal both at the bottom and at the top.
-At best the trunk of this oak is of poor form for saw timber. It divides
-into large limbs ten or twenty feet from the ground. It is of slow
-growth, and it reaches old age--possibly as much as 350 years in extreme
-cases. The wood is very porous, but the pores are not in rows. The
-medullary rays are thin and distinct. It is not known that any
-quarter-sawing has been attempted, and it would hardly be profitable.
-The wood is pale red, exceedingly brittle, firm, light for oak, and it
-has a distinct odor of tannin with which both the wood and the bark are
-heavily charged. The principal uses to which this oak is put in
-California and Oregon are as fuel and ranch timbers, the latter being of
-the simplest and roughest sort. Its fuel value is high, compared with
-other woods of the region. Some use was made of the bark for tanning
-purposes years ago on the Pacific slope, but it does not appear to go to
-market now.
-
-    BLUE JACK OAK (_Quercus brevifolia_) bears several names, upland
-    willow oak, to distinguish it from other willow oaks which grow in
-    swamps, sand jack, referring to the land on which it grows,
-    high-ground willow oak, turkey oak, shin oak and cinnamon oak. No
-    reason is known for the last name which is not used outside of
-    Florida. The tree grows in a narrow strip along the coast from North
-    Carolina to Texas, crossing northern Florida. The blue jack oak
-    sometimes attains a height of fifty feet and a diameter of twenty
-    inches; but that is its best. It is usually fifteen or twenty feet
-    high and a few inches in diameter. The leaves are from two to five
-    inches long and quite narrow, closely resembling those of willow.
-    The acorns are abundant, but small. The tree is of so little value
-    that it does not interest the lumberman. It occupies waste land, and
-    may produce a little fuel without crowding more valuable trees, but
-    is in every way inferior to the black jack oak (_Quercus
-    marilandica_), which overlaps its range a little, but is a northern
-    species. The wood of blue jack oak is hard, strong, light brown in
-    color, with darker-colored sapwood.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SPANISH OAK
-
-[Illustration: SPANISH OAK]
-
-
-
-
-SPANISH OAK
-
-(_Quercus Digitata_)
-
-
-One of the first difficulties in an attempt to clear up the
-misunderstandings regarding Spanish oak is to confine the name to the
-species to which it belongs. That is no easy task, because the name has
-been applied to numerous oaks in various parts of the country, and
-without any apparent reason. Some of these bear little resemblance to
-Spanish oak and grow almost wholly outside its range. It is not a case
-of mistaking one for the other, for there is no mistake. Some speak of
-the common red oak as Spanish oak, others bestow that name on yellow
-oak, others on black jack oak, or scarlet oak, or any one of several
-others. It appears, however, that the name is not applied to any member
-of the white oak group.
-
-It is said that Spanish oak and Norway pine were named by the same
-process. Each got its name because it was supposed to be similar to a
-species in the old country--the pine like an evergreen of north Europe,
-and the oak like a broadleaf tree of Spain. It was learned later that
-both the American species were different from those of Europe which they
-resembled.
-
-The peculiar drooping foliage of Spanish oak gives the tree a character
-which impresses a person who sees the full-leafed crown for the first
-time. The leaves are six or seven inches long and four or five wide.
-Their forms vary within wide limits, and their shapes change from week
-to week while growing. Some have no lobes or sinuses, others have them
-in rudimentary form only, while in still others they are well developed.
-
-The tree is often called red oak, particularly by lumbermen who cut it
-and send it to market with red oak. In Louisiana it is known as Spanish
-water oak, there being much resemblance between it and water oak
-(_Quercus nigra_) with which it is associated. Its range covers more
-than 200,000 square miles, beginning at the north in New Jersey and
-following down the coast regions to central Florida. It extends westward
-into Texas to the valley of the Brazos river; northward to Missouri and
-southern Indiana and Illinois. It does not grow far inland from the
-coast in the north Atlantic states, but further south it is common on
-the coast plain between the sea and the base of the mountains. It is
-often found on dry sand hills in that region. The largest Spanish oaks
-on record grew in the lower Ohio valley, particularly along the Wabash
-river. It is usually of medium size and large trunks are seldom seen.
-The average height is seventy or eighty feet, diameter two or three. In
-the open, the crown is broad and low, but in forests the trunk prunes
-itself fairly well, and makes good saw timber, as far as form and size
-are concerned. The acorns ripen in two years, and are bitter. The bark
-is rich in tannin, but tanneries do not use much of it.
-
-The tree is not generally abundant. Some large areas within its range
-have little, and thick stands are unusual anywhere. It is one of the
-oaks which lumbermen neither reject nor seek. They cut it in course of
-operations, and saw it and sell it under the common name, red oak.
-
-The wood is heavy, very hard, and strong. It is reputed to decay more
-rapidly than most oaks, and it checks badly in seasoning. The annual
-rings of growth are broad, and the springwood is marked by several rows
-of large open pores. The medullary rays are few but conspicuous; color
-light red, the sapwood lighter. The wood weighs about three pounds less
-than white oak per cubic foot, and its fuel value is less.
-
-It is not easy to compile an account of the uses of Spanish oak by the
-various industries of this country, for the reason that other oaks pass
-by its name and it is known by names which should not be applied to it.
-It is shown, however, where special studies of its utilization have been
-made that it is a useful wood for many purposes. It is a useful
-furniture material, and though statistics do not give separate figures
-for it, evidently the total quantity consumed yearly runs into many
-millions of feet. It is much employed in the manufacture of tables,
-chiefly for frames, but occasionally as the outside material. It may be
-quarter-sawed, if good logs are selected. The chair factories in North
-Carolina use about 44,000,000 feet of oak yearly, and Spanish oak
-supplies a rather large share of the material. It is employed as
-interior finish in that state, and also for mission furniture, brackets
-for telegraph and telephone poles, refrigerators, and kitchen safes.
-Slack coopers and manufacturers of boxes and crates find the wood
-suitable for their wares; but its open pores stand in the way of its use
-for tight cooperage.
-
-Similar uses of the wood occur in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and
-it may be assumed that they occur also in all other portions of Spanish
-oak's range. It goes to wagon shops in Texas where it is substituted for
-red oak. It is employed also in the manufacture of rice hullers and
-cotton gins. Lumbermen in northern Louisiana use log trucks with axles,
-felloes, and other heavy parts of Spanish oak, and it is frequently
-preferred for stone wagons.
-
-In practically all large shipments of southern red oak to the North,
-some Spanish oak is mixed. It could not be otherwise, since this wood is
-cut in the forest with other red oaks, is sawed and stocked with them,
-and goes with them to market.
-
-BLACK JACK OAK (_Quercus marilandica_) is one of the scrub trees of this
-country, and few good words are ever heard for it; yet it has redeeming
-qualities. Lumbermen have not paid much attention to it and never will,
-for only when at its best is the trunk large enough for any kind of
-sawlog, and there has been little inclination to use it for anything
-else. It attains size fitting it for fence posts, and sometimes it
-performs service along that line; but the small trunks are nearly all
-sapwood, and decay strikes them quickly. The bark is black, hence the
-name, and it is exceedingly rough, and is broken in squares. The leaves
-are large and pear-shaped, with the broad end opposite the stem. Some
-are slightly lobed. A vigorous black jack oak, standing in open ground,
-presents a fine appearance. The crown is wide and is frequently conical,
-the limbs small, and are set in the trunk on nearly horizontal lines.
-The range of this unloved species covers 600,000 or more square miles,
-beginning in New York, running west to central Nebraska, south through
-Texas nearly to the Rio Grande, and in Florida to Tampa. It is not an
-aggressive tree and has permitted itself to be crowded off the good land
-until it has formed the habit of occupying geographical left-overs in
-the form of sand banks and wornout fields. In the northeastern part of
-its range it is often associated with scrub pine (_Pinus virginiana_),
-because the two have similar habits and are content to live in perpetual
-poverty on dry gravel or thin sand. Large trunks are not possible under
-such circumstances, and first-class wood is unusual. Black jack oak at
-its best may attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of eighteen
-inches, but it is oftener twenty feet high and six inches through. It
-grows with moderate rapidity and does not live long.
-
-The annual rings are often indistinct. The wood is hard, heavy, and
-strong, and checks badly in seasoning. The medullary rays are broad and
-conspicuous, the wood dark brown in color, the sapwood lighter. This oak
-is very high in ash contents, more than one per cent of the dry weight
-of wood going to ashes when burned. The tree reaches its best
-development in the lower Mississippi valley, and in eastern Texas.
-Comparatively few uses for it have been found. Cordwood cutters find it
-valuable where it abounds in sufficient quantity, and it has been burned
-for charcoal for iron foundries and blacksmith shops. Small amounts are
-occasionally found in wood-using factories in Texas, but only when logs
-with considerable heartwood can be procured. The sap is characterless
-and seems to be utterly rejected at the factory. Sometimes the rich
-brown of the heartwood is attractive, but more frequently the wood is
-ringed and splotched with different colors, not distributed in a way to
-give any artistic effect. When a satisfactory stick is found, it can be
-worked into balusters and small spindles which show grain well. It is
-also worked into broad panels made up of narrow, quarter-sawed strips,
-which exhibit the dark flecks of the wood to good advantage.
-
-    TRIDENT OAK (_Quercus tridentata_) is remarkable for its extreme
-    scarcity, and is of no commercial importance. It was formerly found
-    in Missouri--a single tree--which was afterwards destroyed. It
-    occurs in Washtenaw county, Michigan. It appears that no report
-    showing the character of the wood has been made.
-
-    LEA OAK (_Quercus leana_), which is believed to be a hybrid between
-    yellow oak (_Quercus velutina_) and shingle oak (_Quercus
-    imbricaria_), is interesting but not important. Trees are apt to
-    stand alone, and far apart. They occur from District of Columbia to
-    Missouri, and south to North Carolina. The range is imperfectly
-    known.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LAUREL OAK
-
-[Illustration: LAUREL OAK]
-
-
-
-
-LAUREL OAK
-
-(_Quercus Laurifolia_)
-
-
-This representative of the black oak group is found nowhere except in
-the southeastern states, and only in their borders. It never ranges far
-inland, but sticks to wet localities and the margins of swamps where its
-associates are tupelo, southern white cedar, cypress, magnolias, and,
-near its southern limit, myrtle and other semi-tropical trees and
-shrubs. It is sometimes utilized as an ornament, but that is not its
-usual function. It is not a successful competitor as a shade tree with
-willow oak and water oak.
-
-Beginning at the border of the Dismal Swamp in Virginia as the northern
-limit of growth, this interesting tree ranges southward along the coast
-to Cape Romano in Florida and westward in the lower Gulf states to
-southeastern Louisiana. It is seen at its best in eastern Florida. It
-puts forth a vigorous growth on the hummock land in the southern part of
-that state, where it develops a shapely trunk when in crowded stands. It
-grows well in very rocky ground.
-
-Although the common name laurel oak is prompted by its foliage, the tree
-bears various other sectional names. It is known as laurel oak in North
-Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Florida; Darlington oak in South
-Carolina; willow oak in Florida and South Carolina; water oak in
-Georgia. The latter name has a tendency to confuse it with another
-species which is properly called water oak (_Quercus nigra_).
-
-The ornamental qualities of this tree are due to the tall stately bole,
-its shapely and symmetrical round-topped head and slender branches and
-twigs. It sometimes attains the dignity of one hundred feet in height
-with a proportionate diameter of three or four feet. The bark is firm,
-of dark, reddish-brown color, and usually is not fissured but finely
-broken into small close, scale-like plates. On old trees, especially at
-the butt, deep fissures divide it into broad ridges. The buds are shiny
-brown, and they narrow abruptly to an acute point. The acorns are either
-sessile or have short stalks, and they usually grow alone. They are
-short and broad, and are incased in shallow, thin cups. In the flowering
-season hairy aments add to the attractiveness of the tree. The leaves
-are dark green above and lighter on the lower surface and are grouped
-rather closely on the twigs. They attain a length of four inches or
-less, and fall gradually after turning yellow.
-
-Laurel oak seems to be little used. It is occasionally referred to as
-rather inferior to other members of the black oak group, but it is not
-apparent why it bears that reputation. It may be on account of its poor
-seasoning qualities. Like other southern oaks, it is very heavy when
-green, and it is inclined to shrink and warp while in the process of
-parting with its moisture. If this can be successfully overcome, the
-wood ought to be valuable. Tests made on four samples cut on St. John's
-river, Florida, recorded in Sargent's tables, show remarkable results.
-The wood is 34 per cent stronger and 37 per cent stiffer than white oak,
-and is only one pound heavier per cubic foot of dry wood. If these
-values are fairly representative of the wood of laurel oak, it should be
-exceptionally valuable in vehicle making. It would fall considerably
-below hickory, but would stand very high among other woods, and could be
-recommended for wagon axles, tongues, and other parts of heavy vehicles.
-
-It should be borne in mind, however, that tests alone, and particularly
-when the number of samples is small, are not sufficient to decide a
-wood's place as a manufacturing material. It must be tried in actual
-practice, and that has not yet been done in the case of laurel oak as a
-wagon wood. When tried out it may exhibit defects, or undesirable
-qualities, which are not apparent in samples employed in laboratory
-tests.
-
-There is little exact information available in regard to the supply of
-laurel oak in the South. It is not abundant in the sense that willow oak
-and Texan red oak are. Neither are the trees generally of good form for
-lumber. Little has ever been cut, because the land where it grows is not
-demanded for agriculture. It occupies out-of-the-way places, and the
-hunter and fisherman are better acquainted with it than the lumberman.
-
-HIGHLAND OAK (_Quercus wislizeni_) is a California evergreen with leaves
-commonly shaped like holly, but sometimes their edges are smooth with no
-sign of teeth. The foliage remains longer on this tree than is usual
-with evergreen oaks. Old leaves generally fall within a month after the
-new crop appears; but those of highland oak remain several months
-longer, gradually falling during the second summer. When the tree is at
-its best it is a splendid representative of the vegetable kingdom. Its
-form does not please lumbermen, for the trunk is short and rough; but
-the crown rises seventy or eighty feet, is symmetrical, the foliage dark
-green, and the general appearance is that of an enormous holly tree.
-Trunks are sometimes five or six feet in diameter. The name highland oak
-is somewhat misleading, though the species ascends to an altitude of
-6,000 feet or more. It is described as a highland tree to distinguish it
-from the California live oak (_Quercus agrifolia_) which grows in the
-vicinity of the sea in California. The highland oak ranges from northern
-California to the international boundary, following the foothills of the
-mountain ranges. It occurs in dry river bottoms and washes and in
-desert mountain canyons. It is not choice as to soil but will grow in
-loam, sand, gravel, or among rocks. It is not abundant.
-
-When it grows near the sea it is apt to lose its tree form and become a
-shrub. It assumes that form on Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa islands off the
-coast of southern California. It grows slowly and is tenacious of life.
-When it has once secured a foothold it hangs on with determination,
-though exposed to severe storms and inhospitable conditions. The acorns
-do not mature until late in the autumn of their second year. They are
-sometimes an inch and a half long, and scarcely a third of an inch
-thick. The wood of this oak possesses some good qualities which are
-locally appreciated by wagon makers who use it for repair work. It is
-extensively cut for fuel, and it burns about like eastern white oak, but
-leaves more ashes. The dry wood weighs 49 pounds per cubic foot. It is
-considerably weaker than white oak and is less elastic. The summerwood
-constitutes a large part of the annual growth ring. It is very porous,
-the rows of pores running parallel with the medullary rays. This part of
-the wood structure is midway between that of deciduous and the evergreen
-oaks. The medullary rays are broad but short. When exposed on a
-tangential surface, they are from one-fourth to one-half inch long, and
-give the wood a flecked appearance. Exposed in cross section, they are
-from one inch to four inches in length. This applies, of course, only to
-large rays, easily seen with the naked eye. In quarter-sawed lumber, the
-rays have a pinkish color and glossy luster which are not pleasing. This
-tree belongs in the class with those which are in no danger of being
-extirpated by human agencies. It occupies land which man does not need
-and will never want.
-
-    MYRTLE OAK (_Quercus myrtifolia_) associates with the laurel oak in
-    some parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and closely
-    resembles it, though it is smaller, and gives little promise of ever
-    becoming important in a commercial way. It is clearly in the scrub
-    oak class, and does not approach the dignity of even a small tree in
-    most of its range. Few specimens can be found exceeding a height of
-    twenty feet and a diameter of five or six inches. Trees approaching
-    that size grow in western Florida in the region of the Apalachicola
-    river. Generally this oak covers dry, sandy ridges and islands, and
-    is shrubby. It forms thickets on some of the islands off the coast
-    of Alabama and Mississippi, and extends its range westward to the
-    low, southern parts of Louisiana where the dwarf trees are almost
-    hidden by tall reeds and grass. Its name refers to the leaf it
-    bears. It is impossible that man can ever make much use of this
-    tree.
-
-    MOREHUS OAK (_Quercus morehus_) can never be important in the lumber
-    industry, but it fills a few places in California where the ground
-    needs a cover. Its range is in the northern coast range and the
-    Sierra foothills, extending as far south as Kings river. The edges
-    of the leaves bear bent hooks like saw teeth. The foliage falls in
-    late winter. Trees are occasionally a foot or more in diameter. The
-    wood has not the appearance of possessing much value, and is too
-    scarce to be important. The most interesting thing connected with
-    this tree is that it is supposed to be a hybrid--a cross between
-    highland oak and California black oak. It was first found in 1863,
-    and a considerable range has since been established for it.
-
-    It is the opinion of some investigators that new tree species have
-    their origin in crosses between existing species. Of the countless
-    thousands of such crosses a few, at long intervals of time, may
-    develop characteristics which enable them to maintain their
-    existence and to spread into new territory. If that occurs, a new
-    kind of tree has appeared on earth and is ready to take its place
-    among the established forests of the region. Cross-fertilization
-    among trees and plants is very common, but so many adverse
-    conditions are encountered, that few hybrids ever amount to
-    anything.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PIN OAK
-
-[Illustration: PIN OAK]
-
-
-
-
-PIN OAK
-
-(_Quercus Palustris_)
-
-
-Pin oak ranges from certain sections of Massachusetts, notably the
-Connecticut river valley, and near Amherst, westward as far as the
-southeastern part of Missouri; on the south it is found along the lower
-Potomac river in Virginia, in Kentucky, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
-
-It is known as pin oak in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New
-York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, Arkansas, Missouri,
-Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Kansas; in Arkansas and Kansas it is
-called swamp Spanish oak; in Rhode Island and Illinois it is often known
-as water oak; in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kansas as swamp oak; in
-Arkansas as water Spanish oak.
-
-The name pin oak is said to belong to this tree because of a peculiarity
-of its branches. They leave the trunk and the larger limbs at nearly
-right angles, and criss-cross in all directions, resembling pins thrust
-into the wood, and bristling outward at every angle. The crowding to
-which they are subjected kills many of them as the tree reaches middle
-age, but the stubs do not drop quickly, and as many of the
-characteristic pins appear to be present as ever. Such is the usual
-explanation given to account for the name, and the facts fit the theory;
-but the fact that several other species are called pin oaks is not
-accounted for. The habit of the branches of all of them is not the same.
-The Gambel oak in its Arizona range has that name. So has the chinquapin
-oak in Arkansas and Texas, but that is apparently a shortening of its
-true name, the last syllable only being used. They call the Durand oak
-pin oak in Texas, but without any known reason.
-
-The botanical name _palustris_, belonging to this species, refers to the
-tree's habit of growing in swamps and damp land along river bottoms. It
-is not a swamp tree as cypress is, but is more like swamp white oak, and
-finds its most congenial surroundings on the borders of streams and on
-fairly well drained lowland where roots readily reach water.
-
-The leaves are three or five inches long, are simple, and alternate.
-They are broad, and have from five to nine lobes which are toothed, and
-bristle-tipped on the ends. The sinuses are broad and rounded, and
-extend well toward the midrib, which is stout, and from which the veins
-branch off conspicuously. In color the leaves are bright green above and
-lighter below when young, becoming thin, firm and darker green at
-maturity; late in autumn they turn a rich, deep scarlet. They are coated
-below with pubescence, and have large tufts of pale hairs in the axils
-of the veins.
-
-The fruit of pin oak is a small acorn which grows either sessile or on a
-very short stem; sometimes in clusters, and sometimes singly. In shape
-the acorns are nearly hemispherical, and measure about a half inch in
-diameter; they are enclosed only at the base, in a thin, saucer-shaped
-cup, dark brown, and scaly.
-
-The bark of a mature tree is dark gray or brownish-green; it is rough,
-being full of small furrows, and frequently cracks open and shows the
-reddish inner layer of bark. On small branches and young trunks, it is
-smoother, lighter, and more lustrous.
-
-Pin oak is smaller than red oak. Average trees are seventy or eighty
-feet high and two or three in diameter. Specimens 120 feet high and four
-feet in diameter are heard of but are seldom seen. Near the northern
-limit of pin oak's range large trees are not found, nor are small trees
-plentiful. This holds true in all parts of New England and northern New
-York where the species is found growing naturally. South of
-Pennsylvania, along the flood plains of rivers which flow to Chesapeake
-bay, a better class of timber is found. The best development of the
-species is in the lower Ohio valley.
-
-It grows rapidly, but falls a little short of the red oak. When young
-growth is cut, sprouts will rise from the stumps and flourish for a
-time, but merchantable trees are seldom or never produced that way. The
-acorn must be depended on. It has been remarked that pin oak does not
-prune itself well, but it does better in dense stands than in open
-ground. In the latter case the limbs are late in dying and falling.
-
-Pin oak has proved to be a valuable street and park tree. It possesses
-several characteristics which recommend it for that use. It grows
-rapidly, and it quickly attains a size which lessens its liability to
-injury by accidents. Its shade is tolerably dense; the crown is shapely
-and attractive; the leaves fall late; and it seems to stand the smoke
-and dust of cities better than many other trees. It is easily and
-successfully transplanted if taken when small. Many towns and cities
-from Long Island to Washington, D. C., have planted the pin oak along
-streets, avenues, and in parks. Several thoroughfares in Washington are
-shaded by them.
-
-Considerable planting of pin oak has been done by railroads which expect
-to grow ties. Trees of this species when cut in forests and made into
-crossties do not all show similar resistance to decay. Some ties are
-perishable in a short time, while others give satisfactory service. The
-best endure well without preservative treatment, but all are benefited
-by it. If the experimental plantings turn out well, it may be expected
-that pin oak will fill an important place in the crosstie business.
-
-Because of numerous limbs, lumber cut from pin oak is apt to be knotty,
-and the percentage of good grades small. The annual rings are wide, and
-are about evenly divided between spring and summerwood, though the
-latter often exceeds the former. Its general appearance suggests red
-oak, but it is more porous in trunks of thrifty growth. The springwood
-is largely made up of pores. The medullary rays are hardly as prominent
-as those of red oak, but in other ways resemble them. The wood weighs
-43.24 pounds per cubic foot, which is a little above red oak. It is hard
-and strong, dark brown with thin sapwood of darker color. The lumber
-checks and warps badly in seasoning.
-
-The uses to which pin oak is put must be considered in a general way
-because of the absence of exact statistics. The wood is not listed by
-the lumber trade under its own name, but goes along with others of the
-black oak group. Its uses, however, are known along a number of lines.
-Lumbermen cut it wherever it is found mixed with other hardwoods.
-Sometimes vehicle manufacturers make a point of securing a supply of
-this wood. That occurs oftener with small concerns than large. It is
-made into felloes, reaches, and bolsters. Furniture makers use it, and
-well selected, quarter-sawed stock is occasionally reduced to veneer.
-The articles produced pass for red oak, and it would be very difficult
-to detect the difference between pin oak and true red oak when finished
-as veneer. Some highly attractive mission furniture is said to be of pin
-oak.
-
-More goes to chair stock mills than to factories which produce higher
-classes of furniture. Chairs utilize very small pieces, and that gives
-the stock cutter a chance to trim out the knots and produce the maximum
-amount of clear stuff. Chair makers in Michigan reported the use of
-60,000 feet of pin oak in 1910. Slack coopers work in much the same way
-as chair mills, and pin oak is acceptable material for many classes of
-barrels and other containers. Small tight knots are frequently not
-defects sufficient to cause the rejection of staves. Tight coopers do
-not find pin oak suitable, because the wood is too porous to hold
-liquids, particularly liquors containing alcohol. The wood is mixed at
-mills with red oak and other similar species and is manufactured into
-picture frames, boxes, crates, interior finish for houses, and many
-other commodities requiring strength or handsome finish. In early years
-when the people manufactured by hand what they needed, and obtained
-their timber from the nearest forest or woodlot, they split fence rails,
-pickets, clapboards, and shingles of pin oak.
-
-Oak-apples or galls are the round excrescences formed on the limbs by
-gallflies and their eggs. They seem particularly fond of this species
-and specimens are often seen which are literally covered with them. The
-worms which live inside seem to flourish particularly well on the food
-they imbibe from pin oak. The primitive school teachers three or four
-generations ago turned these oak galls to account. They are rich in
-tannin, and were employed in manufacturing the local ink supply. The
-teachers were the ink makers as well as the pen cutters when the pens
-were whittled from quills. The process of making the ink was simple. The
-galls were soaked in a kettle of water and nails. The iron acted on the
-tannin and produced the desired blackness, but if special luster was
-desired, it was furnished by adding the fruit of the wild greenbrier
-(_Smilax rotundifolia_), which grew abundantly in the woods. It was well
-that steel pens were not then in use, for the schoolmaster's oak ink
-would have eaten up such a pen in a single day.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CALIFORNIA LIVE OAK
-
-[Illustration: CALIFORNIA LIVE OAK]
-
-
-
-
-CALIFORNIA LIVE OAK
-
-(_Quercus Agrifolia_)
-
-
-This fine western tree belongs to the black oak group, yet its acorns
-mature in one year, like those of white oaks. It is the only known black
-oak with that habit. It is properly classed with canyon live oak which
-has many characteristics of white oak, yet matures its acorns the second
-year. The two oaks with freakish fruit belong in California, and to some
-extent occupy the same range. California live oak is apparently making
-an effort to conform to the habit of other black oaks by producing two
-year acorns. It has not yet succeeded in doing so, but flowers
-occasionally appear in the fall, and young acorns set on the twigs. They
-drop during the winter, and it is not believed that any of them hang
-till the second season.
-
-The range of this tree covers most of the California coast region but
-does not reach the great interior valleys. The tree is very common in
-the southwestern part of the state. It is called an evergreen, and some
-individuals deserve that reputation, but the leaves never remain long
-after the new crop appears. Frequently the old leaves do not wait for
-the new, and when they drop, the branches remain bare for a few weeks.
-The form of the leaf is not constant. Some have smooth margins, but the
-typical leaf is toothed like holly. One of the early names by which the
-tree was known was holly-leaved oak. The bark looks much like the bark
-of chestnut oak. It is bought for tanning purposes, but its principal
-use is to adulterate the bark of another oak (_Quercus densiflora_).
-Trees range in height from twenty-five to seventy-five feet, and from
-one foot to four in diameter. The trunks are very short, and seldom
-afford clear lengths exceeding eight feet, and often not more than four.
-Trees generally grow in the open, but when in thickets, the boles
-lengthen somewhat. They are of slow growth and live to old age.
-
-The wood is hard and brittle. A cubic foot weighs 51.43 pounds when
-thoroughly dry. The wood of mature trees is reddish-brown; but young and
-middle aged trunks are all sapwood, and are white from bark to center.
-When sapwood is exposed to the air a considerable time it changes color
-and becomes very dark brown. The medullary rays of this oak are broad,
-fairly numerous, and are darker than the surrounding wood. When the log
-is quarter-sawed, the exposed flecks of bright surface are the darkest
-parts. To that extent, it resembles quarter-sawed sycamore, but the
-woods do not look alike in any other particular. This oak is very
-porous, and the pores--as is usual with live oaks--are arranged in rows
-running from bark to center rather than parallel with the annual rings.
-No clear line is distinguishable between spring and summerwood.
-
-Cordwood constitutes the most important use for California live oak. It
-rates high in fuel value, and the many large and crooked limbs make the
-tree an ideal one, from the cordwood cutter's viewpoint. By carefully
-ricking the wood, with the crooks and elbows in every possible
-direction--at which some cordwood cutters are very proficient--a cord of
-wood may be constructed in the forest, which, when sold and delivered in
-the buyer's shed, contracts like an accordion.
-
-    CANYON LIVE OAK (_Quercus chrysolepis_). This splendid California
-    oak bears many names. It is an evergreen, and therefore is called
-    live oak. It is hard when thoroughly seasoned, and this has won for
-    it the name iron oak. Wagon makers often so designate it. It is
-    called Valparaiso oak, but for what reason is not apparent. Black
-    live oak doubtless refers to the dark color of the foliage. The most
-    shapely trees grow in the bottoms of canyons, and the name, canyon
-    live oak, refers to that circumstance. Hickory oak is not an
-    appropriate name, though it doubtless implies that the wood
-    possesses the toughness of hickory. It is about as tough as white
-    oak. The name golden cup oak is a translation of its botanical name
-    which, in Greek, means "golden scale," a reference to a yellow
-    tomentum or wool which covers the cups of the acorns. The wood's
-    hardness qualifies it to serve as mauls, hence the name maul oak.
-
-    The northern limit of its growth is in southern Oregon. It goes
-    south from there on the coast ranges of California and the western
-    slopes of the Sierra Nevadas to the highlands of southern
-    California. Its growth on the mountains of southern Arizona and New
-    Mexico is always shrubby. The lowest limit of its range is about
-    1,000 feet above sea level, the best specimens occurring at low
-    altitudes in the sheltered canyons of the coast ranges of
-    California. Gradually diminishing in size, it grows to the very tops
-    of many of the high mountains, sometimes reaching 9,000 feet, being
-    not more than a foot high at the upper limits of its range. In
-    appearance this tree resembles the eastern live oak (_Quercus
-    virginiana_), having the same majestic wide-spreading crown, except
-    in the high altitudes where it forms dense thickets covering large
-    areas.
-
-    When in its favorite habitat, the massive proportions and majestic
-    appearance of this tree are imposing, the crown sometimes being 150
-    feet across, the bole short and thick, and the great branches long
-    and horizontal. It is not clothed in the somber Spanish moss that is
-    often present on the great live oaks of the southeastern states, but
-    there is a similarity of appearance in the drooping slender twigs.
-    One hundred and fifty feet across is cited as an unusual width of
-    crown, one hundred feet being a good average size, and forty or
-    fifty feet the usual height, although it sometimes reaches 100. The
-    bole is vested in a gray-brown, reddish-tinged bark, about an inch
-    thick, and broken into numerous scales which in old age become flaky
-    and pliable and fall off.
-
-    The bark is light colored, and has the stringy character of white
-    oak. The tree would readily pass for a white oak were it not for its
-    two-year acorns which class it in the black oak group. The wood
-    resembles white oak, and weighs 52.93 pounds per cubic foot.
-
-    Few oaks, if any, retain their leaves a longer time than this. They
-    remain on the branches three or four years. Most evergreen oaks shed
-    theirs at the beginning of the second year. The leaves of this tree
-    are peculiar in another way. They assume various forms. That in
-    itself is not unusual and occurs with many species; but the canyon
-    live oak has one pattern of leaf for the young tree, another for the
-    old. One form has a margin with sharp, hooked teeth; another has
-    smooth-margined leaves, and there are various intermediate forms.
-    Sizes vary no less than shapes of both acorns and leaves. Some
-    acorns are half an inch in length, others two inches.
-
-    The canyon live oak is believed to be long-lived, but further
-    information is desirable. The massive trunks represent centuries.
-    They usually occur in sheltered places which are measurably secure
-    from the ordinary perils which beset trees, notably the woodsman's
-    ax and the periodic forest fire. The bottoms of canyons where this
-    oak makes choice of situation do not usually burn fiercely, and
-    trees sheltered there escape. Cordwood cutters are the most constant
-    peril to good fuel trees in California; but many a canyon is safe
-    from their invasions, because of lack of roads. There the most
-    magnificent oaks rear their crowns in security, while trees of
-    inferior size and character, which grow on exposed slopes and flats,
-    fall before the cordwood cutter, and go to the ricks in village
-    woodyards.
-
-    The wood of canyon live oak is superior to that of any other oak in
-    its range. It is of light brown color, and is tough, strong, stiff,
-    and heavy. The trunks are generally unsuitable for sawlogs, being
-    too short, but when a chance tree is found that may be cut into
-    lumber, it is considered a prize. Trunks are seldom good for more
-    than one sawlog. In that respect this oak may be compared with the
-    southern live oak. The scarcity of good hardwoods on the Pacific
-    coast adds to the value of what may be found there. If the canyon
-    live oak grew in the East, and developed a trunk of the same size
-    and shape as it has in its present home, it would attract no more
-    attention from the users of hardwoods than the live oak in the South
-    attracts now. But place makes great difference.
-
-    Factories in California do not report the use of much of this oak,
-    yet considerable quantities of it are in service. The most important
-    place found for it is in country and village blacksmith shops, where
-    wagons are repaired. Nearly every piece of wood which goes into a
-    wagon, except the bed, may be this oak. Many persons consider it the
-    best wagon timber on the Pacific coast, and it is particularly
-    valued for tongues, not only for wagons, but for heavy log trucks
-    which are operated by several yoke of oxen. The wood is likewise
-    made into singletrees. It has always been in use in California for
-    pack saddles. That article is small, but many saddles were formerly
-    made, and the pack saddle is still an important article in the
-    mountains. Trains of mules, horses, and burros thread the narrow
-    paths, where wheeled vehicles cannot go, and deliver supplies to
-    camps and mines in remote districts. The pack saddle's strength is
-    frequently all that intervenes between the load and destruction; for
-    the snapping of a piece of wood may let the pack go over a precipice
-    beyond recovery. The pack trains are slowly passing out of use in
-    the West, as they long ago disappeared from the "bridle paths" of
-    eastern mountains and forests; but they are still to be seen among
-    the fastnesses of the Sierra Nevadas, as in the days when a western
-    poet burst into inspired song of the long pack trains going
-
-      "Up and down o'er the mountain trail
-      With one horse tied to another's tail."
-
-    HUCKLEBERRY OAK (_Quercus chrysolepis vaccinifolia_) is a variety of
-    canyon live oak, and is never large enough to supply wood for any
-    purpose, but is valuable as a covering to the ground on exposed
-    mountains. It is usually a shrub, and specimens no more than a foot
-    high are mature and bear acorns enormously out of proportion to the
-    size of the tree. If the canyon live oak of largest size in the low
-    hills bore acorns proportionately as large, they would be the size
-    of barrels. The huckleberry oak's acorns are set in their golden
-    cups. The name huckleberry is applied because of a fancied
-    resemblance of the leaves to those of huckleberries. They are
-    generally less than one inch in length, sometimes not half an inch.
-    This unique variety of oak ranges on elevated slopes and ridges of
-    the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the traveler in climbing to the
-    peaks is often grateful for the privilege of pulling himself up the
-    steep slopes by grasping in his hands the tops of full grown trees.
-
-    PALMER OAK (_Quercus chrysolepis palmeri_) is considered a variety
-    of canyon live oak by some, but Sudworth believes it is a distinct
-    species, and draws his conclusion from forms of leaves, flowers, and
-    fruit. It forms large thickets on foothills and plateaus near the
-    southern boundary of California, eighty miles or more east of San
-    Diego. The trees do not attain sufficient size to give them
-    commercial importance.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CALIFORNIA TANBARK OAK
-
-[Illustration: CALIFORNIA TANBARK OAK]
-
-
-
-
-CALIFORNIA TANBARK OAK
-
-(_Quercus Densiflora_)
-
-
-Botanists dispute the right of this tree to the name of oak, and some of
-them refuse to call it an oak. It is admitted that it possesses
-characters not found in any other oak, but these are important to the
-botanist only, while laymen have never considered the tree anything but
-an oak. It has been variously called tanbark oak, chestnut oak,
-California chestnut oak, live oak, and peach oak. The trunk, branches,
-and foliage look much like chestnut. The leaf is like the chestnut's,
-but it is evergreen. There are three or four crops on the tree at one
-time, and none fall until they are three or four years old. Young leaves
-are remarkably woolly, but late in their first summer they get rid of
-most of the fuzz, and become thick in texture.
-
-Tanbark oaks are of all sizes, from mere shrubs on high mountains in the
-northern Sierra Nevadas to fine and symmetrical timber in the damp
-climate of the fog belt between San Francisco and the Oregon line. The
-average height of mature trees is from seventy to 100 feet, with
-diameters up to six feet in rare cases, though more trunks are under
-than over two feet in diameter.
-
-The range of this oak reaches southern Oregon on the north, and runs
-southward three or four hundred miles along the Sierra Nevada mountains,
-to Mariposa county, and six hundred miles through the Coast range to
-Santa Barbara county. The tree is affected by climatic conditions, and
-where surroundings do not suit, it is small and shrubby, often less than
-ten feet high. It does best in the redwood belt where fogs from the
-Pacific ocean keep the air moist and the ground damp. It sometimes
-associates with Douglas fir, and at other times with California live
-oak. If it grows in dense side shade it loses its lower branches and
-develops a long, clean trunk; but in open ground it keeps its limbs
-until late in life.
-
-This is the most important source of tanbark on the Pacific coast, and
-up to the present it has been procurable in large quantities. The annual
-output is nearly 40,000 tons, and it commands a higher price than the
-bark of any other oak or of hemlock. The absence of other adequate
-tanning materials on the Pacific coast gives this tree much importance.
-Its range covers several thousand square miles, and the stand is fairly
-good on much of it. But on the other hand, the destruction of timber to
-secure the bark has been excessive. What occurred with chestnut oak and
-hemlock in the East, is occurring with tanbark oak in the West. Trees
-are cut and peeled, and are left by thousands to rot in the woods, or
-to feed fires and make them more destructive. The bark peelers do their
-principal work in the California redwood region, because there the oak
-is at its best. Economic conditions make the salvage of the trunks
-impossible. The bark can be hauled to market, but the wood is unsalable
-at living prices, after the long haul. It has, therefore, been usually
-abandoned, and becomes a total loss. It cannot even be sold for fuel,
-because the country within reach of it is thinly settled, and wood is
-plentiful on every side.
-
-Large oaks are felled, because the bark can not be stripped from the
-trunks in any other way, and small trees are not spared. The peelers
-often do not take the trouble to cut them down, but strip off the bark
-as high as a man can reach, and leave them standing. A future tree is
-thus destroyed for the sake of a strip of bark a few feet long. Such
-trees live a year or two, sometimes several years, before yielding to
-the inevitable. Usually, as a last expiring effort, they bear an
-abnormally large crop of acorns. That performance, in the language of
-the bark peelers, is "the last kick." A tanbark slashing, when the
-peelers are ready to abandon it, is a sorry spectacle. The barkless and
-sun-cracked trunks strew the ground, the tops and limbs are piled in
-windrows, the small peeled trees stand dying, and the last ricks of bark
-have been sledded down the tote roads, marking the close of operations
-in that district. A few months later, when fire runs through, the end of
-the tanbark oak on that tract is accomplished.
-
-Within recent years commendable efforts have been made to use the wood
-as well as the bark. One of the first steps in that direction was to
-overcome the prejudice against the wood. It was long considered to be
-valueless. That belief was founded on the single fact that this oak is
-difficult to season. Few woods in this country check as badly as this,
-when it is left exposed to sun and wind after the bark has been removed.
-It checks both radially and along the annual rings. The medullary rays
-are broad and extend much of the distance from the center to the
-outside. These are natural lines of cleavage when the log begins to
-season and the internal stresses develop. It must be admitted that the
-prospect of making anything out of timber of that character is
-discouraging; but it has been accomplished, and tanbark oak is now a
-material of considerable value.
-
-The wood has about the strength and stiffness of white oak, while it is
-four pounds lighter per cubic foot. The structure is similar to that of
-California live oak, but the pores of tanbark oak are smaller. They run
-in rows from center to circumference. The medullary rays are broad
-enough to show well in quarter-sawing, but the wood's appearance when so
-worked is not wholly satisfactory. The exposed flat surfaces of the
-rays show a faint purplish or violet tinge which is considered
-objectionable. But when the wood is worked plain it is dependable and
-substantial. It makes good flooring, fairly good furniture, finish,
-vehicles, and agricultural implements. It is perishable when placed in
-damp situations, and this detracts somewhat from its value as railway
-ties; but the wood's porous nature indicates that it will readily yield
-to preservative treatment.
-
-Since the value of the wood is coming to be understood it is to be
-expected that less of it will be destroyed than formerly, and that
-second growth will be given opportunity to hold the ground when old
-stands are cut. The tree is a prolific seeder, but not every year, and
-seedlings come up abundantly in sheltered places. Sprouts rise from
-stumps and grow to vigorous trees. It would seem, therefore, that the
-tanbark oak will hold at least part of the ground where nature planted
-it.
-
-TOUMEY OAK (_Quercus toumeyi_). No oak in this country has smaller
-leaves than this. They are usually less than three-fourths of an inch
-long and half an inch wide, and they hang on petioles one-sixteenth inch
-long. The leaves have no lobes or notches. They remain all winter and
-fall in the spring in time to make room for the new crop. The acorns are
-nearly as long as the leaves and ripen in June of the first year. Few
-persons ever see this oak, for its known range is restricted to Mule
-mountain, in Cochise county, southeastern Arizona. It attains a height
-of twenty-five or thirty feet, and a diameter of six or eight inches.
-The trunk is not only small, but is of form so poor that it can never be
-of value for anything but fuel. It divides near the ground into crooked
-branches. The heart of the tree is light brown, the thick sapwood is
-lighter.
-
-    WOOLLY OAK (_Quercus tomentella_) has apparently been crowded off
-    the American continent and has taken refuge on islands off the
-    southern California coast. As far as known, not a single tree stands
-    on the mainland, but several groves, with a few isolated specimens,
-    are found on Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and Catalina islands, where
-    they are huddled together in the bottoms of sheltered canyons. The
-    leaves are thick, leathery, and are toothed like holly. The trees
-    are evergreen. The acorns do not mature until the second season.
-    They are generally more than an inch long. The scarcity of this oak
-    relegates it to an unimportant place among commercial woods. This
-    seems unfortunate, for the appearance of the wood indicates that it
-    possesses excellent properties. No other oak looks like this wood.
-    It is decidedly yellow, and is dense and firm. The medullary rays
-    are different from those of any other oak. When seen in cross
-    section they are arranged in short, wavy lines, broadest in the
-    middle and tapering toward both ends. The pores are arranged between
-    the rays, and follow wavy lines also. Trees grow with fair rapidity,
-    and the largest on the islands are seventy-five feet high and two in
-    diameter.
-
-    BARREN OAK (_Quercus pumila_) is called dwarf black oak, or simply
-    scrub oak. Its habit of growing on barren land is responsible for
-    its common name which some people shorten to "bear" oak. It is one
-    of the poorest oaks of the East, and it seldom grows more than
-    twenty-five feet high and a few inches in diameter. Its range
-    follows the Atlantic coast southward from Mount Desert Island,
-    Maine, to North Carolina. It is probably more abundant on the pine
-    barrens of New Jersey than elsewhere. The trunks are too small to be
-    of use for anything but fuel.
-
-    PRICE OAK (_Quercus pricei_) is a California tree, supposed to be
-    very local in its range, since it has not been found outside the
-    drainage basin of a small stream in Monterey county. That locality
-    on the coast of California appears to be the starting place or
-    principal abiding place of several tree species, among which are
-    Monterey cypress and Monterey pine. The Price oak attains a height
-    of twenty-five or thirty feet, and a diameter of twelve inches or
-    less; consequently it is too small to be of value to lumbermen, even
-    if it were abundant. The leaves resemble those of California live
-    oak, and are believed to remain two summers on the tree. The acorns
-    mature the second season.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SHINGLE OAK
-
-[Illustration: SHINGLE OAK]
-
-
-
-
-SHINGLE OAK
-
-(_Quercus Imbricaria_)
-
-
-The origin of this tree's name has been the subject of considerable
-controversy. According to one account the name was first used by the
-French colonists at Kaskaskia, Illinois, nearly 150 years ago. They
-found that the wood rived well and it was abundant in the vicinity of
-their settlement. They split it for shingles and covered their cabins.
-It was the best wood obtainable for the purpose in that region, and they
-designated the tree shingle oak, a name translated into Latin by the
-botanist Michaux and still retained as the tree's botanical name. The
-story of the name appears to be well authenticated, but the fact cannot
-be denied that as much reason exists for another theory. A person who
-sees a shingle oak tree in full leaf, particularly if it stands in open
-ground where its foliage has had opportunity to develop along natural
-lines, will at once notice the peculiar and characteristic overlapping
-of the leaves. They suggest the courses of shingles nailed on a roof. No
-other oak has that arrangement. The similitude is so striking that it
-would be surprising if the name shingle oak were not applied.
-
-It is not a one-name tree, but following the fashion, it carries several
-names. It is called laurel oak in some regions. The form and appearance
-of the leaf give the name. The oak looks like a mammoth laurel tree more
-than like its own species. The shingle oak is known as jack oak in some
-parts of Illinois. That is a name liable to be applied to any tree when
-its real name is not known. In North Carolina they call the tree water
-oak, which name, like jack oak, is often used to conceal ignorance of
-the true name. Another southern species (_Quercus nigra_) is properly
-named water oak.
-
-Shingle oak requires good soil for growth but is not partial either to
-uplands or bottoms. It is found at its best in the lower Ohio river
-basin and in Missouri, but is comparatively rare in the East. From
-middle Pennsylvania its range extends southward along the Alleghanies to
-northern Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and west Arkansas. It is found in
-Michigan, Wisconsin, and westward to Kansas.
-
-It manifests a strong tendency to hybridize with other oaks, and it
-readily crosses with black jack oak, pin oak, and yellow oak. It is
-believed that a cross between yellow oak and shingle oak produced the
-species known as lea oak.
-
-A mature tree may be one hundred feet high and three or four feet in
-diameter. It has a round or pyramidal attractive crown composed of many
-slender branches and twigs. The foliage is distinctively grouped at the
-ends of the twigs in star-like clusters. The leaves are four or six
-inches long, with wedge-shaped or rounded bases, and are deep green and
-shiny on the upper side, but lighter below. The acorns are short,
-stubby, and rounded, covered one-third of the way with thin shallow
-cups.
-
-Shingle oak grows rapidly, and it is often sold by nurseries which deal
-in ornamental forest trees. It is hardy as far north as Massachusetts.
-Although it bears great abundance of leaves, they are so arranged that
-the crown seems open. One may see through the branches of a large
-shingle oak, and it suggests an airiness not common with oaks.
-
-Differences of opinion exist concerning the value of shingle oak for
-commercial purposes. It belongs in the black oak group, and its wood
-goes to market as red oak, and apparently is never listed as anything
-else. It is never named in market reports; shops and factories never
-report it, and it has been pronounced inferior to red oak in strength
-and seasoning properties. Tests have been made of some of its physical
-properties, and the results do not indicate that the wood belongs with
-inferior timbers. Its breaking strength is given at 39 per cent greater
-than white oak, and its stiffness at 28 per cent greater. However, these
-values, which are calculated from Sargent's tables, are based on tests
-of only a few specimens of the wood, and fuller investigation might make
-revision necessary.
-
-The wood is heavy, hard, and is said to check badly in drying. The pores
-are large and are arranged in rows; medullary rays are broad and
-conspicuous. The wood is light brown, tinged with red, the sapwood much
-lighter. The broad medullary rays, running radially, give the wood its
-good splitting qualities.
-
-The tree is fairly abundant in different parts of its range, and is cut
-and manufactured with other oaks and hardwoods. Slack coopers use it for
-barrels; box makers employ it for crates; chair mills saw dimension
-stock and ship it to factories to be finished; some goes to furniture
-factories; some is turned for spindles for grills, and for balusters for
-stairs; other fills various places as interior finish and molding. But
-it all goes to market and passes through factories under names other
-than its own.
-
-WATER OAK (_Quercus nigra_) has several names, some of them bestowed
-with little apparent reason. It is called possum oak and duck oak, but
-these names are neither descriptive nor definitive. Punk oak is another
-name. It may refer to a decayed condition of the wood, but this tree is
-no more affected by decay than others of the same region. In Texas it is
-sometimes known as spotted oak. It thrives in wet situations though not
-actually in swamps. It prefers margins of ponds, banks of rivers, and
-low swales where the ground water is just below the surface, but it is
-not confined to such situations. It does well, within its range,
-wherever willow oak flourishes, but willow oak has a wider range. The
-leaves take on various forms, and they change shape as they increase in
-size. Some have smooth margins, others are lobed. Some are wedge-shaped,
-others coffin-shaped. Their typical form, if it may be said of them that
-they have a typical form, is narrow at the stem end and wide at the
-other. To this is usually added rudimentary lobes, which are sometimes
-nearly as well developed as in any other oak. Their typical form is like
-the leaf of the black jack oak; but they are not half as large, and are
-thin and delicate, while the black jack's leaf is thick and leathery.
-
-The range of water oak begins in Delaware and follows the Atlantic
-coastal plain south to central Florida, and through the Gulf States to
-Texas. It grows as far north as Kentucky and Missouri. It keeps clear of
-the Appalachian mountain region, and other hilly districts. It is
-plentiful in some parts of its range, and trunks three feet in diameter
-and long enough for two or three logs are not unusual, yet large numbers
-of water oaks may be seen in the South which are not fit for sawlogs
-because they stand in open ground and are limby down to ten feet of the
-ground. Many have been planted for shade trees in streets and in parks,
-and are justly admired. They grow rapidly and are extremely graceful.
-Their leaves are deciduous, but adhere to the branches most of the year.
-South of the belt of severe frost, the old leaves frequently hang until
-the buds for the new crop are opening. The acorns are bitter, and even
-the southern pine hog passes them by until the pinch of famine edges up
-his appetite.
-
-Water oak possesses value as a source of lumber, but it belongs with the
-large class of oaks which lose their names and their identity when they
-pass the threshold of the sawmill. They come out red oak. Only in rare
-instances is water oak called by its own name in the factory and lumber
-yard. Wagon makers employ it for bolsters, axles, spokes, tongues,
-sandboards, hounds, felloes and reaches. Entire dump carts, except the
-iron, are constructed of this wood. Furniture manufacturers use it as
-frame material, but seldom as the outside visible parts, though no
-reason for not doing so is offered. Objection is made to its seasoning
-qualities, but the same objection applies to most red oaks. A
-considerable amount of water oak is cut in the South into thick planks
-for bridge floors. It is strong and hard, and satisfactorily resists
-decay in that place; though, in common with the black oaks generally, it
-is liable to decay when exposed to dampness. The wood weighs a little
-less than white oak, and is not quite as strong or as stiff. It is
-porous, but the pores are small, except one or two rows in the
-springwood. The medullary rays are thin and not numerous, but they are
-conspicuous, and the wood may be successfully quarter-sawed. The lumber
-has the appearance of red oak, though the reddish color is not so
-pronounced.
-
-    BARTRAM OAK (_Quercus heterophylla_). This interesting but
-    commercially unimportant oak was named by Michaux from a single tree
-    found in a field belonging to John Bartram near Philadelphia more
-    than a century ago. A few trees have since been found in widely
-    scattered districts as far south as North Carolina and as far west
-    as Texas. Botanists believe it is a hybrid, one parent being the
-    willow oak (_Quercus phellos_) and the other yellow oak (_Quercus
-    velutina_). It is probable that here may be witnessed the origin of
-    a tree species. The leaves seem to be a compromise between the
-    deeply cut foliage of yellow oak and the entire leaf of willow oak.
-    The new species is so scarce that few people have ever seen it.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED GUM
-
-[Illustration: RED GUM]
-
-
-
-
-RED GUM
-
-(_Liquidambar Styraciflua_)
-
-
-This tree does not belong to the same group as black gum and tupelo,
-which are in the dogwood family, while red gum is of the witch hazel
-family. If a tree is to be judged and named by its character, red gum is
-more entitled to the name "gum" than any other tree of this country,
-because it exudes a yellow resin from wounds in the bark. The botanical
-name recognizes that fact. Storax is procured from a closely related
-tree is Asia, and has been known in commerce for many centuries. The
-other popular names of red gum are sweet gum, liquid-amber gum, gum
-tree, alligator wood, bilsted, starleaved gum, and satin walnut.
-
-The last name originated in England where it was desirable to avoid the
-name gum when applied to the wood of this tree. Though botanically it is
-about as distantly related to walnut as any tree can be, the figure of
-the wood often suggests walnut. The name sweet gum refers to the
-pleasant odor of the resin which is sometimes used in France, and
-probably elsewhere, to perfume gloves. Alligator wood is descriptive of
-warty excrescences on the bark of some trees, but they are not common to
-all. Starleaved gum relates to the leaf. It is a lopsided star--a six
-point star with one point missing.
-
-This tree's range in the United States extends from Connecticut to Texas
-and as far northwest of the Alleghanies as Missouri and Illinois. It
-reaches its greatest size in the lower Mississippi valley in rich bottom
-land which is subject to repeated inundation. It is not, however, as
-purely a swamp tree as tupelo and cypress. It grows well on land which
-is never inundated, but it needs plenty of moisture. The largest
-specimens exceed a height of 120 feet and a diameter of four; but logs
-from eighteen inches to three feet are the usual sizes. The tree's range
-extends southward through Mexico into Central America.
-
-The rise of red gum lumber into prominence forms an interesting chapter
-in the industry. It was formerly considered so difficult to season that
-few mills cared to deal with it, but that difficulty has been largely
-overcome. In the past, gum, having no market value, was left standing
-after logging; or, where the land was cleared for farming, was girdled
-and allowed to rot, and then felled and burned. Not only were the trees
-a total loss to the farmer, but, from their great size and the labor
-required to handle them, they were so serious an obstruction as often to
-preclude the clearing of valuable land. Now that there is a market for
-the timber, it is profitable to cut gum with other hardwoods, and land
-can be cleared more cheaply. This increase in the value of gum timber
-will be of great benefit to the South in many ways.
-
-Throughout its entire life red gum is intolerant of shade. As a rule
-seedlings appear only in clearings or in open spots in the forest. It is
-seldom that an overtopped tree is found, for the gum dies quickly if
-suppressed, and is consequently nearly always a dominant or intermediate
-tree. In a hardwood bottom forest, the timber trees are all of nearly
-the same age over considerable areas, and there is little young growth
-to be found in the older stands. The reason for this is the intolerance
-of most of the swamp species.
-
-Red gum reproduces both by seed and by sprouts, fairly abundantly every
-year, but about once in three years there is a heavy production. In the
-Mississippi valley the abandoned fields on which young stands of red gum
-have sprung up are, for the most part, being rapidly cleared again. The
-second growth here is considered of little worth in comparison with the
-value of the land for agricultural purposes.
-
-A large amount of red gum growing in the South can be economically
-transported from the forests to the mills only by means of the streams,
-owing to the expense of putting in railroads solely for handling the
-timber. Green red gum, however, is so heavy that it scarcely floats and,
-to overcome this difficulty, various methods of driving out the sap
-before the logs are thrown into the river have been tried. One method is
-to girdle the trees and leave them standing a year. That partly seasons
-them, but does not give time for the sapwood to decay. The logs from
-such trees float readily, and the swamps and streams are utilized to
-carry the logs to the mills.
-
-Some years ago that method of seasoning red gum was extensively
-advertised in England by contractors who sold paving blocks of this
-wood. It was claimed that the common defects of red gum were thus
-overcome. Large sales of paving material were made, particularly in
-London, and red gum was popular for a time, but it finally lost its hold
-as a paving wood in competition with certain Australian woods. The
-theory that by girdling a tree and allowing it to die, the amount of
-heartwood will be increased has been abandoned. In selecting trees for
-cutting, those with doty tops, rotten stumps, and heavy bark,
-indications of an old tree which contains a very small proportion of
-sapwood, are now chosen. These are found mainly in the drier localities.
-In low, wet places the trees have more sapwood and are smaller. The
-heartwood forms while the tree is living, not after it dies.
-
-The rapidity with which red gum has come into use in this country and
-elsewhere is the best evidence of the wood's real value. Its range of
-uses extends from the most common articles, such as boxes and crates, to
-those of highest class, like furniture and interior finish. It is only
-moderately strong and stiff, and is not a competitor of hickory, ash,
-maple, and oak in vehicle manufacturing and other lines where strength
-or elasticity is demanded; but in nearly all other classes of wood uses,
-red gum has made itself a place. It has pushed to the front in spite of
-prejudice. As soon as the difficulties of seasoning were mastered, its
-victory was won. Its annual use in Michigan, the home and center of
-hardwood supply, exceeds 20,000,000 feet in manufactured articles,
-exclusive of what is employed in rough form. In Illinois, the most
-extensive wood-manufacturing state in the Union, red gum stands second
-in amount among the hardwoods, the only one above it being white oak. In
-Kentucky, only white oak and hickory are more important among the
-factory woods, while in Arkansas, where the annual amount of this wood
-in factories exceeds 100,000,000 feet, it heads the list of hardwoods.
-
-As a veneer material, it is demanded in four times the quantity of any
-other species. The veneer is nearly all rotary cut, and it goes into
-cheap and expensive commodities, from berry crates to pianos.
-
-The wood weighs 36.83 pounds per cubic foot. It is straight-grained, the
-medullary rays are numerous but not prominent, the pores diffuse but
-small, and the summerwood forms only a narrow band, like a line. The
-annual rings do not produce much figure, but wood has another kind of
-figure, the kind that characterizes English and Circassian walnuts,
-smoky, cloudy, shaded series of rings, independent of the growth rings.
-They have no definite width or constant color, but the color is usually
-deeper than the body of the wood. This figure is one of the most prized
-properties of red gum. It is that which makes the wood the closest known
-imitator of Circassian walnut.
-
-All red gum is not figured, and that which is figured may be worked in a
-way to conceal or make little use of the figure. It shows best in rotary
-cut veneer and tangentially sawed lumber. Various woods are imitated
-with red gum. It is stained or painted to look like oak, cherry,
-mahogany, and even maple.
-
-Some trees have thin sapwood, and others are all sapwood. This
-peculiarity sometimes leads to misunderstandings in lumber transactions.
-A buyer specifies red gum, expecting to get red heartwood, but the
-seller delivers lumber cut from the red gum tree, though light colored
-sapwood may predominate. Properly speaking, the name is applied to the
-tree as a whole and does not refer to any particular color of wood in
-the tree. The term "red" is said to have referred originally to the
-color of autumn leaves, and not to the wood.
-
-The fruit of red gum is a bur, midway in appearance and size between the
-sycamore ball and the chestnut bur. It hangs on the tree until late in
-winter. The resin which exudes from wounds in the bark is of much
-commercial importance and is shipped from New Orleans and Mexican ports.
-Near the northern limit of the species' range the trees yield little
-resin, but it is abundant farther south. In the southern states it is
-used locally as chewing gum. It is known commercially as copalm balm.
-
-    WITCH HAZEL (_Hamamelis virginiana_) is a cousin to red gum, but
-    there is small resemblance. It is known as winter bloom, snapping
-    hazel, and spotted alder. Its range extends from Nova Scotia to
-    Nebraska, Texas, and Florida. It reaches its largest size among the
-    southern Appalachian mountains where the extreme height is sometimes
-    forty feet, with a diameter of eighteen inches; but few people have
-    ever seen a witch hazel that large. It is usually fifteen or twenty
-    feet high and three or four inches in diameter. The wood is much
-    like that of red gum, being diffuse-porous with obscure medullary
-    rays, and a thin line of summerwood. It is of little commercial use;
-    in fact, no report has been found that a single foot of it has ever
-    been used for any purpose. Yet it is a most interesting little tree.
-    It blooms in the fall, sometimes as late as the middle of November.
-    Its rusty summer foliage turns yellow in autumn, and as the leaves
-    begin to fall, the tree bursts into delicately-scented golden
-    flowers, the most visible part of each consisting of four petals
-    which float out like streamers. At the same time that flowers are
-    scenting the air, the seeds are discharging. A full year is required
-    to ripen them; and when dry, cold weather comes, the contraction of
-    their envelopes shoots them with sufficient force to send them
-    fifteen or twenty feet. They depend on neither wings, birds, nor
-    squirrels to scatter them. The origin of the name witch hazel is
-    disputed; but the person who examines the open-topped button which
-    holds the black seeds, and notes the fantastic resemblance to a
-    weasen face, will feel satisfied that he can guess the origin of the
-    name. The tree's bark is used for medicine, in extracts and gargles.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK GUM
-
-[Illustration: BLACK GUM]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK GUM
-
-(_Nyssa Sylvatica_)
-
-
-Black gum grows from the Kennebec river in Maine to Tampa bay, Florida;
-westward to southern Ontario and southern Michigan; Southward through
-Missouri, as far as the Brazos river in Texas. The names by which it is
-known in different regions are black gum, sour gum, tupelo, pepperidge,
-wild pear tree, gum, and yellow gum.
-
-The leaves of black gum are simple and alternate; not serrate. They are
-attached by very short petioles, which are fuzzy when young; they are a
-rich, brilliant green above and lighter below; rather thick, with
-prominent midrib. As early as the latter part of August the leaves
-commence to turn a gorgeous red. The flowers are greenish and
-inconspicuous, growing in thick clusters, the staminate ones small and
-plentiful, the pistillate ones larger. They bloom in April, May or June.
-The fruit of black gum is a drupe about one and a half inches long;
-inside of it is a rough, oval pit; the pulp is acrid until mellowed by
-frost.
-
-The bad name given to black gum by early settlers of this country has
-stayed with it, though the faults found with it then, should hold no
-longer. The pioneers were nearly all clearers of farms. They went into
-the woods with ax, maul, mattock, wedges and gluts, and made fields and
-fenced them. The fencing was as important as the clearing, for the woods
-were alive with hogs, cattle, and horses, and the crop was safe nowhere
-except behind an eight-rail staked and ridered fence. The farmer mauled
-the rails from timber which he cut in the clearing, and there it was
-that he and black gum got acquainted. The oak, chestnut, walnut, cherry,
-yellow poplar, and red cedar were split into rails and built into
-fences; but black gum never made a fence rail. No combination of maul,
-wedge, glut, determination, and elbow grease ever split a black gum log
-within the borders of the American continent. An iron wedge, driven to
-its head in the end of a rail cut, will not open a crack large enough to
-insert the point of a pocket knife. In fact, it is as easy to split the
-log crosswise as endwise. Consequently, the early farmers heaped their
-anathemas and maranathas on black gum and passed it by.
-
-Nevertheless, the tree had its virtues even in the eyes of the
-rail-splitters; for, though it was unwedgeable, it helped along the
-fence rail industry in a very substantial way by furnishing the material
-of which mauls were made. It drove the wedges and gluts which opened
-other timbers. About the only maul that would beat out more rails than
-one of black gum was that made of a chestnut oak knot. The oak beetle's
-only advantage over gum was that it was harder and wore longer. So
-involved and interlaced are the fibers of black gum, that they cross one
-another not only at right angles, but at every conceivable angle. This
-can be seen in examining very thin pieces with a magnifying glass.
-
-The wood is not hard, but is moderately strong, and stiff. It has been
-compared with hickory, but it is so inferior in almost every essential
-that no comparison is justified.
-
-Black gum weighs 39.61 pounds per cubic foot. It is very porous, but the
-pores are too small to be seen by the naked eye, and are diffused
-through the wood and form no distinct lines or groups. The summerwood is
-a thin dark line, not prominent enough to clearly delimit the yearly
-rings of growth. The medullary rays are numerous, but very thin. In
-quarter-sawed wood they produce a luster, but the individual rays are
-practically invisible. The wood is not durable in contact with the soil.
-
-The standing tree is apt to fall a victim to the agencies of decay.
-Hollow trunks, mere shells, are not uncommon. The entire heartwood is
-liable to fall away. The pioneers cut these hollow trees, and sawing
-them in lengths of about two feet, made beehives of them. They called
-them gums because they were cut from gum trees. Larger sizes, used in
-place of barrels, were also called gums, but these were usually made
-from sycamores. The black gum is not usually large. Individuals have
-been measured that were five feet in diameter and more than a hundred in
-height, but an average of sixty feet high and two in diameter is
-probably too much, except in the southern Appalachian mountains where
-the species attains its largest size.
-
-It is a tree which will always be easily recognized after it has been
-seen and identified once. Its general outline, particularly when leaves
-are off, is different from other trees associated with it. It might
-possibly be mistaken for persimmon unless looked at closely; but there
-are easily-recognized points of difference. Its branches are very small,
-slender, and short. Its bark is rougher than that of any other gum, and
-is much darker in color. It is the bark's color that gives the tree its
-name. The leaves have smooth edges. In the fall they change to gorgeous
-red, and one of their peculiarities is that half a leaf may be red while
-the other half remains green. Toward the end of the season, the green
-disappears. The dark blue drupes ripen in October. They do not seem to
-be food for any living creature.
-
-Sawmills include black gum with tupelo in reporting lumber cut, and
-generally call both of them gum without distinction. The woods are quite
-different, and neither the standing tree nor the lumber of one need be
-mistaken for the other. The range of black gum is much more extensive
-than that of tupelo. Gum lumber cut north of the Ohio and Potomac rivers
-may be safely classed as black gum, though a little of both red and
-tupelo gum is found north of those streams. In the South, the species
-cannot be separated by regions, for all the gums grow from Texas to
-Virginia. The total annual output of black gum is not known, but some
-operators estimate it at about 20,000,000 feet a year, or nearly
-one-fourth as much as tupelo.
-
-The bulk of black gum lumber is used in the rough, for floors,
-sheathing, frames, and scaffolds; but a considerable portion is further
-manufactured. The amounts thus used annually have been ascertained for a
-few states, and furnish a basis for estimates for the whole country:
-Mississippi, 7,000 feet; Maryland, 85,000; Illinois, 120,000; Louisiana,
-120,000; Missouri, 190,000; Texas, 360,000; Massachusetts, 475,000;
-Alabama, 486,000.
-
-The uses are general, except that the wood is not employed where
-attractive figure is required, for black gum is as plain as cottonwood.
-It is not displeasing in its plainness, for the surface finishes nicely
-with a soft gloss which, except that it lacks figure, suggests the sap
-of red gum. It is specially useful in situations where noncleavability
-is required. Black gum mallets for stone masons and woodworkers are in
-the market. Mine rollers require a much larger amount. The entire 85,000
-feet reported in Maryland was made into such rollers. They furnish the
-bearing for the rope that hauls the car up the incline out of the coal
-pit. Its toughness qualifies it for wagon hubs, but it is sometimes
-objected to because its softness causes the mortises to wear larger
-where the spokes are inserted, and the wheel does not stand as well as
-when the hubs are of good oak. Early farmers and lumbermen preferred
-black gum for ox yokes, and some are still seen where oxen are used; but
-many other woods are as strong and equally as serviceable for yokes.
-Rollers of this wood for glass factories are common. It is made into
-hatters' blocks where a wood is wanted which, when thoroughly seasoned,
-will hold its shape. It is less popular for this purpose than yellow
-poplar. One of the best places for black gum is in the manufacture of
-bored water pipe. The wood's interlaced fiber prevents splitting under
-the internal stress due to hydrostatic pressure. The shell of such pipes
-can be thinner than with most woods. A drawback is found in the
-non-durable qualities of black gum. However, the internal pressure of
-water keeps the wood thoroughly saturated, and prolongs its life when
-used as pipes.
-
-The makers of firearms employ black gum as gunstocks and pistol grips.
-The wood is stained to make it darker. It is cut by the rotary process
-into cheap veneer and is made into baskets and berry crates. Less
-trouble with the veneer, on account of breaking, is experienced than
-might be expected of a wood so cross-grained. It is sawed into thin
-lumber for boxes for shipping coffee and other groceries. It is a
-substitute for cottonwood and yellow poplar in the manufacture of
-certain lines of woodenware, notably, ironing boards, rolling pins,
-potato mashers, and chopping bowls. It is made into interior finish for
-houses; and furniture manufacturers find many places where it is a
-serviceable material. Musical instrument makers employ it, particularly
-as trusses for pianos, and in frames of pipe organs. In Louisiana it is
-converted into excelsior, and in Mississippi into broom handles, and
-parts of agricultural implements, particularly hoppers and seedboxes.
-
-All gums are hard to season, and this one is no exception. It checks
-badly, but the checks are usually very small.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-TUPELO
-
-[Illustration: TUPELO]
-
-
-
-
-TUPELO
-
-(_Nyssa Aquatica_)
-
-
-Tupelo is said to be an Indian name. White men have applied it to three
-species of gum, all of the same genus, namely, black gum (_Nyssa
-sylvatica_), sour tupelo (_Nyssa ogeche_), and tupelo (_Nyssa
-aquatica_). Probably, the name tupelo applies as well to one as to the
-other, for it is said to refer to the drupe-like fruit; but custom
-confines the name to the species now under consideration. It is largest
-of the three species, most abundant, and most important. Sour gum is
-heard in Arkansas and Missouri, swamp tupelo in South Carolina and
-Louisiana, cotton gum in the two Carolinas and Florida, wild olive tree
-in Louisiana, and olive tree in Mississippi.
-
-The range of tupelo extends from Virginia along the coast to Florida,
-northward in the Mississippi valley to southern Illinois, and westward
-to Arkansas and Texas. It prefers swamps and attains largest size in low
-ground which is subject to frequent overflow. The tree will stand in
-several feet of water the greater part of the year without injury. It is
-closely associated with cypress, the planer tree, and other species
-which grow in deep swamps.
-
-Tupelo has not figured much in tree literature outside the books of
-botanists. Travelers and local writers have paid it little attention. It
-has not been remarkable for anything in the past, and has escaped
-observation to a large extent because it grows in swamps and along
-bayous, remote from the usual routes of travel. Its flowers attracted no
-attention, its fruit was worthless, and the early settlers did not put
-themselves to trouble to procure the wood for any purpose. That was the
-situation from the early settlement of the country where this species is
-found up to a very recent period when economic conditions began to bring
-tupelo into notice.
-
-It first attracted attention in the markets as a substitute for yellow
-poplar. That was brought about by an attempt to pass it as poplar. The
-growing scarcity of that wood in the region about Chesapeake bay led to
-the trial of tupelo. It was sold as bay poplar, and the purchaser was
-left to infer that it was poplar cut in the region tributary to
-Chesapeake bay. Probably few buyers were deceived, but they found the
-wood a fair substitute for the yellow poplar which they had been
-purchasing in the Baltimore and Norfolk markets. It is known as bay
-poplar yet in many localities. It goes to England as such. One of its
-most important uses in that country is as casing for electric wire
-fittings. It has, however, many other important uses in England and on
-the continent. It is claimed that it may be stained to imitate
-Circassian walnut in the manufacture of furniture. This is possible, but
-most probably tupelo has been confused with red gum which is a
-well-known substitute for Circassian walnut.
-
-Tupelo trees attain a height from seventy to a hundred feet, and a
-diameter of two to four feet above the swelled base. The general
-appearance of the bark suggests both yellow poplar and red gum. Trees
-have a habit of forking near the tops. The leaves are five or seven
-inches long, sometimes with smooth margins, and often with a few sharp
-points. Flowers appear in March and April, and fruit ripens early in
-Autumn. It is a dark purple, tough-skinned drupe, about an inch long.
-
-The wood weighs 32.37 pounds per cubic foot. It is soft, and has about
-three-fourths the strength and little more than half the stiffness of
-white oak. It is not well suited to places where strength and rigidity
-are required. The fibers are interwoven, making the wood difficult to
-split. The heart is brown, often nearly white; the sapwood is very
-thick; and the annual rings are not clearly defined, because of the
-similarity between the springwood and summerwood. The pores are small
-but numerous, and are scattered evenly through the whole annual ring.
-The wood of roots differs from that of the trunk more than is usual with
-hardwoods. It is very light, and has been long employed in the South as
-a substitute for cork as floats for fish nets.
-
-Tupelo is often logged with cypress. The two trees grow in close
-association in deep swamps. The butt cuts of tupelo are so heavy that
-they float deep, or even go to the bottom. It was formerly customary,
-and still is to some extent, to girdle trees whose trunks were to be
-floated to the mills. In the course of one season the standing trees dry
-sufficiently for the logs to float. At other times, trees are cut green,
-the logs are skidded and allowed to dry some months before they are
-rafted or floated to the mills. The sapwood is liable to decay, even in
-the brief period while the logs are on the skids. The wood may be
-protected against decay to some extent by smearing the ends of the logs
-with tar or some other substance which prevents the spores of
-decay-producing fungus from entering.
-
-The seasoning of tupelo was formerly a problem exceedingly vexatious to
-the lumberman. The wood is full of water, and warping was one of the
-troubles which was constantly encountered. Finally experience gained the
-mastery, and seasoning troubles are fewer now. Shrinkage of four or five
-per cent is not unusual in passing lumber from the green to dry state.
-
-Tupelo is like hickory in one respect--factories use more wood than the
-sawmills cut. The shops and manufacturing plants of ten states use as
-much tupelo as is cut by all the sawmills in the United States. These
-states are Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan,
-Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas. The reason for factory
-use exceeding the sawmill cut is that much reaches factories, in the
-form of veneer, which does not pass through a sawmill. The lumber output
-of most of the timber trees of this country is from one-third to
-one-half greater than the factory use. The difference represents the
-rough lumber used, and which never goes to a factory.
-
-Tupelo lately entered the general market, but the yearly demand now
-exceeds 100,000,000 feet. Its uses range from boxes and cheap handles to
-interior finish and material for musical instruments. It is particularly
-liked for containers for berries and small fruits, on their way to
-market. Its whiteness and clean appearance fit it for that use.
-
-Higher grades of shipping boxes are also made. Wholesale grocers order
-largely of this wood for spice, coffee, and tea boxes. These commodities
-are exacting in their requirements because their odor, which is often
-regarded as the criterion of their value, must not be impaired. A wood
-with an odor of its own is immediately ruled out. Cigar box makers use
-tupelo, sometimes as thin lumber for the whole box, but usually as
-backing over which to lay a thin veneer of Spanish cedar. Plug tobacco
-boxes are also made of tupelo.
-
-In Illinois and Michigan tupelo is listed among woods manufactured into
-pianos, organs, mandolins, and guitars. In Maryland they make scows and
-barges of it. In Arkansas and Louisiana it is worked into excelsior and
-slack cooperage stock. It is a favorite wood in Mississippi for pumplogs
-and broom handles. Its leading reported use in Texas is for porch
-columns. In Missouri it is manufactured into laundry appliances, such as
-washboards, clothes racks, and ironing boards. In nearly all
-manufacturing centers of the country it is made into furniture and
-interior finish. It is frequently substituted for yellow poplar in
-panels, not only in furniture and cabinet work, but in carriage bodies.
-
-The supply of tupelo in southern forests is fairly large, and will meet
-demand for some years, but it is a tree of slow growth, and when present
-stands are cut, a new supply will probably never come.
-
-    SOUR TUPELO (_Nyssa ogeche_) appears to be the only member of the
-    gum group whose fruit is of any value to man, and it is not very
-    important. The large, dull red drupes ripen in July and August, and
-    sometimes hang on the trees until late fall, allowing ample time for
-    gathering them. They are very sour, for which reason the tree is
-    called sour gum. The fruit is put through a pickling process which
-    renders it palatable and it is not an infrequent article on southern
-    pantry shelves. The range of the tree is confined to the region near
-    the coast from the southern border of South Carolina, through the
-    Ogeechee river valley in Georgia, to northern and western Florida.
-    The botanical name refers to the river along whose course the trees
-    are most abundant. Local names are gopher plum, Ogeechee lime, and
-    wild lime. The tree is sixty or seventy feet high, one or two in
-    diameter, and is often divided in several stems. Its wood is
-    lightest of the gums, weighing only 28.75 pounds per cubic foot. It
-    is diffuse-porous, and the springwood is scarcely distinguishable
-    from the summerwood. The annual rings of growth are indistinct, and
-    the medullary rays are thin and inconspicuous. The wood is weak,
-    soft, tough, and white, and little difference is apparent between
-    heart and sapwood. The flowers are rich in honey and are valuable to
-    bee keepers. It appears that no reports exist of the use of this
-    wood for any purpose. It is not abundant anywhere.
-
-    WATER GUM (_Nyssa biflora_) is a member of the gum group, and is of
-    small importance. Trees above thirty feet high are unusual, and the
-    trunk is of poor form, owing to its greatly enlarged base. This gum
-    is found on the margins of small ponds in the pine barrens from
-    North Carolina to the Gulf coast. The leaves turn purple and red in
-    the fall, and are then conspicuous objects. The fruit is a blue
-    drupe about a third of an inch long. The wood is light, tough, and
-    difficult to split.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK WALNUT
-
-[Illustration: BLACK WALNUT]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK WALNUT
-
-(_Juglans Nigra_)
-
-
-This tree has few names. It is called walnut, black walnut, and
-walnut-tree. The color of the wood and bark is responsible for the word
-black in the name, though some people use the adjective to distinguish
-the tree from butternut which is often known as white walnut. The
-natural range of black walnut covers 600,000 or 700,000 square miles,
-and it has been extended by planting. Its northern limit stretches from
-New York to Minnesota, its southern from Florida to Texas. It is
-difficult to say where the species found its highest development in the
-primeval forests, for very large trees were reported in New York, among
-the southern Appalachian mountains, in the Ohio valley, and beyond the
-Mississippi in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas. The wood cut in
-Ohio and Indiana has been of greater commercial importance than that
-from any other portion of its range, but that has been due, in part, to
-the fact that it came into market before the best of the forest growth
-had been destroyed in those states, and instead of burning it or mauling
-it into rails, as eastern farmers did in early times, the farmers of the
-Ohio valley sold their walnut. Early in the history of black walnut
-lumbering, Indiana and Ohio came to the front as the most important
-sources of supply, and they still hold that position, notwithstanding
-the original forests of those states were supposed to be nearly
-exhausted long ago. The states cutting most black walnut in 1910, in the
-order named, were Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee,
-Missouri, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Iowa.
-
-During the period from 1860 to 1880 black walnut was in much demand for
-furniture, and the largest yearly cut was 125,000,000 feet. It was
-during that period of twenty years that operators pushed into all of the
-out-of-the-way places in search of the timber. Logs were hauled on
-wagons long distances to bring them out of remote valleys and slopes
-where no timber buyer had ever gone before. The walnut buyers made such
-a thorough canvas of the country that it was generally supposed no
-merchantable tree from Kansas to Virginia would escape. Many a dooryard
-giant whose wide branches had shaded the family roof for generations,
-fell before the ax of the contractor who was willing to pay fifty
-dollars for a single trunk, though it might be twenty miles from the
-nearest railroad or navigable stream. In spite of the thoroughness of
-the search, many a walnut tree was spared. Logs have been going to
-market ever since, and still they go. They will continue to go for
-years, generations, and centuries; for walnut trees grow with rapidity.
-
-The trunk's value increases with age. The dark colored heartwood only is
-merchantable, and young trees have little heartwood. The thick, white
-sap constitutes most of the trunk until long after the tree has reached
-small sawlog size. Then the transformation to the dark, valuable
-heartwood goes on with fair rapidity, and the outer shell of sapwood
-becomes thinner as the heart increases, and in time a trunk is produced
-which is fit for good logs. Value comes only with age. The quarter or
-half a century which has passed since the country was so diligently
-ransacked for merchantable walnut, has been sufficient to develop many a
-tree which was then rejected by the purchasers. Many a tree now a foot
-in diameter had scarcely sprouted then. In a region of 700,000 square
-miles, walnut trees do not need to grow very close together to produce a
-yearly cut of 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 feet.
-
-Black walnut is valuable for its color, figure, and the fine polish it
-takes. It is stronger than white oak, weight for weight, but it is eight
-pounds lighter per cubic foot. The figure of the wood is due wholly to
-the annual rings, as its medullary rays are invisible to the naked eye.
-The wood is very porous, and the pores are diffused in all parts of the
-annual rings, except in the thin, pencil-like mark representing the
-outward boundary of the summerwood. When sapwood changes to heartwood,
-some of the pores disappear, but those which remain are abundantly
-sufficient to absorb any stains or fillers which the wood finisher may
-wish to apply.
-
-The annual sawmill cut of black walnut in the United States is from
-35,000,000 to 40,000,000 feet, but much goes to foreign countries in the
-log, and a considerable quantity goes to veneer mills--about 2,500,000
-feet a year--and a quantity finds its way to various factories where it
-is worked up without any statistical record being made of it.
-
-Black walnut is never used as rough lumber. It all goes to factories of
-some kind to be converted into finished commodities. It is not possible
-to say where it all goes, for statistics of manufacture are fragmentary
-in this country. It may be of interest to know that demand for walnut by
-factories in the following states was 11,641,137 feet in 1910: Alabama,
-Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, North
-Carolina, and Texas. The wood served so many purposes that a list of
-them would be monotonous. In Illinois the largest users are the sewing
-machine and the musical instrument industries; in Michigan the makers of
-automobiles and of musical instruments; in Kentucky the manufacturers of
-coffins, furniture, and musical instruments; in Massachusetts, the
-makers of furniture and of firearms. These uses probably afford a fairly
-accurate index for the whole country. During the Civil war the largest
-demand for walnut came from gunstock makers. Doubtless the largest use
-from 1865 to 1885 was for furniture.
-
-Much of the best black walnut is exported. The logs are flattened on the
-four sides to make them fit better in ships and cars, and also to be rid
-of most of the sapwood which is valueless. The ends are painted with red
-lead or some other substance to lessen liability to check. Sometimes
-export walnut is sawed in thick planks.
-
-Large quantities of old-time walnut furniture have been resurrected in
-recent years from granary and garret where it was stored long ago to
-have it out of the way. Some of the old beds, lounges, cupboards, and
-chairs were of heavy, solid walnut, the kind not made now. Some of it
-has been furbished, re-upholstered, and set among the heirlooms; other
-pieces have been sold to furniture makers who saw the solid wood in
-veneers, and use it again.
-
-The search for old walnut did not stop with dragging antique furniture
-from cubbyholes and attics, but two-inch lumber has been pulled from
-floors of old barns, and mills. Many old fence rails were made into gun
-stocks during the Civil war. Later, walnut stumps were pulled from field
-and wayside, and went to veneer mills. Some finely figured wood comes
-from stumps where roots and trunk join.
-
-An occasional walnut tree develops a large burl which is valued for its
-figured wood. Sometimes the burl is the form of a door knob, with the
-tree trunk growing through the center. The burl sometimes has a diameter
-three or four times as great as the trunk. The origin of such burls is
-supposed to be a mass of buds which fail to break through the bark.
-
-Black walnut has a compound leaf from one to two feet long, with from
-fifteen to twenty-three leaflets, each about three inches long and an
-inch or two wide. The nuts ripen in the fall, and are valuable. They are
-borne chiefly by trees growing in open ground; forest trees do not bear
-until old, and then only a few nuts. The walnuts which germinate are
-usually those buried by squirrels, and forgotten.
-
-Within the past twenty or thirty years plantations have been made in
-states of the Middle West. Many young planted trees have been cut for
-fence posts, with disappointing results. It was known that old walnut is
-durable, and it was supposed young trunks would be, when used for posts;
-but young trees are nearly all sapwood which rots quickly.
-
-Forest grown walnut trees vary in size from a diameter of two feet and a
-height of fifty, to a diameter of six or more and a height of 100 or
-120. Trunks which grow in the shade are tall, clear, and symmetrical;
-those in the open are shorter, with more taper.
-
-    PALE-LEAF HICKORY (_Hicoria villosa_) is a small tree but large
-    enough to be useful wherever it exists in sufficient quantity. The
-    largest specimens attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of
-    eighteen inches. The tree bears nuts when very small, and the kernel
-    is sweet. The bark of this hickory is rough but not shaggy. The
-    range extends from New Jersey to Florida and west to Missouri and
-    Texas. It is most abundant in the lower Appalachian ranges. The wood
-    possesses the common characteristics of the hickories, and it is cut
-    with them wherever it is found, but is seldom or never reported
-    separately in lumber operations.
-
-    SMALL PIGNUT HICKORY (_Hicoria odorata_) is considered a species by
-    some botanists while others regard it as a variety. It is called
-    small pignut in Maryland, and occasionally little shagbark. This
-    last name refers to the roughness of the bark which resembles the
-    bark of elm. The range of the tree extends from Massachusetts to
-    Missouri and south to the Ohio and the Potomac rivers. The wood
-    differs little from that of pignut hickory, and the uses are the
-    same. No distinction is made between them at the shop and factory.
-    This tree is by some botanists believed to be a hybrid between
-    shagbark and pignut. It is sometimes called false shagbark. The nut
-    is edible.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BUTTERNUT
-
-[Illustration: BUTTERNUT]
-
-
-
-
-BUTTERNUT
-
-(_Juglans Cinerea_)
-
-
-This tree is known as butternut or as white walnut in all parts of its
-range. Butternut is in reference to the oily kernel of the nuts, and
-white walnut is the name given by those who would distinguish the tree
-from black walnut. Persons acquainted with one of the species in its
-native woods are usually sure to be acquainted with the other, for their
-ranges are practically co-extensive, except that black walnut extends
-farther southwest, butternut farther northeast. Butternut grows from New
-Brunswick to South Dakota, from Delaware to Arkansas, and along the
-Appalachian highlands to northern Georgia and Alabama.
-
-Butternut resembles black walnut in a good many ways and differs from it
-in several. They are very closely related botanically--as closely as are
-brothers in the same household. Black walnut is larger, stronger, better
-known, and has always dominated and eclipsed the other in usefulness and
-public esteem; yet butternut is a tree both useful and interesting. No
-person acquainted with both would ever mistake one for the other, winter
-or summer. Botanists tell how to distinguish butternut from black walnut
-by noting minor differences. The person who is not a botanist needs no
-such help. He knows them at sight, and there is no possibility of
-mistaking them.
-
-Butternut in the forest may attain a height of eighty or 100 feet, and a
-diameter of three, but few persons ever see a specimen of that size, and
-never in open ground. In shade, the butternut does its best to get its
-crown up to light and sunshine, but it is weak. It often gives up the
-struggle and remains in the shade of trees which overtop it. In that
-situation its crown is small, thin, and appears to rest lightly in the
-form of a small bunch of yellowish-green leaves on the top of a tall,
-spindling bole, which is seldom straight, but is made up of slight,
-undulating curves. The pale, yellowish tinge of the bark suggests a
-plant deprived of sunshine.
-
-When butternut grows in open ground where light falls upon its crown and
-on all sides, it assumes a different form and presents another figure.
-The trunk is nearly as short as that of an apple tree. It divides in
-large branches and limbs, and these spread wide; leaves are healthy, yet
-the crown of a butternut always looks thin compared with that of the
-black walnut. Tests show that butternut wood, when thoroughly dry, is
-somewhat stiffer than black walnut; but it is light and weak. It is
-about two-thirds as heavy and two-thirds as strong as black walnut. The
-growing tree betrays the wood's weakness. Large limbs snap in storms.
-Trees become lopsided, and a symmetrical, well-proportioned butternut
-crown is an exception. The broken branches leave openings for the
-entrance of decay, and butternuts nearly always die of disease rather
-than of old age.
-
-Leaves are compound, and from fifteen to thirty inches in length. Few
-trees of this country have larger leaves. There are from eleven to
-seventeen leaflets. They are hairy and sticky. Hands that handle them
-are covered with mucilage-like substance. The nuts, which grow in
-clusters of three or five, are of the same color as the leaves and
-covered with the same sticky fuzz. The nuts are two inches or more in
-length, and are borne abundantly when trees stand in open ground. Size
-rather than age appears to determine the period when trees commence to
-bear. Those of extra vigor produce when ten or twelve years old. The
-nuts are salable in the market. They fall with the leaves, immediately
-after the first sharp frost, and all come down together. A single day
-frequently suffices to strip the last leaf from a tree, though some of
-the nuts may hang a little longer. The kernels are very rich, when the
-nuts are dry, and are apt to cloy the appetite; but they are improved by
-freezing where they lie on the ground among the leaves; but they must be
-used quickly after they thaw, or they will spoil. Nuts nearly full-grown
-but not yet hard are made into pickles, but the fuzz must first be
-washed off with hot water.
-
-Butternut bark has played a rather important role in the country's
-affairs. Doctors in the Revolutionary war made much of their medicine of
-the roots and bark of this tree. Drugs were unattainable, and physicians
-were forced to betake themselves to the woods for substitutes, and their
-pharmacopoeias were enriched by the butternut tree. Housewives dyed
-cloth a brown color with this bark long before aniline dyes found their
-way into this country. Whole companies of Confederate soldiers from the
-mountain regions in the Civil war wore clothes dyed in decoctions of
-butternut bark, and popularly known as "butternut jeans."
-
-The annual output of butternut lumber is placed at a little more than
-1,000,000 feet a year. It is widely used, but in small amounts. In
-Maryland it is made into ceiling and flooring; in North Carolina into
-cabinet work, fixtures for stores and offices, and into furniture; in
-Michigan its reported uses are boat finish, interior finish for houses,
-molding, and screen frames. In Illinois it is used for all the purposes
-listed above and also for church altars and car finish. These uses are
-doubtless typical, and hold good in all parts of the country where any
-use is made of butternut.
-
-The wood has figure similar to that of black walnut, but the color is
-lighter. It is nearer brown than black. The pores are diffused through
-the annual ring, but are more numerous and of larger size in the inner
-than in the outer part. The springwood blends gradually with the wood of
-the latter part of the season, without sharp distinction, but the ring
-terminates in a black line which is the chief element of contrast in the
-wood's figure.
-
-The future value of butternut will be less in the lumber than in the
-nuts. The tendency in that direction is now apparent. When land is
-cleared, the trees which would formerly have gone to the sawmill, are
-now left to bear nuts. The averaged price paid by factories in North
-Carolina for butternut is $40 a thousand feet. It is cheaper in the Lake
-States.
-
-    MEXICAN WALNUT (_Juglans rupestris_) will never amount to much as a
-    timber tree, though it is by no means useless. It is known by
-    several names, among them being western walnut, dwarf walnut, little
-    walnut, and California walnut. The last name is applied in Arizona
-    through a misunderstanding of the tree's identity. It is there
-    confused with the California walnut which is a different species.
-    The Mexican walnut's range extends from central Texas, through New
-    Mexico to Arizona, and southward into Mexico. It prefers the
-    limestone banks of streams in Texas where it is usually shrubby,
-    seldom attaining a height above thirty feet. It reaches its largest
-    size in canyons among the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona where
-    it reaches a height of sixty feet. Trunks are sometimes five feet in
-    diameter. The wood weighs 40.85 pounds per cubic foot, is dark in
-    color, but the tone is not as regular as that of black walnut;
-    neither is it as strong and stiff. It polishes well, and is said to
-    be durable in contact with the soil. It finds its way in small
-    amounts to local mills, shops, and factories where it is made into
-    various commodities. It is particularly liked for the lathe, and is
-    suited better for turnery than for any other purpose. It is made
-    into gavels, cups, spindles, parts of grills; and it is also worked
-    into picture frames, handles, and small pieces of furniture. It does
-    not appear that lumber sawed from this walnut ever gets into the
-    general market, but the whole output, which is small, is consumed
-    locally. Trees do not occur in pure stands and the whole supply
-    consists of isolated trees or small groups, with few trunks large
-    enough for sawlogs. The nuts are dwarfs. All are not the same size,
-    but none are as large as a hickory nut. Many that grow on the
-    diminutive trees along the water courses in western Texas are not as
-    large, husks and all, as a nutmeg, and the nut itself is about half
-    the size of a nutmeg, and not dissimilar in appearance. The kernels
-    of such a nut are too small to have any commercial value, but they
-    are rare morsels for the native Mexicans and Indians who pick them
-    by pocketfuls. Trees in the stony canyon of Devil's river, in Texas,
-    are in full bearing when so small that a man can stand on the ground
-    and pick walnuts from their highest branches. The Mexican walnut is
-    occasionally cultivated in the eastern part of the United States and
-    in Europe. It is hardy as far north as Massachusetts.
-
-    CALIFORNIA WALNUT (_Juglans californica_) is a small tree confined
-    to California, and pretty close to the coast, though it grows in
-    Eldorado county. It is most abundant within twenty or thirty miles
-    of tidewater. In the southern part of the state it ascends to an
-    elevation of 4,000 feet. It prefers the banks of streams and the
-    bottoms of canyons where the soil is moist, but it will grow in dry
-    situations. Trees occur singly or in small groups. Their average
-    size is fifteen or twenty feet high, and eight or ten inches in
-    diameter; but trees occasionally are sixty feet high and eighteen
-    inches through. The leaves are small, measuring from six to nine
-    inches in length, with from nine to seventeen leaflets. Nuts are
-    about half the size of eastern black walnuts. The kernel is edible.
-    The wood is heavier than black walnut, and somewhat lighter in
-    color. Otherwise the two woods are much alike, except in strength
-    and stiffness. In these the California wood is inferior. It has not
-    been reported for any use, but it is suitable for a number of
-    purposes, provided logs of sufficient size could be had. The trunk,
-    in addition to being small, is usually short. The tree is intolerant
-    of shade, and is not often found in forests. It grows rapidly and
-    will attain a diameter of fifteen inches in twenty years or less;
-    but it apparently does not live long. Its principal usefulness in
-    California is as a shade tree, and as a stock in nurseries on which
-    to graft English walnut.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SHAGBARK HICKORY
-
-[Illustration: SHAGBARK HICKORY]
-
-
-
-
-SHAGBARK HICKORY
-
-(_Hicoria Ovata_)
-
-
-Twelve species of hickory grow in the United States, all east of the
-Rocky Mountains. None grow anywhere else in the world, as far as known.
-They were widely dispersed over the northern hemisphere in prehistoric
-times. The records of geology, written by leaf prints in the rocks, tell
-of forests of hickory in Europe, and even in Greenland, probably a
-hundred thousand or more years ago, and certainly not in times that can
-be called recent. No records there later than the ice age have been
-found. This leads to the presumption that the sheet of ice which pushed
-down from the North and covered the larger portions of Europe and North
-America, overwhelmed the hickory forests, and all others, as far as the
-southern limit of the ice's advance.
-
-In Europe the hickory was utterly destroyed, and it never returned after
-the close of the reign of ice; but America was more fortunate. The ice
-sheet pushed little farther in its southward course than the Ohio and
-Missouri rivers, and forests south of there held their ground, and they
-slowly worked their way back north as the ice withdrew. Hickory
-recovered part but not all of its lost ground in America, for it is now
-found no farther north than southern Canada, which is more than a
-thousand miles from its old range in Greenland.
-
-The early settlers in New England and in the South at once came into
-contact with hickory. It was one of the first woods named in this
-country, and the name is of Indian origin, and is spelled in no fewer
-than seventeen ways in early literature relating to the settlements. It
-is probable that John Smith, a prominent man in early Virginia and New
-England, was the first man who ever wrote the name. He spelled it as the
-Indians pronounced it, "powcohiscora," and it has been trimmed down to
-our word hickory. The Indian word was the name of a salad or soup made
-of pounded hickory nuts and water, and was only indirectly applied to
-the tree itself.
-
-The first settlers along the Atlantic coast nearly always called this
-tree a walnut, and the name white walnut was common. They were
-unacquainted with any similar nut-bearing tree in Europe, except the
-walnut, and most people preferred applying a name with which they were
-already familiar. Hickories and walnuts belong to the same family, and
-have many points in common.
-
-Although there are twelve hickories in the United States, and in many
-respects they are similar, all are not of equal value. Some are very
-scarce, and the wood of others is not up to standard. From a commercial
-standpoint, four surpass the others. These are shagbark (_Hicoria
-ovata_), shellbark (_Hicoria laciniosa_), pignut (_Hicoria glabra_), and
-mockernut (_Hicoria alba_). The wood of some of the others is as good,
-but is scarce; and still others, particularly the pecans, are abundant
-enough, but the wood is inferior. It is impossible in business to
-separate the hickories. Lumbermen do not do it; manufacturers cannot do
-it. In some regions one is more abundant than the others, and
-consequently is used in larger quantities, but in some other region a
-different species may predominate in the forest and in the factory. It
-cannot be truthfully asserted that one hickory is always as good as
-another, or even that a certain species in one region is as good as the
-same species in another region. All parts of the same tree do not
-produce wood of equal value.
-
-Along certain general lines, hickories have many properties in common.
-The wood is ring-porous, that is, the inner edge of the yearly growth
-ring has a row of large pores. Others are scattered toward the outer
-part of the ring, generally decreasing in number and size outward. There
-is no distinct division between spring and summerwood. The medullary
-rays are thin and obscure. The unaided eye seldom notices them. The
-sapwood is white in all species of hickory, and is usually very thick.
-The heartwood is reddish. Common opinion has long held that sapwood is
-tougher and more elastic than heartwood, and therefore to be preferred
-for most purposes. Tests made a few years ago by the United States
-Forest Service ran counter to the long-established opinion of users, by
-showing that in most respects the redwood of the heart was as good as
-the white sapwood. However, where resiliency is the chief requisite, as
-in slender handles, many manufacturers still prefer sapwood.
-
-Hickory is very strong, probably the strongest wood in common use in
-this country. The statement that one wood is stronger than all others is
-hardly justified because averages of strength should be taken, and not
-isolated instances. Satisfactory averages have not yet been worked out
-for a large number of our woods; but, as far as existing figures may be
-accepted, hickory is at the head of the list for strength, toughness,
-and resiliency. Choice samples of certain woods may exceed the average
-of hickory in some of these particulars. Sugar maple, hornbeam, and
-locust occasionally show greater strength than hickory, but they lack in
-toughness and resiliency--the very properties which give hickory its
-chief value for many purposes.
-
-Considerable misunderstanding exists as to second growth hickory. Some
-suppose it consists of trees of commercial size developed from sprouts
-where old trees have been cut. That is not generally correct. When
-small hickory trees are cut, the stumps often sprout, but hoop poles are
-about the only commodity made from that kind of hickory. If sprouts are
-left to grow large, the trees produced are generally defective. Good
-hickory grows from the nut. The term "second growth" means little,
-unless it is explained in each instance just what conditions are
-included. In one sense, all young, vigorous trees are second growth, and
-that is often the idea in the mind of the speaker. Some would restrict
-it to trees which have come up in old fields or partial clearings, where
-they have plenty of light, and have grown rapidly. Their trunks are
-short, the wood is tough, and there is little red heartwood. The larger
-a pine, oak, or poplar, provided it is sound, the better the wood; but
-not so with hickory. Great age and large size add no desirable qualities
-to this wood.
-
-Shagbark is largest of the true hickories. The pecans are not usually
-regarded as true hickories from the wood-user's viewpoint. Some
-shagbarks are 120 feet high and four feet in diameter, but the average
-size is about seventy-five tall, two in diameter. There is confusion of
-names among all the hickories, and shagbark is misnamed and over-named
-as often as any of the others. Many persons do not know shagbark and
-shellbark apart, though the ranges of the two species lie only partly in
-the same territory. Shagbark is known as shellbark hickory, shagbark
-hickory, shellbark, upland hickory, hickory, scaly bark hickory, white
-walnut, walnut, white hickory, and red heart hickory. Most of the names
-refer to the bark, which separates into thin strips, often a foot or
-more long, and six inches or more wide; and this remains more or less
-closely attached to the trunk by the middle, giving the shaggy
-appearance to which the tree owes its common name.
-
-The leaf-buds are large and ovate, with yellowish-green and brown
-scales. The leaves are compound and alternate; they have rough stalks
-containing five or seven leaflets; they are sessile, tapering to a point
-and having a rounded base. The lower pair of leaflets is markedly
-different from the rest in shape; sharply serrate and thin; dark green
-and glabrous above; lighter below. The flowers do not appear until the
-leaves have fully matured. They grow in catkins; the staminate ones are
-light green, slender, and grow in groups of three on long peduncles; the
-pistillate ones grow in spikes of from two to five flowers. The fruit
-grows within a dense, green husk, shiny and smooth on the outside,
-opening in four parts. The nut is nearly white, four-angled, and
-flattened at the sides. The kernel is sweet and of a strong flavor.
-
-This tree's range is not much short of 1,000,000 square miles, but it is
-not equally abundant in all parts. It grows from southern Maine to
-western Florida; is found in Minnesota and Nebraska, and southward
-beyond the Mississippi. It is most common and of largest size on the
-western slopes of the southern Appalachian mountains and in the basin of
-the lower Ohio river. Its favorite habitat is on low hills, or near
-streams and swamps, in rich and moderately well drained soil.
-
-The hickories have long tap roots, and they do best in soils which the
-tap roots can penetrate, going down like a radish. The root system makes
-most hickories difficult trees to transplant. Early in life they do a
-large part of their growing under ground, and when that growth is
-interrupted, as it must be in transplanting, the young tree seldom
-recovers. Those who would grow hickories for timber, nuts, or as
-ornaments, should plant the seed where the tree is expected to remain.
-Most of the planting of hickory in the forest is done by squirrels which
-bury nuts, with the apparent expectation of digging them up later.
-Occasionally one is missed, and a young tree starts.
-
-The uses of this wood are typical of all the other hickories. Handles
-and light vehicles consume most of it. The markets are in all parts of
-this country, and in manufacturing centers in many foreign lands.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BITTERNUT HICKORY
-
-[Illustration: BITTERNUT HICKORY]
-
-
-
-
-BITTERNUT HICKORY
-
-(_Hicoria Minima_)
-
-
-The tannin in the thin shelled nuts which grow abundantly on this tree
-gives the name bitternut. The name is truly descriptive. Gall itself
-scarcely exceeds the intense bitterness of the kernel, when crushed
-between the teeth. The sense of taste does not immediately detect the
-bitterness in its full intensity. A little time seems to be necessary to
-dissolve the astringent principal and distribute it to the nerves of
-taste. When this has been accomplished, the bitterness remains a long
-time, seeming to persist after the last vestige of the cause has been
-removed. In that respect it may be likened to the resin of the incense
-cedar of California which is among tastes what musk is among odors,
-nearly everlasting. The bitterness of this hickory nut has much to do
-with the perpetuation of the species. No wild or tame animal will eat
-the fruit unless forced by famine. Consequently, the nuts are left to
-grow, provided they can get themselves planted. That is not always easy,
-for small quadrupeds which bury edible nuts for food, and then
-occasionally forget them, show no interest whatever in the unpalatable
-bitternut. It is left where it falls, unless running water, or some
-other method of locomotion, transports it to another locality. This
-happens with sufficient frequency to plant the nuts as widely as those
-of any other hickory. It is believed that this is the most abundant of
-the hickories.
-
-The tree bears names other than bitternut. It is called swamp hickory,
-though that name is more applicable to a different species, the water
-hickory. Pig hickory or pignut are names used in several states, but
-without good reason. Hogs may sometimes eat the nuts, but never when
-anything better can be found. Besides, pignut is the accepted name of
-another species (_Hicoria glabra_). In Louisiana they call it the bitter
-pecan tree. Bitter hickory is a common name in many localities. In New
-Hampshire it is known as pig walnut, in Vermont as bitter walnut, and in
-Texas as white hickory. The names are so many, and so often apply as
-well to other hickories as to this, that the name alone is seldom a safe
-guide to identification. It has two or three characters which will help
-to pick it out from among others. Its leaves and bark bear considerable
-resemblance to ash. The leaves are the smallest among the hickories, and
-the bark is never shaggy. The small branches always carry yellow buds,
-no matter what the season of the year. The compound leaves are from six
-to ten inches long, and consist of from five to nine leaflets, always an
-odd number.
-
-Bitternut hickory's range covers pretty generally the eastern part of
-the United States. It is one of the largest and commonest hickories of
-New England, and is likewise the common hickory of Kansas, Nebraska, and
-Iowa. It grows from Maine through southern Canada to Minnesota, follows
-down the western side of the Mississippi valley to Texas, and extends
-into western Florida.
-
-Hickory is often lumbered in ways not common with other hardwoods. It is
-not generally found in ordinary lumber yards, and is not cut into lumber
-as most other woods are. It is in a class by itself. The person who
-would consult statistics of lumber cut in the United States to ascertain
-the quantity of hickory going to market, would utterly fail to obtain
-the desired information. The statistics of lumber cut in the United
-States for the year 1910 listed the total for hickory at 272,252,000
-feet, distributed among 33 states, and cut by 6,349 mills. Reports by
-users of this wood in a number of states show that probably twice as
-much goes to factories to be manufactured into finished commodities, as
-all the sawmills cut. This means that much hickory goes to factories
-without having passed through sawmills to be first converted into
-lumber. It goes as bolts and billets, and as logs of various lengths.
-Some sawmills in the hickory region cut dimension stock and sell it to
-factories to be further worked up; but that is a comparatively small
-part of the hickory that finds its way to factories of various kinds.
-Many sawmills refuse to cut hickory, claiming that it does not pay them
-to specialize on a scarce wood. Scattered trees occur among other
-timber, but these are left when the other logging is done. Special
-operators go after the hickory, and distribute it among various
-industries which are in the market for it. That method often results in
-much waste, because the man who is specializing in one commodity, such
-as wagon poles, ax handles, sucker-rods, wheel stock, or the like, is
-apt to cut out only what meets his requirements, and abandon the rest.
-Some of the hickory camps where such stock is roughed out are spectacles
-of carelessness and waste, with heaps of rejected hickory which, though
-not meeting requirements for the special articles in view, are valuable
-for many other things. Few woods contribute to the trash heap more in
-proportion to the total cut than hickory; but the waste nearly all
-occurs before the factories which finally work up the products are
-reached. These factories are often hundreds of miles from the forests
-where the hickory grows.
-
-Hickory was not a useful farm timber in early times, as oak and chestnut
-were. It decayed quickly when exposed to weather, and was not suitable
-for fence rails, posts, house logs, or general lumber. It was sometimes
-used for barn floors, but when seasoned it was so hard to nail that it
-was not well liked. The pioneers were not able to use this wood to
-advantage, because it is a manufacturer's material, not a farmer's or a
-villager's standby. It can be said to the credit of the pioneers,
-however, that they knew its value for certain purposes, and employed as
-much of it as they needed.
-
-Fuel was the most important place for hickory on the farm. All things
-considered, it is probably the best firewood of the American forest. The
-yawning fireplaces called for cords of wood every month of winter in the
-northern states. Enough to make a modern buggy would go up the chimney
-in a rich red blaze in an hour, and no one thought that it was waste;
-and it was not waste then, because farms had to be cleared, and firewood
-was the best use possible for the hickory at that time. Every cord
-burned in the chimney was that much less to be rolled into logheaps and
-consumed in the clearing for the new cornfield.
-
-Hickory has always been considered the best material for smoking meat.
-More than 30,000 cords a year are now used that way. It was so used in
-early times, when every farmer smoked and packed his own meat. Hickory
-smoke was supposed to give bacon a flavor equalled by no other wood; and
-in addition to that it was believed to keep the skippers out.
-
-The nuts were made into oil which was thought to be efficacious as a
-liniment employed as a remedy against rheumatism to which pioneers were
-susceptible because their moccasins were porous and their feet were
-often wet. The oil was used also for illuminating purposes. It fed the
-flame of a crude lamp.
-
-No other wood equalled hickory for "split brooms," the kind that swept
-the cabins before broom corn was known or carpet sweepers and vacuum
-cleaners were invented. The toughness, smoothness, and strength of
-hickory made it the best oxbow wood, and the same property fitted it for
-barrel hoops. Thousands of fish casks in New England and tobacco
-hogsheads in Maryland and Virginia were hooped with hickory before
-George Washington was born. The wood's value for ax handles was learned
-early. The Indians used it for the long, slender handles of their stone
-hammers with which they barked trees in their clearings, and broke the
-skulls of enemies in war.
-
-Bitternut hickory has about ninety-two per cent of the strength of
-shagbark, and seventy-three per cent of its stiffness. It yields
-considerably more ash when burned, and is rated a little lower in fuel
-value.
-
-    MOCKER NUT HICKORY (_Hicoria alba_) has many names. It is called
-    mocker nut in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey,
-    Delaware, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
-    Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas; white heart hickory, Rhode Island, New
-    York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, Texas, Illinois,
-    Ontario, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska; black hickory,
-    Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri; big bud and red hickory,
-    Florida; hardback hickory, Illinois; white hickory, Pennsylvania,
-    South Carolina; big hickory nut, West Virginia; hognut, Delaware.
-    The name mocker nut is supposed to refer to the thick shell and
-    disappointingly small kernel within. The range is not as extensive
-    as some of the other hickories. Beginning in southern Ontario, it
-    extends westward and southward to eastern Kansas and the eastern
-    half of Texas. The region of its most abundant growth is in the
-    basin of the lower Ohio and in Arkansas, the best specimens
-    appearing in fertile uplands. This is said to be the only hickory
-    that invades the southern maritime pinebelt, growing on the low
-    country along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in abundance. The leaves
-    are fragrant with a powerful, resinous odor; they have five or seven
-    leaflets with hairy petioles or stems. The bark resembles that of
-    bitternut, and is not scaly like that of shagbark. The wood weighs
-    51.21 pounds per cubic foot. It is hard, strong, tough, flexible. It
-    has about ninety-four per cent of the strength of shagbark, and
-    eighty per cent of its stiffness. Certain selected specimens of this
-    species are probably as strong as any hickory; but, as is the case
-    with all woods, there is great difference between specimens, and
-    general averages only are to be relied upon. G. W. Letterman, who
-    collected woods for Sargent's tests, procured a sample of this
-    hickory near Allenton, Missouri, which showed strength sufficient to
-    sustain 20,000 pounds per square inch, and its measure of stiffness
-    was the enormous figure of 2,208,000 pounds per square inch.
-
-    The uses of mocker nut hickory do not differ from those of other
-    hickories. The tree is frequently nearly all sapwood, to which the
-    name white hickory is due. Some persons suppose that the heartwood
-    is white, but that misconception is due to the fact that some pretty
-    large trees have no heartwood, but are sap clear through.
-
-    The term "black hickory" is sometimes applied to three species with
-    dark-colored bark which bears some resemblance to the bark of ash.
-    They are bitternut (_Hicoria minima_), pignut (_Hicoria glabra_),
-    and mocker nut (_Hicoria alba_). When the word black is thus used,
-    it refers to the bark and the general outward appearance of the
-    tree, and not to the wood, which is as white as that of any other
-    hickory.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PIGNUT HICKORY
-
-[Illustration: PIGNUT HICKORY]
-
-
-
-
-PIGNUT HICKORY
-
-(_Hicoria Glabra_)
-
-
-The name of this tree is unfortunate, although so far as the nuts are
-concerned, no injustice is done. It is one of the best hickories in the
-quality of its wood, and also as an ornamental tree. It is likewise
-abundant in many parts of its range, which extends from Maine to Kansas,
-Texas, Florida, and throughout most of the territory enclosed by the
-boundary lines thus delimited.
-
-The name pignut is common in New England, New York, New Jersey,
-Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
-Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky,
-Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and
-Minnesota; bitternut in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin; black
-hickory in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and
-Indiana; broom hickory in Missouri; brown hickory in Mississippi,
-Delaware, Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota; hardshell in West Virginia; red
-hickory in Delaware; switch bud hickory in Alabama; and white hickory in
-New Hampshire and Iowa.
-
-The nuts are generally bitter, but some trees bear fruit which is not
-very offensive to the taste. The avidity with which swine feed upon it
-gives the common name. This tree is doubtless confused many times with
-bitternut, though their differences are enough to distinguish them
-readily if they grow side by side. As far as the woods of the two
-species are concerned, there is little occasion to keep them separate.
-The pignut is a forked tree more frequently than any other species of
-hickory; and the nuts vary in shape and size more than those of any
-other. The tree is more remarkable for its variations than for its
-regularity. In one thing, however, it is pretty constant: the limbs and
-branches are smooth and clean, hence the botanical name _glabra_. As a
-name for this tree, smooth hickory would be preferable to pignut. Trunks
-attain a height of eighty or ninety feet and a diameter of three or
-four, but the extreme sizes are rare. The largest specimens are found in
-the lower Ohio valley, and the species is most common in Missouri and
-Arkansas. It grows farther south and farther west than any other hickory
-except pecan. Its southern limit is in Florida and its western in Texas.
-
-The uses of hickory fall into general classes. More is manufactured into
-vehicles than into any other single class of commodities, but not more
-than into all other articles combined. The second largest users of
-hickory are the manufacturers of handles. The third largest demand comes
-from makers of agricultural implements and farm tools. Large amounts
-are required for athletic goods, meat smoking, and various miscellaneous
-purposes. The total amount used yearly in this country, and exported to
-foreign countries, is not accurately known, but it probably exceeds
-500,000,000 feet, board measure. About half of this passes through
-sawmills in the usual manner, and the other half goes directly from the
-forest to the factory or to the consumer.
-
-The superiority of American buggies, sulkies, and other light vehicles
-is due to the hickory in their construction. No other wood equals this
-in combination of desirable physical properties. Though heavy, it is so
-strong, tough, and resilient that small amounts suffice, and the weight
-of the vehicle can be reduced to a lower point, without sacrificing
-efficiency, than when any other wood is employed. It is preëminently a
-wood for light vehicles. Oak, ash, maple, and elm answer well enough for
-heavy wagons where strength is more essential than toughness and
-elasticity. Hickory is suitable for practically all wooden parts of
-light vehicles except the body. The slender spokes look like frail
-dowels, and seem unable to maintain the load, but appearances are
-deceptive. The bent rims are likewise very slender, but they last better
-than steel. The shafts and poles with which carriages and carts are
-equipped will stand severe strains and twists without starting a
-splinter. The manufacturing of the stock is little less than a fine art.
-In scarcely any other wood-using industry--probably excepting the making
-of handles--is the grain so closely watched. Hickory users generally
-speak of the annual growth rings as the grain. The grain must run
-straight in spokes, rims, shafts, and poles. If the grain crosses the
-stick, a break may occur by the simple process of splitting, and the
-hickory in that case is no more dependable than many other woods.
-
-Handle makers observe the same rule, and must have straight grain. The
-more slender the handle, the more strictly the rule must be followed. A
-cross grained golf club handle would fail at the first stroke. An ax
-handle, if it has cross grain, will last a little longer, but it will
-speedily split. Many of the best slender handles are of split hickory.
-The line of cleavage follows the grain, but a saw does not always do so.
-Heavy handles, like those for picks and sledges, are not so strictly
-straight grained, because they are made strong enough to stand much more
-strain than is ever likely to be put on them. Red heartwood is
-frequently used in handles of that kind. Peavey and canthook handles are
-generally split from billets, because the grain must be straight. Though
-they are among the largest and heaviest of handles, breakage must be
-guarded against with extra care, for the snap of a peavey handle at a
-critical moment might cost the operator his life by precipitating a
-skidway of logs upon him.
-
-The hickory which goes into agricultural implements fills many places,
-among the most important being connecting rods. It is often made into
-springs to take up or check oscillation. It is used for that purpose as
-picker sticks in textile mills.
-
-Furniture makers could get along without hickory, and they do not need
-much. It is oftenest seen in dowels, slender spindles, and the rungs of
-chairs. The makers of sporting and athletic goods bend it for rackets,
-hoops, and rims, or make vaulting poles, bats, or trapezes.
-
-SHELLBARK HICKORY (_Hicoria laciniosa_) is often mistaken for shagbark.
-The ranges of the two species coincide in part only. Shagbark grows
-farther east, north and south than shellbark. The latter occupies an
-island, as it were, inside the shagbark's range. Shellbark is found from
-central New York and eastern Pennsylvania, westward to Kansas, and
-southward to North Carolina and middle Tennessee. The species is at its
-best in the lower Ohio valley and in Missouri. The largest trees are 120
-feet high and three in diameter, and are often free from branches half
-or two-thirds of the length. The species prefers rich, deep bottom
-lands, and does not suffer from occasional inundation from overflowing
-rivers. The average tree is not quite as large as shagbark. The leaves
-are larger than those of any other hickory, ranging in length from
-fifteen to twenty-two inches. There are from five to nine leaflets,
-usually seven. The upper ones are largest, and may be eight or nine
-inches long and four or five wide. In the autumn the leaflets drop from
-the petioles which adhere to the branches and furnish means of
-identifying the tree in winter. The nuts including the hulls are as
-large as small apples. When ripe, the hulls open and the nuts fall out;
-but the hulls fall also. The nuts are as large as shagbark nuts, but the
-two are seldom distinguished in market, though the shagbark's are a
-little richer in flavor. The bark's roughness gives the tree its name.
-Strips three or four feet long and five or six inches wide curl up at
-the lower ends--sometimes at both ends--and adhere to the trunk several
-years. The species has other names. It is known as big shellbark in
-Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois,
-and Kansas; bottom shellbark in Illinois; western shellbark or simply
-shellbark in Rhode Island and Kentucky; thick shellbark in South
-Carolina, Indiana, and Tennessee; kingnut in Tennessee.
-
-The wood weighs 50.53 pounds per cubic foot, and is very hard, strong,
-tough, and flexible. The heartwood is dark brown, the sapwood nearly
-white. This hickory usually has less sapwood in proportion to heart than
-other members of the species; but the wood is not kept separate from the
-others when it goes to market, and its uses are as extensive as the
-other hickories'. It is believed by some foresters that shellbark
-hickory is worth cultivating for its nuts, as it is a vigorous bearer;
-but little planting has been done. East of the Alleghanies, particularly
-in Virginia, some planting has been carried out on old plantations for
-ornamental purposes. On account of its long taproot, the tree is
-difficult to transplant, and the nuts should be planted where the trees
-are expected to remain.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PECAN
-
-[Illustration: PECAN]
-
-
-
-
-PECAN
-
-(_Hicoria Pecan_)
-
-
-The name is pecan in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama,
-Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and
-Kansas; pecan nut and pecan tree in Louisiana. The name is of Indian
-origin, and means walnut. The tree's natural range is smaller than the
-present area in which the tree is found, for it has been extensively
-planted in recent years. It is found as far north as Iowa, south to
-Texas, and east to Alabama and Kentucky. The highest development of the
-wild tree is in the lower Ohio valley. Forest trees were once found
-there which were said to be six feet in diameter and 170 high. Specimens
-that large would be hard to find now.
-
-The pecan is a hickory. As to wood, it is the poorest of the hickories,
-and as to nuts it is the best. Its compound leaves are from twelve to
-twenty inches long with from nine to seventeen leaflets. The latter are
-from four to eight inches in length, and from one to three wide. The
-first pairs on the petiole are smallest. The fruit grows in clusters of
-from three to eleven, the number exceeding any other hickory. The nuts
-are four-angled, and long for their width.
-
-The wood of pecan has disappointed those who have attempted to use it
-like other hickories. It does not differ much from them in appearance,
-but it falls low in mechanical tests. In strength, toughness, and
-stiffness it is inferior to the poorest of the other hickories. It has
-less than half the strength and half the stiffness of shagbark hickory.
-It is a fairly good fuel, but is high in ash.
-
-The inferior quality of the wood has saved many a pecan tree from the
-sawmill and the wagon shop. Fine trunks stand near public highways,
-along river banks, and in fields, while all merchantable hickories of
-other species have been sent to market. The uses of the wood are few. If
-some of it goes to wagon shops or to factories where agricultural
-vehicles are made, it is employed for parts which are not required to
-endure strain or sustain sudden jars.
-
-Fortunately it is a tree with a value of another kind. It is the most
-important nut tree of the United States at this time, and it promises to
-remain so. The forest-grown pecans were an article of food for Indians
-who once lived in the region, and though white settlers who succeeded
-the Indians as occupants of the land, depended less upon forest fruits
-than the red men had done, yet the pecan was often of supreme importance
-in the early years of settlement. The nuts have constituted an article
-of commerce ever since the region had markets.
-
-Nurserymen were not slow to recognize the value of the pecan tree for
-planting purposes, and nursery grown stock has been on the market many
-years. Extensive orchards have been planted in Texas, Louisiana,
-Florida, and other southern states, and some of the earliest of these
-orchards are now in bearing. However, by far the largest part of pecans
-on the market is wild fruit from the forests. Many are shipped in from
-Mexico, but most grow in the rich woods of southern states. They are
-gathered like chestnuts in northern woods. The people who pick them sell
-to local stores at low prices, often taking pay in merchandise. Buyers
-collect the stock from country and village merchants, and put it on the
-general market, often at three or four times the price paid to the
-gatherers of the nuts.
-
-One of the most important matters connected with pecan is the large
-number of horticultural varieties which have been produced by
-cultivation and selection. More than seventy have been listed in nursery
-catalogues and special reports. Some of the nuts are twice the size of
-those of the forest, and shells have been reduced in thinness until some
-of them are really thinner than they should be to stand the rough usage
-which comes to them in reaching markets.
-
-Dealers occasionally polish pecans to impart the rich, brown color which
-is supposed to give them the appearance of being fresh and of high
-grade. The polishing is produced by friction, when the nuts in bulk are
-shaken violently. Last year's stock takes on as bright a polish as fresh
-stock, and the color and smoothness alone are not sufficient to prove
-that pecans are fresh from the trees.
-
-The planted pecan tree grows rapidly and is as easily raised as fruit
-trees. The wild tree is long-lived, and the cultivated varieties will
-probably be like it.
-
-    NUTMEG HICKORY (_Hicoria myristicæformis_) is so named because the
-    nut has the size and the wrinkled surface of a nutmeg, though the
-    shape is different. The husk enclosing the nut is almost as thin as
-    paper. The only other name by which it is known is bitter waternut,
-    in Louisiana. The name scarcely applies, for the kernel is said not
-    to be bitter. The range of nutmeg hickory extends from the coast of
-    South Carolina to Arkansas. It is rather abundant in Arkansas, but
-    scarce in most other parts of its range. The tree has several
-    interesting features. It was partly discovered a long time before
-    the discovery was complete. In 1802 Andre F. Michaux saw the nut and
-    to that extent the species was discovered, but many years passed
-    before a full description was given to the world by a competent
-    botanist. The wood rates among the strongest and stiffest of all the
-    hickories, according to present information; but the calculations
-    were based on too few tests to be considered final. Two samples of
-    wood procured near Bonneau's depot, South Carolina, by W. H.
-    Revenel, showed the remarkable breaking strength of 19,822 pounds
-    per square inch, and the measure of stiffness exceeded 2,000,000
-    pounds to the square inch. That strength is sixteen per cent above
-    shagbark. The weight of nutmeg hickory is 46.96 pounds to the cubic
-    foot. The wood is hard, tough, and compact. The structure, including
-    pores, medullary rays, annual rings, springwood and summerwood, is
-    similar to the wood of other hickories. Trees grow best in sandy
-    soil but near swamps and rivers where there is plenty of water. The
-    largest trunks are eighty or one hundred feet in height and two in
-    diameter. When use is made of this hickory it serves the same
-    purposes as the wood of other trees of the group. It is never
-    reported separately in statistics of wood utilization. It is too
-    scarce to be important as a timber tree. It apparently has a future
-    as an ornament, though it has not yet been widely planted. It has
-    proved a success in the Carolinas and it thrives in the climate of
-    Washington, D. C. The luster of its foliage makes it the most
-    beautiful of the hickories. In common with other members of the
-    genus, its long taproot renders the transplanting of nursery stock
-    difficult.
-
-    WATER HICKORY (_Hicoria aquatica_) is known as swamp hickory in
-    South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana; bitter pecan in
-    Mississippi and Louisiana, and water bitternut in Tennessee and
-    South Carolina. The northern limit of this species is in Virginia
-    near Mobjack bay, the southern limit in the Caloosa valley, Florida,
-    west to the Brazos river, Texas, and north to southern Illinois. The
-    wood is hard, heavy, strong, but rather brittle; the sapwood is
-    thick and often is nearly white, while the heartwood is dark brown.
-    It is the most porous of the hickories, and the pores are
-    distributed generally through the annual rings of growth. In other
-    hickories they are largely restricted to the inner part of each
-    ring, though a few are dispersed through all parts. In swamp hickory
-    there is little difference in appearance between the wood grown
-    early in the season and that produced later. The tree is a rapid
-    grower. It is an inhabitant of deep swamps, and if the land is
-    inundated a considerable part of the year, the tree seems to grow
-    all the better. At its best it may attain a height of 100 feet, and
-    a diameter of two, but that size is unusual. The nut is small and
-    wrinkled, and when broken open, pockets of red bitter powder are
-    frequently found inside the shell. Usually the nuts are too bitter
-    to be eaten, but it is said that near the western limit of the
-    tree's range, nuts are sometimes edible.
-
-    The only reported uses for the wood are fuel and fencing. It is poor
-    fence material, because, like other hickories, it decays in a short
-    time when exposed to weather. The wood of this genus is rich in
-    foods on which decay-producing fungi feed. Fungus is a low order of
-    plant life which sends its hair-like threads into the wood cells and
-    consumes the material found there; but numerous insects bore into
-    wood to procure food. Few woods suffer from such attacks more than
-    hickory. Even after it is seasoned and manufactured into
-    commodities, it is frequently attacked by various species of powder
-    post beetles, and much injury results. Water hickory while yet
-    standing is often greatly damaged by the larvæ of certain moths
-    which find their way into the soft wood just under the bark and
-    tunnel minute galleries which subsequently fill with brown
-    substance. According to R. B. Hough, these brown streaks in water
-    hickory are hard enough to turn the edge of steel tools. They not
-    only damage the structure of the wood but spoil its appearance.
-
-    BITTER PECAN (_Hicoria texana_) is a Texas species which has not
-    been reported elsewhere. The average size of the tree is from
-    fifteen to twenty-five feet in height and eight to ten inches in
-    diameter; but in rich bottom land, particularly along the Brazos
-    river, specimens sometimes attain a diameter of three feet and a
-    height of 100. The leaves are from ten to twelve inches in length,
-    with from seven to eleven leaflets. The nuts are very bitter, but
-    are of approximately the same size and shape as edible pecans. The
-    shells are thin and very brittle. The tree's range extends inland
-    100 or 150 miles from the Texas coast.
-
-    NORTH CAROLINA SHAGBARK HICKORY (_Hicoria carolinæ-septentrionalis_)
-    is found in the neighboring parts of the four states: North
-    Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. In the best land this
-    tree is occasionally eighty feet high and two or three in diameter,
-    but when it occurs on dry hillsides its average height is twenty or
-    thirty feet, and its diameter about a foot. The compound leaves are
-    from four to eight inches long, with usually three, but occasionally
-    five leaflets. The sweet nuts are small and brown. The bark
-    separates into thick strips a foot or more in length and three or
-    four inches wide. The rough trunk resembles the northern shagbark
-    hickory. The wood is very tough, strong, and hard, the heart light
-    reddish-brown, the thin sapwood nearly white. It is not
-    distinguished from the other hickories in commerce, and it has the
-    same uses when any use is made of it.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE ELM
-
-[Illustration: WHITE ELM]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE ELM
-
-(_Ulmus Americana_)
-
-
-Six species of elm occur in the United States, not counting the planer
-tree as an elm, though lumbermen usually consider it as such.[5] The
-white elm is the most common, is distributed most widely, and is
-commercially the most important. More of it is used as lumber, slack
-cooperage, and other forms of forest products, than all other elms of
-this country combined. The statistics of sawmill output collected
-annually by the United States census are not compiled in a way to show
-the elms separately. All go in as one. The annual lumber cut of elm in
-the whole country is about 265,000,000 feet, distributed over
-thirty-four states, with Wisconsin leading, followed in the order named
-by Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas, New York, and Minnesota.
-In addition to lumber, elm furnishes about 130,000,000 slack cooperage
-staves yearly.
-
-    [5] The elms are white elm (_Ulmus americana_), cork elm (_Ulmus
-    racemosa_), slippery elm (_Ulmus pubescens_), cedar elm (_Ulmus
-    crassifolia_), wing elm (_Ulmus alata_), and red elm (_Ulmus
-    serotina_). They are all confined to the region east of the Rocky
-    Mountains.
-
-The elms, taken as a class, are much alike. There is more resemblance
-between the species than between species of oaks or pines, yet some
-difference exists between elms. This holds not only between different
-species, but between individuals of the same species. Climate,
-situation, and soil have much to do with the character of the wood of
-the same species. So great is the difference at times that fairly good
-judges of timber are deceived as to the species. A tree growing on dry,
-rocky soil produces wood quite different from one on rich, deep,
-well-watered soil. Not only is the wood of one different from that of
-the other, but the appearances of the standing trees are not alike. The
-differences may not show in leaves, flowers, and fruit as much as in the
-shapes and sizes of trees, and the habit of the branches.
-
-White elm is by common consent the type of the genus, the standard by
-which the other species are measured. It is proper to compare certain
-properties and characters of other elms with white elm, in order that a
-general view of all may be had. The dry weights, per cubic foot, of wood
-are as follows: White elm 40.54 pounds, slippery elm 43.35, cedar elm
-45.15, cork elm 45.26, and wing elm 46.69. Figures which show the weight
-of the southern red elm (_Ulmus serotina_) are not available. White elm
-is thus shown to be lightest of the group.
-
-Its breaking strength averages 12,158 pounds per cubic inch, under the
-usual tests by which the strength of woods is determined. Reduced to
-everyday language that means that 12,158 pounds would just break a white
-elm stick, 2-5/8 inches square, and resting on supports twelve inches
-apart. That is the meaning of "breaking strength," or "modulus of
-rupture," as the term is used in engineering text books relating to
-woods. The following figures for the breaking strength of other elms
-make comparisons with white elm easy: Cedar elm 11,000; wing elm 11,162;
-slippery elm 12,342; cork elm (often called rock elm) 15,172. It is
-shown that two elms are stronger and two weaker than white elm. This
-wood rates very little below white oak in strength.
-
-The different species of elms vary considerably in stiffness, or the
-ability to spring back when bent. This factor is expressed by engineers
-in high figures, is purely technical, and is based on a wood's ability
-to stretch and regain its former position. The only service which the
-figures can render to the layman is to furnish a basis for comparing one
-wood with another. The stiffer a wood, the greater its resistance to an
-effort to stretch it lengthwise. White elm's measure of stiffness
-(modulus of elasticity) is 1,070,000 pounds per square inch; wing elm
-853,000; cedar elm 981,000; slippery elm 1,318,000; cork elm 1,512,000.
-It is shown here, as was shown in the figures representing the strength
-of the elms, that two species rate above and two below white elm in
-stiffness.
-
-White elm is known by several names. The color of the bark is
-responsible for the name gray elm among lumbermen and woodworkers of the
-Lake States. American elm is a translation of its botanical name, and is
-neither descriptive nor definitive, because there are other elms as
-truly American as this one. White elm distinguishes its wood from the
-redder wood of slippery elm, but it would often be difficult if not
-impossible to identify the elms, or any one of them, by the color of the
-wood alone. Some persons who call this elm white doubtless refer to the
-color of the bark, as is the case with those who speak of it as gray
-elm. It is known as water elm in several states, but that name is
-applied indiscriminately to any elm that frequents river banks, as most
-of them do in some part of their range. It is called rock elm when it is
-found on stony uplands, and swamp elm on low wet ground. In some parts
-of the Appalachian mountain ranges it is called astringent elm to
-distinguish it from slippery elm.
-
-White elm surpasses the others in extent of range. Its northern boundary
-stretches from Newfoundland, across Canada to the eastern base of the
-Rocky Mountains, a distance of nearly 3,000 miles. It runs south through
-the Atlantic states to Florida, a distance of 1,200 miles or more. Its
-southwestern limit is in Texas. The area thus bounded is about
-2,500,000 square miles. A few other trees have ranges as large, but none
-much exceed it. It covers so much of America, and is so important in
-many parts of its range, that it is clearly the leading elm in this
-country. It is entitled to first place among elms for other reasons.
-
-It is not easy to give any sure features or characteristics by which the
-layman may always distinguish this elm from others with which it is
-associated; however, by carefully observing certain features, the
-identity of white elm is generally easy to establish.
-
-The leaves have teeth along the margins like beech and birch. They have
-straight primary veins running from the midrib to the points of the
-teeth. Before falling in autumn the leaves turn yellow. The foliage is
-not very thick, and most of it is near the ends of the limbs. The bloom
-comes early in the spring, ahead of the leaves, and the seeds are ripe
-and ready for flight before the leaves are grown. Sometimes the seeds
-are ripe almost before the leaves are out of the buds. The seeds are
-oblong, and about the size of a small lentil. The wing entirely
-surrounds the seed, and is about half an inch long. The flight of elm
-seeds is an interesting phenomenon. The individual seeds are so small
-that they are not easily seen as they sail away from the tall tree top
-but when they go in swarms, in fitful puffs of wind, they are not hard
-to see. It is chiefly by their fruits that they are known, that is, by
-the multitudes of seedlings that appear a few weeks later. If one
-seedling elm in a thousand should reach maturity, there would be little
-besides elms in the whole country. They spring up by highways and
-hedges, in gutters, fields, and even between cobbles and bricks of paved
-streets; but in a few days they have crowded one another to death, or
-have perished from other causes, and those which manage to live to
-maturity do not much more than make up for old trees which perish from
-natural causes.
-
-The botanist Michaux pronounced the white elm "the most magnificent
-vegetable of the temperate zone." A number of trees are larger, though
-this reaches great size. Sargent sets the limit of the tree at 120 feet
-high and eleven feet in trunk diameter. That size is, of course,
-unusual, but it has been surpassed at least in height. A tree in
-Jefferson county, Pennsylvania, was 140 feet high, and although forest
-grown, it had a spread of crown of seventy-six feet. It was sent to the
-sawmill where it made 8,820 feet of lumber. That trunk was only five
-feet in diameter.
-
-Some of the finest forest grown elms in this country have been cut in
-Michigan. Their trunks were as tall, straight, and shapely as yellow
-poplars, and their crowns surpassed those of poplars. It was formerly
-not unusual for sawlogs to be cut from elm limbs which branched from the
-trunk fifty or more feet from the ground. The best of the forest grown
-elm of this country has been cut; but it is still lumbered throughout
-the whole eastern half of the United States.
-
-The finest elms of this country, and doubtless the finest in the world,
-are the planted trees in some of the New England villages. The largest
-of them have been growing for two hundred years, and in many instances
-they still show the vigor of youth. Trunks six or seven feet through are
-not uncommon, but the glory of the trees is not alone in the trunks.
-Their spread and form of crown are magnificent. The largest are 150 feet
-across, and some of the splendid branches, rising in parabolic curves,
-are fully 100 feet long, from the junction with the tree to the tips of
-the twigs. The most apt comparison for that form of elm is the spray of
-a fountain. The upward jet of water corresponds to the trunk of the
-tree; the upward, outward, and downward curves of the spray represent
-the crown of the elm. Trees which take that form are grown in open
-ground where sunlight and air reach every side. Forest grown trees are
-less symmetrical, but even in dense woods, the elm frequently rises
-clear above the canopy of other trees, and develops the fountain form of
-crown. The new England street and park elms surpass those farther west
-only because they are older. The splendid trunks and crowns are the work
-of centuries.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CORK ELM
-
-[Illustration: CORK ELM]
-
-
-
-
-CORK ELM
-
-(_Ulmus Racemosa_)
-
-
-This tree is called cork elm in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
-New York, New Jersey, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan,
-Iowa, and Ohio; rock elm in Rhode Island, Kentucky, West Virginia,
-Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska; hickory elm in
-Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana; white elm in Ontario; Thomas elm
-in Tennessee; northern cork-barked elm in Tennessee; corkbark elm, New
-York; northern cork elm, Vermont; wahoo, Ohio; cliff elm in Wisconsin.
-
-Cork elm is the natural name. It is a descriptive term which a stranger
-would be apt to apply on seeing the tree for the first time. The bark of
-the branches, after it has attained an age of three or four years,
-becomes rough by the growth of ridges and protuberances. This feature is
-sometimes so prominent that it at once attracts attention, particularly
-when the branches are bare of leaves; hence the name cork elm.
-
-Lumbermen insist on naming the tree rock elm. They refer to the hardness
-of the wood, or they may have in mind the dry, stony situations where
-tough, strong elm grows. The latter is often the case, because the name
-is applied also to slippery elm and white elm if they grow on stony
-ground. A wide-spread opinion prevails that wood which grows among rocks
-is harder, tougher, stronger, and more durable than that produced by
-deep, fertile soil. It is possible to cite much evidence to support that
-view, and the case might be considered proved, but for the fact that an
-equal, or greater amount of evidence, in every way as trustworthy, may
-be cited on the other side. The strongest hickory, ash, and oak do not
-come from stony land. It sometimes happens that a species with tough,
-strong wood, is found on rocks, but it is not tough because it is there,
-but in spite of being there.
-
-The name cliff elm which this tree bears in Wisconsin is but another
-form of the name rock elm, and clearly has reference to the situation
-where the tree grows in that part of the country. Hickory elm, on the
-other hand, a name applied to this tree much farther south, is a
-recognition of the wood's toughness.
-
-In some particulars it does not fall much below hickory in toughness,
-but is not as strong, elastic, or capable of as smooth polish. The
-latter property is one of the recommendations of hickory when used for
-handles. It is very smooth to the touch; cork elm is less so. In the
-northern woods, elm ax handles are in use, and some axmen prefer them
-to hickory. Such is probably the case when the best cork elm and a
-medium or poor quality of hickory are in competition.
-
-The fibers of cork elm are interlaced, rendering the splitting of the
-wood difficult. For uses in which that is a desirable property, it is
-preferable to hickory. It is better for hubs for large wagons, and that
-is a very important use for this elm.
-
-The wood of all the elms is ring-porous; that is, the springwood, or
-inner part of the annual ring, consists of one or more rows of large
-ducts. The summerwood contains pores in large numbers, but they are
-small, and are usually arranged in short curved lines. The medullary
-rays are not prominent in the wood of any of the elms, and
-quarter-sawing adds no beauty to the lumber. The wood is practically
-without figure, on account of either annual rings or medullary rays; but
-it may be stained, polished, and made very attractive. That is done
-oftener with white elm than with any other.
-
-The strength of cork elm created demand for it in boat building at an
-early day. The tree is and always was scarce in the vicinity of the
-Atlantic sea board, and the earliest boat builders seem not to have been
-acquainted with the wood. It was most abundant in the forests of
-Michigan, though it extended westward to Nebraska. It was plentiful in
-the province of Ontario, and the timbers from that region acquainted
-English shipbuilders with the merits of the wood. They sent contractors
-into Michigan to buy cork elm, long before the other hardwoods of that
-region had attracted the attention of the outside world. The most
-convenient supplies of cork elm on the Lower Michigan peninsula thus
-passed through Canada to ship yards on the other side of the sea. The
-wood is reputed to be more durable than any of the other elms.
-
-It is generally understood that the country's supply of cork elm is
-running short, but there are no statistics which show how much is left
-or how much has been cut. It is doubtful if the original forests,
-including the whole country, had one tree of cork elm to twenty of white
-elm. The average size of cork elm is sixty feet high and two in
-diameter. The trunks are well shaped, if forest grown. They develop
-small crowns in proportion to the size of trunks; and the crowns are
-less graceful than those of white elm--lacking the long, sweeping curves
-of the latter. The general contour of the tree has been compared to
-white oak.
-
-Cork elm grows well when planted on the Pacific coast, in environments
-quite different from its native habitat. In the forest it increases in
-size slowly; when planted it makes much better headway. It has a
-disagreeable habit of sprouting which puts it out of favor as a park
-tree.
-
-The wood of the different elms is largely used for manufacturing
-purposes. They are sometimes kept separate, but generally not. The
-particular place where cork elm is preferred is in the manufacture of
-vehicles and boats, but it is by no means confined to those commodities.
-
-The state of Michigan alone sends 50,000,000 feet of elm a year to its
-factories to be converted into articles of general utility. Furniture
-makers take over 2,000,000 feet of it, though elm is not classed as a
-furniture wood. In certain places it is superior to almost every other
-wood. No matter how discolored it becomes by weathering and the
-accumulation of foreign substances, a vigorous application of soap,
-water, and a scrubbing brush will whiten it. It is liked in certain
-parts of refrigerators which need constant scrubbing. Elm to the extent
-of 8,000,000 feet goes into refrigerators in Michigan alone.
-
-The strength and toughness of elm make it suitable for frames of tables.
-When thus used, it is generally out of sight, but not infrequently it is
-made into table legs as well as frames. Statistics show that more than a
-million feet are manufactured yearly into handles in Michigan alone. All
-three of the northern elms--white, cork, and slippery--are listed in the
-handle industry.
-
-Many millions of feet of elm are yearly converted into automobile
-stock--3,000,000 in Michigan. Horse-drawn vehicles take more. The most
-common place for it is the hub, but it serves also as shafts, poles,
-reaches, and even as spokes for wagons of the largest size.
-
-The important place in the slack cooperage industry held by elm is well
-known. It is a flour barrel wood, but is employed for barrels of many
-other kinds. It stands high as veneer, not the kind of which the visible
-parts of furniture are made, but the invisible interior, built up of
-veneer sheets glued together. A similar kind of veneer forms the boxes
-or frames of trunks--the part to be covered by metal, leather, or cloth.
-The slats which strengthen the outside of trunks are frequently of elm.
-
-This wood is not in favor for one important purpose, hardwood
-distillation. It has escaped pretty generally also from being employed
-as a farm material, on account of its poor lasting qualities. Some
-slippery elm was mauled into fence rails in the pioneer days of Ohio,
-Indiana, and southern Michigan, but that was only because it was
-plentiful and convenient. Cork elm probably never made a fence rail,
-because it is so unwedgeable that no rail splitter would have anything
-to do with it. At the best, it is but a temporary makeshift as fence
-posts, but by applying creosote and other preservative treatments to
-lessen decay, it measures up with most other post woods.
-
-The elms are not indispensable woods in this country, but their
-exhaustion, should it ever come, will leave many places hard to fill. As
-far as known, no woodlots of any species of elm have been planted in
-this country, and there is little prospect that any will be planted,
-because the slow growth of the trees discourages foresters. A century
-or two is a long look ahead.
-
-However, the exhaustion of no species of the elms in this country need
-be expected soon. The most apparent peril lies ahead of cork elm,
-because it never was abundant, and demand, which has been large for a
-long time, is still strong. The species is scattered over more than
-200,000 square miles, and a long time must elapse before the last cork
-elm finds its way to the sawmill. The situation of white elm is more
-promising. It may be among the last trees of the American forests to
-take its final departure. Its wide range and its bounteous seed crops
-insure a supply, though not necessarily a large one, for a long time.
-The greatest peril to elms, as well as to many other forest trees, is
-that, when weakened by depletion, some disease will attack them and
-destroy the remnants. Experience in New England and elsewhere has shown
-that elm has no great resisting power when a strong attack is made upon
-it.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SLIPPERY ELM
-
-[Illustration: SLIPPERY ELM]
-
-
-
-
-SLIPPERY ELM
-
-(_Ulmus Pubescens_)
-
-
-This tree is known as slippery elm in every state where it grows, thirty
-or more; but in some localities it has other names also. It is doubtful
-if any person who is acquainted with the tree would fail to recognize it
-by the name slippery elm, though some who are acquainted with the lumber
-only might not know it by that name. Those who call it red elm have in
-mind the color of the heartwood which is of deeper red than the wood of
-any other elm, or they may refer to the tawny pubescence on the young
-shoots in winter. The botanical name describes that characteristic.
-
-In the North, the slippery elm is sometimes known as moose elm. It
-furnishes forage in winter for the moose and other herbivorous animals
-when ground plants are covered with snow. The moose is able to eat
-branches as thick as a man's thumb. The principal food element in the
-twigs is the mucilaginous inner bark. It is this which gives the tree
-its name slippery elm. The value of the bark as a food has been
-questioned. It is agreeable to the taste of both man and beast, but it
-is claimed that a human being will starve to death on it, though it will
-prolong life several days. The lower animals, however, seem able to
-derive more benefit from eating the bark. An incident of the War of 1812
-appears to prove this. The army under General Harrison, operating in the
-vicinity of Lake Erie, kept the horses of the expedition alive by
-feeding them on slippery elm bark, stripped from the trees and chopped
-in small bits.
-
-The inner bark has long been used for medicinal purposes. It is now
-ground fine and is kept for sale in drug stores, but formerly it was a
-household remedy which most families in the country provided and kept in
-store along with catnip, mandrake, sage, dogwood blossoms, and other
-rural remedies which were depended upon to rout diseases in the days
-when physicians were few. The slippery elm bark was peeled from the tree
-in long strips, the rough outer layers were shaved off, leaving the
-mucilaginous inner layer. That was from an eighth to a quarter of an
-inch thick. It was dried and put away for use. When needed it was
-pounded to a pulp, moistened with water, and applied as a poultice, if
-an external remedy was wanted. If a medicine was needed, a decoction was
-drunk as tea. There is no question that the remedy often produced good
-results when no doctor was within reach. A well-known medical writer
-said three-quarters of a century ago that the slippery elm tree was
-worth its weight in gold.
-
-The range of slippery elm extends from the lower St. Lawrence river
-through Canada to North Dakota. It is found in Texas as far west as the
-San Antonio river, and its western limit is generally from 200 to 300
-miles west of the Mississippi river. Its range extends south nearly to
-the Gulf of Mexico. It is not this tree's habit to grow in thick stands,
-but it occurs singly or in small groups on the banks of streams or on
-rich hillsides.
-
-The average size is scarcely half that of white elm. Few trees exceed a
-height of seventy feet and a diameter of two. It grows rapidly at first,
-but does not live to old age. The crown lacks the symmetry and beauty so
-conspicuous in white elm. The limbs follow no law of regularity, but
-leave the trunk at haphazard. The fruit is mature before the leaves are
-half grown. The seeds have more wing area than those of white elm; and,
-like those of white elm, the wing surrounds the flat seed on all its
-edges. The leaves are rough to the touch, and when crumpled in the hand,
-the crunching sensation is unpleasant.
-
-Next to white elm, slippery elm appears to be more abundant than any
-other member of the group; but statistics do not give the basis for
-close estimates. The factories of Michigan use 3,700,000 feet of
-slippery elm a year, and 44,000,000 of white elm. The proportion of
-slippery to white is larger in the factories of Illinois.
-
-The uses are the same as for other elms. The wood is rated more durable
-than the others, but it is not in much demand for outdoor work where
-resistance to decay is an important consideration. It is sometimes set
-for fence posts, but the results are scarcely satisfactory, particularly
-for round posts which are largely sapwood. Posts sawed from the
-heartwood of large trees would do better. The deeper red of the
-heartwood gives it an advantage over the other elms for furniture and
-finish where natural colors are shown; but this is not important because
-no elm's natural color stands for much in the estimation of users of
-fine woods. The more common use of slippery elm is for boxes and
-cooperage. Next to red gum, it is employed in larger quantities for
-cooperage in Illinois than any other wood.
-
-The supply is rapidly decreasing. The cut for lumber is the chief drain,
-but a not inconsiderable one is the peeling of trees for bark. This goes
-on all over the species' range and much of it is done by boys with
-knives and hatchets. It is often hard to find slippery elms within miles
-of a town, because all have succumbed to bark hunters.
-
-    CEDAR ELM (_Ulmus crassifolia_) appears to bear this name because it
-    is often found associated with red cedars on the dry limestone hills
-    of Texas. There is little in the form and appearance of the tree to
-    suggest the tall, tapering conical crown of cedar. There is still
-    less in the wood. In some parts of Texas the species is called red
-    elm, on account of the color of the wood, while in Arkansas, which
-    is near the northern boundary of its range, it is locally known as
-    basket elm, because basket makers find desirable qualities in its
-    wood. It is a species of rather limited range, but it is abundant in
-    certain regions. It is found as far east as Sunflower river,
-    Mississippi, north into Arkansas, west to Pecos river, Texas, and
-    south into Mexico. It is confined to three states, this side the Rio
-    Grande. Trees on dry hills are inclined to be shrubby, but in damp
-    valleys where soil is fertile, specimens attain a height of eighty
-    feet and a diameter of three, but the average is not nearly so
-    large. The leaves are small but numerous. The flowering habits of
-    this elm are somewhat erratic. The usual time for bloom to appear is
-    August, and a month or six weeks afterwards the small seeds are
-    ready for flight; but occasionally, as if not satisfied with its
-    first effort, the tree blooms again in October, and ripens a second
-    crop late in the fall. The seeds are poorly supplied with wings,
-    which are reduced to narrow margins surrounding the seed. It does
-    not appear, however, that the species is in any way handicapped in
-    securing reproduction. The small shoots are equipped with flat,
-    corky keels, similar to but much smaller than those of the wing elm.
-
-    This tree is important for the lumber it produces. It is the common
-    and most abundant elm of Texas, and it is found in a large part of
-    that state. The wood is the weakest of the elms, and is likewise
-    quite brittle; but in the region where it is most abundant it
-    compares favorably with any other. The best is cut from the largest
-    trees, which grow in valleys where moisture is abundant. The growth
-    found on the dry hills is of poor quality, and is worth little, even
-    for fuel. The highest development in Texas, and also the highest in
-    the species' range, is in the valleys of Trinity and Guadalupe
-    rivers. In Texas this wood is employed in furniture factories as
-    inside frames, to be covered by other woods, but it is not employed
-    as outside parts of furniture, unless in very cheap kinds. It is
-    suitable for drain boards and floors of refrigerators where it is
-    wet much of the time. Under such circumstances it is more easily
-    kept clean than most other woods. It whitens with repeated
-    scrubbings. One of its most common uses in Texas is for wagon hubs.
-    Some wheelwrights pronounce it next to the best native wood for that
-    purpose, the first place being accorded Osage orange. The tree is
-    often planted for shade along the streets of Texas towns, and
-    develops thick crowns and satisfactory forms.
-
-    RED ELM (_Ulmus serotina_) is a lately discovered member of the elm
-    family. It so closely resembles the cork elm that it was supposed to
-    be of the same species, and the close scrutiny of a botanist was
-    required to discover that it was a separate species. Sargent
-    observed the flowers opening in September while those of cork elm
-    appear in early spring. The seeds ripen in November, while cork
-    elm's are ripe early in the summer. The tree was named red elm, the
-    wood being reddish-brown. That name is widely applied to slippery
-    elm, but it is improbable that much confusion will result. The red
-    elm's range is quite restricted and in that area the slippery elm is
-    not important. Red elm occurs on limestone hills and river banks
-    from central Kentucky to northern Georgia and Alabama. It attains a
-    height of fifty or sixty feet and a diameter of two or three. The
-    leaves are from two to four inches in length, and one or two wide,
-    with margins toothed like the other elms. The midrib is yellow, and
-    in the autumn the leaves change to an orange yellow before falling.
-    Branches which are two or three years old develop corky wings, two
-    or three in number.
-
-    It is not known that mechanical tests of the wood have been made in
-    a regular way to determine its physical properties, but superficial
-    examination indicates that it is hard, tough, and strong, apparently
-    about the same as cork elm. Special lists of uses for this wood have
-    not been compiled for the reason that lumbermen and operators of
-    sawmills have never distinguished it from other elms of the region.
-    Since it has never been left standing in districts where other elms
-    are cut, it is evident that it has been regularly put to use for
-    vehicles, agricultural implements, boxes, crates, and slack
-    cooperage, because such articles have been manufactured in the
-    region. The red elm has been occasionally planted as a shade tree
-    along streets of towns in northern Georgia and Alabama.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PLANERTREE
-
-[Illustration: PLANERTREE]
-
-
-
-
-PLANERTREE
-
-(_Planera Aquatica_)
-
-
-This tree is a first cousin of the elms, but it is no more an elm than a
-hackberry is an elm. It is a member of the family but is of a different
-genus, and it is the sole representative of its genus in the known
-world. There is only one kind of planertree, with no nearer relatives
-than the elms on one side and hackberry, sugarberry, and palo blanco on
-the other. Except those kinsfolk, it is alone on earth. The name is in
-honor of Johann Jacob Planer, a German botanist whose efforts did much
-for science nearly two hundred years ago. The name of the species
-_aquatica_, recognizes the tree's habit of growing where water is
-abundant. It is a swamp species, or rather, it prefers situations
-subject to periodic overflow. It looks like an elm, and that has led
-people to call it water elm. That is the name by which it is usually
-known in Florida. In Alabama it is called the American planertree, which
-is an unnecessary restriction, since there is no planertree except this
-one. The Louisiana French gave it the name plene, and the abridgement of
-its name is yet heard in that state. In North Carolina it has acquired
-the name sycamore, but without good reason. It does not look in the
-least like sycamore.
-
-It has the leaf of an elm, and it resembles that tree in bark, and
-somewhat in general form. The layman detects the first important
-difference when he examines the seeds. Those of the elms have wings, but
-the planertree's are without those appendages, and they would be useless
-if it had them, unless they were as large as the parachute of the
-basswood seed. The planertree bears a sort of nut, a third of an inch
-long, and too heavy to be transported far on the ordinary membranous
-wings of tree seeds. Water is doubtless the principal agent in carrying
-the seeds from place to place. Probably few of them are transported far,
-because the water about the trees is generally stagnant; and, besides,
-the species does not seem to be extending its range or increasing in
-numbers.
-
-The planertree has a history. If the terms which the Roman historian
-Tacitus applied to people, could be applied to trees, it might be said
-of this species, as he said of certain tribes: "The cowards fly the
-farthest and are the last survivors." The planertree is now found only
-in certain southern swamps, from North Carolina to Florida, and west to
-Missouri and Texas. In former periods, as is shown by the records of
-geology, there were several species, and they had a wide range over
-portions of the northern hemisphere. They appear to have been a strong
-group of trees, able to hold their ground with the best inhabitants of
-the forest. They were in the Rocky Mountains, and far north in Alaska.
-They were in Europe also, or were represented there by some very similar
-species.
-
-For some reason which is not definitely known, they lost out when
-competition with other trees became keen, and in the course of long
-periods of time they disappeared from their former ranges in the North
-and West. They took to the swamps, just as the tribes of which Tacitus
-spoke, took to the morasses when they could no longer face their enemies
-on open ground. It was a far cry from Alaska to the Chattahoochee swamps
-in Florida, yet that was where A. H. Curtis and Charles Mohr went to
-procure typical planertree specimens for the tests which Sargent made of
-American woods.
-
-It has been suggested that tree species which have lost out in
-competition for ground, have been those which were at some decided
-disadvantage in the matter of getting their seeds properly scattered and
-planted. The case has not been proved, because there are as many facts
-and as much argument against that hypothesis as for it. The bigtrees of
-California are a noted example of a species which lost out and retreated
-to a corner, yet their seeds fly like birds. Plainly, something besides
-winged seeds is needed to keep the species in the fight. However, it is
-not difficult to see that the planertree, with wingless seeds and of so
-little use as food that no bird or rodent will carry them or bury them,
-has been much handicapped in the long contest which has crowded it from
-the arctic circle to the cotton belt.
-
-It has the habits of the subdued and conquered tree. It has adapted
-itself to swamps where few species can grow, and where competition for
-light and room is reduced to a minimum. Yet, even there, it is content
-to take the leavings of more ambitious species. The crowns make little
-effort to rise up to the light, for which many other trees battle during
-their whole existence. The planertree's low, broad top of contorted
-branches places it perpetually in the shade of any other trees which
-overtop it.
-
-The wood of the planertree is lighter in weight, poorer in fuel value,
-weaker, and more brittle than the poorest of the elms. The annual ring
-lacks the rows of large open pores common in all the elms, but it has
-many small pores scattered through the whole year's growth. It is not
-easy to note a difference between the springwood and that which grows
-later. The wood is soft, light brown in color, and the nearly white
-sapwood is thick. It is often, perhaps generally, a tree of fairly rapid
-growth, and since it does not reach large size, it is probably
-short-lived, but exact information along that line is lacking.
-
-The tallest trees seldom exceed a height of forty feet and a diameter of
-two. It is evident that a tree of that size and form does not tempt the
-lumberman to much exertion to procure it. An examination of reports of
-sawmill operations and of the utilization of woods by shops and
-factories in the southern states has failed to find a single instance
-where the planertree has been reported in use for any purpose whatever.
-Doubtless, trees are sometimes cut and the lumber gets into the market,
-but not under its own name. The species is interesting for reasons other
-than that it ever has had or ever can have a place in the country's
-lumber industry.
-
-    WING ELM (_Ulmus alata_), which is the smallest of the elms, is
-    plentifully supplied with names, but in most parts of its range it
-    is known as wing or winged elm. It is also called wahoo or wahoo
-    elm, and the West Virginians have named it witch elm; the North
-    Carolinans refer to it often as simply elm; from Florida to Texas
-    some call it cork elm; in Alabama it is water elm; in Arkansas
-    mountain elm; while in other regions it is corky elm, small-leaf
-    elm, and red elm. Some of these names are self-explanatory. Wing elm
-    does not relate to a winged seed, but to winged twigs. That
-    characteristic of the tree is very prominent. The wings consist of
-    flattened keels along opposite sides of the branches. A twig no more
-    than a quarter of an inch in diameter may be decorated with wings
-    half an inch or more wide, making the twig four or five times as
-    wide as it is thick. As the twig enlarges, the wings do not broaden
-    in proportion. The lowest branches and those nearest the trunk are
-    most generously furnished with wings. They appear to be entirely
-    ornamental, for it is not known that they serve any useful purpose.
-    The growth is different from those which give cork elm its name. The
-    latter occur on the large branches, often in the form of isolated
-    protuberances, but the wings are fairly continuous for a foot or
-    more, except that they terminate abruptly at the nodes, but
-    recommence immediately after. Branches less than a year old seldom
-    have wings. The name wahoo appears to have lost its etymology if it
-    ever had any. Dictionaries tell what it means, but they shy at its
-    origin. It is a southern word which is applied to this elm, and also
-    to other trees, and occasionally it means a fish instead of a tree.
-    Some would trace it to the cry of an owl, others to a name in
-    Gulliver's Travels, with a slight change in spelling.
-
-    Wing elm at its best is about fifty feet high and two in diameter;
-    but much of the stand is small. The best occurs west of the
-    Mississippi river. The range extends from Texas to Virginia, south
-    to Florida, and north to Illinois. In Texas it is a fairly important
-    wood in furniture factories, the annual supply being about a million
-    feet. It is used by turners for table legs. In an investigation of
-    the uses of the wood, the same difficulty is encountered that makes
-    difficult a study of the uses of all the elms--conflict and
-    uncertainty of names. There are few regions in the hardwood areas of
-    this country which produce one elm and no more; and after all
-    practical means of identification are resorted to, there is often
-    doubt and uncertainty concerning the exact species of elm lumber
-    found in use. Fortunately, it generally makes little difference,
-    because anyone of them is good enough for ordinary use. Wing elm is
-    extensively planted for shade along the streets of towns in the
-    lower Mississippi valley, but more frequently on the west side of
-    the valley. When the trees grow in the open they develop broad
-    crowns, and the branches, even of comparatively small trees, are
-    long enough to reach well over the sidewalks, and cast satisfactory
-    shade. The dark-colored winged twigs add much to the ornamental
-    value of the street trees.
-
-    FREMONTIA (_Fremontodendron californicum_) is not botanically in the
-    elm family, but it is popularly known as slippery elm in the region
-    where it occurs, and for that reason it is here given place among
-    the elms. It is known also as leatherwood. It is a California
-    species, ranging among the lower mountains and higher foothills in
-    dry, gravelly soils, from the Mexican boundary five hundred miles
-    northward in the state. The mucilaginous inner bark tastes like that
-    of the true slippery elm. The shape of the leaf much more resembles
-    sycamore than elm; and it is an evergreen. It bears a bright yellow,
-    roselike flower, and the seeds are small, reddish-brown. The wood is
-    fine grained, clear reddish-brown, with thick, whitish sapwood. It
-    is very soft. The tree attains its largest size among the foothills
-    of the Sierra Nevada mountains, but even there it is too small to
-    have much economic value, seldom exceeding thirty feet in height and
-    a foot in diameter. Its most important use is as a forage plant for
-    cattle and sheep. In that particular it resembles slippery elm in
-    northern woods. The tree is occasionally planted in the eastern
-    states and in Europe for ornament. In its native range it grows
-    slowly.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-HACKBERRY
-
-[Illustration: HACKBERRY]
-
-
-
-
-HACKBERRY
-
-(_Celtis Occidentalis_)
-
-
-Hackberry is a common name for this tree in nearly all parts of its
-range, but it has other names. It is sometimes confused with sugarberry
-(_Celtis mississippiensis_). They call it nettle tree in Rhode Island,
-Massachusetts, Delaware, and Michigan, and in Tennessee it is known as
-American nettle-tree. In Vermont it is hoop ash; in Rhode Island
-one-berry; hack-tree in Minnesota, and juniper tree in New Jersey.
-
-The name hackberry is not of American origin. It dates far back in the
-languages of western Europe and is believed to have the same origin as
-the word haw, which, in its turn meant hedge. If that etymology is
-correct, the word really means hedge berry, which is not an
-inappropriate name for the tree. The name is sometimes applied to a
-small bird cherry in Europe. The New Jersey name juniper-tree is in
-recognition of the resemblance of the berries to those of red cedar or
-red juniper. No reason has been assigned for the name nettle-tree.
-
-Its range covers about 2,000,000 square miles in the United States
-besides part of Canada. It grows from the Atlantic on the coast of New
-England to the tide water of the Pacific on Puget sound; in southern
-Florida and in Texas. It is not found in pure stands, but often as
-single trees far apart. This is the case in the northeastern part of the
-United States in particular where probably not more than one tree might
-be found in a whole county. Frequently the people in the neighborhood do
-not know what the tree is, and suppose it is the last representative on
-earth of some disappearing species.
-
-It is far from being a disappearing tree. Not only is it widely
-dispersed over the United States, but related species are scattered
-through many countries of the old world, from Denmark to India. There
-are said to be between fifty and sixty species, only two of which are in
-the United States.
-
-It has been claimed by scholars that the lotus referred to by ancient
-writers was the hackberry. It was reputed to cause forgetfulness when
-eaten, but the claim was fictitious, for the fruit does not produce that
-effect. It is not now regarded as human food. Tennyson deals with the
-fiction very beautifully in the poem "Lotus Eaters," but he took
-liberties with botany when he represented fruit and flowers on the same
-branch; for, though the berries hang several months, they drop before
-the next season's flowers appear.
-
-The hackberry belongs to the elm family, being of the same relation as
-the planertree. The leaves resemble those of the elm, but are more
-sharply pointed. The fruit is usually classed as a berry. It ripens in
-September and October, but remains on the tree several months, becoming
-dry. It is about one-fourth inch long, dark purple, with a tough, thick
-skin, and with flesh dark orange. Most of the pale brown seeds are eaten
-by birds.
-
-The tree varies greatly in size. In some remote corners of its immense
-range it is little more than a shrub, while at its best it may attain a
-height of 100 feet and a diameter of three or four. Its average size is
-about that of slippery elm. The bark varies as much in appearance as the
-tree in size. Sometimes it has the smooth surface and pale bluish-green
-appearance that suggest the bark of beech; again it is darker and
-rougher, like the elm. It frequently exhibits the harsh warty bark which
-is peculiar to the hackberry, and when present it is a pretty safe means
-of identification. The warts may be conical, oblong, or sharp-pointed,
-and probably an inch in height. When closely examined, most of them are
-found to consist of parallel strata of bark which may usually be pulled
-off without much difficulty. The warts are a decided disadvantage to the
-tree in some of the low swampy districts of Louisiana where Spanish moss
-is a pest. This moss (which is not a true moss), is propagated
-principally by tufts and strands which are carried by wind until they
-find anchorage among the branches of trees where they increase and
-multiply at a rapid rate until they finally smother or break down the
-unfortunate tree which supplied a lodging place. The hackberry's warts
-catch and hold every flying strand of moss that touches them, and
-hundreds, perhaps thousands of pounds of it may accumulate on a single
-tree. The grayish-green color of the moss often exactly matches the hue
-of the tree's bark.
-
-The reported annual cut of hackberry lumber in the United States is less
-than 5,000,000 feet. That can be only a fraction of the total output.
-Few mills report it separately, but list it as ash. The wood looks more
-like ash than elm. It is heavy, but only moderately hard and strong. Its
-color is more yellowish than ash, but the annual rings of growth
-resemble that wood. The sapwood is thick, and growth is rapid where
-conditions are favorable.
-
-It is doubtless used by industries in thirty states or more, but
-comparatively few factories report it. In Texas it is listed in the box
-and crate industry. In Louisiana it rises to more importance, for that
-is the region where the tree attains its best. Slack coopers make kegs,
-tubs, and barrels of it; vehicle manufacturers convert it into parts of
-buggy tops and the running gears of wagons; it serves for furniture and
-interior finish; and it takes the place of ash for hoe handles and parts
-of agricultural implements. The uses are nearly the same in
-Mississippi, but it is used there for rustic seats and other outdoor
-furniture. In Missouri it is found suitable for cart axles, saddle
-trees, stitching horse jaws, and wagon beds. In Arkansas it goes with
-ash into flooring, and interior finish for houses. Illinois builders
-work it into fixtures for stores. In Michigan it serves the same
-purposes as in Texas, baskets, boxes, and crates. These examples
-doubtless are representative of its uses wherever the tree is found in
-commercial quantities. The wood is not durable in contact with the soil.
-It is also liable to attack by boring insects if logs are allowed to
-retain their bark.
-
-The hackberry has been planted to a small extent as a street tree in the
-southern towns, but it is not as popular as the elms and oaks. It will
-never occupy a more important position in the country's lumber industry
-than it holds at present. It is a tree which, for some reason, inspires
-little enthusiasm in anybody; but nature takes care of it fairly well,
-and the small sweet drupes which it bears are a guarantee that the
-species will not want for seed carriers as long as birds continue to
-have access to its branches in winter.
-
-SUGARBERRY (_Celtis mississippiensis_) is frequently mistaken for
-hackberry even by persons who ought to be able to distinguish them.
-Botanists formerly confused the two, and probably some insist still that
-sugarberry is only a variety of hackberry. The leaves generally have
-smooth margins, and that would differentiate the tree from the hackberry
-were it not that sometimes the sugarberry has serrate leaves. The drupes
-are bright orange red and are usually smaller than the purple fruit of
-hackberry. As for the wood of the two species, it is not easy to tell
-one from the other. The sugarberry's range is not one-third as extensive
-as hackberry's, but covers some hundreds of thousands of square miles in
-the southeastern quarter of the United States. Its northern limit is in
-Illinois and Indiana where it occupies rich bottom lands and the banks
-of streams. It reaches its largest size in the lower Ohio river basin,
-grows southward into Florida and west into Texas, Arkansas, and
-Missouri. It crosses the Rio Grande into Mexico, appearing to outstrip
-the hackberry in that direction. It outstrips it in another direction
-also, for it is found in the Bermuda islands. The French of Louisiana
-called it bois inconnu, or the unknown wood.
-
-This tree shows a marked tendency to run into varieties, and cultivation
-would probably develop the tendency. The differences between the species
-and the varieties are plain enough to the systematic botanist, but are
-such that the lumberman or other ordinary observer would scarcely notice
-them. The variety which has been named _Celtis mississippiensis
-reticulata_, but without any English name except sugarberry, is a tree
-forty or fifty feet high, covered with blue-gray bark, very rough. It
-ranges from Dallas, Texas, to the Rio Grande and westward into New
-Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, and into southern California and Lower
-California. In eastern Texas it is found on dry limestone hills, but
-westward only in mountain canyons in the vicinity of water. In the
-southern part of Texas this tree is usually known as palo blanco, but
-those who apply that name have no idea that it is a variety of
-sugarberry but suppose it is a tree peculiar to their region. In Cameron
-and Hidalgo counties, Texas, either because an extra good quality grows
-there, or because some opinion exists in its favor, it is liked for
-wagon material, and occasionally is turned for table legs and other
-parts of furniture. It is quite common in that part of Texas as an
-ornamental tree in yards and along streets of small towns. The whiteness
-of the bark is the most striking feature.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE ASH
-
-[Illustration: WHITE ASH]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE ASH
-
-(_Fraxinus Americana_)
-
-
-This tree is generally called white or gray ash, or simply ash. American
-ash is a translation of its botanical name and is not often used in
-business transactions in this country. In some parts of the South the
-term cane ash is occasionally employed, but there seems to be no
-agreement among those who use the name as to what it means. This is the
-common ash in the lumber trade. There are more than a dozen species in
-the United States, but white ash goes to market in larger amounts than
-all others together. This is known in a general way, but exact figures
-cannot be given, because statistics of the cut of different species of
-ash are not kept separate.
-
-The range of this tree covers at least a million square miles, and all
-or part of every state east of the Mississippi river and west of it from
-Nebraska to Texas. It is reported cut for lumber in thirty states. The
-various ashes are lumbered in thirty-nine states. Ash does not occur in
-pure stands but is scattered in forests of other species, sometimes
-growing in small clumps. It is difficult to name an average size for the
-tree, because climate and soil control the growth over a large area
-where conditions vary. Trees 120 feet high and six feet in diameter are
-said to have stood in the primeval forests in the lower Ohio valley; but
-logs four feet through are seldom seen now. Trees seventy or eighty feet
-high and three in diameter are above the average in any region where
-this tree is now lumbered. Some of the old planted trees of New England
-are five or six feet through, and are finely proportioned, but growing
-as they do in the open, they have larger crowns than are found in forest
-trees.
-
-All species of ash have compound leaves, and those of white ash are from
-eight to twelve inches long. The under sides of the leaflets are white,
-and some persons have this fact in mind when they call the species white
-ash, while others refer to the bark, and still others to the wood. It is
-a characteristic of the tree that most of the leaves grow near the ends
-of the limbs. For that reason the crown appears open when viewed from
-below, and the larger limbs and branches are naked. The leaves demand
-light, and they arrange themselves on the extremities of the limbs to
-get it. When the tree is crowded, it sheds its lower limbs and its crown
-rises rapidly until it reaches abundance of light. This produces long
-trunks in forests.
-
-The boles are often not quite straight, but have several slight crooks,
-yet keep close to a general perpendicular line. That form is due to a
-peculiarity of growth. The leading shoot of a growing ash has more than
-one terminal bud. If a side bud pushes ahead, the stem leans a little in
-that direction; next, a bud on the other side may gain the ascendancy,
-producing a slight lean for a few years in that direction; or two side
-buds may develop simultaneously, causing a forked trunk. Mature trees
-often carry the history of these peculiarities of growth.
-
-The seeds of white ash are equipped for moderate flight. The wing is
-large, but the seed attached to the end of it is heavy enough to give it
-a sharp tilt downward when it begins its flight through the air, and it
-generally shoots at a steep angle toward the ground. It is not apt to
-whirl through the air with a gliding motion like a maple seed.
-Consequently, ash seeds are not great travelers. They are dispersed with
-economy, however, for all do not come down at once, but many hang on the
-tree for months, and a few go with every strong wind, thus getting
-themselves scattered in every direction. Their power of germination is
-low, and only about forty per cent of seeds are fertile. This is due to
-the fact that pistillate and staminate flowers do not grow on the same
-tree, and fertilization is imperfect.
-
-The importance of ash in the industries of the country does not depend
-on the quantity but the quality of the wood. Although the various
-species are produced in thirty-nine states, as shown by mill statistics,
-the total yield is less than 250,000,000 feet a year. That is exceeded
-by several woods, among them hickory, elm, beech, basswood, chestnut,
-and even larch.
-
-The wood of ash which has grown rapidly is generally considered superior
-to that of slow growth. The reason is found in the fact that trees of
-slow growth do most of their growing early in the season, and the wood
-is porous; but trees of rapid growth lay summerwood on abundantly, and
-it is dense. Few species show a sharper line between spring and
-summerwood than ash, for which reason the annual rings are clear-cut and
-distinct. What figure ash has is produced by the growth rings, and not
-by medullary rays. Quarter-sawing brings out no additional beauty.
-Slight crooks in many logs produce a moderate cross grain in lumber,
-which gives to finished ash its characteristic figure or grain. When
-straight-grained wood is wanted, as when it is for tool handles and
-oars, logs without crooks are selected.
-
-The wood of white ash is heavy, hard, strong, elastic, but rather
-brittle. It lacks the toughness of hickory. The medullary rays are
-numerous, but small and obscure. The color is brown, the sapwood much
-lighter, often nearly white. It is not durable in contact with the soil.
-Notwithstanding its name, the wood rates low in ash, and its fuel value
-is under that of white oak. The states which produce the largest yearly
-cut of this species are, ranging downward in the order named: Arkansas,
-Ohio, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and Tennessee.
-
-The uses of white ash are so numerous that they can be presented only in
-classes. It goes into almost every wood-using industry, but in different
-sections of country certain uses lead. Thus in Illinois the makers of
-butter tubs take more of it than any other industry; in Michigan
-automobiles lead, and in Arkansas the handle factories are largest
-buyers; in Louisiana boat oars consume most; in Alabama and Missouri car
-construction is in the lead; in Texas boxes and crates; in North
-Carolina wagons; in Kentucky handles; in Maryland musical instruments;
-and in Massachusetts furniture. The utilization of ash in these states,
-scattered over the eastern half of the United States, indicates fairly
-well the wood's most important lines of usefulness. A considerable
-quantity is made into flooring and interior finish. It is classed among
-sanitary woods, that is, it does not stain or taint food products by
-contact.
-
-The total quantity of merchantable white ash in the country is not
-known, but there is still enough to meet demand, and the extent of the
-tree's range makes supplies convenient in nearly all manufacturing
-states. The species grows rather rapidly, and trees a hundred or a
-hundred and fifty years old yield logs of good size.
-
-TEXAS ASH (_Fraxinus texensis_) has been regarded by some as a variety
-of white ash, while others, including Sudworth and Sargent, consider it
-a distinct species. It is often called mountain ash where it occurs
-among the mountains of western Texas. Its range lies wholly in that
-state, and extends from the vicinity of Dallas to the valley of Devil's
-river. The compound leaves are smaller than those of white ash, and are
-usually composed of five leaflets. The winged seeds ripen in May, and
-are an inch or less in length. The largest trees are fifty feet high and
-two or three in diameter; but generally the trees are much smaller. The
-wood is strong, heavy, and hard. The annual rings are marked by one or
-more rows of open ducts, and the medullary rays are inconspicuous. The
-heartwood is light brown, the sapwood lighter. This ash is employed
-within its range for various purposes, but it is not of sufficient
-abundance to constitute an important commodity. In market it is not
-distinguished from white ash.
-
-GREGG ASH (_Fraxinus greggii_) has some peculiarities which make it
-worthy of mention as one of the minor species. Its range is in the dry
-mountains of western Texas where a number of ashes seem to have put in
-an appearance as members of the thinly-peopled vegetable kingdom of that
-region. The compound leaves of Gregg ash are seldom three inches long,
-and the leaflets are often half an inch long and less than a quarter of
-an inch wide. The petioles are winged like the twigs of wing elm. The
-undersides of the leaves have small black dots. The winged seeds are as
-proportionately small as the leaves. The flowers have not been described
-by botanists, for the species is not well known. The largest trees are
-scarcely twenty-five feet high and eight inches in diameter. More
-frequently they are shrubs from four to twelve feet tall. The wood is
-heavy, hard, brown in color and of slow growth.
-
-DWARF ASH (_Fraxinus anomala_) might be mistaken for some other species
-were its telltale winged seeds missing. It has lost the leaflets from
-its compound leaf, and a single one remains. Occasionally, however, a
-stem bearing three leaflets is found. The seeds are equipped with wide,
-oblong wings. It is a desert species, and the desolate surroundings of
-its habitat explain why nature has dispensed with as much foliage as
-possible. It is found in southwestern Colorado, in southern Utah, and on
-the western slopes of the Charleston mountains in southern Nevada. Trees
-are small and the wood is not of much use for other than fuel, but a few
-small ranch timbers are made of it where other kinds are scarce. Trunks
-are usually not more than six or seven inches in diameter. The wood is
-heavy, hard, and light brown in color.
-
-    FRINGE ASH (_Fraxinus cuspidata_) has some difficulty in proving
-    that it is entitled to be called a tree in the United States, though
-    southward in Mexico its right to that title is unquestioned. It is
-    very small where its range extends over the dry ridges and rocky
-    slopes of southwestern Texas and southern New Mexico and Arizona.
-    Its compound leaves are five or seven inches long, and the leaflets
-    which number from three to seven have long, slender tips. The
-    trowel-shaped fruit is about one inch long. The wood resembles white
-    ash, but trunks of considerable size are not found. The name refers
-    to the flowers, and they give this small tree its value for
-    ornamental purposes. The flowers appear in April and are extremely
-    fragrant.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK ASH
-
-[Illustration: BLACK ASH]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK ASH
-
-(_Fraxinus Nigra_)
-
-
-When George Washington was a surveyor locating land on the upper waters
-of the Potomac river, and westward on the Kanawha and Ohio rivers, he
-always spoke of this ash as "hoop tree" when he marked it with two or
-with three "hacks," depending upon whether it designated a "corner" or a
-"line," or a "pointer" in the system of surveying then in use. Trees
-were used then as landmarks, and were duly recorded in the surveyor's
-field notes, and were described in the deeds when the title to the land
-passed from one party to another. It was not unusual, if subsequent
-litigation came up, to cut blocks from marked trees to prove that such a
-corner was at such a place. The "hacks" or ax marks, were sometimes
-healed over and invisible at the bark, but were found deep in the wood.
-The rings of growth covering the ax marks afforded an admissible record
-of the years that had passed since the survey was made. The selection of
-the black ash as a landmark was one of the few instances in which
-Washington showed poor judgment; because it is a tree of short life, and
-might be expected to die before a great many years.
-
-The name hoop ash is applied to this tree yet. It has always been good
-material for barrel hoops, because it splits into thin pieces, and is
-sufficiently tough. It is known as basket ash for the same reason. The
-New England Indians were making fish baskets of it when the first white
-people landed on those shores, and settlers speedily learned the art
-from the children of the wilderness. Those untutored savages knew little
-of wood technology, but they were able to take advantage of a
-peculiarity in the structure of black ash wood, which the white man's
-microscope has revealed to him. The Indians doubtless discovered it
-accidentally. The springwood in the annual ring of black ash is made up
-of large pores, crowded so closely together that there is really very
-little actual wood substance there. In other words, the springwood is
-chiefly air spaces. The result is, that billets of black ash are easily
-separated into thin strips, the cleavage following the weak lines of
-springwood. A little beating and bending causes the annual rings to fall
-apart. In some way the Indians found that out, and utilized their
-knowledge in manufacturing baskets in which to carry fish, acorns,
-hickory nuts, and other forest and water commodities.
-
-The white people extended the scope of application to include chairs and
-other furniture in which splits are manipulated. It is worthy of note
-that Indians made a similar discovery with northern white cedar or
-arborvitæ, which separates into thin pieces by beating and bending.
-Barrel makers took advantage of the splitting properties of black ash to
-make hoops of it, hence the name hoop ash, or hoop tree as Washington
-called it. The name basket ash has a similar origin.
-
-The names swamp ash and water ash refer to situations in which the tree
-grows best. It is one of the thirstiest inhabitants of the forest. Its
-aggressive roots ramify through the soil and drink up the moisture so
-voraciously that if water is not abundant, neighboring trees and plants
-may find their roots robbed, and the functions of healthy growth will be
-interfered with. This has led to a general belief that black ash poisons
-trees that it touches. It simply robs their roots. Carolina and Lombardy
-poplars will sometimes do the same thing.
-
-The name black ash by which this tree is now known in most regions where
-it grows refers to the color of the large, prominent, shiny, blue-black
-buds in late winter and early spring; to the very dark green leaves in
-summer--which at a distance resemble the foliage of post oak--and, to
-some extent, to the dark brown color of the heartwood, though the wood
-is not always a safe means of identification if judged from superficial
-appearance only. The form of the tree assists in identifying it; for it
-is the slimmest of the ashes, in proportion to its height. Trunks three
-feet through are heard of, but few persons have ever seen one much over
-twenty inches, and many are about done growing when they are one foot in
-diameter. Yet the trunks of such are very tall, perhaps seventy or
-eighty feet. Their appearance has been likened to tall, slender columns
-of dark gray granite. They often stand so straight that a plummet line
-will not reveal a deviation from the perpendicular.
-
-The tree has been called elder-leaved ash. The form of the foliage has
-something to do with that name, but the odor more. Crush the leaves, and
-they smell like elder. The compound leaves are from twelve to sixteen
-inches long; the leaflets range from seven to eleven in number, and the
-side leaflets have no stalks. The leaves appear late in spring, and they
-fall early in autumn. They drop with the butternut leaves, and like
-them, all at once. The seed is winged, and the wing forms a margin
-entirely round the seed.
-
-The wood of black ash is rather soft, moderately heavy, tough, but only
-moderately strong, not durable in contact with the soil, dark brown in
-color with sapwood whiter. The species ranges farther north than any
-other ash, and grows in cold swamps and on the low banks of streams and
-lakes from Newfoundland to Winnipeg, and southward to Virginia, southern
-Illinois, southern Missouri, and Arkansas.
-
-Black ash fills many important places in the country's wood-using
-industries, but the total quantity is not large. In 1910 Michigan
-manufacturers reported the annual quantity in that state at 9,110,432
-feet, and in Illinois the total was 9,936,000 feet. The uses for the
-wood in Michigan may be regarded as typical of the whole country. The
-reported uses were, auto seats, baskets, boat finish, butter tubs, candy
-pails, carriage seats, crating, church pews, fish nets, office fixtures,
-flooring, furniture, ice chests, interior finish, jelly buckets, kitchen
-cabinets, lard tubs, piano frames, putty kegs, racked hoops, spice kegs,
-tin plate boxes, veneer, washboards, and woven splint boxes.
-
-Black ash burls are characteristic excrescences on the trunk. They begin
-as small lumps or knobs under the bark, and never cease growing while
-the tree lives. They may reach the dimensions of wash tubs, but most do
-not exceed the size of a gallon measure. The grain of the wood is
-exceedingly distorted and involved. The burls are sliced or sawed in
-veneers which are much prized by cabinet makers. Early New Englanders
-made bowls of them, which seldom checked or split during generations of
-service. The burls are believed to be due to adventitious buds; that is,
-buds which originate deep in the wood, but are never able to force their
-way through the bark. The internal structure of the ash burl indicates
-that the buried bud grows, branches, and sends shoots in various
-directions, but all of them are hopelessly enmeshed in the wood
-substance, and never are able to free themselves and burst through the
-bark. A constantly enlarging excrescence is the result.
-
-BLUE ASH (_Fraxinus quadrangulata_) is named from a blue dye procured
-from the inner bark. The botanical name relates to the square shape of
-the young twigs, particularly the twigs of young trees, and was given by
-A. F. Michaux who found the species growing in the South. It reaches its
-best development on the lower Wabash river in Indiana and Illinois and
-on the Big Smoky mountains in Tennessee. Its northern limit reaches
-southern Michigan, its western is in Missouri. It is not abundant, if
-found at all, east of the Appalachian mountains. Trees may reach a
-height of 100 feet and a diameter of three, but about seventy is the
-average height, with a diameter of two feet or less. The leaves resemble
-those of black ash in form, but the foliage when seen in mass is
-yellow-green instead of dark green like that of black ash. The seeds
-look like those of black ash. The tree bears perfect flowers, and in
-that respect differs from most other species of ash.
-
-The wood is heavier than that of any other member of the ash group,
-except Texas ash. It weighs about the same as white oak, which is six
-pounds per cubic foot more than white ash weighs. In general appearance
-the wood resembles white ash, but it is usually considered stronger and
-more springy. The trunks of young trees are largely or entirely sapwood.
-Sometimes no heartwood is formed until an age of seventy or eighty
-years is reached. Many manufacturers of ash tool handles prefer this
-species to any other ash, because of its thick, white sapwood. It is
-often made into handles for hoes, rakes, shovels, pitchforks, spades,
-and snaths for scythes. Makers of vehicles draw liberally upon this wood
-within its range, as do furniture makers and the manufacturers of
-flooring. It is regarded as harder than white ash, and consequently
-better flooring material.
-
-    LEATHERLEAF ASH (_Fraxinus velutina_) changes its velvety leaves to
-    a leathery condition, hence the conflict in the meanings of its two
-    names. _Velutina_ means velvet-like. The compound leaves are seldom
-    six inches long, often not three, and they are made up of from three
-    to nine leaflets. The small seeds are equipped with wings. The tree
-    is small and would be without any commercial importance except that
-    it grows in an arid region where any wood is welcome. It is made
-    into ax, hammer, and pick handles, and wagon makers are often glad
-    to get it. It is found among the mountains and canyons of western
-    Texas, in New Mexico, Arizona, southern Nevada, and southeastern
-    California, near the shores of Owen's lake. The largest trees are
-    scarcely forty feet high and eight inches in diameter. The wood is
-    not hard or strong, and is of slow growth. The largest trunks are
-    apt to be hollow. Sapwood is comparatively thick.
-
-    BERLANDIER ASH (_Fraxinus berlandieriana_) may not be entitled to a
-    place among native species, of the United States. Some suppose it
-    was introduced from Mexico by early Spanish settlers in western
-    Texas. It now grows wild there along Nueces and Blanco rivers where
-    specimens thirty feet high and a foot in diameter are found.
-    Southward in Mexico it is a popular street tree, and trunks reach
-    six or eight feet in diameter. The wood is soft and is used only
-    locally and in very small quantities.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-OREGON ASH
-
-[Illustration: OREGON ASH]
-
-
-
-
-OREGON ASH
-
-(_Fraxinus Oregona_)
-
-
-This tree is unusual in that it has only one common name, and that is a
-translation of its botanical name which was given it by Nuttall who
-visited the Pacific coast several years before the discovery of gold.
-
-The moist bottom lands of southwestern Oregon are best suited to its
-growth, and here the best individuals and most abundant stands are
-found. Moist soil and climate are essential to proper development of
-this tree, and in such environment it is found from Puget Sound
-southward along the coast to San Francisco. A little further from the
-coast it grows along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, to
-the low mountains in San Diego and San Bernardino counties, California,
-in the southern extension of its range occupying a rather dry region.
-
-The trunk grows to a height of eighty or 100 feet, and is often three
-feet in diameter. It is covered with a gray-brown bark, exfoliating in
-flaky scales. The leaves are from five to fourteen inches long, and have
-five or seven firm, light-green leaflets, finely toothed and bluntly
-pointed. The flowers appear in April and May and are in compact
-panicles; the fruit in clusters, broadly winged and round pointed, and
-from one to two inches long.
-
-The scarcity of good hardwoods on the Pacific coast gives this ash more
-importance than it otherwise would have, and the importance which it
-possesses has been frequently overstated. It is not abundant of form and
-size fitting it for lumber. It has long been cut in small quantities,
-but never in large. The census returns for 1910 show that less than
-400,000 feet per year are reported in its entire range. Three-fourths of
-this is sawed in Oregon, the remainder in Washington. Though the species
-has a range of 800 miles north and south through California, no sawmill
-reported a foot of it. However, it is probable that census returns fail
-to do this wood full justice; for it is well known that considerable
-quantities are manufactured into articles without passing through
-sawmills. Chief among such commodities is slack cooperage. Butter tubs
-of Oregon ash are common. Much goes to wagon shops, and some of it
-without aid of sawmills.
-
-Little or none of this wood is shipped outside its range, and its use is
-local. Boat builders work it into finish for cabins and upper parts, and
-some serves as ribs. It is often seen as handles for picks, shovels,
-spades, pitchforks, and rakes. A little finds place, combined with other
-woods, in office and store fixtures. Its grain resembles that of white
-ash. It is not as heavy, and it is not believed to be as strong. It is
-hard, brittle, brown in color, with thick, lighter-colored sapwood.
-Furniture makers list it as shop material, and such is its largest
-reported use in Washington. A moderate amount is made into saddletrees
-and stirrups, and much is used as fuel.
-
-Oregon ash has been planted for shade and ornament in both this country
-and Europe. It grows rapidly and develops a symmetrical crown. The habit
-it has of coming into leaf late in the spring and throwing its foliage
-down early in autumn is held by some as a serious objection to it as an
-ornamental tree; but it has compensating habits. It is remarkably free
-from disease, and, though leaves come late and go early, while its
-foliage is on, it is healthy and vigorous. Reproduction is satisfactory
-in the tree's wild state, and there is no danger that the species will
-disappear. No movement has yet been made to plant this ash for
-commercial timber growing.
-
-GREEN ASH (_Fraxinus lanceolata_) has been given that name on account of
-the bright color of its foliage. It has other names, however, which
-indicate that its greenness is not always preëminently prominent. In
-Iowa and Arkansas they call it blue ash; in Kansas and Nebraska white
-ash; in some regions it is known as water ash, and elsewhere swamp ash.
-Some botanists do not regard it as a separate species but call it a
-variety of red ash, but the consensus of opinion is that it is a
-distinct species, though there appear to be connecting forms grading
-from red ash into green ash. Certain it is that the two are distinct
-enough in certain parts of the country. The range of green ash is more
-extensive than that of any other ash in this country. Beginning in
-Vermont it passes southward to Florida; northwestward to the
-Saskatchewan river several hundred miles north of the international
-boundary line; along the base of the Rocky Mountains and over the ranges
-to Arizona, and through Texas. This includes more than half of the area
-of the United States. Notwithstanding a range so extensive, the total
-quantity of green ash timber in the country is not large. No pure
-forests or extensive stands exist. Trees are widely dispersed, and when
-lumbermen cut them, the wood is sold as some other, usually as white
-ash. The wood has the general characters of red ash. It weighs about
-forty-four pounds per cubic foot of dry wood; is moderately strong,
-fairly stiff and elastic, and, like other species of ash, it is not
-durable in contact with the soil.
-
-Green ash is more planted than any other in the cold and dry regions of
-the West and Northwest. It is a prairie tree and is found along highways
-and in door yards from Kansas northward into British America. It stands
-drought better than any other ash, and resists cold fully as well, and
-yet it endures the warm weather and the rains of the South and
-flourishes there. It is not a large tree, but of sufficient size for use
-as furniture, finish, and vehicle making. It is seldom listed in
-statistics of woods which go to sawmills, yet it is known that a good
-many logs find their way to mills, while wagon makers and slack coopers
-employ it in producing their commodities. The tree is an abundant
-seeder, and the seeds continue to fall during most of the winter.
-
-    RED ASH (_Fraxinus pennsylvanica_) is neither a large tree nor very
-    abundant, yet it has a wide range and is put to use wherever
-    lumbermen find it convenient. The lumber generally passes in the
-    market as white ash, and for most purposes it is as good, but is
-    rated lower than that wood in elasticity. It is called brown ash in
-    Maine, black ash in New Jersey, river ash in Rhode Island. The last
-    name is bestowed because the tree prefers moist land near rivers and
-    ponds, and largest specimens are found in such situations, where it
-    is often an associate of black ash and is frequently mistaken for
-    it, though it should not be difficult to tell the species apart. A
-    slight reddish tinge sometimes shows on the outer bark; the inner
-    layer of bark is reddish; the small twigs and the under sides of
-    leaves are clothed with hairs which sometimes suggest redness; and
-    the heartwood is reddish-brown. Persons who speak of the tree as red
-    ash probably have one or more of those characteristics in mind. As a
-    tree it has no striking peculiarities. Its usual height is forty or
-    sixty feet; its diameter from fifteen to twenty inches; its compound
-    leaves ten or twelve inches long, with seven or nine leaflets; its
-    seeds one or two inches in length, narrow, and sharply pointed, with
-    slender, graceful wing.
-
-    The range of red ash is from New Brunswick to Dakota, and from
-    Florida to Alabama, with all of the included region of a million
-    square miles. It attains its best development in the north Atlantic
-    states, while it is usually inferior west of the Alleghany
-    mountains. It develops a broad crown in open ground, but even there
-    its lower limbs die and drop, while in forests the trunk grows tall
-    and the crown is reduced. It is planted for shade and ornament, but
-    it seems to have no superiority over white ash for that purpose.
-    Some of the Michigan manufacturers list red ash separately in their
-    factories, and apparently this is not done elsewhere in the country.
-    About three-quarters of a million feet a year are used in that
-    state, and since uses there are doubtless typical of uses in the
-    country generally, the list possesses importance: Automobile frames,
-    boxes, butter tubs, crates, eveners, flooring, furniture, interior
-    finish, neck yokes, singletrees, wagon poles. Farther east in early
-    times red ash was occasionally split for fence rails, but that use
-    is important now only as history.
-
-    PUMPKIN ASH (_Fraxinus profunda_) is a tree of peculiar interest. It
-    was unknown before 1893, though the region had been settled over a
-    hundred years. It has the largest leaves, largest fruit, and largest
-    swelled base of all American ashes. Notwithstanding that, it
-    remained so deeply hidden in swamps that it escaped discovery. The
-    botanical name refers to the deep swamps in which the tree chooses
-    its habitation. Its great, swelled base enables it to stand on the
-    soft mud of lagoon bottoms, and the abnormal swelling is ribbed like
-    a pumpkin, hence the only English name the tree has ever had. These
-    are not the only remarkable things connected with this ash. Its
-    range includes three or four deep swamps, far apart. One is in
-    southern Missouri, New Madrid country, another near Varney,
-    Arkansas, and a third, in a vast morass on the Apalachicola river,
-    Florida. It is believed to have been originally a Florida species,
-    and by some freak of nature it reached the Missouri and Arkansas
-    swamps. Certain other Florida plants accompanied it, one of which
-    was corkwood (_Leitneria floridana_). It is expected that pumpkin
-    ash will be found elsewhere in deep swamps intermediate between the
-    extremes of its range. The uses of this wood are few, because it is
-    scarce, and the trees are difficult of access on account of being
-    nearly always surrounded by water. Lumbermen who operate in swamps
-    occasionally bring out a few ash logs with cypress and tupelo. No
-    tests seem to have been made of the wood. Trees are sometimes 120
-    feet high and three in diameter above the swelled bases.
-
-    WATER ASH (_Fraxinus caroliniana_) is much lighter in weight than
-    any other American ash, and the wood is also lighter in color. It is
-    weaker and less elastic than any other, and is lower in fuel value.
-    It weighs less than white pine. It grows in deep swamps from
-    southern Virginia to Florida and westward in swamps to Texas. Some
-    have confused it with pumpkin ash, but the two are quite distinct.
-    This tree is also called poppy ash. The leaves are from seven to
-    twelve inches long, with five or seven leaflets which are much
-    blunter than most other ash leaves. The seeds are nearly in the
-    center of the broad, long wing, and are better flyers than most ash
-    seeds. The tree seldom exceeds forty feet in height, or twelve
-    inches in diameter. It is not known that the wood is ever used. Its
-    scarcity will keep it from becoming important, though its uncommon
-    lightness may lead to its employment for certain purposes.
-
-    BILTMORE ASH (_Fraxinus biltmoreana_) is named from Biltmore, N. C.,
-    where the tree attains its best development, a height of forty or
-    fifty feet and a foot or less in diameter. Its range extends from
-    northern West Virginia southward along the foothills of the
-    Appalachian mountains to Georgia, Alabama, and middle Tennessee. The
-    seed wings are slender, and only slightly narrowed at the end. The
-    leaf is ten or twelve inches long, with seven or nine leaflets. The
-    twigs of young trees are hairy. An occasional log doubtless goes to
-    sawmills, but no report has been made of uses of the wood.
-
-    FLORIDA ASH (_Fraxinus floridana_) is a deep swamp tree, thirty or
-    forty feet high, and a few inches in diameter. It is found in the
-    valley of St. Mary's river, southern Georgia, and along the lower
-    Apalachicola river, Florida. The compound leaves are five or more
-    inches long with three or five leaflets. The seeds are small but
-    their wings are wide and long. No report has been made concerning
-    the quality of the wood, nor has it been used, as far as known. The
-    supply is very small.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SUGAR MAPLE
-
-[Illustration: SUGAR MAPLE]
-
-
-
-
-SUGAR MAPLE
-
-(_Acer Saccharum_)
-
-
-The makers of sugar in the North call this tree sugar maple, but
-lumbermen and users of wood nearly always speak of it as hard maple. All
-maples--and there are nearly a dozen--are tolerably hard, and sugar may
-be obtained from most of them; but this species is hardest of all, and
-the most prolific sugar maker, hence the two names are appropriate. It
-is often called rock maple, which name refers to its hard wood. In some
-regions the name most heard is sugar tree.
-
-Its range extends from Newfoundland through Canada to Lake of the Woods,
-southward through Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Arkansas to Texas. It is
-found in every state east of the Mississippi, but it is not abundant in
-the South. Its best development is found from New England across the
-northern states to Michigan. Some very fine sugar maple is found in
-fertile valleys and on slopes among the Appalachian ranges from
-Pennsylvania southward. The largest lumber cut of maple is in the
-following states, ranging in the order given: Michigan, Wisconsin,
-Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Vermont. Since
-the different species of maple are not reported separately in
-statistics, there is no way of determining how much each of the maples
-supplies. It is well known that sugar maple greatly exceeds all others.
-
-At its best this tree may exceed a height of 100 feet and a diameter of
-three; but the average for mature timber in the best part of its range
-is sixty or eighty feet in height, and two in diameter. The flowers
-appear with the leaves in early spring, but the seeds do not ripen until
-autumn, when they are bright red. They are winged, and usually two grow
-together, but they sometimes become detached, in which case each is
-capable of flight with its single wing. It is characteristic of maple
-seeds to whirl rapidly while falling, and if a moderate wind is blowing,
-they glide considerable distances. They usually fly farther than the
-seeds of ash although their wings are no larger. The immense numbers of
-seeds borne by the sugar maple insure abundant reproduction in the
-vicinity of parent trees. The seeds sprout readily, but often so closely
-crowded together that most of them die the first few weeks. Not one in
-ten thousand can even become a large tree, and yet large trees are
-exceedingly abundant in extensive regions. They often form nearly pure
-stands, crowding to death all rivals that try to obtain a foothold. On
-the other hand, this maple often contents itself with a place among
-other forest trees.
-
-It is one of the most vigorous and dependable of trees. It does not grow
-fast, but it keeps steadily at it a long time, and enjoys unusually good
-health. Its worst enemy is coal smoke, but fortunately, most sugar maple
-forests are out of reach of that disturber, though shade trees near
-factory towns and in the vicinity of coke ovens often suffer. Woodlots
-of sugar maple, occupying corners of farms in the northern states from
-Minnesota to Maine, present pictures of health, vigor, cleanliness, and
-beauty which no forest tree surpasses. The intense green and the density
-of the crowns in summer make the trees conspicuous in any landscape
-where they occur, while their brilliant colors in autumn are the chief
-glory of the forest where they abound.
-
-The wood of this tree is hard, strong, and dense. It is three pounds
-lighter per cubic foot than white oak, and theoretically it rates a
-little lower in fuel value, but those who use both woods as fuel
-consider maple worth more. It is thirty per cent stronger than white
-oak, and fifty-three per cent stiffer. The wood is diffuse-porous, that
-is, the pores are not arranged in bands or rows, as they usually are in
-oaks, but are scattered in all parts. They are too small to be seen with
-the naked eye, but under a magnifying glass they are visible in large
-numbers. The yearly ring is not very distinct, because of the slight
-contrast between spring and summerwood. The medullary rays are numerous
-but small. In wood sawed along radial lines, from heart to sap, small
-silvery flecks are numerous. These are the medullary rays. They add
-something to the appearance of quarter-sawed maple, but not enough to
-induce mills to turn out much of it.
-
-Such figures as maple has are brought out best in tangential
-sawing--that is, cut like a slab off the side of the log. Three distinct
-figures are recognized in sugar maple, and to some extent they belong to
-other maples. These forms of wood are known as birdseye, curly, and
-blister maple. They are accidental forms and exist in certain trees
-only. Students of wood structure are not wholly agreed as to the cause
-of these forms, but one of them, the birdseye effect, is believed to be
-due to adventitious buds which distort the wood in their vicinity. These
-buds start near the center of the tree when it is small, but never
-succeed in forcing their way out. They remain just beneath the bark
-during most or the whole of the tree's life. A pin-like core, resembling
-a fine thread, connects the birdseye with the tree's pith. This thread
-is the pith of the embryonic branch formed by the bud which never breaks
-through the bark. When the wood is sawed tangentially, small, dark-brown
-points or dots show the center of the buds, or the pith line connecting
-it with the tree's center. Curly maple and blister maple are not
-believed to be formed in the same way as birdseye.
-
-The uses of sugar maple are nearly universal, where a hard, white wood
-is wanted. Many large trees contain little colored heart, and trees are
-generally fifty years old before they have any. More maple is worked
-into flooring than into any other one commodity. Mills in Michigan
-alone, in 1910, made 185,611,662 feet of maple flooring. It was shipped
-to practically every civilized country in the world. Many builders
-consider it the best wooden floor that can be laid. In a test made in a
-large store in Philadelphia some years ago, a marble floor wore through
-sooner than maple, when the same wear was on both.
-
-Nearly all kinds and classes of furniture have places for maple, either
-as outside material or inside frames, drawer bottoms, or partitions.
-Vehicle manufacturers employ it for heavy axles, running gear, parts of
-automobiles, sleigh runners and frames, and hand sleds. It is made into
-handles from gimlet sizes to cant hooks. Gymnasium apparatus owes much
-to the whiteness, smoothness, and strength of maple. Woodenware from
-toothpicks to ironing boards; from butcher blocks to butter molds; from
-door knobs to die blocks, is dependent on maple for some of its best
-material. It is largely used for boxes, in both solid and veneer form.
-Only two woods are now employed in larger amounts for veneers in the
-United States than maple. They are red gum and yellow pine.
-
-Maple is one of the three woods most largely employed in hardwood
-distillation in this country; beech and birch are the others. Maple
-sugar is a product of this tree almost exclusively, and the business is
-large. In some parts of New England it is claimed that a grove is worth
-more for sugar than the land is worth for agriculture.
-
-    SILVER MAPLE (_Acer saccharinum_) is generally called soft maple by
-    lumbermen. It is known also as white maple, river maple,
-    silver-leaved maple, swamp maple, and water maple. The sinuses of
-    the leaves are very deep. The lighter color of its bark and the pale
-    green of the leaves distinguish soft maple at a glance from sugar
-    maple when both are in full leaf. The greenish-yellow flowers open
-    in early spring, and the seeds are ripe in April or May, depending
-    on the season and region. The seeds have large wings and fly well.
-    They germinate in a few days after they find suitable soil, and
-    before the end of the summer the seedlings have grown several
-    leaves. The vigor thus displayed continues until the tree is large.
-    It is a fast grower, and for that reason has been extensively
-    planted as a street and park tree. The wisdom of doing so is
-    doubtful, for this maple throws out long limbs which are often
-    broken by wind. The trunk is subject to disease, and a row of old
-    soft maples nearly always presents a ragged, unkempt, neglected
-    appearance. As to beauty of form and crown, there is little
-    comparison between it and the planted sugar maple. Soft maples in
-    forests range from seventy-five to 120 feet in height, and two to
-    four in diameter; that is, they attain about the same size as sugar
-    maples. The species covers a million square miles, practically the
-    whole country east of the Mississippi, some west of that river, and
-    most of eastern Canada.
-
-    It is a useful wood for many purposes. The custom of mixing this
-    with sugar maple makes it impossible to clearly separate the two
-    woods afterwards. It is the opinion of some well-informed
-    manufacturers that about five per cent of the total maple cut in the
-    United States is soft maple. The ratio is less in the North and more
-    in the South. The wood is hard, strong, rather brittle, easily
-    worked, pale brown with thick, white sapwood. Some rather large
-    trunks have no sapwood. It is in general use, but not for as many
-    purposes as sugar maple. The largest places found for it are as
-    flooring and woodenware, though furniture and boxes, particularly
-    veneer boxes, consume much. Its weight is three-fourths that of
-    sugar maple. The largest trees and the best wood grow in the lower
-    Ohio valley.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED MAPLE
-
-[Illustration: RED MAPLE]
-
-
-
-
-RED MAPLE
-
-(_Acer Rubrum_)
-
-
-This tree's names describe it. Some refer to color of leaves, flowers,
-and fruit, others to situation where it grows best. It is known as red
-maple and swamp maple; also as water maple, white maple, scarlet maple,
-and shoepeg maple. New York Indians called it ah-we-hot-kwah, which
-meant red flower. Most trees looked alike to Indians, and when they gave
-a name, it was descriptive.
-
-The redness of this maple is so marked that it cannot escape notice. The
-flowers, fruit, twigs, and leaves all possess the property at one time
-or another during the season. The flower comes before the leaf, during
-the first warm days of spring. That is pretty early in the South, and
-later in the North. The flowers are bright scarlet, and very
-conspicuous, growing in umbel-like, drooping clusters. The staminate and
-pistillate ones frequently grow on different trees, and always in
-separate clusters.
-
-The fruit ripens quickly, and is sometimes almost mature before the
-leaves appear. The date of ripening depends upon latitude. The tree's
-range north and south exceeds a thousand miles and that makes much
-difference in climate. In the South the fruit outstrips the leaves and
-has about reached maturity before the unfolding leaves are large enough
-to hide it; but in New England and New York the leaves are large before
-the fruit is mature. The seed is the characteristic maple key, with a
-wing to carry it. The fruit--and by that term the seed with its attached
-wing is meant--is bright red, and a tree loaded with the vivid clusters
-is a beautiful spectacle. Two seeds are generally fast together, and
-they make surprising flights in that condition, passing with whirling
-motion through the air. Gravity spins them, but wind carries them
-forward, and the random of their flight depends on the strength of the
-wind, which happens to be blowing when they sever their connection with
-the tree.
-
-The seeds germinate quickly when they light on damp soil. If they do not
-find such situations, they soon perish; because they do not retain their
-vitality long. By the middle of summer the young trees have several
-leaves, and from that time on the struggle is mainly among themselves
-for space and moisture, because they stand so thick that it is a
-survival of the fittest.
-
-The young twigs are generally red in spring, but they do not present as
-conspicuous a mass as the flowers and fruit do. The leaves are simple,
-with long reddish petioles. They have three or five lobes, the lower
-pair often entirely missing, and small if present. Each lobe has a
-pointed apex, and is irregularly serrate. The base of the leaf is
-rounded; also the sinuses, which extend far into the body of the leaf.
-The upper surface of the leaf is bright green, the lower a
-silvery-white. In the fall this tree is entitled to the name scarlet;
-for then the brilliant hues of the leaves are remarkably fine.
-
-The range of red maple covers more than a million square miles, and
-touches every state east of the Mississippi river, and west of that
-stream it extends from South Dakota to Texas. It prefers rather swampy
-ground, but wants fertile soil. It is frequently found on the banks of
-creeks and rivers, and rarely on hillsides. It is most abundant in the
-South, particularly in the lower Mississippi valley, while trees of
-larger size are found in the valley of the lower Ohio. In the North it
-takes more to low wet swamps where it sometimes grows in such thickets
-as almost to exclude other species.
-
-The best red maple trees attain a height of 100 feet or more, and a
-diameter of four feet or less. The average size is seventy feet high and
-two in diameter. The form of the tree, like that of all other maples,
-depends much upon the situation in which it grows. Good saw timber is
-not often cut from this species near the outer borders of its range.
-
-The wood is about three-fourths as strong as hard maple, and is five
-pounds lighter per cubic foot, but is about six pounds heavier than soft
-or silver maple. It may, therefore, be considered that in some important
-points red maple is midway between hard and soft maple. In color it is
-light brown, slightly tinged with red. The sapwood is thick and lighter
-in color than the heart. The tree is usually not of rapid growth. The
-contrast between the springwood and summerwood is not strong. The wood
-is very porous, but the pores are so small that the unaided eye cannot
-discern them. The medullary rays are numerous, but thin, and are seldom
-considered in working the lumber.
-
-Mills which saw this maple do not separate the lumber from other maples.
-The woodsman knows the difference, but the lumberman does not consider
-it worth while to pile the sawed stock separately. It sometimes goes to
-market as hard maple, sometimes as soft, but never under its own name.
-Consequently, it has no uses which are not also common to other maples.
-Lumbermen cut it when they find it mixed with other hardwoods where they
-are carrying on logging operations.
-
-Red maple is made into flooring, interior finish, and veneer box
-material. Veneers are also made for furniture. These are the most
-important uses for the wood, but the manufacturers of woodenware employ
-it for numerous commodities, such as trays, bowls, ironing boards, grain
-scoops, snow shovels, clothes racks, garment hangers, and clothes pins.
-This species shows birdseye effect similar to that of sugar maple, but
-less of the stock goes to market. Logs with birdseye wood are generally
-reduced to veneer by the rotary process. Curly and wavy grains also
-occur in this maple. The wavy grain was much sought after by the early
-hunters who equipped their long rifles with stocks. Having found a piece
-of timber with the desired wavy grain, the hunter proceeded to shave and
-whittle until the stock was fitted to the barrel, and the gun was
-complete. Some of the stocks made with no tools but an ax, drawing
-knife, and a pocket knife, were works of art which are worthy of
-preservation in museums.
-
-Occasionally some unknown rural Stradivari made a violin and selected
-the curly wood of red maple for the neck and sides. A few of these
-instruments are floating about the country, but an age of fifty or a
-hundred years has not yet imparted classic value to them, but the wood
-is unsurpassed in delicacy of grain and figure.
-
-Sugar may be manufactured from red maple, but in smaller quantity than
-from sugar maple. In the days when every frontier settlement did its own
-manufacturing, inks and dyes were made from the bark of this tree. The
-tannin boiled from the bark was treated with sulphate of iron, and it
-became ink; when alum was added it became black dye; when the sulphate
-of iron was omitted, and alum alone was put in, a cinnamon-colored dye
-resulted.
-
-Red maple is one of the most desirable trees for planting in parks and
-by roadsides. Nurserymen complain that seedlings are more difficult to
-manage than silver maples; nor do they grow as rapidly, but the trees
-are worth much more when once established. They have shorter and
-stronger branches than silver maple; are less liable to be attacked by
-disease; are more handsome in every way; but they demand damper soil,
-and succeed poorly in any other. That drawback tends to restrict the
-artificial planting of this tree.
-
-    MOUNTAIN MAPLE (_Acer spicatum_) is known also as moose maple, low
-    maple, and water maple. It is a small tree at its best, seldom more
-    than twenty-five feet high and eight inches in diameter, while in
-    most parts of its range it is only a shrub. Its best growth is on
-    mountain slopes of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. It
-    likes moist, rich hillsides, and does not object to shade. The
-    flowers come late, but within a month or six weeks after the bloom
-    appears, the fruit is full grown, but it remains on the tree till
-    autumn. The tree's bark is smooth and very thin. The absence of
-    stripes distinguishes this tree from striped maple, which has nearly
-    the same range. Mountain maple grows from Maine to Minnesota,
-    southward to Michigan, and along the mountains to Georgia. The wood
-    is light, soft, brown tinged with red. The small size of the trunk
-    forbids its conversion into ordinary lumber. The only commercial use
-    reported for it is in Pennsylvania where it is cut along with other
-    hardwoods for destructive distillation.
-
-    FLORIDA MAPLE (_Acer floridanum_) is a species according to some,
-    and according to others is a variety of the hard maple. Its range is
-    limited, and the available quantity of the wood is small. It is
-    found in the swamps of southern Georgia and western Florida, and
-    westward to Texas, Louisiana, and southern Arkansas. Near the
-    southwestern limits of its range in Texas and Mexico, it is often a
-    shrub; but in the best part of its range it becomes a tree fifty or
-    sixty feet high and two or three in diameter. The wood passes for
-    hard maple when sawed into lumber, but it is not often sent to
-    sawmills. The makers of bent wood rustic furniture in some of the
-    southern towns, particularly in Louisiana, have found the slender
-    branches of Florida maple well suited to that purpose.
-
-    DRUMMOND MAPLE (_Acer rubrum drummondii_) is a variety of red maple,
-    not a separate species. Its range lies in the coastal plain of
-    Alabama and Georgia, western Louisiana, eastern Texas, southwestern
-    Tennessee, and southern Arkansas. It grows in deep swamps, and has
-    three-lobed leaves, and large-winged fruit, ripening in April and
-    May. The wood is too scarce to be important in the lumber trade, but
-    where it can be had it is used. Violin makers have procured some
-    finely curled wood of this maple in Union Parish, Louisiana. Some of
-    the wood from that district has been made into gunstocks also.
-
-    WHITEBARK MAPLE (_Acer leucoderme_) has been classed as a variety of
-    sugar maple, and also as a separate species. It is named from the
-    light gray color of the bark of young stems; but the color turns
-    dark with age. The tree is usually twenty or thirty feet high with a
-    diameter of a foot or more. The wood is of good quality, but no
-    uses, except fuel, have been reported. Trees are not abundant, but
-    the range covers parts of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia,
-    Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas. It is occasionally planted as a
-    shade tree along the streets of towns of Georgia and Alabama.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-OREGON MAPLE
-
-[Illustration: OREGON MAPLE]
-
-
-
-
-OREGON MAPLE
-
-(_Acer Macrophyllum_)
-
-
-Botanists prefer to call this tree broadleaf maple. The name is not
-inappropriate, as its extraordinarily broad leaves constitute the most
-striking feature of the tree where it stands in the woods. The leaf is
-usually wider than it is long. Some exceed a foot in both measurements.
-Bigleaf maple is not an uncommon name for the tree in Oregon, where it
-attains its highest development in damp valleys where the soil is good.
-The name white maple is not particularly descriptive of any feature of
-the tree, though the name is applied in both Oregon and Washington. In
-California it is known simply as maple. There is small likelihood in
-that region that it will be confused with any other member of the maple
-household; nor is there much danger of such a thing in any part of the
-Pacific coast, for, though four species of maple occur there, no one of
-them bears close enough resemblance to this one to be mistaken for it.
-
-The Oregon maple's range north and south covers twenty degrees of
-latitude. In that particular it is not much surpassed, if surpassed at
-all, by any maple of this country. Its northern limit lies in Alaska,
-its southern close to the Mexican boundary, in San Diego county,
-California. Its range east and west is restricted. It has a width of
-about one hundred and fifty miles in California, where it grows from the
-coast to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. An altitude of
-5,600 feet appears to be the limit of its range upward. It attains
-altitudes above 5,000 feet at several points in the Sierra Nevada range.
-It descends nearly to sea level. Its geographical range is similar to
-the ranges of several other Pacific coast species which occupy long
-ribbons of territory stretching north and south parallel with the coast
-of the Pacific ocean.
-
-This maple's leaves change to a clear reddish-yellow before falling.
-Flowers appear after the leaves are grown, and the seeds ripen late in
-autumn. Some of them hang until late in winter, but the habit varies in
-different parts of the range, as is natural in view of its great
-extension north and south. The trees which stand in open ground are very
-abundant seeders, but those in dense stands produce sparingly, in that
-particular following the habit of most trees. This maple often grows in
-dense, nearly pure stands in Oregon and Washington where soil and other
-conditions are favorable.
-
-The sizes and forms of Oregon maple vary greatly. John Muir spoke of
-forests whose trees were eighty or one hundred feet high, so dense with
-leaves and so abundantly supplied with branches that moss and ferns
-formed a canopy with foliage and limbs high over head, like an aerial
-garden; while George B. Sudworth described it in certain situations as a
-short-stemmed, crooked tree from twenty-five to thirty feet high and
-under a foot in diameter.
-
-This maple has been called the most valuable hardwood of the Pacific
-coast, but that claim is made also for other trees. Some persons rate it
-with the hard maple of the East, in properties which commend it for use.
-It is doubtful if the claim can be substantiated. According to Sargent's
-figures for strength, stiffness, weight, and fuel value, it lacks much
-of equalling the eastern tree. It is twelve pounds per cubic foot
-lighter; has not three-fourths the fuel value; and is little more than
-half as strong or as stiff. The comparison is more in favor of the
-western tree when color of wood and appearance of grain are considered.
-The wood is light brown with pale tint of red. The rings of annual
-growth are tolerably distinct, with a thin, dark line separating the
-summerwood of one year from the springwood of the next. The pores are
-scattered with fair evenness in all parts of the ring. They are small
-and numerous. The medullary rays are thin and abundant. In quarter-sawed
-wood they show much the same as in hard maple, but are rather darker in
-color. The mirrors are decidedly tinged with brown. The wood is reported
-poor in resisting decay when in contact with the soil.
-
-The largest use of Oregon maple appears to be for furniture, second, for
-interior finish, and following these are numerous miscellaneous uses.
-Statistics of the cut of this wood, as shown by sawmill reports, are
-unsatisfactory. Census returns include it with all other maples of the
-country, without figures for species. The cut of maple for all the
-western states seems too small to give this wood justice. The amount
-reported used in Washington, Oregon, and California exceeds the total
-reported sawmill cut in the West.
-
-Oregon maple is an important handlewood. The smooth grain appeals to
-broom makers. The wood is made into ax handles, but for that use it is
-much below hickory, or even hard maple or white oak. It is converted
-into pulleys in Washington, also into saddle trees, and tent toggles.
-Boat makers employ it for finish material, in which capacity it fills
-the same place, and must meet the same requirements as in interior
-finish for houses. Curly or wavy wood is occasionally found and this is
-worked into finish and also into furniture. The figure is as handsome as
-in eastern maple, but birdseye is less frequent. Counter tops for stores
-and bar tops for saloons are sometimes made of figured maple. It is seen
-also in grill work and show cases, but in order to show the figured wood
-to the best advantage it should be worked in flat surfaces.
-
-Oregon maple is converted into flooring of the ordinary tongued and
-grooved kind, and also into parquet flooring. Rotary veneers are made
-into boxes and baskets. Solid logs are turned for rollers of various
-sizes and kinds. Mill yards use them for offbearing lumber, and house
-movers find them about the best local material to be had. This maple has
-been successfully stained in imitation of mahogany, and is said to pass
-satisfactory tests where the color is the principal consideration.
-
-The amount of this species available in the Northwest is not definitely
-known, but it is a relatively scarce wood. No attention has ever been
-given to planting it as a commercial proposition. It is not of very
-rapid growth, and unless it is in dense stands, it develops a short
-trunk and large crown. It is better suited for shade and ornament, and
-is to be seen as a street tree in some western towns. It does not
-flourish in the eastern states, but has found the climate of western
-Europe more congenial and is occasionally found as an ornamental tree
-there.
-
-The relative importance of this maple in the state of Washington is
-indicated by the amount used annually compared with certain other
-hardwoods. In 1911 the consumption of willow was 2,000 feet, vine maple
-10,000, Oregon ash 58,000, Oregon oak 197,000, western birch 315,000,
-Oregon maple 932,500, red alder 1,881,500, and black cottonwood
-32,572,200.
-
-VINE MAPLE (_Acer circinatum_) is sometimes called mountain maple,
-though the name is misleading. It may grow among mountains, but always
-near streams. It is found at various altitudes from near sea level to
-5,000 feet above. It ranges from the coast region of British Columbia
-southward through Washington and Oregon to Mendocino county, California.
-This tree is more useful than might be inferred from its name, or even
-from a study of it in its usual form. Only an occasional tree is good
-for the wood user. A height of twenty feet and a diameter of six inches
-are above the average. It is called vine maple because of its habit of
-sprawling on the ground like a vine. The trunk lacks sufficient
-stiffness to hold it erect. It grows upward to a certain point, then
-leans over and the branches lie on the ground. Some of them take root
-and in course of time what was first a single stem becomes a thicket of
-branches and stems. The winter snow often has much to do with bending
-the trunk, which appears to have no power to get back to the
-perpendicular when once bowed down. The damp situation where this tree
-thrives best, induces a luxuriant growth of moss and mold which help to
-bury the branches that lie on the ground.
-
-The tree prospers in deep shade. The young leaves are rose red, and in
-the fall become yellow or scarlet. The fruit is the characteristic maple
-key. The wing becomes rose-red before falling in autumn. Though this
-tree is more a curiosity than a lumberman's asset, it is not without
-value. Handle makers use 10,000 feet of it a year in the state of
-Washington. It is shaved and turned for ax and shovel handles. It has
-two-thirds the strength and less than half the stiffness of eastern hard
-maple. The tree grows slowly and the annual rings are very narrow and
-indistinct. Seventy or eighty years are required to produce a trunk five
-inches in diameter. The wood is hard, and checks badly in seasoning. The
-bark is very pale brown--suggesting the color of a potato sprout that
-has grown in a dark cellar. The Indians liked the wood for fish net
-bows, though there appears to have been no very good reason why they
-preferred it to other woods of the region. Its most extensive use at
-present is as fuel, but it is not particularly sought after. The tree's
-future is not promising. Under domestication it does not take on its
-fantastic, moldy, moss-grown form, and its forest growth will never be
-encouraged by lumbermen.
-
-DWARF MAPLE (_Acer glabrum_) is one of the smallest of the maples, but
-in a north and south direction its range is equal to that of any other.
-Its southern limit is among the canyons of Arizona, and its northern on
-the coast of Alaska within six or seven degrees of the Arctic circle. It
-extends to Nebraska, and is found east of the continental divide far
-north in British America. It reaches its largest size on Vancouver
-island and on the Blue mountains in Oregon. It here is large enough to
-make small sawlogs, but it is usually shrubby in other parts of its
-range. It grows from sea level in Alaska to 9,000 feet altitude among
-the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Two forms of leaf occur. One
-is three-lobed; the other is a compound leaf, the lobes having formed
-separate leaves. The bright upper surface of the leaf gives the species
-its botanical name. The seeds have large, wide wings. It cannot be
-ascertained that the wood of this maple has ever been used for anything.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BOX ELDER
-
-[Illustration: BOX ELDER]
-
-
-
-
-BOX ELDER
-
-(_Acer Negundo_)
-
-
-Attempts to ascertain the meaning of the word _negundo_ which botanists
-apply to this species have not been crowned with entire success. It is
-known to be a word in the Malayalam language of the Malabar coast of
-India, and is there applied to a tree, apparently referring to a
-peculiar form of leaf. The name was transferred to the box elder by
-Moench, and has been generally adopted by botanists, although at least
-seven other scientific names have been given the tree. It bears ten or
-more English names in different regions. Among these names are
-ash-leaved maple, known from Massachusetts to Montana and Texas;
-cut-leaved maple in Colorado; three-leaved maple in Pennsylvania; black
-ash in Tennessee; stinking ash in South Carolina; sugar ash in Florida;
-water ash in the Dakotas; and box elder wherever it grows.
-
-The tree's geographical range does not fall much short of 3,000,000
-square miles, and is equalled by few species of this country. It extends
-from New England across Canada to Alberta, thence to Arizona, and
-includes practically all the United States east and south of those
-lines. It thrives in hot and cold climates, and high and low elevations;
-in regions of much rain, and in those with little. That fact has been
-turned to account by tree planters, particularly in the years when the
-western plains were being settled by homesteaders. The box elder was the
-chief tree on many a timber claim where the letter of the law rather
-than the spirit was carried out. It afforded the earliest protection
-against scorching summer sun and the keen winds of winter about many a
-frontiersman's cabin on the plains. It was the earliest street tree in
-many western towns. The people planted it because they knew it would
-grow, and they were not so sure of a good many other trees. Green ash
-was often its companion in pioneer plantings on the plains. Many towns
-which set box elders along the streets when they did not know of
-anything better, still have the trees, though they would willingly
-exchange them for something else. They are not ideal street and park
-trees; do not produce shapely trunks and crowns; and drop leaves all
-summer and seeds all winter. The tree is reputed to be short lived, yet
-some of those planted a generation or two ago show no symptoms of
-decline.
-
-There is no good reason why this tree should be called an elder, or an
-ash, except that its leaves are compound. If that is a reason, it might
-be called a hickory or a walnut, since they bear compound leaves. It is
-clearly a maple. Its fruit shows it to be so, and Indians of the far
-Northwest who had no other maple, formerly manufactured sugar from this
-tree, collecting the sap in wood or bark troughs and boiling it with hot
-stones.
-
-The compound leaf does not necessarily take it out of the maple group.
-It requires no great exercise of imagination to understand how a lobed
-leaf, by deepening the sinuses between the lobes, might become a
-compound leaf in the process of evolution. There may be no visible
-evidence that the box elder's leaf reached its present form by that
-process, but there is another maple which is at the present time
-developing a compound leaf in that way, or seems to be doing so. It is
-the dwarf maple (_Acer glabrum_) of the Northwest coast. Lobed leaves
-and compound leaves may occur on the same tree.
-
-The seeds of box elder resemble those of other maples. They ripen in the
-fall, and are blown off by wind, few at a time, during several months.
-The trees are from fifty to seventy feet high, and from one and a half
-to three feet in diameter. The trunk is apt to divide near the ground in
-several large branches, and is not of good form for sawlogs, being often
-crooked as well as short. The small branches, particularly those less
-than a year old, are usually nearly as green as the leaves. This fact
-may assist in identifying the tree when the leaves are off. The bark
-bears more resemblance to ash and basswood than to maple.
-
-The wood is lightest of the maples. It weighs less than twenty-seven
-pounds to the cubic foot; has less than half the strength and about
-forty per cent of the stiffness of sugar maple; and is much inferior to
-it in most mechanical properties. It is equal, if not superior to most
-maples in whiteness. The pores are small, numerous, and scattered
-through all parts of the growth ring, as is characteristic of maple
-wood. The tree grows rapidly. The summerwood is a thin, dark line,
-separating one annual ring from another. The medullary rays are many and
-obscure, but when wood is sawed or split along a radial line, they are
-easily seen, and show the true maple luster.
-
-The uses of box elder are similar to those of soft maple. The wood is
-seldom reported under its own name. In fact, an examination of
-wood-using reports of various states, shows that in only two states,
-Michigan and Texas, has box elder been listed separately. Its uses in
-the former state were for boxes, crates, flooring, handles, woodenware,
-and interior finish, while in Texas it was made into furniture. The tree
-is of commercial size in at least thirty states, and is cut and marketed
-in all of them. Tests of the wood for pulp are said to be satisfactory,
-and it finds its way in rather large amounts to cooper shops where it is
-made into slack barrels. It is cut as acid wood along with other maples,
-beech, and birch, and is converted into charcoal and other products of
-distillation.
-
-It may be expected that box elder will exist in the United States as
-long as any other forest tree remains. It is willing to be crowded off
-good land into low places, which are almost swamps, and there it grows
-free from disturbance; but if given the opportunity it will appropriate
-the most fertile soil within reach of it; and by scattering seeds during
-four or five months of the year, it manages to do much effective
-planting.
-
-    CALIFORNIA BOX ELDER (_Acer negundo californicum_) is a variety of
-    box elder, and not a separate species. As the name implies, it is a
-    California tree, and it occurs in the valleys and among the Coast
-    Range mountains from the lower Sacramento valley to the western
-    slopes of the San Bernardino mountains. The tree is from twenty to
-    fifty feet high and from ten to thirty inches in diameter. The
-    leaves and young twigs are hairy, in that respect differing from the
-    eastern box elder. The seeds are scattered during winter. The wood
-    is very pale lemon-yellow or creamy-white, the heart and sapwood
-    hardly distinguishable. The wood is soft and brittle, but is suited
-    to the same purposes as the eastern box elder. No reports of its
-    uses appear to have been made. It is found on the borders of streams
-    and in the bottoms of moist canyons. It is believed to be a
-    short-lived tree.
-
-    STRIPED MAPLE (_Acer pennsylvanicum_) is usually thirty or forty
-    feet high, and eight or ten inches in diameter. Its range extends
-    from Quebec to northern Georgia, westward to Minnesota, and is of
-    largest size on the slopes of Big Smoky mountains of Tennessee, and
-    the Blue Ridge in North and South Carolina. It grows best in shade,
-    but maintains itself in open ground; is generally shrubby in the
-    northern part of its range. The name refers to the bark. The stripes
-    are longitudinal and are caused by the parting of the outer bark and
-    the exposure to view of the lighter colored inner layers. The bark
-    of small trees is greenish, but later in life the color is darker,
-    and the stripes largely disappear. Among its names are moosewood, so
-    called because it is good browse for moose and other deer; goosefoot
-    maple, a reference to the form of the leaf; whistlewood, an allusion
-    to the ease with which the bark slips from young branches in spring
-    when boys with jack-knives are on the search for whistle material.
-    The names mountain alder and striped dogwood are based on
-    misunderstanding of the tree's family relations.
-
-    The young leaves are rose colored when they unfold, and when full
-    grown are six inches wide. The wood is light and soft, and light
-    brown in color, the thick sapwood lighter. The wood is liable to
-    contain small brown pith flecks, which in longitudinal sections
-    appear as brown streaks an inch or less in length and as thick as a
-    pin, and in cross section they are brown dots. They are not natural
-    to the wood but are caused by the larvæ of certain moths which
-    burrow into the cambium layer, or soft inner bark, and excavate
-    narrow galleries up and down the trunk. The galleries afterwards
-    fill with dark material. The insects sometimes attack other maples,
-    the birches, service, and other trees. The wood of striped maple is
-    little used, because of the small size of the trees. The species is
-    planted for ornament in this country and Europe.
-
-    BLACK MAPLE (_Acer nigrum_) has been by some considered a variety of
-    sugar or hard maple, and by others a separate species. It is as
-    large as the sugar maple and its range is much the same, but it is
-    more abundant in the western part of its range than in the East. The
-    name refers to the color of the bark of old trunks. If the name had
-    considered the bark of young twigs it would have been yellow or
-    orange maple, because the twigs are of that color. In summer the
-    peculiar drooping posture of the leaves calls attention to this
-    tree. However, the bark, twigs, and leaves combined are not
-    sufficient to set it apart, in the eyes of most people, for it
-    generally passes without question as sugar maple, even when it
-    stands side by side with that tree. It yields sugar abundantly. The
-    wood is a little heavier than that of sugar maple, but the
-    difference cannot be noticed except when the two woods are weighed.
-    Their uses are the same. No maker of furniture, flooring, or finish
-    ever protests against black maple. The tree generally prefers lower
-    and damper ground than sugar maple, and is often found along
-    streams.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SERVICEBERRY
-
-[Illustration: SERVICEBERRY]
-
-
-
-
-SERVICEBERRY
-
-(_Amelanchier Canadensis_)
-
-
-This tree will never be other than a minor species in the United States,
-but it is not a worthless member of the forest. It belongs to the rose
-family, and therefore is near akin to the haws, thorns, and crabapples.
-The genus is found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as in the United
-States. Two tree species occur in this country, or, according to some
-botanists, three, one west of the Rocky Mountains, two east.
-
-The serviceberry has a number of names: June berry, service-tree, May
-cherry, Indian cherry, wild Indian pear, currant tree, shadberry,
-savice, and sarvice. The northern limit of its range is in Newfoundland,
-the southern in Florida. It grows westward to Minnesota and Arkansas;
-but it is not plentiful except in certain restricted localities. It is
-most abundant among the ranges of the Appalachian mountains, and of its
-largest size toward the south. It is dispersed through forests
-generally, a tree or bush here and there; but it prefers the borders of
-forests, the brinks of cliffs, banks of streams, or some other open
-space where light is abundant. It prospers most in rich soil but does
-fairly well in ground thin and dry.
-
-The bloom, where it occurs, is a conspicuous feature of the landscape,
-though generally a tree on ten or twenty acres represents the density of
-its stand. The white, showy bloom comes early in spring, when most trees
-are yet bare of leaves. Occasionally, however, the serviceberry is more
-abundant, and the rows and clumps of blooming trees along creek banks or
-about the margins of glades or other openings in the forests, look like
-distant snowdrifts.
-
-The fruit is a berry a half inch or less in diameter, bright red when
-fully grown in early summer, and changing to purple when ripe. The seeds
-are brown and very small, and each berry contains from five to ten. When
-circumstances are favorable, the tree is a prolific bearer, the slender
-branches bending beneath the weight. The tree need not reach any
-particular size before beginning to bear. On some of the severely burned
-summits of the Alleghany mountains in West Virginia, 4,000 feet or more
-above sea level, this tree, when only two or three feet high, bears
-abundantly. Such trees are probably sprouts from roots of older trunks
-destroyed by fire. At its best, it reaches a height of forty or fifty
-feet and a diameter of one or possibly two feet. Trunks of largest size
-occur among the southern Appalachian ranges.
-
-The wood is heavy and very hard and strong. It is liable to check and
-warp in seasoning, is satiny, and is susceptible of a good polish.
-Medullary rays are very numerous, but obscure; color, dark brown, often
-tinged with red. The wood is stronger, stiffer and heavier than white
-oak. It possesses most of the properties to make it a wood of great
-value, but its scarcity, and the usual small size of the trees, relegate
-it to the class of minor woods. Some use is made of it in turnery and
-for other small articles. It is frequently planted in gardens for its
-bloom and berries. In such situations it lacks some of the charm which
-it holds as part and parcel of the wildwoods where its early spring
-bloom is thrown against a background of leafless branches.
-
-WESTERN SERVICEBERRY (_Amelanchier alnifolia_) is also called
-pigeonberry and sarvice. Its botanical name refers to the resemblance of
-its leaves to those of alder. Its range covers a million square miles,
-and the species reaches its best development on islands and rich bottom
-lands of the lower Columbia river. It is found as far south as
-California, north to Yukon territory, east to Lake Superior and northern
-Michigan. It is nowhere a tree of attractive size, and is usually a
-shrub about ten feet tall and one inch thick. Trees are sometimes thirty
-feet high and six or eight inches in diameter. The fruit is blue-black
-and sweet, and pleasant to the taste if not overripe. Indians in the
-northern and western range of this tree gather the berries industriously
-while they last, and many of the white settlers do likewise. The birds
-flock to the thickets for their share, and though the berries are small,
-the bears in the region consider them worthy of prompt and continued
-attention. The berries are generally a little more than half an inch in
-diameter, and ripen in July or August, depending on latitude. Cattle,
-sheep, goats, and deer find this small tree or bush a source of food.
-They do not object to eating the berries when obtainable, but their
-principal attack is on the leaves and tender shoots which afford
-excellent browse. Fortunately, the serviceberry is so tenacious of life
-that it is next to impossible to browse it to death. If eaten down to
-the ground, with little left but bare and barked trunks sticking up like
-bean poles, the roots will throw up sprouts year after year, making the
-service thicket a permanent browse-pasture. Fire is not able to destroy
-such a thicket, for, when the tops are burned off, the sprouts will
-quickly spring up with vigor unimpaired. As a source of food for
-insects, birds, beasts, and men, few trees, in proportion to size and
-quantity, are the equal of western serviceberry. Flowers, fruit, leaves
-and sprouts are all food for something.
-
-LONGLEAF SERVICE TREE (_Amelanchier obovalis_) is by some regarded a
-variety rather than a species. It occupies in part the same range as
-serviceberry, but runs much farther north, reaching the valley of
-Mackenzie river in latitude 65. It is found in North Carolina and
-Alabama, but it is only a shrub in the extreme southern part of its
-range. The fruit ripens in early summer and is reddish purple. Trees are
-seldom more than thirty feet high and eight inches in diameter. A
-variety with large fruit is occasionally planted as an ornamental tree.
-Unless the crop of serviceberries is unusually plentiful in a locality,
-the most of it is eaten by birds which temporarily abandon nearly all
-other sources of food and give their undivided attention to the
-perishable harvest which must be garnered in at once or it will be lost.
-
-NARROWLEAF CRAB (_Malus angustifolia_) is one of the wild crabapples of
-the United States. They are of the genus _Malus_ and the thousands of
-varieties of cultivated apples are derived from them, or from other
-species found in the old world which are very similar. They belong to
-the rose family. The narrowleaf crab is found from Pennsylvania to
-Florida and westward to Tennessee and Louisiana. It thrives best in open
-spaces in the forest and is often found in glades and along the banks of
-streams in the North, while in the South it occurs in depressions in the
-pine barrens. The flowers are much like those of apple, very fragrant,
-and in color are white, pink, or rose. When in full bloom, the tree is a
-beautiful object, and its odor is carried long distances. The fruit is
-an apple in all respects except size and taste. It is somewhat
-flattened, and is an inch or less across. It is fragrant when fully
-ripe, and many a person has been led by appearances to taste, only to
-meet disappointment. The flesh is hard and sour, and unfit for food in
-its natural state, but by cooking and artificial sweetening, it is made
-into preserves. The tree reaches a height of twenty or thirty feet and a
-diameter of eight or ten inches. It is smaller than the sweet crab. The
-wood is hard, heavy, light brown, tinged with red, with thick yellow
-sapwood. It is not put to many uses, but is occasionally made into small
-handles, and levers. It has been much used as stock on which to graft
-apples. Farmers who wanted orchards formerly dug up small crabapples in
-the surrounding woods and fields, planted them in an orchard, and when
-securely rooted, the apples of desired kinds were grafted on. If
-successful, the apple finally replaced the crab by spreading its own
-bark and wood over the entire trunk, until no part of the original stock
-remained visible. The sweet crab was also employed as a stock on which
-to graft apples.
-
-SWEET CRAB (_Malus coronaria_) is the wild crab of the northeastern
-states, although it intrudes on the region to the southwest to a limited
-extent. It finds use in ornamental planting in the region of best
-growth. It is known as American crab, sweet scented crab, crab apple,
-wild crab, crab, American crab apple, and fragrant crab. Its range
-extends from the shores of Lake Erie in Canada, south through New York
-and Pennsylvania, along the Alleghany mountains to Alabama; west to
-Minnesota, eastern Nebraska, Kansas, Louisiana, and eastern Texas. It
-needs moist soil for good growth and the best types are found in the
-lower Ohio basin. In height this tree rarely exceeds thirty feet and it
-is bushy, having short rigid limbs. The leaves are rounded and sharply
-toothed, the blossoms generally white and very fragrant; the fruit
-small, dry, yellow, tinged with red. The wood is heavy, not strong,
-heart light red, sapwood yellow. It is used for tool handles, small
-turned articles, and for carving and engraving.
-
-OREGON CRABAPPLE (_Malus rivularis_) grows wild from the Aleutian
-Islands, Alaska, southward to central California, and is of largest size
-in Washington and Oregon where trees are occasionally forty feet high
-and eighteen inches in diameter, but they are generally about ten feet
-high and form dense thickets. The fruit is oblong, ripens late in
-autumn, is greenish, or reddish, or clear lemon yellow in color, and
-rather pleasant to the taste. The tree grows slowly, the wood is hard,
-and light reddish-brown in color, and is suitable for tool handles.
-
-IOWA CRAB (_Malus ioensis_) grows from Minnesota to Texas and is the
-common crabapple of the Mississippi basin. Large trees are twenty-five
-feet high and a foot in diameter. It is believed that this tree crosses
-with the common apple, and produces a variety known as the soulard apple
-(_Malus soulardi_). Wild apple (_Malus malus_) is a European species
-introduced into this country and now running wild.
-
-    MOUNTAIN ASH (_Pyrus americana_) is closely related to the crabs. It
-    occurs from Newfoundland to Manitoba, and southward along the
-    mountains to North Carolina. Trees have compound leaves, red berries
-    the size of small cherries, and reach a height of thirty feet and a
-    diameter of a foot or more. There are several forms or varieties,
-    among them the small fruit mountain ash (_Pyrus americana
-    microcarpa_) of the Alleghany mountains.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED HAW
-
-[Illustration: RED HAW]
-
-
-
-
-RED HAW
-
-(_Cratægus Coccinea_)
-
-
-This tree belongs to the rose family, and the genus _Cratægus_ consists
-of a large group of small, thorny trees, scattered through many parts of
-the world. They are known by their thorns, but comparatively few of them
-are known by name to the ordinary observer, and they afford a perpetual
-source of study, victory, and bewilderment to the trained botanist. "No
-other group of American trees," says Sudworth, "presents such almost
-insurmountable difficulties in point of distinctive characters. It is
-impossible, and fortunately unnecessary, for the practical forester to
-know them all, and exceedingly difficult even for the specialist." More
-than one hundred species of these thorn trees occur in the United
-States, exclusive of shrubs. Their bloom resembles that of apple and
-pear trees. Bees and insects swarm round the flowering trees, assisting
-in cross fertilization. The various species are aggressive. They force
-their way into vacant spaces, and their thorns protect them against
-browsing animals. The wood is sappy and heavy, and for most of the
-species it is valueless. The growing brambles, however, perform an
-important service in forest economy. Seeds of various valuable trees are
-blown by wind or carried by birds and mammals into the thickets where
-they germinate and get a start under the protecting shelter of the
-thorns. Finally the seedlings overtop the brambles, gain the mastery,
-shade the thorns to death, and develop valuable forests. The thorn trees
-shed their leaves annually. Their seeds are slow to germinate, some not
-sprouting until the second year. The fruit is worthless for human
-consumption, but some of it has a tart and not unpleasant taste. It is
-of many colors and sizes, depending on species.
-
-No attempt is here made to name or to list the species. Such a list
-would, for most people, be a dull catalogue of names, and many of them
-in Latin because there are no English equivalents. A few representative
-species are given. The red haw, though not the most abundant, is widely
-distributed, and is probably as well known as any. Its range extends
-from Newfoundland westward through southern Canada to the eastern base
-of the Rocky Mountains, thence south to Texas and Florida. It covers
-one-half of the United States. In the northern part of its range the red
-haw is confined to the slopes of low hills and along water courses, but
-south in the Appalachian mountains it grows at an elevation of several
-thousand feet.
-
-It has various names in different regions. It is called scarlet haw,
-red haw, white thorn, scarlet thorn, scarlet-fruited thorn, red thorn,
-thorn, thorn bush, thorn apple, and hedge thorn. The fact is worthy of
-note that it is well known and is clearly recognized in every region
-where it grows, though various names are given it.
-
-The red haw never reaches large size. In rare cases it may attain a
-height of thirty feet and a diameter of ten inches, but it is usually
-less than half that size. Where it grows in the open it develops a round
-crown. The branches are armed with chestnut-brown thorns from an inch to
-an inch and a half in length. The bright scarlet color of the fruit
-gives name to the tree. It ripens late in September or in October, and
-at that time the tree presents a beautiful appearance. The branches
-frequently remain laden with fruit after the leaves have fallen.
-
-The wood of red haw is of a high character and but for its scarcity
-would have wide commercial use. It is among the heavy woods of this
-country. A cubic foot of it, thoroughly seasoned, weighs 53.71 pounds.
-The tree is of slow growth and therefore the annual rings are narrow,
-and the wood is dense. The evenness and uniformity of the rings of
-yearly growth make the wood susceptible of a high polish. The medullary
-rays are very obscure in red haw, and for that reason the appearance of
-the wood is much the same, irrespective of the direction in which it is
-cut. In that respect it is similar to the wood of most members of the
-thorn family--usually being too small to be quarter-sawed. However, even
-if the trees were large enough, quarter-sawing would bring out little
-figure.
-
-Red haw is a lathe wood. It is well suited to some other purposes, and
-has been used for engraving blocks, small wedges, and rulers, but the
-best results come from the lathe. If it is thoroughly seasoned it is not
-liable to crack or check, though cut thin in such articles as goblets
-and napkin rings. The turner sometimes objects to the wood because of
-its hardness and the rapidity with which it dulls tools. This drawback,
-however, is compensated for by the smoothness and fine polish which may
-be given to the finished article. Red haw checker pieces have been
-compared with ebony for wearing quality. In color the ebony is more
-handsome, and on that account is generally preferred.
-
-Perhaps the most extensive use of red haw is in the manufacture of
-canes. Most of the species of thorn are suitable for that purpose on
-account of their weight, strength, and hardness. Red haw is not
-specially preferred, but is used with others. As a source of wood
-supply, the tree will never be important, but as an adornment to the
-landscape it will always be valuable, and at the same time will fill a
-minor place in the country's list of commercial woods.
-
-SUMMER HAW (_Cratægus æstivalis_) is a southern species which
-contributes more or less to the food supply of the people within its
-range. It is known also as May haw and apple haw. The flowers appear in
-February and March, are about one inch in diameter, and flushed with red
-toward the apex. The fruit ripens in May, is bright red, very fragrant,
-and is from half to three-fourths of an inch in diameter. The flesh is
-of a pleasant taste, and is gathered in large quantities by country
-people for making preserves and jelly. It is sold in town and city
-markets, particularly in New Orleans. The range of this thorn tree is
-from South Carolina and Florida, to Texas. It attains a height of twenty
-or thirty feet, and a diameter sometimes as great as eighteen inches. It
-reaches its largest size in Louisiana and Texas. It grows well on land
-which may be submerged several weeks in winter. The wood has not been
-reported for any use.
-
-COCKSPUR (_Cratægus crus-galli_) may be taken as the type of more than
-twenty species of cockspur thorns growing in this country. Its other
-names are red haw, Newcastle thorn, thorn apple, thorn bush, pin thorn,
-haw, and hawthorn. It grows southwestward from Canada to Texas, and
-extends into Florida. The largest trees are twenty-five feet high and a
-foot in diameter. The fruit is dull red, half inch in diameter, ripens
-in September and October, and hangs on the branches until late winter.
-Hogs eat the fruit when they can get it, and boys utilize the small
-apples as bullets for elder pop guns. The thorns are formidable slender
-spines from three to eight inches long, strong, and extremely sharp.
-They were formerly used as pins to close wool sacks in rural carding
-mills. The many species of cockspur thorns are multiplied by numerous
-varieties. Fence posts and fuel are cut from the best trunks.
-
-PEAR HAW (_Cratægus tomentosa_) is a representative of at least ten
-species. It is called pear haw without any very satisfactory reason,
-since the fruit bears little resemblance to pears. It is half an inch in
-diameter, dull orange red in color, and sweet to the taste, but it is of
-little value as food. The tree has been occasionally planted for
-ornament, but never for fruit. The flowers are showy. Trees at their
-best are fifteen or twenty feet high and five or six inches in diameter.
-They have few thorns and such as they have are small. The tree's range
-extends from New York to Missouri, and along the Appalachian mountains
-to northern Georgia, and west to Texas and Arkansas. It is known in
-different parts of its range as black thorn, red haw, pear thorn, white
-thorn, common thorn, hawthorn, thorn apple, and thorn plum.
-
-HOG HAW (_Cratægus brachyacantha_) is distinguished by its blue fruit.
-The name indicates that the fruit is unfit for human food but is eaten
-by swine. In some parts of Louisiana the dense thickets produce
-considerable quantities of forage for hogs. The range is not extensive,
-being confined to Louisiana and eastern Texas where the tree occurs in
-low, wet prairies. The largest specimens are forty or fifty feet high
-and eighteen inches in diameter. It is one of the largest of the thorns,
-and the best trunks are of size to make small, very short sawlogs, but
-it does not appear that the wood has ever been manufactured into
-commodities of any kind. The tree is occasionally planted for ornament.
-
-BLACK HAW (_Cratægus douglasii_) reaches its best development on the
-Pacific coast where trees occur thirty or more feet in height and a foot
-and a half in diameter. The principal range is west of the Rocky
-Mountains, from British Columbia to northern California, but it extends
-eastward to Wyoming, and the tree is found also in northern Michigan.
-The fruit is black or very dark purple, is edible, and matures in early
-autumn, falling soon after. The heartwood is brownish-red. No use for
-the wood has been found on the Pacific coast.
-
-WASHINGTON HAW (_Cratægus cordata_), also known as Washington thorn,
-Virginia thorn, heart-leaved thorn, and red haw, grows on banks of
-streams from the valley of the upper Potomac river southward through the
-Appalachian ranges to northern Georgia, and westward to Missouri and
-Arkansas. Flowers are rose-colored, the fruit ripens in the fall and
-hangs till late winter. Trees are twenty or thirty feet high, and a foot
-or less in diameter. Washington haw is frequently planted in this
-country and in Europe.
-
-ENGLISH HAWTHORN (_Cratægus oxyacantha_) was introduced into this
-country from Europe and has become naturalized in some of the eastern
-states. Thirty or more varieties are distinguished in cultivation. It is
-worthy of note that, although the United States has more than 130
-species of thorn trees of its own, with varieties so numerous that no
-one has yet named or counted all of them, a foreign thorn has been
-introduced and added to the number.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MAHOGANY
-
-[Illustration: MAHOGANY]
-
-
-
-
-MAHOGANY
-
-(_Swietenia Mahagoni_)
-
-
-This tree belongs to the family _Meliaceæ_ which has about forty genera,
-all of which are confined to the tropic except _Swietenia_ to which
-mahogany belongs. This tree has made its way up from southern latitudes
-and has secured a foothold in Florida where it is confined to the
-islands and the most southern part of the mainland.
-
-No attempt is here made to settle or even to take part in the disputes
-among dendrologists as to what mahogany is. There are said to be more
-than forty different trees which pass as mahogany in lumber markets.
-Various descriptions and keys have been published for the purpose of
-separating and identifying different woods which are bought and sold as
-mahogany. These woods grow on every continent except Europe; but those
-which pass as mahogany nearly all come from Africa or America. Some are
-well known, both as to origin and botany, while others are doubtful.
-Logs sometimes appear in markets and no one knows where they come from,
-or the species which produce them. It has been maintained that annual
-rings will separate true mahogany from the false--that the true has no
-annual rings. At the best, this evidence is only negative and is worth
-little, since many tropical trees show no annual rings, and yet are no
-kin to mahogany. Neither is it certain that true mahogany shows no
-yearly rings. Some trees do not, but others may. The ring, as is well
-known, is produced because the tree grows part of the year and rests
-part. In the tropics where growth is continuous, the ring may not exist,
-but it sometimes does exist, and thus upsets the theory. Besides, it
-proves little in the case of mahogany which has a range extending from
-south of the equator northward into the temperate zone, where there are
-seasonal changes. It also grows near sea level and at considerable
-altitudes, and elevation alone might make considerable variation in the
-character of the wood.
-
-The two most important mahoganies of commerce--leaving botany out of the
-question--grow in Africa and in America. The most important of the
-African mahoganies is _Khaya senegalensis_, and of the American is
-_Swietenia mahagoni_. It is the latter which extends its range into the
-United States, and it alone will be considered in these pages as true
-mahogany; the status of foreign woods which pass as mahogany will not be
-discussed.
-
-Leaves of the mahogany tree are three or four inches long, and an inch
-or more wide. They are compound, with from three to five pairs of
-leaflets. The tree is an evergreen and presents a fine appearance. The
-flowers appear in July and August, are small and cup-shaped. Fruit is
-four or five inches long and two or more wide. It ripens in late fall or
-early winter. The nearly square seeds are three-fourths of an inch long.
-In Florida the tree rarely exceeds fifty feet in height and two in
-diameter; but in tropical countries it may exceed a height of 100 and a
-diameter of eight or ten. The bark is thin.
-
-The wood is practically of the same weight as white oak, but is stronger
-and more elastic. It is exceedingly hard, very durable, and is
-susceptible of high polish. Medullary rays are numerous but small and
-obscure. The color is rich reddish-brown, turning darker with age, but
-the thin sapwood is yellow. It is known in Florida as mahogany, madeira,
-and redwood.
-
-The uses of mahogany are so many and so well-known that it is
-unnecessary to speak of them in detail. There were importations into the
-United States nearly three hundred years ago, and it has been coming
-ever since. One thing about this wood deserves mention: the price has
-not varied much in three hundred years. Different prices have prevailed,
-owing to distance from supply and differences in grade and quality; and
-that holds true today; but for similar grades, the prices have been
-remarkable for their evenness.
-
-Florida never figured largely in the world's supply of mahogany. At
-their best, the trees were neither large nor numerous, but their quality
-was good. Cutting of this timber ceased in Florida about three-quarters
-of a century ago. The islands and the small area of the mainland where
-the timber grew, were stripped. The logs were shipped to the Bahama
-islands and it is said they found their ultimate market in England. A
-few trees were overlooked here and there, and some that were small
-seventy-five years ago, have grown to merchantable size since. These
-have been cut, a few at a time, and the cutting is still going on. The
-total is now only a few thousand feet a year, and one of the markets for
-the logs, probably the chief market, is Miami, Florida. The logs are
-small, and are generally cut and brought in by negroes who find a tree
-now and then, cut the logs, and float them as near to market as
-possible, and haul them the rest of the way. The scarcity of the trees
-may be inferred from the fact that the average resident of south
-Florida, where the range of the mahogany lies, never saw one. In
-appearance the tree when seen at a little distance, resembles a young,
-vigorous black walnut tree.
-
-CHINA TREE (_Melia azedarach_) belongs to the same family as mahogany
-but is of a different genus. It is not native in the United States, but
-has been extensively planted and is running wild. It is a forest tree in
-some parts of Louisiana, but is found under pure forest conditions only
-here and there. As such, the trunk and thin crown look like a forest
-grown butternut tree in Wisconsin. It is abundant in yards and along
-streets, where it is often called Chinaball tree. A little of the wood
-is used. The color resembles mahogany, but the texture is much coarser.
-Annual rings are clearly marked by rows of large pores, and the wood
-does not polish well. It is sometimes known as pride of India, which
-country is its native home, or it was carried there from Persia at an
-early date. A variety, commonly known as the Texas Umbrella tree (_Melia
-azedarach umbraculifera_), has been widely planted, and is known by its
-short trunk and dense, round crown.
-
-SOAPBERRY (_Sapindus saponaria_), known also as false dogwood, is a
-species of south Florida, and is one of three soap trees in this
-country. It has no family kinship with mahogany, but the appearance of
-the trees leads some persons to conclude that they are related to the
-China tree. In fact, one of the species is locally known as wild China
-and Chinaberry. They are called soap trees because their fruit has a
-property which causes water to foam, and the natives of the West Indies
-once used it for soap. The botanical name _Sapindus_ means "Indian
-soap." The tree is twenty-five or thirty feet high, and ten or twelve
-inches in diameter. The bloom appears in November in Florida, and the
-fruit ripens the following spring. The wood is heavy, rather hard, and
-is light brown, tinged with yellow. It reaches largest size on the
-Thousand Islands, Florida. Another species is _Sapindus marginatus_
-which attains size similar to that of the first. It is found in southern
-Florida, but is not abundant. It grows as far north as the mouth of the
-St. John river. A third species is _Sapindus drummondi_ which has its
-range from western Louisiana, Arkansas, and southern Kansas, through
-Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, to Mexico. The flowers appear in May and
-June, and the fruit ripens in September and October, but it hangs on the
-trees until the following spring. When first ripe, it is half an inch in
-diameter, and yellow, but when it dries it turns black. Trees attain
-diameters up to two feet, and heights of forty or fifty. It is commonly
-supposed to be the Chinaberry, by persons who judge by general
-appearances, but the two are not related. The wood's appearance suggests
-the heartwood of ash. It probably reaches its best development in Texas
-where it is manufactured into boxes, crates, and even furniture, but not
-in large amounts. It is reputed to be a rapid grower, and it may be
-under the most favorable circumstances, but it is usually of rather slow
-growth. The wood splits readily into thin strips which are employed in
-making baskets for harvesting cotton. In western Texas it is made into
-pack saddle frames.
-
-    MOUNTAIN MAHOGANY (_Cercocarpus ledifolius_) is not a mahogany, and
-    is not even in the same family. It belongs to the rose family, and
-    is closely related to the crabapple; but since it is commonly known
-    as mahogany, it is proper to mention it here. Extensive
-    consideration is unnecessary, for the tree is not important as a
-    source of wood. Three species are recognized by some botanists, four
-    by others. All are western, and are noted for their long-tailed
-    fruit. The generic name refers to that feature. The seed, with its
-    tail, is carried by the wind, or it catches in the wool of sheep and
-    the hair of cattle and goats, or the feathers of birds, and is
-    carried far and near. The mountain mahogany sometimes is thirty feet
-    high, and two in diameter. It grows from 5,000 to 9,000 feet
-    elevation, sometimes on steep cliffs. Its range extends from Wyoming
-    and Montana to Oregon, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. The wood
-    is bright, clear red, or rich dark brown. It reaches its largest
-    size on the mountains of central Nevada. Another species is known as
-    valley mahogany (_Cercocarpus parvifolius_). It ranges from Nebraska
-    to Oregon, and Texas to California. Its rate of growth is very slow,
-    and it seldom exceeds a height of thirty feet and a diameter of ten
-    inches. The wood is reddish-brown. A third species, called Trask
-    mahogany (_Cercocarpus traskiæ_) is chiefly notable on account of
-    its restricted range. It occurs as far as known, in a single canyon
-    of Santa Catalina island, off the southern coast of California. Some
-    of the specimens are twenty feet high and six inches in diameter. A
-    fourth species, or a variety, is known as short-flower mahogany
-    (_Cercocarpus parvifolius breviflorus_). It occurs in western Texas,
-    southern New Mexico and Arizona, usually at elevations about 5,000
-    feet above sea level where the largest trees are not more than eight
-    inches in diameter and twenty-five feet high.
-
-    VAUQUELINIA (_Vauquelinia californica_) belongs to the same family
-    as the so-called western mahoganies, that is, the rose family; but
-    it is of a different genus. Its range is largely south of the
-    international boundary, but it extends into southern Arizona where
-    the best development of the species occurs about 5,000 feet above
-    the sea on grassy slopes. It is seldom more than a bush, and the
-    wood is very heavy and hard, and is dark-brown, streaked with red.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK WILLOW
-
-[Illustration: BLACK WILLOW]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK WILLOW
-
-(_Salix Nigra_)
-
-
-The willows and the cottonwoods belong to the same family of trees,
-_Salicaceæ_, and the family is fairly numerous, and it has some
-well-defined traits of character. The quinine-bitter of the bark is ever
-present, but more marked in willows than in cottonwoods. Though quite
-unpleasant to the taste, it is harmless. The leaves never grow in pairs,
-and in most instances they fall early in autumn, and some without
-changing color. Male and female flowers are borne on different trees,
-and fertilizing is done by insects, often by honey bees and bumblebees.
-Fruit ripens in late spring, and the seeds are equipped for flight by
-being provided with exceedingly fine silky hairs. The wind carries them
-long distances. The trees generally grow in the immediate vicinity of
-streams or in situations where the soil is damp, but there are
-exceptions.
-
-The willow family consists of two genera, one the cottonwoods or
-poplars, the other the willows proper. There are about seventy-five
-species of willow in America, twenty of them trees. Some, however, are
-quite small and only occasionally attain sizes which place them in the
-tree class. The willows are old residents of this continent. They grew
-in the central portion of what is now the United States in the
-Cretaceous age, as is proved by their leaf prints in the rocks. They
-have held their ground ever since, and there is no likelihood that they
-are about to give it up. Few species are better fitted for holding what
-they have. A few trees are capable of seeding a large region in a few
-years, and if soil and situation are suitable, reproduction will be
-abundant. The willows' tenacity of life is often remarkable. It
-sometimes seems next to impossible to kill them by cutting off their
-tops. There are said to be instances in Europe where willows have been
-pollarded successively during hundreds of years, the crops of sprouts
-being used for wickerwork and other purposes. No such records exist in
-this country, but the willow's sprouting habit is well known. A shoot
-stuck in the ground will grow, and a fence post will sprout. Many
-willows develop large stools, or roots, and repeatedly send up numerous
-sprouts, and it makes little difference how often they are cut, others
-will come up.
-
-Comparatively few willows that start in life ever become trees. They are
-suppressed by crowding, or meet misfortunes of one kind or another which
-keep them small, but occasionally a tree of good size results. Willow
-trees are usually not old. Probably few reach an age exceeding 150
-years. Large trunks, in old age, are apt to be hollow or otherwise
-defective, though a willow tree will live many years after much of its
-trunk has disappeared. A little green bark on the side, and sprouts from
-the stump will maintain life long after all usefulness has ceased.
-
-Young willows are usually pliant and tough, old are stiff and brash.
-They range from sea level up to 10,000 feet or more; grow profusely in
-the wet lands about the gulf of Mexico, and likewise on the bleak coasts
-of the Arctic ocean. Commander Peary found willows blooming in
-considerable profusion on the extreme northern shore of Greenland, where
-they produce enough growth during the few weeks of summer sunshine to
-afford the muskox the means of eking out a living during his sojourn in
-those inhospitable regions.
-
-The identification of willows is one of the most difficult tasks that
-fall to the botanists. Black willow is unquestionably the most important
-willow in this country from the lumberman's standpoint. It is the common
-tree willow that attains size suitable for sawlogs. If a forest grown
-willow of large size is encountered east of the Rocky Mountains in the
-United States, it is pretty safe to class it as black willow. There are
-some others which grow large, but not many. Planted willows, both large
-and small, may be foreign species, and white willows, which are not
-native in this country, but have been widely planted, and are running
-wild, may be occasionally found of ample size for saw timber.
-
-Black willow's range extends from New Brunswick to Florida, west to the
-Dakotas, and south to Texas, thence passing into Mexico, New Mexico,
-Arizona, and California. It attains its best size in the Ohio and
-Mississippi valleys, though large trees are found in other parts of its
-range. It is difficult to say what its average size is, for some black
-willows are only a few feet high and an inch or two in diameter. The
-largest trees exceed 100 feet in height and three in diameter. An
-extreme size of seven feet in diameter has been reported. It is not
-unusual to see willow logs three feet in diameter in mill yards in
-Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, and logs four feet in diameter are
-not so unusual as to excite much comment. The average sizes, however, of
-willow sawlogs in that region are from eighteen inches to two feet.
-
-The wood of black willow is pale reddish-brown. When freshly cut it is
-sometimes purple, almost black. When sawed in lumber and exposed to the
-air the dark color fades. The wood is soft but firm. It has about fifty
-per cent of the strength of white oak, and forty per cent of its
-stiffness. It weighs 27.77 pounds per cubic foot; and considering its
-weight, it is tolerably strong and stiff.
-
-Probably no other wood in the United States is as systematically cheated
-out of its just credit as this one. Many of the oaks are seldom given
-their proper names, but they are listed as oak in sawmill output, and
-thus the genus, if not the species is given credit. But willow is almost
-totally ignored. The United States census in 1910 credited to all the
-willow lumber in this country an amount less than a million and a half
-feet; yet a single mill in Louisiana, and not a large mill at that, cut
-and sold four times that much during that year. The wood was cut by
-hundreds of other mills, some a few logs only, others considerable
-quantities.
-
-It is sold for various purposes, and much of it goes as cottonwood. In
-some instances it is called brown cottonwood. Probably ninety per cent
-is made into boxes, but it has many other uses. It is cut into
-excelsior, made into rotary cut veneer, and finds place in the
-manufacture of furniture; it is a common woodenware material; slack
-coopers make barrels of it; and it is turned for baseball bats.
-
-The supply of black willow in this country is not small. It is usually
-found in wet situations along streams. Sometimes islands and low flats
-are taken possession of and pure stands result. The growth is sometimes
-phenomenal. Trunks may add nearly or quite an inch to their diameter per
-year when conditions are exceptionally favorable. Instances, apparently
-well authenticated, are reported of abandoned fields along the
-Mississippi, which in sixty years grew 100,000 feet of willow per acre.
-
-    LONGSTALK WILLOW (_Salix longipes_) sometimes grows to a height of
-    thirty feet with a diameter of six or eight inches. Its range
-    extends from Maryland to Texas, and is at its best in the Ozark
-    region of southwestern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas.
-
-    ALMONDLEAF WILLOW (_Salix amygdaloides_) grows across northern
-    United States and southern Canada from New York to Oregon, and
-    occurs as far south as Missouri and Ohio, and is abundant in the
-    lower Ohio valley. At its best it is seventy feet high and two feet
-    in diameter. The wood is light, soft, and the heartwood is brown.
-
-    SMOOTHLEAF WILLOW (_Salix lævigata_) attains a diameter of one foot
-    and a height of forty or fifty. It is a Pacific coast tree,
-    occurring in California on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevadas
-    up to an altitude of 3,000 feet. It is known as black willow. The
-    wood is pale reddish-brown.
-
-    SILVERLEAF WILLOW (_Salix sessilifolia_) looks like longleaf willow,
-    and though usually a shrub it sometimes is twenty-five feet high and
-    ten inches in diameter. It grows from the mouth of the Columbia
-    river to southern California.
-
-    YEWLEAF WILLOW (_Salix taxifolia_) ranges from western Texas,
-    through southern Arizona into Mexico and Central America. Trees are
-    occasionally forty feet high and more than one foot in diameter. A
-    little fuel and fence posts are cut from this willow.
-
-    BEBB WILLOW (_Salix bebbiana_) is nearly always shrubby, but
-    occasionally reaches a trunk diameter of six or eight inches and a
-    height of twenty feet. Its northern limit lies within the Arctic
-    circle, its southern in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Arizona. West of
-    Hudson bay it forms almost impenetrable thickets, and in Colorado it
-    ascends mountains to elevations of 10,000 feet.
-
-    GLAUCOUS WILLOW (_Salix discolor_), commonly known as silver or
-    pussy willow, ranges from Nova Scotia to Manitoba, and southward to
-    Delaware, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. It is one
-    of the best known willows within its range, on account of its
-    flowers which are among the earliest of the season, and very showy.
-    The largest specimens are scarcely twenty-five feet high and twelve
-    inches in diameter.
-
-    MACKENZIE WILLOW (_Salix cordata mackenzieana_) is not abundant, and
-    is one of the smallest of the tree willows. It is nearly always a
-    shrub. Its range extends from California nearly to the Arctic
-    circle, where it occurs in gravelly soil on the borders of mountain
-    streams.
-
-    MISSOURI WILLOW (_Salix missouriensis_) is so named because it
-    occurs principally in Missouri, but its range extends into Kansas
-    and Iowa. It is occasionally forty feet high and a foot in diameter.
-    It is used for fence posts.
-
-    BIGELOW WILLOW (_Salix lasiolepis_) is generally called white willow
-    on account of its gray bark. It occurs in California and Arizona,
-    and at its best it is twenty-five feet high and ten inches in
-    diameter. Some use is made of it as fuel, where other wood is
-    scarce.
-
-    NUTTALL WILLOW (_Salix nuttallii_), called also mountain willow in
-    Montana, ranges from British America, east of the Rocky Mountains,
-    to southern California. Its usual height is twenty or twenty-five
-    feet, and its diameter six or eight inches. In southern California
-    it grows 10,000 feet above sea level.
-
-    HOOKER WILLOW (_Salix hookeriana_) occurs in the coast region from
-    Vancouver island to southern Oregon, and varies in height from a
-    sprawling shrub to a height of thirty feet and a diameter of one.
-    Little use is made of it.
-
-    SILKY WILLOW (_Salix sitchensis_), known also as Sitka willow,
-    ranges from Alaska to southern California. The largest specimens are
-    twenty-five feet high and ten inches in diameter. Trunks are largely
-    sapwood and are of little commercial importance.
-
-    BROADLEAF WILLOW (_Salix amplifolia_), known also as feltleaf
-    willow, was discovered in Alaska in 1899. The leaves are woolly. The
-    largest trees rarely exceed a height of thirty feet and a diameter
-    of six inches. Its range extends to the valley of the Mackenzie
-    river.
-
-    A number of foreign willows have become naturalized in the United
-    States. Among them is white willow (_Salix alba_), which grows to
-    large size, probably as large as black willow; crack willow (_Salix
-    fragilis_), so named on account of the brittleness of its twigs; and
-    weeping willow (_Salix babylonica_). The botanical name is based on
-    the supposition that it was this willow, growing by the rivers near
-    Babylon, on which the captive Hebrews hung their harps. Basket
-    willow is planted for its osiers in several eastern states. It is
-    not a single species, but a group of varieties developed by
-    cultivation.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-HARDY CATALPA
-
-[Illustration: HARDY CATALPA]
-
-
-
-
-HARDY CATALPA
-
-(_Catalpa Speciosa_)
-
-
-This tree belongs to the family _Bignoniaceæ_ which has its name from
-Abbé Bignon, librarian of Louis XV. About one hundred genera belong to
-this family, only three of which reach the size of trees in the United
-States. These include the catalpas, the desert willow, and the black
-calabash tree.
-
-Seven species of catalpa are known, two of them occurring in the United
-States. Others are found in China and the West Indies. The name is an
-Indian word and was first heard among the tribes of the Carolinas. It
-seems probable that the name catalpa as applied to a tree and catawba,
-applied to a grape, have the same origin, and in some way refer to the
-Catawba Indians, a small tribe--said to be Sioux--that lived two hundred
-years ago in the western part of the Carolinas and neighboring regions
-where one of the catalpa species was first heard of by Europeans. The
-tree in that region is still often called catawba.
-
-The two catalpas of this country are known to botanists as _Catalpa
-speciosa_ and _Catalpa catalpa_. Much confusion has resulted from
-attempts to distinguish one from the other. Botanists are able to clear
-the matter up among themselves, but the general public has not been so
-successful. John P. Brown, of Connersville, Indiana, specialized on
-catalpas during many years, and published numerous tracts, pamphlets,
-and books for the purpose of educating the public to the point where the
-differences between common catalpa and hardy catalpa could be
-distinguished. His labor was likewise directed toward inducing land
-owners to plant catalpa for commercial purposes. Due to his efforts, and
-otherwise, catalpa was for a time the most advertised plantation tree in
-this country. Some supposed that hardy catalpa was the wood which was to
-save the country from a threatened timber famine. Claims made for it
-were wide and far reaching.
-
-The judgment of history has been--if it may be classed as a matter of
-history--that the tree fell short of expectation. This does not imply an
-inferiority of the wood itself, or a slower rate of growth than was
-claimed for it; but exceptional cases were interpreted as averages, and
-for that reason the whole situation was overestimated. When all
-conditions are perfect, hardy catalpa grows rapidly and grows large, but
-it demands nearly perfect conditions or it will disappoint. It wants
-ground rich enough and damp enough to grow good crops of corn, and
-farmers are not generally willing to put that class of land to growing
-fence posts and railroad ties.
-
-The range of hardy catalpa before the species was spread by artificial
-planting, was through southern Illinois and Indiana, southeastern
-Missouri and northeastern Arkansas, western Louisiana and eastern Texas,
-and western Kentucky and Tennessee. Its position on the fertile banks of
-streams, and on flood plains subject to frequent inundation, indicates
-that the spread of the species was effected by running water. In that
-case, the dispersal of seeds would be down stream, implying that the
-starting place of the species was along the lower reaches of the Wabash
-river.
-
-The catalpa may reach a height of 100 or 120 feet and a diameter of four
-feet; but few trees attain that size. The leaves are ten or twelve
-inches long and seven or eight wide, and are considerably larger than
-those of common catalpa. The flowers appear late in May or early in
-June, and are showy. The prevailing colors are white and purple, and the
-blossoms are about two inches long and two and a half wide.
-
-The fruit is a pod from eight to twenty inches long, and the enclosed
-seeds are nearly an inch long, shaped like beans. The trees are prolific
-bearers.
-
-The tree is known by several names in different parts of its range,
-including the territory where it is known only from plantings. It is
-called western catalpa to distinguish it from the other species found
-farther east and south. In Missouri and Iowa it is known as cigar tree.
-The name Indian bean is an allusion to the large seeds. Shawneewood is
-another name referring to the supposed interest of Indians in the tree.
-Shawnee was the name of a tribe of Indians in the Ohio valley in early
-times.
-
-The wood weighs less than twenty-six pounds per cubic foot, and is soft
-and weak. It is rated very durable in contact with the soil, and this is
-one of the chief advantages claimed for it. The annual rings are clearly
-marked by several bands or rows of large open ducts, and the denser
-summerwood forms a narrow band. The medullary rays are numerous and
-obscure. The heartwood is brown, the sapwood lighter. In appearance, the
-heartwood suggests butternut, but it is coarser, and lacks the gloss
-shown by polished butternut. Quarter-sawing produces no figure, but when
-sawed at right angles to the radial lines, the annual rings are cut in a
-way to give figure resembling that of ash or chestnut.
-
-The wood of this catalpa has been thoroughly tried out for a number of
-purposes. Furniture and finish have been made of it with varying
-success, and molding and picture frames are listed among its uses. It is
-not a sawlog tree. Statistics of lumber cut seldom mention it, though
-now and then a log finds its way to a mill. Efforts have been made to
-pass the wood as mahogany, but with poor success. The counterfeit is
-easily detected, since the artificial color which may be imparted to
-catalpa is about the only resemblance to mahogany.
-
-In the lower Mississippi valley some success, but on a very small scale,
-has resulted from attempts to induce catalpa to grow in crooks suitable
-for small boat knees. The young trunk, after being hacked on one side,
-is bent and induced to grow the crook or knee. Natural crooks have been
-utilized in the manufacture of knees for small boats in Louisiana.
-
-Probably ninety per cent of all the catalpa ever cut has gone into fence
-posts. It is habitually crooked. A straight bole is the exception;
-though in plantations trees are crowded and pruned until they grow
-fairly straight, and sometimes trunks of forest grown trees of large
-size are nearly faultless in their symmetry.
-
-It was once believed in some quarters that catalpa would solve the
-railroad tie problem by growing good ties quickly. It must be admitted,
-however, that in spite of extensive plantings, the railroad tie problem
-has not yet been solved by catalpa.
-
-COMMON CATALPA (_Catalpa catalpa_) originated many hundred miles outside
-the range of hardy catalpa, to judge by the localities in which it was
-first found by white men. It is supposed to have been indigenous in
-southwestern Georgia, central Alabama, and Mississippi, and northwestern
-Florida. Its range has been greatly extended by planting, and it grows
-in most parts of the country east of the Rocky Mountains, as far north
-as New England. It has been planted in many parts of Europe. Its leaves,
-flowers, fruit, and the tree itself are smaller than hardy catalpa. The
-pods hang unopened all winter. The trunks sometimes are three feet in
-diameter and sixty high, but are generally small, crooked, rather
-angular, and poor in appearance, but the leaves and flowers are
-ornamental. The wood is durable in contact with the ground, and its
-largest use has been for posts, crossties, and poles.
-
-DESERT WILLOW (_Chilopsis linearis_) does not even belong to the willow
-family, notwithstanding its names, all of which are based on the
-presumption that it is a willow. The shape and size of its leaves are
-responsible for that misapprehension. The very narrow leaves may be a
-foot long. It is called flowering willow and Texas flowering willow. Its
-flowers are always emphasized when it is compared with willow, for they
-are totally different from the willow's characteristic catkins. The
-flowers appear in early summer in racemes three or four inches long, and
-continue open during several months in succession. The fruit is a pod
-seven or nine inches long, and as slender as a lead pencil. It is this
-pod which gives the plainest hint of its relationship to the catalpas,
-for it is in good standing in the family with them. The seeds resemble
-very small beans with wings at each end. They are light, and the wind
-disperses them. The tree is a prolific seeder.
-
-The range of this small tree extends across western Texas, New Mexico,
-Arizona, Utah, Nevada, into San Diego county, California. The tree
-occurs in dry, gravelly, porous soil near the banks of streams and in
-depressions in the desert. The wood is weak and soft, the heart brown,
-streaked with yellow. No use has been found for it. The tree is
-cultivated for ornament in Mexico and sometimes in the southern states.
-The flowers look well when they are encountered in the desert. They are
-white, faintly tinged with purple, with bright yellow spots inside. They
-are funnel shaped and have the odor of violets.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CUCUMBER
-
-[Illustration: CUCUMBER]
-
-
-
-
-CUCUMBER
-
-(_Magnolia Acuminata_)
-
-
-This tree is a member of the magnolia family which has ten genera in
-North America, two of them, magnolia and liriodendron, being trees.
-The family has its name from Pierre Magnol, a French botanist who died
-in 1715. The genus magnolia has seven species in the United States,
-all of which are of tree size. They are evergreen magnolia (_Magnolia
-f[oe]tida_), sweet magnolia (_Magnolia glauca_), cucumber (_Magnolia
-acuminata_), largeleaf umbrella (_Magnolia macrophylla_), umbrella
-tree (_Magnolia tripetala_), Fraser umbrella (_Magnolia fraseri_), and
-pyramidal magnolia (_Magnolia pyramidata_). The remaining member of the
-magnolia family is the yellow poplar (_Liriodendron tulipifera_). Though
-of the same family it is of a different genus from the seven other
-magnolias.
-
-The cucumber is the hardiest member of the magnolia family. It is found
-in natural growth farther north than any other, yet it has the
-appearance of a southern tree. All magnolias look like trees belonging
-in the South. Their large leaves indicate as much, and some of them do
-not venture far outside of the warm latitudes. It is one of the oldest
-of all the families of broadleaf trees, and it has been a family that
-during an immense period of the earth's history has clung near the old
-homestead where it came into existence countless ages ago. There were
-magnolias growing in the middle Appalachian region, and eastward to the
-present Atlantic coast, so far in the past that the time can be measured
-only by hundreds of thousands of years. Leaf prints in rocks, which were
-once mud flats, tell the story--though but a page here and there--of the
-magnolia's ancient history, doubtless antedating by long periods the
-earliest appearance of man on earth.
-
-Next to the yellow poplar, the cucumber tree is the most important
-species of the magnolia family, at least as a source of lumber. As an
-ornamental tree it may not equal some of the others, particularly
-certain of the southern species which are evergreen and produce large,
-showy flowers.
-
-The cucumber tree receives its name from its fruit, which looks like a
-cucumber when seen at a distance, but it is far from being one. Its
-intense bitter makes it safe from the attacks of birds and beasts. So
-far as known, it is not eaten, tasted, or touched by any living
-creature--except man. Some of the pioneer settlers, in the days when
-there was precious little to eat on the frontiers, discovered a way of
-extracting the bitter from the wild cucumber, and making some sort of a
-pickle of the remainder; but the art seems to have been lost with the
-passing of the pioneers of the Daniel Boone type, and the wild cucumber
-now hangs untouched, and tempts nobody. It is three inches or less in
-length, generally slightly curved, and is green in color until fully
-ripe. Even the flowers which produce the fruit are green, with the
-merest suggestion of yellow. They are so inconspicuous that few persons
-ever notice them, even though cucumber trees stand in door yards. The
-ripe cucumbers are dark red or scarlet, or rather the seeds are, which
-grow on the surface like grains of corn on a cob, though fewer in number
-and farther apart. Something seems to be lacking in the machinery by
-which the flowers are fertilized, with the result that often nearly half
-the seeds which ought to cover the surface of the cucumber, fail to
-materialize. There are many blank spaces representing flowers which the
-pollen missed.
-
-There is likewise something missing in the modus operandi of scattering
-the seeds. They have no wings, and the wind is powerless to carry them.
-They are as bitter as quinine and no bird, squirrel, or mouse will
-plant, carry, or touch them. Nature appears to have forgotten to provide
-any other means for dispersing the seeds of this remarkable tree. When
-seeds are fully ripe, they drop away from the parent fruit--the
-cucumber--but the fall of each seed is arrested by a small thread which
-suspends it from one to three inches below the fruit. There the seeds
-hang, swinging and dangling in the wind. What part the threads play in
-the economy of nature is not apparent, unless their purpose is to expose
-the seeds to a chance of becoming entangled with the wings, feet, or
-feathers of flying birds, whereby they may be carried away and dropped
-in suitable places for growing. There can be no doubt that this happens
-occasionally, and constitutes one of the methods of seed dispersal.
-Others are transported by flowing water.
-
-The chances seem to be greatly against the survival of the cucumber tree
-in competition with maples, birches, pines, and cottonwoods, whose
-winged seeds are wind-borne; or with oaks, hickories, and walnuts whose
-heavy, wingless nuts are planted hither and thither by accommodating
-squirrels which are intent only on providing for their own winter wants,
-but in reality are industrious and effective forest planters.
-Notwithstanding the disadvantages under which the cucumber tree is
-placed, it has managed to hold its ground in the forest during immense
-periods of time, and it seems to be as firmly established now as ever.
-
-The leaves of this tree are from seven to ten inches long, and four to
-six wide. In autumn before they fall they turn a blotched yellow-brown
-color. The first severe frost brings them all down in a heap. At sunset
-the tree may be laden with leaves, and by the next noon all will be on
-the ground. They are so heavy that the wind does not move them far, and
-they drop in heaps beneath the branches. In color they resemble owl
-feathers, and the suggestion that comes to one's mind, who happens to
-pass under a cucumber tree the morning following the first frost, is
-that during the night some prowler picked a roost of owls and scattered
-the feathers on the ground.
-
-The range of cucumber extends from western New York to Alabama,
-following the Appalachian mountains; and westward to Illinois and
-Mississippi, appearing west of the Mississippi river in Arkansas. It
-occurs on low rocky slopes, the banks of mountain streams, and on rich
-bottom land. It is of largest size and is most abundant in the narrow
-valleys in eastern Tennessee and the western parts of the Carolinas. The
-tree is from two to four feet in diameter, and sixty to ninety feet
-high. The trunk is of good form for sawlogs. Among its local names are
-pointed-leaf magnolia, black lin, magnolia, and mountain magnolia.
-
-The wood of cucumber resembles that of yellow poplar in appearance and
-in physical properties, except that it is ten per cent heavier than
-poplar. It usually passes for that wood at sawmill and factory. The
-Federal census credits it with less than a million feet a year as
-lumber. That is much too small. It is valuable and finds ready sale.
-Manufacturers of wooden pumps regard it as the best material for the
-bored logs. It is worked into interior finish for houses, flooring for
-cars, interior parts of furniture, woodenware, boxes and crates, slack
-cooperage, including veneer barrels.
-
-The tree is planted for ornament in the northern states and Europe. The
-chief value lies in its large, green leaves and symmetrical crown. The
-red fruit adds to the tree's attractiveness late in summer.
-
-    LARGELEAF UMBRELLA (_Magnolia macrophylla_) is valuable chiefly as a
-    sort of ornamental curiosity, on account of its enormous leaves and
-    flowers. The leaf is from twenty to thirty inches long and ten to
-    twelve wide. It drops in autumn before its green color has undergone
-    much change. The leaves lack toughness, and the wind whips them into
-    strings long before the summer is ended. Thus what otherwise would
-    be highly ornamental becomes somewhat unsightly. When well protected
-    from wind by surrounding objects, the leaves fare better and last
-    longer. The white, fragrant flowers are likewise remarkable on
-    account of size. They are cup-shaped and some of them are almost a
-    foot across. They pay a penalty no less severe than the leaves pay,
-    on account of large size, and are liable to be thumped and bruised
-    by swinging leaves and branches.
-
-    The largeleaf umbrella is a tree of the southern Appalachian
-    mountains although its range extends southwest to Louisiana, and
-    northward from there to Arkansas. It is at its best in deep rich
-    soil of sheltered valleys, occurring in isolated groups, but never
-    in pure forests. It is known as large-leaved cucumber tree,
-    great-leaved magnolia, large-leaved umbrella tree, and long-leaved
-    magnolia. The fruit is nearly a sphere, from two to three inches in
-    diameter, and bright rose color when fully ripe. The seeds are
-    two-thirds of an inch long. The smooth, light gray bark is usually
-    less than a quarter of an inch thick. Large trees are forty or fifty
-    feet high and twenty inches in diameter. It is not considered
-    valuable for lumber, because of scarcity and small size. The wood is
-    considerably heavier than yellow poplar, and is hard but not strong;
-    light brown in color with thick, light yellow sapwood. Reports do
-    not show that the wood is put to any use. Planted trees are hardy as
-    far north as Massachusetts, and success has attended the tree's
-    introduction in the parks and gardens of southern Europe.
-
-    YELLOW FLOWERED CUCUMBER TREE (_Magnolia acuminata cordata_) is
-    usually considered a variety of the common cucumber tree, rather
-    than a separate species. The most noticeable feature is the yellow
-    blossom which gives the names by which it is generally known, among
-    such being yellow-flowered magnolia, and yellow cucumber tree. It is
-    not a garden variety, for it grows wild; but it has been cultivated
-    during more than a century, and has undergone changes which are not
-    matched by wild trees. The finest forms of the forest variety are
-    found on the Blue Ridge in South Carolina, and in central Alabama.
-    The cultivated tree is distinguished by its darker green leaves, and
-    by its smaller, bright, canary-yellow flowers. The variety has no
-    value as a timber tree, but is widely appreciated as an ornament.
-    Cultivated trees generally remain small in size, and do not develop
-    the long, clean trunks common with the cucumber tree under forest
-    conditions.
-
-    UMBRELLA TREE (_Magnolia tripetala_) is one of the magnolias and
-    should not be confounded with the Asiatic umbrella tree often
-    planted in yards. The flower is surrounded by a whorl of leaves
-    resembling an umbrella, hence the name. It is also known as
-    cucumber, magnolia, and elkwood. The range of the tree extends from
-    Pennsylvania to Alabama and west to Arkansas. It prefers the margins
-    of swamps and the rich soil along mountain streams. Leaves are
-    eighteen inches long and half as wide. They fall in autumn. Flowers
-    are cup-shaped and creamy-white. The fruit somewhat resembles that
-    of the common cucumber tree, but is rose colored when fully ripe.
-    Trees are thirty or forty feet high and a foot or more in diameter.
-    The brown heartwood is light, soft, and weak, and is used little or
-    not at all for commercial purposes. The tree is cultivated for
-    ornament in the northern states and in Europe.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW POPLAR
-
-[Illustration: YELLOW POPLAR]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW POPLAR
-
-(_Liriodendron Tulipifera_)
-
-
-In diameter of trunk the yellow poplar is, next to sycamore, the largest
-hardwood tree of the United States, and if both height and trunk
-diameter are considered, it surpasses the sycamore in size. It belongs
-to a very old group of hardwoods which have come down from remote
-geological ages, and the species is now found only in the United States
-and China. Mature trees are from three to eight feet in diameter and
-from 90 to 180 in height.
-
-It has many names in different parts of its range, but it is never
-mistaken for any other tree. The peculiar notched leaf is a sure means
-of identification. The resemblance of the flower to the tulip has given
-it the name tulip tree in some localities, and botanists prefer that
-name. It is so called in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
-Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
-West Virginia, District of Columbia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
-Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Ontario. Wood
-users in New England and in some of the other northern states prefer the
-name whitewood and it is so known, in part at least, in New England, New
-York, New Jersey, Delaware, South Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan,
-and Illinois. Yellow poplar is the name preferred by lumbermen in nearly
-all regions where the tree is found in commercial quantities, notably in
-New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia,
-North and South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana,
-Illinois, Missouri, and Tennessee. The name is often shortened to
-poplar, which is used in Rhode Island, Delaware, North and South
-Carolina, Florida, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana. The name
-tulip poplar is less frequently heard, and blue poplar and hickory
-poplar are terms used in West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina,
-but generally under the impression that they refer to a different form
-or species. In Rhode Island it is called popple, in New York cucumber
-tree, and canoe wood in Tennessee and in the upper Ohio valley.
-
-The botanical range of yellow poplar is wider than its commercial range;
-that is, a few trees are found in regions surrounding the borders of the
-district where the tree is profitably lumbered. The boundaries of its
-range run from southwestern Vermont, westward to Lake Michigan near
-Grand Haven, southward to northern Florida, and west of the Mississippi
-river in Missouri and Arkansas. The productive yellow poplar timber belt
-has never been that large but has clung pretty closely to the southern
-Appalachian mountain ranges and to certain districts lying both east and
-west of them. The best original stands were in Pennsylvania, Maryland,
-Virginia, West Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Kentucky and
-Tennessee, and in some parts of Ohio and Indiana. However, considerable
-quantities of good yellow poplar have been cut in other regions.
-
-The physical properties of the wood of yellow poplar fit it for many
-purposes but not for all. It is not very strong and is tolerably
-brittle. It is light in weight, medium soft, and is easily worked. The
-annual rings of growth are not prominent compared with some of the oaks,
-yet select logs show nicely in quarter-sawing. The medullary rays are
-numerous, but small and not prominent, for which reason bright streaks
-and flecks are not characteristic of the wood. Yellow poplar is fairly
-stiff and elastic, but is not often selected on account of those
-qualities. In color it is light yellow or brown. The color gives name to
-the tree. The sapwood is whiter, and it is the abnormally thick sapwood
-of some trees which causes them to be called white poplar. The wood has
-little figure, and it is seldom employed for fine work without stain or
-paint of some kind. It is not usually classed as long lasting when
-exposed to the weather, yet cases are known where weather boarding of
-houses, and bridge and mill timbers of yellow poplar have outlasted the
-generation of builders.
-
-The quantity of yellow poplar in the country is but a remnant of the
-former enormous supply that covered the rich valleys and fertile coves
-in a region exceeding 200,000 square miles. It occupied the best land,
-and much was destroyed by farmers in clearing fields. It was not
-generally found in groves or dense stands, but as solitary trees
-scattered through forests of other woods. The trunks are tall and
-shapely, the crowns comparatively small. The form is ideal for sawlogs,
-and very few trees of America produce a higher percentage of clear,
-first class lumber. That is because the forest-grown poplar early sheds
-its lower branches, and the trunks lay on nothing but clear wood. In the
-yellow poplar's region it was the principal wood of which the pioneers
-made their canoes for crossing and navigating rivers. It is still best
-known by the name canoewood in some regions. It worked easily and was
-light, and a thin-shelled canoe lasted many years, barring floods and
-other accidents. Builders of pirogues, keelboats, barges, and other
-vessels for inland navigation in early times when roads were few and
-streams were the principal highways of commerce, found no timber
-superior to yellow poplar. It could be had in planks of great size and
-free from defects, and while not as strong as oak, it was strong enough
-to withstand the usual knocks and buffetings of river traffic.
-
-Yellow poplar sawlogs have probably exceeded in number any other wood,
-except white pine, floated down rivers and creeks to market. The wood
-floats well and lumbermen have usually pushed far up the rivers, ahead
-of other lumber operations, to procure it. Enormous drives have gone and
-are still going out of rivers in the Appalachian region.
-
-The uses of yellow poplar are so many that an enumeration is
-impracticable, except by general classes. These are boxes and
-woodenware, vehicles, furniture, interior finish, and car building.
-There is another class consisting of low-grade work, such as common
-lumber, pulpwood, and the like.
-
-There is a class of commodities which are usually packed in boxes and
-require a wood that will impart neither taste nor stain. That
-requirement is met by yellow poplar. It has been an important wood for
-boxes in which food products are shipped. It is so used less frequently
-now than formerly because of increased cost, but veneer is employed to a
-large extent, and while the total quantity of wood going into box
-factories is smaller than formerly, the actual number and contents of
-poplar boxes are perhaps about the same. It is a white wood and shows
-printing and stenciling clearly. That is an important point with many
-manufacturers who wish to print their advertisements on the boxes which
-they send out. Woodenware, particularly ironing boards, bread boards,
-and pantry and kitchen utensils, are largely made of poplar because it
-is light, attractive, and easily kept clean. It is popular as pumplogs
-for the same reason.
-
-As a vehicle wood, yellow poplar is not a competitor of oak and hickory.
-They are for running gear and frames; poplar for tops and bodies. No
-wood excels it for wide panels. It receives finish and paint so well
-that it is not surpassed by the smoothest metals. Many of the finest
-carriage and automobile tops are largely of this wood. In case of slight
-accidents it resists dints much better than sheet metal.
-
-Cheap furniture was once made of yellow poplar. It now enters into the
-best kinds, and is finished in imitation of costly woods, notably
-mahogany, birch, and cherry. No American wood will take a higher polish.
-It is also much employed as an interior wood by furniture manufacturers.
-It fills an important place as cores or backing over which veneers are
-glued.
-
-When used as an interior house finish and in car building, it is nearly
-always stained or painted. Many of the broad handsome panels in
-passenger cars, which pass for cherry, birch, mahogany, or rosewood, are
-yellow poplar, to which the finisher and decorator have given their best
-touches.
-
-All poplar lumber is not wide, clear stock, though much of it is. The
-lower grades go as common lumber and small trees are cut for pulpwood. A
-large part of the demand for high-grade yellow poplar is in foreign
-countries, and a regular oversea trade is carried on by exporters.
-Foreign manufacturers put the wood to practically the same uses as the
-best grades in this country.
-
-Yellow poplar seasons well, and is a satisfactory wood to handle. When
-thoroughly dry it holds its shape with the best of woods. Bluing is apt
-to affect the green wood if unduly exposed. Fresh poplar chips in damp
-situations sometimes change to a conspicuous blue color within a day or
-two. However, millmen do not experience much difficulty in preventing
-the bluing of the lumber.
-
-GYMINDA (_Gyminda grisebachii_) is also called false boxwood, and
-belongs to the staff family. The name gyminda is artificial and
-meaningless. The genus has a single species which occurs in the islands
-of southern Florida where trees of largest size are scarcely twenty-five
-feet high and six inches in diameter. The wood is very heavy, hard,
-fine-grained, and is nearly black. It is suitable for small articles,
-but it is not known to be so used, and its scarcity renders improbable
-any important future use of the wood. The fruit is a small berry,
-ripening in November. The range of the species extends to Cuba, Porto
-Rico, and other islands of the West Indies.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-EVERGREEN MAGNOLIA
-
-[Illustration: EVERGREEN MAGNOLIA]
-
-
-
-
-EVERGREEN MAGNOLIA
-
-(_Magnolia F[oe]tida_)
-
-
-This is not a timber tree of first importance. A few years ago it was
-seldom cut except in very small quantities; but it was found to possess
-good qualities, and now it goes regularly to the mills which saw
-hardwoods in the region where it grows. The wood of different magnolia
-trees, or even the wood of the same tree, shows lack of uniformity. Some
-of it looks like yellow poplar and compares favorably with it in several
-particulars, while other of it is very dark, with hard flinty streaks
-which not only present a poor appearance, but dull the tools of the
-woodworking machines and create an unfavorable impression of the wood
-generally. This magnolia holds pretty closely to the damp lands in all
-parts of its range. The amount of the annual cut is not known, because
-it goes in with the minor species in most places and no separate account
-is taken. It is coming into more notice every year, and some
-manufacturers have been so successful in finding ways to make it
-serviceable that the best grades are easily sold. The wood does not hold
-its color very well. The light-colored sapwood is apt to become darker
-after exposure to the air, and the dark heartwood fades a little. The
-tree is so handsome in the forest that it is occasionally spared when
-the surrounding trees are removed.
-
-It is doubtful if any American tree surpasses it as an ornament when its
-leaves, trunk, flowers, and bark are considered. It is not perfect in
-all of these particulars; in fact, it possesses some serious faults. The
-crown is often too small for the tree's height; the branches straggle,
-many on some parts of the trunk and few on others; the flowers are
-objectionable because of strong odor which is unpleasant to most people.
-But these shortcomings are more than compensated for by splendid
-qualities. The rich, dark green of the leaves, their size and profusion,
-their changeless luster, place them in a position almost beyond the
-reach of rivalry from any other tree.
-
-Those who see this splendid inhabitant of the forest only where it has
-been planted in northern states, and elsewhere outside of its natural
-range, miss much of the best it has to give. It belongs in the South.
-The wet lands, the small elevations in deep swamps, the flat country
-where forests are dense, are its home. The yellowish-green trunk rises
-through the tangled foliage that keeps near the ground, and towers fifty
-feet above, and there spreads in a crown of green so deep that it is
-almost black. It likes company, and seldom grows solitary. Its
-associates are the southern maples, red gum, tupelo, cypress, a dozen
-species of oak, and occasionally pines on nearby higher ground.
-Festoons of grayish-green Spanish moss often add to the tropical
-character of the scene. The moss seldom hangs on the magnolia, but is
-frequently abundant on surrounding trees.
-
-Lumbermen formerly left the evergreen magnolia trees on tracts from
-which they cut nearly everything else. Large areas which had once been
-regarded as swamps were thus converted into parks of giant magnolias,
-many of which towered seventy or eighty feet. The tracts were left wild,
-and those who so left them had no purpose of providing ornament, but
-they did so. Many a scene was made grand by its magnolias, after other
-forest growth had been cut away.
-
-The range of evergreen magnolia is from North Carolina to Florida and
-west to Arkansas and Texas. The species reaches largest size in the
-vicinity of the Mississippi, both east and west of it. Trees eighty feet
-high and four feet in diameter occur, and trunks are often without limbs
-one-half or two-thirds their length, when they grow in forests.
-
-The common name for the tree in most parts of its range is simply
-magnolia, though that name fails to distinguish it from several other
-species, some of which are associated with it. Occasionally it is called
-big laurel, great laurel magnolia, laurel-leaved magnolia, laurel, and
-laurel bay. Bull bay is a common name for it in Georgia, Alabama, and
-Mississippi. It is called bat tree, but the reason for such a name is
-not known.
-
-Leaves are from five to eight inches long and two or three wide, and
-dark green above, but lighter below. They fall in the spring after
-remaining on the branches two whole years.
-
-The odor of the flowers is unpleasant, but they are attractive to the
-sight, being six or eight inches across, with purple bases. The
-flowering habit of this tree is all that could be desired. It is in
-bloom from April till August.
-
-The fruit resembles that of the other magnolias and is three or four
-inches long and two or less wide. Its color is rusty-brown. The ripe
-seeds hang awhile by short threads, according to the habit of the
-family. The wood is stronger than poplar, fully as stiff, and nearly
-fifty per cent heavier. The annual rings are rather vaguely marked by
-narrow bands of summerwood. Pores are diffuse, plentiful, and very
-small. Medullary rays are larger than those of yellow poplar, and show
-fairly well in quarter-sawed stock. The wood is compact and easily
-worked, except when hard streaks are encountered. The surface finishes
-with a satiny luster; color creamy-white, yellowish-white, or often
-light brown. Occasionally the wood is nearly diametrically the opposite
-of this, and is of all darker shades up to purple, black, and blue
-black. The appearance of the dark wood suggests decay, but those who
-pass it through machines, or work it by hand, consider it as sound as
-the lighter colored wood.
-
-The uses of magnolia are much the same in all parts of its range, and
-those of Louisiana, where the utilization of the wood has been studied
-more closely than in other regions, indicate the scope of its
-usefulness. It is there made into parts of boats, bar fixtures, boxes,
-broom handles, brush backs, crates, door panels, dugout canoes,
-excelsior, furniture shelving, interior finish, ox yokes, panels, and
-wagon boxes. In Texas where the annual consumption probably exceeds a
-million feet, it is employed by furniture makers, and appears in window
-blinds, packing boxes, sash, and molding. In Mississippi, fine mantels
-are made of carefully selected wood, quarter-sawed to bring out the
-small, square "mirrors" produced by radial cutting of the medullary
-rays.
-
-Evergreen magnolia has long been planted for ornament in this country
-and Europe. It survives the winters at Philadelphia. Several varieties
-have been developed by cultivation and are sold by nurseries.
-
-Southern forests have contributed, and still contribute, large
-quantities of magnolia leaves for decorations in northern cities during
-winter. The flowers are not successfully shipped because they are easily
-bruised, and they quickly lose their freshness and beauty.
-
-    SWEET MAGNOLIA (_Magnolia glauca_) ranges from Massachusetts to
-    Texas and south to Florida. It reaches its largest size on the
-    hummock lands of the latter state. Trees are occasionally seventy
-    feet high and three or more in diameter, but in many parts of its
-    range it is small, even shrubby. Among the names by which it is
-    known are white bay, swamp laurel, swamp sassafras, swamp magnolia,
-    white laurel, and beaver-tree. It inhabits swamps in the northern
-    part of its range, hence the frequency of the word "swamp" in
-    coining names for it. Beaver-tree as a name is probably due to its
-    former abundance about beaver dams, where impounded water made the
-    ground swampy. In the North, sweet magnolia's chief value is in its
-    flowers, which are two or three inches across, creamy-white, and
-    fragrant. They were formerly very abundant near the mouth of the
-    Susquehanna river in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and northward
-    through New Jersey; but the traffic in the flowers has destroyed the
-    growth in many places where once plentiful. It is not important as a
-    timber resource, but it is employed for a number of useful purposes
-    where logs of fair size may be had. The sapwood is creamy-white, but
-    the heart is nearly as dark as mahogany, and in Texas it is used to
-    imitate that wood. The brown and other shades combine with fine
-    effect. One of its common uses is for broom handles. Heartwood is
-    worked into high-grade chairs. It takes a beautiful polish.
-
-    FRASER UMBRELLA (_Magnolia fraseri_) ranges south from the Virginia
-    mountains to Florida and west to Mississippi. It is of largest size
-    in South Carolina where trees are sometimes thirty feet high and a
-    foot or more in diameter. The leaves fall in autumn of the first
-    year; the creamy-white, sweetly-scented flowers are eight or ten
-    inches in diameter, and the fruit resembles that of the other
-    magnolias. The wood is weak, soft, and light. The heart is clear
-    brown, the sapwood nearly white. It has not been reported in use for
-    any commercial purpose. Among its other names it is known as
-    long-leaved cucumber tree, ear-leaved umbrella tree, Indian bitters,
-    water lily tree, and mountain magnolia. In cultivation this species
-    is hardy as far north as Massachusetts, and it is planted for
-    ornament in Europe.
-
-    PYRAMID MAGNOLIA (_Magnolia pyramidata_) seems to have generally
-    escaped the notice of laymen, and it therefore has no English name
-    except the translation of the Latin term by which botanists know it.
-    Its habitat lies in southern Georgia and Alabama, and western
-    Florida, and it is occasionally seen in cultivation in western
-    Europe. It is a slender tree, twenty feet or more in height. Its
-    flowers are three or four inches in diameter, and creamy-white in
-    color. A tree so scarce cannot be expected to be commercially
-    important.
-
-    WESTERN BLACK WILLOW (_Salix lasiandra_) is a rather large tree when
-    at its best, reaching a diameter of two feet or more, and a height
-    of fifty, but in other parts of its range it rarely exceeds ten feet
-    in height. It follows the western mountain ranges southward from
-    British Columbia into California. The wood is soft, light, and
-    brittle, and is used little if at all. Lyall willow (_Salix
-    lasiandra lyalli_) is a well marked variety of this species and is a
-    tree of respectable size.
-
-    GLOSSYLEAF WILLOW (_Salix lucida_) is a far northern species which
-    has its southern limit in Pennsylvania and Nebraska. It grows nearly
-    to the Arctic circle. Trees twenty-five feet high and six or eight
-    inches in diameter are the best this species affords.
-
-    LONGLEAF WILLOW (_Salix fluviatilis_) is known also as sandbar
-    willow, narrowleaf willow, shrub, white, red, and osier willow, and
-    by still other names. It ranges from the Arctic circle to Mexico,
-    reaching Maryland on the Atlantic coast, and California on the
-    Pacific. In rare cases it is sixty feet high, and two in diameter,
-    but it is usually less than twenty feet high.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WAHOO
-
-[Illustration: WAHOO]
-
-
-
-
-WAHOO
-
-(_Evonymus Atropurpureus_)
-
-
-No one seems to know what the original meaning of the word wahoo was. It
-is applied to no fewer than six different trees in this country, four of
-them elms, one a basswood, and one the tree now under consideration. The
-generic name, _Evonymus_, appears to be an effort to put somebody's seal
-of approval on the name, for it means in the Greek language "of good
-name."
-
-It belongs to the family _Celastraceæ_, which means the staff family.
-Some designate members of this group as "Spindle trees," because
-formerly in Europe the wood was employed for knitting needles, hooks for
-embroidering, spindles for spinning wheels, and the like. Unless the
-members of the family in Europe have wood quite different from that of
-the wahoo tree in this country, no adequate reason can be found for the
-use of the wood for spindles or staffs, because it is poor material for
-that purpose. It may be compared with basswood.
-
-This beautiful little tree, scarcely more than a shrub in most regions
-of its growth, is a widely distributed species, its range extending
-through western New York to Nebraska, southeastern South Dakota and
-eastern Kansas, and in the valley of the upper Missouri river, Montana,
-southward to northern Florida, southern Arkansas and Oklahoma. In these
-localities it is generally a shrub, rarely reaching a height of more
-than nine or ten feet. It attains the proportions of a tree only in the
-bottom lands of southern Arkansas, Oklahoma, and in the lower
-Appalachian regions. The most favorable habitat of the tree is moist
-soil along the banks of streams. In the southern and western parts of
-its range, under favorable conditions of soil and climate, and when
-isolated from other species, the wahoo tree grows to rather large size
-and develops a wide flat top of slender spreading branches.
-
-The largest and most beautiful specimens of wahoo grow in the
-mountainous regions of West Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and western
-North Carolina. In these sections it is no unusual thing for a tree of
-this species to attain a height of sixty or seventy feet and a diameter
-of twenty or twenty-four inches. It is never found in pure stands but is
-isolated along the edge of the forest, and thrives best near water
-courses.
-
-The tree is known by a variety of names in the different parts of the
-country. The Indians are said to have called it wahoo. Burning bush, a
-very popular name, is especially appropriate, as no brighter dash of
-color is displayed by any tree than the scarlet fruit of this growth,
-which remains on the branches long after the leaves have fallen, often
-until the winter storms beat it to the ground. The growth is also
-called occasionally by the name bleeding-heart tree, in reference to the
-blood-red contents revealed by the bursting fruit.
-
-The wahoo in the fall of the year may be identified by the flaming color
-of its fruit, or rather the seeds of the fruit. The hull bursts and
-exposes the bright red seeds within. These, contrary to the usual run of
-red fruits, are not of a glossy surface, and in this the tree is unique.
-During the summer season, however, identification is not such a simple
-matter, for the foliage is quite ordinary, and the flat, unassuming
-flowers have little that is distinctive about them; but as the autumn
-approaches and the leaves turn a pale yellow color, the tree becomes a
-conspicuous and beautiful object with its scarlet berries.
-
-The bark of the wahoo is ashen gray, thin, furrowed, and divided into
-minute scales. On the branchlets it is a dark purplish-brown, later
-becoming brownish-gray.
-
-The heartwood of wahoo is white, with a slight tinge of orange. The
-sapwood, scarcely distinguishable from the heartwood, is more nearly
-white in tone. The wood is heavy and close-grained but not very hard. It
-weighs when seasoned a little less than forty pounds to the cubic foot.
-Such of this wood as is sawed into lumber, which is but a small
-quantity, sells commercially with poplar saps, thus masquerading like
-its forest fellow, the cucumber tree. The character of the wood is such
-that it will not stand exposure to the weather any length of time. It is
-far from durable, but is remarkably clear from defects and answers
-admirably many purposes for which sap poplar is desirable.
-
-The leaves of the tree are waxy in appearance, opposite, entire,
-elliptical or ovate in shape, from two to four inches long, one to two
-broad. They are finely serrate and pointed at both apex and base, and
-the stems are short and stout.
-
-The flowers, which appear in May and June, are definitely four-parted,
-presenting a Maltese cross in shape. They are half an inch across, and
-their rounded petals are deep purple in color. The fruit which succeeds
-these flowers and which ripens in October is also four-parted. It is
-about half an inch across, a pale purple when full size, and hangs on
-long slender stems. When ripe the purple husk bursts and reveals the
-seed enveloped in a scarlet outer coat that fits it loosely. The leaves,
-bark, and fruit of the wahoo are acrid and are reputed to be poisonous.
-
-The wood is one-third heavier than that of yellow poplar, and it is
-evident that it would not pass as poplar with any one disposed to reject
-it. It is also much harder than poplar, and is more difficult to season,
-as it checks badly. The medullary rays are so thin as to be scarcely
-discernible. The wood contains many very small pores. The bark is said
-to possess some value for medicinal purposes. No special uses for the
-wood have been reported, and it is too scarce to be of much value. The
-tree's principal importance is as an ornament, and it shows well in
-winter borders where the bright colors of the seeds are exposed. It is
-planted both in this country and in Europe. The plantings seldom or
-never reach tree size.
-
-FLORIDA BOXWOOD (_Schæfferia frutescens_) is of the same family as wahoo
-but of another genus, and is quite a different kind of tree. The generic
-name is in honor of Jakob Christian Schaeffer, a distinguished German
-naturalist who died in 1790. Two species of this tree occur in the
-United States, one the Florida boxwood, the other a small, shrubby
-growth in the dry regions of western Texas and northern Mexico. Florida
-boxwood is a West Indies tree which flourishes in the Bahamas and
-southward along the other islands to Venezuela. It has gained a foothold
-on the islands of southern Florida where it has found conditions
-favorable and it grows to a height of thirty or forty feet, and reaches
-a trunk diameter of ten inches, but such are trees of the largest size.
-The leaves are bright yellow-green, about two inches long, and one or
-less in width. They appear in Florida in April and persist a full year,
-until the foliage of the succeeding crop displaces them. The flowers
-which are small and inconspicuous, open about the same time as the
-leaves. The fruit is a scarlet berry which ripens in November, and has a
-decidedly disagreeable flavor. The bark is very thin.
-
-When sound wood in sufficiently large pieces is obtainable it is
-valuable for a number of purposes, but chiefly as a substitute for
-Turkish boxwood as engraving blocks. The trees are always small in
-Florida, which is the only place in the United States where they occur,
-and the largest are often hollow or otherwise defective. The wood weighs
-48.27 pounds per cubic foot, thoroughly dry, which is about two pounds
-heavier than white oak. It is rich in ashes, having about four times as
-much as white oak. The color of the heartwood is a bright, clear yellow
-to which is due the name yellow-wood occasionally applied to the tree in
-the region where it grows, as well as in markets where it is sold. This
-is not the tree known in commerce as West Indies boxwood, though it may
-be an occasional substitute. It is said that Florida boxwood was
-formerly much more abundant in this country than it is now. It was
-lumbered for the European market at about the same time that the south
-of Florida was stripped of its mahogany. It is suitable for many small
-articles where a hard, even-grained wood is wanted.
-
-IRONWOOD (_Cyrilla racemiflora_) ranges from the coast region of North
-Carolina to Florida, and west near the coast to Texas. It is known as
-leatherwood, burnwood, burnwood bark, firewood, red titi, and white
-titi. Ten woods besides this are called ironwood in some parts of this
-country. The name is applied because the hardness of the wood suggests
-iron. It is not remarkable for its weight nor its strength. The
-medullary rays are thin and inconspicuous. In color it is brown, tinged
-with red. It is not apparent why it is a favorite fire wood, for its
-fuel value does not rate high theoretically, being much below many
-species with which it is associated. The largest trees rarely exceed a
-height of thirty feet and a diameter of twelve inches. They flourish in
-shady river bottoms and along the borders of sandy swamps and shallow
-ponds.
-
-The tree occasionally assumes the form of a bush and sends up many stems
-which produce almost impenetrable thickets. Aside from its use as fuel,
-it is in small demand anywhere. In Texas it is sometimes made into
-wedges, and similar uses for it are doubtless found in other regions
-where it is abundant. It is named from Domenico Cirillo, an Italian
-naturalist who died in 1799.
-
-TITI (_Cliftonia monophylla_) is of the _cyrilla_ family and is one of
-three species which occasionally pass under that name. It sometimes
-reaches a height of fifty feet and a diameter of one or more. Its range
-follows the coast region from South Carolina to Louisiana. It betakes
-itself to swamps and flourishes in situations that would be fatal to
-many species. Half under water during many months of the year it is
-placed at no disadvantage. It grows equally well in shallow swamps which
-are rarely overflowed. Near the southern limits of its range in Florida
-it is reduced to a shrub. It is known as ironwood and buckwheat tree.
-The last name is due to its seeds which are about the size of a
-buckwheat grain and otherwise resemble it. The flowers appear in early
-spring on long racemes, and are very fragrant. The wood weighs about
-thirty-nine pounds per cubic foot, is not strong, but is moderately
-hard. It is valuable as fuel and burns with a clear, bright flame.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MOUNTAIN LAUREL
-
-[Illustration: MOUNTAIN LAUREL]
-
-
-
-
-MOUNTAIN LAUREL
-
-(_Kalmia Latifolia_)
-
-
-This tree belongs to the heath family and not to the laurels, as the
-name seems to imply. The same is true of rhododendron. The kalmia genus
-has five or six species in this country, but only one of tree size, and
-then only when at its best. Mountain laurel reaches its best development
-in North and South Carolina in a few secluded valleys between the Blue
-Ridge and the western mountains of the Appalachian ranges. The largest
-specimens are forty or fifty feet high and a foot or a foot and a half
-in diameter. Trunks are contorted and unshapely, and lumber is never
-sawed from them.
-
-The tree has many names, most of them, however, are applied to the
-species in its shrubby form. A common name is simply laurel, but that
-does not distinguish it from the great laurel which is often associated
-with it. Calico bush is one of its names, and is supposed to be
-descriptive of the flowers. Spoonwood is one of its northern names,
-dating back to the times when early settlers, who carried little
-silverware with them to their frontier homes, augmented the supply by
-making spoons and ladles of laurel roots. Ivy is a common name,
-sometimes mountain ivy, or poison ivy. Poison laurel and sheep laurel
-are among the names also. The leaves are poisonous, and if sheep feed on
-them, death is apt to follow. The exact nature of the poison is not
-understood. Sheep seldom feed on the leaves, and do so only when driven
-by hunger. Other names are small laurel, wood laurel, and kalmia. The
-last is the name of the genus, and is in honor of Peter Kalm, a Swedish
-naturalist.
-
-The species is found from New Brunswick to Louisiana, but principally
-among the ranges of the Appalachian mountains. Its thin bark makes it an
-easy prey to fire and the top is killed by a moderate blaze. The root
-generally remains uninjured and sends up sprouts in large numbers.
-Thickets almost impenetrable are sometimes produced in that way.
-
-Flowers and foliage of mountain laurel are highly esteemed as
-decorations, foliage in winter, and the flowers in May and June. The
-bloom appears in large clusters, and various colors are in evidence,
-white, rose, pink, and numerous combinations. The seeds are ripe in
-September, and the pods which bear them burst soon after.
-
-The wood of mountain laurel weighs 44.62 pounds per cubic foot. It is
-hard, strong, rather brittle, of slow growth, brown in color, tinged
-with red, with lighter colored sapwood. This description applies to the
-wood of the trunk; but in nearly all cases where mention is made of the
-wood of this tree, it refers to the roots. These consist of enlargements
-or stools, often protruding considerably above the ground. If the area
-has been visited repeatedly by fire, the roots are generally out of
-proportion to the size of the tops. In that respect they resemble
-mesquite, except that the enlarged root of mesquite penetrates far
-beneath the surface while that of mountain laurel remains just below the
-surface or rises partly above it.
-
-The utilization of mountain laurel is not confined to the trunks which
-reach tree size. Generally it is the root that is wanted. Roots are
-usually sold by weight, because of the difficulty of measuring them as
-lumber or even by the cord. The annual product of this material in North
-Carolina alone amounts to about 85,000 pounds, all of which goes to
-manufacturers of tobacco pipes and cigar holders. The use of the laurel
-root for pipes is as old as its use for spoons. Pioneers who raised and
-cured their own tobacco smoked it in pipes which were their own
-handiwork. The laurel root was selected then as now because it carves
-easily, is not inclined to split, does not burn readily, and darkens in
-color with age. It is cheap material, is found throughout an extensive
-region, and the supply is so large that exhaustion in the near future is
-not anticipated.
-
-The wood is employed in the manufacture of many small articles other
-than tobacco pipes. Paper knives, small rulers, turned boxes for pins
-and buttons, trays, plaques, penholders, handles for buckets, dippers,
-and firewood, are among the uses for which laurel is found suitable.
-
-It is of no small importance for ornamental purposes, and is often seen
-growing in clumps and borders in public parks and private yards, where
-its evergreen foliage and its bloom make it a valuable shrub. It is
-planted in Europe as well as in this country.
-
-GREAT LAUREL (_Rhododendron maximum_) is also in the heath family. More
-than two hundred species of _rhododendron_ are known, and seventeen are
-in this country, but only one attains tree size. The generic name means
-"rose tree," and the name is well selected. The flowers are the most
-conspicuous feature belonging to this species, and few wild trees or
-shrubs equal it for beauty. It is not native much west of the Alleghany
-mountains, but grows north and east to Nova Scotia. It is at its best
-among the mountains, thrives in deep ravines where the shade is dense,
-and on steep slopes and stony mountain tops. It forms extensive thickets
-which are often so deep and tangled that it is difficult to pass through
-them. This laurel is seldom found growing on limestone. It reaches its
-largest size in the South. Trees thirty or forty feet high and a foot in
-diameter occur in favored localities. It grows on the Alleghany
-mountains in West Virginia at an elevation exceeding 4,000 feet and
-there forms vast thickets. Some use is made of the wood for engraving
-blocks and as tool handles. It is hard, strong, brittle, of slow growth,
-and light clear brown. It is frequently planted in parks in this country
-and Europe, and three or more varieties are distinguished in
-cultivation. This laurel's leaves have a peculiar habit of shrinking and
-rolling up when the thermometer falls to zero or near it. Among the
-names applied to it are great laurel, rose bay, dwarf rose bay tree,
-wild rose bay, bigleaf laurel, deer tongue, laurel, spoon hutch, and
-rhododendron.
-
-CATAWBA RHODODENDRON (_Rhododendron catawbiense_) is a rare,
-large-flowered species of the mountain regions from West Virginia
-southward to Georgia and Alabama. The wood is not put to use, and the
-species is chiefly valuable as an ornamental shrub. It seldom reaches
-large size.
-
-SOURWOOD (_Oxydendrum arboreum_) follows the Alleghany mountain ranges
-south from Pennsylvania, and extends into Florida, reaching the Atlantic
-coast in Virginia, and Indiana, Tennessee, and Louisiana westward. The
-best development of the species is found among the western slopes of the
-Big Smoky mountains in Tennessee. It is called sorrel-tree, sour gum,
-and sour gum bush, on account of the acidity of the leaves when chewed.
-Arrow-wood, another name, refers to the long, straight stems between the
-whorls of branches of young trees--those three or four feet high. The
-stems are of proper size for arrows, and amateur bowmen use them. Those
-who designate the tree as lily-of-the-valley have in mind the flowers.
-The shape suggests an opening lily, but the size does not. The flower is
-about one-third of an inch long, but panicles several inches long are
-covered with them. They open in July and August, and in September the
-fruit is ripe. The seed is pale brown and one-eighth of an inch long.
-
-The sourwood tree at its best is fifty or sixty feet high and from
-twelve to eighteen inches in diameter. The bark of young trees is
-smooth, but on mature trunks it resembles the exceedingly rough bark of
-an old black gum. In fact, many people suppose this tree to be black
-gum, never having noticed the difference of leaf, fruit, and flower. The
-genus consists of a single species. The wood is heavy, hard, compact,
-and it takes good polish. The medullary rays are numerous, but thin, and
-they contribute little or nothing to the figure of the wood. The annual
-rings show little difference between springwood and summerwood, and
-consequently produce poor figure when the lumber is sawed tangentially.
-The pores are many and small and are regularly distributed through the
-yearly ring. Heartwood is brown, tinged with red, the sapwood lighter.
-The strength and elasticity of sourwood are moderate. The wood is made
-into sled runners in some of the mountain districts where it occurs, but
-no particular qualities fit it for that use. It is occasionally employed
-for machinery bearings. It has been reported for mallets and mauls, but
-since it is not very well suited for those articles, the conclusion is
-that those who so report it have confused it with black gum which it
-resembles in the living tree, but not much in the wood. Small handles
-are made of it, and it gives good service, provided great strength and
-stiffness are not required. Sourwood is not abundant anywhere, and
-seldom are more than a few trees found in a group.
-
-    TREE HUCKLEBERRY (_Vaccinium arboreum_) is the only tree form of
-    twenty-five or thirty species of huckleberry in this country. The
-    cranberry is one of the best known species. The range of tree
-    huckleberry extends from North Carolina to Texas, and it reaches its
-    largest size in the latter state where trunks thirty feet high and
-    ten inches in diameter occur, but not in great abundance. The fruit
-    which this tree bears has some resemblance to the common
-    huckleberry, but is inferior in flavor, besides being dry and
-    granular. It ripens in October and remains on the branches most of
-    the winter. The fruit is about a quarter of an inch in diameter,
-    dark and lustrous, and is a conspicuous and tempting bait for
-    feathered inhabitants of swamp and forest. The bark of the roots is
-    sometimes used for medicine, and that from the trunk for tanning,
-    but it is too scarce to become important in the leather industry.
-    The tree is known in different parts of its range as farkleberry,
-    sparkleberry, myrtle berry, bluet, and in North Carolina it is known
-    as gooseberry. The wood is hard, heavy, and very compact; is liable
-    to warp, twist, and check in drying; polishes with a fine, satiny
-    finish. Medullary rays are numerous, broad, and conspicuous; wood
-    light brown, tinged with red. Small articles are turned from it.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-OSAGE ORANGE
-
-[Illustration: OSAGE ORANGE]
-
-
-
-
-OSAGE ORANGE
-
-(_Toxylon Pomiferum_)
-
-
-Osage orange belongs to the mulberry family. There are fifty-four
-genera, three of which are found in the United States, the mulberries,
-the Osage orange, and the figs. Osage orange is known by several names,
-the principal one of which refers to the Osage Indians, who formerly
-lived in the region where the tree grows. It is called orange because
-the fruit, which is from two to five inches in diameter, looks like a
-green orange, but it is unfit for food. In its range most people call it
-bodark or bodock, that being a corruption of the name by which the
-French designated it, bois d'arc, which means bow wood. It was so called
-from the fact that Indians made bows of it when they could get nothing
-better. Its value as material for bows seems to be traditional and
-greatly overestimated. It is lower in elasticity than white oak and very
-much lower than hickory, and, theoretically, at least, it is not well
-suited for bows. The wood is known also as mock orange, bow-wood, Osage
-apple tree, yellow-wood, hedge, and hedge tree. The last name is given
-because many hedges have been made of it.
-
-Osage orange has been planted in perhaps every state of the Union, and
-grows successfully in most of them. It is one of the most widely
-distributed of American forest trees, but its distribution has been
-chiefly artificial. It was found originally in a very restricted region,
-from which it was carried for hedge and ornamental planting far and
-wide. Its natural home, to which it was confined when first discovered,
-embraced little more than ten thousand square miles, and probably half
-of that small area produced no trees of commercial size. Its northern
-limit was near Atoka, Oklahoma, its southern a little south of Dallas,
-Texas; a range north and south of approximately one hundred miles. Its
-broadest extent east and west was along Red River, through Cooke,
-Grayson, Fanning, Lamar, and Red River counties, Texas, about 120 miles.
-Some Osage orange of commercial size grew outside the area thus
-delimited, but no large amount. Much of that region, particularly south
-of Red River, was prairie, without timber of any kind; but scattered
-here and there were belts, strips, thickets, and clumps of Osage orange
-mixed with other species. On the very best of its range, and before
-disturbed by white men, this wood seldom formed pure stands of as much
-as 100 acres in one body, and since the country's settlement, the stands
-have become smaller or have been entirely cleared to make farms. All
-accounts agree that the Osage orange reaches its highest development on
-the fertile lands along Boggy and Blue rivers in Oklahoma, though fine
-bodies of it once grew south of the Red River in Texas, and much is
-still cut there though the choicest long ago disappeared. Few trees are
-less exacting in soil, yet when it can make choice it chooses the best.
-In its natural habitat it holds its place in the black, fertile flats
-and valleys, and is seldom found on sandy soil. It is not a swamp tree,
-though it is uninjured by occasional floods. The tracts where it grows
-are sometimes called "bodark swamps," though marshy in wet weather only.
-
-The tree attains a height of fifty or sixty feet when at its best, but
-specimens that tall are unusual. Trunks are occasionally two or three
-feet in diameter, but that size is very rare. At the present time
-probably ten trees under a foot in diameter are cut for every one over
-that size.
-
-Rough and unshapely as Osage trees are, they have been more closely
-utilized than most timbers. Fence posts are the largest item. The board
-measure equivalent of the annual cut of posts has been placed at
-18,400,000. The posts are shipped to surrounding states, in addition to
-fencing nearly 40,000 square miles of northern Texas and southern
-Oklahoma. Houseblocks constitute another important use. These are short
-posts set under the corners of buildings in place of stone foundations.
-The annual demand for this kind of material amounts to about 1,000,000
-board feet. An equal amount goes into bridge piling. The principal
-demand comes from highway commissioners. Telephone poles take a
-considerable quantity, and insulator pins more.
-
-One of the most important uses of Osage orange is found in the
-manufacture of wagon wheels, though the total quantity so used is
-smaller than that demanded for fence posts.
-
-About 10,000 or 12,000 wagons with Osage orange felloes or rims are
-manufactured annually in the United States. That use of the wood is not
-new. It began in a small way soon after the settlement of the region. At
-first the work was hand-done by local blacksmiths and wheelwrights. They
-found the wood objectionable, from the workman's standpoint, on account
-of its extreme hardness and the difficulty of cutting it. That objection
-is still urged against it though machines have taken the place of the
-hand tools of former times. Saws and bits are quickly dulled, and the
-cost of grinding, repair, and replacement increases the operator's
-expense much above ordinary mill outlay for such purposes. On that
-account many prefer to work the wood green. It is then softer, and cuts
-more smoothly. If seasoned before it is passed through the machines it
-is liable to "pull." That term is used to indicate a rough-breaking of
-the fibres by the impact of knives. The readiness with which the wood
-splits calls for extraordinary care in boring it, and many felloes are
-spoiled in finishing them to receive the tenoned ends of spokes.
-
-A number of commodities are made of Osage orange but in quantities so
-small that the total wood used does not constitute a serious drain upon
-the supply. Police clubs are occasionally made as a by-product of the
-rim mill. Some years ago at the Texas state fair at Dallas, a piano was
-exhibited, all visible wood being Osage orange, handsomely polished. The
-rich color of this wood distinguishes it from all other American
-species. When oiled it retains the yellow color, but unoiled wood fades
-on long exposure. Clock cases of Osage have been manufactured locally,
-and gun stocks made of it are much admired, though the wood's weight is
-an argument against it for gun stocks. Canes split from straight-grained
-blocks, and shaved and polished by hand, are occasionally met with, but
-none manufactured by machinery have been reported. Sawmills in the Osage
-orange region use the wood as rollers for carriages and off-bearing
-tables. Rustic rockers and benches of the wood, with the bark or without
-it, figure to a small extent in local trade. It has been tried
-experimentally for parquetry floors, with satisfactory results. Sections
-of streets have been paved with Osage orange blocks. The wood wears well
-and is nearly proof against decay, but no considerable demand for such
-blocks appears ever to have existed. Railroads which were built through
-the region years ago cut Osage for ties and culvert timber, but no such
-use is now reported. The demand for the wood for tobacco pipes is
-increasing, more than 100,000 blocks for such pipes having been sold
-during a single year.
-
-Osage orange weighs 48.21 pounds per cubic foot. It is twenty-eight per
-cent stronger than white oak, but is not quite as stiff, is very
-brittle, and under heavy impact, will crumble. For that reason, Osage
-wagon felloes will not stand rocky roads. The bark is sometimes used for
-tanning, and the wood for dyeing.
-
-    RED MULBERRY (_Morus rubra_) is frequently spoken of simply as
-    mulberry, and is sometimes called black mulberry. The full grown
-    fruit is red, but turns black or very dark purple when ripe. The
-    berry is composed of a compact and adhering cluster of drupes, each
-    drupe about one thirty-second of an inch long. What seems to be a
-    single berry is really an aggregation of very small fruits, each
-    resembling a tiny cherry. The mulberry is naturally a forest tree,
-    but it is permitted to grow about the margins of fields, and is
-    often planted in door yards for its fruit and its shade. It is
-    looked upon by many as a tame species.
-
-    Two mulberries grow naturally in this country. The red species
-    ranges from Massachusetts west to Kansas, and south to Texas and
-    Florida. Its best growth is found in the lower Ohio valley and the
-    southern foot hills of the Appalachian mountains. The largest trees
-    are seventy feet high and three or four in diameter. If this tree
-    were abundant the wood's place in furniture and finish would be
-    important. The heartwood is dark, of good figure, and fairly strong.
-    It takes a fine polish, and resembles black walnut, though usually
-    of a little lighter shade. Its largest use is as fence posts. It is
-    durable in contact with the soil. The effect when made into
-    furniture, finish, and various kinds of turnery, is pleasing. Farm
-    tools, particularly scythe snaths, are made of it, and it has been
-    reported for slack cooperage and boat building, but such uses are
-    apparently infrequent. The wood is evidently sold under some other
-    name, or without a name, for the total sawmill output in the United
-    States is given in government statistics at only 1,000 feet, which
-    is probably not one per cent of the cut.
-
-    MEXICAN MULBERRY (_Morus celtidifolia_) ranges from southern Texas
-    to Arizona. Trees are seldom more than thirty feet high and one in
-    diameter. The berry is about half an inch long, black, and made up
-    of a hundred or more very small drupes. It is edible, but its taste
-    is insipid. The wood is heavy and is of dark orange or dark brown
-    color. It is suitable for small turnery and other articles, but no
-    reports of uses for it have been found. The tree is occasionally
-    planted for its fruit by Mexicans, but Americans care little for it.
-
-    Two foreign mulberries have been extensively planted in this
-    country, and in some localities they are running wild and are
-    mistaken for native species. One is the white mulberry (_Morus
-    alba_), a native of China; the other is the paper mulberry
-    (_Broussonetia papyrifera_) a different genus, but of the same
-    family. It is a native of Japan, and has been naturalized in some of
-    the southern states. Nine varieties of the white mulberry have been
-    distinguished in cultivation.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PERSIMMON
-
-[Illustration: PERSIMMON]
-
-
-
-
-PERSIMMON
-
-(_Diospyros Virginiana_)
-
-
-Persimmon belongs to the ebony family, and the family has contributed to
-the civilization of the human race since very early times. Some of the
-oldest furniture in existence, that which was found hidden in the ruins
-of ancient Egypt, is ebony, and there is evidence among the old records
-in the land of the Nile that the Egyptians made voyages southward
-through the Red sea and brought back cargoes of ebony from Punt, a
-region in eastern Africa. The name ebony is believed to be derived from
-a Hebrew word, probably brought to Palestine by some of Solomon's
-captains who traded along the south coast of Asia or the east coast of
-Africa about the time of the building of the first temple. The botanical
-name for the genus (_diospyros_) is made up of two words meaning
-"Jupiter's wheat"--supposed to be a reference to the value of persimmons
-as food. The name, however, is not as old as the Hebrew word, nor is the
-Hebrew as old as the references to ebony in the records of Egypt. A
-piece of the old furniture--not less than 4,000 years old--is still in
-existence. It probably matches in age the cedar of Lebanon coffins in
-the oldest Egyptian tombs.
-
-The ebony family consists of five genera, one of which is persimmon
-(_diospyros_). This genus consists of 160 species, only two of them in
-the United States. Thus the persimmon trees of this country are a very
-small part of the family to which they belong, but they are a highly
-respectable part of it. The word persimmon is of Indian origin, and was
-used by the tribes near the Atlantic coast. The original spelling was
-"pessimin," and that was probably about the pronunciation given it by
-the aborigines.
-
-It has never been called by many names. It is known as date plum in New
-Jersey and Tennessee, and as possumwood in Florida. The avidity with
-which opossums feed on the fruit is responsible for the name.
-
-The range of persimmon extends from Connecticut to Florida, and westward
-to Iowa, Missouri, and Texas. It reaches its largest size in the South.
-It is of vigorous growth, spreading by means of seeds, and also by
-roots. The latter is the most common method where the ground is open.
-Such situations as old, abandoned fields invite the spread of
-persimmons. Roots ramify under the ground, and sprouts spring up, often
-producing thickets of an acre or more. Trees do not generally reach
-large size if they grow in that way, but their crowded condition does
-not make them fruitless as can be attested to by many a boy who
-penetrates the persimmon thickets by means of devious paths that wind
-with many a labyrinthic turn which takes in all that is worth finding.
-
-The variation in the quality of persimmons is greater than that of most
-wild fruits. Nature usually sets a standard and sticks closely to it,
-but the rule is not adhered to in the case of persimmons. Some are twice
-as large as others; some are never fit to eat, no matter how severely or
-how often they are frosted; others require at least one fierce frost to
-soften their austerity; but some may be eaten with relish without the
-ameliorating influence of frost.
-
-The austerity of a green persimmon is due to tannin. It is supposed that
-cultivation might remove some of this objectionable quality, but no
-great success has thus far attended efforts in that direction. Japanese
-persimmons, which are of a different species, are cultivated with
-success in California.
-
-The sizes of persimmon trees vary according to soil, climate, and
-situation. They average rather small, but occasionally reach a height of
-100 feet and a diameter of nearly two. Mature trunks are usually little
-over twelve inches in diameter, and many never reach that size.
-
-The dry wood weighs 49.28 pounds per cubic foot, which is about the
-weight of hickory. It is hard, strong, compact, and is susceptible of a
-high polish. The yearly rings are marked by one or more bands of open
-ducts, and scattered ducts occur in the rest of the wood. The medullary
-rays are thin and inconspicuous; color of heartwood dark brown, often
-nearly black; the sapwood is light brown, and frequently contains darker
-spots.
-
-The value of persimmon depends largely upon the proportion of sapwood to
-heartwood. That was the case formerly more than it is now; for until
-recent years the heartwood of persimmon was generally thrown away, and
-the sapwood only was wanted; but demand for the heart has recently
-increased. There is much difference in the proportion of heartwood to
-sapwood in different trees. It does not seem to be a matter of size, nor
-wholly of age. Small trunks sometimes have more heart than large ones. A
-tree a hundred years old may have heartwood scarcely larger than a lead
-pencil, and occasionally there is none. In other instances the heart is
-comparatively large.
-
-Persimmon has never been a wood of many uses, as hickory and oak have
-been. In early times it was considered valuable almost wholly on account
-of its fruit, and that had no commercial value, as it was seldom offered
-for sale in the market. In the language of the southern negroes who
-fully appreciated the fruit, it was "something good to run at"--meaning
-that the ripe persimmons were gathered and eaten from the trees while
-they lasted, but that few were preserved.
-
-It is recorded that the "small wheel" of the pioneer cabins was
-occasionally made of persimmon wood. The wheel so designated was the
-machine on which wool and flax were spun by the people in their homes.
-Spinning wheels were of two kinds, one large, with the operator walking
-to and fro, the other small, with the operator sitting. It was the small
-wheel which was sometimes made of persimmon. There is no apparent reason
-why it should have been made of that wood in preference to any one of a
-dozen others.
-
-The demand for persimmon in a serious way began with its use as shuttles
-in textile factories. Weavers had made shuttles of it for home use on
-hand looms for many years before the demand came from power looms where
-the shuttles were thrown to and fro by machinery. Up to some thirty
-years ago, shuttles for factories were generally made of Turkish
-boxwood, but the supply fell short and the advance in price caused a
-search for substitutes. Two satisfactory shuttlewoods were found in this
-country, persimmon and dogwood. The demand came not only from textile
-mills in America but from those of Europe. The manufacture of shuttle
-blocks became an industry of considerable importance.
-
-Persimmon wood is suitable for shuttles because it wears smooth, is
-hard, strong, tough, and of proper weight. Most woods that have been
-tried for this article fail on account of splintering, splitting,
-quickly wearing out, or wearing rough. The shuttle is not regarded as
-satisfactory unless it stands 1,000 hours of actual work. Some woods
-which are satisfactory for many other purposes will not last an hour as
-a shuttle.
-
-The manufacture of shuttles, after the square has been roughed out,
-requires twenty-two operations. Probably more shuttlewood comes from
-Arkansas than from any other section, though a dozen or more states
-contribute persimmon. The total sawmill cut of this wood in the United
-States is about 2,500,000 feet, but this does not include that which
-never passes through a sawmill.
-
-The wood has other uses. It has lately met demand from manufacturers of
-golf heads. Skewers are made of it in North Carolina, and billiard cues
-and mallets in Massachusetts.
-
-The heartwood is dark and shuttle makers and golfhead manufacturers will
-not have it. Until recently it was customary to throw it away, because
-no sale for it could be found. It is now known to be suitable for
-parquet flooring and for brush backs, and the demand for the heartwood
-is as reliable as for the sapwood. A little of the dark wood is cut in
-veneer and is employed in panel work, and other is used in turnery.
-
-The seeds of persimmon furnished one of the early substitutes for coffee
-in backwoods settlements when the genuine article could not be obtained.
-They were parched and pounded until sufficiently pulverized. During the
-Civil war many a confederate camp in the South was fragrant with the
-aroma of persimmon seed coffee, after the soldiers had added the fruit
-to their rations of cornbread.
-
-MEXICAN PERSIMMON (_Diospyros texana_) grows in Texas and Mexico. It is
-most abundant in southern and western Texas, where it suits itself to
-different soils, is found on rich moist ground near the borders of
-prairies, and also in rocky canyons and dry mesas. The largest trees are
-fifty feet high and twenty inches in diameter, but trunks that large are
-not abundant. The tree differs from the eastern persimmon in that the
-sapwood is thinner, and the heartwood makes up a much greater proportion
-of the trunk; the uses are consequently different, since it is taken for
-its dark wood, the eastern tree for its light-colored sap. The fruit of
-the Mexican persimmon is little esteemed. It is small, black, and the
-thin layer of pulp between the skin and the seed is insipid. Until fully
-ripe it is exceedingly austere. The Mexicans in the Rio Grande valley
-make a dye of the persimmons and use it to color sheep skins. The
-fruit's supply of tannin probably contributes to the tanning as well as
-the dyeing of the sheep pelts. The wood is heavier than eastern
-persimmon, and has more than three fold more ashes in a cord of wood,
-amounting to about 160 pounds. The bark is thin and the trunk gnarled.
-The dark color of the wood gives it the name black persimmon in Texas.
-Mexicans call it chapote. Sargent pronounces it the best American
-substitute for boxwood for engraving purposes, but it does not appear to
-be used outside of Texas. The wood is irregular in color, even in the
-same piece, being variegated with lighter and darker streaks, and cloudy
-effects. It ought to be fine brush-back material. It is worked into tool
-handles, lodge furniture, canes, rules, pen holders, picture frames,
-curtain rings, door knobs, parasol handles, and maul sticks for artists.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-FLOWERING DOGWOOD
-
-[Illustration: FLOWERING DOGWOOD]
-
-
-
-
-FLOWERING DOGWOOD
-
-(_Cornus Florida_)
-
-
-The dogwood or cornel family is old but not numerous. It originated
-several hundred thousand years ago and spread over much of the world,
-but preferred the temperate latitudes. One species at least crossed the
-equator and established itself in the highlands of Peru. There are forty
-or fifty species in all, about one-third of them in the United States,
-but most are shrubs. Black gum and tupelo are members of the family, and
-are giants compared with the dogwoods. In Europe the tree is usually
-called cornel, and that has been made the family name. It is a very old
-word, coined by the Romans before the days of Caesar. They so named it
-because it was hard like horn (_cornus_ meaning horn in the Latin
-language). They used it as shafts of spears, and so common was that use
-that when a speaker referred to a spear he simply called it by the name
-of the wood of the handle or shaft, as when Virgil described a combat
-which was supposed to have occurred 800 years before the Christian era,
-and used the words: "Clogged in the wound the Italian _cornel_ stood."
-
-The qualities of this wood which led to important uses among the Romans,
-have always made dogwood a valuable material. Civilized nations do not
-need it for spear shafts, but they have other demands which call for
-large amounts.
-
-The flowering dogwood has other names in this country. It is generally
-known simply as dogwood, but it is called boxwood in Connecticut, Rhode
-Island, New York, Mississippi, Michigan, Kentucky, and Indiana; false
-box-dogwood in Kentucky; New England boxwood in Tennessee; flowering
-cornel in Rhode Island; and cornel in Texas.
-
-Its range extends from Massachusetts through Ontario and Michigan to
-Missouri, south to Florida, and west to Texas. The area where it grows
-includes about 800,000 square miles. It is most common and of largest
-size in the South, comparatively rare in the North, generally occurs in
-the shade of taller trees, and prefers well-drained soil, but is not
-particular whether it is fertile or thin.
-
-The dogwood is valuable as ornament and for its wood. It was formerly a
-source of medicine, from roots, bark, and flowers; but it seems to have
-been largely displaced by other drugs; was once considered a good
-substitute for quinine, that use having been learned from Indian
-doctors. The Indians dug roots for a scarlet dye with which the vain
-warrior stained escutcheons on buckskin, and colored porcupine quills
-and bald eagle feathers for decorating his moccasins and his hair.
-
-The dogwood varies in size from a shrub with many branches to a tree
-forty feet high, eighteen inches in diameter, and with a flat but
-shapely crown. The trunk rises as a shaft with little taper, until the
-first branches are reached. All the branches start at the same place,
-and the trunk ends abruptly--divides into branches. Flowers are an
-important part of the tree, as might be inferred from the prominence
-given them in the tree's names. In the South the flowers appear in
-March, in the North in May, and in both regions before the opening of
-the leaves. The flowers on vigorous trees are three or four inches
-across, white, and very showy. A dogwood tree in full bloom against a
-hillside in spring is a most conspicuous object, and is justly admired
-by all who have appreciation of beauty. The flowers fall as leaves
-appear, and for some months the tree occupies its little space in the
-forest unobserved; but in the autumn it bursts again into glory, and
-while not quite as conspicuous an object as when in bloom, it is no less
-worthy of admiration. The fall of the leaves reveals the brilliant
-scarlet fruit which ladens the branches. The berries are just large
-enough for a good mouthful for a bird, but birds spare them until fully
-ripe to the harvest, and they then harvest them very rapidly. The tree
-is thus permitted to display its fruit a considerable time before
-yielding it to the feathered inhabitants of the air whose mission in
-forest economy is to scatter the seeds of trees, when nature provides
-the seeds themselves with no wings for flying.
-
-The two periods in the year when dogwood is highly ornamental, the
-flowers in spring before leaves appear, and fruit in autumn after leaves
-fall, are responsible for this tree's importance in ornamental planting.
-It is a common park tree, but it is small, generally not more than
-fifteen feet high, and it occupies subordinate places in the plans of
-the landscape garden. It is a filler between oaks, pines, and spruces,
-and it passes unnoticed, except when in bloom and in fruit.
-
-Dogwood is about four pounds per cubic foot heavier than white oak, has
-the same breaking strength, and is lower in elasticity. It is quite
-commonly believed that this tree has no heartwood, but the belief is
-erroneous. It seldom has much, and small trunks often none; but when
-dogwood reaches maturity it develops heart. Sometimes the heartwood is
-no larger than a lead pencil in trunks forty or fifty years old. The
-heart is brown, sapwood is white, and is the part wanted by the users of
-dogwood. Annual rings are obscure and it is a tree of slow growth. The
-wood is as nearly without figure as any in this country. It seldom or
-never goes to sawmills. The logs are too small. Most of the supply is
-bought by manufacturers of shuttles and golf stick heads, in this
-country and Europe. They purchase it by the cord or piece. It does not
-figure much in any part of the lumber business, but is cut and marketed
-in ways peculiar to itself. Log cutters in hardwood forests pay little
-attention to it. The dogwood harvest comes principally from southern
-states. Village merchants are the chief collectors, and they sell to
-contractors who ship to buyers in the manufacturing centers. The village
-merchants buy from farmers, who cut a stick here and there as they find
-it in woodlots, forests, or by the wayside, on their own land or
-somebody else's. When the cutter next drives to town he throws his few
-dogwoods in the wagon, and trades them to the store keeper for groceries
-or other merchandise. It is small business, but in the aggregate it
-brings together enough dogwood to supply the trade.
-
-Dogwood has many uses, but none other approaches shuttle making and
-golfhead manufacture in importance. The wood is made into brush blocks,
-wedges, engraver's blocks, tool handles, machinery bearings as a
-substitute for lignum-vitæ, small hubs, and many kinds of turnery and
-other small articles.
-
-WESTERN DOGWOOD (_Cornus nuttallii_) is a larger, taller tree than the
-eastern flowering dogwood. A height of 100 feet is claimed for it in the
-low country along the coast of British Columbia, but there are no
-authentic reports of trees so large anywhere south of the boundary
-between Canada and the United States. Its height ranges from twenty to
-fifty feet, and its diameter from six to twenty inches. The appearance
-is much the same as its eastern relative. Its berries are red, and grow
-in clusters of forty or less; the bark on old trunks is rough, but is
-smooth on those of medium size; the flowers are generally described as
-very large and showy, but the true flower is quite an inconspicuous
-affair, being a small, greenish-yellow, button-like cluster, surrounded
-by four or six snowy-white or sometimes pinkish scales which are
-popularly but erroneously supposed to form a portion of the real flower.
-The western dogwood in its native forest often puts out flowers in
-autumn; is well supplied with foliage which assumes red and orange
-colors in the fall when the showy berries are at their best. However,
-the tree has not yet won its way into the good graces of landscape
-gardeners, and has not been much planted in parks. It wants some of the
-good points possessed by the flowering dogwood. The western tree shows
-to best advantage in its native forest where it thrives on gentle
-mountain slopes and in low bottoms, valleys, and gulches, provided the
-soil is well drained and rich. It runs southward fifteen hundred miles
-from Vancouver island to southern California. It cares little for
-sunshine, and often is found growing nicely in dense shade. Seedlings do
-better where shade is deep. The wood is lighter but somewhat stronger
-than that of the flowering dogwood; is pale reddish-brown, with thick
-sapwood; is hard, and checks badly in seasoning. Mature trees are from
-100 to 150 years.
-
-BLUE DOGWOOD (_Cornus alternifolia_) is given that name because of the
-blue fruit it bears. It has a number of other names, among them being
-purple dogwood, green osier, umbrella tree, pigeonberry, and
-alternate-leaved dogwood, the last being simply a translation of its
-botanical name. It grows in more northern latitudes than the flowering
-dogwood, and does not range as far south. It is found from Nova Scotia
-to Alabama, and westward to Minnesota, but its southern habitat lies
-along the Appalachian mountain ranges. It attains size and assumes form
-similar to the flowering dogwood. The wood is heavy, hard, brown, tinged
-with red, the sapwood white. It is a deep forest tree, but has been
-domesticated in a few instances where it has been planted as ornament.
-The wood seems to possess the good qualities of flowering dogwood, but
-no reports of uses for it have been made.
-
-Two varieties of flowering dogwood have been produced by cultivation,
-weeping dogwood (_Cornus florida pendula_), and red-bract dogwood
-(_Cornus florida rubra_). English cornel or dogwood (_Cornus mas_) has
-been planted in many parts of this country. The so-called Jamaica
-dogwood is not in the dogwood family.
-
-
-    ANDROMEDA (_Andromeda ferruginea_) is a small southern tree of South
-    Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and in the latter state is sometimes
-    known as titi, though other trees also bear that name. The largest
-    are thirty feet high, if by chance one can be found standing erect,
-    for most of them prefer to sprawl at full length on the ground. The
-    fruit is a small berry of no value. The wood is weak, but hard and
-    sufficiently compact to receive fine polish. The heartwood is light
-    brown, tinged with red.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CALIFORNIA LAUREL
-
-[Illustration: CALIFORNIA LAUREL]
-
-
-
-
-CALIFORNIA LAUREL
-
-(_Umbellularia Californica_)
-
-
-This tree's range lies in southern Oregon and in California. It is a
-member of the laurel family and is closely related to the eastern
-sassafras and the red and the swamp bays of the southern states; but it
-is not near kin to the eastern laurels which, strange as it may appear,
-do not belong to the laurel family, notwithstanding the names they bear.
-
-The people of California and Oregon have several names for this
-interesting tree. It is known as mountain laurel, California bay tree,
-myrtle tree, cajeput, California olive, spice tree, laurel, bay tree,
-oreodaphne, and California sassafras.
-
-Those who call it laurel name it on account of its large, lustrous,
-thick leaves which adhere to the branches from two to six years. All new
-leaves do not come at once, as with most trees, but appear a few at a
-time during the whole summer.
-
-The names which connect this tree with sassafras, spice and cajeput are
-based on odor and taste. All members of the laurel family in this
-country are characterized by pungent, aromatic odor and taste, and the
-one under consideration shares these properties in a remarkable degree.
-When the leaves and the green bark are crushed, they give off a light,
-volatile oil in follicles which float in the air, like those of an
-onion, and when inhaled it produces severe pain over the eyes, and may
-induce dizziness and violent sneezing. Though the symptoms are alarming
-to one who is undergoing the experience for the first time, no serious
-inconvenience follows. Dried leaves are capable of producing a similar
-effect but with less violence. The California laurel's close
-relationship to the camphor tree is readily believed by persons who
-inhale some of the oily spray from the crushed leaves.
-
-Attempts have been made to produce the commercial oil of cajeput, or a
-substitute for it, by distilling the leaves and bark of this laurel. A
-passable substitute has been manufactured, but it cannot be marketed as
-the genuine article. By distilling the fruit a product known as
-umbellulic acid has been obtained.
-
-The California laurel carries a very dense crown of leaves. This is due
-partly to the old crops which hang so long, and to the tree's habit of
-lengthening its leading shoots during the growing season, and the
-constant appearance of young leaves on the lengthening shoots. It can
-stand an almost unlimited amount of shade itself, and is by no means
-backward in giving abundance of shade to small growth which is trying
-to struggle up to light from below. It delights in dense thickets, but
-it prefers thickets of its own species.
-
-Its fruiting habits and its disposition to occupy the damp, rich soil
-along the banks of small water courses, are responsible for the thick
-stands. The fruit itself is an interesting thing. It is yellowish-green
-in color, as large as a good-sized olive, and looks much like it. The
-fruit ripens in October, and falls in time to get the benefit of the
-autumn rains which visit the Pacific coast. Since the trees generally
-grow along gulches, the fruit falls and rolls to the bottom. The first
-dashing rain sends a flood down the gulches, the laurel drupes are
-carried along and are buried in mud wherever they can find a resting
-place. Germination takes place soon after. The fruit remains under the
-mud, attached to the roots of the young plants, until the following
-summer.
-
-The result is that if a laurel gets a foothold in a gulch through which
-water occasionally flows, lines of young laurels will eventually cover
-the banks of the gulch as far down stream as conditions are favorable.
-
-The wood of California laurel weighs 40.60 pounds per cubic foot when
-kiln-dried. That is nine pounds heavier than sassafras. It is very heavy
-when green and sinks when placed in water. It is hard and very firm,
-rich yellowish brown in color, often beautifully mottled; but this
-applies to the heartwood only, and not to the thick sapwood.
-
-Lumbermen have discovered that the wood's color can be materially
-changed by immersing the logs when green, and leaving them submerged a
-long time. The beautiful "black myrtle," which has been so much admired,
-is nothing more than California laurel which has undergone the cold
-water treatment.
-
-The annual rings of growth are clearly marked by dark bands of
-summerwood. The rings are often wide, but not always, for sometimes the
-growth is very slow. The wood is diffuse-porous, and the pores are small
-and not numerous. The wood's figure is brought out best by tangential
-sawing, as is the case with so many woods which have clearly-marked
-rings but small and obscure medullary rays. Figure is not uniform; that
-is, one trunk may produce a pattern quite different from another. The
-figure of some logs is particularly beautiful; these logs are selected
-for special purposes. Sudworth says that none of our hardwoods excels it
-in beautiful grain when finished, and Sargent is still more emphatic
-when he declares that it is "the most valuable wood produced in the
-forests of Pacific North America for interior finish of houses and for
-furniture."
-
-The wood of this tree has more than ninety per cent of the strength of
-white oak, is considerably stiffer, and contains a smaller amount of
-ash, weight for weight of wood. The species reaches its best development
-in the rich valleys of southwestern Oregon, where, with the broadleaf
-maple, it forms a considerable part of the forest growth. The largest
-trees are from sixty to eighty feet high, and two to four in diameter.
-In crowded stands the trunks are shapely, and often measure thirty or
-forty feet to the first limbs; but more commonly the trunk is short.
-
-The boat yards in southwestern Oregon were the first to use California
-laurel for commercial purposes, but early settlers made a point of
-procuring it for fuel when they could. The oil in the wood causes it to
-burn with a cheerful blaze, and campers in the mountains consider
-themselves fortunate when they find a supply for the evening bonfire.
-
-Shipbuilders have drawn upon this wood for fifty years for material. It
-is made into pilot wheels, interior finish, cleats, crossties, and
-sometimes deck planking. Furniture makers long ago made a specialty of
-the wood for their San Francisco trade. For thirty years travelers
-admired the superb furniture of the Palace hotel in that city, and
-wondered of what wood it was made. It was the California laurel. The
-hotel's furniture was hand-made, or largely so, at a time when
-woodworking factories were few on the Pacific coast. The furniture was
-finally destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake. Furniture is still
-one of the products made of the wood, but the quantity is small. Other
-products are interior finish; fixtures for banks, stores and offices;
-musical instruments, including organs; mathematical instruments, and
-carpenters' tools, including rulers, straight-edges, spirit levels,
-bench screws and clamps, and handles of many kinds.
-
-Makers of novelties and small turnery find it serviceable for paper
-knives, pin trays, match safes, brush backs, and many articles of like
-kind. One of the largest uses for it is as walking beams for pumping
-oilwells in central and southern California. The beauty of grain has
-nothing to do with this use.
-
-Country blacksmiths repair wagons and agricultural implements with this
-wood. Farmers have long employed it about their premises for posts,
-gates, floors, and building material. Cooks flavor soup with the leaves,
-and poultrymen make henroosts of poles, believing that the wood's odor
-will keep insects away. This is probably the old sassafras superstition
-carried west by early California settlers.
-
-
-    RED BAY (_Persea borbonia_) is a southern member of the laurel
-    family, and close akin to sassafras and the California laurel. The
-    bark is red, hence the name; but it is known also as bay galls,
-    laurel tree, Florida mahogany, false mahogany, and sweet bay. It
-    grows from Virginia to Texas, but is most abundant near the coast,
-    yet it ascends the Mississippi valley to Arkansas. The leaves remain
-    on the tree a full year, but turn yellow toward the last, in
-    consequence of which the species is not evergreen. In shape and
-    color the leaves resemble laurel. The fruit is a small, dark blue
-    drupe, with thin flesh. The wood is heavy, hard, very strong,
-    rather brittle, bright red, with thin, lighter-colored sapwood. It
-    was once very popular in the South for furniture. Rare pieces, some
-    150 years old, are still found in southern homes. The wood was
-    exported prior to 1741 from the Carolinas, and the quantity seems to
-    have been considerable. It was then regarded as a finer wood than
-    mahogany. It was exported to the West Indies, where mahogany was
-    abundant, and was made into furniture and finish for the homes of
-    wealthy planters and merchants. An old report describes the wood as
-    resembling "watered satin." It was in early demand by shipbuilders,
-    but it has now ceased to go to boat yards. Except in rare instances,
-    it is not reported by any wood-using industries. In Texas a little
-    is made into pin trays, small picture frames, canes, and shelves. It
-    deserves a more important place, for when polished and finished, it
-    is one of the handsomest woods of this country. Trees attain a
-    height of sixty or seventy feet, and a diameter of two or three.
-
-    SWAMP BAY (_Persea pubescens_) attains a height of thirty or forty
-    feet, but is seldom more than a foot in diameter, and is too small
-    for saw timber. The wood is strong, heavy, rather soft, orange
-    colored, streaked with brown, and not as handsome as its larger
-    relative, red bay, which is associated with it from North Carolina
-    to Mississippi. It is an evergreen in some cases, but in others the
-    leaves turn yellow the second spring. The black fruit is a drupe
-    nearly an inch long. The wood is without attractive figure, since
-    its medullary rays are obscure, and the annual rings are indistinct
-    and produce little contrast when the trunks are sawed tangentially.
-    Color is the chief attraction that can be claimed for the wood. A
-    little is occasionally worked into interior finish.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LOCUST
-
-[Illustration: LOCUST]
-
-
-
-
-LOCUST
-
-(_Robinia Pseudacacia_)
-
-
-Locust belongs to the pea family, known in botany as _Leguminosæ_.[6] In
-most parts of its range it is known simply as locust, but in some
-localities it is called black locust, an allusion to the color of the
-bark; yellow locust, descriptive of the heartwood; white locust,
-referring to the bloom; red locust, probably a reference to the wood,
-and green locust for the same reason; acacia and false acacia; honey
-locust, a name which belongs to another species; post locust, because it
-has always been a favorite tree for fence posts; and pea-flower locust,
-a reference to the bloom.
-
-    [6] This is a very large family, containing trees, shrubs, and
-    vines, such as locusts, acacias, beans, and clovers. There are 430
-    genera in the world, and many times that many species. The United
-    States has seventeen genera and thirty species of the pea family
-    that are large enough to be classed as trees. Their common names
-    follow: Florida Cat's Claw, Huajillo, Texan Ebony, Wild Tamarind,
-    Huisache, Texas Cat's Claw, Devil's Claw, Leucæna, Chalky Leucæna,
-    Screwbean, Mesquite, Redbud, Texas Redbud, Honey Locust, Water
-    Locust, Coffeetree, Horsebean, Small-leaf Horsebean, Greenbark
-    Acacia, Palo Verde, Frijolito, Sophora, Yellow-wood, Eysenhardtia,
-    Indigo Thorn, Locust, New Mexican Locust, Clammy Locust, Sonora
-    Ironwood, Jamaica Dogwood. These species are treated separately in
-    the following pages, and are given space according to their relative
-    commercial importance in the particular regions where they grow.
-
-Several of the names refer to the color of the wood, and seem
-contradictory, for yellow, green, and red are not the same; yet the
-names describe with fair accuracy. Color of the heartwood varies with
-different trees, yellow with some, tinged with red with others, and
-sometimes it might be appropriately called blue locust, for the
-heartwood is nearer that color than any other.
-
-The natural range of locust seems to have been confined to the
-Appalachian mountain ranges from Pennsylvania to Georgia. It probably
-existed as a low shrub in parts of Arkansas and Oklahoma. Its range has
-been extended by planting until it now reaches practically all the
-states, but is running wild in only about half of them. It has received
-a great deal of attention from foresters and tree planters. It attracted
-notice very early, because of its hardness, strength, and lasting
-properties. At one time the planting of locust came nearly being a fad.
-In England it was supposed that it would rise to great importance in
-shipbuilding, and in France it was looked upon as no less important.
-Books were written on the subject in both English and French. All the
-details of planting and utilization were discussed. Its generic name,
-_Robinia_, is in honor of a Frenchman, Robin. Extravagant claims were
-once made for the wood. When American ships were gaining victory after
-victory over English vessels in the war of 1812, it was asserted in
-England that the cause of American success was the locust timber in
-their ships. The claim may have been partly true, but other factors
-contributed to the phenomenal series of successes.
-
-The locust craze died a natural death. Too much was claimed for the
-wood. Possibilities in the way of growth were over estimated. It was
-assumed that the tree, if planted, would grow everywhere as vigorously
-as on its native mountains in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia,
-where trees two or three feet in diameter and eighty feet high were
-found. Experience proved later that nature had planted the locust in the
-best place for it, and when transplanted elsewhere it was apt to fall
-short of expectations. Outside of its natural range it grows vigorously
-for a time, and occasionally reaches large size; but in recent years the
-locust borer has defeated the efforts of man to extend the range of this
-species and make it profitable in regions distant from its native home.
-The tree is often devoured piecemeal, branches and twigs breaking and
-falling, and trunks gradually disappearing beneath the attacks of the
-hungry borers. No effective method of combating the pest is known. The
-planting of locust trees, once so common, has now nearly ceased.
-
-Within its native range, and beyond that range when it has a chance,
-locust is a valuable and beautiful tree. It is valuable at all times on
-account of the superior wood which it furnishes, and beautiful when in
-bloom and in leaf. A locust in full flower is not surpassed in
-ornamental qualities by any tree of this country. It is a mass of white,
-exceedingly rich in perfume. It blooms in May or June. During the summer
-its foliage shows tropical luxuriance with exquisite grace. Its compound
-leaves are from eight to fourteen inches long, with seven to nine
-leaflets. They come late in spring and go early in autumn. The tree's
-thorns, resembling cat claws, are affixed to the bark only, and usually
-fall with the leaves. The fruit is a pod three or four inches long, and
-contains four or eight wingless seeds. They depend on animals to carry
-them to planting places. The pods dry on the branches, and rattle in the
-wind most of the autumn. The tree spreads by underground roots which
-send up sprouts. A locust in winter is not a thing of beauty. It appears
-to be dead; not a bud visible. Its black, angular branches lack every
-line of grace.
-
-Locust wood is remarkable for strength, hardness, and durability. It is
-about one pound per cubic foot lighter than white oak, but is
-thirty-four per cent stiffer and forty-five per cent stronger. Its
-strength exceeds that of shagbark hickory, and it is doubtful whether a
-stronger wood exists in the United States. Its hardness is equally
-remarkable, and is said to be due to crystals formed in the wood cells,
-and known as "rhaphides." Its durability is probably equal to that of
-Osage orange, mesquite, and catalpa, but it is not easy to fix a
-standard of durability by which to compare different woods. Locust is
-the best fence post wood in this country, because it is usually much
-straighter than other very durable woods. The posts are expected to last
-at least thirty years, and have been known to stand twice that long.
-
-For more than 150 years locust was almost indispensable in shipbuilding,
-furnishing the tree nails or large pins which held the timbers together.
-It supplied material for other parts of ships also, but in smaller
-quantities. The substitution of steel ships for wooden lessened demand
-for locust pins, and in many instances large iron nails are used to
-fasten timbers together. In spite of this, the demand for locust tree
-nails is nearly always ahead of supply.
-
-The wood's figure is fairly strong, due to the contrast between the
-springwood and that grown later, but not to the medullary rays, which
-are small and inconspicuous. The wood is not in much demand for
-ornamental purposes. Small amounts are made into policemen's clubs, rake
-teeth, hubs for buggy wheels, ladder rungs, and tool handles.
-
-The tree grows rapidly where conditions are favorable, and very slowly
-when they are not. Usually trees of fence post size are twenty years old
-at least, but trunks thirty five years old have been known to produce a
-post for each two years of age, though that was exceptional. Railroads,
-especially in Pennsylvania, planted locust largely a few years ago for
-ties. It has been reported that in some instances expectations of growth
-have not been fully realized.
-
-    CLAMMY LOCUST (_Robinia viscosa_) was originally confined to the
-    mountains of North Carolina and South Carolina where its attractive
-    flowers brought it to the notice of nurserymen who have enlarged its
-    natural range a hundred if not a thousand fold. It is now grown in
-    parks and gardens not only in the United States east of the
-    Mississippi river and as far north as Massachusetts, but in most
-    foreign countries that have temperate climates. It is usually a
-    shrub, but on some of the North Carolina mountains it attains a
-    height of forty feet and a diameter of twelve inches. The wood is
-    seldom or never used for any commercial purpose. The leaves are from
-    seven to twelve inches long, and contain thirteen to twenty-one
-    leaflets. The flowers appear in June, possess little odor, and are
-    admired solely for their beauty. They are mingled red and rose
-    color. The pods are from two to three and a half inches long, and
-    contain small, mottled seeds. The wood is hard and heavy, the heart
-    brown and the sap yellow. In its wild haunts it is usually a shrub
-    five or six feet high.
-
-    NEW MEXICAN LOCUST (_Robinia neo-mexicana_) is a small southwestern
-    tree, seldom exceeding a height of twenty-five feet or a diameter of
-    eight inches. It ranges from Colorado to Arizona, and takes its name
-    from its presence in New Mexico. It reaches its largest size near
-    Trinidad, Colorado. It is found at elevations of 7,000 feet. Leaves
-    are from six to twelve inches long, and the leaflets number from
-    fifteen to twenty-one. The flowers appear in May and are less showy
-    than those of the eastern locust. The wood is heavy, exceedingly
-    hard, the heartwood yellow, streaked with brown, the thin sapwood
-    light yellow. This locust is occasionally used locally for small
-    posts or stakes, but is generally too small. It is sometimes met
-    with in cultivation in Europe and the eastern states.
-
-    TEXAN EBONY (_Zygia flexicaulis_) ranges from the Texas coast
-    through Mexico to Lower California. It reaches a height of thirty
-    feet or more, and a diameter of two or less. It is a beautiful tree
-    along the lower Rio Grande where it reaches its largest size. The
-    light yellow or cream-colored, very fragrant flowers bloom from June
-    till August; the fruit ripens in Autumn but adheres several months
-    to the branches. Mexicans roast the seeds as a substitute for
-    coffee. The color of the heartwood gives this tree its name, but it
-    is not a true ebony. The wood of the roots is blacker than that of
-    the trunk, and small articles made of roots resemble black ebony of
-    Ceylon. The trunk wood is liable to be streaked with black, brown,
-    and medium yellow. The rings of annual growth are frequently of
-    different colors. Considerable demand is made upon this wood in
-    Texas for crossties. It is very durable, but is so hard that holes
-    must be bored for the spikes. It is sold in large amounts as
-    cordwood, and it burns well. Other articles made of this so-called
-    ebony are foundation blocks for buildings and rollers for moving
-    houses. It is used also for small turnery.
-
-    HUAJILLO (_Zygia brevifolia_) has no English name, but Americans in
-    the Rio Grande valley where this tree grows call it by its Mexican
-    name. It is a larger tree in Mexico than on this side of the river.
-    It is not often more than thirty feet high and six inches in
-    diameter, and is generally a shrub. Its beautiful foliage looks like
-    masses of ferns, and the flowers range from white to violet-yellow.
-    The wood is dark, hard, heavy, and is seldom used for anything but
-    fuel.
-
-    FLORIDA CAT'S CLAW (_Zygia unguis-cati_), with a Latin name that
-    would make Julius Caesar stare and gasp, reaches its largest size in
-    the United States on Elliott's Key, Florida. Its name refers to its
-    curved thorns. Trunks twenty-five feet high and eight inches in
-    diameter are the largest in this country. It bears pods, but the
-    leaves are not compound, thus differing from most trees of the pea
-    family. The wood is not put to any use, though it is very hard and
-    heavy, rich red, varying to purple, with clear yellow sapwood. It is
-    said to check badly in drying. The bark is used for medicine in some
-    of the islands of the West Indies.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-HONEY LOCUST
-
-[Illustration: HONEY LOCUST]
-
-
-
-
-HONEY LOCUST
-
-(_Gleditsia Triacanthos_)
-
-
-This tree has never suffered for want of names, but most of them refer
-either to the sweetness of the pod or to the fierceness of the thorns.
-The belief has long prevailed that it was the pods of this tree on which
-John the Baptist fed while a recluse in the Syrian desert. The tradition
-should not be taken seriously. It was certainly not this tree, if any,
-which furnished food to the prophet in the wilderness, for it does not
-grow in Syria. Some related species may grow there, for species of
-_Gleditsia_ occur in western Asia as well as in China, Japan, and west
-Africa. The generic name is in honor of Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch, a
-German botanist who died in 1786.
-
-The name honey locust refers to the pod, not the flowers. The latter are
-greenish, inconspicuous, and though eagerly sought by bees, they offer
-no particular attractions to people. Few persons ever notice them.
-
-In some of the southwestern states the tree is called black locust,
-though for what reason it is not apparent. Sweet locust, by which name
-it is known in several states, has reference to the pods, as do the
-names honey, and honey-shucks locust, applied in different localities.
-Many persons in naming the tree have thorns in mind. It is known as
-three-thorned acacia, thorn locust, thorn tree, thorny locust, and
-thorny acacia. The botanist who named it considered thorns a
-characteristic, for _Triacanthos_ means "three-thorned."
-
-No one who has ever had dealings with the thorns, will fail to duly
-consider them. They are about the most ferocious product of American
-forests. The tree's trunk and largest branches bristle with them,
-standing out like porcupine quills, and sharper than any needle devised
-by human ingenuity. Microscopists use them for picking up and handling
-minute objects, their points being smooth and delicate though their
-shafts may be strong and rough. Thorns are arrested branches, coming
-from deep down in the wood. No more can one of them be pulled out than a
-limb can be extracted by the roots. They come from the center of the
-tree or limb. Some put out leaves and become true branches, but others
-sharpen their points, assume an attitude of hostility, and remain thorns
-to the end of their lives. Some of them are a foot long, and are so
-strong that birds flying against them are impaled and meet cruel death.
-A well-armed trunk is proof against the agility and skill of the
-squirrel. He cannot negotiate the thorns, and probably he tries only
-once. The hot pursuit of a dog will not compel him to attempt it. All
-trees, however, are not formidably thorned; some have few, and certain
-varieties have none.
-
-The honey locust is sometimes called the Confederate pin tree in the
-South. This is a reference to the Civil war, and the use occasionally
-made of the thorns by soldiers in mending the rents in their torn
-uniforms. The thorns were once put to a somewhat similar use among the
-Alleghany mountains where local factories for carding and spinning
-country wool employed them to pin up the mouths of wool sacks.
-
-The natural range of honey locust has been greatly extended by man. It
-was not originally found east of the Alleghany mountains. It grew from
-western Pennsylvania to northern Alabama and Mississippi, and westward
-to Nebraska and Texas. It is now naturalized east of the Alleghanies,
-and southward to the Gulf of Mexico. Planting for ornamental purposes
-and for hedges has been the cause of its extension into new territory.
-In spite of thorns, it is ornamental. Its foliage is thin, and its
-flowers inconspicuous, but the tree possesses a grace which wins it
-favor. It grows very rapidly, and in a short time a seedling becomes a
-respectable tree, and continues its rapid growth a long time. In
-southern Indiana and Illinois, which is the best part of its range,
-trees have attained a height of 140 feet and a diameter of six. The
-average size of forest-grown specimens is seventy-five feet in height,
-and two or more in diameter.
-
-The leaves are seven or eight inches long, doubly compound; the fruit a
-pod a foot or more in length, which assumes a twist when ripe, or
-sometimes warps several ways. The green pod contains a sweet substance
-often eaten by children, but it is believed to be of little value for
-human food. Cattle devour the pods when in the sugary condition; but
-they cannot often obtain them, because thorns intervene, when the pods
-would otherwise be in reach. In rural districts, a domestic beer is
-brewed from the young fruit. The juice extracted from it is permitted to
-ferment, but the beverage is probably never sold in the market.
-
-The pods are in no hurry to let go and fall, even after they are fully
-ripe. They become dry, distort themselves with a number of corkscrew
-twists, and hang until late fall or early winter, rattling in the wind
-and occasionally shaking out a seed or two.
-
-Honey locust has never been considered important from the lumberman's
-standpoint. Sawlogs go to mills here and there, but never many in one
-place. The wood is not listed under its own name, but is put in with
-something else. Occasionally, it is said, it passes as sycamore in the
-furniture factory, though the difference ought not be difficult to
-detect. It doubtless depends to a considerable degree on the particular
-wood, for all honey locust does not look alike when converted into
-lumber. Some of that in the lower Mississippi valley might pass as
-sycamore if inspection is not too conscientiously carried out. The
-medullary rays, being darker than the body of the wood, suggest sycamore
-in quarter-sawed stock. Some of it goes into furniture, finish,
-balusters, newel posts, panels, and molding, particularly in eastern
-Texas. In Louisiana, where wood of similar texture and appearance might
-be expected, it is not looked on with favor, but is employed only in the
-cheapest, roughest work.
-
-The principal use of the wood is for posts and railroad ties. It lasts
-well, and is strong. Claims have been made that it is generally equal
-and in some ways superior to locust. It is difficult to see on what
-these claims are based. It is lighter, less elastic, and much weaker.
-Figures showing the comparative durability of the two woods are not
-available, but in like situations, locust would doubtless last much
-longer. As timber trees, the former may have the advantage over locust
-in being free from attacks of borers, attaining greater size, and
-thriving in a much larger area. It has been planted for ornament in
-other lands than this, and is now prospering in all the important
-countries of the temperate zone. One variety is thornless, and is known
-to botanists as _Gleditsia triacanthos lævis_; another has short thorns.
-
-    WATER LOCUST (_Gleditsia aquatica_) looks so much like honey locust
-    that the two are often supposed to be the same species in Louisiana;
-    yet there are a number of differences. Water locust has fewer thorns
-    and they are smaller, and often flat like a knife blade. The pods
-    are entirely different from those of honey locust, being short and
-    wide. The two species share the same range to some extent, but that
-    of water locust is smaller, extending from South Carolina to Texas,
-    Illinois, and Missouri; but the best of the species is west of the
-    lower Mississippi where trees may reach a height of sixty feet and a
-    diameter of two. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, the heartwood
-    rich bright brown, tinged with red, the sapwood yellow. The wood is
-    much like that of honey locust, and when used at all is employed in
-    the same way.
-
-    TEXAS LOCUST (_Gleditsia texana_) is of no importance as a timber
-    tree, and deserves mention only because its extremely restricted
-    range gives it an interest. It exists, as far as known, in a single
-    grove on the bottom lands of the Brazos river, near Brazoria, Texas,
-    where some of the trees exceed 100 feet in height, and a diameter of
-    two. The bark is smooth and thin, the leaves resemble those of honey
-    locust, and the pods are about one-third as long.
-
-    HUISACHE (_Acacia farnesiana_) is native along the Rio Grande in
-    Texas, but it is running wild in Florida from planted trees. It is
-    one of the most widely distributed species in the world, both by
-    natural dispersal and by planting; and it is one of the handsomest
-    members of the large group of acacias which includes more than 400
-    species. It bears delicate double-compound leaves, small and
-    graceful. A tree in full leaf in its native wilds along the Rio
-    Grande looks like a trembling fluffy mass of green silk. Nature
-    formed the tree for ornament, not for timber. It attains a height of
-    from twenty to forty feet, diameter eighteen inches or less. Trunk
-    usually divides into several branches near the ground. Perhaps the
-    only place in this country where the wood is used is in southern
-    Texas where is it called "cassie," a shortening of acacia. The wood
-    so much resembles mesquite that locally they are considered the
-    same. Huisache warps and checks in seasoning, but it is employed in
-    a small way for furniture, usually as small table legs, spindles,
-    knobs, and ornaments. It takes high polish, and resembles the best
-    grades of black walnut, but is much heavier, harder, and stronger.
-    It is next to impossible to drive a nail into it without first
-    boring a hole. When used as crossties, holes must be bored for the
-    spikes. The heartwood resists decay a long time, but the thin
-    sapwood is liable to be riddled by small boring insects, which
-    seldom or never enter the heartwood.
-
-    TEXAS CAT'S CLAW (_Acacia wrightii_) is a hardluck tree of western
-    Texas where it is usually found on dry, gravelly hills and in stony
-    ravines. Its twice-compound leaves are among the smallest of the
-    acacias, seldom exceeding two inches in length. The fragrant, light
-    yellow flowers appear from March to May, and the short pods ripen in
-    midsummer, but like so many trees of the pea family, they are in no
-    hurry to fall. The largest trees are thirty feet high and one in
-    diameter, but most people associate cat's claw with low, tangled
-    brush, tough as wire, and armed with curved thorns so strong that
-    their hold on clothing can hardly be broken. When a cat's claw bush
-    strikes out to become a tree--which is infrequent--it grows rapidly.
-    It has been known to attain a diameter of nine inches in
-    twenty-three years. The heart is dark in color and exceedingly hard.
-    The color varies from nearly red to nearly black, and takes a polish
-    almost like ivory. The thin yellow sapwood is preyed on by boring
-    insects. Heartwood is made into canes, umbrella sticks, tool
-    handles, rulers, and turned novelties.
-
-    DEVIL'S CLAW (_Acacia greggii_) has such paradoxical names as
-    paradise flower, ramshorn, and cat's claw. It deserves them all
-    where it grows wild on the semi-deserts of the Southwest from Texas
-    to California. The double-compound leaves are one or two inches
-    long, its bright, creamy-yellow and exquisitely fragrant flowers are
-    the glory of desert places, while its masses of thorns readily
-    suggest the common name by which it is known. The wood is scarce,
-    but extraordinarily fine. It is dark rich red, but clouded with
-    streaks and patches of other shades, becoming at times gray, at
-    others green. No nail can be driven into it, and an ordinary gimlet
-    will hardly bore it. It is so saturated with oil that it is greasy
-    to the touch. It is manufactured into small articles, but apparently
-    is not used outside of the locality where it grows. The wood is
-    often contorted, due to pits and cavities which slowly close as the
-    tree advances in age. They add to rather than detract from the
-    wood's beauty.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-COFFEE TREE
-
-[Illustration: COFFEE TREE]
-
-
-
-
-COFFEETREE
-
-(_Gymnocladus Dioicus_)
-
-
-This tree is scarce though its range covers several hundred thousand
-square miles, from New York to Minnesota, and from Tennessee to
-Oklahoma. It never occurs in thick stands, and usually the trees are
-widely scattered. Many districts of large size within the limits of its
-range appear to have none.
-
-The names coffeetree and Kentucky coffeetree refer to the custom of the
-pioneers, who settled the region south of the Ohio river, and who used
-the grotesque fruit as a substitute for coffee at a time when the
-genuine article could not be procured. The seed is a very hard bean that
-can be procured in abundance, where trees abound.
-
-The beans were softened by roasting or parching, and were then pounded
-into meal with hammers, and boiled for coffee. The beverage was black
-and bitter, and a little of it would go a long way with a modern coffee
-drinker. When the Kentuckians were able to procure coffee they let the
-wild substitute alone.
-
-The name was sometimes varied by calling it coffeenut or coffeenut tree,
-and sometimes it was known as coffeebean and coffeebean tree. It is less
-easy to explain why it was called mahogany in New York, and virgilia in
-Tennessee. Some knew it as the nicker tree, but the reason for the name
-is not known. Stump tree was another of its names. This was meant to be
-descriptive of the tree's appearance after it had shed its leaves. It
-has remarkable foliage, double compound leaves two or three feet long,
-with four or five dozen leaflets. When leaves fall in autumn it looks as
-if the tree is shedding its twigs; and when all are down, the stripped
-and barren appearance of the branches suggests the name stump tree.
-
-The flowers are greenish-purple and are inconspicuous. In this respect
-they differ from many trees of the pea family which are noted for their
-attractive bloom. The fruit is among the largest of the tree pods of
-this country, ranging in length from six to ten inches and from one and
-a half to two in width. When fully grown they are heavy enough to make
-their presence felt if they drop on the heads of persons beneath. They
-are slow to fall, however, and it is not unusual for them to cling to
-the branches until late winter or early spring.
-
-The coffeetree has been known to attain a diameter of five feet and a
-height of more than a hundred, but the usual size is about half of that.
-It prefers rich bottom lands, and the trunks generally separate into
-several stems a few feet above the ground. Only one species exists in
-this country, and as far as known, only one other species elsewhere, and
-that grows in southern China where it is said the natives make soap of
-the pods. It is not known that any such utilization has been attempted
-in this country.
-
-The coffeetree's range has been considerably extended by planting for
-ornament. In summer it is attractive, but from the first autumn frost
-until the leaves put out the following spring, it is uninteresting. The
-spring leaves are late, and the branches are bare more than half the
-year.
-
-The wood is heavy, strong, and durable in contact with the soil. The
-heart is rich light brown, tinged with red, the sapwood thin and lighter
-colored. Annual rings are distinct. The springwood is porous and wide,
-the summerwood dense. The medullary rays are inconspicuous and of no
-value in giving figure to the wood. When the annual rings are cut
-diagonally across they give figure like that of ash. The wood of the
-coffeetree has never been in much demand. Furniture makers may use it
-sometimes, but specific instances of such use do not exist in
-manufacturers' reports. There are many places in furniture and finish
-which it might fill in a satisfactory manner.
-
-It is suitable for fence posts, and that is where it commonly gives
-service. It is occasionally employed as frame work in house and barn
-building, but is not sought for that purpose, and is used only when it
-happens to be at hand. Though the tree has the habit of branching, some
-of the trunks grow tall and shapely, and are good for two or three
-sawlogs or railcuts. An occasional tree serves as fuel. Medicine is
-sometimes made of a decoction of the fresh green pulp of unripe pods;
-and the leaves are reported to produce a fly poison if soaked in water.
-
-REDBUD (_Cercis canadensis_) is also known as Judas tree, red Judas
-tree, Canadian Judas tree, and salad tree. The last name refers to a
-custom in some parts of its range of making salad of the flowers. It is
-the flower rather than the bud that is red and gives the tree its name,
-the bloom being conspicuous in early spring. The tree ranges from New
-Jersey to Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, but reaches its
-fullest development in southern Arkansas, Oklahoma, and eastern Texas
-where trunks fifty feet high and a foot in diameter are found. It is
-shrubby in many parts of its range. Leaves are not compound. The fruit
-is a pink or rose-colored pod two or three inches in length, and by some
-is considered nearly as ornamental though not as showy as the flowers.
-No one ever thinks of redbud as a timber tree or considers its wood, yet
-it might be used for a number of purposes. It is heavy and hard, but
-weak; and the heartwood is rich dark brown tinged with red. The tree is
-planted for ornament in this country and Europe.
-
-TEXAS REDBUD (_Cercis reniformis_) differs somewhat from the common
-redbud, but it takes a botanist to point out the differences. The
-largest trees are forty feet high and a foot in diameter; the range
-extends from eastern Texas into Mexico; the wood closely resembles that
-of the other species, and is not known to be used for any purpose.
-
-CALIFORNIA REDBUD (_Cercis occidentalis_) is often classed as a shrub,
-but Sudworth gives it a place among the forest trees of the Pacific
-coast. The pea-shaped flowers are a clear magenta color. The pods turn
-purple when ripening but afterwards change to russet-brown. The wood is
-dark yellowish-brown, but because of the smallness of the trunks, it can
-never be important. The tree is found along the California mountains,
-six hundred miles north and south; is an abundant seeder, and is
-valuable as a protection to slopes and ravines, and as an ornament.
-
-HORSEBEAN (_Parkinsonia aculeata_) is generally called retama in the
-valley of the lower Rio Grande in Texas where the species attains its
-largest size. Trees are occasionally thirty feet high and a foot or more
-in diameter. Trunks usually separate in several stems near the ground.
-The range extends from southern Texas to California, and the species is
-naturalized in south Florida, the West Indies, and many tropical
-countries. Leaves vary in form, and are occasionally eighteen inches
-long. Fruit consists of pods, each containing from two to eight beans.
-The yellow flowers are small and fragrant; the bark on young twigs is
-green, but on older trunks is brown. The brown, however, is easily
-rubbed off, exposing the green beneath, as may be seen in school grounds
-in some of the southern towns in Texas where this tree has been planted
-for ornament, and abrasions, due to children climbing about the
-spreading stems, keep the bark green. The upper branches are armed with
-thorns which discourage the climbing propensities of children. The wood
-is heavy, hard, tinged with yellow, and is made into small novelties,
-but is not of much importance.
-
-SMALL-LEAF HORSEBEAN (_Parkinsonia microphylla_) is well named, for the
-compound leaves, with four or six pairs of leaflets, are about an inch
-long, covered with hairs, and fall at the end of a few weeks.
-Consequently, the tree is bare most of the year, except for the pale
-yellow flowers which appear in spring before the leaves, and the
-clusters of striped pods, each containing from one to three beans. The
-pods are nearly always present, for they have the pea family habit of
-adhering to the branches a long time. Trees reach a height of fifteen or
-twenty feet, and a diameter of ten inches or less. The wood is very hard
-and dense, in color deep yellowish-brown, often mottled and streaked
-with dull red; the sapwood thick and yellow. The wood is suitable for
-small articles, but its scarcity renders it of little importance. It is
-found in the deserts of southern Arizona and the adjacent parts of
-California, and is usually a small shrub.
-
-JAMAICA DOGWOOD (_Ichthyomethia piscipula_) is the lone representative
-of the genus, and is found in this country only in southern Florida. It
-is not in the same family with the dogwoods, and its name is misleading.
-The Carib Indians formerly used the leaves to stupify fish and render
-them easier to catch; hence the botanical name. The leaves are compound,
-but bear little resemblance to the foliage of most members of the pea
-family to which this tree belongs. The flowers are the tree's chief
-source of beauty, and are delicately clustered, hanging in bunches a
-foot long. The fruit is a pod three or four inches long, with four wings
-running the full length. The wings are useless for flying. Trees are
-forty or fifty feet high and two or three feet in diameter; are common
-in southern Florida and on the islands. The wood is of considerable
-importance in the region where it grows but figures little in general
-markets. It weighs 54.43 pounds per cubic foot, and is moderately strong
-and stiff. In color it is a clear yellow-brown, with thick, lighter
-colored sapwood. It is very durable in contact with the ground, and in
-Florida it is used for posts, and occasionally for railway ties. It has
-been commonly reported as a wood for boatbuilding in Florida, but its
-importance for that purpose has probably been overstated, since an
-investigation of the boatbuilding industry in Florida failed to find one
-foot of this wood in use, although some may be employed but not listed
-in reports.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW-WOOD
-
-[Illustration: Yellow-wood]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW-WOOD
-
-(_Cladrastis Lutea_)
-
-
-This wood's color is evidently responsible for its names yellow ash,
-yellow locust, and yellow-wood in Tennessee, North Carolina, and
-Kentucky, but no reason is offered for the name gopherwood by which it
-is known in some parts of Tennessee. The botanical name is based on the
-brittleness of the twigs. It is the only species of the genus, and it is
-not known to grow anywhere, except by planting, outside of Kentucky,
-Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina.
-
-It occurs in an area not much exceeding 60,000 square miles, and it is
-not abundant in that area. It prefers limestone ridges and slopes, and
-does best where the soil is fertile. It often overhangs the banks of
-mountain streams, and is most abundant and of largest size in the
-vicinity of Nashville, Tennessee, where a few trees have reached a
-diameter of three or four feet and a height of fifty or sixty. A
-diameter of eighteen or twenty-four inches is a good average.
-
-The tree's habit of dividing six or seven feet from the ground into two
-or more stems is responsible for the scarcity of trunks suitable for saw
-timber, even in localities where trees of large size are found. However,
-an occasional trunk develops a shapely form. It goes to sawmills so
-seldom that it is never mentioned in statistics of lumber cut or
-wood-utilization.
-
-Most people who are acquainted with this tree, know it as planted stock
-in parks and yards where it is a favorite on account of its flowers. The
-bloom may properly be described as rare from two viewpoints. The beauty
-of its large clusters of white flowers differs from those of all
-associated trees; and it seldom blooms. One year of plenty is generally
-followed by several lean years. Those who plant the tree understand
-this, and feel amply repaid for the long wait, when the flowering year
-arrives. The planted tree is often known as virgilia, that being the
-name under which nurseries sell it. Flowers appear about the middle of
-June, in clusters a foot or more in length. It is claimed, but with what
-correctness cannot at present be stated, that the odor of flowers of
-different trees varies greatly, being faint with some, and strong and
-luxurious with others.
-
-The leaves are compound, but have no resemblance to those of locust and
-the acacias. They are eight or twelve inches long, with five or seven
-leaflets. In autumn before falling they change to a clear yellow, but
-adhere to the branches until rather late in the season. The fruit, which
-consists of small pods hanging in clusters, is ripe in September.
-
-Yellow-wood is a little below white oak in strength and seven pounds per
-cubic foot under it in weight; is hard, compact, and susceptible of a
-beautiful polish. Rings of yearly growth are clearly marked by rows of
-open ducts, and contain many evenly-distributed smaller ducts. The wood
-is bright, clear yellow, changing to brown on exposure; sapwood nearly
-white. Trunks of largest size are generally hollow or otherwise
-defective.
-
-The uses of yellow-wood have been few. In the days when families in
-remote regions were under the necessity of manufacturing, growing, or
-otherwise producing nearly every commodity that entered into daily life,
-the settlers among the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee discovered
-that the wood of this tree, particularly the roots, yielded a clear,
-yellow dye. The process of manufacture was simple. The wood was reduced
-to chips with an ordinary ax, and the chips were boiled until the yellow
-coloring matter was extracted. The resulting liquor was the dye, and it
-gave the yellow stripe to many a piece of home-made cloth in the cabins
-of mountaineers.
-
-The women usually attended to the dye making and the manufacture of yarn
-and cloth; but the men found a way to utilize yellow-wood in producing
-an article once so common in Tennessee and Kentucky that no cabin was
-without it--the trusty rifle. The gunsmith, assisted by the blacksmith,
-made the barrel and the other metal parts, but the hunter generally was
-able to whittle out the wooden stock. Yellow-wood's lightness, strength,
-and color suited the gun stock maker's purpose, and he slowly hewed and
-whittled the article, fitted it to the barrel, adjusted it to his
-shoulder, and completed a weapon which never failed the owner in time of
-need.
-
-FRIJOLITO (_Sophora secundiflora_) is found in Texas, New Mexico, and
-southward in Mexico. The name is Spanish and means "little bean." A
-common name for it in English is coral bean. Sophora is said to be an
-Arabic word of uncertain meaning, except that it refers to some kind of
-a tree that bears pods. It is a species, therefore, which draws its
-names from four languages, while the name applied to it by Comanche
-Indians is translated "sleep-bush." The bright scarlet seeds, as large
-as beans, but in shape like door-knobs, grow from one to eight in a pod,
-and contain a narcotic poison, "sophorin." It is probable that Indians
-discovered that the beans, if eaten, produced sleep, hence the name. The
-tree is from twenty-five to thirty-five feet high, and from six to ten
-inches in diameter. The leaves are compound, and consist of seven or
-nine leaflets. The small, violet-blue flowers appear in early spring.
-They are not conspicuous, but their presence cannot escape the notice of
-a traveler in the dry, semi-barren canyons and on the bluffs where the
-tree holds its ground. Their odor calls attention to their presence. The
-perfume is powerful but pleasant, unless the contact is too close. The
-pods are from one to seven inches long, and hang on the boughs until
-late winter. It is not believed that birds or mammals distribute the
-seeds, as their poison renders them unfit for food. Running water
-appears to be the principal agent of distribution. The tree reaches its
-largest size in the vicinity of Metagorda bay, Texas. Among the dry
-western canyons it is usually a shrub. The small size of this tree
-stands in the way of extensive use of the wood. It burns well and its
-principal importance is as fuel. The weight is 61.34 pounds per cubic
-foot; it is hard, compact, susceptible of a beautiful polish; medullary
-rays are numerous and thin; color is orange, streaked with red, the
-sapwood brown or yellow. The wood is worked into a few small articles.
-
-SOPHORA (_Sophora affinis_) ranges through portions of Arkansas and
-Texas. It is popularly supposed to be a locust, and is called pink
-locust or beaded locust, the first name based on the color of the wood,
-the last on the appearance of the pod which looks like a short string of
-beads, sometimes three inches in length, but usually shorter. In early
-times the pioneers manufactured ink from the pods. It was a fairly
-serviceable article, but was never sold, each family making its own.
-This tree's flowers appear in early spring with the leaves. Trunks reach
-a height of twenty feet and a diameter of eight or ten inches; but the
-habit of separating into several stems a few feet above the ground
-lessens the use of the wood, even as posts, for the stems are usually
-very crooked. The tree's preferred habitat is on limestone bluffs, or
-along the borders of streams, or in depressions in the prairie where
-small groves often occur. The wood weighs fifty-three pounds per cubic
-foot, and is very hard and strong. The annual rings are clearly marked
-with bands of large, open pores; medullary rays are thin and
-inconspicuous; color of the heartwood light red, the sapwood yellow. The
-wood is not sawed into lumber, but is whittled into canes and tool
-handles.
-
-GREENBARK ACACIA (_Cercidium floridum_) is properly named. Its green
-bark makes up for its scarcity of leaves, and answers the purpose of
-foliage. The manufacture of the tree's food goes on in the bark, because
-the leaves are too small to do the work. The foliage resembles that of
-locust and acacia in form, but the compound leaves are about an inch in
-length, and the leaflets are one-sixteenth of an inch long. Flowers are
-small, but the tree puts on three or four crops of them in a single
-summer. The pods are two inches long. The tree is found in the United
-States only in the south and west of Texas, where it is occasionally
-called palo verde. It attains a height of twenty feet and a diameter of
-ten inches when at its best. The wood is pale yellow tinged with green,
-and, because of small size, is of little importance.
-
-PALO VERDE (_Cercidium torreyanum_) sheds its leaves and its pods so
-early in the season that its branches are bare most of the year. Trees
-are from fifteen to thirty feet high, and some are considerably more
-than a foot in diameter. Its range covers a portion of southern
-California, the lower part of the Gila valley in Arizona, and extends
-southward into Mexico. It is a typical tree of the desert, and its
-extreme poverty of foliage enables it to live in a dry, hot climate. It
-clings to the sides of desert gulches and canyons, ekes out a dreary
-life in depressions among desolate dunes and hills of sand and gravel,
-and spends its allotted period of years in solitude, growing either
-singly or in small groups where the full foliage at the best time of
-year is insufficient to offer much obstruction to the full glare of the
-sun from a cloudless sky. The small flowers have little beauty or
-sweetness, but what they have is wasted on the desert air. Wayfarers in
-the barren country use the wood for camp fires.
-
-    INDIGO THORN (_Dalea spinosa_) receives its name from the color of
-    its flowers which appear in June. The tree has few leaves and they
-    fall in a short time. This appears to be a provision of nature to
-    enable the tree to endure the heat and dryness of its desert home.
-    Its range covers the lower Gila valley in Arizona, and extends into
-    the Colorado desert in southern California. It is not abundant, and
-    if it were, it is of a size so small that it is practically
-    valueless for commercial purposes. Some trees are a foot in diameter
-    and twenty feet high. The wood is light, soft, and of a rich
-    chocolate-brown color. It is known also as indigo bush and dalea.
-
-    EYSENHARDTIA (_Eysenhardtia orthocarpa_) is so little known that it
-    has no English name. It grows from western Texas to southern
-    Arizona, but reaches tree size only near the summit of Santa
-    Catalina mountains in Arizona where it is twenty feet or less in
-    height and seldom more than eight inches in diameter. It inhabits an
-    arid region, and bears fruit sparingly, with usually a single seed
-    in a pod. The wood is heavy and hard, light reddish-brown in color,
-    with thin yellow sap. It is not of commercial importance and
-    probably never will be.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MESQUITE
-
-[Illustration: MESQUITE]
-
-
-
-
-MESQUITE
-
-(_Prosopis Juliflora_)
-
-
-There are known to be sixteen species at least of mesquite in the world,
-in Asia, Africa, and North and South America. The one here considered
-has a geographical range of at least seven thousand miles north and
-south, from Kansas to Patagonia, and an east and west range of four
-thousand miles, if the naturalized growth in Hawaii may be considered
-the western outpost of the species.[7]
-
-    [7] Botanists have had much controversy among themselves concerning
-    mesquite, particularly as to what is its correct name. In giving in
-    these pages some of the important facts concerning this interesting
-    tree, or group of species and varieties, it is not necessary to
-    touch the points in dispute.
-
-The generic name _prosopis_ is a Greek word meaning "burdock;" the rest
-of the botanical name is Latin, meaning "July flower." Mesquite is an
-Aztec word (mezquitl), coming down through the Spanish. Other names for
-the tree are algaroba, honey locust, honey pod, and ironwood.
-
-The largest size of mesquite is found along the Rio Grande in southern
-Texas where trees three feet in diameter and fifty feet high are found,
-but individuals of that size are rare. The species is supposed not to
-extend west of New Mexico, but varieties grow farther west.
-
-The leaves are compound, with twenty or more leaflets. The foliage is
-thin and casts a penumbrous shadow; trees generally occur wide apart,
-and there is enough sunshine reaching the ground to satisfy grass and
-other plants growing there. The pods are from four to nine inches long,
-and each contains from ten to twenty seeds. The principal growth of this
-tree in the United States is in Texas. It has been planted in Hawaii and
-has run wild in some of the islands of the group. It is of slow growth,
-but of remarkable vitality, holds its own, and gains ground in the face
-of obstacles.
-
-Persons well acquainted with conditions in Texas, both past and present,
-say that the mesquite area is at least double now what it was when the
-state came into the Union. Old stands were scattered here and there, but
-hundreds of square miles which were in grass only, and little of that,
-half a century ago, now support forests of mesquite. It is perhaps a
-misnomer to designate some of these stands as forests, for they present
-a rather ragged and sorry appearance, but they are forests in the
-process of forming. The old growth, which is found principally in the
-counties bordering on the lower Rio Grande, is made up of trunks of
-large size, but the stands that have come on within the past fifty or
-sixty years are of smaller trees. A large mesquite trunk is from one to
-three feet in diameter; a small one from one foot down to an inch or
-two. A person would need to hunt from center to circumference of Texas
-to find many mesquite trunks that would make a straight sawlog twelve
-feet long. The tree is generally one of the most crooked, deformed and
-unpromising in the whole country; and its habit of dividing into forks
-near the ground, like a peach tree, makes it still more difficult to
-make use of. In fact, in winter when mesquite trees are bare of leaves
-the appearance of a forest reminds the observer of an old, neglected,
-diseased, moss-grown peach orchard in the eastern states; but in summer
-the leaves conceal much of the trunk scaliness and deformity, and there
-is something positively restful and attractive in the prospect of a wide
-range of these trees, covering hills and prairies. The leaves are
-compound like the acacias, and are delicate and graceful.
-
-The spread of mesquite in the last fifty or seventy-five years has been
-attributed to the checking of grass fires which Indians once set yearly
-to keep the prairies open. The dispersion of the trees is facilitated by
-the scattering of seeds by cattle which feed on the pods. It is a tree
-hard to kill. Roots send up sprouts year after year during long periods.
-Sometimes, but not often in Texas, when adverse circumstances become so
-severe that the mesquite tree can no longer survive above the surface,
-it grows beneath the ground, sending only a few sprouts up for air. "Dig
-for wood" is a term applied to trees of that kind, when fuel is dragged
-out with mattocks, grab hooks, and oxen.
-
-The roots of the mesquite penetrate farther beneath the surface for
-water than any other known tree in this country. Depths of fifty or
-sixty feet are occasionally reached. Well diggers on the frontiers
-learned to go to the mesquite for water. Large trunks never develop
-unless their roots are abundantly supplied with moisture. Railroad
-engineers on the "Staked Plains" of northwestern Texas turned that
-knowledge to account in boring wells.
-
-Though mesquite is seldom or never mentioned in the lumber business, it
-is and has been one of the most important trees of the region. Its fuel
-value is very great. It has cooked more food, warmed more buildings,
-burned more bricks, than any other wood in Texas. The tannic acid in it
-injures boilers and it is not much used for steam purposes. It is very
-high in ash. A cord of mesquite wood when burned leaves from ninety to
-one hundred pounds of ashes. This exceeds five fold the ashes left when
-white oak is burned.
-
-Mesquite is a high-grade furniture material, though it is difficult to
-work because of its exceeding hardness. Ordinary wood-working tools and
-machinery will not stand it. Suites of nine pieces are sold in some
-southwestern cities at $200 or $300. The merchants find difficulty in
-getting mesquite furniture made. Factories do not want to handle it,
-though the articles sell higher than mahogany. Large, heavy tables,
-deeply carved, are sold in some of the cities, but all seem to be made
-to order and largely by hand. The appearance of the polished and
-finished wood is a little lighter in color than mahogany. It is not
-uniform in color, but shades from tone to tone in the same piece. A
-little of the lighter colored sapwood is worked in with pleasing effect.
-Some of the tones resemble black walnut, and some suggest the luster of
-polished cherry.
-
-Mesquite is brittle. Pieces of large size may be broken by a few blows
-with an ax. It has about half the strength of white oak, and is very low
-in elasticity. The wood has been used for two hundred years--possibly
-for thousands of years--as beams and sills for adobe houses; but it is
-not required to carry much weight. Spaniards employed it in building
-their churches and forts within its range. A timber taken from the
-Alamo, at San Antonio, Texas, in 1912, was said to have served more than
-190 years with no sign of decay. Fence posts survive the men who set
-them. Paving blocks outlast sandstone subjected to the same use.
-Railroads in southern Texas employ this wood for crossties, but it is so
-hard that holes must be bored for the spikes.
-
-Mesquite baskets are made by hand of splits the size of knitting
-needles, some of white sapwood, others of dark heartwood. Such baskets,
-large enough to contain five quarts, sell in the curio shops at San
-Antonio for $1.25 each. Some wagon makers insist that mesquite is in the
-same class with Osage orange for wagon felloes in hot, dry regions; but
-it does not appear that much of it is so used. The brittleness of the
-wood is against it, in use as felloes, except for vehicles of the
-heaviest sort where large pieces are demanded.
-
-Among the uses of mesquite, by-products are an important consideration.
-The pods are food for farm stock. Before the first railroad reached San
-Antonio mesquite pods were a regular market commodity. The Mexicans know
-how to make bread and brew beer from the fruit; tan leather with the
-resin; dye leather, cloth, and crockery with the tree's sap; make ropes
-and baskets of the bark. Parched pods are a substitute for coffee; bees
-store honey from the bloom which remains two months on the trees; riled
-water is purified with a decoction of mesquite chips; vinegar is made
-from the fermented juice of the legumes; tomales of mesquite bean meal,
-pepper, chicken, and cornshucks; mucilage from the gum; and candy and
-gum drops from the dried sap.
-
-One of the most promising uses for this wood is in turnery. Short
-lengths can be utilized to advantage. The artistic color fits it for the
-manufacture of lodge gavels, curtain rings, goblets, plaques, trays,
-and numerous kinds of novelties. Spindles for grills and stairways do
-not suffer in comparison with black walnut, mahogany, cherry, and teak.
-The wood is porous, annual rings narrow and indistinct, and the
-medullary rays thin and inconspicuous.
-
-A variety (_Prosopis juliflora glandulosa_) is found from Kansas to
-eastern Texas, and also in Arizona and California. It is the common
-mesquite of eastern Texas. Another variety (_Prosopis juliflora
-velutina_) occurs in some of the hot valleys of southern Arizona and
-southward in Mexico.
-
-    SCREWBEAN (_Prosopis odorata_) is known also as screwpod mesquite,
-    and tornillo. The name is due to the pod's habit of growing in
-    spiral form, there being a dozen or more tight twists. The flowers
-    appear in early spring and new crops follow until summer. The pods
-    ripen early in autumn or late in summer, and many become infested
-    with grubs. The tree is from twenty-five to thirty feet high, and a
-    foot or less in diameter. Its range extends from western Texas and
-    Utah and Nevada through New Mexico and Arizona to southern
-    California. The wood is stronger and stiffer than common mesquite,
-    but a little lighter. Its uses are much the same, and it has the
-    same habits of growth, including its disposition to develop enormous
-    roots. The name might lead to the conclusion that the flower is rich
-    in perfume, but such is not the case. The tree grows slowly and
-    lives to old age, if it escapes fire and other accidents.
-
-    CHALKY LEUCÆNA (_Leucæna pulverulenta_), commonly called mimosa,
-    occurs in the United States only in southern Texas, but is somewhat
-    abundant in Mexico, where trees sixty feet high and nearly two feet
-    in diameter are sometimes manufactured into lumber. Along the Rio
-    Grande it is called "tepeguaja" by Mexicans. This name is said to be
-    equivalent to "hardwood," which is an appropriate name. It is very
-    smooth and handsome when finished, and is used for tool handles,
-    small spindles, grills, and other small articles, particularly
-    products of the lathe. In color it resembles the lighter shades of
-    mahogany; weighs about forty-two pounds per cubic foot; foliage
-    extremely delicate and the tree is highly valuable for ornamental
-    purposes. It has been planted outside of its natural range. The pods
-    sometimes exceed a foot in length.
-
-    LEUCÆNA (_Leucæna glauca_) is small and probably will never be of
-    much importance. Trunks are seldom more than five inches in diameter
-    and twenty feet high. The tree grows in canyons and ravines in
-    western Texas. The compound leaves are six or seven inches long,
-    with thirty or less pairs of leaflets; fruit is a pod six or eight
-    inches long. The rich brown wood is streaked with red.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SWEET BIRCH
-
-[Illustration: SWEET BIRCH]
-
-
-
-
-SWEET BIRCH
-
-(_Betula Lenta_)
-
-
-Ten species of birch occur in the United States, including Alaska. Six
-are eastern and four western.[8] Sweet birch is known by that name in
-many localities, but in others as black birch, cherry birch, river
-birch, mahogany birch, and mountain mahogany. Its range extends from
-Newfoundland to northwestern Ontario, south to southern Indiana,
-Kentucky, and along the Appalachian mountains to Tennessee and North
-Carolina. Probably the best development of the species is found in the
-Adirondack region of northern New York, in the northern peninsula of
-Michigan, through southern Ontario, and along the mountain ranges
-southward through Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
-
-    [8] The eastern species, which do not extend west of the continental
-    divide, are, Sweet Birch (_Betula lenta_), Yellow Birch (_Betula
-    lutea_), River Birch (_Betula nigra_), Paper Birch (_Betula
-    papyrifera_), White Birch (_Betula populifolia_) and Blue Birch
-    (_Betula cærulea_). The western birches, none of which are known to
-    extend much east of the continental divide, are: Western Birch
-    (_Betula occidentalis_), Mountain Birch (_Betula fontinalis_), White
-    Alaska Birch (_Betula alaskana_), and Kenai Birch (_Betula
-    kenaica_). The last two occur in Alaska, but not in United States
-    proper.
-
-It attains a height of seventy or eighty feet, and a diameter of two or
-three. It prefers deep, moist, rich soil, but will grow in comparatively
-dry, rocky ground. Its seeds are produced in large numbers and are
-scattered by the wind a hundred feet or more from the parent tree. They
-lack the wing power and the buoyancy of the seeds of some of the other
-birches, but they manage to get themselves sown in sufficient numbers,
-and their powers of germination are good.
-
-The young seedling comes into existence with smooth bark, but it does
-not keep it through life. As age increases, the bark becomes rough and
-black. It is not shed in papery rolls and flakes as is the bark of river
-birch, yellow birch, and paper birch, with which it is associated in
-some parts of its range. It is generally an easy tree to identify and
-the black, rough bark is generally a sufficient guide.
-
-The sweet birch is tapped like sugar maple, but not for the same purpose
-or to the same extent--only an occasional tree. Immense quantities of
-sap will flow from it during the two or three weeks when the buds are
-swelling in the spring. It is said that as much as two tons has been
-known to flow from a medium sized birch in a single season. The sap is
-made into a beer which has some commercial value, but is chiefly used
-locally. One of the ways of making it, employed by farmers and woodsmen,
-is to jug the sap, put in a handful of shelled corn, and let
-fermentation do the rest.
-
-A substance known in commerce as oil of wintergreen is procured almost
-exclusively from this birch, though occasionally it is made from the
-small wintergreen plant (_Gaultheria procumbens_). The product is
-manufactured in very crude stills made by mountaineers in Pennsylvania
-and southward along the mountains where sweet birch is abundant.
-Frequently the woodsman's whole family go into the business, chopping
-down birch bushes and hacking them with hatchets into chips of the
-desired sizes. The oil is extracted from the hogged mass by a steaming
-and roasting process. It is sold by the quart to country storekeepers
-who ship it to wholesale druggists where it is refined and used to
-flavor candy, medicine, and drugs. The woodsman who manufactures the oil
-prefers young birches from half an inch to two or three inches in
-diameter, and he usually procures them in old logging grounds where
-seedlings have sprung up. It is said that on an average one hundred
-small birch trees are destroyed for each quart of oil that goes to
-market. It is a process wasteful in the extreme.
-
-In the open ground, sweet birch develops a full crown, short trunk,
-abundance of limbs, with numerous slender, graceful twigs and small
-branches. Its leaves form a dense mass, and they are so free from
-attacks by insects and worms that diseased foliage is unusual. That
-cannot be said, however, of the trunk. It is not particularly liable to
-disease, but many old trees show the results of decay. It is of slow
-growth, and a small tree may be much older than its size indicates. The
-sapwood is generally thick, heartwood forms slowly, and the contrast in
-color between sap and heart is strong.
-
-The wood of sweet birch had few uses in early times, except fuel. The
-pioneer sawmill had little to do with it. Lumber was hard to saw and was
-seasoned with difficulty. Its tendency to warp was too great a tax on
-the lumberman's patience and ingenuity. The only way he could hold it
-straight was to cob a few layers in the bottom of a pile, and stack
-thousands of feet of other lumber on top, and leave it a year or two.
-That was generally too much trouble, particularly when the wood had slow
-sale, and the price was low. Birch reached market in large quantities
-only when modern mills and improved drykilns came into existence.
-
-The wood is heavy, strong, hard, in color dark brown tinged with red.
-The light brown or yellow sapwood generally makes up seventy or eighty
-annual rings. The difference between springwood and that of the later
-season is not clearly marked, and consequently the rings are often
-indistinct. The wood is very porous, and the pores are diffused through
-all parts of the ring. They are too small to be seen with the naked eye,
-except under the most favorable conditions. The medullary rays are
-numerous but so small that they appear on the quartered wood merely as a
-gloss, which, however, gives the surface a rich appearance.
-
-Forms known as curly and wavy birch are highly esteemed. They are
-accidents of growth, well developed in birch, and occurring in several
-other woods. Difficulties are encountered in assigning sweet birch its
-individual place in the industrial world. As a tree it is well known,
-but that is not the case when its lumber goes to market. The sweet birch
-log goes into the sawmill, but when the lumber goes out at the other end
-of the mill, it is often simply birch having lost the adjective "sweet"
-somewhere in the operation. The reason is that sweet birch and yellow
-birch, quite distinct in the forest, are often mixed and become one, to
-all intents and purposes, when they reach the market. That is not always
-the case, but it frequently is. Something depends on the region. The
-yellow birch's range is more extensive, and in areas where it is
-abundant, and sweet birch is not, it prevails in the lumber markets. But
-south and southeast of the great lakes, as well as in the northeastern
-part of the country, the two species mingle, and they are apt to go to
-market simply as birch. The woods may be distinguished by a microscopic
-examination, but the ordinary observer would make many mistakes if he
-attempted to tell one from the other in the lumber yard.
-
-The two woods are different in several physical properties. Both are
-heavy, but sweet birch weighs 47.47 pounds per cubic foot, while yellow
-birch weighs only 40.84 pounds, according to tests averaged by Sargent.
-Yellow birch rates a little above the other in breaking strength. Both
-are very stiff, but yellow birch rates superior. In most respects the
-two woods are put to similar uses--flooring, interior finish,
-furniture--but for some purposes sweet birch is preferred. It is
-substituted oftener for cherry and mahogany, and for that reason is
-known as cherry birch or mahogany birch. Its color makes the
-substitution easy, and the appearance of the grain, with a little
-doctoring with stains and fillers, helps in the deception. The buyer may
-be deceived as to the exact kind of wood he is getting, but he is not
-cheated in the quality. Birch is substituted where strength is required,
-as in the rails of beds, the frames of sofas, davenports, large chairs,
-and certain parts of large musical instruments. It is much stronger, and
-fully as hard as cherry or mahogany, and as its appearance is so much
-like them, the article is actually better on account of the
-substitution. Sweet birch is largely employed for various parts of
-vehicle manufacture, particularly for wagon hubs and frames of
-automobiles. It is also much used in the manufacture of sleds, boats,
-and handles.
-
-The demand is heavy and the supply is diminishing. The tree is of such
-slow growth that few timber owners will be inclined to wait for a second
-crop, after the old trees have been cut, since 150 years are necessary
-under forest conditions to produce a merchantable tree.
-
-    SONORA IRONWOOD (_Olneya tesota_) is a desert tree, and the only
-    representative of the genus. It takes its name from the Mexican
-    state where it is most abundant and where it was discovered in 1852.
-    It grows in southern California and Arizona, and there it thrives in
-    gulches and depressions in the desert, frequently associated with
-    mesquite. It is so heavy that perfectly dry wood will sink in water.
-    The heartwood is deep chocolate-brown, mottled with red, the thin
-    sapwood is lemon-yellow. Its hardness renders it difficult to work,
-    and it can scarcely be split. The wood is made into canes and other
-    small articles of great beauty. It is not abundant, and the small
-    supply is remote from manufacturing centers; otherwise it would be
-    more valuable. It is excellent fuel, but it is burned chiefly by
-    stockmen and miners in their camps. The largest trees are thirty
-    feet high and eighteen inches in diameter. It is an evergreen, and
-    its pea-like flowers brighten many a remote desert place.
-
-    WILD TAMARIND (_Lysiloma latisiliqua_) is forty or fifty feet high,
-    two or three in diameter, grows in southern Florida, and has
-    double-compound leaves, four or five inches long. The fruit is a pod
-    one inch wide and five or less in length. The wood weighs forty
-    pounds to the cubic foot, is neither strong nor tough, very low in
-    elasticity, is rich dark brown tinged with red, the sapwood white.
-    It has been reported for boatbuilding, and claims have been made
-    that it is equal to mahogany for that purpose, but the claim is of
-    doubtful validity, in view of the rather poor showing it makes in
-    several physical properties, though it takes good polish.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW BIRCH
-
-[Illustration: YELLOW BIRCH]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW BIRCH
-
-(_Betula Lutea_)
-
-
-There is little likelihood of mistaking the yellow birch for any other
-as it stands in the woods. Its points of individuality may be discovered
-on slight acquaintance, and there is little need of studying leaves,
-flowers, and fruit to find ways of distinguishing this birch from other
-members of the family. Its tattered, yellow and gray bark fixes it in
-the memory of all who have seen it a few times. Two other eastern
-birches have tattered, curling bark also, but they do not look like
-this. They are the paper birch and the river birch. The former is too
-white to be mistaken for yellow birch, and the river birch is too much
-the color of bronze or copper. Yellow birch is named from the color of
-its bark, the part which shows when the outer layers break and roll
-back, disclosing the fresh, smooth, satiny layers below. Sometimes the
-tree is called silver birch, gray birch, or swamp birch.
-
-Its geographic range is bounded by a line drawn from Newfoundland to
-northern Minnesota, southward through the Lake States, and along the
-Atlantic coast to Delaware. It follows the Appalachian ranges of
-mountains to eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. Generally the
-tree is small near the southern limit of its range. The best grows in
-Michigan and Wisconsin, but it is of considerable importance in
-Minnesota.
-
-Few trees are better equipped than yellow birch to perpetuate their
-species. It is an abundant seeder, and the seeds are light, winged, and
-they are scattered by wind over long distances. Sometimes they are
-carried miles. Of course, most of them fall in unfavorable places, and
-either do not germinate or perish soon after; but they are not
-particularly choice in situations, and will grow on bare mineral soil,
-even in old fields, where they are flooded with sunshine, or they will
-grow in deep shade where a beam of sunlight seldom touches them. They
-often germinate without touching mineral soil, and take root quickly and
-grow vigorously.
-
-It is not unusual in the northern part of the tree's range, and on high
-mountains farther south, to see yellow birches standing on high,
-spreading roots, two, three, or four feet above the ground. That
-peculiar attitude is brought about by the manner in which the seed
-begins to grow. It falls on moss which occupies the top of a log or a
-stump. The moss in the deep shade retains much moisture, and the seed
-germinates, grows, sends roots down the sides of the log or the stump
-until they strike mineral soil, and become firmly fixed. In course of
-time the log or stump decays, and the spreading roots continue to
-sustain the trunk, high above the ground. This attitude of the yellow
-birch tree is very common in damp woods. Occasionally the seed finds
-lodgment in the moss on top of a large rock. The roots descend the sides
-until they reach the ground, and as the rock does not decay, the tree
-grows to maturity on the rock. The most favorable seed bed for this
-species is a mass of rotten wood where a log has decayed and fallen to
-pieces. Frequently such a plot is covered with yellow birch seedlings.
-They have the space all to themselves, because the seeds of few trees or
-plants will grow in rotten wood, unmixed with mineral soil.
-
-The trunk of yellow birch averages a little smaller than that of sweet
-birch, but may equal it in some instances. Trees reach a height of 100
-feet and a diameter of three or four, but a more common size, even in
-the regions of best development, is a height of sixty or seventy feet,
-and a diameter of two or less.
-
-Yellow birch was a long time coming into use. One of the first things
-learned about it by early settlers in the region where it was abundant,
-was that it decays quickly in situations alternately wet and dry. That
-prejudiced the woodsmen against it, and they were not disposed to give
-it a fair trial, as long as there was plenty of other timber. All
-birches are subject to quick decay, if conditions are right to produce
-it. Yellow birch in the woods sometimes dies standing, and when that
-happens, the wood falls to pieces so quickly that the bark may remain
-standing with very little inside of it except powder of decayed wood.
-This tree is seldom mentioned in early accounts of lumber operations,
-and practically never with a good word. Operators generally left it
-standing when they cut the timber which grew with it.
-
-Yellow birch is heavy, very strong, hard, light brown tinged with red,
-with thin, nearly white sapwood. The color of the heartwood varies
-considerably. The pores are very numerous, rather small, and are
-scattered through the wood with little tendency to run in bands or
-groups. The springwood blends gradually with the summerwood in a way to
-make the boundaries of the annual rings somewhat indistinct. Medullary
-rays are numerous, but very thin and obscure. Quarter-sawing adds little
-or nothing to the appearance of the wood. It has poor figure, except an
-occasional tree with wavy or curly grain, or with burls.
-
-The wood may be readily stained. The pores hold the coloring matter
-applied, and by varying the application, the appearance of the surface
-can be varied. The colors of mahogany and of cherry are easily imparted,
-and yellow birch often imitates those woods.
-
-Vehicle makers choose this wood for its strength and elasticity. In the
-North it is manufactured into frames for cutters and sleighs of all
-kinds. It is a competitor of sugar maple for that purpose. Hubs are made
-of it for horse-drawn vehicles, and its hardness gives long wear where
-the spokes are inserted. That is one of the first points of failure when
-a soft, inferior wood is used for hubs. The spokes work loose.
-
-Manufacturers of automobiles have tried out yellow birch as material for
-frames; it has stood the test, and is much used in competition with
-other woods. The amount demanded for that purpose is not necessarily
-large, but it must be the best wood that can be had.
-
-This material reaches the markets in all grades. Large amounts are used
-for packing boxes, crates, and shipping containers. Low grades answer
-for these purposes, leaving the better sorts for the more exacting
-industries. The logs are cut in rotary veneer for baskets, and for ply
-work. Some of the veneer in three-ply is worked into commodities of high
-class, such as seats and backs of theater chairs.
-
-Birch flooring competes closely with maple for popular favor. It may
-lack something of maple's whiteness, but it takes no second place in
-hardness, smoothness, and wearing qualities. It is made into parquet
-flooring as well as the ordinary tongued and grooved article. As such,
-the sap matches the light colored woods, and the heart the dark.
-
-It goes into all kinds of interior house finish, from floor to ceiling,
-and the finest grades are often devoted to stair work. Door and window
-frames are made of it in large quantities, but it is not suited to
-outside work exposed to weather, because of its tendencies to decay. It
-is much employed as door material. Furniture demands the same class of
-wood. Medium priced articles may be of solid birch, but the best
-commodities are made of veneers laid upon other woods. Figured birch is
-a favorite material for that class of work.
-
-The more common commodities manufactured of this wood can be listed only
-by groups, because of their great number. Novelties constitute a large
-class. One of the earliest demands was from the manufacturers of pill
-boxes, such as apothecaries use. That was before anyone had tried to
-sell yellow birch in the general market, and the demand came principally
-from New England and New York. Another early demand came from coopers
-who found that barrel hoops of yellow birch were highly satisfactory for
-certain kinds of vessels. Fish kits were among the first to appear in
-birch hoops. Small saplings were used, not over two inches in diameter.
-They are large enough to make two hoops by splitting. The bark was left
-on, and the identity of the wood was never in doubt, because when the
-sapling is of that size, the bark is a fine yellow. It has not yet
-commenced to crack open and roll up, as it does later. Millions of birch
-hoops are still produced yearly in the United States, but all of them
-are not of this species. The hoop business has existed much more than a
-century, and millions of young birches have been cut every year to meet
-the demand.
-
-Birch broom handles have been a commodity since the first lathe went to
-work on that product. They are made of all the commercial birches, but
-yellow birch contributes a large part. Other handles are manufactured of
-it also, such as are fitted to hand saws, planes, drawing knives,
-chisels, and augers.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RIVER BIRCH
-
-[Illustration: RIVER BIRCH]
-
-
-
-
-RIVER BIRCH
-
-(_Betula Nigra_)
-
-
-This tree is known as red birch, river birch, water birch, blue birch,
-black birch, and simply as birch. The name red birch refers to the color
-of the bark which is exposed to view in the process of exfoliation. The
-trunk is constantly getting rid of its outer bark, and in doing so, the
-exterior layers are rolled back, hang a while, and are gradually whipped
-off by the wind. The new bark which is exposed to view when the old is
-rolled back is reddish. Its color varies considerably, sometimes
-suggesting the tint of old brass, again it is brown, but people in
-widely separated regions have seen fit to call the tree red birch
-because of the color of its bark. The name black birch is not
-appropriate, though the old bark near the base of large trunks may
-suggest it. No reason can be assigned for calling it blue birch, unless
-the foliage in early summer may warrant such a term. River birch and
-water birch are more appropriate, as these names indicate the situations
-where the species grows. It clings to water courses almost as closely as
-sycamore. A favorite attitude of the tree is to lean over a river or
-pond, with the long, graceful limbs almost touching the water.
-
-Nature seems to recognize the tree's habit of hanging over muddy banks,
-and has prepared it for that manner of life. Seeds are ripe early in
-summer when the rivers are falling. They are scattered by myriads on the
-muddy shores and upon the water. Those which fall in the mud find at
-once a suitable place for germination, and those whose fortune it is to
-drop in the water float away with the current or they are driven by the
-wind until they lodge along the shores, and the receding water leaves
-them in a few days, and they spring up quickly. Before the autumn or
-early winter high water comes, they are well rooted in the mud and sand,
-ready to put up a fight for their lives.
-
-The provision is a wise one. If the seeds matured in the fall, when
-water is low, they would be strewn along the low shores, and before they
-could take root and establish themselves, the high water and the ice of
-winter would destroy them. The seeds need mud to give them a start in
-life, and they need that start early in summer.
-
-The range of river birch is less extensive than that of the other
-important eastern birches, yet it is by no means limited. Its eastern
-boundary is in Massachusetts, its western in Minnesota, and it adheres
-fairly well to a line drawn between the two states. Its range extends
-200 miles west of the Mississippi and covers most of the southern
-states. It is found in an area of nearly 1,000,000 square miles, but is
-scarce in most of it. In certain restricted localities it is fairly
-abundant, but there are thousands of square miles in the limits of its
-range which have not a single tree. Its greatest development is in the
-south Atlantic states, and in the lower Mississippi basin.
-
-Trees at their best are from eighty to ninety feet high and from two to
-four in diameter, but most trunks are less than two feet in diameter.
-The tree frequently forks fifteen or twenty feet from the ground, or
-occasionally sends up several stems from the ground. Forms of that kind
-are practically useless for lumber.
-
-The wood is among the lightest of the birches and weighs 35.91 pounds
-per cubic foot. It is rather hard, medium strong, the heartwood light
-brown in color, with thick, pale sapwood. It rates below sweet and
-yellow birch in stiffness, is very porous, but the pores are quite
-small, and can scarcely be seen without a magnifying glass. They are
-diffused throughout the entire annual ring. There is no marked
-difference in the appearance of the springwood and that of the late
-season. The medullary rays are very small and have little effect on the
-appearance of the wood, no matter in what way the sawing is done.
-
-The wood is apt to contain pith flecks and streaks. These are small,
-brown spots or lines scattered at random through the wood. They are a
-blemish which is not easily covered up if the wood is to be polished;
-but they are small and may not be objectionable. The flecks are caused
-by insects which, early in the season, bore through the bark into the
-cambium layer (the newly-formed wood), where eggs are deposited. The
-young insect cuts a tunnel up or down along the cambium layer, an inch
-or less in length and a sixteenth of an inch wide. This gallery
-subsequently fills with brown deposits which remain permanently in the
-wood. Sometimes these deposits are sufficiently hard to turn the edge of
-tools.
-
-River birch is widely used but in small amounts. It may properly be
-described as a neighborhood wood--that is, wherever it grows in
-considerable quantity it is put to use, but nearly always in a local
-way. For example, in Louisiana, where it is as abundant as in any other
-state, it is a favorite material for ox yokes, and no report from that
-state has been made of its employment for any other purpose. The reason
-given for its extensive use for ox yokes there is that it is very strong
-for its weight, and that it resists decay. The yokes there are usually
-left out of doors when not in use, and the dampness and hot weather
-cause rapid decay of most woods. The birches are usually listed as
-quick-decaying woods, but the verdict from Louisiana seems to be that
-river birch is an exception.
-
-Plain furniture is made of it, and the manufacturers of woodenware find
-it suitable for most of their commodities. It is sometimes listed as
-wooden shoe material, but no particular instance has been reported where
-it has been so used in this country. In Maryland some of the
-manufacturers of peach baskets make bands or hoops of it, and pronounce
-it as satisfactory for that purpose as elm.
-
-The supply is not in much danger of exhaustion. The species is equipped
-to take care of itself, occupying as it does, ground not in demand for
-farming purposes. When a tree once gets a start it has a chance to
-escape the ax until large enough for use.
-
-WHITE ALASKA BIRCH (_Betula alaskana_) is usually called simply white
-birch where it grows. It is not exclusively an Alaska species though
-that is the only place where it touches the territory of the United
-States. It is supposed by some to be closely related to the white
-birches of northern Asia, but the relationship, if it exists, has not
-been established. In Alaska it grows as far north as any timber extends.
-It was first discovered and reported in 1858 on the Saskatchewan river,
-east of the Rocky Mountains, and its range is now known to extend down
-the valley of the Mackenzie river toward the Arctic ocean to a point
-more than 100 miles north of the Arctic circle. It is common in many
-parts of Alaska both along the coast and in the interior. In some
-portions of that territory it is an important source of fuel. Trees are
-from twenty-five to sixty feet high, and from six to eighteen inches in
-diameter. The bark is thin and often nearly white, separating into thin
-scales. The tree bears typical birch cones, but larger than those of
-some of the other species. No tests of the wood's physical properties
-have been made, but it looks like the wood of paper birch, and will
-probably attain to considerable importance in the future, since it grows
-over a large area, and in many parts is abundant. There remain many
-things for both botanists and wood-users to investigate concerning this
-tree which has a range of more than half a million square miles.
-
-WESTERN BIRCH (_Betula occidentalis_) is believed to be the largest
-birch in the world, and yet it is not of much commercial importance in
-the United States, because of scarcity, occurring only in northwestern
-Washington and in the adjacent parts of British Columbia, as far as its
-range has been determined. It resembles paper birch, and has often been
-supposed to be that tree. The people in the restricted region where it
-grows speak of it simply as birch. The largest trees are 100 feet high
-and four feet in diameter, clear of limbs forty or fifty feet. A height
-of seventy feet and a diameter of two are common. The general color of
-the trunk is orange-brown, the new bark, exposed by exfoliation, is
-yellow. The tree prefers the border of streams and the shores of lakes.
-Though it is the largest of the birches, its seeds are among the
-smallest. They are provided with two wings and are good flyers.
-Manufacturers of flooring and interior finish in Washington reported the
-use of 315,000 feet of this birch in 1911. That was the only use found
-for it in the only state where it grows. Information is meager as to the
-probable quantity of this birch available. It has been reported in
-Idaho, but exact information on the subject is lacking.
-
-    MOUNTAIN BIRCH (_Betula fontanalis_) is a minor species concerning
-    which there has been much contention among botanists. It has finally
-    been called mountain birch because it grows on mountains, as high as
-    10,000 feet among the Sierra Nevadas in California. It has many
-    local names for a tree so small as to be almost a shrub throughout
-    most of its range: Black birch, sweet birch, cherry birch, water
-    birch, and canyon birch. Its bark is of the color of old copper;
-    wood is light yellowish-brown, with thick white sapwood; trunks
-    seldom exceed ten inches in diameter and thirty feet high; range
-    extends from northern British Columbia to California, and along the
-    Rocky Mountains to Colorado and possibly further south. The uses of
-    the wood are few.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PAPER BIRCH
-
-[Illustration: PAPER BIRCH]
-
-
-
-
-PAPER BIRCH
-
-(_Betula Papyrifera_)
-
-
-This tree is called paper birch because the bark parts in thin sheets
-like paper. It is known as canoe birch from the fact that Indians and
-early white explorers and travelers constructed canoes of the bark. The
-name silver birch is an allusion to the color of the bark; and big white
-birch is the name used when the purpose is to distinguish it from the
-white birch with which it is associated in the northeastern part of its
-range. It grows as far north as Arctic British America, east to
-Labrador, south to Michigan and Pennsylvania, and west nearly or quite
-to the base of the Rocky Mountains. This indicated area exceeds
-1,000,000 square miles. The quantity of birch of this species in the
-forests is unknown, but it runs into billions of feet, probably
-exceeding any other single species of birch. The tree sometimes grows
-dispersed through forests of other woods, sometimes in nearly pure
-stands. Persons well acquainted with the species have expressed the
-opinion that paper birch exists in larger quantities now than at the
-time when the country was first explored by white men. That can be said
-of few other species; but probably holds true of lodgepole pine in the
-West, loblolly pine in the Southeast, and mesquite in the Southwest.
-Each of these species took advantage of man's presence and influence to
-extend its range. Cattle spread the mesquite; the lodgepole pine came up
-in fire-burned tracts; loblolly pine spread into abandoned fields; and
-paper birch profited by fires which destroyed large tracts of timber.
-
-The seeds are light, are furnished with wings which sail them long
-distances through the air, and they are quickly scattered over the
-burned areas where they spring up. In the contest, they are competitors
-of aspen. Birch often captures the ground, but does not always do it.
-Some of the largest stands in the Northeast occupy tracts bared by fire
-half a century or more ago. When paper birch does not find open tracts,
-it contents itself with sharing ground with other species. That was the
-usual manner of its growth in the original forests; but it has been
-quick to seize opportunities to take full possession.
-
-It does not like shade and, if crowded, one of the first things it does
-is to rid its lower trunk of all branches. Only limbs remain which are
-at the top where they receive plenty of light. Therefore, forest-grown
-paper birches have long, clean trunks, though they are not always
-straight. The largest trees are seventy feet high and three in diameter,
-but those fifty feet in height and eighteen inches in diameter are above
-rather than under the average.
-
-The bark of paper birch has played an important part in American
-history, story, and poetry. It was the canoe material, the roof, and the
-utensil in its region. The Indians had brought the art of canoe making
-to perfection before white men went among them. The bark peels from the
-trunks in large pieces, and may be separated into thin sheets, which are
-very tough, strong, and durable. The Indians sewed pieces of bark
-together, using the long, slender roots of tamarack for thread. The bark
-was stretched and tied over a frame, the shape of the canoe, and made of
-northern white cedar, or some other light wood. Holes in the bark, and
-the partings at the seams, were stopped with resin from balsam fir, wax
-from balm of Gilead, or resin from pine. The forest supplied all the
-material needed by the Indian, and a canoe thus made, and large enough
-to carry 800 or 1,000 pounds, weighed no more than fifty pounds. Frail
-as it seemed, it was good for long service on rivers and lakes, and
-could weather storms of no small severity.
-
-White men adopted the bark canoes at once, and learned from Indians how
-to make them. The daring explorers and venturesome fur traders who
-threaded every river and navigated every important lake of British
-America, found the birch canoe equal to every requirement, even to
-attacking whales in the tidewater of the Arctic ocean. The bark from
-this birch was used for tents and the roofs of cabins; vessels in which
-to store or carry food were made of it, as well as beds on which to
-sleep, and wrapping material for bundles. These uses have now
-practically ceased; but as sport, recreation, and for the novelty,
-articles, from canoes to visiting cards, are still made of the bark.
-
-The wood of paper birch is valuable for certain purposes. The trees are
-largely white sapwood, which is without figure. It is as plain a wood as
-grows in the forest, but it may be stained. That, however, is seldom
-done. The heartwood is dark or red, and is made into brush backs and
-parquet flooring, but the hearts are small, and no large quantity of
-that wood is used. The largest use of paper birch is for spools, the
-common kind for thread. Some of larger size are made for use in mills.
-The sapwood only is accepted by makers of spools. The heart is cut out,
-and most of it is thrown away or burned under the boilers. The qualities
-of paper birch which appeal to spool makers are, white color, small
-liability to warp, and the ease with which it may be cut without dulling
-the tools. The logs are worked into bars of the various spool sizes, and
-are carefully seasoned. One of the problems that must be constantly
-solved is the prevention of sap stain while the bars are seasoning. The
-wood discolors quickly and deeply.
-
-Tooth picks, shoe pegs, and shoe shanks are other important commodities
-manufactured from paper birch. It has not yet been satisfactorily
-converted into lumber, because it is more valuable for spools, tooth
-picks, pegs, and the like. This wood is frequently listed as a pulpwood,
-and it is quite generally believed that its use for that purpose is
-important. This is apparently an error, as the wood is not even
-mentioned in statistics of pulpwood output in this country.
-
-Paper birch weighs 37.11 pounds per cubic foot, is strong, hard, tough;
-medullary rays are numerous but very small and obscure; wood is
-diffuse-porous, and earlywood blends gradually with latewood in the
-annual rings which are not very distinct.
-
-This is one of the woods which does not threaten to become soon
-exhausted. A supply for half a century, at present rate of use, is in
-sight, if no more should grow; but in fifty years new forests, now
-young, will be large enough to use.
-
-    KENAI BIRCH (_Betula kenaica_) is an Alaska species concerning which
-    comparatively little is known, except that its botanical identity
-    and something of its range have been established. Its small size,
-    and the remote regions where it grows, do not necessarily indicate
-    that it can never be important. Scarcity of other woods may give it
-    a place which it does not now occupy. No reports on the properties
-    of the wood have been made. The bark is deep brown in color. Trees
-    are from twenty to thirty feet high and from twelve to eighteen
-    inches in diameter. The trunks are very short. Cones are an inch or
-    less in length and the double winged seeds are very small. The name
-    applied to this species relates to the region where the best
-    developed trees have been found. As far as known, the species is
-    confined to the coast region of Alaska and to adjacent islands from
-    the head of Lynn canal westward. It has been reported on Koyukuk
-    river above the Arctic circle.
-
-    WHITE BIRCH (_Betula populifolia_) is known also as gray birch,
-    old-field birch, poverty birch, poplar-leaved birch, and small white
-    birch. It is chiefly confined to the northeastern part of the United
-    States, but grows as far east as Nova Scotia, and west to the
-    southern shore of Lake Ontario. It occurs on the Atlantic coast
-    south to Delaware, and along mountain ranges to West Virginia. The
-    names describe either the habits or the appearance of the tree. The
-    bark is white, and is the most prominent feature of a thicket of
-    these graceful but practically worthless little birches. It is
-    called an old-field species because it quickly scatters its small,
-    winged seeds over abandoned farmland and takes possession when it
-    does not have to compete with stronger species. Poverty birch is an
-    allusion, either to the poor ground it occupies or the unpromising
-    nature of the tree itself. The resemblance of its leaves to those of
-    cottonwood leads some people to prefer the name poplar-leaved birch.
-    The tree at its best is seldom more than forty feet high and
-    eighteen inches in diameter. A height of twenty or thirty feet is
-    the usual size. The stem is generally clothed with branches nearly
-    to the ground. The wood is light, soft, not strong or durable, heart
-    light brown, thick sap nearly white. The form and size of the trunk
-    exclude it from sawmills, but it has some special uses: Spools, shoe
-    pegs, and hoops. Its small size does not disqualify it for service
-    along those lines. The tree springs up quickly, grows with fair
-    rapidity, and dies young. It is cut for cordwood in New England and
-    makes good fuel. It takes possession of areas bared by fire, and
-    protects the ground, furnishing shelter for more valuable species
-    which come later.
-
-    BLUE BIRCH (_Betula cærulea_) is a small tree of which more
-    information is to be desired. It is rarely more than thirty feet
-    high with a diameter of eight or ten inches. Its leaves are
-    long-pointed, its cones about an inch in length, the bark is thin,
-    white tinged with rose, and is lustrous. Bark is not easily
-    separated into layers, in that respect differing from the paper
-    birch. The inner bark is of light orange color. It is probably put
-    to no use, unless for fuel or as hoops. It is smallest of New
-    England birches, and its range has not been fully determined, but it
-    is known to grow in Maine and Vermont, and probably will be found in
-    other parts of New England and in the adjacent regions of Canada. It
-    has been compared with a European species of birch, the _Betula
-    pendula_.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED ALDER
-
-[Illustration: RED ALDER]
-
-
-
-
-RED ALDER
-
-(_Alnus Oregona_)
-
-
-Many species of alder are found in various parts of the world, and on
-both sides of the equator, but chiefly in the northern hemisphere. Some
-of these are trees, others are shrubs. Six species belonging in the tree
-class grow in the United States, besides others which remain shrubs.
-Some trees are burdened with names, changing them with locality, but not
-so with alder. An adjective may accompany the name, as red, white,
-seaside, or mountain, to describe it, but it is always alder, no matter
-where it grows. The different species cover much of the United States,
-and few large areas are found which have not one or more species. It
-grows from sea level up to 7,000 feet or more, but some species thrive
-at one elevation, and others above or below.
-
-The alders are old inhabitants of the earth. They had a place in the
-Eocene and Miocene forests of the old world and new. It is not apparent
-that they have either gained or lost in extent of range during the
-hundreds of thousands of years which measure their tenancy on the earth.
-They have not been aggressive in pushing their way, nor have they shown
-a disposition to retire before the aggression of other trees. Some
-alders bear seeds equipped with wings for wind distribution, others
-produce wingless seeds which depend on water to bear them to suitable
-situations and plant them. Of course, the water-borne seeds are planted
-on muddy shores or on the banks of running streams, and the trees of
-those species are confined to such situations. The alders belong to the
-birch family.
-
-Red alder is the largest of the alder group in this country. Mature
-trees are from forty to ninety feet high, and from one to three feet in
-diameter. The northern limit of its range crosses southern Alaska; its
-southern border is in southern California. It is a Pacific coast tree,
-with a north and south range of 2,000 miles. Trunks are straight, and
-branches are generally slender. The largest specimens grow in the
-vicinity of Puget Sound. The bark is thin, leaves are from three to ten
-inches long, cones from one-half to one inch in length, seeds have very
-narrow, thin wings, and are about the size of radish seeds. The cones
-remain green in color until the seeds are fully ripe, but they finally
-turn brown, and seeds are liberated during the fall and winter.
-
-Red alder is given that name because the newly cut wood is liable to
-change quickly to a reddish-brown. This applies to the whitish sapwood
-only; but since the trunk is largely sapwood, it is an important matter.
-It is not apparent whether the change in color is due to attack by
-fungi, or to some chemical change in the sap. It is not believed that
-the change in color weakens the wood, at least it does not appear to do
-so immediately. The heart is reddish, and when dressed and polished, it
-presents a fine appearance.
-
-Red alder when thoroughly air dry weighs about thirty pounds per cubic
-foot, which is slightly above the weight of basswood. It is strong for
-its weight, rating only eight per cent below white oak, while in
-stiffness or elasticity it is about twelve per cent above white oak. It
-is not difficult to season, is soft, stands well when made up, and is
-one of the most important hardwoods of the northwest Pacific coast. More
-than 2,000,000 feet a year go to wood-using factories in Washington and
-Oregon.
-
-The Indians of the Northwest, when they had only stone hatchets or the
-crudest kinds of metal tools, found red alder a wood which worked so
-easily that they specialized with it. They made canoes of the largest
-trunks, and all manner of troughs, trays, trenches, platters, and
-dugouts, some of no more than a pint in capacity, others holding three
-or four bushels. The Field Museum in Chicago has a collection of these
-Indian utensils made of alder. The workmanship shows considerable skill
-mixed with barbaric art. There are carvings of eagles and bears which
-are not entirely grotesque. The utensils were designed primarily to
-contain food at ceremonial feasts, or it was stored for times of
-scarcity. Among them are cooking vessels of alder in which meat was
-boiled by filling the troughs with water and dropping in hot stones.
-
-Furniture manufacturers are the largest users of red alder. Carefully
-selected heartwood, finished in the proper color, looks much like
-cherry, though it lacks something of the characteristic cherry luster.
-The sapwood in its natural color resembles the sapwood of yellow birch.
-The annual rings are defined by narrow bands of dense summerwood. The
-pores are small and diffused through the entire ring, as with birch.
-Medullary rays are very thin and do not show much figure; neither do the
-rings of growth, in tangential sawing, display much contrast. It is,
-therefore, a figureless wood, entering into practically all grades of
-furniture, in the region where alder is plentiful, but it shows to
-particularly good advantage in panels.
-
-Reports on wood-utilization on the Pacific coast list this wood for
-archery bows but particulars as to amount used, and why it is used at
-all, are not given. The physical properties of the wood do not seem to
-fit it for that use. It is wanting in both strength and elasticity which
-are the prime, almost the only, factors considered in selecting bow
-wood. No account has been found of any employment of alder for bows by
-Indians of the region where it grows.
-
-Broom handle turners in Washington use 350,000 feet of alder a year. The
-smooth finish which may be imparted to the wood constitutes its chief
-value for broom handles. It is well liked for porch columns. When the
-center is bored out, the wood seldom checks. In that respect it
-resembles yellow poplar. It takes paint well and holds it a long time.
-Comparatively large amounts are converted into interior finish. It is
-made into spindles, newel posts, railing, panels, molding, ornaments,
-and pedestals. Occasionally it is finished in the wood's natural color.
-
-Many minor places are found for red alder. Frames of pack saddles are
-made of it; it forms parts of pulleys; is available for small turnery;
-and it is sometimes worked into bodies and compartments for business
-wagons, such as butchers and bakers use. The bark is rich in tannin and
-is said to be employed in local tanneries, but no statistics are
-available showing the annual supply.
-
-WHITE ALDER (_Alnus rhombifolia_) is known simply as alder in the region
-where it grows. Where this tree and red alder occupy the same range they
-are commonly supposed to be the same. The range of white alder extends
-from northern Idaho to southern California. It is the common alder of
-central California where it attains its best development, and the only
-alder at low altitudes in southern California. Trees vary in height from
-thirty to eighty feet, and in diameter from one to three. A common size
-is fifty feet high and fifteen inches in diameter. Like most alders, it
-sticks close to water courses, and is usually found in the bottoms of
-gulches where water flows most of the year. The flowers begin to appear
-in midsummer as dark, olive-brown catkins less than an inch in length.
-By midwinter they are fully developed, and the tree is loaded with
-catkins from four to six inches long and thick as lead pencils. In the
-gulches among the elevated foothills it is not unusual for trees to be
-bending beneath snow and flowers at the same time. That is about the
-period when the seeds of the preceding year complete their dispersal.
-The cones hang closed nearly a whole twelve months, and when they give
-up their seeds, they often do it slowly. The seeds are the size of pin
-heads, and seem to have had wings once, but lost them. The remnants
-remain, but are of no use. If running water does not carry seeds to new
-grounds they lie beneath the parent tree. The wood of white alder is
-five pounds lighter per cubic foot than red alder. Its structure is less
-satisfactory. Medullary rays are irregular, some being thin as those of
-sweet birch, while others are as broad as rays of chestnut oak. Those of
-large size seem to be scattered at haphazard, and are so irregular and
-uncertain that no dependence can be placed in them for figure. Trees are
-largely sapwood, which is nearly white when freshly cut, but it quickly
-turns brown; heartwood is pale, yellowish-brown. This is said to be one
-of most quickly-decaying woods of the western forests when logs are left
-lying in damp woods. The white alder ought to be suitable for nearly
-every purpose for which red alder is used.
-
-    MOUNTAIN ALDER (_Alnus tenuifolia_) is too small to contribute much
-    to the lumber supply of the country, though it may yield fuel in
-    some localities where there is little else. Its range extends from
-    Yukon territory to Lower California, a distance of 4,000 miles, and
-    it nearly touches both the torrid and frigid zones. It is found from
-    the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific in the United States. Few trunks
-    exceed twenty-five feet in height or six inches in diameter; but the
-    form is generally brush, in tangled thickets along the courses of
-    mountain streams, and on boggy slopes, up to 7,000 feet in altitude.
-    The wood is light brown, and there are no reports showing its use
-    for any purpose except firewood.
-
-    SITKA ALDER (_Alnus sitchensis_) is one of the smallest of the
-    arborescent species, and in most instances it is a shrub a few feet
-    high. At its best it is thirty feet high and eight inches in
-    diameter. It grows from Alaska to Oregon, and eastward to Alberta
-    and Montana. It is found in mountain regions 4,000 feet above the
-    sea. The wood is valuable for fuel only. This species was discovered
-    about eighty years ago, but was practically lost sight of until
-    recently. Many persons saw it but supposed it to be one of the other
-    alders.
-
-    LANCELEAF ALDER (_Alnus acuminata_) is a southwestern species,
-    ranging through southern New Mexico and southern Arizona and south
-    4,000 miles to Peru. In the United States it ascends to altitudes of
-    4,000 or 6,000 feet where it fringes the banks of streams, and
-    flourishes in the bottoms of canyons. The largest trees are thirty
-    feet high and eight inches in diameter. Flowers open in February
-    before the appearance of the leaves. The seeds have small wings
-    which are of little or no use.
-
-    SEASIDE ALDER (_Alnus maritima_) grows in Maryland, Delaware, and
-    Oklahoma, and the largest trunks are thirty feet high and five
-    inches in diameter. It is found on the banks of ponds and streams.
-    The flowers appear in July, and the seeds of last year's crop ripen
-    at the same time. The wood is light, soft, and brown, heart and sap
-    being scarcely distinguishable. The wood is not used.
-
-    The European Alder (_Alnus glutinosa_) has been naturalized in a few
-    places in the United States, and several varieties are distinguished
-    in cultivation. A native shrubby species (_Alnus rugosa_) is common
-    in many parts of the eastern states. It is not usually listed as a
-    tree, being too small, but it is sometimes twenty-five feet high and
-    three or four inches in diameter. In Europe the charcoal made from
-    alder is considered excellent material for the manufacture of gun
-    powder, and considerable areas of alder in England are held in
-    reserve against an emergency. It is probable that the American
-    alders would answer as well as the European species.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-HORNBEAM
-
-[Illustration: HORNBEAM]
-
-
-
-
-HORNBEAM
-
-(_Ostrya Virginiana_)
-
-
-This tree belongs to the birch family and is closely related to the
-alders and to blue beech. Four species of hornbeam are known in the
-world, and two of them are in the United States. One is well known to
-most persons who are familiar with eastern hardwood forests, but the
-other is seldom seen because of the limited extent of its range.
-
-The well-known hornbeam is found in the valley of the St. Lawrence
-river, throughout Nova Scotia and Ottawa, along the northern shore of
-Lake Huron to northern Minnesota, south through the northern states and
-along the Alleghany mountains to the Chattahoochee region of western
-Florida; through eastern Iowa, southeastern Missouri and Arkansas,
-eastern Kansas, Oklahoma and the Trinity river region of Texas. It is
-known as ironwood, hop-hornbeam, leverwood, and hardhack.
-
-The Indians were small users of wood except for fuel, but they had
-places where they put wood to special uses. They chose hornbeam, when
-they could get it, for one of these places. It was a favorite material
-for the handles of their stone warclubs. The stone heads were chipped to
-various forms, but were usually egg-shaped with a groove round the
-middle for fixing the handle. This was made fast with thongs of rawhide,
-and was generally nearly or quite two feet long, and slender as a golf
-stick. Great strength and a high degree of elasticity were required to
-stand the strain when a warrior swung his club in battle. Hornbeam meets
-these requirements exactly, and doubtless the Indian found this out by
-experience. It is about thirty per cent stronger than white oak, and
-forty-six per cent more elastic. The demand for warclub handles made no
-great inroads on the hornbeam supply, but it affords proof that the
-Indians sometimes used good judgment.
-
-The different names of this tree describe some characteristic of the
-wood or foliage. The fruit resembles hops, hence one of the names.
-Hardness gives it the other names by which it is known. It is the custom
-nearly everywhere to call any wood ironwood if it is extra hard. No
-fewer than eleven species of the United States are known as ironwood in
-some parts of their ranges.
-
-The leaves of hornbeam are simple and alternate; they taper to a sharp
-point at the end, while the base is rounded. They are doubly and sharply
-serrate. In color they are dark green above, and lighter below, tufted
-in places, resembling birch leaves in some respects, although they are
-quite different in texture, the leaves of birch being glossy, while
-those of ironwood are rough. They are joined to the twig with a short
-petiole, hardly a fourth of an inch in length.
-
-The flowers grow in long catkins, staminate ones sometimes more than two
-inches long, covered with fringed scales. The pistillate catkins are
-usually shorter. Hornbeam blooms in April and May and its fruit ripens
-in August and September. The seed is a small nut equipped with
-balloon-like wings, intended for wind distribution. The seeds are often
-carried, rolled, and tumbled considerable distances. They keep on going
-until their wings are torn off or wear out, or until they become
-inextricably entangled among twigs or other obstacles. Comparatively few
-of the seeds ever find lodgment in situations suitable for germination.
-Consequently, hornbeam is scarce.
-
-It is not easy to state the average size of the hornbeam, though it is
-usually small and never very large. Sometimes it reaches a height of
-fifty or sixty feet and a diameter of two or more, but such sizes are
-unusual. Trees a foot in diameter and forty feet high are more common.
-The foliage is thin, and the tree is satisfied to grow in shade,
-provided the shadows are not too dense. The leaves must have a little
-sunshine, and the flecks that fall through the open spaces in the forest
-canopy high above, suffice. The hornbeam makes no effort to overtop its
-fellow trees; but when it grows in the open, as on a rocky bank or
-ridge, where it catches the full light, the crown puts on more leaves,
-and multiplies its branches, and it is no longer the lean tree which
-some of the Indians called it. Forest grown specimens produce clear
-trunks, but those in the open are limby almost to the ground.
-
-Hornbeam has neither smell nor taste. It burns well, the embers glowing
-brightly in still air. The weight of a cubic foot of seasoned wood is
-fifty-one pounds. It is strong, hard, heavy, tough, and exceedingly
-durable when exposed to variable weather, or when in contact with the
-soil. It takes a beautiful polish. Trees more than a foot in diameter
-are often found to be hollow.
-
-The wood is strong, hard, tough, durable in contact with the soil;
-heartwood light brown, tinged with red, or often nearly white; thick,
-pale sapwood which generally does not change to heart for forty or fifty
-years. The annual rings are not uniform in appearance. Some are easily
-distinguishable, while others are vague. This variation is due to the
-irregular development of the dark summerwood in the outer portion of the
-rings. It is at times distinct and again is hardly discernible.
-
-The wood is diffuse-porous, and the pores are too small to be easily
-seen by the naked eye. The medullary rays are small and obscure. In
-quarter-sawed wood they show as a silvery gloss, but the appearance is
-too monotonous to be attractive. Neither is there striking figure when
-the wood is sawed tangentially, because of the small contrast in the
-different parts of the yearly ring. Hornbeam may, therefore, be listed
-among woods which have little or no figure. No one ever thinks of using
-it for the sake of its beauty. Because of the small size and limited
-quantity hornbeam will never come into commercial prominence. Its uses
-are almost entirely local and domestic. The lumberman or the farmer
-selects a hornbeam sapling as being the best material obtainable for
-making a wagon or sleigh tongue, a skid, or a lever. The farmer often
-laboriously works a section of the flint-like wood into minor
-agricultural implements.
-
-The statistics of sawmill cut in the United States do not mention
-hornbeam even among such minor species as holly, Osage orange, alder,
-and apple. However, it is known that an occasional log goes to sawmills
-in the Lake States, and doubtless in other regions, and in some
-instances the wood is kept separate from others and is sold to fill
-special orders. Manufacturers of farm tools consider it the best wood
-for rake teeth. That use has come down from the time when farmers made
-their own rakes and pitchforks. They learned the wood's value by
-experience, and manufacturers cater to the trade.
-
-It is sometimes called lever wood, and that name dates from long ago
-when the man who needed a lever went into the woods and cut one to suit
-his needs. The modern lever is usually somewhat different and partakes
-more of the nature of a handle. They are seen in sawmills where they
-manipulate the carriage machinery; on certain agricultural implements
-where their function is to throw clutches in and out of gear; sometimes
-they are used as the handle by which the rudder of a small boat is
-controlled; and occasionally the lever has a place as an adjunct of a
-wagon or log-car brake. In all of these uses strength and stiffness are
-required, and durability is duly considered.
-
-Wagon makers and repairers find several uses for hornbeam. It would be
-more frequently employed if it were more plentiful. Nearly any
-blacksmith who runs a repair shop for vehicles will testify to that. It
-fulfills every requisite for axles; is made into felloes for heavy
-wagons; and is considered the best obtainable wood for the tongues of
-heavy logging wheels and stone wagons.
-
-Among various occasional uses of this wood it is listed by the
-manufacturers of reels for garden hose; rungs for long ladders; stakes
-for sleds, and also for cross pieces and parts of runners of sleds;
-wedges for the makers of machinery; and hammer and hatchet handles. It
-is a pretty active competitor of dogwood for some of these uses, and it
-has been suggested for shuttles, but no report of its use in that
-capacity seems to have been made.
-
-One of its most common uses is as fence posts. Few lines of fence are
-built exclusively of hornbeam posts, because not enough can be had in
-one place; but posts are cut singly or a few together from Maine to
-Arkansas, and the aggregate number is large. The wood is said to outlast
-the heartwood of white oak when in contact with the ground, and it is so
-strong that posts of small size stand the pull of wires or the weight of
-planks or pickets.
-
-Hornbeam is of slow growth and there is little reason to believe that it
-will ever be seriously considered by timber growers; but it will
-doubtless win its way to favor as an ornamental tree. It has been
-planted in city parks in New England and elsewhere, and its form,
-foliage, and habits are much liked. The pale green pods or cones--they
-are not exactly the one or the other--remain a long time on the branches
-and are delicately ornamental until after the autumn frosts change their
-green into brown. Then comes the flying time of the balloon seeds, and
-that is an interesting period in parks and yards where the tree's habits
-may be closely studied.
-
-    KNOWLTON HORNBEAM (_Ostrya knowltoni_) is interesting chiefly on
-    account of its extremely limited range, and its far removal from all
-    its kin. It is an exile in a distant country. It has thus far been
-    found only on the southern slope of the canyon of the Colorado river
-    in Arizona, about seventy miles north of Flagstaff. It occurs at an
-    elevation of 6,000 or 7,000 feet above the sea. Trees are twenty or
-    thirty feet high and twelve or eighteen inches in diameter, and
-    trunks usually divide a foot or two above the ground into three or
-    more branches, which are often crooked and contorted. Such sizes and
-    forms could not be of much value for anything but fuel, even if
-    abundant. The heart is light reddish-brown, sapwood thin. The leaves
-    are round instead of pointed at the apex, as with the other
-    hornbeam; but the flowers and fruit are much the same. Botanists
-    speculate in vain as to how this species happens to be so far
-    removed from other members of its family.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SILVERBELL
-
-[Illustration: SILVERBELL]
-
-
-
-
-SILVERBELL TREE
-
-(_Mohrodendron Carolinum_)
-
-
-This tree belongs to the storax family, which is not a very numerous
-family as forest families are generally counted, but it is old and
-highly respectable. Its members are found in the old world and the new
-in both North and South America, in Europe, Asia, and the Malay
-Archipelago. Trees of the storax family produce, or they are supposed to
-produce, resins and gums, balsams, and aromatic exudations, but some
-give little or none. The priests and soothsayers of idolatrous nations
-of ancient times laid great stress on storax. They insisted on having
-the resin as an adjunct to their superstitious rites. It was the incense
-offered in their worship, and they compassed sea and land to obtain it
-for that purpose. It is not improbable that the southern peninsulas of
-Asia and the far-off Molucca islands were visited in ancient times to
-procure the incense which ultimately found its way to the Mediterranean
-regions.
-
-It is, therefore, interesting to find that two members of the old storax
-family are quietly living in the coast region and among the mountains of
-the southeastern part of the United States. No one has ever suspected
-that they might be capable of yielding resinous incense suitable for the
-altars of heathen gods. They are the silverbell tree, and its little
-cousin, the snowdrop tree (_Mohrodendron dipterum_). They have had
-common names a long time, but their botanical names are the result of a
-recent christening. They are named from Charles Mohr who wrote an
-interesting book on the flora of Alabama. The silverbell tree is the
-larger of the two and deserves first consideration.
-
-It has a somewhat extensive range, but in some parts it is so scarce
-that few persons ever see it. It is found from the mountains of West
-Virginia to southern Illinois, south to middle Florida, northern
-Alabama, and Mississippi, and through Arkansas and western Louisiana to
-eastern Texas. Under cultivation, this tree is known as the snowdrop
-tree in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina,
-Florida, and Louisiana. In Rhode Island, under cultivation, it is also
-sometimes known as the silverbell tree, and bears the same name in
-Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi. In parts of Tennessee it is known as
-the wild olive tree, and in other parts of the state as the bell tree.
-In various localities in Alabama it is referred to as the four-winged
-halesia; and in others as opossumwood. It is indiscriminately known in
-various sections of Texas as the rattlebox and calicowood, and some of
-the furniture manufacturers in North Carolina list it as box elder,
-though it is only distantly related to the true box elder. In the Great
-Smoky mountains in Tennessee, where the species reaches its greatest
-development, it bears a variety of names, among them being tisswood,
-peawood, bellwood, and chittamwood.
-
-The tree varies in size from a shrubby form so small that it is scarcely
-entitled to the name of tree, up to a height of eighty, ninety, and even
-more than 100 feet with diameters up to nearly four feet. The largest
-sizes occur only among the ranges of the Great Smoky mountains in
-Blount, Sevier, and Monroe counties, Tennessee. No reason is known why
-this tree in that region should so greatly exceed its largest dimensions
-in other areas; but most species have a locality where the greatest
-development is reached, and this has found the favorable conditions in
-the mountains of eastern Tennessee. Some of the trees measure sixty feet
-or more to the first limbs.
-
-Lumbermen of the country are not generally acquainted with silverbell,
-as is natural since its commercial range is so limited. It is not listed
-in statistics of sawmill cut or of veneer mills. The wood-using
-industries of the country do not report it, except in the one state,
-North Carolina, and there in very small amounts. Doubtless, it is
-occasionally used elsewhere, but it escapes mention in most instances.
-It has been made into mantels at Knoxville, Tennessee, and passes as
-birch.
-
-The wood is light, soft, usually narrow-ringed, color light brown, the
-thick sapwood lighter. It weighs thirty-five pounds per cubic foot, and
-when burned it yields a low percentage of ash. The wood's chief value is
-due to its color and figure. Best results are not obtained by sawing the
-logs into lumber, because the handsomest part of the figure is apt to be
-lost. It is preëminently suited to the cutting of rotary veneer. By that
-method of conversion the birdseye and the pitted and mottled effects are
-brought out in the best possible manner. Veneers so cut from logs
-selected for the figure, possess a rare beauty which no other American
-wood equals. There is a pleasing blend of tones, which are due to the
-direction in which the distorted grain is cut. This distinguishes the
-wood from all others and gives it an individuality. Much of the figure
-appears to be due to the presence of adventitious buds, similar to those
-supposed to be responsible for the birdseye effect in maple.
-
-The leaves of silverbell are bright green at maturity and are from four
-to six inches long and two or three wide. They turn yellow before
-falling in autumn. The flowers give the tree its name, for they resemble
-delicate bells, about one inch in length. They appear in early spring
-when the leaves are one-third grown, on slender, drooping stems from one
-to two inches long. The trees are loaded throughout the whole crown,
-and present an appearance that is seldom surpassed for beauty in the
-forests of this country.
-
-The fruit is peculiar and is not particularly graceful. It has too much
-the appearance of the load carried by a well-fruited vine of hops. It
-ripens late in autumn and persists during most of the winter. There is
-nothing in its color, shape, or taste to tempt birds or other creatures
-to make food of it, though, under stress of circumstances, they may
-sometimes do so. The fruit is two inches or less in length and an inch
-wide, and has four wings, which seem to be practically useless for
-flight. The seed is about half an inch long.
-
-The bark of the trunk is bright red-brown and about half an inch thick,
-with broad ridges which separate on the surface into thin papery scales.
-The young branches wear an early coat of thick, pale wool or hairs,
-light, reddish-brown during the first summer, but later changing to an
-orange color.
-
-The botanical range of the species is extensive, though the tree-form is
-confined to a few counties among the southern Appalachian mountains. The
-northern limit of its range is in West Virginia where it is so scarce
-that many a woodsman never recognizes it. Unless it is caught while in
-the full glory of its bloom, it attracts no attention. It is not there a
-tree, but a shrub, hidden away among other growth, along mountain
-streams or on slopes where the soil is fertile. The blooming shrub
-might, at a distance, be mistaken for a dogwood in full blossom, but a
-closer inspection corrects the mistake.
-
-It is true of this species as of many others that the range has been
-greatly extended by planting. The bell-like white flowers early drew
-attention of nurserymen who were on the lookout for trees for ornamental
-planting. It was carried to Europe long ago, and graces many a yard and
-park in the central and northern countries of that continent. It now
-grows and thrives in the United States six hundred miles northeast of
-its natural range, where it endures the winters of eastern
-Massachusetts, blooms as bounteously as in its native haunts among the
-shaded streams of the Alleghany mountains.
-
-SNOWDROP TREE (_Mohrodendron dipterum_) is a near relative of the
-silverbell tree, and looks much like it, except that it is smaller, has
-larger leaves, and the flowers are creamy-white. The two occupy the same
-territory in part of their ranges, but they differ in one respect. The
-silverbell tree grows with great luxuriance among the mountains while
-the snowdrop tree keeps to the low country and is seldom or never found
-growing naturally at any considerable elevation. It prefers swamps or
-damp situations near the coast. While the silverbell tree's range
-includes West Virginia, that of the snowdrop extends no farther north
-than South Carolina. It follows the coast to Texas, and runs north
-through Louisiana to central Arkansas. Its range has been greatly
-enlarged by planting, and the northern winters do not kill it on the
-southern shores of Lake Erie. The largest trees are about thirty feet
-high and six inches in diameter, but the growth in most places is
-shrubby. Leaves are four or five inches long and three or four wide.
-Flowers are one inch long and are borne in profusion. They constitute
-the tree's chief value as an ornament, though the foliage is attractive.
-The bloom lasts a month or six weeks, from the middle of March till the
-last of April. The fruit has two wings instead of four, as with
-silverbell, but occasionally two rudimentary wings are present. The wood
-is light, soft, strong, color light brown, with thicker, lighter
-sapwood. The smallness of the trunks makes their use for lumber
-impossible. The species is valuable for ornamental purposes only, and
-has been planted both in this country and Europe. It has a number of
-names by which it is known in different localities, among them being
-cowlicks in Louisiana, and silverbell tree in the North where it has
-been planted outside of its natural range.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SYCAMORE
-
-[Illustration: SYCAMORE]
-
-
-
-
-SYCAMORE
-
-(_Platanus Occidentalis_)
-
-
-Probably no person with a practical knowledge of trees ever mistakes
-sycamore for anything else. The tree stands clear-cut and distinct.
-Until the trunk becomes old, it sheds its outer layer of bark yearly, or
-at least frequently, and the exfoliation exposes the white, new bark
-below. The upper part of the trunk and the large branches are white and
-conspicuous in the spring, and are recognizable at a long distance. No
-other tree in the American forest is as white. The nearest approach to
-it is the paper birch of the North, or the white birch of New England.
-
-Notwithstanding the tree's individuality, it has a good many names. It
-is generally known as sycamore throughout the states of the Union, but
-it is frequently called buttonwood in Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode
-Island, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
-South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
-Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Ontario;
-buttonball tree in several of the eastern states and occasionally in
-Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, and Nebraska; the plane tree in Rhode
-Island, Delaware, South Carolina, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa; the water
-beech in Delaware; the platane, cottonier, and bois puant in Louisiana.
-Probably the finest growth of the sycamore ever encountered was in Ohio
-and Indiana, and these states still contain isolated patches of
-magnificent specimens of the wood. The Black Swamp of Ohio was
-originally a famous sycamore country, of which Defiance was the center
-of lumber manufacture. Many parts of Indiana produced a good sycamore
-growth, and a considerable amount of timber of excellent quality still
-exists, but is now largely owned by farmers who are generally holding it
-out of the market.
-
-The range of sycamore extends from Maine to Nebraska, and south to Texas
-and Florida. It is one of the largest of American hardwoods, and in
-diameter of trunk it is exceeded by none. Trees are on record that were
-from ten to fourteen feet in diameter, and it was not unusual in the
-primeval forests for them to tower nearly or quite 125. In height a
-number of hardwoods exceed it, the yellow poplar in particular; but none
-of them has a larger trunk than the largest sycamores. However, the
-mammoths are generally hollow. The heart decays as rings of new growth
-are added to the outside of the shell. So large were the cavities in
-some of the sycamores in the original forests that more than one case is
-on record of their being used by early settlers as places of abode.
-
-The tree thrives best in the immediate vicinity of rivers and creeks. It
-needs abundance of water for its roots, but is not insistent in its
-demand for deep, fertile soil, for it grows on gravel bars along water
-courses, provided some soil and sand are mixed with the gravel. Great
-age is doubtless attained, but records are necessarily lacking in cases
-where the annual rings of growth must be depended upon; because the
-hollow trunks have lost most of their rings by decay.
-
-Sycamore bears abundance of light seed which is scattered short
-distances by wind and much farther by running water. Its ideal place for
-germinating is on muddy shores and wet flats. Here the seeds are
-deposited by wind and water, and in a short time multitudes of seedlings
-spring up. Though most of them are doomed to perish before they attain a
-height of a few feet, survivors are sufficient to assure thick stands on
-small areas. The trunks grow tall rapidly, and until they reach
-considerable size, they remain solid and make good sawlogs; but at an
-age of seventy-five or 100 years, deterioration is apt to set in; some
-die, others become hollow, and the result is a good stand of large
-sycamores is unusual. The veterans are generally scattered through
-forests of other species.
-
-The statement has often been made in recent years that sycamore is
-becoming very scarce and that the annual output is rapidly declining.
-Statistics do not show a declining output. The cut of sycamore in 1909
-was approximately twice as great as in 1899. It is true that the supply
-is not very large, and it never was large compared with some other
-hardwoods; but it appears to be holding its own as well as most forest
-trees. The cut in the United States in 1910 was 45,000,000, and it was
-credited to twenty-six states. Indiana was the largest contributor, and
-it had held that position a long time. States next below it in the order
-named were Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois.
-Doubtless some of the sycamore lumber now going to market has grown
-since old settlers cut the primeval stands when they cleared their
-fields. It will continue to grow, and since it usually occupies waste
-places, it may be depended upon to contribute pretty regularly year by
-year during time to come. It is one of the forest trees which have never
-suffered much from fires, because it grows in damp situations.
-
-The wood of sycamore weighs 35.39 pounds per cubic foot, is hard, but
-not strong, difficult to split and work; the annual rings are limited by
-narrow bands of dark summerwood. The rings are very porous. The
-medullary rays are rather small, but can be easily seen without a glass.
-They run in regular, radial lines, close together, and the pores are in
-rows between. The rays of sycamore vary from the rule with most woods,
-in that they are darker than the body of the wood.
-
-One of the earliest uses of sycamore was by farmers who cut hollow
-trunks, sawed them in lengths of three or four feet, nailed bottoms in
-them, and used them for barrels for grain. They were called gums. Solid
-logs two or three feet in diameter were cut in lengths of a foot or
-less, bored through the center, and used as wheels for ox carts. The ox
-yoke was often made of sycamore. Butchers used sycamore sections about
-three feet high for meat blocks. The wood is tough, and continual
-hacking fails to split it. The use for meat blocks continues at the
-present time. In Illinois 1,600,000 feet were so employed in 1910.
-
-One of the earliest employments of the wood for commercial purposes was
-in the manufacture of boxes for plug tobacco; but it has now been
-largely replaced by cheaper woods. Its freedom from stain and odor is
-its chief recommendation for tobacco boxes. Some of it is in demand for
-cigar boxes.
-
-The modern uses of sycamore are many. It is made into ordinary crates
-and shipping boxes in most regions where it grows. Rotary cut veneer is
-worked into berry crates and baskets, and into barrels. Ice boxes and
-refrigerators are among the products. Slack coopers are among the
-largest users, but some of the manufactured stave articles belong more
-properly to woodenware, such as tubs, washing machines, candy buckets,
-and lard pails.
-
-Furniture makers demand the best grades, and most of the quarter-sawed
-stock goes to them, though the manufacturers of musical instruments buy
-some of the finest. Use is pretty general from pipe organs and pianos
-down to mandolins, guitars and phonographs. It enters extensively into
-the making of miscellaneous commodities. As small a toy as the
-stereoscope consumes much sycamore. Makers of trunks find it suitable
-for slats, and it serves as small squares and borders in parquetry. It
-is a choice wood for barber poles and saddle trees, and its fine
-appearance when worked in broad panels leads to its employment as
-interior finish for houses, boats, and passenger cars.
-
-    CALIFORNIA SYCAMORE (_Platanus racemosa_) is one of the three
-    species of sycamore now found growing naturally in the United
-    States. They are survivors of a very old family and appear to have
-    been crowded down from the far North by the cold, or to have made
-    their way south for some other reason. Sycamores flourished in
-    Greenland in the Cretaceous age, some millions of years ago, as is
-    shown by fossil remains dug up in that land of ice and eternal
-    winter. They grew in central Europe, about the same time, but long
-    ago disappeared from there. Sycamores were growing in the United
-    States an immense period of time ago, and were doubtless lifting
-    their giant white branches high above the banks of ancient rivers
-    while the gorgeous bloom of yellow poplars brightened the forests on
-    the rich bottom lands farther back. Several species of sycamores
-    which grew in the United States during the Tertiary age are now
-    extinct. All seem to have been much like those which have come down
-    to the present day.
-
-    The California sycamore is found in the southern half of that state,
-    and in Lower California. It grows from sea level up to 5,000 feet,
-    and has the same habits as the larger sycamore of the East, and
-    prefers the banks of streams and the wet land in the bottoms of
-    canyons. It attains a height of from forty to eighty feet, and a
-    diameter of from two to five. Some trees are larger, one in
-    particular near Los Angeles having a trunk diameter of nine feet.
-    The tree is usually extremely distorted and misshaped, leaning,
-    twisted, and forking and reforking until a practical lumberman would
-    pronounce it a hopeless proposition. This applies, however, to
-    trunks which grow in the open, and that is where most of them grow.
-    When they are found crowded in thick stands in the bottoms of
-    canyons, their trunks are shapely enough for short sawlogs. The wood
-    is very similar to that of eastern sycamore, and it is used for
-    similar purposes, when used at all. The balls are strung five on one
-    tough stem, which is from six to ten inches long. The eastern
-    sycamore usually has a stem for each ball. The seeding habits of
-    both trees are the same.
-
-    ARIZONA SYCAMORE (_Platanus wrightii_) has its range in southern New
-    Mexico, southern Arizona, and neighboring regions in Mexico, where
-    it grows in the bottoms of canyons up to 6,000 feet above sea. The
-    tree attains a height of from thirty to eighty feet, and a diameter
-    of two to five. The trunk is seldom shapely, but often divides in
-    large branches, some of which are fifty or sixty feet long. There
-    are usually three balls on a stem, and the leaf is shaped much like
-    the leaf of red gum, but there is considerable variation in form.
-    The wood resembles eastern sycamore in color and most other
-    features, but when quarter-sawed the flecks produced by the
-    medullary rays are generally smaller, and give a mottled effect. The
-    wood has not been much used, but apparently it is not inferior to
-    eastern sycamore.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK CHERRY
-
-[Illustration: BLACK CHERRY]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK CHERRY
-
-(_Prunus Serotina_)
-
-
-This widely distributed tree supplies the cherry wood of commerce. Its
-natural range extends from Nova Scotia westward through the Canadian
-provinces to the Kaministiquia river; south to Tampa bay in Florida and
-west to North Dakota, eastern Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and eastern
-Texas. The tree is known as wild black cherry, wild cherry, black
-cherry, rum cherry, whiskey cherry, and choke cherry.
-
-Cherry belongs to a remarkably large family and the ordinary observer
-would never suspect the relationship that exists between it and other
-growths to which it bears little resemblance. It is in the rose family
-(_Rosaceæ_). It has multitudes of small and large cousins, most of them
-small, however. Among them are the crabapple, the serviceberry, the
-haws, thorns, plums, and the peach, besides plants which do not rise to
-the dignity of trees.
-
-The crown of black cherry is narrow and the branches are horizontal. In
-height the tree ranges from fifty to one hundred or more feet. The bark
-is a dark reddish-brown, rough and broken into plates, becoming smoother
-toward the top. The branchlets are a rich reddish-brown, and are marked
-with tiny orange-colored dots. The leaves are small, alternate, oblong
-or oval lanceolate, taper-pointed at the apex and pointed or rounded at
-the base, finely serrate; at maturity glabrous, firm, glossy, the light
-colored midrib being very distinct. The flowers are white and grow on
-pedicels in long slender racemes, which terminate leafy shoots. The
-fruit is almost black, showing deep red coloring beneath and is a small
-round drupe; vinous, although not disagreeable to the taste. In most
-instances a liking for it must be acquired, but comparatively few people
-ever take the trouble to acquire it. The old settlers among the
-Alleghany mountains had a way of pressing the juice from the drupes and
-by some simple process converting it into "cherry bounce," a beverage
-somewhat bitter but it never went begging when the old-time mountaineers
-were around. This was doubtless what persons had in mind who called it
-rum cherry. Few fruits, either wild or tame, contain more juice in
-proportion to bulk. Ripe fruit is employed as a flavor for alcoholic
-liquors. The bark contains hydrocyanic acid and is used in medicine. The
-peculiar odor of cherry bark is due to this acid.
-
-In early years the ripening of the cherry crop among the ranges of the
-Appalachian mountains was a signal for bears to congregate where cherry
-trees were thickest. The cubs were then large enough to follow their
-mothers--in August--and it was considered a dangerous season in the
-cherry woods, because the old bears would grow fierce if molested while
-feeding. The mountaineers knew enough to stay away from the danger
-points at that time, unless they went there purposely to engage in a
-bear fight. It was a common saying among those people that "cherry
-bears" should be let alone.
-
-The cherry's chief importance in this country has been due to its
-lumber. Unfortunately, that value lies chiefly in the past, for the
-supply is running low. It never was very great, for, though the species
-has a large range, it is sparingly dispersed through the forests. In
-many parts of its range a person might travel all day in the woods and
-see few cherry trees, and perhaps none. The best stands hardly ever
-cover more than a few acres. Generally the trees grow singly or in
-clumps. It appears to be nearly wholly a matter of soil and light, for
-the seeds, which are carried by birds, are scattered in immense numbers,
-and only those grow which chance to find conditions just right. The tree
-wants rich ground and plenty of room, which is a combination not often
-found in primeval forest regions; but, since the country has been
-largely cleared, cherry trees spring up along fence rows and in nooks
-and corners. If let alone they grow rapidly, but trunks so produced are
-of little value for lumber, because too short and limby. In the forest
-the tree lifts its light crown high on a slender trunk to reach the
-sunshine, and such trunks supply the cherry lumber of commerce. Near the
-northern limit of its range it seems to abandon its demand for good soil
-and is content if it is supplied with light only. It betakes itself to
-the face of cliffs, sometimes overhanging the sea, and so near it that
-the branches are drenched in spray thrown up by breakers. It is needless
-to say that no good lumber is produced under such circumstances.
-
-The first loss of cherry occurred when the farms were cleared. It stood
-on the best ground, and the land-hungry Anglo-Saxon wanted that for
-himself. He cut the tall shapely cherry trees, built fences and barns of
-some of the logs, and burned the balance in the clearing. Then came the
-pioneer lumberman who did not take much, because his old up-and-down
-saw, which was run by water, would cut only about a thousand feet a day,
-and there was plenty of other kinds of timber. But when the steam mill
-put in its appearance, cherry went fast. Its price was high enough to
-pay for a long haul. From that day till this, cherry has gone to market
-as rapidly as millmen could get to it.
-
-Next to walnut, it is the highest priced lumber produced in the United
-States. The average cut per mill, according to returns of those who
-sawed it in 1909, was only 11,200 feet, and the total output that year
-was only 24,594,000 feet, contributed by twenty-nine states. The five
-leading producers were, in the order named, West Virginia,
-Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and Indiana. The next year the total
-output fell to 18,237,000 feet, and cherry went down to a place among
-the "minor species," such as dogwood, alder, locust, and buckeye. The
-day of its importance in the lumber industry is past. It has become too
-scarce to attract much attention, but there will always be some cherry
-in the market, though veteran trunks, three and four feet through and
-good for four sixteen-foot logs, will be seldom seen in the years to
-come.
-
-While good taste ordinarily dictates that cherry be finished in a tone
-approximating its natural color, it is quite frequent that it
-masquerades as mahogany. A well-known and perfect method of making
-cherry look like mahogany is to have the wood rubbed with diluted nitric
-acid, which prepares it for the materials to be subsequently applied;
-afterwards, to a filtered mixture of an ounce and a half of dragon's
-blood dissolved in a pint of spirits of wine, is added one-third that
-quantity of carbonate of soda, the whole constituting a very thin liquid
-which is applied to the wood with a soft brush. This process is repeated
-at short intervals until the wood assumes the external appearance of
-mahogany. While cherry is employed as an imitation of mahogany, it is in
-its turn imitated also. Sweet birch is finished to look like cherry, and
-for that reason is sometimes known as cherry birch.
-
-Cherry weighs 36.28 pounds per cubic foot; it is very porous, but the
-pores are small and are diffused through all parts of the annual ring.
-The wood has no figure. Its value is due to color and luster. The
-medullary rays are numerous but small, and in quarter-sawing they do not
-show as mirrors, like oak, but as a soft luster covering the whole
-surface.
-
-The principal uses of cherry have always been in furniture and finish,
-but it has many minor uses, such as tool handles, boxes for garden
-seeds, spirit levels and other tools, and implements, patterns,
-penholders, actions for organs and piano players, baseblocks for
-electrotypes and other printing plates, and cores for high-class panels.
-Aside from its color, its chief value is due to its comparative freedom
-from checking and warping. This cherry is one of the few trees that
-cross the equator. It extends from Canada far down the west coast of
-South America.
-
-    CHOKE CHERRY (_Prunus virginiana_) is widely distributed in North
-    America from Canada to Mexico. It is said to attain its largest size
-    in the Southwest where trees are sometimes forty feet high and a
-    foot in diameter. The name is due to the astringency of the half
-    ripe fruit which can scarcely be eaten. When fully ripe it is a
-    little more tolerable, and is then black, but is red before it is
-    ripe. The color of immature cherries deceives the unsophisticated
-    into believing they are ripe. In Canada the fruit is made into pies
-    and jelly, and it is said the tree is occasionally planted for its
-    fruit. The Indians of former times made food of it. The tree is
-    small, and bruised branches emit a disagreeable odor; leaves contain
-    prussic acid, and when partly withered, they are poisonous to
-    cattle. The trunks are nearly always too small for commercial
-    purposes, and are apt to be affected with a fungous disease known as
-    black knot.
-
-    WESTERN CHOKE CHERRY (_Prunus demissa_) grows from the Rocky
-    Mountains to the Pacific in the United States. It is often regarded
-    as the western form of choke cherry, but it has more palatable
-    fruit, and trees are a little larger, while trunks are so crooked
-    that no user of wood cares to have anything to do with them. The
-    wood is weak, but is hard and heavy.
-
-    BITTER CHERRY (_Prunus emarginata_) belongs to the far West, and is
-    found from British Columbia to southern California. In size it
-    ranges from a low shrub to a tree a foot in diameter and forty feet
-    high. The largest sizes are found in western Washington and Oregon.
-    The wood is soft and brittle, brown streaked with green. It is not
-    known that any attempt has been made to put the wood of this tree to
-    any useful purpose. The bark and the leaves are exceedingly bitter.
-    Fruit ripens from June to August, depending on region and elevation,
-    and it is from one-fourth to one-half inch in diameter, black, and
-    intensely bitter.
-
-    HOLLYLEAF CHERRY (_Prunus ilicifolia_) is a California species
-    growing in the bottoms of canyons from San Francisco bay to the
-    Mexican line. It is rarely more than thirty feet high, but has a
-    large trunk, sometimes two feet in diameter. The wood is heavy,
-    hard, and strong, and it ought to be valuable in the manufacture of
-    small articles, but fuel is the only use reported for it. The fruit
-    is insipid, and ripens late in autumn. The foliage is much admired
-    and has led to the planting of the species for ornamental purposes.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WILD RED CHERRY
-
-[Illustration: WILD RED CHERRY]
-
-
-
-
-WILD RED CHERRY
-
-(_Prunus Pennsylvanica_)
-
-
-In addition to the name wild red cherry by which this tree is known in
-most parts of its range, it is called bird cherry in Maine, New
-Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa; red cherry in Maine
-and Rhode Island; fire cherry in New York and many other localities; pin
-cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Michigan, Iowa, and North
-Dakota; pigeon cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York,
-Ontario, and North Dakota; and wild cherry in Tennessee and New York.
-Its range extends from Newfoundland to Hudson bay, west to British
-Columbia, south through the Rocky Mountains to Colorado, and in the East
-along the Appalachian ranges to North Carolina and Tennessee. It reaches
-its largest size among the Big Smoky mountains in Tennessee and North
-Carolina.
-
-It is ordinarily a tree thirty or forty feet high, and from eight to ten
-inches in diameter, though trunks are sometimes twenty inches through.
-It grows fast, but is very short-lived. Many stands disappear in thirty
-years or less, but individuals survive two or three times that long, if
-they stand in open ground. One of its names is fire cherry, and that
-fitly describes it. Like paper birch and lodgepole pine, it follows
-forest fires where the ground is laid bare by the burning. Nature seems
-to have made peculiar provisions whereby this tree clothes barren tracts
-which have been recently burned. In the first place, it is a prolific
-seeder. Its small, red cherries are borne by bushels on very young
-trees. Birds feed on them almost exclusively while they last, and the
-seeds are scattered over the surrounding country. They have such thick
-shells that few germinate unless they pass through a moderate fire,
-which cracks the shells, or at least they do not sprout until they come
-in direct contact with mineral soil. When a fire burns a forest,
-thousands of the cherry seedlings spring up. Many persons have wondered
-where they come from so quickly. They were already scattered among the
-forest leaves before the fire passed. The heat crazed their shells, and
-the burning of the leaflitter let them down on the mineral soil where
-they germinated and soon came up by thousands. The case is a little
-different with paper birch and with aspen, which are also fire trees.
-Their seeds cannot pass through fire without perishing, and when birches
-and aspens follow a fire it means that the seeds were scattered by the
-wind after the passing of the fire. Doubtless cherry seeds are often
-scattered after the fire has passed; but it is believed that most of
-those which spring up so quickly have passed through the fire without
-being destroyed.
-
-This small cherry is one of the means by which damage by forest fires is
-repaired. The tree is of little value for lumber or even for fuel; but
-it acts as a nurse tree--that is, it shelters and protects the seedlings
-of other species until they obtain a start. By the time the cherry trees
-die, the seedlings which they have nursed are able to take care of
-themselves, and a young forest of valuable species is established.
-
-Except in this indirect way, the wild red cherry is of little use to
-man. The wood is soft, light, and of pleasing color, but trees are
-nearly always too small to be worked into useful articles. About the
-only industry of which there is any record, which draws supplies from
-this source, is the manufacture of pipe stems. The straight, slender,
-bright-barked branches are cut into requisite lengths and bored endwise,
-and serve for stems of cheap pipes, and occasionally for those more
-expensive. The bark, like that of most cherries, is marked by dark bands
-running part way round the stems. These are known as lenticels, and
-exist in the bark of most trees, but they are usually less conspicuous
-in others than in cherry. It is this characteristic marking which gives
-the cherry pipe stem its value.
-
-Wild red cherry blooms from May to July, depending on latitude and
-elevation, and the fruit ripens from July to September. The cherries
-hang in bunches, are bright red, quite sour, and the seed is the largest
-part. They are occasionally made into jelly, wine, and form the basis of
-certain cough syrups.
-
-WEST INDIA CHERRY (_Prunus sphærocarpa_) grows near the shores of
-Biscayne bay, Florida. It there blooms in November and the fruit ripens
-the next spring. The tree attains a height of from twenty-five to thirty
-feet, and a diameter of five or six inches. When grown in the open at
-Miami, Florida, it is larger, and is much liked as an ornament. The
-thin, smooth bark is brown, tinged with red, and is marked by large
-conspicuous lenticels. The wood is hard and light, and of light clear
-red color. It is too scarce to be of much importance, but paper knives,
-napkin rings, and other novelties made of it are sold in souvenir stores
-in southern Florida. Its range extends south to Brazil.
-
-WILLOWLEAF CHERRY (_Prunus salicifolia_) is a small tree, also called
-Mexican cherry, is more common south of the United States than in this
-country, ranging as far south as Peru. It is found on some of the
-mountains of southern New Mexico and Arizona.
-
-LAUREL CHERRY (_Prunus caroliniana_) is a southern species which sticks
-close to the coast in most of its range from South Carolina to Texas. It
-has many names, among them wild peach, wild orange, mock orange,
-evergreen cherry, mock olive, and Carolina cherry. Leaves hang two
-years, and the fruit remains nearly one. The latter is black and about
-half an inch long. The withered leaves are poisonous if eaten by cattle.
-The tree is thirty or forty feet high, and eight or ten inches in
-diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, color light brown to
-dark, rich brown, sometimes of much beauty, but no record has been found
-of any use for it. The tree is often planted for ornament.
-
-    WILD PLUM (_Prunus americana_) is found from New Jersey to Montana,
-    southward to New Mexico and Texas, and extends to Florida and
-    Mexico. Its range covers about a million square miles. There are
-    seven or more species of wild plums in the United States. The fruit
-    of all of them is edible. They have been planted accidentally or
-    otherwise in many localities where they were not found before the
-    country was settled. The plum was an important fruit in the
-    country's early history. The pioneers gathered wild fruits before
-    planted orchards came into bearing, and the plum was one of the best
-    which nature supplied. Early travelers among the Indians in the
-    South frequently spoke of Indian peaches. Such references have led
-    some to believe that the peach was native in that region, but it is
-    safe to conclude that what was called the peach was really some
-    species of wild plum. These fruits were among the earliest to become
-    domesticated. In fact, they were abundant about the sites of Indian
-    towns and old fields, where the savages had scattered seeds without
-    any purpose on their part of planting trees; and early settlers
-    imitated the Indians, and plums were soon growing in the vicinity of
-    most of the cabins. As a forest tree, it usually thrived best on the
-    banks of streams, for there it could find more sunshine than in the
-    deep woods, and it bore much more fruit. The ranges of several
-    species of plums overlapped, and different sizes and colors of fruit
-    were found in the same locality even before white men assisted the
-    spread of species. The common plum, known to botanists as _Prunus
-    americana_, is recognized under many names among laymen; among these
-    names are yellow plum, red plum, horse plum, hog plum, August plum,
-    native plum, and goose plum. Usually the plum's skin is red, and the
-    flesh yellow, which accounts for its names, both red and yellow. The
-    tree ranges in height from twenty to thirty-five feet, and from five
-    to ten inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, and
-    dark rich-brown. It is suitable for turnery and small novelties, but
-    little of it has been used.
-
-    CANADA PLUM (_Prunus nigra_) appears to be the most northern member
-    of the plum group. It grows from Newfoundland to Manitoba, and south
-    into the northern tier of states. Its range has been much extended
-    by planting, and a number of varieties have appeared. It is twenty
-    or thirty feet high, and five to eight inches in diameter. Flowers
-    appear in April and May, and the fruit is ripe in September and
-    October. The plums are about an inch long, orange-red in color, with
-    yellow flesh. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong. Those who
-    cultivate this tree often do so for the beauty of the flowers,
-    rather than for the value of the fruit. The wood is not used for
-    commercial purposes.
-
-    BLACK SLOE (_Prunus umbellata_), known also as southern bullace
-    plum, hog plum, and wild plum, ranges from South Carolina, round the
-    coast through Florida, to Louisiana and up the Mississippi valley
-    into Arkansas. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet high and from six
-    to ten inches in diameter. The fruit ripens from July to September,
-    is black when ripe, and often nearly an inch long. The people where
-    it grows use it for jelly. It is not reported that the wood is used
-    for any purpose.
-
-    WESTERN PLUM (_Prunus subcordata_) grows west of the Cascade
-    mountains from southern Oregon to central California. It is often a
-    low bush, but at its best forms a tree twenty feet high and six
-    inches in diameter, but its wood is of no economic importance. Its
-    deep, purple-red plums ripen in autumn and are an excellent wild
-    fruit, juicy and tart. During the fruit season the plum thickets
-    were formerly infested by both bears and Indians, and many a fight
-    for possession took place, with victory sometimes on one side,
-    sometimes on the other. The white inhabitants now make jam and jelly
-    of the fruit.
-
-    ALLEGHANY SLOE (_Prunus allegheniensis_) is so named because it is
-    best developed among the Alleghany mountains of Pennsylvania. The
-    tree is eighteen or twenty feet high and six or eight inches in
-    diameter. The wood is without value for commercial purposes, but the
-    tree's fruit has some local importance. It ripens about the middle
-    of August, and is somewhat less than an inch in diameter, with dark,
-    reddish-purple skin, covering yellow flesh.
-
-    CHICKASAW PLUM (_Prunus angustifolia_) is a well-known wild plum of
-    the South from Delaware to Texas, and north to Kansas. Its natural
-    range is not known, because it has been so widely planted,
-    accidentally or otherwise, near farm houses and in fence corners.
-    Its bright, red fruit goes only to local markets. Negroes gather
-    most of the crop in the South. The wood is not considered to have
-    any value, but, in common with other plums, it possesses qualities
-    which fit it for many small articles.
-
-    GARDEN WILD PLUM (_Prunus hortulana_) is supposed to have originated
-    in Kentucky from a cross between the Chickasaw plum and the common
-    wild plum (Prunus americana). It has spread from Virginia to Texas.
-    The largest trees are thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The
-    fruit ripens in September and October, is deep red or yellow, with
-    hard, austere, thin flesh, quite sour. The fruit is called wild
-    goose or simply goose plum in Tennessee and Kentucky.
-    Horticulturists have made many experiments with this plum.
-
-    COCOA PLUM (_Chrysobalanus icaco_), also called gopher plum, grows
-    in southern Florida, and its insipid fruit is seldom eaten except by
-    negroes and Seminole Indians. There is little sale for it in the
-    local markets. Trees are sometimes thirty feet high and a foot in
-    diameter. The light brown wood is heavy, hard, and strong, but it is
-    seldom used. The tree grows in Africa and South America as well as
-    in Florida.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BEECH
-
-[Illustration: BEECH]
-
-
-
-
-BEECH
-
-(_Fagus Atropunicea_)
-
-
-There is only one beech in the United States, and four or five in Europe
-and Asia. The southern portion of South America has several species
-which usually pass for beech. One or more of them are evergreen. Old
-world species are sometimes planted in parks and cemeteries in this
-country, but as forest trees they have no importance in the United
-States and probably never will have. It becomes a simple matter,
-therefore, to deal with the tree in this country. It is alone, and has
-no nearer relatives than the chestnuts, chinquapins, and the oaks, all
-of which are members of the same family, and the beech gives the name to
-the family--_Fagaceæ_. The blue beech, which is common in most states
-east of the Mississippi river and in some west, is not a member of the
-same family, though it looks enough like beech to be closely related to
-it.
-
-The name has come down from remote antiquity. It is one of the oldest
-names in use. It is said to have descended through thousands of years
-from old Aryan tribes of Asia which were among the earliest to use a
-written language. For the want of better material, they cut the letters
-on beech bark, and a piece of such writing was called "boc." It was but
-a step from that word to book--a collection of writings. Both beech and
-book came from the same word "boc" and the connection between them is
-very evident. The pronunciation has been little changed by the Germanic
-races during thousands of years, but the Romans translated it into Latin
-and called it "liber," from which we have the word library. Doubtless in
-very ancient times, say 5,000 years before the building of Solomon's
-temple, the libraries beyond the Euphrates river consisted of several
-cords of trimmed and lettered beech bark. Such material being
-perishable, it has wholly disappeared. The matter is not now directly
-connected with the lumber interests, but it increases one's respect for
-beech to know how important a part it must have played in the ancient
-world, whereby it stamped its name so indelibly upon the language of the
-most intelligent portion of the human race.
-
-The word buckwheat has the same origin. It means beech wheat, so named
-because the grains are triangular like beech nuts. The tree is always
-known as beech in this country, though it may have a qualifying word
-such as red, white, ridge.
-
-It usually grows in mixed forests of hardwoods, but it is often found in
-the immediate presence of hemlock and spruce, grows from Maine to
-Florida, and west to Arkansas. Considerable areas are often occupied by
-little else. This is attested by the frequency with which such names as
-"beech flat," "beech ridge," "beech woods," and "beech bottom" are
-encountered in local geography. Perhaps the finest examples of beech
-growth in the United States occur in the higher altitudes of the lower
-Appalachian range in eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina,
-where trees are frequently encountered, showing a bole of perfectly
-symmetrical form, of from three to more than four feet in diameter, and
-of a sheer height of seventy feet before a limb is encountered. The wood
-which grows in this section is nearly as hard as that of the North, but
-that growing on lower levels in the South is of a much softer texture
-and lighter color, the heart being pinkish rather than reddish-brown.
-
-Beech is one of the truly beautiful trees of the forest. In the eyes of
-many, the beech is as much to be admired as the American elm or sugar
-maple. Certainly in spring when it is covered with its staminate
-blossoms, it is a splendid sight, and its perfect leaves are seldom
-spotted or eaten by insects. In winter, it is particularly interesting.
-Its beautiful bark then appears very bright. After its fine leaves have
-fallen, though many of them, pale and dry, cling to the branches
-throughout the winter, the structure of its massive head is seen to
-advantage. In the Canadian markets and those of many of the middle and
-western states, its nuts are gathered and sold in considerable
-quantities. These nuts are favorite food of both the red and gray
-squirrel and these rodents collect them in considerable quantities
-during the late fall, and store them in tree hollows for their winter's
-supply of food. It often happens, in felling beech trees in the winter,
-that shelled beech nuts to the quantity of a quart or more will be found
-secreted in some hollow by these provident little animals.
-
-Formerly beech was little used for lumber, but was long ago given an
-important place as firewood and material for charcoal. Its excellent
-qualities as lumber have now made it popular in most markets. The
-sapwood is comparatively thin and the heart is very much esteemed for
-many purposes. Many millions of feet of it are converted into flooring
-and the "pure red" product is very highly esteemed for ornamental
-floors. It has not as good working qualities as maple, but still it
-stays in place even better than does that famous flooring material.
-Nearly all the large flooring factories of the North, whose principal
-output is maple, have a side line of beech flooring, and in the South,
-notably in Nashville, a considerable quantity of the wood is made into
-flooring. In full growth this beautiful tree is round topped, with wide
-spreading and horizontal branches, and shows a normal altitude of about
-sixty feet. In this form of growth branches appear on the body very
-close to the ground, and their ends often trail upon it. In its forest
-form, where trees of any sort are of commercial importance, it often
-attains a height of ninety or 100 feet, with smooth rounded bole as
-symmetrical as the pillar of a cathedral, with a diameter of from two to
-four feet. Its time to bloom is April or May, and its nuts ripen in
-October. The bark is a light bluish-gray, and remarkably smooth; the
-leaves are simple, alternate, with very short petioles, oblong with
-pointed apex and rounded or narrowed base. The ribs are straight,
-unbranching, and terminate in remote teeth. The fruit is a pair of
-three-sided nuts with a sweet and edible kernel which grows in a
-four-celled prickly burr, splitting when ripe.
-
-Beech is an excellent fuel and it has long been used for that purpose.
-It is so regularly dispersed over the country that most neighborhoods
-were able to get it in the years when families cut their own firewood.
-Later, when charcoal was burned to supply primitive iron furnaces,
-before coke could be had, beech was always sought for. Still later, when
-large commercial plants were built to carry on destructive distillation
-of wood, beech was still a favorite. Its modern uses are many. There is
-scarcely a plant east of the Rocky Mountains, engaged in the manufacture
-of hardwood commodities, which does not use beech. In Michigan alone
-nearly 30,000,000 feet a year are demanded by box makers, and more than
-that much more by manufacturers of other commodities. It is widely
-employed for furniture, filing cabinets, vehicles, interior finish,
-agricultural implements, woodenware, and musical instruments. It is one
-of the heaviest and strongest of the common hardwoods, and gives long
-service when kept dry, but does not last well in damp situations.
-
-Beech is strictly a forest tree. This does not mean that it will not
-grow in the open, but when it does grow there it makes poor lumber,
-short and limby. The seedlings must have shade if they are to do any
-good, but after they attain a certain size they can endure the light.
-The roots lie close to the surface of the ground, and the trampling of
-cattle often kills large trees.
-
-BLUE BEECH (_Carpinus caroliniana_) is not in the beech family, but the
-name by which it is commonly known, and its resemblance to beech,
-justify its consideration with beech. The bluish color of the bark is
-responsible for its common name, but it is known by several others,
-among them being water beech, because it often grows on or near the
-banks of streams, and it seldom seems more at home than when it is
-hanging over the bank of a creek where shade is deep and moisture
-plentiful. It is often called hornbeam and ironwood, and it is closely
-related to hop hornbeam (_Ostrya virginiana_). It grows from Quebec, to
-Florida and from Dakota to Texas, reaching its largest size in eastern
-Texas where it is sometimes sixty feet high and two in diameter, though
-this size is unusual. Few trees develop a bole less acceptable to
-lumbermen. In addition to being short, crooked, twisted, and covered
-with limbs, it is nearly always ribbed and fluted, so that a log, even
-if but a few feet long, is apt to be almost any shape except round. The
-thick sapwood is pale white, heart pale brown. The annual rings are
-usually easily seen, but they are vague, because of so little difference
-between the springwood and summerwood; diffuse-porous; medullary rays
-thin and usually seen only in the aggregate as a white luster where wood
-is sawed radially. The uses of this wood are many, but the amounts very
-small. It is made into singletrees and ax and hammer handles in
-Michigan, wagon felloes in Texas and other parts of the Southwest;
-levers and other parts of agricultural implements in various localities.
-It seldom goes to sawmills, is generally marketed in the form of bolts,
-and is hard, stiff, and strong.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHESTNUT
-
-[Illustration: CHESTNUT]
-
-
-
-
-CHESTNUT
-
-(_Castanea Dentata_)
-
-
-Five species of chestnut are known, three of them in the United States.
-One of these, _Castanea alnifolia_, is a shrub and has no place in a
-list of trees. Chestnut and chinquapin are the two others. They are in
-the beech family to which oaks belong also. The ancient Greeks
-designated these as food trees (_Fagaceæ_), not an inappropriate name
-for chestnut which probably furnishes more human food than any other
-wild tree. Its range extends from Maine to Michigan and southward to
-North Carolina and Tennessee. It attains its greatest size in western
-North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. It is one of the few well-known
-woods of the United States that does not bear a half dozen or more local
-names in the various localities of its growth, but the wood is
-invariably known as chestnut.
-
-Trees vary in size from sixty to 100 feet in height, and from two to
-four in diameter. Trunks six feet through occur where trees have grown
-in the open, but such are not tall, and are not valuable for lumber.
-Chestnut trees are sometimes heard of in this country with trunks ten
-and twelve feet through, but such must be very scarce, because no one
-seems to know just where they are located. It is not improbable that in
-rare cases such sizes have existed. In France and Italy trees much
-larger are well authenticated, but that chestnut is of a species
-different from ours.
-
-Chestnut is a very long-lived tree where it is fortunate enough to
-escape the attacks of worms and disease; but as age comes on, it is
-almost certain to be attacked. Insects bore the wood, and fungus induces
-decay. Frequently the heartwood of large trunks is all gone, and the
-trees stand mere shells with scarcely enough sound wood left to support
-the diseased tops.
-
-Few species sprout with more vigor than chestnut. In the mountains of
-eastern Tennessee, W. W. Ashe found that ninety-nine per cent of stumps
-sprout. This applies as well to veterans of three hundred years as to
-young growth. Sprouts which rise from the top of a high stump are liable
-to meet misfortune, because, under their disadvantage they cannot
-develop adequate root systems; but sprouts which spring from the root
-collar, or near it, may grow to large trees. It is claimed by some that
-a chestnut which grows from a sprout has straighter grain than one
-springing from seed. The latter's trunk is liable to develop a spiral
-twist, not only of the wood, but also of the bark; but the sprout-grown
-tree lacks the twist.
-
-Chestnut blooms in midsummer, and the profusion of pale golden catkins
-makes the isolated tree a conspicuous object at that time. Bloom is
-nearly always abundant, but the nut crop fails frequently. Several
-accidents may happen, but the most frequent cause of scarcity in the
-chestnut crop is a spell of rainy weather while the trees are in bloom.
-The rain hinders proper pollenization.
-
-Many thousands of bushels of chestnuts are sent to market yearly in the
-United States. The nuts are smaller but sweeter than those of European
-chestnut. The largest part of the crop is collected from trees in open
-ground. Those in dense forests bear only a few nuts at the top.
-Open-grown trees develop enormous and shapely crowns; and it is not
-unusual for farmers who value their nut bearing trees to pollard them.
-This puts the tree out of consideration as a source of lumber. Its
-branches multiply, but the trunk remains short. It is claimed that a
-chestnut orchard of good form and in a region where large crops are
-frequent, is more profitable than an apple orchard. The tree does not
-demand rich land, but must have well-drained soil. It grows on rocky
-slopes and ridges, and will prosper where most other valuable trees will
-barely exist.
-
-It grows rapidly in its early life, but does not maintain the rate many
-decades. Large trees are old. In the southern Appalachians the ages of
-telegraph poles forty feet long and six inches in diameter at the top
-range from forty-five to sixty-five years. Trees of round fence-post
-size may grow in fifteen years. Few trees will produce posts more
-quickly or in larger numbers per acre. In some instances nearly a
-thousand saplings large enough for posts stand on a single acre.
-Sprout-growth chestnut often forms nearly pure stands of considerable
-extent.
-
-The value of this tree is in its wood as well as its nuts. More than
-500,000,000 feet of lumber are cut from it yearly. Long before it was
-much thought of as a sawmill proposition, it was manufactured in large
-amounts into rails and posts by farmers, particularly in New England and
-in the Appalachian region. Axes, crosscut saws, mauls, and wedges were
-the means of manufacture. Untold millions of fence rails were split
-before wire fences were thought of. It is a durable wood, made so by the
-tannic acid it contains. As fence rails, it was more durable than the
-best oak, and where both were equally convenient, farmers nearly always
-chose chestnut. On high and dry ridges a chestnut rail fence would last
-from twenty-five to fifty years, and in extreme cases very much longer,
-even a full century it is claimed.
-
-Dry chestnut wood weighs 28.07 pounds per cubic foot, which makes it a
-light wood. Its annual rings are as clearly marked as those of any tree
-in this country. The springwood is filled with large open pores, the
-summerwood with small ones. The medullary rays are minute, and of no
-value in giving figure to the wood. Nevertheless, chestnut has strong
-figure, but it is due solely to the arrangement of the spring and
-summerwood of the annual rings. It is commonly classed as a
-coarse-grained wood. The finisher can greatly alter its appearance by
-rubbing the pores full of coloring matter. The wood is likewise
-susceptible to change in tone in the fumes of ammonia, and by similar
-treatment with other chemicals. The light colors of mission furniture
-are generally the result of treatment of that kind.
-
-The largest cut of chestnut lumber comes from West Virginia,
-Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Connecticut. The largest use by any single
-industry is probably by the manufacturers of musical instruments, though
-the honor may be divided with furniture, interior house finish, and
-coffins and caskets. It is much employed as core or backing on which to
-glue veneers. The lumber of old, mature trees is best liked for this
-purpose, because it is not apt to shrink and swell, and it holds glue.
-It is no detriment that it is riddled with worm holes the size of pins.
-That kind of chestnut is known in the trade as "sound wormy." Some
-persons claim that such lumber is better as backing for veneer than
-sound pieces, because it is lighter, is sufficiently strong, and the
-small holes seem to help the glue to stick. Wormy chestnut is frequently
-not objected to for outside work because the small holes are not hard to
-fill and cover up. The uses of chestnut are many. Between 6,000,000 and
-7,000,000 crossties go into railroad construction yearly. From 16,000 to
-20,000 tons of wood are demanded annually for tanning extract. Every
-part of the tree is available.
-
-In recent years a disease due to fungus has attacked chestnut forests of
-Pennsylvania and neighboring regions. It has destroyed the timber on
-large areas, and the loss threatens to increase. A tree usually dies in
-one or two years after it is attacked. The fungus works beneath the bark
-and completely girdles the tree. The spores of the fungus are believed
-to be carried from tree to tree on the feet of birds, on the bodies of
-insects, and by the wind.
-
-    GOLDENLEAF CHINQUAPIN (_Castanopsis chrysophylla_) occurs on the
-    Pacific coast from the Columbia river to southern California. It is
-    of its largest dimensions in the coast valleys of northern
-    California where it occasionally attains a size equal to the
-    chestnut tree of the eastern states, but in many other parts of its
-    range it is shrubby. It is an evergreen, and its name is descriptive
-    of the underside of the leaf. Late in summer, flowers and fruit in
-    several stages of growth may be seen at the same time. The nuts are
-    sweet and edible. In northern California the bark is sometimes mixed
-    with that of tanbark oak and sold to tanneries. The wood is
-    considerably heavier than chestnut, and is sometimes employed in the
-    making of agricultural implements. It has small and obscure
-    medullary rays, and its pores are arranged more like those of live
-    oak than of chestnut; that is they run in wavy, radial lines and not
-    in concentric rings as in chestnut. The heartwood is darker than
-    chestnut.
-
-    CHINQUAPIN (_Castanea pumila_) is a little chestnut that grows from
-    Pennsylvania to Texas. It is generally a shrub or a bush ten or
-    fifteen feet high east of the Alleghany mountains, but in some of
-    the southern states it reaches a height of fifty feet and a diameter
-    of two or more, and is of largest size in southern Arkansas and
-    eastern Texas. It has no name but chinquapin which is an Indian word
-    supposed to have the same meaning that it now has. The nut is from
-    one-fourth to one-half as large as a chestnut, and is fully as
-    sweet. It is sold in the markets of the South and Southwest, but is
-    not an important article of commerce. Where the trees are large
-    enough, the wood is put to the same uses as chestnut. It is
-    manufactured into furniture in Texas, and is bought by railroads for
-    ties.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BASSWOOD
-
-[Illustration: BASSWOOD]
-
-
-
-
-BASSWOOD
-
-(_Tilia Americana_)
-
-
-There are about twenty species of basswood in the world, and from three
-to six of them are in the United States. Authors do not agree on the
-number of species in this country. There are at least three, and they
-occupy, in part, the same range, with consequent confusion. They are
-much alike in general appearance, and not one person in twenty knows one
-from the other. The same names apply to all, when they occur in the same
-region. Few trees carry more names, and with less reason. Basswood is
-generally not difficult to identify in summer, but in winter a person
-only slightly acquainted with different trees might take it for
-cucumber, and if of small size, it might possibly be mistaken for ash or
-mountain maple. When the tree is bearing leaves, flowers, and fruit,
-there is no excuse for mistaking it for any other. The fruit, a cluster
-of four or five berry-like globes, hangs under a leaf, fixed by a short
-stem to the midrib. This feature alone should be sufficient to identify
-the basswood in this country.
-
-Among the many names by which this tree is known, in addition to
-basswood, are American linden, linn, lynn, limetree, whitewood, beetree,
-black limetree, wickup, whistle wood, and yellow basswood.
-
-The range is extensive, its northeastern boundary lying in New
-Brunswick, its southwestern in Texas. It reaches Lake Winnipeg, and is
-found in Georgia. This delimited area is little short of a million
-square miles. It reaches a height of from sixty to 120 feet, and a
-diameter of from eighteen inches to four feet. It has a decided
-preference for rich soil, and the best lumber is cut in fertile coves
-and flats, or in low land near streams. The largest trees formerly grew
-in the forests of the lower Ohio valley, but few of the giants of former
-times are to be found in that region now. They went to market a
-generation or two ago. The largest cut of basswood lumber now is in
-Wisconsin, Michigan, and West Virginia, but most of that from West
-Virginia is white basswood (_Tilia heterophylla_).
-
-The wood weighs 28.20 pounds per cubic foot, which is more than the
-other basswoods in this country weigh. The rings of annual growth are
-not very clearly marked. They may be distinguished, in most cases, by a
-narrow, light-colored line. This is the springwood. In some trees it is
-much more distinct than in others. The wood is very porous, but the
-pores are small, cannot readily be seen with the naked eye, and are
-scattered pretty evenly through the yearly ring. The medullary rays are
-small but numerous. They give quarter-sawed lumber a pleasing luster,
-but are too minute to develop much figure. The general tone of the wood
-is white. It is soft, works easily, holds its shape well, and is tough,
-but is in no sense a competitor of oak and hickory in toughness, though
-it shows the quality best in thin panels which resist splitting and
-breaking.
-
-In the days when it was customary to ceil houses with boards, both
-overhead and the walls of rooms, carpenters were partial to basswood
-because of its softness. Dressing lumber was then nearly always done by
-hand, and the carpenter who pushed the jack plane ten or twelve hours a
-day, looked pretty carefully to the softness of the wood he handled. In
-tongued and grooved work, as in ceiling and wainscoting, it was not
-necessary to dress the fitting edges as carefully when basswood was used
-as in using some others, because it is so soft that fittings can be
-forced, and cracks may be closed by driving the boards together.
-
-Slack coopers have long employed basswood for barrel headings, and also
-in the manufacture of various kinds of small stave ware, such as pails,
-tubs, and kegs. In this use, as in ceiling, the softness of the wood is
-a prime consideration, because the pressure of the hoops will close any
-small openings. Its whiteness and its freedom from stains and unpleasant
-odors are likewise important when vessels are to contain food products.
-Box makers like the wood on that account, and large quantities are
-manufactured into containers for articles of food.
-
-Much basswood is cut into veneer, some of which serves in single sheets
-as in making small baskets and cups for berries and small fruits, but a
-large part of the output is devoted to ply work. Usually three sheets
-are glued together, but sometimes there are five. By crossing the
-sheets, to make the grain of one lie at right angles to the next, plies
-of great strength and toughness are produced. Trunk makers are large
-users of such, and many panels of that kind are employed by
-manufacturers of furniture and musical instruments.
-
-Woodenware factories find basswood one of their most serviceable
-materials, and it is made into ironing boards, wash boards, bread
-boards, and cutting boards for cobblers, saddlers, and glass cutters.
-Its lightness and toughness make it serviceable as valves and other
-parts of bellows for blacksmiths, organs, and piano players. Makers of
-gilt picture frames prefer it for molding which is to be overlaid with
-the gilt or gold. It is serviceable for advertising signs because its
-whiteness contrasts well with printing. Makers of thermometers use it
-frequently for the wooden body of the instrument, and yard sticks are
-made of it. Apiarists find no wood more suitable for the small, light
-frames in which bees build the comb.
-
-The uses of this wood are so many and so various that lists would prove
-monotonous. The annual cut in this country, exclusive of veneer, is
-nearly 350,000,000 feet, and the demand for veneer takes many millions
-more.
-
-Basswood is named for the bark, and the spelling was formerly bastwood.
-The manufacture of articles from the bark was once a considerable
-industry, not so much in this country as in Europe. However, some use
-has been made of the bark here. Louisiana negroes make horse collars of
-it by braiding many strands together, and chair bottoms are woven of it
-in lieu of cane and rattan, and it is likewise woven into baskets of
-coarse kinds. Bark is prepared for this use by soaking it in water, by
-which the annual layers of the bark are separated, long, thin sheets are
-produced, and these are reduced to strips of the desired width.
-
-The annual cut of basswood lumber is declining with no probability that
-it will ever again come up to past figures; but basswood is in no
-immediate danger of disappearing from American forests. It is not
-impossible that it may be planted for commercial purposes. In central
-Europe, forests of basswood, there called linden, are maintained for the
-honey which bees gather from the bloom. In this country it is often
-called beetree because of the richness of its flowers in nectar.
-Possibly bee owners may grow forests for the honey, and when trees are
-mature, dispose of them for lumber.
-
-    WHITE BASSWOOD (_Tilia heterophylla_) attains a trunk diameter as
-    great as that of the common basswood, but is not as tall. Trees
-    sixty or seventy feet high are among the tallest. This species
-    ranges from New York to Alabama, and is found as far west as
-    southern Illinois, and its best development is among the rich
-    valleys and fertile slopes of the Appalachian mountains from
-    Pennsylvania southward. It is the prevailing basswood of West
-    Virginia, and reaches its largest size on the high mountains of
-    North Carolina and Tennessee. It averages about two pounds lighter
-    per cubic foot than the common basswood, but ordinarily neither the
-    lumber nor the standing trees of the two species are distinguished.
-    Only persons somewhat skilled in botany are able to tell one species
-    of basswood from another as they occur in the forests of this
-    country.
-
-    DOWNY BASSWOOD (_Tilia pubescens_) is a southern member of the
-    basswood group, and is scarce. Its range extends from North Carolina
-    to Arkansas and Texas. Trees are rarely more than forty feet high
-    and fifteen inches in diameter. The wood is light brown, tinged with
-    red, and the sap is hardly distinguishable from the heart. As far as
-    it is used at all, its uses are similar to those of other basswoods.
-
-    SOUTHERN BASSWOOD (_Tilia australis_) is confined, as far as is now
-    known, to a small section of Alabama, where it attains a height of
-    sixty feet in rich woodlands. No reports on the quality of the wood
-    have been published, and the species is too scarce to possess much
-    interest to others than systematic botanists.
-
-    FLORIDA BASSWOOD (_Tilia floridana_), as its name suggests, is a
-    Florida species, and has not been reported elsewhere. It seems to be
-    the smallest of American basswoods, the largest trees being little
-    more than thirty feet high. No tests of the wood have been made and
-    no uses reported.
-
-    MICHAUX BASSWOOD (_Tilia michauxii_) has been listed for a long
-    time, but is still not well known. Its range extends from Canada to
-    Georgia and westward to Texas. Trees three feet in diameter and
-    eighty feet high have been reported. Only botanists distinguish it
-    from other species of basswood with which it is associated.
-
-    PAWPAW (_Asimina triloba_) is of more value for its fruit than its
-    wood. It grows from New York to Texas, but in certain localities
-    only. It is the most northern species of the custard apple family,
-    and is usually of little importance above an altitude of 1,500 feet.
-    In Arkansas and some other southwestern regions it is called banana.
-    It is usually a shrub, but may reach a height of forty feet and a
-    diameter of twelve inches. The wood is light, soft, and weak. Pond
-    apple (_Annona glabra_), called custard apple in some parts of its
-    range in Florida, is a member of the same family. It attains the
-    size of pawpaw, and the wood is similar.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-AMERICAN HOLLY
-
-[Illustration: AMERICAN HOLLY]
-
-
-
-
-AMERICAN HOLLY
-
-(_Ilex Opaca_)
-
-
-Holly is a characteristic member of a large family scattered through
-most temperate and tropical regions of the world. It belongs to the
-family _Aquifoliaceæ_, a name which conveys little meaning to an English
-reader until botanists explain that it means trees with needles on their
-leaves, _acus_ meaning needle, and _folium_ leaf. How well holly, with
-its spiny leaves, fits in that family is seen at once.
-
-About 175 species of holly are dispersed in various parts of the world,
-the largest number occurring in Brazil and Guiana. _Ilex_ is the
-classical name of the evergreen oak in southern Europe.
-
-The glossy green foliage and the brilliant red berries of the holly tree
-have long been associated in the popular mind with the Christmas season.
-Mingled with the white berries and dull green foliage of the mistletoe,
-it is the chief Yuletime decoration, and many hundred trees are annually
-stripped of their branches to supply this demand. The growth is still
-quite abundant, but if the destruction and waste continue, American
-holly will soon be exhausted.
-
-Its range extends from Massachusetts to Texas and from Missouri to
-Florida. In New England, the trees are few and small, and the same holds
-true in many parts of the Appalachian region. The largest trees are
-found in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. In the North it grows in
-rather dry, gravelly soil, often on the margins of oak woods, but in the
-South it takes to swamps, and does best on river bottoms where the soil
-is rich. It is often associated with evergreen magnolia, which it
-resembles at a distance, though differences are plain enough on close
-examination. The light, grayish-green barks of the two trees look much
-alike; but the magnolia's leaves are larger, thicker, and lack the
-briers on the margins.
-
-Holly varies in size from small straggling bushes to well-formed trees
-fifty or sixty feet high and two or three in diameter. The principal
-value of holly is not in its wood, but in its leaves and berries. Some
-persons suppose that holly leaves never fall. That is true of no tree
-that attains any considerable age. An examination of a holly thicket, or
-a single tree, in the spring of the year will reveal a fair sprinkling
-of dead leaves on the ground, though none may be missed from the
-branches. Those that fall are three years old, and they come down in the
-spring. There are always two full years of leaves on the trees.
-
-Flowers are the least attractive part of holly. Few people ever notice
-the small, unobtrusive cymes, scattered along the base of the young
-shoots in the early spring, with the crop of young leaves. Nothing showy
-about them attracts attention.
-
-The fruit is the well-known berry, the glory of winter decorations. It
-is usually red, but sometimes yellow. The latter color is not often seen
-in decorations because it is a poor contrast with the glossy green of
-the leaves. The berries ripen late in autumn and hang until nearly
-spring, provided they are let alone. That is seldom their fortune, for
-if they escape the wreath hunter at Christmas, they remain subject to
-incessant attacks by birds. Fortunately, the berries are not very choice
-food for the feathered bevies that fly in winter; otherwise, the trees
-would be stripped in a day or two. Birds are attracted by the color, and
-they keep pecking away, taking one or two berries at a bait, and in the
-course of a long winter they get most of them.
-
-The gathering of holly leaves and berries is an industry of much
-importance, taken as a whole; but it lasts only a short time, and is
-carried on without much system. The greatest source of supply is
-northern Alabama, and the neighboring parts of surrounding states; but
-some holly is gathered in all regions where it is found. Those who
-collect it for market make small wages, but the harvest comes at a
-season when little else is doing, and the few dimes and dollars picked
-up are regarded as clear gain--particularly since most of the holly
-harvesters have no land of their own and forage for supplies on other
-people's possessions.
-
-The seeds of holly are a long time in germinating, and those who plant
-them without knowing this are apt to despair too soon. The great
-differences in the germinating habits of trees are remarkable. Some of
-the maples bear seeds which sprout within a few days after they come in
-contact with damp soil, certain members of the black oak group of trees
-drop their acorns with sprouts already bursting the hulls, and mangroves
-are in a still greater hurry, and let fall their seeds with roots
-several inches long ready to penetrate the mud at once. But holly is in
-no hurry. Its seeds lie buried in soil until the second year before they
-send their radicles into the soil. They are so slow that nurserymen
-usually prefer to go into the woods and dig up seedlings which are
-already of plantable size.
-
-Users of woods find many places for holly but not in large amounts. The
-reported output by all the sawmills in the United States in 1909 was
-37,000 feet, and Maryland produced more than any other state. The wood
-is employed for inlay work, parquetry, marquetry, small musical
-instruments, and keys for pianos and organs. Engravers find it suitable
-for various classes of work, its whiteness giving the principal value.
-It approaches ivory in color nearer than any other American wood. Brush
-back manufacturers convert it into their choice wares. It is
-occasionally worked into small articles of furniture, but probably never
-is used in large pieces.
-
-The wood is rather light, and the vague boundaries between the annual
-rings, and the smallness and inconspicuousness of the medullary rays,
-are responsible for the almost total absence of figure, no matter in
-what way the wood is worked. The so-called California holly
-(_Heteromeles arbutifolia_) is of a different family, and is not a
-holly.
-
-DAHOON HOLLY (_Ilex cassine_) grows in cold swamps and on their borders
-in the coast region from southern Virginia to southern Florida, and
-westward to Louisiana. It is often found on the borders of pine barrens,
-is most common in western Florida and southern Alabama, and when at its
-best, is from twenty-five to thirty feet high and a foot or more in
-diameter. The leaves are nearly twice as long as those of common holly,
-and are generally spineless or nearly so. The fruit ripens late in
-autumn and hangs on the branches until the following spring. The berries
-are sometimes bright red, oftener dull red, and those fully up to size
-are a quarter of an inch in diameter. Some hang solitary, others in
-clusters of three. The wood is light and soft, weighing less than thirty
-pounds per cubic foot. The heart is pale brown, and the thick sapwood
-nearly white. The tree is known locally as yaupon, dahoon, dahoon holly,
-and Henderson wood. This species passes gradually into a form designated
-as _Ilex myrtifolia_, which Sargent surmises may be a distinct species.
-Another form, narrowleaf dahoon (_Ilex cassine angustifolia_), is listed
-by Sudworth.
-
-YAUPON HOLLY (_Ilex vomitoria_) is a small, much-branched tree, often
-shrubby, and at its best is seldom more than twenty-five feet high and
-six inches in diameter. Its range follows the coast from southern
-Virginia to St. John's river, Florida, and westward to eastern Texas. It
-sticks closely to tidewater in most parts of its habitat, but when it
-reaches the Mississippi valley it runs north into Arkansas. It attains
-its largest size in Texas, and is little more than a shrub elsewhere.
-Berries are produced in great abundance, are red when ripe, but they
-usually fall in a short time and are not much in demand for decorations.
-The wood weighs over forty-five pounds per cubic foot, is hard, and
-nearly white, but turns yellow with exposure. The leaves of this holly
-were once gathered by Indians in the southeastern states for medicine.
-The savages journeyed once a year to the coast where the holly was
-abundant, boiled the leaves in water, and produced what they called the
-"black drink." It was nauseating in the extreme, but they drank copious
-draughts of it during several days, then departed for their homes,
-confident that good health was assured for another year.
-
-    MOUNTAIN HOLLY (_Ilex monticola_) is so named because it grows among
-    the Appalachian ranges from New York to Alabama. It is best
-    developed in the elevated district where Tennessee and North and
-    South Carolina meet near one common boundary. It is elsewhere
-    shrubby. The leaves are deciduous, and the bright scarlet berries
-    are nearly as large as cherries. They fall too early to make them
-    acceptable as Christmas decorations. The wood is hard, heavy, and
-    creamy-white, and if it could be had in adequate quantities, would
-    be valuable. The trees are sometimes a foot in diameter and forty
-    feet high, but they are not abundant. Their leaves bear small
-    resemblance to the typical holly leaf, but look more like those of
-    cherry or plum.
-
-    DECIDUOUS HOLLY (_Ilex decidua_) is called bearberry in Mississippi
-    and possum haw in Florida, while in other regions it is known as
-    swamp holly because of its habit of clinging to the banks of streams
-    and betaking itself to swamps. It keeps away from mountains, though
-    it is found in a shrubby form between the Blue Ridge and the sea in
-    the Atlantic states, from Virginia southward. It runs west through
-    the Gulf region to Texas, and ascends the Mississippi valley to
-    Illinois and Missouri, attaining tree size only west of the
-    Mississippi. The wood is as heavy as white oak, hard, and
-    creamy-white, both heart and sap. Doubtless small quantities are
-    employed in different industries, but the only direct report of its
-    use comes from Texas where it is turned for drawer and door knobs in
-    furniture factories. Most but not all of the leaves fall in early
-    winter. The berries obey the same rule, some fall and others hang
-    till spring. They are orange or orange-scarlet.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW BUCKEYE
-
-[Illustration: YELLOW BUCKEYE]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW BUCKEYE
-
-(_Æsculus Octandra_)
-
-
-Four species and one variety of buckeye are native in the United States,
-yellow buckeye, Ohio buckeye, California buckeye, small buckeye, and
-purple buckeye. They belong in the horse chestnut family. The so-called
-Texas buckeye is in a different family, and is not a true buckeye, but
-is close kin to the soapberry. The buckeyes are named for the large
-white spot on the smooth, brown nut, resembling the eye of a deer. The
-yellow buckeye is the most important of the group, is the largest and
-most abundant. It is known by the name of buckeye in North Carolina,
-South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Kentucky. It
-is called sweet buckeye in West Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, Missouri,
-and Indiana, probably owing to the fact that it does not exhale the
-disagreeable odor characteristic of other members of the family. Yellow
-buckeye is the term applied to it in South Carolina and Alabama; large
-buckeye in Tennessee; big buckeye in Tennessee and Texas. It flourishes
-from Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, southward along the Alleghany
-mountains to northern Georgia and Alabama, westward along the valley of
-the Ohio river to southern Iowa, through Oklahoma and the valley of the
-Brazos river in eastern Texas. It thrives best along streams and in
-dense, rich woods. It reaches its fullest development on the slopes of
-the Alleghany mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee.
-
-The leaves of the buckeye are compound, with from five to seven
-leaflets; flowers appear in May or June and are dull yellow; the fruit
-is a large brown nut, one or two of which are enclosed in a rough,
-uneven husk, about two inches or more in diameter. The tree grows from
-forty to 100 feet in height, and attains a diameter of from one to three
-and a half feet.
-
-Buckeye grows intermingled with poplar, oak, maple, beech and a variety
-of other hardwoods. From its comparatively limited growth as compared
-with the totality of the average hardwood forest, it never has been
-recognized, and probably never will be, as a distinctive type of
-American commercial wood. The timber is felled with the other valuable
-trees surrounding it, and its appearance, when manufactured into lumber
-is so similar to that of the sap of poplar or whitewood that almost
-without exception it is assorted with poplar saps, and goes on the
-market masquerading as that wood. There is probably not one lumberman in
-a thousand, handling poplar, that is able to distinguish buckeye from
-sap poplar in his shipments of that wood.
-
-Sawmills make no distinction between the different species. All that
-comes is buckeye, but nearly all of it is the yellow species, though
-doubtless a little of all the others is cut into lumber and veneer, or
-goes to the slack cooperage shop, or to the pulp mill. The woods of all
-are quite similar, and they are used for the same purposes. If one is
-employed in larger quantities than another, it is because it is more
-convenient, or of better form or larger size.
-
-Early uses of buckeye were as important as those of the present day,
-though amounts were smaller. Many an Ohio statesman of former times
-boasted that, as a baby, he was rocked in a buckeye sugar trough for a
-cradle. They claimed with pride that the prevalance of the custom caused
-Ohio to be known as the buckeye state, a name which clings to it still.
-Next to yellow poplar, buckeye was considered the best wood from which
-to hew the small troughs which collected the sugar water from the tapped
-maples in early spring; but the range of buckeye did not extend
-northward into the real maple area, and the troughs like those which
-rocked the inchoate Ohio statesmen were unknown in the North, but were
-familiar along the mountain ranges southward. Dough trays, bread boards,
-chopping bowls, and troughs in which to salt bacon and pork, were hewed
-from buckeye by farmers and village woodworkers.
-
-It weighs 27.24 pounds per cubic foot; is diffuse-porous, and the slight
-difference between the wood grown in spring and that of late summer
-renders the annual rings indistinct. It has little figure, no matter how
-it is sawed; medullary rays are thin and obscure. Softness is one of the
-principal qualities, and it is also weak, and is wanting in rigidity.
-These are its faults, but it has virtues. It is tasteless and odorless,
-and these properties make it valuable in the manufacture of boxes in
-which food products are shipped. The reported cut of buckeye in the
-United States is from 11,000,000 to 13,000,000 feet a year. The reports
-of factories which use the wood in making commodities throw light on the
-question of actual use. North Carolina works 10,000 feet a year into
-cabinets and office fixtures; Michigan 100,000 into candy and chocolate
-boxes, dishes, and bowls; Maryland uses 200,000 feet yearly for
-practically the same purposes, but with the added commodities of spice
-drawers and tea chests. Makers of artificial limbs consider buckeye one
-of their best materials, but it is second to willow. The "cork legs" are
-usually either buckeye or willow. Pulp mills grind the wood for paper,
-but it is not separately listed in pulp statistics, and the total cut
-cannot be stated. It is converted into veneer and finds many places of
-usefulness, but here, also, no separate figures are to be had.
-
-The nuts are large and abundant, but almost wholly useless for man or
-beast. Bookbinders make paste of them, as a substitute for flour, and
-with satisfactory results. The paste resists ferments much better than
-that manufactured from flour; but the demand upon the nut supply for
-that purpose is very small. Squirrels and other small animals leave
-buckeyes alone. Some writers, whose acquaintance with this tree was
-apparently acquired at long range, state that the nuts are food for
-cattle. No person with knowledge of the buckeye says that. Cattle
-occasionally eat a few, but are poisoned thereby, and if they recover,
-they never again have anything to do with buckeyes.
-
-This tree is ornamental during a few months of the year. Its flowers are
-attractive, and its large, vigorous leaves and conspicuous fruit are
-admired in summer; but early in the fall the leaves come down, the husks
-burst from the nuts and strew the ground with unsightly fragments. The
-tree is seldom planted, but the horse chestnut, a foreign species, takes
-its place.
-
-OHIO BUCKEYE (_Æsculus glabra_) was once thought to be more abundant in
-Ohio than elsewhere, hence the name; but its best development is in
-Tennessee and northern Alabama. The disagreeable odor emitted by the
-bark gives it the names fetid and stinking buckeye, and it is known also
-as American horse chestnut. Its range is approximately the same as that
-of yellow buckeye, but it is a smaller tree, rarely more than thirty
-feet high, though it is seventy in exceptional cases. In common with
-other trees of the species, it prefers rich soil along water courses.
-The wood was formerly in demand for chip hats, but that use has
-apparently ceased. The sapwood is darker than the heart which is an
-exception to the general rule. Dark streaks, probably stains due to
-fungus, occasionally run through the trunk. In weight, strength, and
-stiffness the wood is approximately the same as yellow buckeye. Its odor
-is sufficient to distinguish it from that species, and it associates
-with no other except on rare occasions when it may be found with the
-small buckeye in western Tennessee and southern Missouri.
-
-CALIFORNIA BUCKEYE (_Æsculus californica_) occurs only in the state
-whose name it bears. It is a short, much-branched, ill-formed tree; root
-large and shaped somewhat like an inverted tub, often standing a foot or
-more above the ground, and the branches rising from it. A tree so formed
-is without value to the general lumberman, but cabinet makers sometimes
-grub out the root and saw it transversely into thin lumber or veneer and
-make small articles which possess considerable figure, due to the
-involved growth, but little variety of color. Its tone is light yellow.
-The tree is found in the central part of California, from near sea level
-up to 4,500 in the Sierra Nevadas. It gets away from the immediate
-vicinity of water courses and grows on hillsides. It is heavier than any
-other American buckeye, and has very thin sapwood. The other properties
-of the wood, and the botanical characters of the tree are common to
-other members of the species. The seeds depend for their dispersal on
-running water, when the tree grows by a stream, or on gravity, if
-situated on a hillside. The seed will not grow unless buried in moist
-soil, and it retains its vitality only a few months. Few trees in the
-United States have larger seeds than buckeyes. The tree is short-lived,
-reaching maturity in most cases in less than a hundred years. It is
-sometimes planted for ornament in this country and in Europe.
-
-SMALL BUCKEYE (_Æsculus austrina_) is one of the latest recognized
-members of the buckeye household. It seldom attains a diameter above
-five or six inches, or a height of twenty-five feet. It is, therefore,
-too small to be seriously considered as a source of lumber, and even if
-trunks were large enough, the species is too scarce to furnish many
-logs. It grows on rich uplands from western Tennessee and southern
-Missouri to Texas. The bright red flowers open in April, the fruit falls
-in October.
-
-PURPLE BUCKEYE (_Æsculus octandra hybrida_) is a variety characterized
-by red or purple flowers and by leaves woolly on the under sides, and
-bark of lighter color than that of yellow buckeye. The range follows the
-Appalachian mountains from West Virginia southward. It has been reported
-in Texas also. If the wood is used at all, it goes for the same purposes
-as yellow buckeye.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SASSAFRAS
-
-[Illustration: SASSAFRAS]
-
-
-
-
-SASSAFRAS
-
-(_Sassafras Sassafras_)
-
-
-The French settlers in Florida were the first white men to give the name
-sassafras to this tree, but the Indians called it by that name long
-before. It was a tree which Indians were sure to name, because it had an
-individuality which appealed to them. It is not known what the real
-meaning of the word was, when the southern Indians used it. After the
-French adopted the name in Florida, it passed to other colonies and
-other languages, and has led to numerous disputes since. Many have
-erroneously supposed that the name is of Latin origin. When the English
-colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, the tree was well
-known by that name, but it was pronounced so variously and spelled in so
-many ways that it was often almost unrecognizable. It is pronounced
-variously and spelled differently yet. It is called sassafras in most
-regions, and in others is saxifrax, sassafas, sassafac, sassafrac, and
-saxifrax tree.
-
-Its range covers the territory from Massachusetts to Iowa and Kansas,
-and south to Florida and Texas. Some of that range it has occupied for
-vast periods of time, for sassafras leaves have been found embedded in
-the Cretaceous formations of Long Island. Near the northern limit of its
-range it is generally small, often of brush size; but further south it
-becomes a tree which sometimes exceeds 100 feet in height, and three or
-four in diameter. The best development of the species is in Arkansas and
-Missouri.
-
-Sassafras belongs to the laurel family. Strangely enough, the two trees
-which are usually supposed to be typical laurels--namely, mountain
-laurel (_Kalmia latifolia_) and great rhododendron, do not belong to the
-laurel family, but the heath family. The laurel family to which
-sassafras belongs includes many species in all parts of the world, some
-are evergreen, others are not, but all characterized by the strong,
-pungent odor of their wood or bark, and all having fruit with a single
-seed like a plum or cherry. The camphor tree from the distillation of
-whose wood commercial camphor (except synthetic camphor made largely
-from turpentine) is derived, belongs to this family, as do certain bay
-trees of the southern states. It was formerly supposed that sassafras
-existed only in the eastern half of the United States; but a species
-closely resembling ours, if not identical with it, has recently been
-found in China. The California laurel (_Umbellularia californica_) is in
-the same family with sassafras.
-
-This tree has had a peculiar history. It was once supposed to possess
-miraculous healing powers, and was shipped from Virginia to England in
-one of the first cargoes to go to that country from the present
-territory of the United States. Its supposed value did not consist in
-its use as lumber, but in some medicinal property which it was reputed
-to possess. People appeared to believe that it would renew the youth of
-the human race. Some portion of this superstition has clung round
-sassafras to this day, and it is not entirely confined to ignorant
-people. Bedsteads made of sassafras were supposed to drive away certain
-nightly visitors which disturb slumber. In southeastern Arkansas and
-northwestern Mississippi, bedsteads are still made of this wood, with
-the belief that sleep will be sounder. The same custom doubtless
-prevails elsewhere. In northern Louisiana floors of sassafras are
-occasionally laid in negro cabins because of the same superstition, and
-in the firm belief that it will keep out animals as large as rats and
-mice. Some of the mountaineers of Kentucky, where each family makes its
-own soap, insist that the kettle must be stirred with a sassafras stick
-or it will produce a poor quality of soap. Among the mountains of West
-Virginia many a farmer equips his henhouse with sassafras poles for
-roosts, fully convinced that he has put an effective quietus on all
-tribes, shoals, and kindred of _menopon pallidum_, and the hens will
-sleep better.
-
-The production of sassafras oil is perhaps the largest industry
-dependent upon this tree. Roots are grubbed by the ton and are subjected
-to destructive distillation. Much of this work is carried on in Virginia
-where sassafras spreads quickly into abandoned fields, springing up from
-seeds carried by birds. Veritable thickets soon take possession. Here is
-where the sassafras oil supply comes from. Contractors often clear the
-old fields and make them ready for tillage, taking the roots for pay.
-
-The wood weighs 31.42 pounds per cubic foot; is very durable when
-exposed to dampness; is slightly aromatic; inclined to check in drying;
-the layers of annual growth are marked by rings of large pores;
-summerwood is quite distinct from the earlier growth; medullary rays are
-many and thin; color dull orange-brown, the thin sapwood light yellow.
-
-Sassafras goes to sawmills in all regions where it is large enough for
-lumber, but the total cut is small. Reports from sawmills in 1909
-credited this species with only 25,000 feet in the United States, and it
-was still less in 1910. It is evident that this is only a small portion
-of the total output, and probably Tennessee alone produces that much.
-The wood is sold with other species and loses its name, frequently
-passing as ash. The wood bears considerable resemblance to ash, in grain
-and color, but is lighter in weight, and much lower in strength.
-
-Sassafras was one of the canoe woods of early times along the lower
-Mississippi and its tributaries. Its two principal advantages over most
-woods with which it was associated was its light weight and lasting
-qualities. Canoes of this timber in Louisiana have given continued
-service for a third of a century.
-
-In all parts of its range, wherever it is of sufficient size, it has
-been used for posts. It is generally considered good for about twenty
-years. Large trunks were formerly split for rails, and a few are
-utilized in that way still, but most timber large enough for rails, now
-goes to sawmills. In Texas most of the sassafras supplied by sawmills is
-manufactured into furniture, but is listed as ash. The same thing is
-done in Arkansas and Missouri, but the use in the latter state is
-extended to interior house finish and office and bank fixtures.
-Sometimes it is made the outside wood, and the figure caused by sawing
-the logs tangentially is accentuated by stains and fillers. The figure
-of quarter-sawed wood is not attractive because the medullary rays are
-too small. It lasts well as railroad ties and a few are found in service
-in many parts of the tree's range, but those who see it in the track are
-liable to mistake it for chestnut.
-
-A by-product of sassafras deserves mention--tea made from the flowers or
-from the bark of the roots. It is relished in the early spring, and is
-popular in most regions where the tree is known. The bark is a
-commercial commodity. It is tied in small bundles, and the price at
-retail ranges from a nickel to a dime each. Drug stores and grocers sell
-it. In the city of Washington in early spring sassafras peddlers canvas
-the city from center to circumference. They are generally negro men and
-women who dig the roots on the neighboring hills of Virginia and
-Maryland, strip the bark, tie it in small bundles, and by diligence and
-perseverance, succeed in converting the merchandise into money.
-
-Sassafras is often cited as an example of a tree with leaves of
-different forms. Three shapes are common, and all frequently occur on
-the same tree, and even on the same twig. One has no lobes, another has
-one lobe like the thumb of a mitten, and another has three.
-
-LANCEWOOD (_Ocotea catesbyana_) is a small evergreen tree, looks much
-like laurel, and grows in southern Florida, on the islands and on the
-mainland in the vicinity of Biscayne bay. It is closely related to
-sassafras, and the bark has an aromatic odor. It belongs to a group of
-trees with nearly 200 species scattered in hot regions of both
-hemispheres. This is the only one belonging to the United States, and it
-appears to be a newcomer on these shores, from the fact that it has
-succeeded in obtaining so limited a foothold. It keeps well south of the
-region where it is likely to be frosted and it seldom exceeds a height
-of thirty feet and a diameter of eighteen inches. The fruit ripens in
-autumn and is dark blue with flesh thin and dry. The wood is hard,
-heavy, strong, checks badly in drying, and has a rich brown color, the
-sapwood being yellow. Rings of annual growth are marked with many small,
-regularly-distributed open ducts; medullary rays are thin and numerous;
-wood weighs 47.94 pounds per cubic foot; durable in contact with the
-soil, beautifully colored, and is highly prized for small cabinet work
-and novelties. At Miami, Florida, small trunks cut on neighboring
-hummocks, or brought from the keys, are worked into souvenirs to be sold
-to visitors. Lancewood fishing rods are among the strongest and most
-expensive on the market; but little of the material of which they are
-made grows in Florida. It is also manufactured into billiard cues and
-small handles.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MADRONA
-
-[Illustration: MADRONA]
-
-
-
-
-MADRONA
-
-(_Arbutus Menziesii_)
-
-
-Madrona is an interesting tree which ranges from British Columbia
-southward to central California, attaining its greatest development in
-the redwood forests of northern California, where trees are sometimes
-one hundred feet high and six or seven feet in diameter. It is not only
-an interesting tree itself, but it has many interesting relatives, some
-of which are trees, others shrubs, and still others only small plants or
-vines. It may be called a second cousin to the common huckleberry, the
-mountain laurel, trailing arbutus, the azaleas, the tiny wintergreen,
-and the great rhododendron. It has some poor relations, but many that
-are highly respectable. It belongs to the heath family, of which there
-are seventy genera, and more than a thousand species; but less than half
-of them are in America, the others being scattered widely over the
-world.
-
-The madrona, when at its best, is one of the largest members of the
-family; but it is not always at its best. It sometimes degenerates into
-a sprawling shrub, where it grows on poor ground and on cold, dry
-mountain tops. It is manifestly not fair to study any tree at its worst,
-and it is particularly not fair to the madrona, which varies so greatly
-in its appearance. At one place it may be scarcely large enough to shade
-the lair of a jackrabbit, and at another it spreads its branches wide
-enough to shade an army--a small army, however, say, about two thousand
-men. A tree of that size may be found within a few hours' ride of San
-Francisco. Its branches cover an area of from eight thousand to ten
-thousand square feet.
-
-When madrona grows in the open it throws out wide limbs like a southern
-live oak, though not so large or long. Its crown is rounded and
-graceful; but when it grows in forests, where other trees crowd it, the
-trunk rises straight up to lift the crown into the sunlight and fresh
-air. The madrona is seen in all its glory in northwestern California,
-where it catches some of the warmth and the moist air from the Pacific.
-It follows the ranges of the Siskiyou mountains eastward near the
-boundary of California and Oregon. It is usually mixed with other forest
-trees, but sometimes large stands nearly pure are encountered, and there
-the long trunks, rather gray near the ground, but wine-colored above,
-rise in imposing beauty and are lost in the evergreen crowns.
-
-The leaves suggest those of laurel, but are broader. The large clusters
-of white flowers are among the glories of the vegetable kingdom. George
-B. Sudworth, dendrologist of the United States Forest Service, who
-usually describes in strictly prosaic terms, breaks away from that habit
-long enough to compare madrona flowers to lilies of the valley, in his
-"Forest Trees of the Pacific Slope." The flowers appear from March to
-May, depending on latitude and elevation.
-
-The brilliant orange-red fruit ripens in the fall, and is often borne in
-great abundance. It renders the crowns of the trees very beautiful. The
-fruit is about half an inch long and contains many small angular seeds.
-The fruit is said to contain a substance which puts to sleep wild
-creatures that feed on it. The claim is probably mythical, for birds
-breakfast extravagantly on it in the morning, and apparently do not do
-any sleeping until after sunset.
-
-This tree was discovered by and named for Archibald Menzies, a Scotch
-botanist who traveled in the Northwest more than a hundred years ago. It
-has several local names, among them being madrove, laurel wood,
-madrone-tree, laurel, and manzanita. The last is the proper name of
-another small tree which is associated with madrona and is closely
-related to it.
-
-The wood weighs 43.95 pounds per cubic foot. It is a little below
-eastern white oak in fuel value, a little above it in strength, and
-somewhat under it in stiffness. The color is pale reddish-brown,
-resembling applewood in tone, but generally not quite so dark. The wood
-is porous, but the pores are very small. Medullary rays are numerous but
-thin. On account of the rays being of a little deeper red than the other
-wood, quarter-sawed stock is handsome and of somewhat peculiar
-appearance. The figure is much like quarter-sawed beech, but of deeper,
-more handsome color. The contrast between springwood and summerwood is
-not strong, though easily seen. Generally, the summerwood constitutes
-about one-fourth of the annual ring. The tree grows slowly, but with
-much irregularity. The increase in one season may be four or five times
-as great as in another. The bark exfoliates, and is quite thin.
-
-Madrona has never been put to much use. Difficulties in seasoning it
-have stood in the way. The wood warps and checks. Similar difficulties
-with other woods have been overcome, and such troubles should not be
-unduly discouraging. The beauty of the wood is unquestioned. It presents
-a fine appearance when worked into furniture, particularly in small
-panels and turned work, like spindles, knobs, and small posts. When made
-into grills it shows a surprising richness of tone. The wood polishes
-almost to the smoothness of holly. Small quantities are made into
-flooring; a little goes to the furniture makers; lathes turn some of it
-for novelties and souvenirs; fuel cutters sell it as cordwood; and
-tanbark peelers cut the trees for the thin, papery bark. In that case
-the trunks are left to decay, unless they happen to be convenient to a
-cordwood market.
-
-One of the most extensive uses for the wood of madrona is for charcoal
-burning. Blacksmiths buy it because it is cheaper than coal, and some is
-used in shops where soldering and welding are done; but the most
-exacting demand comes from gunpowder manufacturers. They find this wood
-almost equal to alder and willow as a source of charcoal suitable for
-powder.
-
-MEXICAN MADRONA (_Arbutus xalapensis_) might properly be called Texas
-madrona as it occurs in that state and probably in no other, but its
-range extends southward into Mexico. It produces a poorly shaped trunk
-seldom much more than twenty feet high and one foot in diameter, and
-usually divided into several branches near the ground. It blooms in
-March and ripens its fruit in midsummer. The tree is found on dry
-limestone hills, and in the valley of the Rio Blanco, and among the
-Eagle mountains. Cabinet makers in Texas put the wood to rather exacting
-uses after they have carefully seasoned it to overcome its natural
-tendency to check. It is very hard; its color is a little lighter than
-applewood which it resembles; annual rings are scarcely visible, so
-regular and even is the year's growth. In Texas the wood is made into
-plane stocks, tool handles, and mathematical instruments.
-
-ARIZONA MADRONA (_Arbutus arizonica_) has a restricted range on the
-Santa Catalina and Santa Rita mountains of southern Arizona, where it
-ascends to an altitude of 8,000 feet. The species extends southward into
-Mexico. The largest trees attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter
-of two. Trunks are usually straight and shapely, and show the thin, red
-bark common to the genus. The wood resembles that of the species in
-Texas, and doubtless is suited to the same purposes, but no utilization
-of it has been reported, except for fuel, and for fences and sheds on
-mountain ranches. When the region becomes more thickly settled, the
-value of the wood will be appreciated.
-
-    MANZANITA (_Arctostaphylos manzanita_) is not generally welcomed by
-    botanists into the tree class. They say it is too small; but it is
-    as large as some of the laurels which go as trees without question,
-    and is shaped much like them. There are several species of
-    manzanita. The word is Spanish and means "little apple." The name is
-    natural, for one of the most noticeable things about manzanita is
-    the fruit, the size of well-grown huckleberries. It is shaped like
-    an apple, and its tart taste suggests that fruit. The Digger Indians
-    along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California
-    gather the berries by the sack, dry them, and keep them for
-    winter--if they can. It is often impossible to keep them because,
-    like other fruit, they are apt to become wormy. When the Indians
-    discover them in that condition they display rare thrift and economy
-    for savages, by soaking the fruit and pressing out the juice, which
-    is said to pass for a pretty fair quality of cider, but it must be
-    quickly consumed or it will mother and change to vinegar. Indians
-    now put the berries to use less frequently than in early times when
-    they were nearly always hungry.
-
-    Manzanita is of the same family as madrona. Its range extends along
-    the mountains of the Pacific coast ranges from Oregon to Mexico, and
-    inland to Utah. The largest trees are about twenty feet high and a
-    foot or less in diameter; very much divided and branched, with limbs
-    crooked in more ways, perhaps, than those of any other
-    representative of the vegetable kingdom. Thousands of canes are cut
-    from the branches, and if any living man ever saw a straight one he
-    failed to report it. Manzanita grows in almost impenetrable thickets
-    on dry slopes and ridges. Its thin foliage casts so pale a shadow
-    that the tree's shade is little cooler than the boiling sun upon the
-    open naked ground and rocks. The bark is a reddish-chocolate color,
-    and exfoliates in scales of papery thinness. The heart is nearly of
-    the same color as the bark, but the sap is white and very thin. The
-    wood is hard, strong, stiff, but exceedingly brittle. If a branch is
-    sharply bent it will fly into splinters.
-
-    The uses of the wood are numerous, but the total quantity demanded
-    is moderate. Novelty stores sell small articles to tourists in
-    California, sometimes passing the wood off as mountain mahogany
-    which does not so much as belong to the same family. The most common
-    articles manufactured by novelty shops from manzanita are canes,
-    paper weights, paper knives, rulers, spoons, napkin rings, curtain
-    rings, cuff buttons, dominos, manicure sticks, jewel boxes, match
-    safes, pin trays, and photo frames.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-COTTONWOOD
-
-[Illustration: COTTONWOOD]
-
-
-
-
-COTTONWOOD[9]
-
-(_Populus Deltoides_)
-
-    [9] The following species grow in the United States: Cottonwood
-    (_Populus deltoides_), Aspen (_Populus tremuloides_), Largetooth
-    aspen (_Populus grandidentata_), Swamp Cottonwood (_Populus
-    heterophylla_), Balm of Gilead (_Populus balsamifera_), Lanceleaf
-    Cottonwood (_Populus acuminata_), Narrowleaf Cottonwood (_Populus
-    angustifolia_), Black Cottonwood (_Populus trichocarpa_), Fremont
-    Cottonwood (_Populus fremontii_), Mexican Cottonwood (_Populus
-    mexicana_), Texas Cottonwood (_Populus wislizeni_).
-
-
-Eleven species of cottonwood are found in the United States, if all
-trees of the genus _Populus_ are classed as cottonwoods. It is not
-universally admitted, however, that they should be so classed. The
-common cottonwood is the most widely known of all of them, but it is
-recognized under different names in different regions, viz.: Big
-cottonwood, yellow cottonwood, cotton tree, Carolina poplar, necklace
-poplar, broadleaf poplar, and whitewood.
-
-Its range covers practically all of the United States east of the Rocky
-Mountains. It is rare or missing in eastern New England and southern
-Florida, and most abundant in the Mississippi valley, and there the
-largest trees are found. Some exceed 100 feet in height, and four in
-diameter. Extreme sizes of 140 feet in height with diameters of from
-seven to nine have been reported. The cottonwood was a frontier tree on
-the western plains when settlers began to push into the region. It grew
-as far west as any hardwood of the eastern forests, and was found beyond
-meridian 100, which was supposed to be the boundary between the region
-of rains and the semi-arid country. The cottonwood clung to the river
-banks and to islands in the rivers, and by that means escaped the
-Indian's prairie and forest fires which he kindled every year to improve
-the range for the buffalo. It is supposed that most of the open country
-east of meridian 100 was originally timbered, and that the Indians
-destroyed the forests by their long-continued habit of burning the woods
-and prairies every year to improve the pasture. Cottonwood was the
-longest survivor, because it grew in damp places where fires did not
-burn fiercely. Black willow was its most frequent companion on the
-western outposts of the forests.
-
-The cottonwood was fitted for holding its ground, and pushing forward.
-Its light seeds are carried by millions on the wind and by water. The
-tree bears large quantities of cotton (hence the name), and when the
-wind whips it from the tree, seeds are caught among the fibers and
-carried along, to be scattered miles away.
-
-This tree was not much thought of by eastern people who had plenty of
-other kinds of wood, but pioneers on the plains who had a hard time to
-get any, found cottonwood useful. It made fences, corncribs, stables,
-cabins, ox yokes, and fuel. The first canoes made by white men on the
-upper Missouri river were of cottonwood. Lumber cut from this tree is
-inclined to warp and check unless carefully handled, and this prejudiced
-it in the eyes of many; but difficulties of that kind were easily
-mastered, and instead of being a neglected wood it became popular. Some
-of the largest early orders came from Germany. Vehicle makers in this
-country employed it for wagon beds, as a substitute for yellow poplar
-when that wood's cost advanced. Manufacturers of agricultural implements
-were pioneers in its use, it being excellent material for hoppers,
-chutes, and boxes.
-
-Cottonwood weighs 24.24 pounds per cubic foot, which is approximately
-the weight of white pine. It has about the stiffness of white oak, but
-only about eighty per cent of white oak's strength, and fifty per cent
-of its fuel value. The wood is very porous, but the pores are small,
-usually invisible to the naked eye. The medullary rays are small and
-obscure. The appearance of the wood is not improved by quarter-sawing.
-The summerwood forms a thin, dark line, so faint that the annual rings
-are often scarcely distinguishable. The tree is generally a rapid
-grower; heartwood is brown, sapwood lighter, but as a whole, this tree
-produces white wood.
-
-The annual cut is declining. It was little more than half in 1910 what
-it was in 1899. Some regions where large trees were once abundant now
-have few. The sawmill output in 1910 for the United States--including
-several species--was 220,000,000 feet. The veneer cut was 33,000,000
-feet, log measure; the slack cooperage staves, chiefly for flour
-barrels, numbered 44,000,000; and pulpwood amounted to about 18,000,000
-feet. The lumber cut was largest in the following states in the order
-named: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Iowa,
-Wisconsin, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Minnesota. The tree was lumbered in
-forty-one states.
-
-Cottonwood is a standard material in several lines of manufacturing. It
-is made into nearly every kind of box that goes on the market, from the
-cigar box to those in which pianos are shipped. Manufacturers of food
-products are particularly anxious to procure this wood, and it is one of
-the best for woodenware, such as dough boards, ironing boards, and cloth
-boards. It is used by manufacturers of agricultural implements, interior
-finish, bank and office fixtures, musical instruments, furniture,
-vehicle tops, trunks, excelsior, saddle trees, caskets and coffins, and
-numerous others.
-
-There is no danger that cottonwood will disappear from this country, but
-it will become scarce. It is being cut much faster than it is growing,
-and is losing favor as a planted shade and park tree, because of its
-habit of shedding cotton in the spring and its leaves in the early
-autumn.
-
-SWAMP COTTONWOOD (_Populus heterophylla_) is known also as river
-cottonwood, black cottonwood, downy poplar, and swamp poplar. Its range
-describes a crude horseshoe, running from Rhode Island down the Atlantic
-coast in a narrow strip, where it is neither abundant nor of large size;
-touching northern Florida; running westward to eastern Texas and thence
-up the Mississippi basin and the Ohio river to southwestern Ohio. There
-is nothing handsome about its appearance with its heavy limbs and
-sparse, rounded crown. In the eastern range the average height is
-probably not more than fifty feet but in the fertile Mississippi valley
-it reaches 100 and has a long merchantable bole three feet in diameter.
-Its bark is rugged, dirty-brown and broken into loose, conspicuous
-ridges. It is easily distinguished from the other cottonwoods by the
-orange-colored pith in the twigs. The buds are rounded and red and have
-a resinous odor. Sawmills and factories never list this wood separately.
-It comes and goes as cottonwood. Its uses are the same as those of
-common cottonwood. The two species grow in mixture throughout the entire
-range of the swamp cottonwood.
-
-TEXAS COTTONWOOD (_Populus wislizeni_) is a rather large tree and is the
-common cottonwood in the upper valley of the Rio Grande in New Mexico
-and western Texas. The yellowish color of the twigs is apt to attract
-attention. The wood is used about ranches and occasionally a log finds
-its way to local sawmills; but its importance is limited to the region
-where it grows.
-
-MEXICAN COTTONWOOD (_Populus mexicana_) extends its range north of the
-Mexican boundary into southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. It
-is abundant in Mexico where the largest trees are eighty feet high and
-three or four in diameter. It is smaller near the northern limits of its
-range, and there it hugs the banks of mountain streams. Stockmen use the
-trunks, which are usually small enough to be called poles, to make
-fences and sheds.
-
-NARROWLEAF COTTONWOOD (_Populus angustifolia_)is a mountain species
-which manages to live in the semi-arid regions from the Rocky Mountains
-of Canada to Arizona, but is seldom found below an elevation of 5,000
-feet, and it ranges up to 10,000. Trunks are eighteen inches or less in
-diameter, and fifty or sixty feet high. The seeds are larger than those
-of most other cottonwoods. It being a semi-desert species, its wood is
-appreciated where it is accessible, and it has local uses only.
-
-LANCELEAF COTTONWOOD (_Populus acuminata_) is a small tree with limited
-range, growing in the arid region along the eastern base of the Rocky
-Mountains, southward from the Black Hills. It is found also north of the
-Canadian border. It is usually fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter,
-and thirty or forty feet high. Trunks seldom go to sawmills, but some
-local use is made of the wood. Trees are occasionally planted for shade
-in towns of western Nebraska and Wyoming.
-
-FREMONT COTTONWOOD (_Populus fremontii_), called white cottonwood in New
-Mexico, but elsewhere simply cottonwood, grows from western Texas to
-California, and as far north as Utah and Colorado. It sometimes attains
-a diameter of five or six feet and a height of 100. The Indians in New
-Mexico formerly made rude, clumsy ox carts of this wood, without a scrap
-of iron or other metal in the vehicles. One of the carts is preserved in
-the National Museum, Washington, D. C. The wood is tough and light, but
-it is dull white, with no attractive figure. Even the annual rings are
-hardly distinguishable. Logs are occasionally sawed into lumber, and
-farmers in western Texas make wagon beds of it.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BALM OF GILEAD
-
-[Illustration: BALM OF GILEAD]
-
-
-
-
-BALM OF GILEAD
-
-(_Populus Balsamifera_)
-
-
-This tree is known in different regions by the following names: Balsam,
-balm of Gilead, cottonwood, poplar, balsam poplar, and tacamahac. The
-usual name, balm of Gilead, is applied in recognition of the supposed
-healing virtue of the wax which covers the buds and young leaves. It has
-long been used in medicine, but its exact value is still a matter of
-discussion. The wild Indians of the North discovered a use for the
-balsam in mending their bark dishes, and plugging knot holes in the
-wooden trenchers. The wax is slow to dissolve in water, and it resisted
-for a long time such soups as were known to the redman's culinary art.
-Bees know the value of the wax and use it to seal cracks and crevices in
-their hives and to hold the comb in place. It is popularly believed that
-the economy of the wax on the buds is to keep them from freezing. That
-view is erroneous, for it would take more than a coating of wax to keep
-the buds warm with the thermometer from fifty to seventy degrees below
-zero, as it is every winter in some parts of this tree's range.
-
-Balm of Gilead is a native of the North from the Atlantic to the
-Pacific, but its finest growth is about the headwaters of the Mackenzie
-river, on Peace and Laird rivers, and the lower valley of the Athabaska.
-Sixty years ago Sir John Franklin reported that most of the driftwood of
-the Arctic ocean was this species. Since that time the range has been
-more definitely determined, and it is now known that the tree grows so
-far north that it is for some weeks in darkness, and again in summer for
-some weeks in unbroken sunshine. It grows in Alaska nearly 200 miles
-north of the Arctic circle. Its natural range southward reaches New
-England, New York, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, and Oregon.
-
-Trees of all sizes abound, from mere shrubs in the outskirts of its
-range to trunks 100 feet high and six feet in diameter in favored
-localities. In the United States the best timber seldom exceeds thirty
-inches in diameter and sixty or seventy feet in height. The bark on
-limbs and young trunks is brownish-gray, frequently so tinged with green
-that it is noticeable at a considerable distance; but usually large
-trees have reddish-gray bark with deep furrows and wide ridges. Year-old
-twigs are clear, shiny reddish-brown; end buds are about an inch long,
-the side buds somewhat shorter.
-
-The wood is not distinguishable in appearance from that of the other
-poplars or cottonwoods, but it is lighter than most of them, weighing
-22.65 pounds per cubic foot, has a breaking strength which places it
-among the weakest woods, but in stiffness making a much better showing.
-The pores are small, numerous, and are distributed equally through all
-parts of the wood.
-
-Balm of Gilead bears seeds abundantly and scatters them widely. It must
-do its planting quickly in the short summers of the cold North. It
-sticks close to alluvial flats, banks of rivers, borders of lakes and
-swamps, and gravelly soils. It grows to a diameter of fifteen inches in
-about forty-five years.
-
-Though balm of Gilead is not one of the most important timber trees of
-this country, its place is by no means obscure. No separate tally is
-kept of it among woods cut for pulp, but it goes with aspen and other
-similar species as "poplar." A little better account is kept of the
-amount passing through wood-using factories. The annual quantity so
-reported in Illinois is 2,775,000 feet, and it is made into boxes and
-crates. The lumber is shipped from the North, since it does not grow as
-far south as Illinois. The situation is different in Michigan, for balm
-of Gilead grows there. The amount going yearly into factories in that
-state is reported at 4,912,000 feet. It is made into many commodities,
-but boxes and crates take most of it. The wood is reduced to veneer and
-converted into berry buckets, grape baskets, fruit and egg crates, and
-other small shipping containers. It is made into excelsior and woodwool
-which are used as packing material. Druggist's barrels are manufactured
-from this wood. These are small, two-piece vessels, bored hollow, with a
-closely fitting lid, and varying in size from a couple of inches high,
-to nearly a foot. They contain powders, perfumes, pills, and other
-commodities in small bulk. The wood is worked into pails, tubs, and
-kegs. Furniture makers put balm of Gilead to use in several ways. It is
-cut thin for shelving; it is made into panels, and is employed as cores
-over which to lay veneers of more expensive materials. Woodenware
-factories generally keep it in stock in the northern states.
-
-The supply is ample at present to meet all demands. Cutters of pulpwood
-probably take more than sawmills, and are satisfied with smaller timber.
-Trees are often planted for ornament, but few if any have yet been
-propagated for forestry purposes.
-
-HAIRY BALM OF GILEAD (_Populus balsamifera candicans_) is not a species
-but a variety, and it is so different from balm of Gilead that it is
-entitled to a place of its own. Ordinarily it passes under the common
-names applied to balm of Gilead. It is a cultivated tree in eastern
-Canada and northeastern United States, where it has escaped from
-cultivation and is running wild. Both Sargent and Sudworth say that
-nothing is definitely known of the tree's native range; while it has
-been claimed by others that it once grew wild in Michigan but was
-destroyed by lumbermen. Probably most planted balm of Gileads are of
-this variety, as they are very ornamental. It is a large tree with
-branches less upright and crowns more open than in the wild species. The
-leaves are wide, heart-shaped, and are usually silvery white beneath
-with minute hairs on the margins, on the veins, and leaf stems. It is
-not improbable that this variety could be more profitably planted for
-forestry purposes than the species which grows wild; but there is no
-present indication that foresters favorably consider either of them.
-
-LARGETOOTH ASPEN (_Populus grandidentata_) is named on account of the
-shape of the leaves. It is sometimes called aspen, popple, white poplar,
-and large poplar. The wood weighs 28.87 pounds per cubic foot, and is
-the heaviest of the poplar group except Fremont cottonwood of the arid
-southwestern regions. The wood is white, attractive, but not strong. It
-was formerly manufactured into chip hats and shoe heels in New England,
-and is now used for baskets, crates, boxes, buckets, refrigerators,
-excelsior, and pulp. Northern factories usually give it the general name
-"poplar," and for that reason its importance in the lumber trade is
-underestimated. Trees may reach a height of seventy feet with a diameter
-of two; but a height of forty or fifty is more usual. The species' range
-extends from Nova Scotia to Minnesota, southward to Delaware and
-Illinois, and along the Appalachian mountains to North Carolina and
-Tennessee.
-
-GUMBO LIMBO (_Bursera simaruba_) is a south Florida species and is known
-also as West Indian birch. It is in a family by itself with no near
-relative. It is not a birch. The wood is spongy and very light, weighing
-less than nineteen pounds per cubic foot. It decays with remarkable
-rapidity. Branches thrust in the ground take root and grow. An aromatic
-resin, exuding from wounds in the bark, is manufactured into varnish.
-The leaves are substituted for tea, and gout remedies are made from the
-resin. Large trees are fifty feet high and two feet or more in diameter.
-Another Florida tree, not in the same family as this, is also called
-gumbo limbo (_Simarouba glauca_), paradise tree, and bitter wood.
-Ailanthus (_Ailanthus glandulosa_) is in the same family as paradise
-tree, but is not native in this country, though extensively planted
-here.
-
-ANGELICA TREE (_Aralia spinosa_). This is a small tree, which usually
-develops little or no heartwood. The springwood, or the inner and porous
-part of the ring, is broad and yellow, the summerwood, or exterior part
-of the ring, is narrow and dark. The wood's figure, due to the marked
-contrast between the outer and inner portions of the rings, is strong.
-When finished it shows a rich yellow, but somewhat lighter than dwarf
-sumach which it resembles. It is made into small shop articles, like
-button boxes, photograph frames, pen racks, stools, and arms for
-rocking chairs. Its range extends from Pennsylvania to Texas. It is
-sometimes known as Hercules' club.
-
-    ASPEN (_Populus tremuloides_) is widely known but not everywhere by
-    the same name. It is called quaking asp, mountain asp, aspen leaf,
-    white poplar, popple, poplar, and trembling poplar. The peculiarity
-    of the tree which is apt to attract attention, and which gives it
-    most of the names it carries, is the leaf's habit of being nearly
-    always in motion. The day is remarkably still if aspen foliage is
-    not stirring. This is due to the long, flat leaf stem, which is so
-    limber that it offers little resistance to air currents. The
-    difference in color between the upper and lower sides of the leaves
-    affords sufficient contrast to attract notice, and for that reason a
-    person will observe the motion of aspen leaves when he might fail to
-    see a similar movement among the leaves of other species where the
-    contrast of colors is not so marked. Aspen is credited with being
-    the most widely distributed tree of North America. It grows from
-    Tennessee to the Arctic ocean, from Mexico to northern Alaska, from
-    Labrador to Bering strait. It is found at sea level, and at 10,000
-    feet elevation among the mountains of California. Its very small
-    seeds grow in enormous numbers. Winds carry them miles, and scatter
-    them by millions. They spring up quickly when they fall on mineral
-    soil. This places it in the class with "fire trees"--those which
-    take possession of burned tracts. Paper birch is in this class.
-    Aspen has replaced pines over large burned areas of the Rocky
-    Mountains. It grows quickly but is weak if it has to contend with
-    other trees. If crowded it speedily gives up the fight and dies. The
-    wood is not strong, but is useful for several purposes. Next to
-    spruce and hemlock, it is the most important pulpwood in this
-    country, and it is coming into considerable use as lumber. The
-    whiteness of the wood--it looks much like holly--makes it a favorite
-    for small boxes and vessels for shipping and containing foods. It is
-    made into jelly buckets, lard pails, fish kits, spice kegs, sugar
-    buckets and a long line of similar articles. It turns well, and is
-    made into wooden dishes. Michigan alone uses two and a half million
-    feet of it a year; and it is in demand along the whole northern tier
-    of states from Maine to Washington, but because it is not separately
-    listed in lumber output, it is difficult to say how much is used.
-    Trees are usually small, though trunks three feet in diameter are
-    not unknown. It grows rapidly, and may be expected to fill an
-    important place in this country's future timber supply. There will
-    be no occasion to plant it by artificial means, for nature will
-    attend to the planting.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK COTTONWOOD
-
-[Illustration: BLACK COTTONWOOD]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK COTTONWOOD
-
-(_Populus Trichocarpa_)
-
-
-This member of the cottonwood group is a strong tree that holds its
-ground in various latitudes and at many elevations, ranging from sea
-level up to eight or nine thousand feet, and in latitude from Alaska to
-southern California, a distance of nearly three thousand miles. Its east
-and west extension is more restricted and seldom exceeds four hundred
-miles. Its habitat covers an area of half a million square miles, and in
-that space it finds conditions which vary so greatly that the tree which
-can meet them must possess remarkable powers of adaptation.
-
-Beginning in Alaska and the interior of Yukon territory, it has an
-arctic climate. It there not only grows on the coast, but it strikes the
-interior. It appears on the headwaters of several streams which flow
-into the Mackenzie or Hudson bay. It passes south through British
-Columbia and enters the United States west of the Rocky Mountains. It
-has been reported as far east as Idaho and Montana, but further
-information is needed before its limits in that direction can be
-definitely fixed.
-
-When it enters California it prefers the elevated valleys and canyons of
-the Sierra Nevadas, though it occurs sparingly among the coast ranges.
-It is generally found in the Sierras at elevations of from 3,000 to
-6,000 feet, though it occurs between 8,000 and 9,000. Among the San
-Jacinto mountains of southern California it grows at an altitude of
-6,000 feet.
-
-When it occurs at low levels it is usually found on river bottoms and
-sand bars, in sandy and humous soils, and there the largest trees are
-found. At higher elevations it is more apt to occur in canyon bottoms
-and gulches, in moist, sandy or gravelly soil, and in such situations
-the black cottonwood is smaller. The best growth occurs where the
-climate is humid and the precipitation is great. Beyond the reach of sea
-fogs, where the tree depends on soil moisture chiefly, it is smaller.
-
-It is an intolerant tree. It must have light. When it is crowded a tall,
-slender trunk is developed and the small crown is lifted clear above its
-competitors into the full light. If it cannot succeed in gaining that
-position its growth is stunted or the tree meets an early death.
-
-The black cottonwood is the greatest of the cottonwoods. This country
-produces no other to match it, and, as far as known, the whole world has
-none. The Pacific coast is remarkable for the giant trees it produces,
-but most of them are softwoods--the redwoods, the bigtree, the sugar
-pine, Douglas fir, western larch, noble fir, Sitka spruce and western
-red cedar. This cottonwood is the largest of the Pacific coast
-hardwoods. In trunk diameter it is excelled by the weeping oak in the
-interior valleys of California, but when both height and diameter are
-considered, the black cottonwood is in the West what yellow poplar is in
-the East, the largest of the hardwoods.
-
-Sargent says this tree reaches a height of two hundred feet and a
-diameter of eight, but Sudworth is more conservative and places the
-trunk limit at six feet. The average size is much below the figures
-given, but abundance of logs exceeding three feet in diameter reach the
-sawmills of Washington and Oregon.
-
-Old trees range from 150 to 200 years in age, but trees under 100 years
-old are large enough for saw timber. Records of the ages of the largest
-trunks have not been reported.
-
-Black cottonwood is a prolific seeder, but the seeds do not long retain
-their vitality. If they find lodgment in damp situations, where other
-conditions are favorable, the rate of germination is high. Seedlings are
-often very numerous on wet bars.
-
-The excellent quality of the wood and its suitability for many purposes
-bring it much demand on the Pacific coast. In the state of Washington
-more than 30,000,000 feet were used by wood-using industries in 1910.
-Smaller quantities were reported in Oregon and California.
-
-In strength the wood is approximately the same as common cottonwood, but
-in stiffness it much exceeds the eastern species. Its elasticity rates
-high, and compares favorably with some of the valuable eastern
-hardwoods. In weight it is slightly under common cottonwood. Trees are
-of fine form, nearly always straight, and are generally free from limbs
-to a considerable height.
-
-The wood is grayish-white, soft, tough, odorless, tasteless,
-long-fibered, nails well, is easily glued, and cuts into excellent
-rotary veneer with comparatively small expenditure of power. It does not
-split easily after it has undergone seasoning, and this property
-commends it to box makers. It is little disposed to shrink and swell in
-atmospheric changes. The absence of odor and taste gives it much of its
-value for box making, because foods are not contaminated by contact with
-it.
-
-It is manufactured into veneer berry baskets and is one of the most
-suitable woods on the Pacific coast for that purpose. Candy barrel
-makers use it in preference to most others, and a long line of
-woodenware articles draw much of their material from this source. Many
-thousands of cords are cut yearly for the pulp mills, where material for
-paper is produced. Black cottonwood and white fir are the principal
-woods used for pulp on the Pacific coast.
-
-Not only is it used for rotary-cut veneer, but it is made into cores or
-backing on which veneers of costly woods are glued in the manufacture of
-furniture, interior finish and fixtures for banks, stores and offices.
-It serves in the same way in casket making, and is demanded in millions
-of feet.
-
-It is employed in amounts larger than any other wood by excelsior mills
-in the northern Pacific coast region. It is the only wood demanded by
-that industry in Washington and 6,400,000 feet were cut into that
-product in 1910.
-
-Slack coopers find it as valuable in their business in the far West as
-the common cottonwood is in the East, and hundreds of thousands of
-staves are made yearly. It is in demand for the manufacture of flour
-barrels and those intended for other food products.
-
-Trunk makers use it in three-ply veneers for the bodies, trays, boxes
-and compartments of trunks and for suit cases. Though soft and light, it
-is very tough, and sheets of veneer with the grains placed transversely
-resist strains much better than solid wood of the same thickness.
-
-Vehicle makers employ black cottonwood for the tops and shelves of
-business wagons. Another of its uses is as bottoms of drawers for
-bureaus, wardrobes, and chiffoniers, and as partitions in desk
-compartments. A full line of kitchen and pantry furniture is made wholly
-or in part of this wood in the regions where it is cheap and abundant.
-
-The cottonwoods belong to a very ancient race of broadleaf trees, and
-like several others, they seem to have had their origin, or at least a
-very early home, in the far North, where intense cold now excludes
-almost every form of vegetable growth except the lowest orders. The
-Cretaceous age saw cottonwoods growing in Greenland. The cotton which
-then, as now, carried the seeds and planted them fell on more hospitable
-shores then than can now be found in the far frozen North. The genus was
-not confined to the arctic and subarctic regions, however, for there
-were cottonwoods at that time, or later, in more southern latitudes.
-There were many species in the central portion of this country, and also
-in Europe, long before the ice age destroyed all the forests north of
-the Ohio and the Missouri rivers. Some of the old species long ago
-ceased to exist, but others appear to have come down to the present time
-without great change.
-
-The cottonwood shows wonderful vitality, which is doubtless a survival
-of the characteristic which enabled it to come down from former geologic
-epochs to the present time. A damaged and mutilated tree will recover. A
-broken limb, thrust in the ground, will grow.
-
-    BLACK POPLAR (_Populus nigra_) is quite distinct from black
-    cottonwood, though both belong to the same family. The latter is a
-    Pacific coast species, while the former belongs in Europe, although
-    it may have been introduced into that country from Persia or some
-    other eastern region. It is common in the United States, on account
-    of having escaped from cultivation. The best known variety of this
-    tree is the Lombardy poplar (_Populus nigra italica_). It is easily
-    recognized by the characteristic attitude of the branches which grow
-    upward close against the trunk. The crowns of the trees are very
-    long and slender, sometimes not ten feet across though fifty feet
-    high. Their slimness gives the trees the appearance of being much
-    taller than they really are. They were formerly popular for planting
-    along lanes and in door yards. Their slender and pointed spires cut
-    the horizon with a peculiar effect. Planting is less common now than
-    formerly, because people have come to know the trees better. They
-    are probably the most limby of all the members of the cottonwood
-    group. The long trunks are masses of knots when the limbs have been
-    trimmed away, and any desire to make lumber of the trees is apt to
-    be discouraged, though not infrequently logs go to local sawmills,
-    and farmers haul the boards home to put them to some use about the
-    place. In Michigan and Ohio, box makers use the lumber for the
-    rougher and cheaper articles which they turn out.
-
-    The most discouraging thing about Lombardy poplar is the tendency of
-    the trees to send up sprouts. The living trees do it, and the stumps
-    are worse. The sprouts are not confined to the ground immediately
-    round the base of the tree, but spring up many feet or many yards
-    distant, until they produce a veritable jungle. Years are often
-    required to complete their extermination by grubbing and cutting.
-
-    WHITE POPLAR (_Populus alba_) is a European species but has become
-    naturalized in the United States. It is widely planted as a shade
-    tree, and has escaped from cultivation. It may be known by the white
-    undersides of its small leaves, and by its yellowish-green bark
-    which remains smooth, except on large trunks. It is not yet
-    important as a source of lumber, but the vigor of its growth
-    indicates that it may sometime become so. The wood is soft, white,
-    and light. Some persons consider the tree objectionable as an
-    ornament because of its habit of sending up sprouts from the roots,
-    and because its woolly leaves collect dust and smoke until they are
-    almost black by the end of summer.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MANGROVE
-
-[Illustration: MANGROVE]
-
-
-
-
-MANGROVE
-
-(_Rhizophora Mangle_)
-
-
-The mangrove family is large and widely scattered, but only one member
-has gained a foothold in the United States, and it occupies only limited
-areas in south Florida, at the delta of the Mississippi, and on the
-coast of Texas. The family's fifteen genera are confined to the tropics,
-with a little overlapping on the temperate zones. The botanical name
-_Rhizophora_ refers to the tree's peculiar roots, and _mangle_ is the
-Spanish for mangrove. This is one of the few trees in this country which
-are known by a single name. It is always called mangrove, and attains
-its best development in Florida.
-
-The leaves hang two years, are from three to five inches long and one or
-two wide. Flowers are not showy, but they are nearly always present,
-blooming the year round, the yellow blossom about an inch in diameter.
-The fruit proper is about an inch long, but its habit of sprouting while
-still on the tree and sending down a long stem-like root, gives the
-impression that the fruit is several inches long, sometimes a foot.
-
-It is not an easy matter to state the average size of mangrove trees.
-Peculiar habits of growth make measurements difficult. Neither is it
-easy to tell where a tree begins and where it ends. Mangrove thickets
-along some of the rivers of south Florida, within the influence of tide
-water, are strange forms of vegetation. If the foliage alone is
-considered from a little distance, it reminds one of a row of fig trees
-in Louisiana or California. The color and general appearance suggests
-fig trees. A nearer approach reveals beneath the crowns a mass of roots,
-stems, and limbs, joined with the ground beneath and the crowns above.
-In addition to these, there are many others that dangle from above, like
-rope ends, some nearly touching the ground, others several feet above.
-These are roots or limbs, by whichever name one cares to call them. They
-grow from overhead branches, and strike for the ground. When they touch
-the soil, they quickly anchor themselves, and become stems. They then
-look like slender poles set as props under the branches of an overladen
-fruit tree.
-
-This strange habit of growth gives the tree its character. Most
-mangroves stand in water. They fringe the banks of rivers and bayous,
-extending the fringe as far as the water is shallow. Growth of that kind
-is generally from ten to twenty feet high, and the largest stems from an
-inch in diameter up to three or four; but these dimensions cannot be
-taken as limits to size. Sometimes the trees are sixty or seventy feet
-high, but those which stand in water seldom reach that size. Trees
-which have their beginning in the water sometimes end their days high
-and dry on the land.
-
-The mangrove is a land builder. The sycamore and willow are land
-builders on a small scale, along northern water-courses, but mangrove
-excels them a hundred or a thousand fold where it grows on the low
-shores of Florida. The seed is prepared for land-building work before it
-drops from the tree. It sprouts a long, peculiar root--it looks like a
-very slender, big-ended cucumber--the large, heavy end down. This
-attains a length of several inches or a foot. When it drops from the
-branch, the end sticks in the mud and takes root, grows, and produces a
-tree. But generally it falls in water, and not on a mud bank. In that
-case it floats away, the heavy end down, the light end barely appearing
-on the surface. Winds and currents drive it about until the lower tip
-finally touches bottom in some shallow place. There it takes root, and
-unless circumstances are extremely adverse, it holds fast, finally
-becomes a tree, sends branches down from above to take root at the
-bottom of the water, and a clump is produced. The tangled mass of stems
-and roots catches driftwood and mud, resulting finally in a little
-island, and later the island is joined to the mainland. Thus the land is
-built. Many large flats in Florida owe their origin to this tree. When
-land is permanently above water, the mangrove loses, to some extent, its
-ability to send roots down from the limbs. Nature seldom does something
-for nothing, and since the mangrove's aerial roots no longer serve a
-useful purpose in nature's economy, they are dispensed with. Trunks then
-reach much larger size, and become timber instead of thickets. The
-accompanying picture shows a mangrove that no longer stands in water,
-and its habit of growth is changing.
-
-Thickets of mangrove are useful, not only in building new land, but in
-protecting that already built. Frequently the force of waves is broken,
-which otherwise would destroy low shores. Tremendous seas, in time of
-storms, will roll over thickets of mangrove without uprooting them or
-breaking the stems. Again nature's fine engineering is apparent. When
-men build lighthouses which must endure the shocks of waves, they have
-learned to construct them of open beams and lattice work. The wave
-passes through without delivering the full impact of the blow to the
-structure. No solid masonry will stand what a comparatively light open
-frame will endure without injury, because it allows the waves to pass
-on. A large wave may strike with a force of 6,000 pounds to the square
-foot. The mangrove thickets are like the open-framed lighthouse--they
-let the waves pass through and spend their force gradually beyond, but
-they hold the shore against washing.
-
-Admirable and wonderful as is nature's provision for protecting the
-land by a fringe of lattice work of branches and stems, the marvelous
-efficiency of the provision has been greatly increased in another way.
-Suppose, for illustration, that cottonwood instead of mangrove formed
-the protective thickets along stormy shores. The first hour of heavy
-seas would reduce the trees to fragments. The weak, brittle trunks and
-limbs would quickly break to pieces. But mangrove passes through storm
-after storm unharmed. It is scarcely believable that accident accounts
-for the fact that the best wood for the place is in the place; but it is
-probable, rather, that ages of development and natural selection gave to
-mangrove the qualities which make possible the accomplishment of its
-work. It is one of the strongest, and as far as available data may be
-depended upon, it is absolutely the most elastic wood in the United
-States. Shellbark hickory is rated high in both strength and elasticity;
-but mangrove rates higher. Sargent gives hickory's measure of elasticity
-at 1,925,000 pounds per square inch; but mangrove's is 2,333,000 pounds.
-
-It is thus fitted in the highest manner to perform the work needed. It
-plants itself in the right place; develops stems which will endure most
-and suffer least; possesses enormous strength for resisting force, yet
-is so extremely elastic that the force of waves is exhausted upon the
-trunks and branches without flattening them upon the ground or crushing
-them. Few things of the vegetable world show more perfect adaptation to
-environment. The wood's very heaviness seems to add one more quality
-fitting it for its place. When a trunk falls in the water, it does not
-float away as most trees would, but sinks like iron, lies on the bottom,
-helps to hold the forming island or bar in place, and in its death as in
-its life it is a land-builder. Its efficiency in that particular is
-increased by the fact that it is little affected by marine borers which,
-in the warm, brackish waters, usually destroy wood in a short time.
-
-Mangrove is not important commercially, though it is used for a number
-of purposes. The wood weighs 72.4 pounds per cubic foot, takes good
-polish, though it is inclined to check in drying; it contains many small
-pores; medullary rays numerous and thin; color reddish-brown streaked
-with lighter brown. The principal use of the bark is for tanning and the
-trunks for piles. It is well fitted for fence posts, but not many have
-been used in the region where it grows. It rates high as fuel, but its
-great weight increases transportation charges if the haul is long.
-
-Tanbark peelers in Florida have cut much of the large mangrove forest.
-They took the bark, and abandoned the trunks. There is no likelihood
-that the species will be exterminated. Much of the growth is practically
-inaccessible, and the trunks are too small to tempt bark peelers, and
-cordwood cutters find plenty of material more convenient.
-
-    OTHER SPECIES.--Two other trees of this country are called mangrove
-    though they are not even in the same family. One is the black
-    mangrove (_Avicennia nitida_), called also blackwood and black tree.
-    It is a Florida species of the family Verbenaceæ, and has some of
-    the mangrove's habits. It takes root and grows on muddy shores and
-    is a land builder. The largest trees are sixty or seventy feet high
-    and two in diameter, but are usually less than thirty feet high. The
-    bark is used in tanning, and no use for the wood is reported, except
-    for fuel. White mangrove (_Laguncularia racemosa_), known also as
-    white buttonwood, is a Florida species. It attains a height of
-    thirty or forty feet and a diameter of a foot or more. It reaches
-    its largest size on the shores of Shark river, Florida. The wood is
-    dark yellow-brown, and the bark is rich in tannin, and the tree may
-    become valuable as a source of tanbark.
-
-    Near akin to white mangrove is Florida buttonwood (_Conocarpus
-    erecta_) which is highly esteemed as fuel. It burns slowly like
-    charcoal. Trees are from twenty to fifty feet high. Its range lies
-    in southern Florida. Black olive tree (_Terminalia buceras_) belongs
-    in the south Florida group, and the wood is exceedingly hard and
-    heavy. The trunk is often two or three feet in diameter, but lies on
-    the ground like a log, with upright stems growing from it. Tanners
-    make use of the bark.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CABBAGE PALMETTO
-
-[Illustration: CABBAGE PALMETTO]
-
-
-
-
-THE PALMS
-
-
-Lumbermen in this country could get along very well without the palms,
-as they are little used for ordinary lumber. Their wood does not grow in
-concentric rings, like that of the ordinary tree. The stems are usually
-single, cylindrical, and unbranched. The fruit is berry-like, and is
-usually one seeded, though sometimes there are two or three. When a seed
-sprouts, it puts out at first a single leaf, like a grain of corn. About
-130 genera of palms are recognized in the world, most of them in the
-tropics, but several in the United States are of tree size. Botanists
-divide the palms of the United States into two groups, the palm family
-and the lily family. The yuccas belong in the lily family. In the very
-brief treatment that can be given the subject here, it is not necessary
-to recognize strict family divisions.
-
-CABBAGE PALMETTO (_Sabal palmetto_) grows in the coast region from North
-Carolina to southern Florida, and west to the Apalachicola river. It is
-sometimes called Bank's palmetto, cabbage tree, and tree palmetto. The
-name cabbage is due to the large leaf-bud in the top of the stem which
-is cooked as a substitute for cabbage. A sharp hatchet and some
-experience are necessary to a successful operation in extracting the bud
-from the tough fibers which surround it.
-
-This palm is a familiar sight in the coast region within its range. The
-tall trunks, with tufts of leaves at the tops, suggest the supposed
-scenery of the Carboniferous age. Usually the trunks, in thick stands,
-rise straight like columns from twenty to forty feet high, but
-occasionally they bend in long, graceful curves, as if the weight of the
-tops caused them to careen, which is probably what does happen. They
-vary in diameter from eight inches to two feet.
-
-The leaves are five or six feet long, and seven or eight wide, with
-stems six or seven feet long. Flowers occur in racemes two feet or more
-in length. The fruit is spherical and about a third of an inch in
-diameter. The roots are an important part of this palm, and are adapted
-to their environment, forming a rounded mass four or five feet in
-diameter, while small rope-like roots, half an inch in diameter,
-penetrate the wet marshy soil fifteen or twenty feet. The large,
-globe-like mass gives support in the soft soil, and the stringy roots
-supply water and mineral substances essential to growth. The wood is
-light, soft, pale-brown, with numerous hard, fibro-vascular bundles, the
-outer rim about two inches thick and much lighter and softer than the
-interior. The most important use for the wood at present is as wharf
-piles. It lasts well and is ideal in form. It is of historical interest
-that Fort Moultrie which defended Charleston, South Carolina, in the
-Revolutionary war, was built of palmetto logs. When the British made
-their memorable attack in 1776, their cannon balls buried in the spongy
-logs without dislodging them, and the fort successfully withstood the
-bombardment of ten hours, and disabled nine of the ten British ships
-taking part in the assault.
-
-The wood is employed to a small extent in furniture making, and the bark
-for scrubbing brushes. Some of the finest forests of palmetto in Florida
-are much injured by fire that runs up the trunks to feed on stubs of
-leaves.
-
-SILKTOP PALMETTO (_Thrinax parviflora_) and silvertop palmetto (_Thrinax
-microcarpa_) are species met with on some of the islands off the coast
-of southern Florida.
-
-MEXICAN PALMETTO (_Sabal mexicana_) is much like cabbage palmetto in
-size and general appearance, and is put to similar uses, except that the
-leaf-bud does not appear to be used as food. The tree occurs in Texas
-along the lower Rio Grande, and southward into Mexico where the leaves
-are employed as house thatch by improvident Mexicans and Indians who do
-not care to exert themselves to procure better roofing material. In the
-vicinity of Brownsville, Texas, trunks of this palm are employed as
-porch posts and present a rustic appearance. They are said to last many
-years. The average size of trunks in Texas is fifteen or twenty feet
-high and a foot or less in diameter, but some much larger are found in
-Mexico. Some of the wharfs along the Texas coast are built on palmetto
-piles. It is said the trunks are not as strong as those of the cabbage
-palmetto in Florida.
-
-SARGENT PALM (_Pseudoph[oe]nix sargentii_) is interesting but not
-commercially important, but may become so as an ornamental plant. It is
-occasionally planted on lawns in south Florida. Leaves are five or six
-feet long with stems still longer. The clusters of flowers are sometimes
-three feet in length. A single species is known, occurring on certain
-keys in southern Florida, and is so limited in its range that it would
-be possible to count every tree in existence. A grove of 200 or 300
-trees occurs on Key Largo.
-
-ROYAL PALM (_Oreodoxa regia_) is one of the largest palms of this
-country. It is said to reach a height of eighty feet, but such sizes are
-rare. The trunk rises from an enlarged base, and may be two feet in
-diameter. Bark is light gray in color, and its appearance suggests a
-column of cement. Leaves are ten or twelve feet long, and the stems
-increase the total length to twenty feet or more. Flowers are two feet
-in length, and in Florida open in January and February. The fruit is
-smaller than would be expected of a tree so large. It is a drupe about
-the size of a half-grown grape. The wood is spongy, but the outer
-portion of the stem is strong and is made into canes and other small
-articles. Trunks are sometimes used as wharf piles. This palm's range is
-confined to south Florida in this country, but it is common in the West
-Indies. In Miami and other towns of southern Florida it is much planted
-for ornament.
-
-FANLEAF PALM (_Neowashingtonia filamentosa_) also called Washington
-palm, California fan palm, Arizona palm, and wild date, ranges through
-southern California, and occupies depressions in the desert west of the
-Colorado river. There are said to be several forms and varieties. It
-ranges in height from thirty-five to seventy feet and in diameter from
-twenty to thirty inches. Trunks are of nearly the same diameter from
-bottom to top, or taper very gradually. They usually lean a little. Dead
-leaves hang about the trunks and blaze quickly when fire touches them,
-but the palm is seldom killed by fire. The small black fruit is about a
-third of an inch in diameter, and of no commercial importance; wood is
-little used; and the tree is chiefly ornamental, and has been much
-planted in California.
-
-MOHAVE YUCCA (_Yucca mohavensis_) is one of a half dozen or more palms
-of the yucca genus and the lily family. Trees of this group are
-characterized by their stiff, sharp-pointed leaves, some of which are
-called daggers and others bayonets. Both names are appropriate. The
-Mohave yucca takes its name from the Mohave desert in California, where
-it is occasionally an important feature of the doleful landscape. The
-ragged, leather-like leaves, forming the tops of the short, weird trees,
-rattle in the wind, or resound with the patter of pebbles when
-sandstorms sweep across the dry wastes. It is believed to be one of the
-most slowly-growing trees of this country. Trunks are seldom more than
-fifteen feet high and eight or ten inches in diameter. The wood is
-spongy and interlaced with tough, stringy fibers. Stockmen whose ranges
-include this tree, make corrals of the stems by setting them in the
-ground as palisades. When weathered by wind and made bone dry by the
-sun's fierce heat, the trunks are reduced to almost cork-lightness.
-Other yuccas are the Spanish bayonet (_Yucca treculeana_) of Texas;
-Joshua-tree (_Yucca arborescens_), which ranges from Utah to California
-and is known as tree yucca, yucca cactus, and the Joshua; Schott yucca
-(_Yucca brevifolia_) of southern Arizona; broadfruit yucca (_Yucca
-macrocarpa_) of southwestern Texas; aloe-leaf yucca (_Yucca aloifolia_)
-with a range from North Carolina near the coast to Louisiana; and
-Spanish dagger (_Yucca gloriosa_), on the coast and islands of South
-Carolina.
-
-    GIANT CACTUS (_Cereus giganteus_) is a leafless tree of Arizona and
-    attains a height of forty or sixty feet, diameter of one or two.
-    About twenty genera of cactus are known in the world and a large
-    number of species. Two genera, the cereuses and opuntias, have
-    representatives of tree size in this country. The two genera differ
-    in form. Cereus in the Latin language means a candle, and the
-    cactuses of that genus stand up in straight stems like candles, or
-    have branches like old-fashioned candlesticks. The opuntias have
-    flat, jointed stems, like thick leaves. Giant cactus bears flowers
-    four inches long and two wide; fruit two inches long and one wide,
-    and edible. Indians derive a considerable part of their food from
-    this cactus. They use the wood for rafters, fences, fuel, lances,
-    and bows. The trunks consist of bundles of fiber, very hard and
-    strong. In the dry region where this cactus grows, the woody parts
-    of fallen stems last long periods, some say for centuries, but there
-    are no records. Schott cactus (_Cereus schottii_) and Thurber cactus
-    (_Cereus thurberi_) are found in southern Arizona and southward in
-    Mexico.
-
-    CHOLLA (_Opuntia fulgida_) ranges from Nevada southward into Mexico.
-    It is popularly called "divil's tongue cactus," but there are other
-    species with the same name. Trunks are occasionally ten or twelve
-    feet high, and the wood is made into canes and small articles of
-    furniture, but as lumber it is not important. The fruit is not
-    eaten. A closely-related species is known as tassajo (_Opuntia
-    sponsior_). It is found on the dry mesas of southern Arizona where
-    trunks may be ten feet high and a few inches in diameter. It has the
-    same uses as cholla. A third species is _Opuntia versicolor_ of
-    southern Arizona. It is similar to the other opuntias. Attempts have
-    been made to grow spineless varieties of this group of cactuses. It
-    is believed that cattle, sheep, and goats would thrive on the pulpy
-    growth, if the thorns could be gotten rid of. The semi-desert
-    regions of the Southwest produce enormous quantities of cactus of
-    many kinds, and if those worthless species could be made way with
-    and thornless varieties substituted, it is probable that much land
-    now worthless would become valuable.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration: YELLOW CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-MINOR SPECIES
-
-
-A considerable number of trees grow in this country which, taken singly,
-are of small importance, but in the aggregate they fill a place which
-would be difficult to fill without them. Most of them are local, and are
-seldom heard of outside of the regions where they grow. Some are small,
-and for that reason are not demanded by the ordinary user of lumber; but
-small size is not necessarily a bar to the use of a wood. Many places
-may be filled by pieces too small for the sawmill. Sometimes a
-diminutive trunk contains material of extraordinary hardness, or it may
-be polished to a rare smoothness, or the colors may be exquisite.
-Numerous commodities can be successfully manufactured from blocks or
-billets which are only a few inches in diameter and a foot or two in
-length. This is particularly true of some of the rare hardwoods of
-Florida and southern Texas where tropical species have extended their
-ranges northward over the borders of the United States. Some of the
-small trees in that group are known by name in only the immediate
-locality where they grow, and their qualities are scarcely appreciated
-even there. In some instances railroad ties are hewed from wood which is
-fit for the finest furniture.
-
-It is no uncommon thing for Mexicans along the Rio Grande to warm their
-huts and cook their meals with fuel chopped from trunks of Texas ebony,
-algarita, cat's claw, bluewood, huisache, retama, and junco. Those who
-have traveled among the Indian rancherias of New Mexico and Utah have
-grown familiar with the peculiar odor filling the air in the vicinity of
-camp fires. It is the smoke of the rare junipers which the Indians burn
-for fuel; and yet it is wood of such soft tones and exquisite blending
-of colors that the shades of a Persian rug suffer by comparison. Among
-the ten thousand islands which fringe the coasts of south Florida, and
-also among the hummocks of the mainland, are rare trees whose wood is
-unsurpassed in hardness, fineness of texture, and beauty. These are not
-being used at all, or only as fuel to feed some fisherman's or camper's
-fire, or to make a smoke to drive away mosquitoes. The time will come
-when small and scarce woods will be sought, if they are valuable for any
-special purpose. In preceding pages of this book many minor species have
-been listed and briefly described in connection with those more
-important, and with which they are closely related. There are more than
-a hundred others which were necessarily omitted from former pages. A few
-of these deserve at least a brief mention, and are listed in the
-following paragraphs.
-
-K[OE]BERLINIA (_K[oe]berlinia spinosa_) is commonly considered a
-curiosity; a tree without a relative in the world, and without leaves,
-flowers, or fruit. The popular notion is wrong, of course, for no tree
-is without relatives, and none without leaves, flowers, and fruit, or
-something that takes their place. The flowers, leaves, and fruit of this
-tree are small and escape notice of the casual observer, but they exist.
-Its nearest relative in this country is the paradise tree of Florida and
-the ailanthus introduced from China. It has a small, thorny, crooked
-trunk; the wood is dark, turning nearly black with exposure; it is rich
-with oil; and it is very hard. The species grows in certain places along
-the Rio Grande. The wood is made into canes, rulers, knife handles,
-turned articles, and a little furniture of the smaller kinds. The trunks
-are too small for ordinary sizes of lumber.
-
-GUM ELASTIC (_Bumelia lanuginosa_) ranges from Georgia to Texas, and in
-Florida is called black haw. Children in Texas mix its berries with
-chewing gum, to increase the quantity, and the name which they apply to
-it is "gum stretch it." An exuded resin is also used for chewing gum.
-Trees are sometimes sixty feet high and two in diameter, and a
-considerable number of logs go to hardwood mills, where they lose their
-name, and possibly appear as ash lumber, or occasionally as maple. The
-wood is white, tinged with yellow, and is manufactured into agricultural
-implements. A scarce and smaller species, known as buckthorn bumelia and
-ironwood (_Bumelia lycioides_) covers nearly the same range. From a tree
-of the same family in southern Asia the gutta percha of commerce is
-obtained. Other woods of the same family in this country are mastic
-(_Sideroxylon mastichodendron_) of south Florida, a tree sometimes sixty
-feet high and three feet in diameter, useful for boat building;
-satinleaf (_Chrysophyllum monopyrenum_), also of Florida, a tree
-twenty-five feet high and one in diameter, the wood very heavy, hard,
-and strong; tough bumelia (_Bumelia tenax_), ranging from South Carolina
-to Florida, a tree twenty feet high and six inches in diameter, called
-black haw in some parts of its range; saffron plum or ant's wood
-(_Bumelia angustifolia_), growing in Florida and Texas, the trunk twenty
-feet high and six inches in diameter; wood orange colored, and the fruit
-sweet; bustic (_Dipholis salicifolia_), in south Florida, a tree forty
-feet high and eighteen inches in diameter, with wood exceedingly hard,
-strong, and heavy, and dark brown or red in color; wild sapodilla or
-dilly (_Mimusops sieberi_), a tree of south Florida with rich, very dark
-brown wood, height of tree twenty feet, diameter one foot.
-
-DWARF SUMACH (_Rhus copallina_) is known by many names. It is
-distinguished from staghorn sumach by its smooth branches, those of
-staghorn being hairy. Sumach's chief importance is due to its value as
-tanning material. Leaves and small branches are used. The family has
-some well-known members in other parts of the world, among them the
-mangoes. The name dwarf sumach is not well selected, for the species is
-nearly as large as any other sumach. Trees are sometimes thirty feet
-high and ten inches in diameter. The tree's range extends from New
-England to Florida and Texas. It reaches its largest size west of the
-Mississippi river. In the East and North it is usually a shrub. Trees of
-largest size are not believed to exceed fifty years in age. The wood is
-richly striped with yellow and black. Balls turned of it, seven inches
-in diameter, are used for newel-post ornaments, and smaller balls are
-made for use in darning stockings. Cups are turned on the lathe, and the
-bright stripes in the wood give the wares a striking appearance. It was
-formerly much employed for spiles in tapping maple trees for sugar
-making. Staghorn sumach (_Rhus hirta_) is of a different species but of
-the same genus. Its range extends from New Brunswick nearly to the
-Mississippi river. Its name refers to the down on the young branches
-resembling the velvet on the horns of a deer at certain seasons. The
-tree is known as Virginia sumach and hairy sumach. Its compound leaves
-are sometimes two feet long--two or three times the size of dwarf
-sumach's. Trunks have been reported forty feet high and more than a foot
-through. The uses of this wood are the same as of dwarf sumach,
-including tanning. It is more abundant east than west of the
-Alleghanies. Poisonwood (_Rhus metopium_) belongs to the same family. It
-is known in Florida as doctor gum, hog plum, coral sumach, bumwood, and
-mountain manchineel. The juice is exceedingly poisonous, and gum
-produced by wounding the bark is reported to have medicinal value. Trees
-are sometimes forty feet high and two feet in diameter. The American
-smoke tree (_Cotinus cotinoides_) is another member of the sumach
-family. It is found in the southern states from eastern Tennessee to
-Texas. It is nowhere common, and its only reported use is as fence
-posts. Trees may be a foot in diameter and thirty feet high. The wood is
-a bright clear orange color, and a yellow dye has been manufactured from
-it. Poison sumach (_Rhus vernix_) is not the same as poisonwood, though
-sometimes the two are confounded. It is usually a shrub, and rarely
-twenty feet high. It is overloaded with names, as might be expected of a
-plant considered as dangerous as this. Among its names are poison elder,
-poison dogwood, swamp sumach, poison oak, poisonwood, poisontree, and
-thunderwood. It grows from New England to Georgia, and west to Minnesota
-and Louisiana. It is apt to occur in wet swamps, and Sargent pronounces
-it "one of the most dangerous plants of the North American flora." A
-black, lustrous varnish can be made of the acrid poisonous juice, and
-this may sometime give the species a commercial value. When the skin is
-poisoned by contact with this tree, an effective remedy may be found in
-a saturated alcoholic solution of acetate of lead, if applied as a wash
-within an hour or two after the poisoning occurs. A wash with pure
-alcohol is also effective if applied within an hour. Following either
-treatment the skin should be thoroughly washed with soap and water.
-Western sumach (_Rhus integrifolia_), a closely related California
-species, is a small evergreen, seldom more than twenty feet high and a
-foot in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and red, is used as fuel, and
-occasionally in small turnery. The fruit is a berry half an inch long.
-
-CASCARA BUCKTHORN (_Rhamnus purshiana_) is of the buckthorn family, and
-is known by many names on the Pacific coast where the species is best
-developed. It grows as far east as Colorado and Texas. Cascara sagrada,
-its Mexican name, is often used for this tree. It is known also as
-bearberry, bearwood, yellow-wood, pigeonberry, coffeeberry, bayberry,
-and California coffee. The tree's usual size is from ten to thirty feet
-high and twelve to twenty inches in diameter. It is often shrubby, and
-is more valuable for its bark than its wood. Large quantities are peeled
-for medicinal uses, and many trees are thus destroyed. A little of the
-wood is burned as fuel, and some is made into handles. Yellow buckthorn
-(_Rhamnus caroliniana_), with a range from New York to Texas, and
-evergreen buckthorn (_Rhamnus crocea_), a California species, are
-closely related to cascara buckthorn, but are of comparatively little
-importance. Blue myrtle (_Ceanothus thyrsiflorus_) is a California
-species, sometimes called wild lilac or blue blossoms. It ranges in
-height from thirty-five feet, among the redwoods on the Santa Cruz
-mountains, to only one foot high on some of the wind-swept coasts. The
-wood is pale yellowish-brown, and is somewhat used for novelties. Tree
-myrtle (_Ceanothus arboreus_), often known as lilac, is also a
-California tree, closely related to blue myrtle, but is of smaller size
-and of very restricted range. Its prospective value lies more in its
-bloom than in its wood. Naked-wood (_Colubrina reclinata_), a Florida
-species, is of a kindred genus. Trees are sometimes fifty feet high and
-three in diameter. The wood is hard, very strong, and is dark brown
-tinged with yellow.
-
-LIGNUM-VITÆ (_Guajacum sanctum_) grows in Florida, and a species which
-is probably the same is found in south Texas along the Rio Grande. In
-Texas the tree is known as guayacon, which name has come down from the
-times when the Carib Indians ruled the West Indies. That was their name
-for the tree. The annual rings are usually too vague and too involved to
-be counted, but the tree is known to be of slow growth. The wood is
-pitted and it contains cavities and creases; but the clear wood is very
-hard and of fine and various colors. It is dark green, brown, black,
-yellow and of mixed colors, and clouded effects, all in the same block.
-Small pieces of furniture, like bureau cabinets, present attractive
-combinations of colors. The wood is of such exceeding hardness that it
-turns, breaks, or batters the carpenter's tools. Candlesticks, egg cups,
-goblets, vases, checker pieces, dominos, boxes, trays, canes, paper
-knives, and souvenirs are manufactured in a small way. Trees attain a
-height of thirty feet and a diameter of two or more. The compound leaves
-adhere to the branches until those of the following season appear. The
-fruit is an orange-colored pod three-fourths of an inch long.
-
-PRICKLY ASH (_Xanthoxylum clava-herculis_). Some know this species as
-toothache tree, tear-blanket, sting-tongue, and Hercules' club. The wood
-shows little difference in color between heartwood and sap, and bears
-some resemblance to buckeye. It takes good polish and some of it looks
-like birdseye maple, but the figure does not seem to be due to
-adventitious buds. It has been made into picture frames and looks well.
-It is a rapid grower, and since its color fits it for the stencil, it
-might be worthy of consideration for box material. Trees reach a height
-of twenty-five or thirty feet, and a diameter of a foot or more. Its
-range extends from Virginia to Texas. Satinwood (_Xanthoxylum
-cribrosum_) is of the same genus, but it does not grow north of Florida
-where it is sometimes called yellow-wood. Mature trees are a foot or
-more in diameter and twenty-five or thirty-five feet high; wood heavy,
-exceedingly hard and brittle, but not strong; color light orange. It has
-some use as furniture material, and for certain classes of handles which
-need not be strong. Wild lime (_Xanthoxylum fagara_) is a similar tree,
-growing in both Florida and Texas, but it is of small size. Hoptree
-(_Ptelea trifoliata_) is another member of the family. Its fruit is
-sometimes substituted for hops for brewing beer. It is known also as
-wafer ash, wahoo, and quinine tree; the last name being due to its
-bitter bark. It grows from Canada to Florida, and west to New Mexico,
-and seldom exceeds twenty feet in height. Baretta (_Helietta
-parvifolia_) which occurs as a small tree in southern Texas, is a near
-relative. Torchwood (_Amyris maritima_), so named because of its fine
-properties as fuel, grows in southern Florida, sometimes reaching a
-height of forty feet and a diameter of one. Canotia (_Canotia
-holacantha_) is a small, scarce tree of Arizona and California and has
-fine-grained, rich brown wood.
-
-NANNYBERRY (_Viburnum prunifolium_), known as black haw, sloe,
-sheepberry, and stagbush, grows from Connecticut to Oklahoma and is
-usually a shrub which springs up along highways and hedges, but it
-sometimes reaches a height of twenty feet and a diameter of eight
-inches. It is valuable in some localities in the manufacture of canes
-and umbrella sticks. Rusty nannyberry (_Viburnum rufotomentosum_) is a
-similar species, but attains a larger size, and grows from Virginia to
-Texas. The wood may be known by its disagreeable odor. Sheepberry
-(_Vibernum lentago_) has a more northern range, from Quebec to
-Saskatchewan, and south along the mountains to Georgia.
-
-BLUE ELDER (_Sambucus glauca_) is one of three tree elders in the United
-States, the others being Mexican elder (_Sambucus mexicana_) and
-red-berried elder (_Sambucus callicarpa_). They are ornamental rather
-than useful. The three species occur on the Pacific coast. The largest
-recorded size of an elder was forty feet high and twenty-eight inches in
-diameter. Its age was about fifty years.
-
-FRINGE TREE (_Chionanthus virginica_) is known also as white fringe,
-American fringe, white ash, old man's beard, flowering ash, and
-sunflower tree. Its natural range extends from Pennsylvania to Florida
-and west to Texas, but it has been widely planted in this country and
-Europe. It is seldom more than twenty feet high and eight inches in
-diameter. The bark possesses medicinal value. Devilwood (_Osmanthus
-americanus_) belongs to the same family, but to a different genus. It
-grows from North Carolina to Florida and west to Louisiana. The largest
-trunks are a foot in diameter and forty feet high. The wood is strong,
-heavy, hard, dark brown, and difficult to work.
-
-BLACK IRONWOOD (_Rhamnidium ferreum_) of Florida is among the heaviest,
-probably is the heaviest, wood of the United States. It weighs 81.14
-pounds per cubic foot, and when a hundred pounds of the wood is burned,
-it leaves eight pounds of ashes--the highest in ash of all woods of the
-United States. Its fuel value is very high. Trees are small, seldom more
-than thirty feet high and six inches in diameter. Bluewood (_Condalia
-obovata_) is a related Texas species, called also logwood and purple
-haw. It produces heavy, hard, close-grained wood, light red in color.
-Trees six inches in diameter and twenty-five feet high are fully up to
-the average. Along the lower Rio Grande it forms dense, tangled
-thickets. Red ironwood (_Reynosia latifolia_) of southern Florida
-belongs to a related species, and is sometimes called darling plum,
-because its purple fruit is edible. The tree is small, the wood heavy,
-hard, strong, and of rich brown color. White ironwood (_Hypelate
-trifoliata_) belongs to a different family. It occurs in Florida where
-trees are sometimes thirty-five feet high and eighteen inches in
-diameter. The heavy, hard, rich brown wood is durable in contact with
-the ground, and is used for fence posts, handles, and boats. Inkwood
-(_Exothea paniculata_) is of the same family as white ironwood but of a
-different genus. It is also a Florida species and is known in some
-localities as ironwood. The tree is occasionally a foot in diameter and
-forty feet high, wood very hard, heavy, and strong, and bright red in
-color. It is used by boat builders, for wharfs, and as handle wood.
-
-CINNAMON BARK (_Canella winterana_), also called whitewood and wild
-cinnamon, is a south Florida species seldom more than twenty-five feet
-high and ten inches in diameter. The wood is exceedingly heavy, hard,
-and strong, and of dark reddish-brown color. The wild cinnamon bark of
-commerce comes from this tree.
-
-JOEWOOD (_Jaquinia armillaris_) grows in the Florida everglades. The
-dark and beautiful medullary rays of this wood may sometime make it
-valuable for turnery and small novelties. Trunks seldom exceed six or
-seven inches in diameter. Marlberry (_Icacorea paniculata_) belongs in
-the same family with joewood. Trunks are small, but the hard, rich brown
-wood is beautifully marked with dark medullary rays.
-
-CRABWOOD (_Gymnanthes lucida_) is known chiefly by the fine canes made
-of it. The tree occurs in southern Florida where it is sometimes known
-as poisonwood. It is dark brown, streaked with yellow. Trunks more than
-eight inches in diameter are unusual. Manchineel (_Hippomane
-mancinella_) is of the same family, and occurs in Florida. The wood is
-light and soft.
-
-SINGLELEAF PINON (_Pinus monophylla_). This is the only pine in this
-country with single needles. They are one and one-half inches long, and
-are curved like the old fashioned sewing awl used by shoemakers. The
-needles fall during the fourth and fifth years. The cones are one and
-one-half or two and one-half inches long. The trees are small, averaging
-fifteen or twenty feet high and eight or twelve inches in diameter. Its
-range covers portions of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California, but it
-occupies dry, sterile regions as nearly under desert conditions as can
-be found in this country. The tree maintains a foothold on the eastern
-slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains at an altitude of 9,000 feet and it
-descends into the Colorado desert in California at an elevation of 2,000
-feet. It endures winter cold below zero on the mountains, and summer
-temperature of 122 in the Mojave desert. It is fitted to live in a dry,
-sterile region. The leaves are small and the branches bear few of them.
-The thin foliage uses little water, which is a fortunate circumstance,
-for there is little to use. Slow growth is the result. The trunk often
-adds less than an inch to its diameter in twenty years. The trees form
-very open forest, resembling old orchards, and the greenness usually
-associated with pine landscapes is generally wanting. The singleleaf
-pine has filled an important place in the development of the region, and
-furnishes an example of the great service which a small, crooked tree
-can give when it is the only one to be had. Mines worth many millions of
-dollars have been worked with little of any other wood. This has been
-the fuel for the kitchen, the engine house, the blacksmith shop. It has
-supplied the props, posts, stulls, and lagging for the underground
-operations. Fences for stock corrals, sheds, stables, cabins, and
-bridges have been constructed of the small, crooked trunks and the
-distorted limbs, when no other wood could be had in fifty or a hundred
-miles. Extensive tracts have been cut clean in the vicinity of mines.
-The product of the singleleaf pine forest cannot be measured in board or
-log feet, because of the smallness of the trunks and branches, but by
-the cord. The wood is medium heavy, rather high in fuel value, very
-weak, brittle, and soft. The resin passages are few and small, color
-yellow or light brown, the sapwood nearly white. In contact with the
-soil the wood is not durable, but its principal use has been in a very
-dry climate, and it lasts well there. It is the most important of the
-nut pines.
-
-It produces enormous crops which are larger some years than others. John
-Muir believed that the singleleaf pinon's annual nut yield surpassed
-California's yield of wheat. Only a small part of the nut crop is ever
-put to use by man. Scattered over mountains, mesas, and deserts, 100,000
-square miles in extent, most of the nuts fall and decay, though the
-animals of the rocks and sands, and the birds of the air live on them
-while they last. The Indians of the region long looked upon the nut
-crop, as the Egyptians upon the overflow of the Nile--a guarantee
-against famine. The Indians are not so dependent on the nuts now as
-formerly because scattered settlements throughout the region supply
-other sources of food. Many nuts are still gathered, and are sold in
-stores from San Francisco to Denver. They look like peanuts, but are
-richer in oil, and if eaten raw they speedily cloy the appetite. The
-Indians usually roast them, and frequently crush them into meal. When
-the harvest is ripe the Indians gather from all sides and camp during a
-month or more, thrash the cones from the trees with poles, extract the
-nuts, and keep up the operation until all present needs are supplied,
-and every available basket is filled for future use. The packhorses and
-burros of the mining country in Nevada where this pine grows, acquire a
-liking for the nuts. They are as nourishing as oats, and the pack
-animals like them better. Indians do considerable business collecting
-the nuts and selling them by the gunny sack to pack trains, for horse
-feed. A single Indian will sometimes gather thirty or forty bushels, for
-which he can get a dollar a bushel when he has carried them to market.
-
-The singleleaf pine's future will be about as its past has been, as far
-as can now be foreseen. Little planting will ever be done, nor is it
-necessary. Nature plants all that the sterile soil will support. It is
-of too slow growth to tempt the forester. A century is required to
-produce a fence post, and 200 years for a crosstie. Forest fires do
-little injury, for the ground is generally so bare that fire dies out of
-its own accord in a short distance. The tree can never be planted much
-for ornament. Even if it would grow outside of its dry habitat, it
-possesses no more beauty than a half-dead apple tree in a neglected
-orchard. The trunks resemble mesquite in Texas; but the Texas tree is
-redeemed by the beauty of its foliage in summer, while the foliage of
-the singleleaf pine is so pale and thin that it attracts no attention.
-
-CAROLINA HEMLOCK (_Tsuga caroliniana_) is of far less importance than
-its northern neighbor which goes south along the Appalachian mountains
-to meet it. The two species mingle on the mountain tops from
-southwestern Virginia to northern Georgia. The Carolina hemlock is
-usually confined to altitudes 2,500 or 3,000 feet above sea level, and
-prefers rocky banks of streams. It does not usually occur in dense
-stands of even moderate size, as the northern hemlock does. A few trees
-in clumps or scattered solitary represent its habit of growth. Typical
-development of the species occurs on the headwaters of the Savannah
-river in South Carolina. For a long time this hemlock and its northern
-relative were supposed to be the same. Botanists did not formerly
-separate them, and the mountaineers do not generally do so now. There
-are several differences, however, which may be observed upon close
-examination, and by comparing the two species. The Carolina hemlock's
-leaves have more rows of stomata and therefore are a little whiter on
-the under side. The leaves are also longer, and the cones are larger.
-The tree does not attain the dimensions of the northern species, its
-average size being forty or fifty feet in height, and two or less in
-diameter. It is not abundant, and has never been and never can be much
-used for commercial purposes. It is an attractive park tree and has been
-widely planted.
-
-LIMBER PINE (_Pinus flexilis_) owes its name to its long, drooping
-branches. It is often called white pine, Rocky Mountain white pine,
-western white pine, and limber twig pine. It is not the tree usually
-called western white pine (_Pinus monticola_), but is a high mountain
-species, ranging from the Rocky Mountains of Montana to western Texas;
-it grows also on the mountains of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California.
-The upper limit of its range in the Sierra Nevadas is 12,000 feet. It
-descends to an altitude of only 4,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, and
-forms open, scattered stands of round-topped trees of little commercial
-value, and is usually associated with western yellow pine or Rocky
-Mountain cedar. At altitudes of 8,500 or 10,000 feet it is more stunted,
-and associates with Lyall larch and other high mountain species.
-Intermediate between its lower and its higher belts it produces a little
-merchantable lumber. The wood is light, soft, medium brittle, of slow
-growth and with narrow bands of summerwood. The resin passages are large
-and numerous. The wood, when a choice trunk is found, resembles that of
-eastern white pine; but generally the trunks are inferior in size and
-form. The heartwood is light, clear yellow, the sapwood nearly white.
-Trees range in height from thirty to fifty feet, and one to three in
-diameter. A sawlog ten feet long is about as much as can be had from a
-trunk, and of course, when compared with commercial trees, it holds a
-low place; but in some remote mountain regions it is the principal wood
-available, and to that extent it is of importance. When green, the wood
-is very heavy, and sometimes will sink. It is used for posts and in the
-mines. The farmer seasons posts on the stump. He peels the trees six
-months before cutting them. They immediately exude resin over the whole
-peeled surface, and the tree quickly dies. At the end of six months the
-trunk is seasoned, and is cut for posts. The ends are smeared with
-resin. Such posts have lasted twenty years with little decay. Railroads
-make ties of fire-killed limber pine. Charcoal burners use it also. The
-growing trees resist the fumes of copper smelters better than any other
-species associated with it.
-
-    PARRY PINON (_Pinus quadrifolia_). The names by which this tree is
-    known in the region where it grows indicate one of its leading
-    features, a bearer of nuts. It is called nut pine, Parry's nut pine,
-    pinon, and Mexican pinon. The nuts exceed half an inch in length,
-    are reddish-brown, and the wings narrow and small. They cannot carry
-    the nuts far, and the species is not spreading. Reproduction takes
-    place beneath the parent tree, and frequently the old trunk dies
-    without having succeeded in planting a single seed to perpetuate the
-    species. The nuts are nutritious, and are eagerly sought by birds,
-    rodents, and larger animals, including human beings. The cones are
-    seldom two inches long, and the leaves are little more than an inch.
-    They are usually in clusters of four, and fall the third year. The
-    tree's characteristics betray its environment. It is fitted for dry,
-    sterile situations. Its abnormally large seeds provide food for the
-    seedling until it can get its rootlets deep enough in the poor soil
-    to get a start. The Parry pinon's range is confined to the extreme
-    southern part of California and to Lower California where it
-    occupies arid mesas and low mountain slopes. It is common on Santa
-    Rosa mountains, California, at an elevation of 5,000 feet. It is too
-    small to be worth much for lumber, the usual height being less than
-    thirty feet, the trunk diameter from ten to sixteen inches. The wood
-    is medium heavy, weak, low in elasticity, but rather high in fuel
-    value. The annual rings are very narrow, and the thin bands of
-    summerwood are not conspicuous. It is one of the slowest-growing of
-    the pines, and probably it is surpassed in that respect by lodgepole
-    pine alone. Its only uses are fuel, a few fence posts, and small
-    ranch timbers.
-
-    KNOBCONE PINE (_Pinus attenuata_). This pine is known as
-    prickly-cone pine, sun-loving pine, sunny-slope pine, narrow-cone
-    pine, and knobcone pine. Its leaves are in clusters of three, and
-    are four and five inches long. The cones are from three to six
-    inches long. They often adhere to the branches thirty or forty
-    years, and may become entirely overgrown and hidden by bark and
-    wood--hence the name knobcone. The wood is light, soft, weak,
-    brittle; the growth is slow and the annual rings are narrow. The
-    resin passages are large and numerous. The average height of the
-    mature knobcone pine is from twenty-five to forty feet, and the
-    trunk diameter eight to twelve inches. It grows on dry mountain
-    regions of California and Oregon, and is not a valuable timber tree.
-    A little is occasionally sawed in small dimensions, but the
-    principal use is for mine props. It is short lived, even when it
-    does not fall a victim to accidents. In accordance with the
-    provisions of nature, it prepares for early death by bearing seeds
-    when only five or six feet high. The cones act as storing places for
-    seed, sometimes during the whole life of the tree. Thus a knobcone
-    pine may hold in its tightly closed cones the seeds produced during
-    the tree's whole life. When death overtakes it, the cones open and
-    scatter the seeds. The accumulated crops may total three or four
-    pounds of seeds. Fire usually kills the trees, but the heat is
-    generally not sufficient to burn the cones. When they open soon
-    after the fire has passed, they find a bared mineral soil ready to
-    receive them. The knobcone pine lives in adversity and usually dies
-    by violence.
-
-    ARIZONA PINE (_Pinus arizonica_). This tree is confined to the
-    mountains of southern Arizona at from 6,000 to 8,000 feet above sea
-    level. It is the prevailing pine near the summit of the Santa
-    Catalina mountains. Much of the timber is of small size and yields
-    only inferior lumber; but when larger trunks are obtainable, the
-    lumber grades with western yellow pine, and goes to market with it.
-    Arizona pine is medium light, soft, not strong, rather brittle, of
-    slow growth, with the summerwood comparatively broad and very
-    resinous; color, light red or often yellow, the sapwood lighter
-    yellow or white. The leaves are in clusters of five and are tufted
-    at the ends of the branches. They are from five to seven inches
-    long, and are deciduous the third year.
-
-    DWARF JUNIPER (_Juniperus communis_) is an interesting tree because
-    its range practically runs round the world in the north temperate
-    and frigid zones, but in the United States the only reported use of
-    the wood is in southern Illinois where it grows on the limestone
-    hills and is occasionally cut for fence posts. In nearly all other
-    parts of its range in this country it is little more than a shrub.
-    Some trees with a spread of limbs twenty feet across are only three
-    or four feet high. The seeds mature slowly, not ripening until the
-    third year; and they often hang a year or two after ripening. The
-    wood is narrow-ringed, hard, very durable in contact with the soil,
-    of light brown color, with pale sapwood. In Europe the aromatic
-    fruit of this tree is used in large quantities to flavor gin, but
-    there is no report that it has been so employed in this country. In
-    the United States it occurs in Pennsylvania and northward, and
-    northward from Illinois, and throughout the Rocky Mountains north of
-    Texas. It occurs on the Pacific coast north of California. It grows
-    from Greenland to Alaska, and through Siberia, and northern Europe.
-
-    DROOPING JUNIPER (_Juniperus flaccida_) is confined in the United
-    States to the Chisos mountains in western Texas, but grows in
-    Mexico. The tree attains a height of thirty feet and a diameter of
-    one. Its name refers to its graceful branches. It has been planted
-    in this country less than in southern Europe and northern Africa.
-    The bark is light cinnamon-brown, and easily separates in loose,
-    papery scales. The lumberman will never go far to procure drooping
-    juniper logs. They are too small, scarce, and of form too poor. The
-    wood has the usual characteristics of the junipers which grow in
-    western mountains. It looks more like alligator juniper than any
-    other. In Texas it goes to the lathe to be manufactured into
-    candlesticks, pin boxes, picture molding, and other articles of
-    turnery.
-
-    UTAH JUNIPER (_Juniperus utahensis_) is known also as juniper,
-    desert juniper, and western red cedar. The last name is properly
-    applied to a different tree in Washington and Oregon. The Utah
-    juniper occupies the great basin between the Rocky Mountains and the
-    Sierra Nevadas, particularly in Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona,
-    and Colorado. It thrives best about 8,000 feet above the sea, but
-    descends to 5,000 feet or less. It is a desert tree, usually small,
-    often a mere shrub, but occasionally attaining a height of twenty
-    feet or more and a diameter of one or two. The trunk is irregular in
-    shape, and is generally deeply fluted. The wood is light brown in
-    color, though it varies greatly in different specimens, and even in
-    the same tree. The sapwood is thick and nearly white. The tree has
-    not been much used except for fence posts and fuel. The Indians of
-    the region eat the berries raw or bake them in cakes.
-
-
-
-
-INDEX TO COMMON NAMES
-
-
-  Acacia, 535
-  African mahogany, 463
-  Ailanthus, 676
-  Alaska cypress, 121
-  Alaska pine, 193
-  Alder, 589
-  Algaroba, 559
-  Alleghany sloe, 622
-  Alligator juniper, 111
-  Alligator wood, 325
-  Almondleaf willow, 471
-  Aloe-leaf yucca, 693
-  Alpine fir, 166
-  Alpine larch, 88
-  Alpine spruce, 195
-  Alpine western spruce, 196
-  Alpine whitebark pine, 37
-  Alternate-leaved dogwood, 526
-  Alvord oak, 220
-  Amabilis fir, 165
-  American apple, 553
-  American arborvitæ, 97
-  American ash, 409
-  American crab, 453
-  American fringe, 700
-  American holly, 643
-  American larch, 80
-  American linden, 637
-  American planertree, 397
-  American smoke-tree, 697
-  Andromeda, 526
-  Angelica-tree, 676
-  Ant's wood, 696
-  Apple haw, 459
-  Arborvitæ, 97
-  Arizona cork fir, 154
-  Arizona cypress, 142
-  Arizona madrona, 663
-  Arizona palm, 693
-  Arizona pine, 705
-  Arizona spruce, 135
-  Arizona sycamore, 610
-  Arizona white oak, 218
-  Arrow-wood, 507
-  Ash-leaved maple, 445
-  Aspen, 667, 675
-  Aspen-leaf, 675
-  August plum, 621
-
-  Bald cypress, 139
-  Balm of Gilead, 145, 667, 673
-  Balm of Gilead fir, 145
-  Balsam, 135, 136, 151, 166, 673
-  Balsam fir, 145, 151, 159
-  Balsam poplar, 673
-  Baltimore oak, 205
-  Banana, 640
-  Baretta, 699
-  Barren oak, 316
-  Barren scrub oak, 283
-  Bartram oak, 322
-  Basket elm, 393
-  Basket oak, 208, 229
-  Basket willow, 472
-  Basswood, 637
-  Bat-tree, 494
-  Bayberry, 698
-  Bay poplar, 337
-  Bay tree, 529
-  Beaded locust, 555
-  Bearberry, 646, 698
-  Bear oak, 315
-  Bearwood, 698
-  Beaver-tree, 495
-  Bebb willow, 471
-  Beech, 625
-  Beetree, 637
-  Bell-tree, 601
-  Bellwood, 602
-  Berlandier ash, 418
-  Big buckeye, 649
-  Big-bud, 363
-  Big-bud hickory, 363
-  Bigcone pine, 68
-  Bigcone spruce, 172
-  Big cottonwood, 667
-  Bigelow willow, 472
-  Big hickory nut, 363
-  Big laurel, 494
-  Bigleaf laurel, 507
-  Bigleaf maple, 439
-  Big pine, 31
-  Big shellbark, 369
-  Bigtree, 175
-  Big white birch, 583
-  Biltmore ash, 424
-  Birch, 565
-  Bird cherry, 619
-  Bishop's pine, 69
-  Bitter cherry, 616
-  Bitter hickory, 361
-  Bitternut, 367
-  Bitternut hickory, 361
-  Bitter pecan, 361, 375
-  Bitter walnut, 361
-  Bitter waternut, 374
-  Bitterwood, 676
-  Black ash, 415, 416, 423, 445
-  Blackbark pine, 75
-  Black birch, 565, 577, 580
-  Black calabash, 475
-  Black cherry, 613
-  Black cottonwood, 667, 669, 679
-  Black gum, 159, 331
-  Black haw, 460
-  Black hickory, 364, 367, 696, 699
-  Black ironwood, 700
-  Black jack, 283
-  Black jack oak, 291
-  Black larch, 80
-  Black limetree, 637
-  Black locust, 535, 541
-  Black mangrove, 688
-  Black maple, 447
-  Black mulberry, 513
-  Black oak, 259, 260, 271, 277
-  Black olivetree, 688
-  Black pine, 63, 67, 70, 75
-  Black poplar, 681
-  Black slash pine, 55
-  Black sloe, 621
-  Black spruce, 129
-  Black thorn, 459
-  Blacktree, 688
-  Black walnut, 343
-  Black willow, 469
-  Black wood, 688
-  Bleeding-heart tree, 500
-  Blister pine, 145, 151
-  Blue ash, 417, 422
-  Blue beech, 627
-  Blue birch, 565, 577, 585
-  Blue blossoms, 698
-  Blue dogwood, 526
-  Blue elder, 700
-  Blue jack oak, 285
-  Blue myrtle, 698
-  Blue oak, 205, 213, 226
-  Blue spruce, 136
-  Bluet, 508
-  Bluewood, 700
-  Bodark, 511
-  Bodock, 511
-  Bog spruce, 130
-  Bois d'arc, 511
-  Bois inconnu, 405
-  Bottom shellbark, 369
-  Bow-wood, 511
-  Box elder, 445, 601
-  Box oak, 223
-  Box white oak, 223
-  Boxwood, 523
-  Bracted fir, 157
-  Brash oak, 223
-  Brewer oak, 220
-  Bristlecone fir, 171
-  Bristlecone pine, 19, 38
-  Broadfruit yucca, 693
-  Broadleaf maple, 439
-  Broadleaf willow, 472
-  Broom hickory, 367
-  Brown ash, 423
-  Brown hickory, 367
-  Brown pine, 43
-  Buckeye, 649
-  Buckthorn bumelia, 696
-  Buckwheat-tree, 502
-  Bullace plum, 621
-  Bull bay, 494
-  Bull pine, 49, 75
-  Bumwood, 697
-  Burning bush, 499
-  Burnwood, 502
-  Bur oak, 211
-  Bustic, 696
-  Butternut, 349
-  Buttonball, 607
-  Buttonwood, 607
-
-  Cabbage palmetto, 691
-  Cabbage-tree, 691
-  Cactus, 693
-  Cajeput, 529
-  Calico-bush, 505
-  Calicowood, 601
-  California bay tree, 529
-  California black oak, 285
-  California blue oak, 229
-  California box elder, 447
-  California buckeye, 649, 651
-  California chestnut oak, 313
-  California coffee, 698
-  California fan palm, 693
-  California hemlock spruce, 193
-  California holly, 645
-  California juniper, 112
-  California laurel, 529, 655
-  California live oak, 307
-  California nutmeg, 201
-  California olive, 529
-  California post cedar, 109
-  California red bud, 549
-  California red fir, 164
-  California sassafras, 529
-  California scrub oak, 237
-  California swamp pine, 69
-  California sycamore, 609
-  California tanbark oak, 313
-  California walnut, 351
-  California white oak, 249
-  California white pine, 67
-  Canada plum, 621
-  Canadian Judas tree, 548
-  Canadian red pine, 61
-  Canoe birch, 583
-  Canoe cedar, 115
-  Canoewood, 487
-  Canotia, 699
-  Canyon birch, 580
-  Canyon live oak, 308
-  Carolina cherry, 620
-  Carolina hemlock, 703
-  Carolina pine, 49
-  Carolina poplar, 667
-  Cascara buckthorn, 698
-  Cascara sagrada, 698
-  Catalpa, 475
-  Catawba, 475
-  Catawba rhododendron, 507
-  Cat spruce, 130
-  Cedar, 91, 97, 109, 118
-  Cedar elm, 380, 392
-  Cedar pine, 57
-  Cereuses, 693
-  Chalky leucæna, 562
-  Chapman oak, 208
-  Chattahoochee pine, 202
-  Check pine, 70
-  Checkered-barked juniper, 111
-  Cherry birch, 565, 580
-  Chestnut, 631
-  Chestnut oak, 241, 313
-  Chickasaw plum, 622
-  Chihuahua pine, 76
-  Chinaberry, 665
-  China-tree, 664
-  Chinquapin, 634
-  Chinquapin oak, 247
-  Chittamwood, 602
-  Cholla, 691
-  Cigartree, 476
-  Cinnamon bark, 701
-  Cinnamon oak, 286
-  Clammy locust, 537
-  Cliff elm, 385
-  Cockspur, 459
-  Cocoa plum, 622
-  Coffeebean, 547
-  Coffee-berry, 698
-  Coffeenut, 547
-  Coffeetree, 547
-  Colorado blue spruce, 136
-  Common catalpa, 475, 477
-  Common thorn, 459
-  Cornel, 523
-  Coral bean, 554
-  Coral sumach, 697
-  Cork-barked Douglas spruce, 169
-  Cork elm, 380, 385, 399
-  Cork pine, 19
-  Corkwood, 423
-  Corky elm, 399
-  Cotton gum, 337
-  Cottonwood, 667, 673
-  Cotton-tree, 667
-  Coulter pine, 68
-  Cowlicks, 604
-  Cow oak, 229
-  Crab, 453
-  Crab apple, 453
-  Crabwood, 701
-  Crack willow, 472
-  Creeping pine, 37
-  Cuban pine, 45
-  Cucumber, 481
-  Cucumber tree, 487
-  Currant-tree, 451
-  Custard apple, 640
-  Cut-leaved maple, 445
-  Cypress, 70, 139
-
-  Dahoon holly, 645
-  Darling plum, 700
-  Darlington oak, 295
-  Date plum, 517
-  Deciduous holly, 646
-  Deer tongue, 507
-  Delmar pine, 64
-  Desert juniper, 705
-  Desert willow, 477
-  Devil's claw, 544
-  Devil's tongue cactus, 694
-  Devilwood, 700
-  Digger pine, 75
-  Dilly, 696
-  Doctor gum, 697
-  Dogwood, 523
-  Double fir, 151
-  Double spruce, 130
-  Douglas fir, 169
-  Douglas spruce, 169
-  Douglas-tree, 169
-  Down-cone, 166
-  Downy basswood, 639
-  Downy-cone subalpine fir, 166
-  Downy poplar, 669
-  Drooping juniper, 705
-  Drummond maple, 436
-  Duck oak, 320
-  Durand oak, 208
-  Dwarf ash, 412
-  Dwarf chestnut oak, 247
-  Dwarf cypress, 184
-  Dwarf juniper, 705
-  Dwarf maple, 442, 446
-  Dwarf marine pine, 69
-  Dwarf rose bay, 507
-  Dwarf sumach, 696
-  Dwarf walnut, 351
-  Dyer's oak, 271
-
-  Ebony, 517
-  Elder, 700
-  Elderleaf ash, 416
-  Emory oak, 238
-  Engelmann oak, 231
-  Engelmann spruce, 135
-  English cornel, 526
-  English dogwood, 526
-  English hawthorn, 460
-  European alder, 592
-  Evergreen buckthorn, 698
-  Evergreen cherry, 620
-  Evergreen magnolia, 481, 493
-  Eysenhardtia, 526
-
-  False acacia, 535
-  False box-dogwood, 523
-  False mahogany, 531
-  False shagbark, 346
-  Fanleaf palm, 693
-  Farkleberry, 508
-  Fat pine, 43
-  Feather-cone red fir, 157
-  Feather-leaf, 97
-  Fetid buckeye, 651
-  Fetid yew, 202
-  Fighting wood, 199
-  Finger-cone pine, 25
-  Fir balsam, 151
-  Fire cherry, 619
-  Firewood, 502
-  Fir pine, 145
-  Florida ash, 412
-  Florida basswood, 639
-  Florida boxwood, 501
-  Florida buttonwood, 688
-  Florida cat's claw, 538
-  Florida mahogany, 531
-  Florida maple, 435
-  Florida pine, 43
-  Florida torreya, 202
-  Florida yew, 201
-  Flowering ash, 700
-  Flowering cornel, 523
-  Flowering dogwood, 523
-  Flowering willow, 477
-  Forked-leaf black jack, 283
-  Forked-leaf oak, 217, 283
-  Forked-leaf white oak, 217
-  Four-winged halesia, 601
-  Foxtail pine, 19, 38, 39
-  Fragrant crab, 453
-  Fraser fir, 151
-  Fraser umbrella, 481, 495
-  Fremont cottonwood, 667, 670
-  Fremontia, 400
-  Frijolito, 554
-  Fringe ash, 412
-  Fringetree, 700
-
-  Gambel oak, 214
-  Garden wild plum, 622
-  Georgia oak, 267
-  Georgia pine, 43
-  Giant arborvitæ, 115
-  Giant cactus, 693
-  Gigantic cedar, 115
-  Glaucous willow, 472
-  Glossyleaf willow, 496
-  Golden cup oak, 308
-  Golden fir, 164
-  Goldenleaf chinquapin, 633
-  Gooseberry, 508
-  Goose plum, 621, 622
-  Gopherwood, 553
-  Gowen cypress, 184
-  Grand fir, 163
-  Gray birch, 585
-  Gray elm, 380
-  Gray pine, 75
-  Great California fir, 163
-  Great laurel, 494, 505
-  Great western larch, 86
-  Green ash, 422
-  Greenbark acacia, 555
-  Green osier, 526
-  Gregg ash, 411
-  Guayacon, 698
-  Gum, 325
-  Gumbo limbo, 676
-  Gum elastic, 696
-  Gum stretch it, 696
-  Gum-tree, 325
-  Gyminda, 49
-
-  Hackberry, 403
-  Hackmatack, 80, 86
-  Hack-tree, 403
-  Hairy balm of Gilead, 674
-  Hardbark hickory, 363
-  Hardhack, 595
-  Hard maple, 427
-  Hard pine, 43, 61, 63
-  Hardshell, 363
-  Hardwoods, 4
-  Hardy catalpa, 475
-  Haw, 459
-  Hawthorn, 459
-  Healing balsam, 151
-  Heart-leaved thorn, 460
-  Heart pine, 43
-  Heartwood, 5
-  Heavy pine, 67
-  Heavy-wooded pine, 67
-  Hedge, 511
-  Hedge-tree, 511
-  Hemlock, 187
-  Hemlock spruce, 187, 193, 195
-  Hercules' club, 676, 699
-  Hickory, 357
-  Hickory elm, 385
-  Hickory oak, 308
-  Hickory pine, 38, 52
-  Hickory poplar, 487
-  High-ground willow oak, 286
-  Highland oak, 296
-  Hog haw, 459
-  Hog plum, 621, 697
-  Holly, 643
-  Hollyleaf cherry, 616
-  Honey locust, 535, 541, 559
-  Honey-shucks locust, 541
-  Honey pod, 559
-  Hooker's oak, 249
-  Hooker willow, 472
-  Hoop ash, 403, 415
-  Hooptree, 415
-  Hop hornbeam, 595
-  Hoptree, 699
-  Hornbeam, 595, 627
-  Horsebean, 549
-  Horse chestnut, 651
-  Horse plum, 621
-  Huajillo, 538
-  Huckleberry, 508
-  Huckleberry oak, 309
-
-  Incense cedar, 109
-  Indian bean, 476
-  Indian cherry, 451
-  Indian pear, 451
-  Indigo thorn, 556
-  Inkwood, 700
-  Iowa crab, 454
-  Iron oak, 223, 308
-  Ironwood, 501, 502, 559, 595, 627, 696
-  Ivy, 505
-
-  Jack oak, 319
-  Jack pine, 69
-  Jamaica dogwood, 526, 550
-  Jeffrey pine, 75
-  Jersey pine, 57
-  Joewood, 701
-  Joshua-tree, 693
-  Judas tree, 548
-  June berry, 451
-  Juniper, 70, 91, 99, 109, 118, 706
-  Juniper-bush, 91
-  Juniper cedar, 99
-  Juniper tree, 403
-
-  Kalmia, 505
-  Kenai birch, 565, 585
-  Kingnut, 369
-  Kingstree, 51
-  Knobcone pine, 704
-  Knowlton hornbeam, 598
-  K[oe]berlinia, 697
-
-  Lanceleaf alder, 592
-  Lanceleaf cottonwood, 667, 670
-  Lancewood, 657
-  Larch, 79, 165
-  Large buckeye, 649
-  Largeleaf umbrella, 481, 483
-  Large poplar, 675
-  Largetooth aspen, 667, 675
-  Laurel, 494, 505, 507, 529
-  Laurel bay, 494
-  Laurel cherry, 620
-  Laurel-leaved magnolia, 494
-  Laurel oak, 295, 319
-  Laurel tree, 531
-  Lea oak, 292
-  Leatherleaf ash, 418
-  Leatherwood, 400, 502
-  Leucæna, 562
-  Leverwood, 595
-  Lignum-vitæ, 698
-  Lilac, 698
-  Limber pine, 19, 703
-  Limber-twig pine, 703
-  Linn, 637
-  Liquid-amber, 325
-  Little shagbark, 346
-  Little sugar pine, 25
-  Little walnut, 351
-  Live oak, 253, 313
-  Loblolly pine, 55
-  Locust, 535
-  Lodgepole pine, 73
-  Logwood, 700
-  Lombardy poplar, 682
-  Longcone pine, 68
-  Longleaf pine, 43
-  Longleaf service, 452
-  Longleaf willow, 496
-  Longleaved pine, 63
-  Longschat, 63
-  Longshucks pine, 55
-  Longstalk willow, 471
-  Longstraw pine, 55
-  Lovely fir, 165
-  Lovely red fir, 165
-  Lowland spruce pine, 51
-  Low maple, 435
-  Lyall willow, 496
-  Lynn, 637
-
-  Mackenzie willow, 472
-  Macnab cypress, 178
-  Madrona, 661
-  Magnificent fir, 164
-  Magnolia, 494
-  Mahogany, 463, 547
-  Mahogany birch, 565
-  Manchineel, 701
-  Mangrove, 685
-  Manzanita, 663
-  Maple, 439
-  Marlberry, 701
-  Mastic, 696
-  Maul oak, 308
-  May cherry, 451
-  May haw, 459
-  Meadow pine, 45, 55
-  Menzies' spruce, 133
-  Mesquite, 559, 562
-  Mexican cottonwood, 667, 669
-  Mexican elder, 700
-  Mexican madrona, 663
-  Mexican mulberry, 514
-  Mexican palmetto, 692
-  Mexican persimmon, 517
-  Mexican pinon, 19, 33, 704
-  Mexican walnut, 351
-  Mexican white pine, 19
-  Michaux basswood, 639
-  Mimosa, 562
-  Minor species, 695
-  Missouri willow, 473
-  Mocker nut, 356, 363
-  Mocker nut hickory, 363
-  Mock olive, 620
-  Mock orange, 511, 620
-  Mohave yucca, 693
-  Monterey cypress, 141
-  Monterey pine, 69
-  Moose elm, 391
-  Moose maple, 435
-  Morehus oak, 297
-  Mountain alder, 592
-  Mountain ash, 411, 454, 675
-  Mountain balsam, 151, 166
-  Mountain birch, 580
-  Mountain cedar, 111
-  Mountain elm, 399
-  Mountain hemlock, 195
-  Mountain holly, 645
-  Mountain ivy, 505
-  Mountain juniper, 99
-  Mountain laurel, 505, 529
-  Mountain mahogany, 199, 465
-  Mountain manchineel, 697
-  Mountain maple, 435, 441
-  Mountain pine, 25
-  Mountain spruce, 135
-  Mountain white oak, 213
-  Mulberry, 513
-  Myrtleberry, 508
-  Myrtle-tree, 529
-  Myrtle oak, 297
-
-  Naked-wood, 698
-  Narrowberry, 699
-  Narrowcone pine, 704
-  Narrowleaf cottonwood, 667, 669
-  Narrowleaf crab, 453
-  Narrowleaf willow, 496
-  Native plum, 621
-  Necklace poplar, 667
-  Netleaf oak, 219
-  Nettle-tree, 403
-  New England boxwood, 523
-  Newcastle thorn, 459
-  New Mexican locust, 537
-  New Mexican pinon, 28
-  Noble fir, 157
-  Nootka cypress, 121
-  North American red spruce, 127
-  North Carolina pine, 49
-  North Carolina shagbark hickory, 376
-  Northern cork elm, 385
-  Northern spruce pine, 19
-  Northern white cedar, 97
-  Norway pine, 61
-  Nutmeg hickory, 374
-  Nutpine, 28, 33, 68, 704
-  Nuttall willow, 472
-
-  Oak-barked cedar, 111
-  Obispo pine, 69
-  Ohio buckeye, 649, 651
-  Old-field birch, 585
-  Old-field pine, 49
-  Old man's beard, 700
-  Olivetree, 337
-  One-berry, 403
-  One-seed juniper, 99
-  Opossum wood, 601
-  Opuntias, 694
-  Oregon ash, 421
-  Oregon balsam, 166
-  Oregon crabapple, 454
-  Oregon fir, 163
-  Oregon maple, 439
-  Oregon oak, 235
-  Oregon pine, 169
-  Oregon white oak, 235
-  Oreodaphne, 529
-  Osage apple tree, 511
-  Osage orange, 511
-  Osier willow, 496
-  Overcup oak, 217, 223
-
-  Pacific post oak, 235
-  Pacific yew, 199
-  Pale-leaf hickory, 345
-  Palmer oak, 310
-  Palms, 691
-  Palmetto, 691
-  Palo blanco, 406
-  Palo verde, 556
-  Paper birch, 565, 583
-  Paper mulberry, 514
-  Paradise-tree, 676
-  Parry nut pine, 19, 704
-  Parry pinon, 703
-  Parry's spruce, 136
-  Patton's spruce, 196
-  Peach oak, 313
-  Pea-flower locust, 535
-  Peawood, 602
-  Pear haw, 459
-  Pear thorn, 459
-  Pecan, 357, 373
-  Pecan nut, 373
-  Pecan tree, 373
-  Persimmon, 517
-  Pessimin, 517
-  Pigeonberry, 452, 526
-  Pigeon cherry, 619
-  Pignut, 356, 361, 367
-  Pignut hickory, 367
-  Pig walnut, 361
-  Pin cherry, 619
-  Pine, 19
-  Pink locust, 555
-  Pin oak, 208, 247, 301
-  Pinon, 19, 28
-  Pinon pine, 28, 33
-  Pin thorn, 459
-  Pitch pine, 43, 45, 49, 63
-  Planertree, 397
-  Plane-tree, 607
-  Plum, 621, 622
-  Poison dogwood, 697
-  Poison elder, 697
-  Poison ivy, 505
-  Poison laurel, 505
-  Poison oak, 697
-  Poison sumach, 697
-  Poisontree, 697
-  Poisonwood, 697, 701
-  Pond apple, 640
-  Pond cypress, 141
-  Pond pine, 57
-  Poorfield pine, 49
-  Poor pine, 51
-  Poplar, 487, 673
-  Poplar-leaved birch, 585
-  Popple, 487, 675
-  Poppy ash, 424
-  Possum haw, 646
-  Possum oak, 320
-  Possumwood, 517
-  Port Orford cedar, 123
-  Post cedar, 103, 109
-  Post locust, 535
-  Post oak, 223
-  Poverty birch, 585
-  Powcohiscora, 355
-  Price oak, 315
-  Pricklecone pine, 69, 704
-  Prickly ash, 699
-  Prickly pine, 52
-  Prickly spruce, 136
-  Prince's pine, 70
-  Puget sound pine, 169
-  Pumpkin ash, 423
-  Pumpkin pine, 19
-  Pumpkin-tree, 166
-  Punk oak, 320
-  Purple buckeye, 649, 652
-  Purple dogwood, 526
-  Purple haw, 700
-  Pyramidal magnolia, 481, 496
-
-  Quaking asp, 675
-  Quinine-tree, 699
-
-  Rattlebox, 601
-  Red alder, 589
-  Red ash, 423
-  Redbark fir, 164
-  Redbark pine, 75
-  Red bay, 531
-  Red-berried elder, 700
-  Red birch, 577
-  Red-bract dogwood, 526
-  Redbud, 548
-  Red cedar, 91, 109
-  Red elm, 393, 399
-  Red fir, 157, 164, 169
-  Red gum, 325
-  Red haw, 457, 459, 460
-  Redheart hickory, 357
-  Red hickory, 363
-  Red ironwood, 700
-  Red larch, 80
-  Red locust, 535
-  Red maple, 433
-  Red mulberry, 513
-  Red oak, 259, 265, 277, 280, 289
-  Red pine, 61, 169
-  Red plum, 621
-  Red silver fir, 165
-  Red spruce, 127
-  Red thorn, 458
-  Red titi, 502
-  Red willow, 496
-  Redwood, 181
-  Retama, 549
-  Rhododendron, 507
-  River ash, 423
-  River birch, 565, 577
-  River cottonwood, 667
-  Rock chestnut oak, 241
-  Rock elm, 380, 385
-  Rock maple, 427
-  Rock oak, 241
-  Rocky Mountain juniper, 124
-  Rocky Mountain oak, 219, 226
-  Rocky Mountain white pine, 703
-  Rose bay, 507
-  Rosemary pine, 49, 55
-  Royal palm, 692
-  Rum cherry, 603
-  Rusty nannyberry, 700
-
-  Sadler oak, 220
-  Saffron plum, 696
-  Salad-tree, 548
-  Sandbar willow, 496
-  Sand jack, 286
-  Sand pine, 46
-  Sapwood pine, 75
-  Sargent palm, 692
-  Sarvice, 451
-  Sassafac, 655
-  Sassafas, 655
-  Sassafrac, 655
-  Sassafras, 655
-  Satinleaf, 696
-  Satin walnut, 325
-  Satinwood, 699
-  Savice, 451, 452
-  Savin, 91
-  Saxifrax, 655
-  Scaly bark hickory, 357
-  Scarlet haw, 457
-  Scarlet maple, 433
-  Scarlet oak, 277
-  Schott cactus, 694
-  Schott yucca, 693
-  Screwbean, 562
-  Screw-pod, 562
-  Scrub oak, 220, 247, 283
-  Scrub pine, 37, 57, 70
-  Seaside alder, 592
-  Second growth, 357
-  Serviceberry, 451
-  Service-tree, 451
-  Shadberry, 451
-  Shagbark hickory, 355, 357
-  Shasta red fir, 165
-  Shawneewood, 476
-  She balsam, 151
-  Sheepberry, 699, 700
-  Sheepbush, 554
-  Sheep laurel, 505
-  Shellbark, 356, 357
-  Shellbark hickory, 369
-  Shingle cedar, 115
-  Shingle oak, 301, 319
-  Shin oak, 208, 286
-  Shoepeg maple, 433
-  Short-flower mahogany, 466
-  Shortleaf pine, 49
-  Shortleaved pine, 57
-  Shortshat, 49
-  Shrub willow, 496
-  Sierra brownbark pine, 67
-  Silktop palmetto, 692
-  Silky willow, 472
-  Silverbell tree, 601, 604
-  Silver fir, 159, 163, 165
-  Silverleaf willow, 471
-  Silver-leaved maple, 429
-  Silver maple, 429
-  Silver pine, 145
-  Silver spruce, 136, 145
-  Silvertop palmetto, 692
-  Singleleaf pinon, 19, 701
-  Single spruce, 130
-  Sir Joseph Banks' pine, 70
-  Slash pine, 45, 49, 55
-  Sitka alder, 592
-  Sitka spruce, 133
-  Skunk spruce, 130
-  Slippery elm, 380, 391, 400
-  Sloe, 699
-  Small buckeye, 649, 652
-  Small fruit mountain ash, 454
-  Small-leaf elm, 399
-  Small-leaf horsebean, 549
-  Small laurel, 505
-  Small pignut, 346
-  Small pignut hickory, 346
-  Small white birch, 585
-  Smooth cypress, 142
-  Smoothleaf willow, 471
-  Snowdrop-tree, 601, 603
-  Soapberry, 465
-  Soap-tree, 465
-  Soft maple, 429
-  Soft pine, 19, 25
-  Softwoods, 4
-  Soledad pine, 64
-  Sonora ironwood, 568
-  Sophora, 555
-  Sorrel-tree, 507
-  Soulard crab, 454
-  Sour gum, 337, 339, 507
-  Sour gum bush, 507
-  Sour tupelo, 339
-  Sourwood, 507
-  Southern basswood, 639
-  Southern mountain pine, 52
-  Southern red juniper, 94
-  Southern red oak, 265
-  Southern white cedar, 103
-  Southern yellow pine, 43
-  Spanish bayonet, 693
-  Spanish dagger, 693
-  Spanish moss, 256
-  Spanish oak, 200, 277, 289
-  Spanish red oak, 289
-  Sparkleberry, 508
-  Spice-tree, 529
-  Spoon-hutch, 507
-  Spoonwood, 505
-  Springwood, 7
-  Spotted oak, 266, 271, 320
-  Spruce, 127, 169
-  Spruce pine, 45, 49, 51, 57, 187
-  Spruce-tree, 187
-  Stackpole pine, 151
-  Stagbush, 699
-  Staghorn sumach, 697
-  Star-leaved gum, 325
-  Stave oak, 205
-  Stiffness of wood, 11
-  Sting-tongue, 699
-  Stinking ash, 445
-  Stinking buckeye, 651
-  Stinking cedar, 201, 202
-  Stinking savin, 202
-  Strength of wood, 11
-  Striped maple, 447
-  Stone-seed Mexican pinon, 33
-  Stump tree, 547
-  Sugar ash, 445
-  Sugarberry, 403, 405, 406
-  Sugar maple, 427
-  Sugar pine, 19, 31
-  Sugar-tree, 427
-  Sumach, 696
-  Summer haw, 458
-  Summerwood, 7
-  Sunflower-tree, 700
-  Sun-loving pine, 704
-  Sunny-slope pine, 704
-  Swamp ash, 416, 422
-  Swamp bay, 531
-  Swamp cedar, 103
-  Swamp chestnut oak, 229
-  Swamp cottonwood, 667, 669
-  Swamp hickory, 361, 375
-  Swamp holly, 646
-  Swamp laurel, 495
-  Swamp magnolia, 495
-  Swamp maple, 429, 433
-  Swamp oak, 225, 249, 301
-  Swamp poplar, 669
-  Swamp sassafras, 495
-  Swamp Spanish oak, 301
-  Swamp tupelo, 337
-  Swamp white oak, 217, 229
-  Swampy chestnut oak, 241
-  Sweet bay, 531
-  Sweet birch, 565, 580
-  Sweet crab, 453
-  Sweet gum, 325
-  Sweet locust, 541
-  Sweet magnolia, 481, 495
-  Sweet scented crab, 453
-  Switch-bud hickory, 367
-  Sycamore, 397, 607
-
-  Table mountain pine, 52
-  Tacamahac, 673
-  Tamarack, 79, 86
-  Tanbark oak, 241, 271
-  Tassajo, 694
-  Tear-blanket, 699
-  Texan ebony, 538
-  Texan red oak, 265
-  Texas ash, 411
-  Texas buckeye, 649
-  Texas cottonwood, 667, 669
-  Texas flowering willow, 477
-  Texas redbud, 549
-  Texas umbrella-tree, 465
-  Thick shellbark, 369
-  Thomas elm, 385
-  Thorn apple, 459
-  Thorn bush, 459
-  Thorn locust, 541
-  Thorn plum, 459
-  Thorn-tree, 541
-  Thorny acacia, 541
-  Thorny locust, 541
-  Three-leaved maple, 445
-  Three-thorned acacia, 541
-  Thunderwood, 697
-  Thurber cactus, 694
-  Tideland spruce, 133
-  Tisswood, 602
-  Titi, 502, 526
-  Toothache-tree, 699
-  Torch pine, 55
-  Torchwood, 699
-  Tornillo, 562
-  Torrey pine, 64
-  Tough bumelia, 696
-  Tourney oak, 315
-  Trask mahogany, 466
-  Tree huckleberry, 508
-  Tree myrtle, 698
-  Tree palmetto, 691
-  Tree yucca, 693
-  Trident oak, 292
-  Tuck-tuck, 157
-  Tulip poplar, 487
-  Tulip-tree, 487
-  Tupelo, 337
-  Turkey oak, 283, 286
-
-  Umbrella tree, 481, 484, 526
-  Upland hickory, 357
-  Upland willow, 285
-  Utah juniper, 706
-
-  Valley mahogany, 466
-  Valley oak, 249
-  Valparaiso oak, 308
-  Vauquelinia, 466
-  Vine maple, 441
-  Virgilia, 547
-  Virginia pine, 55
-  Virginia thorn, 460
-
-  Wadsworth oak, 225
-  Wafer ash, 699
-  Wahoo, 385, 399, 492, 499, 699
-  Wahoo elm, 399
-  Walnut, 343
-  Walnut-tree, 343
-  Washington haw, 460
-  Washington palm, 693
-  Washington pine, 193
-  Washington thorn, 460
-  Water ash, 422, 424, 445
-  Water beech, 607
-  Water birch, 577, 580
-  Water bitternut, 375
-  Water elm, 380
-  Water hickory, 375
-  Water maple, 429, 433, 435
-  Water oak, 295, 319, 320
-  Water Spanish oak, 301
-  Water white oak, 217
-  Weeping dogwood, 526
-  Weeping oak, 249
-  Weeping spruce, 136, 195
-  Weeping willow, 472
-  Western birch, 565, 579
-  Western black willow, 496
-  Western catalpa, 476
-  Western cedar, 115, 118
-  Western choke cherry, 616
-  Western dogwood, 525
-  Western hemlock, 193
-  Western hemlock fir, 193
-  Western hemlock spruce, 193
-  Western juniper, 118
-  Western larch, 85
-  Western plum, 621
-  Western red cedar, 115, 118, 706
-  Western serviceberry, 452
-  Western shellbark, 369
-  Western spruce, 133
-  Western sumach, 698
-  Western walnut, 351
-  Western white fir, 163
-  Western white oak, 235
-  Western white pine, 19, 25, 703
-  Western yellow pine,  67
-  Western yew, 199
-  West Indian birch, 676
-  West Indian cherry, 620
-  Weymouth pine, 19
-  Whiskey cherry, 613
-  Whistlewood, 637
-  White alder, 591
-  White Alaska birch, 565, 579
-  White ash, 409, 422, 700
-  White balsam, 159, 166
-  White bark, 37
-  Whitebark maple, 436
-  Whitebark pine, 19, 37
-  White basswood, 639
-  White bay, 495
-  White birch, 565, 579, 585
-  White buttonwood, 688
-  White cedar, 97, 103, 109
-  White cottonwood, 670
-  White elm, 379, 385, 397
-  Whiteheart hickory, 363
-  White hickory, 357, 361, 367
-  White fir, 159, 163, 166
-  White ironwood, 700
-  White laurel, 495
-  Whiteleaf oak, 273
-  White locust, 535
-  White mangrove, 688
-  White maple, 433, 439
-  White mulberry, 514
-  White oak, 205, 208, 213, 223, 235
-  White pine, 19, 51, 703
-  White poplar, 675, 682
-  White spruce, 130, 135, 136
-  White stem pine, 37
-  White thorn, 459
-  White titi, 502
-  White walnut, 355, 357
-  White willow, 472
-  Whitewood, 487, 667, 701
-  Wickup, 637
-  Wild apple, 454
-  Wild black cherry, 613
-  Wild cherry, 613, 619
-  Wild China, 465
-  Wild cinnamon, 701
-  Wild crab, 453
-  Wild date, 693
-  Wild lilac, 698
-  Wild lime, 699
-  Wild olive-tree, 337, 601
-  Wild orange, 620
-  Wild peach, 620
-  Wild plum, 621
-  Wild red cherry, 619
-  Wild rose bay, 507
-  Wild sapodilla, 696
-  Wild tamarind, 568
-  Wild thorn, 459
-  Williamson's spruce, 195
-  Willow, 469
-  Willow-leaf cherry, 620
-  Willow oak, 279, 295
-  Wing elm, 399
-  Witch elm, 399
-  Witch hazel, 328
-  Wood laurel, 505
-  Woolly oak, 315
-
-  Yaupon, 645
-  Yaupon holly, 645
-  Yellow ash, 553
-  Yellow bark oak, 271
-  Yellow basswood, 637
-  Yellow birch, 565, 571
-  Yellow buckeye, 649
-  Yellow buckthorn, 698
-  Yellow-butt oak, 271
-  Yellow cedar, 118, 121
-  Yellow chestnut oak, 247
-  Yellow cottonwood, 667
-  Yellow cypress, 121
-  Yellow fir, 163, 169
-  Yellow-leaf willow, 471
-  Yellow-flowered cucumber tree, 484
-  Yellow locust, 535, 553
-  Yellow oak, 247, 271
-  Yellow pine, 43, 63
-  Yellow plum, 621
-  Yellow poplar, 481, 487
-  Yellow spruce, 127
-  Yellow-wood, 511, 553, 698, 699
-  Yew, 199, 201
-  Yucca, 693
-
-
-
-
-INDEX TO LATIN NAMES
-
-
-  Abies amabilis, 165
-  Abies arizonica, 154
-  Abies balsamea, 145
-  Abies concolor, 159
-  Abies fraseri, 151
-  Abies grandis, 163
-  Abies lasiocarpa, 166
-  Abies magnifica, 164
-  Abies nobilis, 79, 157
-  Abies shastensis, 165
-  Abies venusta, 171
-  Acacia farnesiana, 543
-  Acacia greggii, 544
-  Acacia wrightii, 544
-  Acer circinatum, 441
-  Acer floridanum, 435
-  Acer glabrum, 442, 446
-  Acer leucoderme, 436
-  Acer macrophyllum, 439
-  Acer negundo, 445
-  Acer negundo californicum, 447
-  Acer nigrum, 447
-  Acer pennsylvanicum, 447
-  Acer rubrum, 433
-  Acer rubrum drummondii, 436
-  Acer saccharinum, 429
-  Acer saccharum, 427
-  Acer spicatum, 435
-  Æsculus austrina, 652
-  Æsculus californica, 651
-  Æsculus glabra, 651
-  Æsculus octandra, 649
-  Æsculus octandra hybrida, 652
-  Ailanthus glandulosa, 676
-  Alnus acuminata,592
-  Alnus glutinosa, 592
-  Alnus maritima, 592
-  Alnus oregona, 589
-  Alnus rhombifolia, 591
-  Alnus rugosa, 592
-  Alnus sitchensis, 592
-  Alnus tenuifolia, 596
-  Amelanchier alnifolia, 452
-  Amelanchier canadensis, 451
-  Amelanchier obovalis, 452
-  Amyris maritima, 699
-  Andromeda ferruginea, 526
-  Annona glabra, 640
-  Aralia spinosa, 675
-  Arbutus arizonica, 663
-  Arbutus menziesii, 661
-  Arbutus xalapensis, 663
-  Arctostaphylos manzanita, 663
-  Asimina triloba, 640
-  Avicennia nitida, 688
-
-  Betula alaskana, 579
-  Betula cærulea, 565, 585
-  Betula fontinalis, 565, 580
-  Betula kenaica, 565, 585
-  Betula lenta, 565
-  Betula lutea, 565, 571
-  Betula nigra, 565, 577
-  Betula occidentalis, 565, 579
-  Betula papyrifera, 565, 583
-  Betula pendula, 586
-  Betula populifolia, 565, 585
-  Broussonetia papyrifera, 514
-  Bumelia angustifolia, 696
-  Bumelia lanuginosa, 696
-  Bumelia lycioides, 696
-  Bumelia tenax, 696
-  Bursera simaruba, 677
-
-  Camæcyparis lawsoniana, 123
-  Camæcyparis nootkatensis, 121
-  Camæcyparis thyoides, 103
-  Canella winterana, 701
-  Canotia holacantha, 699
-  Carpinus caroliniana, 627
-  Castanea dentata, 631
-  Castanea pumila, 634
-  Castanopsis chrysophylla, 633
-  Catalpa catalpa, 475, 477
-  Catalpa speciosa, 475
-  Celastraceæ, 499
-  Celtis mississippiensis, 403, 405
-  Celtis occidentalis, 403
-  Celtis reticulata, 406
-  Cercidium floridum, 555
-  Cercidium torreyanum, 556
-  Cercis canadensis, 548
-  Cercis occidentalis, 549
-  Cercis reniformis, 549
-  Cercocarpus ledifolius, 466
-  Cercocarpus parvifolius, 466
-  Cercocarpus parvifolius breviflorus, 466
-  Cercocarpus traskiæ, 466
-  Cereus giganteus, 693
-  Cereus schottii, 694
-  Cereus thurberi, 694
-  Chilopsis linearis, 477
-  Chionanthus virginica, 700
-  Chrysobalanus icaco, 622
-  Chrysophyllum monopyrenum, 696
-  Cladrastis lutea, 553
-  Cleanothus arboreus, 698
-  Cleanothus thyrsiflorus, 698
-  Cliftonia monophylla, 502
-  Colubrina reclinata, 698
-  Condalia obovata, 700
-  Conocarpus erecta, 688
-  Cornus alternifolia, 526
-  Cornus florida, 523
-  Cornus florida pendula, 526
-  Cornus florida rubra, 526
-  Cornus nuttallii, 525
-  Cotinus cotinoides, 697
-  Cratægus, 457
-  Cratægus æstivalis, 458
-  Cratægus brachyacantha, 459
-  Cratægus coccinea, 457
-  Cratægus cordata, 460
-  Cratægus crus-galli, 459
-  Cratægus douglasii, 460
-  Cratægus oxyacantha, 460
-  Cratægus tomentosa, 459
-  Cupressus arizonica, 139, 142
-  Cupressus glabra, 139, 142
-  Cupressus goveniana, 139, 184
-  Cupressus macnabiana, 139, 178
-  Cupressus macrocarpa, 139, 141
-  Cupressus pygmæa, 139, 184
-  Cyrilla racemiflora, 501
-
-  Dalea spinosa, 556
-  Dendropogon usenoides, 256
-  Diospyros texana, 520
-  Diospyros virginiana, 517
-  Dipholis salicifolia, 696
-
-  Evonymus atropurpureus, 499
-  Exothea paniculata, 700
-  Eysenhardtia orthocarpa, 556
-
-  Fagus atropunicea, 625
-  Fraxinus americana, 409
-  Fraxinus anomala, 412
-  Fraxinus berlandieriana, 418
-  Fraxinus biltmoreana, 424
-  Fraxinus caroliniana, 424
-  Fraxinus cuspidata, 412
-  Fraxinus floridana, 424
-  Fraxinus greggii, 411
-  Fraxinus lanceolata, 422
-  Fraxinus nigra, 415
-  Fraxinus oregona, 421
-  Fraxinus pennsylvanica, 423
-  Fraxinus profunda, 423
-  Fraxinus quadrangulata, 417
-  Fraxinus texensis, 411
-  Fraxinus velutina, 418
-  Fremontodendron californicum, 400
-
-  Gaultheria procumbens, 566
-  Gleditsia aquatica, 543
-  Gleditsia texana, 543
-  Gleditsia triacanthos, 541
-  Guajacum sanctum, 698
-  Gyminda grisebachii, 490
-  Gymnanthes lucida, 701
-  Gymnocladus dioicus, 547
-
-  Hamamelis virginiana, 328
-  Helietta parvifolia, 699
-  Heteromeles arbutifolia, 645
-  Hicoria alba, 356, 363, 364
-  Hicoria aquatica, 375
-  Hicoria carolinæ-septentrionalis, 376
-  Hicoria glabra, 356, 361, 364, 367
-  Hicoria laciniosa, 369
-  Hicoria minima, 361, 364
-  Hicoria myristicæformis, 374
-  Hicoria odorata, 346
-  Hicoria ovata, 355, 356
-  Hicoria texana, 375
-  Hicoria villosa, 345
-  Hippomane mancinella, 701
-  Hypelate trifoliata, 700
-
-  Icacorea paniculata, 701
-  Ichthyomethia piscipula, 550
-  Ilex cassine, 645
-  Ilex cassine angustifolia, 645
-  Ilex decidua, 646
-  Ilex monticola, 645
-  Ilex myrtifolia, 645
-  Ilex opaca, 643
-  Ilex vomitoria, 645
-
-  Jaquinia armillaris, 701
-  Juglans californica, 351
-  Juglans cinerea, 359
-  Juglans nigra, 243
-  Juglans rupestris, 351
-  Juniperus barbadensis, 94
-  Juniperus californica, 112
-  Juniperus communis, 705
-  Juniperus flaccida, 705
-  Juniperus monosperma, 99
-  Juniperus occidentalis, 118
-  Juniperus pachyphl[oe]a, 111
-  Juniperus sabinoides, 99
-  Juniperus scopulorum, 124
-  Juniperus utahensis, 706
-  Juniperus virginiana, 91
-
-  Kalmia latifolia, 505, 655
-  Khaya senegalensis, 463
-  K[oe]berlinia spinosa, 695
-
-  Laguncularia racemosa, 688
-  Larix americana, 80
-  Larix laricina, 79
-  Larix lyallii, 88
-  Larix occidentalis, 85
-  Leitneria floridana, 423
-  Leucæna glauca, 562
-  Leucæna pulverulenta, 562
-  Libocedrus decurrens, 109
-  Liquidambar styraciflua, 325
-  Liriodendron tulipifera, 481
-  Lysiloma latisiliqua, 568
-
-  Magnolia acuminata, 481
-  Magnolia acuminata cordata, 484
-  Magnolia f[oe]tida, 481, 493
-  Magnolia fraseri, 481
-  Magnolia glauca, 481, 495
-  Magnolia macrophylla, 481, 483
-  Magnolia pyramidata, 481, 496
-  Magnolia tripetala, 481, 484
-  Malus angustifolia, 453
-  Malus coronaria, 453
-  Malus ioensis, 454
-  Malus malus, 454
-  Malus rivularis, 454
-  Malus soulardi, 454
-  Meliaceæ, 463
-  Melia azedarach, 464
-  Melia azedarach umbraculifera, 165
-  Mimusops sieberi, 696
-  Mohrodendron carolinum, 601
-  Mohrodendron dipterum, 601
-  Morus alba, 514
-  Morus celtidifolia, 514
-  Morus rubra, 513
-
-  Neowashingtonia filamentosa, 693
-  Nyssa aquatica, 337
-  Nyssa biflora, 340
-  Nyssa ogeche, 337, 339
-  Nyssa sylvatica, 337
-
-  Ocotea catesbyana, 657
-  Olneya tesota, 568
-  Opuntia fulgida, 694
-  Opuntia sponsior, 694
-  Opuntia versicolor, 694
-  Oreodoxa regia, 692
-  Osmanthus americanus, 700
-  Ostrya knowltoni, 598
-  Ostrya virginiana, 595
-  Oxydendrum arboreum, 507
-
-  Persea borbonia, 531
-  Persea pubescens, 532
-  Picea breweriana, 136
-  Picea canadensis, 130
-  Picea engelmanni, 135
-  Picea mariana, 129
-  Picea parryana, 136
-  Picea rubens, 127
-  Picea sitchensis, 133
-  Pinus albicaulis, 19, 37
-  Pinus aristata, 19, 38, 43
-  Pinus arizonica, 43, 705
-  Pinus attenuata, 704
-  Pinus balfouriana, 19, 38
-  Pinus cembroides, 19, 33
-  Pinus chihuahuana, 43, 76
-  Pinus clausa, 43, 46
-  Pinus contorta, 43, 73
-  Pinus coulteri, 43, 68
-  Pinus divaricata, 43, 69
-  Pinus echinata, 43, 49
-  Pinus edulis, 19, 28
-  Pinus flexilis, 19, 703
-  Pinus glabra, 43, 51
-  Pinus heterophylla, 43, 45
-  Pinus jeffreyi, 75
-  Pinus lambertiana, 19, 25, 31
-  Pinus monophylla, 19, 701
-  Pinus monticola, 19, 25
-  Pinus muricata, 43, 69
-  Pinus palustris, 43
-  Pinus ponderosa, 43, 67
-  Pinus pungens, 43, 52
-  Pinus quadrifolia, 19, 704
-  Pinus radiata, 43, 69
-  Pinus resinosa, 43, 61
-  Pinus rigida, 43, 63
-  Pinus sabiniana, 43, 75
-  Pinus serotina, 43, 57
-  Pinus strobiformis, 19, 27
-  Pinus strobus, 19, 25
-  Pinus tæda, 43, 55
-  Pinus torreyana, 43, 64
-  Pinus virginiana, 43, 57
-  Planera aquatica, 397
-  Platanus occidentalis, 607
-  Platanus racemosa, 609
-  Platanus wrightii, 610
-  Populus acuminata, 667, 670
-  Populus alba, 682
-  Populus angustifolia, 667, 669
-  Populus balsamifera, 667, 673
-  Populus balsamifera candicans, 673
-  Populus deltoides, 667
-  Populus fremontii, 667, 670
-  Populus grandidentata, 667, 675
-  Populus heterophylla, 667, 669
-  Populus mexicana, 667, 669
-  Populus nigra, 681
-  Populus nigra italica, 682
-  Populus tremuloides, 667, 676
-  Populus trichocarpa, 667, 669
-  Populus wislizeni, 667, 669
-  Parkinsonia aculeata, 549
-  Parkinsonia microphylla, 549
-  Prosopis juliflora, 559
-  Prosopis juliflora glandulosa, 562
-  Prosopis juliflora velutina, 562
-  Prosopis odorata, 562
-  Prunus allegheniensis, 622
-  Prunus americana, 621
-  Prunus angustifolia, 622
-  Prunus caroliniana, 620
-  Prunus demissa, 616
-  Prunus emarginata, 616
-  Prunus hortulana, 622
-  Prunus ilicifolia, 616
-  Prunus nigra, 621
-  Prunus pennsylvanica, 619
-  Prunus salicifolia, 620
-  Prunus serotina, 613
-  Prunus sphærocarpa, 620
-  Prunus subcordata, 621
-  Prunus umbellata, 621
-  Prunus virginiana, 615
-  Pseudoph[oe]nix sargentii, 692
-  Pseudotsuga macrocarpa, 172
-  Pseudotsuga taxifolia, 169
-  Ptelea trifoliata, 699
-  Pyrus americana, 454
-  Pyrus microcarpa, 454
-
-  Quercus acuminata, 247
-  Quercus agrifolia, 307
-  Quercus alba, 205
-  Quercus alvordiana, 220
-  Quercus arizonica, 205, 218
-  Quercus brevifolia, 285
-  Quercus breviloba, 208
-  Quercus breweri, 205, 220
-  Quercus californica, 285
-  Quercus catesbæi, 259, 283
-  Quercus chapmani, 208
-  Quercus chrysolepis, 308
-  Quercus chrysolepis palmeri, 301
-  Quercus chrysolepis vaccinifolia, 309
-  Quercus coccinea, 277
-  Quercus densiflora, 313
-  Quercus digitata, 259, 289
-  Quercus douglasii, 213
-  Quercus dumosa, 205, 237
-  Quercus emoryi, 205, 238
-  Quercus engelmanni, 205, 231
-  Quercus gambelii, 205, 214
-  Quercus garryana, 205, 235
-  Quercus georgiana, 259, 267
-  Quercus heterophylla, 322
-  Quercus hypoleuca, 259, 273
-  Quercus imbricaria, 259, 319
-  Quercus laurifolia, 259, 319
-  Quercus leana, 292
-  Quercus lobata, 205, 249
-  Quercus lyrata, 205, 217
-  Quercus macrocarpa, 205, 211
-  Quercus marilandica, 259, 291
-  Quercus michauxii, 205, 229
-  Quercus minor, 223, 241
-  Quercus morehus, 259, 297
-  Quercus myrtifolia, 259, 297
-  Quercus nigra, 259, 320
-  Quercus oblongifolia, 205, 226
-  Quercus palustris, 259, 301
-  Quercus phellos, 259, 279
-  Quercus platanoides, 205, 225
-  Quercus pricei, 259, 315
-  Quercus prinoides, 205
-  Quercus prinus, 205, 241
-  Quercus pumila, 259, 315
-  Quercus reticulata, 205, 219
-  Quercus rubra, 259
-  Quercus sadleri, 205, 220
-  Quercus texana, 259, 265
-  Quercus tomentella, 315
-  Quercus toumeyi, 205, 315
-  Quercus tridentata, 292
-  Quercus undulata, 205, 219
-  Quercus velutina, 259, 271
-  Quercus virginiana, 205, 253
-  Quercus wislizeni, 259, 296
-
-  Reynosia latifolia, 700
-  Rhamnidium ferreum, 700
-  Rhamnus caroliniana, 698
-  Rhamnus crocea, 698
-  Rhamnus purshiana, 698
-  Rhizophora mangle, 685
-  Rhododendron catawbiense, 507
-  Rhododendron maximum, 506
-  Rhus copallina, 696
-  Rhus hirta, 697
-  Rhus integrifolia, 698
-  Rhus metopium, 697
-  Rhus vernix, 697
-  Robinia neo-mexicana, 537
-  Robinia pseudacacia, 535
-  Robinia viscosa, 537
-
-  Sabal mexicana, 692
-  Sabal palmetto, 691
-  Salix alba, 472
-  Salix amplifolia, 472
-  Salix amygdaloides, 471
-  Salix babylonica, 472
-  Salix bebbiana, 471
-  Salix cordata mackenzieana, 472
-  Salix discolor, 472
-  Salix fluviatilis, 496
-  Salix hookeriana, 472
-  Salix lævigata, 471
-  Salix lasiandra, 496
-  Salix lasiandra lyalli, 496
-  Salix lasiolepis, 472
-  Salix longipes, 471
-  Salix lucida, 496
-  Salix missouriensis, 472
-  Salix nigra, 496
-  Salix nuttallii, 472
-  Salix sessilifolia, 471
-  Salix sitchensis, 472
-  Salix taxifolia, 471
-  Sambucus callicarpa, 700
-  Sambucus glauca, 700
-  Sambucus mexicana, 700
-  Sapindus drummondi, 465
-  Sapindus marginatus, 465
-  Sapindus saponaria, 465
-  Sassafras sassafras, 655
-  Schæfferia frutescens, 501
-  Sequoia sempervirens, 181
-  Sequoia washingtoniana, 175
-  Sideroxylon mastichodendron, 692
-  Simarouba glauca, 676
-  Sophora affinis, 555
-  Sophora secundiflora, 554
-  Swietenia mahagoni, 463
-
-  Taxodium distichum, 139
-  Taxodium imbricarium, 139, 141
-  Taxus brevifolia, 199
-  Taxus floridana, 201
-  Terminalia buceras, 688
-  Thrinax microcarpa, 692
-  Thrinax parviflora, 692
-  Thuja occidentalis, 97
-  Thuja plicata, 115
-  Tilia americana, 637
-  Tilia australis, 639
-  Tilia floridana, 639
-  Tilia heterophylla, 637, 639
-  Tilia michauxii, 639
-  Tilia pubescens, 639
-  Toxylon pomiferum, 511
-  Tsuga canadensis, 187
-  Tsuga caroliniana, 187, 703
-  Tsuga heterophylla, 187, 193
-  Tsuga mertensiana, 187, 195
-  Tumion californicum, 201
-  Tumion taxifolium, 202
-
-  Ulmus alata, 379, 399
-  Ulmus americana, 379
-  Ulmus crassifolia, 379, 392
-  Ulmus pubescens, 379, 391
-  Ulmus racemosa, 379, 385
-  Ulmus serotina, 379, 393
-  Umbellularia californica, 529, 655
-
-  Vaccinium arboreum, 508
-  Vauquelinia californica, 466
-  Viburnum lentago, 700
-  Viburnum prunifolium, 699
-  Viburnum rufotomentosum, 700
-
-  Xanthoxylum clava-herculis, 699
-  Xanthoxylum cribrosum, 699
-  Xanthoxylum fagara, 699
-
-  Yucca aloifolia, 693
-  Yucca arborescens, 693
-  Yucca brevifolia, 693
-  Yucca gloriosa, 693
-  Yucca macrocarpa, 693
-  Yucca mohavensis, 693
-  Yucca treculeana, 693
-
-  Zygia brevifolia, 538
-  Zygia flexicaulis, 538
-  Zygia unguis-cati, 538
-
-
-
-
-      *      *      *      *      *      *
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s note:
-
-This text follows the text of the original publication; inconsistent
-hyphenation, spacing, capitalisation, punctuation etc. have been
-retained except as mentioned below.
-
-Non-English words have not been corrected, except as mentioned below.
-
-Some entries in the indexes have been moved to their proper alphabetical
-order.
-
-Remarks on the text:
-
-Page 111, Juniperus pachyphlæa/pachyphl[oe]a: both spellings seem to be
-used, the original gives pachyphl[oe]a; this has been retained.
-
-Page 187: ... in England it is called ... should possibly read ... in
-New England it is called ....
-
-Page 423: New Madrid country: should possibly read New Madrid County.
-
-Page 433: ... and the random of their flight ...: probably there is a
-word missing from this sentence.
-
-Page 627: ... and more than that much more by manufacturers of ...
-should possibly read ... and much more than that by manufacturers of
-....
-
-Changes made:
-
-The pages with photographs of the Tamarack and the Western Larch have
-been interchanged.
-
-Some obvious punctuation errors and missing punctuation have been
-corrected silently.
-
-Page 7: Spring and summerwood changed to Spring- and summerwood
-
-Page 13: possess then changed to possess them
-
-Page 32: wastful changed to wasteful
-
-Page 63: Norway pine has past changed to Norway pine has passed
-
-Page 91: oldfield changed to old-field
-
-Page 104: Gottleib Mittelberger changed to Gottlieb Mittelberger
-
-Page 105: stagnant logoons changed to stagnant lagoons
-
-Page 111: separating into forkes changed to separating into forks
-
-Page 118: juniper, cedar changed to juniper cedar
-
-Page 124: interoir changed to interior
-
-Page 128: careful culling changed to careful cutting
-
-Page 130: Eruope changed to Europe
-
-Page 139: pygmaea changed to pygmæa as elsewhere; ninty-nine changed to
-ninety-nine
-
-Page 146: are quit distinct changed to are quite distinct
-
-Page 171: Cupressus macrocorpa changed to Cupressus macrocarpa
-
-Page 188: which carriers on changed to which carries on
-
-Page 248: Guadaloupe river changed to Guadalupe river
-
-Page 255: lignum-vitae changed to lignum-vitæ
-
-Page 273: sappling changed to sapling
-
-Page 289: anyone changed to any one
-
-Page 301: pubescense changed to pubescence
-
-Page 325: liquid-amber, gum changed to liquid-amber gum
-
-Page 363: hogshead changed to hogsheads
-
-Page 364: ferquently changed to frequently; Sargents' changed to
-Sargent's
-
-Page 385: the woods toughness changed to the wood's toughness
-
-Page 399: Vriginians changed to Virginians
-
-Page 403: new Jersey name changed to New Jersey name
-
-Page 404: doubltess changed to doubtless
-
-Page 410: traveller changed to traveler as elsewhere
-
-Page 412: drawing rotated 90°
-
-Page 415: in other woods changed to in other words
-
-Page 422: concensus changed to consensus
-
-Page 429: sinuouses changed to sinuses; unkept, neglected appearance
-changed to unkempt, neglected appearance
-
-Page 433: New York Indianas changed to New York Indians
-
-Page 436: drawing rotated 90°
-
-Page 463: Swientenia changed to Swietenia
-
-Page 465: Soapbeery changed to Soapberry
-
-Page 475: Abbe Bignon changed to Abbé Bignon
-
-Page 502: Domenico Civillo changed to Domenoci Cirillo
-
-Page 518: specie changed to species
-
-Page 529: pugent changed to pungent
-
-Page 537: as for north changed to as far north
-
-Page 544: clowded changed to clouded
-
-Page 555: mammels changed to mammals
-
-Page 566: Gualtheria procumbens changed to Gaultheria procumbens
-
-Page 573: manufactures changed to manufacturers
-
-Page 580: Betula fontanalis changed to Betula fontinalis
-
-Page 589: raddish changed to radish
-
-Page 592: aborescent changed to arborescent
-
-Page 595: Trintiy river changed to Trinity river
-
-Page 619: it a prolific seeder changed to it is a prolific seeder
-
-Page 622: Chikasaw Plum changed to Chickasaw Plum
-
-Page 633: course-grained changed to coarse-grained
-
-Page 656: losses its name changed to loses its name
-
-Page 675: Simaruba glauca changed to Simarouba glauca
-
-Page 693: Mahave desert changed to Mohave desert
-
-Page 694: opunitas changed to opuntias.
-
-In the indexes the folowing changes have been made so that the indexes
-use the same spelling as the text:
-
-Page i: Alligator-wood to Alligator wood, Bay-tree to Bay tree
-
-Page ii: California bay-tree to California bay tree, Calico-bush to
-Calico bush
-
-Page iii: Cucumber-tree to Cucumber tree
-
-Page iv: Glaucus willow to Glaucous willow, Holly-leaf cherry to
-Hollyleaf cherry, Forked-leaf blackjack to Forked-leaf black jack
-
-Page v: Juneberry to June berry, Kingtree to Kingstree, Longchat to
-Longschat, Judas-tree to Judas tree, Juniper-tree to Juniper tree,
-Liquidamber to Liquid-amber
-
-Page vi: Oldfield to Old-field (2x), Nakedwood to Naked-wood, Osage
-appletree to Osage apple tree
-
-Page vii: Scalybark hickory to Scaly bark hickory, Single-leaf pinon to
-Signleleaf pinon, Smooth-leaf willow to Smoothleaf willow
-
-Page ix: Wild china to Wild China
-
-Page x: cucumber-tree to cucumber tree
-
-Page xi: Andromida ferruginea to Andromeda ferruginea, Cledrastris lutea
-to Cladrastris lutea, Columbrina reclinata to Colubrina reclinata,
-Candalia obovata to Condalia obovata, Canotia holocantha to Canotia
-holacantha, Acer leucoderma to Acer leucoderme, Bumelia lycoides to
-Bumelia lycioides, Alnus tennuifolia to Alnus tenuifolia
-
-Page xii: Juglans cinera to Juglans cinerea, Delea spinosa to Dalea
-spinosa, Cratægus oxacantha to Cratægus oxyacantha
-
-Page xiii: Pinus jefferi to Pinus jeffreyi, Neowashingtoniana
-filamentosa to Neowashingtonia filamentosa, Oxydendron arboreum to
-Oxydendrum arboreum
-
-Page xiv: Tilia amerciana to Tilia americana, Robinia neomexicana to
-Robinia neo-mexicana, Salix sessifolia to Salix sessilifolia.
-
-
-
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42124 ***</div>
 <h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, American Forest Trees, by Henry H. Gibson,
 Edited by Hu Maxwell</h1>
-<p>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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-<p>Title: American Forest Trees</p>
-<p>Author: Henry H. Gibson</p>
-<p>Editor: Hu Maxwell</p>
-<p>Release Date: February 18, 2013  [eBook #42124]</p>
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 <p>&nbsp;</p>
-<h4 class="center">E-text prepared by Greg Bergquist, Harry Lamé,<br />
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diff --git a/42124.txt b/42124.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index e42088f..0000000
--- a/42124.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,24143 +0,0 @@
-The Project Gutenberg eBook, American Forest Trees, by Henry H. Gibson,
-Edited by Hu Maxwell
-
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-
-
-
-Title: American Forest Trees
-
-
-Author: Henry H. Gibson
-
-Editor: Hu Maxwell
-
-Release Date: February 18, 2013  [eBook #42124]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
-
-
-***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN FOREST TREES***
-
-
-E-text prepared by Greg Bergquist, Harry Lamé, and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
-available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
-(http://archive.org/details/americana)
-
-
-
-Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
-      file which includes the original illustrations.
-      See 42124-h.htm or 42124-h.zip:
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42124/42124-h/42124-h.htm)
-      or
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42124/42124-h.zip)
-
-
-      Images of the original pages are available through
-      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
-      http://archive.org/details/americanforestt00gibs
-
-
-Transcriber's note:
-
-      Text printed in italics in the original work are represented
-      here between underscores, as in _text_.
-
-      Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPITALS.
-
-      More Transcriber's notes may be found at the end of this text.
-
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: HENRY H. GIBSON]
-
-
-AMERICAN FOREST TREES
-
-by
-
-HENRY H. GIBSON
-
-Edited by Hu Maxwell
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Hardwood Record
-Chicago
-1913
-
-Copyright 1913 by
-Hardwood Record
-Chicago, Ill.
-
-The Regan Printing House
-Chicago.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-The material on which this volume is based, appeared in Hardwood Record,
-Chicago, in a series of articles beginning in 1905 and ending in 1913,
-and descriptive of the forest trees of this country. More than one
-hundred leading species were included in the series. They constitute the
-principal sources of lumber for the United States. The present volume
-includes all the species described in the series of articles, with a
-large number of less important trees added. Every region of the country
-is represented; no valuable tree is omitted, and the lists and
-descriptions are as complete as they can be made in the limited space of
-a single volume. The purpose held steadily in view has been to make the
-work practical, simple, plain, and to the point. Trees as they grow in
-the forest, and wood as it appears at the mill and factory, are
-described and discussed. Photographs and drawings of trunk and foliage
-are made to tell as much of the story as possible. The pictures used as
-illustrations are nearly all from photographs made specially for that
-purpose. They are a valuable contribution to tree knowledge, because
-they show forest forms and conditions, and are as true to nature as the
-camera can make them. Statistics are not given a place in these pages,
-for it is no part of the plan to show the product and the output of the
-country's mills and forests, but rather to describe the source of those
-products, the trees themselves. However, suggestions for utilization are
-offered, and the fitness of the various woods for many uses is
-particularly indicated. The prominent physical properties are described
-in language as free as possible from technical terms, and yet with
-painstaking accuracy and clearness. Descriptions intended to aid in
-identification of trees are given; but simplicity and clearness are held
-constantly in view, and brevity is carefully studied. The different
-names of commercial trees in the various localities where they are
-known, either as standing timber or as lumber in the yard and factory,
-are included in the descriptions as an assistance in identification. The
-natural range of the forest trees, and the regions where they abound in
-commercial quantities, are outlined according to the latest and best
-authorities. Estimates of present and future supply are offered, where
-such exist that seem to be authoritative. The trees are given the common
-and the botanical names recognized as official by the United States
-Forest Service. This lessens misunderstanding and confusion in the
-discussion of species whose common names are not the same in different
-regions, and whose botanical names are not agreed upon among scientific
-men who mention or describe them. The forests of the United States
-contain more than five hundred kinds of trees, ranging in size from the
-California sequoias, which attain diameters of twenty feet or more and
-heights exceeding two hundred, down to indefinite but very small
-dimensions. The separating line between trees and shrubs is not
-determined by size alone. In a general way, shrubs may be considered
-smaller than trees, but a seedling tree, no matter how small, is not
-properly called a shrub. It is customary, not only among botanists, but
-also among persons who do not usually recognize exact scientific terms
-and distinctions, to apply the name tree to all woody plants which
-produce naturally in their native habitat one main, erect stem, bearing
-a definite crown, no matter what size they may attain.
-
-The commercial timbers of this country are divided into two classes,
-hardwoods and softwoods. The division is for convenience, and is
-sanctioned by custom, but it is not based on the actual hardness and
-softness of the different woods. The division has, however, a scientific
-basis founded on the mechanical structures of the two classes of woods,
-and there is little disagreement among either those who use forest
-products or manufacture them, or those who investigate the actual
-structure of the woods themselves, as to which belong in the hardwood
-and which in the softwood class.
-
-_Softwoods_--The needleleaf species, represented by pines, hemlocks,
-firs, cedars, cypresses, spruces, larches, sequoias, and yews, are
-softwoods. The classification of evergreens as softwoods is erroneous,
-because all softwoods are not evergreen, and all evergreens are not
-softwoods. Larches and the southern cypress shed their leaves yearly.
-Most other softwoods drop only a portion of their foliage each season,
-and enough is always on the branches to make them evergreen. Softwoods
-are commonly called conebearers, and that description fits most of them,
-but the cedars and yews produce fruit resembling berries rather than
-cones. Though the needleleaf species are classed as softwoods, there is
-much variation in the absolute hardness of the wood produced by
-different species. The white pines are soft, the yews hard, and the
-other species range between. If there were no other means of separating
-trees into classes than tests of actual hardness of wood, the line
-dividing hardwoods from softwoods might be quite different from that now
-so universally recognized in this country.
-
-_Hardwoods_--The broadleaf trees are hardwoods. Most, but not all, shed
-their foliage yearly. It is, therefore, incorrect to classify deciduous
-trees as hardwoods, since it is not true in all cases, any more than it
-is true that softwoods are evergreen. Live oaks and American holly are
-evergreen, and yet are true hardwoods. In a test of hardness they stand
-near the top of the list.
-
-There are more species of hardwoods than of softwoods in this country;
-but the actual quantity of softwood timber in the forests greatly
-exceeds the hardwoods. Nearly two hundred species of the latter are
-seldom or never seen in a sawmill, while softwoods are generally cut and
-used wherever found in accessible situations.
-
-As in the case of needleleaf trees, there is much variation in actual
-hardness of the wood of different broadleaf species. Some which are
-classed as hardwoods are softer than some in the softwood list. It is
-apparent, therefore, that the terms hardwood and softwood are commercial
-rather than scientific.
-
-Palm, cactus, and other trees of that class are not often employed as
-lumber, and it is not customary to speak of them as either hardwoods or
-softwoods.
-
-_Sapwood and Heartwood_--Practically all mature trees contain two
-qualities of wood known as sap and heart. The inner portion is the
-heartwood, the outer the sap. They are usually distinguished by
-differences of color.
-
-The terms are much used in lumber transactions and are well understood
-by the trade. The two kinds of wood need be described only in the most
-general way, and for the guidance and information of those who are not
-familiar with them. Differences are many and radical in the relative
-size and appearance of the two kinds of wood in different species, and
-even between different trees of the same species. No general law is
-followed, except that the heartwood forms in the interior of the tree,
-and the sapwood in a band outside, next to the bark. In the majority of
-cases young trees have little heartwood, often none. It is a development
-attendant on age, yet age does not always produce it. Some mature trees
-have no heartwood, others very little.
-
-The two kinds of wood belong to needleleaf and broadleaf trees alike;
-but palms, owing to their manner of growth, have neither. Their size
-increases in height rather than in diameter. With palms, the oldest wood
-is in the base of the trunk, the newest in the top; but in the ordinary
-timber tree the oldest wood is in the center of the trunk, the youngest
-in the outside layers next the bark. It is the oldest that becomes
-heartwood, and it is, of course, in the center of the tree. The band of
-sapwood is of no certain thickness, but averages much thicker in some
-species than in others. The sapwood of Osage orange is scarcely half an
-inch thick, and in loblolly pine it may be six inches or more.
-
-Heartwood is known by its color. The eye can detect no other difference
-between it and the surrounding band of sapwood. There is no fundamental
-difference. The heart was once sapwood, and the latter will sometime
-become heartwood if the tree lives long enough. As the trunk increases
-in size and years, the wood near the heart dies. It no longer has much
-to do with the life of the tree, except that it helps support the weight
-of the trunk. The heartwood is, therefore, deadwood. The activities of
-tree life are no longer present. The color changes, because mineral and
-chemical substances are deposited in the wood and fill many of the
-cavities. That process begins at the center of the trunk and works
-outward year by year, forming a pretty distinct line between the living
-sapwood and the dead and inert heartwood.
-
-For some reason, the heartwood of certain species is prone to decay.
-Sycamore is the best example. The largest trunks are generally hollow.
-The heart has disappeared, leaving only the thin shell of sapwood, and
-this is required not only to maintain the tree's life and activities,
-but to support the trunk's weight. In most instances the substances
-deposited in the heartwood, and associated with the coloring matter,
-tend to preserve the wood from decay. For that reason heart timber lasts
-longer than sap when exposed in damp situations. The dark and variegated
-shades of the heartwood of some species give them their chief value as
-cabinet and furniture material. The sapwood of black walnut is not
-wanted by anybody, for it is light in color and is characterless; but
-when the sap has changed to heart, and its tones have been deepened by
-the accumulation of pigments, it becomes a choice material for certain
-purposes. The same is true of many other timbers, notably sweet and
-yellow birch, black cherry, and several of the oaks.
-
-It sometimes happens that when sapwood is transformed into heart, a
-physical change, as well as a coloring process, affects it. Persimmon
-and dogwood are examples, and hickory in a less degree. The sapwood of
-persimmon and dogwood makes shuttles and golf heads, but after the
-change to heartwood occurs, it is considered unsuitable. Handle makers
-and the manufacturers of buggy spokes prefer hickory sapwood, but use
-the red heartwood if it is the same weight as the sap.
-
-_Annual Rings_--The trunks of both hardwoods and softwoods are made up
-of concentric rings. In most instances the eye easily detects them. They
-are more distinct in a freshly cut trunk than in weathered wood, though
-in a few instances weathering accentuates rather than obliterates them.
-A count of the rings gives the tree's age in years, each ring being the
-growth of one year. An occasional exception should be noted, as when
-accident checks the tree's growth in the middle of the season, and the
-growth is later resumed. In that case, it may develop two rings in one
-year. A severe frost late in spring after leaves have started may
-produce that result; or defoliation by caterpillars in early summer may
-do it. Perhaps not one tree in a thousand has that experience in the
-course of its whole life. Trees in the tropics where seasons are nearly
-the same the year through, seldom have rings. Imitations of mahogany are
-sometimes detected by noting clearly marked annual rings. It is
-difficult for the woodfinisher to obliterate the annual rings, but some
-of the French woodworkers very nearly accomplish it.
-
-No law of growth governs the width of yearly rings, but circumstances
-have much to do with it. When the tree's increase in size is rapid,
-rings are broad. An uncrowded tree in good soil and climate grows much
-faster than if circumstances are adverse. Carolina poplar and black
-willow sometimes have rings nearly three-fourths of an inch broad, while
-in the white bark pine, which grows above the snow line in California,
-the rings may be so narrow as to be invisible to the naked eye.
-
-There is no average width of yearly rings and no average age of trees. A
-few (very few) of the sequoias, or "big trees" of California, are two
-thousand years old. An age of six or seven centuries appears to be about
-the limit of the oldest of the other species in this country, though an
-authentic statement to that effect cannot be made. There are species
-whose life average scarcely exceeds that of men. The aspen generally
-falls before it is eighty; and fire cherry scarcely averages half of
-that. Of all the trees cut for lumber, perhaps not one in a hundred has
-passed the three century mark. That ratio would not hold if applied to
-the Pacific coast alone.
-
-_Spring and Summerwood_--These are not usual terms with lumbermen and
-woodworkers, but belong more to the engineer who thinks of physical
-properties of timber, particularly its strength. Yet, sawmill and
-factory men are well acquainted with the two kinds of wood, but they are
-likely to apply the term "grain" to the combination of the two.
-
-Spring and summerwood make the annual ring. Springwood grows early in
-the season, summerwood later. In fact, it usually is the contrast in
-color where the summerwood of one season abuts against the springwood of
-the next which makes the ring visible. The inside of the ring--that
-portion nearest the heart of the tree--is the springwood, the rest of
-the ring is the summerwood. The former is generally lighter in color.
-Sometimes, and with certain species, the springwood is much broader than
-the other. The summerwood may be a very narrow band, not much wider than
-a fine pencil mark, but its deeper color makes it quite distinct in most
-instances. In other instances, as with some of the oaks, the summerwood
-is the wider part of the annual ring. The figure or "grain" of southern
-yellow pine is largely due to the contrast between the dark summerwood
-and light springwood of the rings. The same is true of ash, chestnut,
-and of many other woods.
-
-_Pores_--Wood is not the solid substance it seems to be when seen in the
-mass. If magnified it appears filled with cavities, not unlike a piece
-of coral or honeycomb; but to the unaided eye only a few of the largest
-openings are visible, and in some woods like maple, none can be seen.
-The large openings are known as pores. They are so prominent in some of
-the oaks that in a clean cut end or cross section they look like pin
-holes. Very little magnifying is required to bring them out distinctly.
-A good reading glass is sufficient.
-
-Pores belong to hardwoods only. The resin ducts in some softwoods
-present a similar appearance, but are far less numerous. All pores are,
-of course, situated in the annual rings, but in different species they
-are differently located as to spring and summerwood. In some woods the
-largest pores are in the springwood only and therefore run in rings.
-Such woods are called "ring porous," and the oaks are best examples. In
-other species the pores are scattered through all parts of the ring in
-about the same proportion, and such woods are called "diffuse porous,"
-as the birches. Softwoods have no pores proper, and are classed
-"non-porous."
-
-_Medullary Rays_--A smoothly-cut cross section of almost any oak, but
-particularly white oak and red oak, exhibits to the unaided eye narrow,
-light-colored lines radiating from the center of the tree toward the
-bark like spokes of a wheel. They are about the breadth of a fine pencil
-mark, and are generally a sixth of an inch or less apart. They are among
-the most conspicuous and characteristic features of oak wood, and are
-known as medullary or pith rays.
-
-Oak is cited as an example because the rays are large and prominent, but
-they are present in all wood, and constitute a large part of its body.
-They vary greatly in size. In some woods a few are visible unmagnified;
-but even in oak a hundred are invisible to the naked eye to one that can
-be seen. Some species show none until a glass is used. Some pines have
-fifteen thousand to a square inch of cross section, all of which are so
-small as to elude successfully the closest search of the unaided eye.
-
-The medullary rays influence the appearance of most wood. They determine
-its character. Oak is quarter-sawed for the purpose of bringing out the
-bright, flat surfaces of these rays. The prominent flecks, streaks, and
-patches of silvery wood are the flat sides of medullary rays. In cross
-section, only the line-like ends are seen, but quarter-sawing exposes
-their sides to view.
-
-That explains in part why some species are adapted to quarter-sawing and
-others are not. If no broad rays exist in the wood, as with white pine,
-red cedar, and cottonwood, quarter-sawing cannot add much to the wood's
-appearance.
-
-_Grain_--The grain of wood is not a definite quality. The word does not
-mean the same thing to all who use it. It sometimes refers to rings of
-yearly growth, and in that sense a narrow-ringed wood is fine grained,
-and one with wide rings is coarse grained. A curly, wavy, smoky, or
-birdseye wood does not owe its quality to annual rings, yet with some
-persons, all of these figures are called grain. The term sometimes
-refers to medullary rays, again to hardness, or to roughness. Some
-mahogany is called "woolly grained" because the surface polishes with
-difficulty. The pattern maker designates white pine as "even grained",
-because it cuts easily in all directions. The handle maker classes
-hickory as "smooth grained", because it polishes well and the sole idea
-of the maker is smoothness to the touch. There are other grains almost
-as numerous as the trades which use wood. In numerous instances "figure"
-is a better term than "grain." Feather mahogany, birdseye birch, burl
-ash, are figures rather than grains. There is no authority to settle and
-decide what the real meaning of grain is in wood technology. It has a
-number of meanings, and one man has as much authority as another to
-interpret it in accordance with his own ideas, and the usage in his
-trade. It is a loose term which covers several things in general and
-nothing in particular.
-
-_Weight_--The weight of wood is calculated from different standpoints.
-It has a green weight, an air-dry weight, a kiln-dry weight, and an
-oven-dry weight. All are different, but the differences are due to the
-relative amounts of water weighed. Sawlogs generally go by green weight;
-yard lumber by air-dry or partly air-dry weight; while the wood used in
-ultimate manufacture, such as furniture, is supposed to be kiln-dry.
-
-The absolute weight of wood, with all air spaces, moisture, and other
-foreign material removed, is about 100 pounds per cubic foot, which is
-1.6 times heavier than water; but that is not a natural form of wood. It
-is known only in the laboratory.
-
-The actual wood substance of one species weighs about the same as
-another. Dispense with all air spaces, all water, and all other foreign
-substance, and pine and ebony weigh alike. It is apparent that the
-different weights of woods, as between cedar and oak for example, are
-due chiefly to porosity. The smaller the aggregate space occupied by
-pores and other cavities, the heavier the wood. That accounts for the
-differences in weights of absolutely dry woods of different kinds,
-except that a small amount of other foreign material may remain after
-water has been driven off. Florida black ironwood is rated as the
-heaviest in the United States, and it weighs 81.14 pounds per cubic
-foot, oven-dry. The lightest in this country is the golden fig which is
-a native of Florida also. It weighs 16.3 pounds per cubic foot,
-oven-dry. When weights of wood are given, the specimen is understood to
-be oven-dry, unless it is stated to be otherwise: it is a laboratory
-weight, calculated from small cubes of the wood. Such weights are always
-a little less than that of the dryest wood of the same kind that can be
-obtained in the lumber market.
-
-_Moisture in Wood_--The varying weights of the same wood indicate that
-moisture plays an important part. No man ever saw absolutely dry wood.
-If heated sufficiently to drive off all the moisture, the wood is
-reduced to charcoal and other products of destructive distillation.
-
-The pores and other cavities in green timber are more or less filled
-with water or sap. This may amount to one-third, one-half, or even more,
-of the dry weight of the wood. The water is in the hollow vessels and
-cell walls. A living tree contains about the same quantity of water in
-winter as in summer, though the common belief is otherwise. It is
-misleading to say that the sap is "down" in one season and "up" in
-another, although there is more activity at certain times than in
-others. Strictly speaking, there is a difference between the water in a
-tree, and the tree's sap; but in common parlance they are considered
-identical. What takes place is this: water rises from the tree's roots,
-through the wood, carrying certain minerals in solution. Some of it
-reaches the leaves in summer where it mixes with certain gases from the
-air, and is converted into sap proper. Most of the surplus water, after
-giving up the mineral substance held in solution, is evaporated through
-the leaves into the air; but the sap, starting from the leaves which act
-as laboratories for its manufacture, goes down through the newly-formed
-(and forming), layer of wood just beneath the bark, and is converted
-into wood. This newly-formed wood is colorless at first. It builds up
-the annual ring, first the springwood very rapidly, and then the
-summerwood more slowly.
-
-The force which causes water to rise through the trunk of a tree is not
-fully understood. It is one of nature's mysteries which is yet to be
-solved. Forces known as root pressure, capillary attraction, and
-osmosis, are believed to be active in the process, but there seems to be
-something additional, and no man has yet been able to explain what it
-is.
-
-The seasoning of wood is the process of getting rid of some of the
-water. As soon as lumber is exposed to air, the water begins to escape.
-Long exposure to dry air takes out a large percentage of the moisture
-which green wood holds, and the lumber is known as air-dry. But some of
-the original moisture remains, and air at climatic temperature is unable
-to expel it. The greater heat of a drykiln drives away some more of it,
-but a quantity yet remains. The lumber is then kiln-dry. Greater heat
-than the drykiln's is secured in an oven, and a little more of the
-wood's moisture is expelled; but the only method of driving all the
-moisture out is to heat the wood sufficiently to break down its
-structure, and reduce it to charcoal.
-
-Wood warps in the process of drying unless it seasons equally on all
-sides. It curls or bends toward the side which dries most rapidly. Dry
-wood may warp if exposed to dampness, if one side is more exposed and
-receives more moisture than another. It curls or bends toward the dryer
-side.
-
-Warping is primarily due to the more rapid contraction or expansion of
-wood cells on one side of the piece than on the other. Saturated cells
-are larger than dry ones.
-
-Moisture in wood affects its strength, the dryer the stronger, at least
-within certain limits. Architects and builders carefully study the
-seasoning of timber, because it is a most important factor in their
-business. The moisture which most affects a wood's strength is that
-absorbed in the cell walls, rather than that contained in the cell
-cavities themselves.
-
-Some woods check or split badly in seasoning unless attended with
-constant care. Checking is due chiefly to lack of uniformity in
-seasoning. One part of the stick dries faster than another, the dryer
-fibers contract, and the pull splits the wood. The checks may be small,
-even microscopic, or they may develop yawning cracks such as sometimes
-appear in the ends of hickory and black walnut logs. Greenwood checks
-worse in summer than in winter, because the weather is warmer, the
-wood's surface dries faster, and the strain on the fibers is greater.
-Phases of the moon have no influence on the seasoning, checking,
-warping, or lasting properties of timber.
-
-_Stiffness, Elasticity, and Strength_--Rules for measuring the stiffness
-of timber are involved in mathematical formulas; but the practical
-quality of stiffness is not difficult to understand. Wood which does not
-bend easily is stiff. If it springs back to its original position after
-the removal of the force which bends it, the wood is elastic. The
-greatest load it can sustain without breaking, is the measure of its
-strength. The load required to produce a certain amount of bending is
-the measure of its stiffness. Flexibility, a term much used by certain
-classes of workers in wood, is the opposite of stiffness. A brittle wood
-is not necessarily weak. It may sustain a heavy load without breaking,
-but when it fails, the break is sudden and complete. A tough wood
-behaves differently, though it may not be as strong as a brittle one.
-When a tough wood breaks, the parts are inclined to adhere after they
-have ceased to sustain the load. Hickory is tough, and in breaking, the
-wood crushes and splinters. Mesquite is brittle, and a clean snap severs
-the stick at once.
-
-Builders of houses and bridges, and the manufacturers of articles of
-wood, study with the greatest care the stiffness, elasticity, strength,
-toughness, and brittleness of timber. Its chief value may depend upon
-the presence or absence of one or more of these properties. Take away
-hickory's toughness and elasticity and it would cease to be a great
-vehicle and handle material. Reduce the stiffness and strength of
-longleaf pine and Douglas fir and they would drop at once from the high
-esteem in which they are held as structural timbers. Destroy the
-brittleness of red cedar and it would lose one of the chief qualities
-which make it the leading lead pencil wood of the world.
-
-There are recognized methods of measuring these important physical
-properties of woods, but they are expressed in language so technical
-that it means little to persons who are not specialists. For ordinary
-purposes, it is unnecessary to be more explicit than to state a certain
-wood is or is not strong, stiff, tough and elastic. Some species possess
-one or more of these properties to double the degree that others possess
-them. Different trees of the same species differ greatly, and even
-different parts of the same tree. Most tables of figures which show the
-various physical properties of woods, give averages only, not absolute
-values.
-
-_Hardness_--In some woods hardness is considered an advantage, but not
-in others. If sugar maple were as soft as white pine, it would not be
-the great floor material it is; and if white pine were as hard as maple,
-pattern makers would not want it, door and sash manufacturers would get
-along with less, and it would not be the leading packing box material in
-so wide a region.
-
-It is generally the summer growth in the annual rings which makes a wood
-hard. The summerwood is dense. A given bulk of it contains more actual
-wood substance and less air and water than the springwood. For the same
-reason, summerwood gives weight, and a relationship between hardness and
-weight holds generally. It may be added that strength goes with weight
-and hardness, but it is not a rule without apparent exceptions.
-
-Some woods possess twice or three times the hardness of others. Among
-some of the hardest in the United States are hickory, sugar maple,
-mesquite, the Florida ironwoods, Osage orange, locust, persimmon, and
-the best oak and elm. Among the softest species are buckeye, basswood,
-cedar, redwood, some of the pines, spruce, hemlock, and chestnut.
-
-The hardness of wood is tested with a machine which records the pressure
-required to indent the surface. The condition of the specimen, as to
-dryness, has much to do with its hardness. So many other factors
-exercise influence that nothing less than an actual test will determine
-the hardness of a sample. A table of figures can show it only
-approximately and by averages.
-
-_Cleavability_--Wood users generally demand a material which does not
-split easily, but the reverse is sometimes required. Rived staves must
-come from timbers which split easily. Many handles are from billets
-which are split in rough form and are afterwards dressed to the required
-size and shape. In these instances, splitting is preferable to sawing,
-because a rived billet is free from cross grain.
-
-The cleavability of woods differs greatly. Some can scarcely be split.
-Black gum is in that list, and sycamore to a less extent. Young trees of
-some species split more readily than old, while with others, the
-advantage is with the old. Young sycamore may generally be split with
-ease, but old trunks seem to develop interlocked fibers which defy the
-wedge. A white oak pole is hard to split, but the old tree yields
-readily. Few woods are more easily split than chestnut. With most
-timbers cleavage is easiest along the radial lines, that is, from the
-heart to the bark. The flat sides of the medullary rays lie in that
-plane. Cleavage along tangential lines is easy with some woods. The line
-of cleavage follows the soft springwood. Green timber is generally, but
-not always, more easily split than dry. As a rule, the more elastic a
-wood is, the more readily it may be split.
-
-_Durability_--In Egypt where climatic conditions are highly favorable,
-Lebanon cedar, North African acacia, East African persimmon, and
-oriental sycamore have remained sound during three or four thousand
-years. In the moist forests of the northwestern Pacific coast, an alder
-log six or eight inches in diameter will decay through and through in a
-single year. No wood is immune to decay if exposed to influences which
-induce it, but some resist for long periods. Osage orange and locust
-fence posts may stand half a century. Timber from which air is excluded,
-as when deeply buried in wet earth or under water, will last
-indefinitely; but if it is exposed to alternate dampness and dryness,
-decay will destroy it in a few years.
-
-It is apparent that resistance to decay is not a property inherent in
-the wood, but depends on circumstances. However, the ability to resist
-decay varies greatly with different species, under similar
-circumstances. Buckeye and red cedar fence posts, situated alike, will
-not last alike. The buckeye may be expected to fall in two or three
-years, and the cedar will stand twenty. Timbers light in weight and
-light in color are, as a class, quick-decaying when exposed to the
-weather.
-
-The rule holds in most cases that sapwood decays more quickly than heart
-when both are subject to similar exposure. The matter of decay is not
-important when lumber and other products intended for use are in dry
-situations. Furniture and interior house finish do not decay under
-ordinary circumstances, no matter what the species of wood may be; but
-resistance to decay overshadows almost any other consideration in
-choosing mine timbers, crossties, fence posts, and tanks and silos.
-
-Decay in timber is not simply a chemical process, but is due primarily
-to the activities of a low order of plants known as fungi, sometimes
-bacteria. The fungi produce thread-like filaments which penetrate the
-body of the wood, ramifying in and passing from cell to cell, absorbing
-certain materials therein, and ultimately breaking down and destroying
-the structure of the wood. Both air and dampness are essential to the
-growth of fungus. That is the reason why timbers deep beneath ground or
-water do not decay. Air is absent, though moisture is abundant; while in
-the dry Egyptian tombs, air is abundant but moisture is wanting, fungus
-cannot exist, and consequently decay of the wood does not occur. Nothing
-is needed to render timber immune to decay except to keep fungus out of
-the cells. Some of the fungus concerned in wood rotting is microscopic,
-while other appears in forms and sizes easily seen and recognized.
-
-Timber may be protected for a time against the agencies of decay by
-covering the surface with paint, thereby preventing the entrance of
-fungus. By another process, certain oils or other materials which are
-poisonous to the insinuating threads of fungus, are forced into the
-pores of the wood. Creosote is often used for this purpose. Attacks are
-thus warded off, and decay is hindered. The preservative fluid will not
-remain permanently in wood exposed to weather conditions, but the period
-during which it affords protection and immunity extends over some years;
-but different woods vary greatly in their ability to receive and retain
-preservative mixtures.
-
-The better seasoned, the less liable is timber to decay, because it
-contains less moisture to support fungi. It is generally supposed that
-timber cut in the fall of the year is less subject to decay than if
-felled in summer. If it is so, the reason for it lies in the fact that
-fungus is inactive during winter, and before the coming of warm weather
-the timber has partly dried near the surface, and fungi cannot pass
-through the dry outside to reach the interior. Timber cut in warm
-weather may be attacked at once, and before cold weather stops the
-activities of fungus it has reached the interior of the wood and the
-process of rotting is under way. When the agents of decay have begun to
-grow in the wood, destruction will go on as long as air and moisture
-conditions are favorable.
-
-The bluing of wood is an incipient decay and is generally due to fungus.
-Some kinds of wood are more susceptible to bluing than others. Though
-boards may quickly season sufficiently to put a stop to the bluing
-process before it has actually weakened the material, the result is more
-or less injurious. The wood's natural color and luster undergo
-deterioration; it does not reflect light as formerly, and seems dead and
-flat.
-
-Decay affects sapwood more readily than heart. The reason may be that
-sapwood contains more food for fungus, thereby inducing greater
-activity. The sapwood is on the outside of timbers and is often more
-exposed than the heart. In some instances greater decay may be due to
-greater exposure. Another reason for more rapid decay of sapwood than
-heart is the fact that the pores of the heartwood are more or less
-filled with coloring matter deposited while the growth of the tree was
-in progress. The coloring matter, in many cases, acts as a preservative;
-it shuts the threads of fungus out. Sometimes the sapwood of a dead tree
-or a log is totally destroyed while the heart remains sound. This often
-happens with red cedar and sometimes with black walnut, yellow poplar,
-and cherry. Occasionally a tree's bark is more resistant to decay than
-its wood. Paper birch and yellow birch logs in damp situations
-occasionally show this. What appears to be a solid fallen trunk, proves
-to be nothing more than a shell of bark with a soft, pulpy mass of
-decayed wood within.
-
-
-
-
-WHITE PINE
-
-[Illustration: WHITE PINE]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE PINE[1]
-
-(_Pinus Strobus_)
-
-    [1] The following 12 species are usually classed soft pines: White
-    Pine (_Pinus strobus_); Sugar Pine (_Pinus lambertiana_); Western
-    White Pine (_Pinus monticola_); Mexican White Pine (_Pinus
-    strobiformis_); Limber Pine (_Pinus flexilis_); Whitebark Pine
-    (_Pinus albicaulis_); Foxtail Pine (_Pinus balfouriana_); Parry Pine
-    (_Pinus quadrifolia_); Mexican Pinon (_Pinus cembroides_); Pinon
-    (_Pinus edulis_); Singleleaf Pinon (_Pinus monophylla_); Bristlecone
-    Pine (_Pinus aristata_).
-
-
-The best known wood of the United States has never been burdened with a
-multitude of names, as many minor species have. It is commonly known as
-white pine in every region where it grows, and in many where the living
-tree is never seen, except when planted for ornament. The light color of
-the wood suggests the name. The bark and the foliage are of somber hue,
-though not as dark as hemlock and many of the pines. The name Weymouth
-pine is occasionally heard, but it is more used in books than by
-lumbermen. It is commonly supposed that the name refers to Lord Weymouth
-who interested himself in the tree at an early period, but this has been
-disputed. In Pennsylvania it is occasionally called soft pine to
-distinguish it from the harder and inferior pitch pine and table
-mountain pine with which it is sometimes associated. It is the softest
-of the pines, and the name is not inappropriate. In some regions of the
-South, where it is well known, it is called northern spruce pine in
-recognition of the fact that it is a northern species which has followed
-the Appalachian mountain ranges some hundreds of miles southward. There
-is no good reason for this name when applied to white pine. It should be
-remembered, however, that no less than a dozen tree species in the
-United States are sometimes called spruce pine. Cork pine is a trade
-name applied more frequently to the wood than to the living tree. It is
-the wood of old, mature, first class trunks, as nearly perfect as can be
-found. Pumpkin pine is another name given to the same class of wood. It
-is so named because the grain is homogeneous, like a pumpkin, and may be
-readily cut and carved in any direction. It is the ideal wood for the
-pattern maker, but it is now hard to get because the venerable white
-pines, many hundred years old, are practically gone.
-
-The northern limit of the range of white pine stretches from
-Newfoundland to Manitoba, more than 1800 miles east and west across the
-Dominion of Canada, and southward to northern Georgia, 1200 miles in a
-north and south direction. But white pine does not grow in all parts of
-the territory thus delimited. It attained magnificent development in
-certain large regions before lumbering began, and in others it was
-scarce or totally wanting. Its ability to maintain itself on land too
-thin for vigorous hardwood growth gave it a monopoly of enormous
-stretches of sandy country, particularly in the Lake States. It occupied
-large areas in New England and southern Canada; developed splendid
-stands in New York and Pennsylvania; and it covered certain mountains
-and uplands southward along the mountain ranges across Maryland, West
-Virginia, and the elevated regions two or three hundred miles farther
-south.
-
-A dozen or more varieties of white pine have been developed under
-cultivation, but they interest the nurseryman, not the lumberman. In all
-the wide extension of its range, and during all past time, nature was
-never able to develop a single variety of white pine which departed from
-the typical species. For that reason it is one of the most interesting
-objects of study in the tree kingdom. True, the white pine in the
-southern mountains differs slightly from the northern tree, but
-botanically it is the same. Its wood is a little heavier, its branches
-are more resinous and consequently adhere a longer time to the trunk
-after they die, resulting in lumber with more knots. The southern wood
-is more tinged with red, the knots are redder and usually sounder than
-in the North.
-
-It is unfortunately necessary in speaking of white pine forests to use
-the past tense, for most of the primeval stands have disappeared. The
-range is as extensive as ever, because wherever a forest once grew, a
-few trees remain; but the merchantable timber has been cut in most
-regions. The tree bears winged seeds which quickly scatter over vacant
-spaces, and new growth would long ago, in most cases, have taken the
-place of the old, had not fires persistently destroyed the seedlings. In
-parts of New England where fire protection is afforded, dense stands of
-white pine are coming on, and in numerous instances profitable lumber
-operations are carried on in second growth forests. That condition does
-not exist generally in white pine regions. Primeval stands were seldom
-absolutely pure, but sometimes, in bodies of thousands of acres, there
-was little but white pine. Generally hardwoods or other softwoods grew
-with the pine. At its best, it is the largest pine of the United States,
-except the sugar pine of California. The largest trees grew in New
-England where diameters of six or more feet and heights exceeding 200
-feet were found. A diameter of four and five feet and a height of 150
-feet are about the size limits in the Lake States and the southern
-mountains. Trees two or three feet through and ninety and 120 tall are a
-fair average for mature timber.
-
-The wood of white pine is among the lightest of the commercial timbers
-of this country, and among the softest. While it is not strong, it
-compares favorably, weight for weight, with most others. It is of rather
-rapid growth, and the rings of annual increase are clearly defined, and
-they contain comparatively few resin ducts. For that reason it may be
-classed as a close, compact wood. It polishes well, may be cut with
-great ease, and after it is seasoned it holds its form better than most
-woods. That property fits it admirably for doors and sash and for
-backing of veneer, where a little warping or twisting would do much
-harm.
-
-The medullary rays are numerous but are too small to be easily seen
-separately, and do not figure much in the appearance of the wood. The
-resin passages are few and small, but the wood contains enough resin to
-give it a characteristic odor, which is not usually considered injurious
-to merchandise shipped in pine boxes. The white color of the wood gives
-it much of its value. Though rather weak, white pine is stiff, rather
-low in elasticity, is practically wanting in toughness, has little
-figure, and when exposed to alternate dryness and dampness it is rated
-poor in lasting properties; yet shingles and weather boarding of this
-wood have been known to stand half a century. The sapwood is lighter in
-color than the heart, and decays more quickly.
-
-As long as white pine was abundant it surpassed all other woods of this
-country in the amount used. It was one of the earliest exports from New
-England, and it went to the West Indies and to Europe. England attempted
-to control the cutting and export of white pine, but was unsuccessful.
-At an early period the rivers were utilized for transporting the logs
-and the lumber to market, and that method has continued until the
-present time. Spectacular log drives were common in early times in New
-England, later in New York and Pennsylvania, and still later in Michigan
-and the other Lake States. Many billions of feet of faultless logs have
-gone down flooded rivers. The scenes in the woods and the life in lumber
-camps have been written in novels and romances, and the central figure
-of it all was white pine.
-
-There are a few things for which this wood is not suitable; otherwise
-its use has been nearly universal in some parts of this country. It went
-into masts and matches, which are the largest and smallest commodities,
-and into almost every shape and size of product between. Most of the
-early houses and barns in the pine region were built of it. Hewed pine
-was the foundation, and the shingles were of split and shaved pine. It
-formed floors, doors, sash, and shutters. It was the ceiling within and
-the weather boarding without. It fenced the fields and bridged the
-streams. It went to market as rough lumber, and planing mills turned it
-out as dressed stock in various forms. It has probably been more
-extensively employed by box makers than any other wood, and though it is
-scarcer than formerly, hundreds of millions of feet of it are still used
-annually by box makers. Scores of millions of feet yearly are demanded
-by the manufacturers of window shade rollers, though individually the
-roller is a very small commodity. In this, as for patterns and many
-other things, no satisfactory substitute for white pine has been found.
-
-As a timber tree, it will not disappear from this country, though the
-days of its greatest importance are past. Enormous tracts where it once
-grew will apparently never again produce a white pine sawlog. The
-prospect is more encouraging in other regions, and there will always be
-a considerable quantity of this lumber in the American market, though
-the high percentage of good grades which prevailed in the past will not
-continue in the future.
-
-White pine belongs in the five needle group, that is, five leaves grow
-in a bundle. They turn yellow and fall in the autumn of the second year.
-The cones are slender, are from five to eleven inches in length, and
-ripen and disperse their seeds in the autumn of the second year.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN WHITE PINE
-
-[Illustration: WESTERN WHITE PINE]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN WHITE PINE
-
-(_Pinus Monticola_)
-
-
-The silvery luster of the needles of this tree gives it the name silver
-pine, by which many people know it. It appears in literature as mountain
-Weymouth pine, the reference being to the eastern white pine (_Pinus
-strobus_), which is sometimes called Weymouth pine. Finger-cone pine is
-a California name; so are mountain pine and soft pine. In the same state
-it is called little sugar pine, to distinguish it from sugar pine
-(_Pinus lambertiana_), which it resembles in some particulars but not in
-all. It is thus seen that California is generous in bestowing names on
-this tree, notwithstanding it is not abundant in any part of that state
-and is unknown in most parts.
-
-The botanical name means "mountain pine," and that describes the
-species. It does best among the mountains, and it ranges from an
-altitude of from 4,000 feet to 10,000 on the Sierra Nevada mountains.
-Sometimes trees of very large size are found near the upper limits of
-its range, but the best stands are in valleys and on slopes at lower
-altitudes. Its range lies in British Columbia, Montana, Idaho,
-Washington, Oregon, and California. In the latter state it follows the
-Sierra Nevada mountains southward to the San Joaquin river.
-
-This species has been compared with the white pine of the East oftener
-than with any other species. The weights of the two woods are nearly the
-same, and both are light. Their fuel values are about the same. The
-strength of the eastern tree is a little higher, but the western species
-is stiffer. The woods of both are light in color, but that of the
-eastern tree is whiter; both are soft, but again the advantage is with
-the eastern tree. The western pine generally grows rapidly and the
-annual rings are wide; but, like most other species, it varies in its
-rate of growth, and trunks are found with narrow rings. The summerwood
-is thin, not conspicuous, and slightly resinous. The small resin
-passages are numerous. The heartwood is fairly durable in contact with
-the soil.
-
-The western white pine has entered many markets in recent years, but it
-is difficult to determine what the annual cut is. Statistics often
-include this species and the western yellow pine under one name, or at
-least confuse one with the other, and there is no way to determine
-exactly how much of the sawmill output belongs to each. The bulk of
-merchantable western white pine lumber is cut in Idaho and Montana. The
-stands are seldom pure, but this species frequently predominates over
-its associates. When pure forests are found, the yield is sometimes
-very high, as much as 130,000 feet of logs growing on a single acre.
-That quantity is not often equalled by any other forest tree, though
-redwood and Douglas fir sometimes go considerably above it.
-
-The western white pine's needles grow in clusters of five and are from
-one and a half to four inches long. The cones are from ten to eighteen
-inches long. The seeds ripen the second year. Reproduction is vigorous
-and the forest stands are holding their own. Trees about one hundred and
-seventy-five feet high and eight feet in diameter are met with, but the
-average size is one hundred feet high and from two to three feet in
-diameter, or about the size of eastern white pine.
-
-The wood is useful and has been giving service since the settlement of
-the country began, fifty or more years ago. Choice trunks were split for
-shakes or shingles, but the wood is inferior in splitting qualities to
-either eastern white pine or California sugar pine, because of more
-knots. The western white pine does not prime itself early or well. Dead
-limbs adhere to the trunk long after the sugar pine would shed them. In
-split products, the western white pine's principal rival has been the
-western red cedar. The pine has been much employed for mine timbers in
-the region where it is abundant. Miners generally take the most
-convenient wood for props, stulls, and lagging. A little higher use for
-pine is found among the mines, where is it made into tanks, flumes,
-sluice boxes, water pipes, riffle blocks, rockers, and guides for stamp
-mills. However, the total quantity used by miners is comparatively
-small. Much more goes to ranches for fences and buildings. It is
-serviceable, and is shipped outside the immediate region of production
-and is marketed in the plains states east of the Rocky Mountains, where
-it is excellent fence material.
-
-A larger market is found in manufacturing centers farther east. Western
-white pine is shipped to Chicago where it is manufactured into doors,
-sash, and interior finish, in competition with all other woods in that
-market. It is said to be of frequent occurrence that the very pine which
-is shipped in its rough form out of the Rocky Mountain region goes back
-finished as doors and sash. When the mountain regions shall have better
-manufacturing facilities, this will not occur. In the manufacture of
-window and hothouse sash, glass is more important than wood, although
-each is useless without the other. The principal glass factories are in
-the East, and it is sometimes desirable to ship the wood to the glass
-factory, have the sash made there, and the glazing done; and the
-finished sash, ready for use, may go back to the source of the timber.
-
-The same operation is sometimes repeated for doors; but in recent years
-the mountain region where this pine grows has been supplied with
-factories and there is now less shipping of raw material out and of
-finished products back than formerly. The development of the fruit
-industry in the elevated valleys of Idaho, Montana, Washington, and
-Oregon has called for shipping boxes in large numbers, and western white
-pine has been found an ideal wood for that use. It is light in weight
-and in color, strong enough to satisfy all ordinary requirements, and
-cheap enough to bring it within reach of orchardists. It meets with
-lively competition from a number of other woods which grow abundantly in
-the region, but it holds its ground and takes its share of the business.
-
-Estimates of the total stand of western white pine among its native
-mountains have not been published, but the quantity is known to be
-large. It is a difficult species to estimate because it is scattered
-widely, large, pure stands being scarce. Some large mills make a
-specialty of sawing this species. The annual output is believed to reach
-150,000,000 feet, most of which is in Idaho and Montana.
-
-MEXICAN WHITE PINE (_Pinus strobiformis_) is not sufficiently abundant
-to be of much importance in the United States. The best of it is south
-of the international boundary in Mexico, but the species extends into
-New Mexico and Arizona where it is most abundant at altitudes of from
-6,000 to 8,000 feet. The growth is generally scattering, and the trunks
-are often deformed through fire injury, and are inclined to be limby and
-of poor form. The best trees are from eighty to one hundred feet high,
-and two in diameter; but many are scarcely half that size. The lumbermen
-of the region, who cut Mexican white pine, are inclined to place low
-value on it, not because the wood is of poor quality, but because it is
-scarce. It is generally sent to market with western yellow pine.
-Excellent grades and quality of this wood are shipped into the United
-States from Mexico, but not in large amounts. An occasional carload
-reaches door and sash factories in Texas, and woodworkers as far east as
-Michigan are acquainted with it, through trials and experiments which
-they have made. It is highly recommended by those who have tried it.
-Some consider it as soft, as easy to work, and as free from warping and
-checking as the eastern white pine. In Arizona and New Mexico the tree
-is known as ayacahuite pine, white pine, and Arizona white pine. The
-wood is moderately light, fairly strong, rather stiff, of slow growth,
-and the bands of summerwood are comparatively broad. The resin passages
-are few and large. The wood is light red, the sapwood whiter. The leaves
-occur in clusters of five, are three or four inches long, and fall
-during the third and fourth years. The seeds are large and have small
-wings which cannot carry them far from the parent tree.
-
-PINON (_Pinus edulis_). This is one of the nut pines abounding among the
-western mountains, and it is called pinon in Texas, nut pine in Texas
-and Colorado, pinon pine and New Mexican pinon in other parts of its
-range, extending from Colorado through New Mexico to western Texas. It
-has two and three leaves to the cluster. They begin to fall the third
-year and continue through six or seven years following. The cones are
-quite small, the largest not exceeding one and one-half inches in
-length. Trees are from thirty to forty feet high, and large trunks may
-be two and one-half feet in diameter. The tree runs up mountain sides to
-altitudes of 8,000 or 9,000 feet. It exists in rather large bodies, but
-is not an important timber tree, because the trunks are short and are
-generally of poor form. It often branches near the ground and assumes
-the appearance of a large shrub. Ties of pinon have been used with
-various results. Some have proved satisfactory, others have proved weak
-by breaking, and the ties occasionally split when spikes are driven. The
-wood's service as posts varies also. Some posts will last only three or
-four years, while others remain sound a long time. The difference in
-lasting properties is due to the difference in resinous contents of the
-wood. Few softwoods rank above it in fuel value, and much is cut in some
-localities. Large areas have been totally stripped for fuel. Charcoal
-for local smithies is burned from this pine. The wood is widely used for
-ranch purposes, but not in large quantities. The edible nuts are sought
-by birds, rodents, and Indians. Some stores keep the nuts for sale. The
-tree is handicapped in its effort at reproduction by weight, and the
-small wing power of the seeds. They fall near the base of the parent
-tree, and most of them are speedily devoured.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SUGAR PINE
-
-[Illustration: SUGAR PINE]
-
-
-
-
-SUGAR PINE
-
-(_Pinus Lambertiana_)
-
-
-This is the largest pine of the United States, and probably is the
-largest true pine in the world. Its rival, the Kauri pine of New
-Zealand, is not a pine according to the classification of botanists; and
-that leaves the sugar pine supreme, as far as the world has been
-explored. David Douglas, the first to describe the species, reported a
-tree eighteen feet in diameter and 245 feet high, in southern Oregon. No
-tree of similar size has been reported since; but trunks six, ten, and
-even twelve feet through, and more than 200 high are not rare.
-
-The range of sugar pine extends from southern Oregon to lower
-California. Through California it follows the Sierra Nevada mountains in
-a comparatively narrow belt. In Oregon it descends within 1,000 feet of
-sea level, but the lower limit of its range gradually rises as it
-follows the mountains southward, until in southern California it is
-8,000 or 10,000 feet above the sea. Its choice of situation is in the
-mountain belt where the annual precipitation is forty inches or more.
-The deep winter snows of the Sierras do not hurt it. The young trees
-bear abundant limbs covering the trunks nearly or quite to the ground,
-and are of perfect conical shape. When they are ten or fifteen feet tall
-they may be entirely covered in snow which accumulates to a depth of a
-dozen feet or more. The little pines are seldom injured by the load, but
-their limbs shed the snow until it covers the highest twig. The
-consequence is that a crooked sugar pine trunk is seldom seen, though a
-considerable part of the tree's youth may have been spent under tons of
-snow. Later in life the lower limbs die and drop, leaving clean boles
-which assure abundance of clear lumber in the years to come.
-
-The tree is nearly always known as sugar pine, though it may be called
-big pine or great pine to distinguish it from firs, cedars, and other
-softwoods with which it is associated. The name is due to a product
-resembling sugar which exudes from the heartwood when the tree has been
-injured by fires, and which dries in white, brittle excrescences on the
-surface. Its taste is sweet, with a suggestion of pitch which is not
-unpleasant. The principle has been named "pinite."
-
-The needles of sugar pine are in clusters of five and are about four
-inches long. They are deciduous the second and third years. The cones
-are longer than cones of any other pine of this country but those of the
-Coulter pine are a little heavier. Extreme length of 22 inches for the
-sugar pine cone has been recorded, but the average is from 12 to 15
-inches. Cones open, shed their seeds the second year, and fall the
-third. The seeds resemble lentils, and are provided with wings which
-carry them several hundred feet, if wind is favorable. This affords
-excellent opportunities for reproduction; but there is an offset in the
-sweetness of the seeds which are prized for food by birds, beasts and
-creeping things from the Piute Indian down to the Douglas squirrel and
-the jumping mouse.
-
-Sugar pine occupies a high place as a timber tree. It has been in use
-for half a century. The cut in 1900 was 52,000,000 feet, in 1904 it was
-120,000,000; in 1907, 115,000,000, and the next year about 100,000,000.
-Ninety-three per cent of the cut is in California, the rest in Oregon.
-Its stand in California has been estimated at 25,000,000,000 feet.
-
-The wood of sugar pine is a little lighter than eastern white pine, is a
-little weaker, and has less stiffness. It is soft, the rings of growth
-are wide, the bands of summerwood thin and resinous; the resin passages
-are numerous and very large, the medullary rays numerous and obscure.
-The heart is light brown, the sapwood nearly white.
-
-Sugar pine and redwood were the two early roofing woods in California,
-and both are still much used for that purpose. Sugar pine was made into
-sawed shingles and split shakes. The shingle is a mill product; but the
-shake was rived with mallet and frow, and in the years when it was the
-great roofing material in central and eastern California, the shake
-makers camped by twos in the forest, lived principally on bacon and red
-beans, and split out from 200,000 to 400,000 shakes as a summer's work.
-The winter snows drove the workers from the mountains, with from eight
-to twelve hundred dollars in their pockets for the season's work.
-
-The increase in stumpage price has practically killed the shake maker's
-business. In the palmy days when most everything went, he procured his
-timber for little or nothing. He sometimes failed to find the surveyor's
-lines, particularly if there happened to be a fine sugar pine just
-across on a government quarter section. His method of operation was
-wasteful. He used only the best of the tree. If the grain happened to
-twist the fraction of an inch, he abandoned the fallen trunk, and cut
-another. The shakes were split very thin, for sugar pine is among the
-most cleavable woods of this country. Four or five good trees provided
-the shake maker's camp with material for a year's work.
-
-Some of the earliest sawmills in California cut sugar pine for sheds,
-shacks, sluiceboxes, flumes among the mines; and almost immediately a
-demand came from the agricultural and stock districts for lumber. From
-that day until the present time the sugar pine mills have been busy. As
-the demand has grown, the facilities for meeting it have increased. The
-prevailing size of the timber forbade the use of small mills. A saw
-large enough for most eastern and southern timbers would not slab a
-sugar pine log. From four to six feet were common sizes, and the
-lumberman despised anything small.
-
-In late years sugar pine operators have looked beyond the local markets,
-and have been sending their lumber to practically every state in the
-Union, except probably the extreme South. It comes in direct competition
-with the white pine of New England and the Lake States. The two woods
-have many points of resemblance. The white pine would probably have lost
-no markets to the California wood if the best grades could still be had
-at moderate prices; but most of the white pine region has been stripped
-of its best timber, and the resulting scarcity in the high grades has
-been, in part, made good by sugar pine. Some manufacturers of doors and
-frames claim that sugar pine is more satisfactory than white pine,
-because of better behavior under climatic changes. It is said to shrink,
-swell, and warp less than the eastern wood.
-
-Sugar pine has displaced white pine to a very small extent only, in
-comparison with the field still held by the eastern wood, whose annual
-output is about thirty times that of the California species. Their uses
-are practically the same except that only the good grades of sugar pine
-go east, and the corresponding grades of white pine west, and therefore
-there is no competition between the poor grades of the two woods. The
-annual demand for sugar and white pine east of the Rocky Mountains is
-probably represented as an average in Illinois, where 2,000,000 feet of
-the former and 175,000,000 of the latter are used yearly.
-
-While there is a large amount of mature sugar pine ready for lumbermen,
-the prospect of future supplies from new growth is not entirely
-satisfactory. The western yellow pine is mixed with it throughout most
-of its range, and is more than a match for it in taking possession of
-vacant ground. It is inferred from this fact that the relative positions
-of the two species in future forests will change at the expense of sugar
-pine. It endures shade when small, and this enables it to obtain a start
-among other species; but as it increases in size it becomes intolerant
-of shade, and if it does not receive abundance of light it will not
-grow. A forest fire is nearly certain to kill the small sugar pines, but
-old trunks are protected by their thick bark. Few species have fewer
-natural enemies. Very small trees are occasionally attacked by mistletoe
-(_Arceuthobium occidentale_) and succumb or else are stunted in their
-growth.
-
-    MEXICAN PINON (_Pinus cembroides_) is known also as nut pine, pinon
-    pine and stone-seed Mexican pinon. It is one of the smallest of the
-    native pines of this country. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet
-    high and a few inches in diameter, but in sheltered canyons in
-    Arizona it sometimes attains a height of fifty or sixty feet with a
-    corresponding diameter. It reaches its best development in northern
-    Mexico and what is found of it in the United States is the species'
-    extreme northern extension, in Arizona and New Mexico at altitudes
-    usually above 6,000 feet. It supplies fuel in districts where
-    firewood is otherwise scarce, and it has a small place as ranch
-    timber. The wood is heavy, of slow growth, the summerwood thin and
-    dense. The resin passages are few and small; color, light, clear
-    yellow, the sapwood nearly white. If the tree stood in regions
-    well-forested with commercial species, it would possess little or no
-    value; but where wood is scarce, it has considerable value. The
-    hardshell nuts resemble those of the gray pine, but are considered
-    more valuable for food. They are not of much importance in the
-    United States, but in Mexico where the trees are more abundant and
-    the population denser, the nuts are bought and sold in large
-    quantities. Its leaves are in clusters of three, sometimes two. They
-    are one inch or more in length, and fall the third and fourth years.
-    Cones are seldom over two inches in length. The species is not
-    extending its range, but seems to be holding the ground it already
-    has. It bears abundance of seeds, but not one in ten thousand
-    germinates and becomes a mature tree.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WHITEBARK PINE
-
-[Illustration: WHITEBARK PINE]
-
-
-
-
-WHITEBARK PINE
-
-(_Pinus Albicaulis_)
-
-
-This interesting and peculiar pine has a number of names, most of which
-are descriptive. The whiteness of the bark and the stunted and recumbent
-position which the tree assumes on bleak mountains are referred to in
-the names whitestem pine in California and Montana, scrub pine in
-Montana, whitebark in Oregon, white in California, and elsewhere it is
-creeping pine, whitebark pine, and alpine whitebark pine. It is a
-mountain tree. There are few heights within its range which it cannot
-reach. Its tough, prostrate branches, in its loftiest situations, may
-whip snow banks nine or ten months of the year, and for the two or three
-months of summer every starry night deposits its sprinkle of frost upon
-the flowers or cones of this persistent tree. It stands the storms of
-centuries, and lives on, though the whole period of its existence is a
-battle for life under adverse circumstances. At lower altitudes it fares
-better but does not live longer than on the most sterile peak. Its range
-covers 500,000 square miles, but only in scattered groups. It touches
-the high places only, creeping down to altitudes of 5,000 or 6,000 feet
-in the northern Rocky Mountains. It grows from British Columbia to
-southern California, and is found in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon,
-Nevada, Arizona, and California. Its associates are the mountain
-climbers of the tree kingdom, Engelmann spruce, Lyall larch, limber
-pine, alpine fir, foxtail pine, Rocky Mountain juniper, knobcone pine,
-and western juniper. Its dark green needles, stout and rigid, are from
-one and one-half to two and one-half inches long. They hang on the twigs
-from five to eight years. In July the scarlet flowers appear, forming a
-beautiful contrast with the white bark and the green needles. In August
-the seeds are ripe. The cones are from one and one-half to three inches
-long. The seeds are nearly half an inch long, sweet to the taste. The
-few squirrels and birds which inhabit the inhospitable region where the
-whitebark pine grows, get busy the moment the cones open, and few
-escape. Nature seems to have played a prank on this pine by giving wings
-to the seeds and rendering their use impossible. The wing is stuck fast
-with resin to the cone scales, and the seed can escape only by tearing
-its wing off. The heavy nut then falls plumb to the ground beneath the
-branches of its parent. It might be supposed that a tree situated as the
-whitebark pine is would be provided with ample means of seedflight in
-order to afford wide distribution, and give opportunity to survive the
-hardships which are imposed by surroundings; but such is not the case.
-The willow and the cottonwood which grow in fertile valleys have the
-means of scattering their seeds miles away; but this bleak mountain tree
-must drop its seeds on the rocks beneath. In this instance, nature seems
-more interested in depositing the pine nuts where the hungry squirrels
-can get them, than in furnishing a planting place for the nuts
-themselves--therefore, tears off their wings before they leave the cone.
-The battle for existence begins before the seeds germinate, and the
-struggle never ceases. The tree, in parts of its range, survives a
-temperature sixty degrees below zero. Its seedlings frequently perish,
-not from cold and drought, but because the wind thrashes them against
-the rocks which wear them to pieces. Trees which survive on the great
-heights are apt to assume strange and fantastic forms, with less
-resemblance to trees than to great, green spiders sprawling over the
-rocks. Trees 500 years old may not be five feet high. Deep snows hold
-them flat to the rocks so much of the time that the limbs cannot lift
-themselves during the few summer days, but grow like vines. The growth
-is so exceedingly slow that the new wood on the tips of twigs at the end
-of summer is a mere point of yellow. John Muir, with a magnifying glass,
-counted seventy-five annual rings in a twig one-eighth of an inch in
-diameter. Trunks three and one-half inches in diameter may be 225 years
-old; one of six inches had 426 rings; while a seventeen-inch trunk was
-800 years old, and less than six feet high. Such a tree has a spread of
-branches thirty or forty feet across. They lie flat on the ground. Wild
-sheep, deer, bear, and other wild animals know how to shelter themselves
-beneath the prostrate branches by creeping under; and travelers,
-overtaken by storms, sometimes do the same; or in good weather the
-sheepherder or the hunter may spread his blankets on the mass of limbs,
-boughs, and needles, and spend a comfortable night on a springy
-couch--actually sleeping in a tree top within two feet of the ground. In
-regions lower down, the whitebark pine reaches respectable tree form.
-Fence posts are sometimes cut from it in the Mono basin, east of the
-Sierra Nevada mountains. In the Nez Perce National Forest trees forty
-feet high have merchantable lengths of twenty-four feet. Similar growth
-is found in other regions. In its best growth, the wood of whitebark
-pine resembles that of white pine. It is light, of about the same
-strength as white pine, but more brittle. The annual rings are very
-narrow; the small resin passages are numerous. The sapwood is very thin
-and is nearly white. Men can never greatly assist or hinder this tree.
-It will continue to occupy heights and elevated valleys.
-
-BRISTLECONE PINE (_Pinus aristata_) owes its name to the sharp bristles
-on the tips of the cone scales. It is known also as foxtail pine and
-hickory pine. The latter name is given, not because of toughness, but
-on account of the whiteness of the sapwood. It is strictly a high
-mountain tree, running up to the timber line at 12,000 feet, and seldom
-occurring below 6,000 or 7,000 feet. It maintains its existence under
-adverse circumstances, its home being on dry, stony ridges, cold and
-stormy in winter, and subject to excessive drought during the brief
-growing season. Trees of large trunks and fine forms are impossible
-under such conditions. The bristlecone pine's bole is short, tapers
-rapidly and is excessively knotty. The species reaches its best
-development in Colorado. Though it is seldom sawed for lumber, it is of
-much importance in many localities where better material is scarce. In
-central Nevada many valuable mines were developed and worked by using
-the wood for props and fuel. Charcoal made of it was particularly
-important in that region, and it was carried long distances to supply
-blacksmith shops in mining camps. Railways have made some use of it for
-ties. Though rough, it is liked for fence posts. The resin in the wood
-assists in resisting decay, and posts last many years in the dry regions
-where the tree grows. Ranchmen among the high mountains build corrals,
-pens, sheds, and fences of it; but the fibers of the wood are so twisted
-and involved that splitting is nearly impossible, and round timbers only
-are employed. The bristlecone pine can never be more important in the
-country's lumber supply than it is now. It occupies waste land where no
-other tree grows, and it crowds out nothing better than itself. It
-clings to stony peaks and wind-swept ridges where the ungainly trunks
-are welcome to the traveler, miner, or sheepherder who is in need of a
-shed to shelter him, or a fire for his night camp. In situations exposed
-to great cold and drying winds, the bristlecone pine is a shrub, with
-little suggestion of a tree, further than its green foliage and small
-cones. The needles are in clusters of five. They cling to the twigs for
-ten or fifteen years. The seeds are scattered about the first of
-October, and the wind carries them hundreds of feet. They take root in
-soil so sterile that no humus is visible. Young trees and the small
-twigs of old ones present a peculiar appearance. The bark is chalky
-white, but when the trees are old the bark becomes red or brown.
-
-    FOXTAIL PINE (_Pinus balfouriana_) owes its name to the clustering
-    of its needles round the ends of the branches, bristling like a
-    fox's tail. The needles are seldom more than one and one-half inches
-    in length, and are in clusters of fives. They cling to the branches
-    ten or fifteen years before falling. The cones are about three
-    inches long, and are armed with slender spines. The tree is strictly
-    a mountain species and grows at a higher altitude than any other
-    tree in the United States, although whitebark pine is not much
-    behind it. It reaches its best development near Mt. Whitney,
-    California, where it is said to grow at an altitude of 15,000 feet
-    above sea level. It has been officially reported at Farewell Gap, in
-    the Sierra Nevada mountains, at an altitude of 13,000. At high
-    altitudes it is scrubby and distorted, but in more favorable
-    situations it may be sixty feet high and two in diameter. On high
-    mountains it is generally not more than thirty feet high and ten
-    inches in diameter. It is of remarkably slow growth, and
-    comparatively small trees may be 200 or 300 years old. The wood is
-    moderately light, is soft, weak, brittle. Resin passages are few and
-    very small. The wood is satiny and susceptible of a good polish, and
-    would be valuable if abundant. The seeds are winged and the wind
-    scatters them widely, but most of them are lost on barren rocks or
-    drifts of eternal snow. The untoward circumstances under which the
-    tree must live prevent generous reproduction. It holds its own but
-    can gain no new foothold on the bleak and barren heights which form
-    its environment. The dark green of its foliage makes the belts of
-    foxtail pines conspicuous where they grow above the timber line of
-    nearly all other trees. Its range is confined to a few of the
-    highest mountains of California, particularly about (but not on) Mt.
-    Shasta and among the clusters of peaks about the sources of Kings
-    and Kern rivers. Those who travel and camp among the highest
-    mountains of California are often indebted to foxtail pine for their
-    fuel. Near the upper limit of its range it frequently dies at the
-    top, and stands stripped of bark for many years. The dead wood,
-    which frequently is not higher above the ground than a man's head,
-    is broken away by campers for fuel, and it is often the only
-    resource.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LONGLEAF PINE
-
-[Illustration: LONGLEAF PINE]
-
-
-
-
-LONGLEAF PINE
-
-(_Pinus Palustris_)
-
-
-Longleaf is generally considered to be the most important member of the
-group of hard or pitch pines in this country[2]. It is known by many
-names in different parts of its range, and outside of its range where
-the wood is well known.
-
-    [2] There is no precise agreement as to what should be included in
-    the group of hard pines in the United States, but the following
-    twenty-two are usually placed in that class: Longleaf Pine (_Pinus
-    palustris_), Shortleaf Pine (_Pinus echinata_), Loblolly Pine
-    (_Pinus taeda_), Cuban Pine (_Pinus heterophylla_), Norway Pine
-    (_Pinus resinosa_), Western Yellow Pine (_Pinus ponderosa_),
-    Chihuahua Pine (_Pinus chihuahuana_), Arizona Pine (_Pinus
-    arizonica_), Pitch Pine (_Pinus rigida_), Pond Pine (_Pinus
-    serotina_), Spruce Pine (_Pinus glabra_), Monterey Pine (_Pinus
-    radiata_), Knobcone Pine (_Pinus attenuata_), Gray Pine (_Pinus
-    sabiniana_), Coulter Pine (_Pinus coulteri_), Lodgepole Pine (_Pinus
-    contorta_), Jack Pine (_Pinus divaricata_), Scrub Pine (_Pinus
-    virginiana_), Sand Pine (_Pinus clausa_), Table Mountain Pine
-    (_Pinus pungens_), California Swamp Pine (_Pinus muricata_), Torry
-    Pine (_Pinus torreyana_).
-
-The names southern pine, Georgia pine, and Florida pine are not well
-chosen, because there are other important pines in the regions named.
-Turpentine pine is a common term, but other species produce turpentine
-also, particularly the Cuban pine. Hard pine is much employed in
-reference to this tree, and it applies well, but it describes other
-species also. Heart pine is a lumberman's term to distinguish this
-species from loblolly, shortleaf, and Cuban pines. The sapwood of the
-three last named is thick, the heartwood small, while in longleaf pine
-the sap is thin, the heart large, hence the name applied by lumbermen.
-In Tennessee where it is not a commercial forest tree, it is called
-brown pine, and in nearly all parts of the United States it is spoken of
-as yellow pine, usually with some adjective as "southern," "Georgia," or
-"longleaf." The persistency with which Georgia is used as a portion of
-the name of this tree is due to the fact that extensive lumbering of the
-longleaf forests began in that state. The center of operations has since
-shifted to the West, and is now in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
-The tree has many other names, among them being pitch pine and fat pine.
-These have reference to its value in the naval stores industry. The name
-longleaf pine is now well established in commercial transactions. It has
-longer leaves than any other pine in this country. They range in length
-from eight to eighteen inches. The needles of Cuban pine are from eight
-to twelve inches; loblolly's are from six to nine; and those of
-shortleaf from three to five.
-
-Longleaf pine's geographic range is more restricted than that of
-loblolly and shortleaf, but larger than the range of Cuban pine.
-Longleaf occupies a belt from Virginia to Texas, following the tertiary
-sandy formation pretty closely. The belt seldom extends from the coast
-inland more than 125 miles. The tree runs south in Florida to Tampa bay.
-It disappears as it approaches the Mississippi, but reappears west of
-that river in Louisiana and Texas. Its western limit is near Trinity
-river, and its northern in that region is near the boundary between
-Louisiana and Arkansas.
-
-Longleaf attains a height of from sixty to ninety feet, but a few trees
-reach 130. The diameters of mature trunks range from one foot to three,
-usually less than two. The leaves grow three in a bundle, and fall at
-the end of the second year. They are arranged in thick, broom-like
-bunches on the ends of the twigs. It is a tree of slow growth compared
-with other pines of the region. Its characteristic narrow annual rings
-are usually sufficient to distinguish its logs and lumber from those of
-other southern yellow pines. Its thin sapwood likewise assists in
-identification. The proportionately high percentage of heartwood in
-longleaf pine makes it possible to saw lumber which shows little or no
-sapwood. It is difficult to do that with other southern pines.
-
-The wood is heavy, exceedingly hard for pine, very strong, tough,
-compact, durable, resinous, resin passages few, not conspicuous;
-medullary rays numerous, not conspicuous; color, light red or orange,
-the thin sapwood nearly white. The annual rings contain a large
-proportion of dark colored summerwood, which accounts for the great
-strength of longleaf pine timber. The contrast in color between the
-springwood and the summerwood is the basis of the figure of this pine
-which gives it much of its value as an interior finish material,
-including doors. The hardness of the summerwood provides the wearing
-qualities of flooring and paving blocks. The coloring matter in the body
-of the wood protects it against decay for a longer period than most
-other pines. This, in connection with its hardness and strength, gives
-it high standing for railroad ties, bridges, trestles, and other
-structures exposed to weather.
-
-Longleaf pine is as widely used as any softwood in this country. It
-serves with hardwoods for a number of purposes. It has been a timber of
-commerce since an early period, and was exported from the south Atlantic
-coast long before the Revolutionary war; but it was later than that when
-it came into keen competition with the Riga pine of northern Europe. It
-has since held its own in the European markets, and its trade has
-extended to many other foreign countries, particularly to the republics
-of South and Central America, Mexico, and the West Indies.
-
-It did not attain an important position in the commerce of this country
-until after the Civil war, but it had a place in shipbuilding before
-that time, and it has held that place. The builders of cars employ large
-quantities for frames and other parts of gondolas, box cars, and
-coaches. Over 175,000,000 feet were so used in 1909 in Illinois. It is
-the leading car building timber in this country. Its great strength,
-hardness, and stiffness give it that place.
-
-It is scarcely less important as an interior wood for house finish. It
-is not so much its strength as its beauty that recommends it for that
-purpose. Its beauty is due to a combination of figure and color.
-Splendid variety is possible by carefully selecting the material.
-Manufacturers of furniture, fixtures, and vehicles are large users of
-longleaf pine. In these lines its chief value is due to strength.
-
-In the naval stores industry in this country, it is more important than
-all other species combined. For a century and a half it has supplied
-this country and much of the rest of the world. The principal
-commodities made from the resin of this tree are spirits of turpentine
-and rosin. These two articles are produced by distilling the resin which
-exudes from wounds in the tree. The distillate is spirits of turpentine,
-the residue is rosin. The manufacture of naval stores has destroyed tens
-of thousands of trees in the past; but better methods are now in use and
-loss is less. Georgia and South Carolina were once the center of naval
-stores production; but it has now moved to Louisiana and Florida.
-
-The supply of longleaf pine has rapidly decreased during the past twenty
-years, and though the end is not yet at hand, it is approaching. Young
-trees are not coming on to take the place of those cut for lumber. They
-grow slowly at best, and a new forest could not be produced in less than
-a hundred years. Both protection and care have been lacking. Fire
-usually kills seedlings in their first or second year. The result is
-that many extensive tracts where longleaf pine once grew in abundance
-have few young and scarcely any old trees now. As far as can be
-foreseen, this valuable timber will reach its end when existing stands
-have been cut.
-
-CUBAN PINE (_Pinus heterophylla_). The Cuban pine has several local
-names; slash pine in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi; swamp
-pine in Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi; meadow pine in Florida and
-Mississippi; pitch pine in Florida; and spruce pine in Alabama. Its
-range is confined to the coast region from South Carolina to Louisiana,
-from sixty to one hundred miles inland. It is the only pine in the
-extreme south of Florida. The wood is heavy, hard, very strong, tough,
-compact, durable, resinous, the resin passages few but conspicuous, rich
-dark orange color, the sapwood often nearly white. The annual ring is
-usually more than half dark colored summerwood. The Cuban pine grows
-rapidly, quickly appropriates vacant ground, and the species is
-spreading. Its needles, from eight to twelve inches long, fall the
-second year. The wood possesses nearly the strength, hardness, and
-stiffness of longleaf pine, and the trunks are as large. The two woods
-which are so similar in other respects differ in figure, owing to the
-wider annual rings of the Cuban pine. The sapwood of the latter species
-greatly exceeds in thickness that of longleaf pine. For that reason it
-is often mistaken for loblolly pine. Cuban pine never goes to market
-under its own name, but is mixed with and passes for one of the other
-southern yellow pines.
-
-SAND PINE (_Pinus clausa_). This tree is generally twenty or thirty feet
-high, and eight or twelve inches in diameter. Under favorable conditions
-it attains a height of sixty or eighty feet and a diameter of two. The
-leaves are two or three inches long, and fall the third and fourth
-years. Its range is almost wholly in Florida but extends a little over
-the northern border. It grows as far south as Tampa on the west coast,
-and nearly to Miami on the east. It is not much cut for lumber because
-of its small size and generally short, limby trunk. In a few localities
-shapely boles are developed, and serviceable lumber is made. It is a
-poor-land tree, as its name implies. The cones adhere to the branches
-many years, and may be partly enclosed in the growing wood.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SHORTLEAF PINE
-
-[Illustration: SHORTLEAF PINE]
-
-
-
-
-SHORTLEAF PINE
-
-(_Pinus Echinata_)
-
-
-In the markets the lumber of this species is known as yellow pine,
-southern yellow pine, and sap pine, and in some localities the term
-shortleaf is used. The latter is descriptive, and can be easily
-understood when reference is made to the living tree, because its short
-needles distinguish it from its associates in the pine forest; but in
-speaking of lumber only, the reference to the leaves has less meaning,
-particularly to one who is not acquainted with the tree's appearance.
-Its wood so closely resembles that of Cuban and loblolly pine that they
-are not easily distinguished by sight alone. In the East the name
-Carolina pine or North Carolina pine is much used, but it is not often
-heard west of the Allegheny mountains. Referring to the manner and
-locality of its growth it is called slash pine in North Carolina and
-Virginia, old-field pine in Alabama and Mississippi, and poor-field pine
-in Florida. Its tendency to take possession of abandoned ground has
-given it these names. It is occasionally called pitch pine in Missouri.
-That name would not distinguish it in most parts of the South where
-several species of pitch pine grow. In some regions it is known as
-spruce pine, but the name is not based on any characteristic of the
-living tree or of its wood. In North Carolina and Alabama, and in
-literature, it is sometimes known as rosemary pine, but that name
-applies rather to fine timber cut from any southern yellow pine, than to
-this species in particular. In Delaware it is known as shortshat and in
-Virginia as bull pine. To those who are familiar with the tree's
-appearance, the name shortleaf pine is most accurate in definition.
-
-The commercial range of shortleaf pine has contracted to a considerable
-extent since the settlement of the country. It once grew as far north as
-Albany, New York, and from fifty to a hundred years ago it was lumbered
-in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia in regions where it has now
-ceased to exist, or is found only as scattered trees. Its geographical
-range is now usually given from New York to Florida, west to Missouri
-and Oklahoma and northeastern Texas. It is important in lumber
-operations in North Carolina and southward, and westward to the limits
-of its range. The tree reaches its largest size and attains its finest
-stands west of the Mississippi river. In average size it exceeds
-longleaf pine. It may reach a height above 100 feet and a trunk diameter
-of three or four. Squared timbers of large size were formerly exported
-from Virginia and North Carolina. Similar sizes cannot now be procured
-there.
-
-Shortleaf pine varies greatly in the quality and amount of sapwood. It
-is normally a thick sap tree, but midway between loblolly and longleaf.
-The young tree increases rapidly in size until it is from six to ten
-inches in diameter, and the yearly rings are wide. The rate of growth
-then decreases and during the rest of its life the rings are narrow.
-This feature is often of assistance in identifying southern yellow pine
-logs or large timbers which contain the heart and also the sap. Wide
-rings near the heart, followed by narrow ones, and a thick sapwood are
-pretty good evidence that the timber--if a southern yellow pine--is
-shortleaf pine. The rule is not absolute; for a high authority on timber
-has said that no infallible rule can be laid down for distinguishing by
-sight alone the woods of the four southern yellow pines--longleaf,
-shortleaf, Cuban, and loblolly.
-
-The wood of shortleaf pine is strong, heavy, hard, and compact; very
-resinous, resin passages large and numerous; medullary rays numerous,
-conspicuous; color, orange, the sapwood nearly white. The thoroughly
-seasoned wood weighs thirty-eight pounds per cubic foot. It is about
-five pounds heavier than loblolly pine, five pounds lighter than
-longleaf, and nearly nine pounds lighter than Cuban pine. There is so
-great a variation in weight of shortleaf pine that only general averages
-have value.
-
-Shortleaf pine is not as strong as longleaf, and is not so extensively
-employed in heavy structural work, but in certain other lines it has the
-advantage of longleaf. It is softer, and door and sash makers like it
-better. It is easier to work, and when manufactured into doors and
-interior finish many consider it superior to longleaf. The wide rings of
-annual growth in the heartwood show fine contrast in color, and when
-these are developed by stains and fillers, the grain or figure of the
-wood is very pleasing. Where hardness is not an essential, it is much
-used for floors. It is in great demand by builders of freight cars, but
-less for frames and heavy beams than for siding and decking. Car
-builders in Illinois bought 77,000,000 feet of it in 1909. That was
-nearly half of the entire quantity of this wood used in the state. The
-second largest users in Illinois were manufacturers of sash, doors,
-blinds, and general millwork. If the whole country is considered, this
-is probably the largest use of the wood. Makers of boxes and crates in
-the South employ large quantities.
-
-The depletion of shortleaf forests has progressed rapidly, but in the
-absence of reliable statistics it is impossible to give figures by
-decades or years. In 1880 an estimate placed the amount west of the
-Mississippi at 95,000,000,000 feet. That was probably less than half of
-the country's supply at that time. In 1911 the Commissioner of
-Corporations estimated that the combined remaining stand of loblolly
-and shortleaf pine in the South was 152,000,000,000 feet. It is doubtful
-if half of it was shortleaf. In that case, there was less shortleaf pine
-in the entire South in 1911 than there was west of the Mississippi river
-thirty years before.
-
-Rapid decrease in total stand of a species does not necessarily imply
-exhaustion. The cut will fall off as scarcity pinches. In the case of
-shortleaf pine, an influence is active which will bring good results in
-the future. This pine reproduces with vigor. Its small triangular seeds
-are equipped with wings which carry them into vacant areas where they
-quickly germinate if they fall on mineral soil. The seedling trees
-suffer much from fire, but their power of resistance is fairly good, and
-dense new growth is coming on in many localities. A good many years are
-required to bring a seedling to maturity, but it will reach sawlog size
-sometime, and there is no question but that the market will welcome it.
-
-The shortleaf pine is peculiar among eastern softwoods in one respect.
-Stumps will sprout. That occurs oftener west of the Mississippi than
-east. However, the tree's ability to send up sprouts from the stump is
-of little practical value, since the sprouts seldom or never develop
-into merchantable trees. In that respect it differs from the other
-well-known sprouting softwood of this country, the California redwood,
-whose numerous sprouts grow into large trunks.
-
-SPRUCE PINE (_Pinus glabra_). This is one of the softest and the whitest
-of the hard pines of this country. Nothing but its scarcity stands in
-the way of its becoming an important timber tree. The best of it is a
-satisfactory substitute for white pine in the manufacture of doors. It
-grows rapidly, and the wide rings contain a high percentage of light
-colored springwood, though there is enough summerwood of darker color to
-give the dressed lumber a character. It weighs about the same as
-northern white pine, but is weaker. In South Carolina and Florida it is
-called white pine, but the name spruce is more general. It is known also
-as kingstree, poor pine, Walter's pine, and lowland spruce pine. Its
-range is restricted to southern South Carolina, northern Florida and
-southern Alabama and Mississippi, and northeastern Louisiana. Its leaves
-are from one and a half to three inches in length, grow two in a bundle,
-and fall the second and third years. Large and well-formed trunks attain
-a height of from eighty to 100 feet and a diameter from two to nearly
-three. It reaches its best development in northwestern Florida, and its
-light, symmetrical trunks have long been in use there as masts for small
-vessels. It is too scarce to attract much attention from lumbermen, but
-they are well acquainted with its good qualities, and some of them take
-pains to keep the lumber separate from associated pines, and sell it to
-manufacturers of doors and interior finish. The bark bears considerable
-resemblance to spruce, which probably accounts for the name of the tree.
-
-    TABLE MOUNTAIN PINE (_Pinus pungens_). The French botanist, Michaux
-    the younger, has been criticized for the statement which he made
-    more than a hundred years ago that this species was confined to a
-    certain flat-topped mountain in the southern Appalachian ranges, and
-    he called it table mountain pine. It lacked much of being confined
-    within the narrow limits where it was discovered. It grows in New
-    Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West
-    Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. Its
-    other names are prickly pine, hickory pine, and southern mountain
-    pine. It supplies timber in all parts of its range, but, except in
-    very restricted localities, it is not abundant. The lumber in the
-    market is seldom distinguished from other pines, but some of the
-    Tennessee mills sell it separately to local customers. The wood is
-    medium light, rather strong (about like _Pinus rigida_, or pitch
-    pine, which it resembles in other respects), is less stiff than
-    white pine, and is resinous. The thick sapwood is nearly white, the
-    heartwood brown. It is not a durable timber in contact with the
-    ground. Its fuel value is low. Its needles grow in clusters of two,
-    and are generally less than two inches long. The cones which are in
-    clusters of from three to eight, and from two to three and a half
-    inches long, are armed with stout, curved hooks. The cones shed
-    their seeds irregularly during two or three years, and sometimes
-    hang on the trees for twenty years. In open ground this pine
-    occasionally produces fertile seeds when only a few feet high. Its
-    forest form and open-ground form are quite different. In thick woods
-    the tree is tall, with good bole, but in open ground it is only
-    twenty or thirty feet high, and is covered with limbs almost to the
-    ground.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LOBLOLLY PINE
-
-[Illustration: LOBLOLLY PINE]
-
-
-
-
-LOBLOLLY PINE
-
-(_Pinus Taeda_)
-
-
-Few trees have more names than this. The names, however, may be
-separated into groups, one group referring to the foliage, another to
-the situations in which the tree grows, and a third to certain
-characters or uses of the wood. Names descriptive of the leaves are
-longschat pine, longshucks pine, shortleaf pine, foxtail pine, and
-longstraw pine. The names which refer to locality or situation are
-loblolly pine, old-field pine, slash pine, black slash pine, Virginia
-pine, meadow pine and swamp pine. Names which refer to the character of
-the wood or of the standing tree are torch pine, rosemary pine,
-frankincense pine, cornstalk pine, spruce pine, and yellow pine. Not one
-of these names is applied to the tree in its entire range, and it has
-several names other than those listed. Sap pine is widely applied to the
-lumber, because the tree's sapwood is very thick, sometimes amounting to
-eighty per cent of a trunk. It has borne the name old-field pine for a
-hundred and fifty years in Virginia, and the name suggests a good deal
-of history. Some of the improvident early Virginia tobacco growers
-neglected to fertilize their fields, and the land wore out under
-constant cropping, and was abandoned. The pine quickly took possession,
-for the fields which were too far exhausted to produce tobacco or corn
-were amply able to grow dense stands of loblolly pine, and the farmers
-noticing this, called it old-field pine. It has been taking possession
-of abandoned fields in Virginia and North Carolina ever since, and the
-name still applies. The tree grows from New Jersey to Florida, west to
-Texas, north to Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia, but it does not
-cover the whole territory thus outlined. It is very scarce near its
-northern limit. There is evidence that the range of loblolly has
-extended in historic times, not into new or distant regions, but outside
-the borders which once marked its range. Since white men in Texas
-stopped the Indians' grass fires, the pine has encroached upon the
-prairie. Early writers in Virginia and North Carolina spoke of pine as
-scarce or totally wanting, except on the immediate coast. It is now
-found from one hundred to two hundred miles inland, and many sawmills
-now cut logs which have grown in fields abandoned since the
-Revolutionary war. This has occurred on the Atlantic coast rather than
-west of the Appalachian ranges of mountains. Virginia has more sawmills
-than any other state, and many of them are working on loblolly pine
-which has grown in the last hundred years.
-
-The tree bears seeds abundantly and scatters them widely. It is
-vigorous, grows with great rapidity, and is able to fight its way if it
-finds conditions in any way favorable. Turpentine operators have not
-found the working of loblolly pine profitable, and this has relieved it
-of a drain which has done much to deplete the southern forests of
-longleaf pine.
-
-Loblolly's leaves are from six to nine inches long, and fall the third
-year. This species, in common with other southern yellow pines, is
-disposed to grow tall, clear trunks, with a meager supply of limbs and
-foliage at the top. The lumber sawed from trunks of that kind is clear
-of knots. No other important forest tree of the United States comes as
-nearly being a cultivated tree as the loblolly pine. This is
-particularly true in the northeastern part of its range, in North
-Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. Though nature has done the actual
-planting, men provided the seed beds by giving up old fields to that
-use; and many of the stands are as thick and even as if they had been
-planted and cared for by regular forestry methods. Trees are from eighty
-to one hundred feet tall, and from two to four in diameter, some very
-old ones being a little larger.
-
-The annual rings of loblolly pine are broad, with good contrast between
-the spring and summer growth. The wood is light, not strong, brittle,
-not durable, very resinous, the resin passages are few and not
-conspicuous; medullary rays are numerous and obscure; color, light
-brown, the thick sapwood orange or nearly white. When this tree is of
-slow growth it is lighter, less resinous, and has thinner sapwood. It is
-sometimes known as rosemary pine.
-
-The use of loblolly pine lumber was greatly stimulated when the custom
-of drying it in kilns became general. It is largely sapwood and dries
-slowly in air. Its market is found in all eastern and central parts of
-the United States, and it is exported to Europe and Central and South
-America. It is a substantial material for many common purposes and its
-use is very large on the Atlantic coast. In quantity it exceeds any
-other species in the wood-using industries of Maryland, and all others
-combined in North Carolina. It is not as often employed in heavy
-structural timbers as longleaf pine, but in the market of which
-Baltimore is the center, much use is made of it for that purpose. It is
-ten pounds a cubic foot lighter than longleaf, has about three-fourths
-of the strength, and nearly four-fifths of longleaf's elasticity. It is
-thus seen to be considerably inferior to it as a structural timber where
-heavy loads must be sustained; but builders use it for many purposes in
-preference to or on an equality with longleaf. It is fine for interior
-finish and doors. Railroads employ large quantities in building freight
-cars, much for crossties, and bridge builders find many places for it.
-It is not a long lasting wood when exposed to weather, unless it has
-been treated with creosote to preserve it from decay. It is one of the
-most easily treated woods.
-
-In North Carolina and Virginia loblolly tobacco hogsheads are common;
-and box factories within easy reach of it use much. A list of its uses,
-compiled from reports of factory operations in Maryland, will give an
-idea of the range it covers: Basket bottoms, beer bottle boxes, boats,
-cart bodies, crates, flooring, frames for doors and windows, fruit
-boxes, interior finish, nail kegs, oyster boxes, seats for boats, siding
-for houses, staves for slack cooperage, store fixtures, wagon beds,
-balusters, brackets, chiffoniers, mantels, molding, picture frames,
-stair railing, sash, scrollwork, sideboards, tables.
-
-The amount of loblolly pine timber in this country is not known. No
-other important species comes so near growing as much as is cut from
-year to year. It covers 200,000 square miles with stands ranging from
-little or nothing in some parts to 20,000 feet per acre in others, or
-more in exceptional cases. The area of fully stocked loblolly pine is
-believed to be as large now as it ever was. Before the Civil war it was
-predicted that its period of greatest production was over; but large
-tracts are now being logged on which the pine seeds had not been sown in
-1860.
-
-POND PINE (_Pinus serotina_). Sargent's table of weights of woods shows
-this to be the heaviest pine of the United States; but, as his
-calculations were made from a single sample which grew in Duval county,
-Florida, further data should be secured before his figures, 49.5 pounds
-per cubic foot, are accepted as an average weight for the species. It is
-rated in strength about equal to longleaf and Cuban pine. Its structure
-shows a large percentage of dense summerwood in the yearly ring. The
-leaves are in clusters of three, rarely four, and are six or eight
-inches long, and fall in their third and fourth years. The name suggests
-that the cones are tightly closed, and that they adhere tenaciously to
-the twigs on which they grow. This is found true. The principal
-impression made on a person who sees the pond pine for the first time is
-that it is overloaded with cones, and that it must be a prolific seeder.
-Better acquaintance modifies the latter part of that impression. It is
-overloaded with cones, but most of them are many years old, and have
-long been seedless, although most of the trees have the seed crops of
-two years on the branches at one time. Enough seed is shed to perpetuate
-the species, but too little to insure an aggressive spread into
-surrounding vacant ground. The pond pine may reach a diameter of three
-feet and a height of eighty, but that is twice the average size. The
-wood is very resinous, and is brittle.
-
-    SCRUB PINE (_Pinus virginiana_). This tree is often called Jersey
-    pine because it is a prominent feature of the landscapes in the
-    southern part of that state where it has spread extensively since
-    the settlement of the country. Its short needles have been
-    responsible for several of its names, among them being shortshuck
-    pine in Maryland and Virginia, shortshat pine in Delaware,
-    shortleaved pine in North Carolina, and spruce pine and cedar pine
-    in some parts of the South. In Tennessee it is known as nigger pine,
-    and in some parts of North Carolina as river pine. The range is
-    fairly well outlined by the above discussion of its names. It grows
-    from New York to South Carolina, and west of the mountains it is
-    found in northern Alabama and middle Tennessee, in Kentucky and West
-    Virginia. It reaches its largest size in southern Indiana where it
-    is sometimes 100 feet high and three in diameter. It is there a
-    valuable tree for many purposes, but is not abundant. Its average
-    size is small in the eastern states, usually not over fifty feet
-    high, and often little more than half of that. Few trunks east of
-    the Allegheny mountains are more than eighteen inches in diameter.
-    The name scrub pine is an index to the opinions held by most people
-    regarding this tree. It is often considered an encumbrance rather
-    than an asset; yet statistics of wood-using industries hardly
-    justify that view. Millions of feet of it are employed annually in
-    each of the states of New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and North
-    Carolina, for boxes, slack cooperage, and common lumber. The wood is
-    moderately strong, but is not stiff. It is medium light, soft,
-    brittle, with summerwood narrow and very resinous. Its color is
-    light orange or yellow, the thick sapwood ivory white. The needles
-    are from one and a half to three inches long, and fall in the third
-    and fourth years. Cones are two or three inches long, and scatter
-    their seeds in autumn. The wings are too small to carry the seeds
-    far, yet the tree succeeds in quickly spreading into surrounding
-    vacant spaces. Cones adhere to the branches three or four years. Tar
-    makers and charcoal burners utilized scrub pine in New Jersey,
-    northeastern Maryland and southeastern Pennsylvania a century and a
-    half ago. The tree seems to be as abundant now as it ever was.
-    Unless it occupies very poor land--which it generally does--the
-    growth is liable to be suppressed and crowded to death by broadleaf
-    trees before the stands become very old. As a species, it is weak in
-    self-defense, and it owes its survival to its habit of retreating to
-    poor soils where enemies cannot follow. It may be said of it as the
-    Roman historian Tacitus said of certain men: "The cowards fly the
-    farthest, and are the longest survivors."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-NORWAY PINE
-
-[Illustration: NORWAY PINE]
-
-
-
-
-NORWAY PINE
-
-(_Pinus Resinosa_)
-
-
-Early explorers who were not botanists mistook this tree for Norway
-spruce, and gave it the name which has since remained in nearly all
-parts of its range. It is called red pine also, and this name is
-strictly descriptive. The brown or red color of the bark is instantly
-noticed by one who sees the tree for the first time. In the Lake States
-it has been called hard pine for the purpose of distinguishing it from
-the softer white pine with which it is associated. In England they call
-it Canadian red pine, because the principal supply in England is
-imported from the Canadian provinces.
-
-Its chief range lies in the drainage basin of the St. Lawrence river,
-which includes the Great Lakes and the rivers which flow into them.
-Newfoundland forms the eastern and Manitoba the western outposts of this
-species. It is found as far south as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,
-northern Ohio, central Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. It conforms
-pretty generally to the range of white pine but does not accompany that
-species southward along the Appalachian mountain ranges across West
-Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Where it was left to
-compete in nature's way with white pine, the contest was friendly, but
-white pine got the best of it. The two species grew in intermixture, but
-in most instances white pine had from five to twenty trees to Norway's
-one. As a survivor under adversity, however, the Norway pine appears to
-surpass its great friendly rival, at least in the Lake States where the
-great pineries once flourished and have largely passed away. Solitary or
-small clumps of Norway pines are occasionally found where not a white
-pine, large or small, is in sight.
-
-The forest appearance of Norway pine resembles the southern yellow
-pines. The stand is open, the trunks are clean and tall, the branches
-are at the top. The Norway's leaves are in clusters of two, and are five
-or six inches long. They fall during the fourth or fifth year. Cones are
-two inches long, and when mature, closely resemble the color of the
-tree's bark, that is, light chestnut brown. Exceptionally tall Norway
-pines may reach a height of 150 feet, but the average is seventy or
-eighty, with diameters of from two to four. Young trees are limby, but
-early in life the lower branches die and fall, leaving few protruding
-stubs or knots. It appears to be a characteristic that trunks are seldom
-quite straight. They do not have the plumb appearance of forest grown
-white pine and spruce.
-
-The wood of Norway pine is medium light, its strength and stiffness
-about twenty-five per cent greater than white pine, and it is moderately
-soft. The annual rings are rather wide, indicating rapid growth. The
-bands of summerwood are narrow compared with the springwood, which gives
-a generally light color to the wood, though not as light as the wood of
-white pine. The resin passages are small and fairly numerous. The
-sapwood is thick, and the wood is not durable in contact with the soil.
-
-Norway pine has always had a place of its own in the lumber trade, but
-large quantities have been marketed as white pine. If such had not been
-the case, Norway pine would have been much oftener heard of during the
-years when the Lake State pineries were sending their billions of feet
-of lumber to the markets of the world.
-
-Because of the deposit of resinous materials in the wood, Norway pine
-stumps resist decay much better than white pine. In some of the early
-cuttings in Michigan, where only stumps remain to show how large the
-trees were and how thick they stood, the Norway stumps are much better
-preserved than the white pine. Using that fact as a basis of estimate,
-it may be shown that in many places the Norway pine constituted
-one-fifth or one-fourth of the original stand. The lumbermen cut clean,
-and statistics of that period do not show that the two pines were
-generally marketed separately. In recent years many of the Norway stumps
-have been pulled, and have been sold to wood-distillation plants where
-the rosin and turpentine are extracted.
-
-At an early date Norway pine from Canada and northern New York was
-popular ship timber in this country and England. Slender, straight
-trunks were selected as masts, or were sawed for decking planks thirty
-or forty feet long. Shipbuilders insisted that planks be all heartwood,
-because when sapwood was exposed to rain and sun, it changed to a green
-color, due to the presence of fungus. The wood wears well as ship
-decking. The British navy was still using some Norway pine masts as late
-as 1875.
-
-The scarcity of this timber has retired it from some of the places which
-it once filled, and the southern yellow pines have been substituted. It
-is still employed for many important purposes, the chief of which is car
-building, if statistics for the state of Illinois are a criterion for
-the whole country. In 1909 in that state 24,794,000 feet of it were used
-for all purposes, and 14,783,000 feet in car construction.
-
-For many years Chicago has been the center of the Norway pine trade. It
-is landed there by lake steamers and by rail, and is distributed to
-ultimate consumers. The uses for the wood, as reported by Illinois
-manufacturers, follow: Baskets, boxes, boats, brackets, casing and
-frames for doors and windows, crating, derricks for well-boring
-machines, doors, elevators, fixtures for stores and offices, foot or
-running boards for tank cars, foundry flasks, freight cars, hand rails,
-insulation for refrigerator cars, ladders, picture moldings, roofing,
-sash, siding for cattle cars, sign boards and advertising signs, tanks,
-and windmill towers.
-
-As with white pine, Norway pine has passed the period of greatest
-production, though much still goes to market every year and will long
-continue to do so. The land which lumbermen denuded in the Lake States,
-particularly Michigan and Wisconsin, years ago, did not reclothe itself
-with Norway seedlings. That would have taken place in most instances but
-for fires which ran periodically through the slashings until all
-seedlings were destroyed. In many places there are now few seedlings and
-few large trees to bear seeds, and consequently the pine forest in such
-places is a thing of the past. The outlook is better in other
-localities.
-
-The Norway pine is much planted for ornament, and is rated one of the
-handsomest of northern park trees.
-
-    PITCH PINE (_Pinus rigida_). The name pitch pine is locally applied
-    to almost every species of hard, resinous pine in this country. The
-    _Pinus rigida_ has other names than pitch pine. In Delaware it is
-    called longleaved pine, since its needles are longer than the scrub
-    pine's with which it is associated. For the same reason it is known
-    in some localities as longschat pine. In Massachusetts it is called
-    hard pine, in Pennsylvania yellow pine, in North Carolina and
-    eastern Tennessee black pine, and black Norway pine in New York. The
-    botanical name is translated "rigid pine," but the rigid refers to
-    the leaves, not the wood. Its range covers New England, New York,
-    Pennsylvania, southern Canada, eastern Ohio, and southward along the
-    mountains to northern Georgia. It has three leaves in a cluster,
-    from three to five inches long, and they fall the second year. Cones
-    range in length from one to three inches, and they hang on the
-    branches ten or twelve years. The wood is medium light, moderately
-    strong, but low in stiffness. It is soft and brittle. The annual
-    rings are wide, the summerwood broad, distinct, and very resinous.
-    Medullary rays are few but prominent; color, light brown or red, the
-    thick sapwood yellow or often nearly white. The difference in the
-    hardness between springwood and summerwood renders it difficult to
-    work, and causes uneven wear when used as flooring. It is fairly
-    durable in contact with the soil.
-
-    The tree attains a height of from forty to eighty feet and a
-    diameter of three. This pine is not found in extensive forests, but
-    in scattered patches, nearly always on poor soil where other trees
-    will not crowd it. Light and air are necessary to its existence. If
-    it receives these, it will fight successfully against adversities
-    which would be fatal to many other species. In resistance to forest
-    fires, it is a salamander among trees. That is primarily due to its
-    thick bark, but it is favored also by the situations in which it is
-    generally found--open woods, and on soil so poor that ground litter
-    is thin. It is a useful wood for many purposes, and wherever it is
-    found in sufficient quantity, it goes to market, but under its own
-    name only in restricted localities. Its resinous knots were once
-    used in place of candles in frontier homes. Tar made locally from
-    its rich wood was the pioneer wagoner's axle grease, and the
-    ever-present tar bucket and tar paddle swung from the rear axle.
-    Torches made by tying splinters in bundles answered for lanterns in
-    night travel. It was the best pine for floors in some localities.
-    It is probably used more for boxes than for anything else at
-    present. In 1909 Massachusetts box makers bought 600,000 feet, and a
-    little more went to Maryland box factories. Its poor holding power
-    on spikes limits its employment as railroad ties and in
-    shipbuilding. Carpenters and furniture makers object to the numerous
-    knots. Country blacksmiths who repair and make wagons as a side
-    line, find it suitable for wagon beds. It is much used as fuel where
-    it is convenient.
-
-    TORREY PINE (_Pinus torreyana_), called del mar pine and Soledad
-    pine, is an interesting tree from the fact that its range is so
-    restricted that the actual number of trees could be easily known to
-    one who would take the trouble to count them. A rather large
-    quantity formerly occupied a small area in San Diego county,
-    California, but woodchoppers who did not appreciate the fact that
-    they were exterminating a species of pine from the face of the
-    earth, cut nearly all of the trees for fuel. Its range covered only
-    a few square miles, and fortunately part of that was included in the
-    city limits of San Diego. An ordinance was passed prohibiting the
-    cutting of a Torrey pine under heavy penalty, and the tree was thus
-    saved. A hundred and fifty miles off the San Diego coast a few
-    Torrey pines grow on the islands of Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa, and
-    owing to their isolated situation they bid fair to escape the
-    cordwood cutter for years to come. Those who have seen this tree on
-    its native hills have admired the gameness of its battle for
-    existence against the elements. Standing in the full sweep of the
-    ocean winds, its strong, short branches scarcely move, and all the
-    agitation is in the thick tufts of needles which cling to the ends
-    of the branches. Trees exposed to the seawinds are stunted, and are
-    generally less than a foot in diameter and thirty feet high; but
-    those which are so fortunate as to occupy sheltered valleys are
-    three or four times that size. The needles are five in a cluster.
-    The cones persist on the branches three or four years. The wood is
-    light, soft, moderately strong, very brittle; the rings of yearly
-    growth are broad, and the yellow bands of summerwood occupy nearly
-    half. The sapwood is very thick and is nearly white.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN YELLOW PINE
-
-[Illustration: WESTERN YELLOW PINE]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN YELLOW PINE
-
-(_Pinus Ponderosa_)
-
-
-The range of western yellow pine covers a million square miles. Its
-eastern boundary is a line drawn from South Dakota to western Texas. The
-species covers much of the country between that line and the Pacific
-ocean. It is natural that it should have more names than one in a region
-so extensive. It is best known as western yellow pine, but lumbermen
-often call it California white pine. The standing timber is frequently
-designated bull pine, but that name is not often given to the lumber.
-Where there is no likelihood of confusing it with southern pines, it is
-called simply yellow pine. The name heavy-wooded pine, sometimes applied
-to the lumber in England, is misleading. When well seasoned it weighs
-about thirty pounds per cubic foot, and ordinarily it would not be
-classed heavy. In California it is called heavy pine, but that is to
-distinguish it from sugar pine which is considerably lighter. The color
-of its bark has given it the name Sierra brownbark pine. The same tree
-in Montana is called black pine.
-
-The tree has developed two forms. Some botanists have held there are two
-species, but that is not the general opinion. In the warm, damp climate
-of the Pacific slope the tree is larger, and somewhat different in
-appearance from the form in the Rocky Mountain region. The same
-observation holds true of Douglas fir.
-
-The wood of western yellow pine is medium light, not strong, is low in
-elasticity, medullary rays prominent but not numerous; resinous, color
-light to reddish, the thick sapwood almost white. The annual rings are
-variable in width, and the proportionate amounts of springwood and
-summerwood also vary. It is not durable in contact with the ground.
-
-The wood is easy to work and some of the best of it resembles white
-pine, but as a whole it is inferior to that wood, though it is
-extensively employed as a substitute for it in the manufacture of doors,
-sash, and frames. It is darker than white pine, harder, heavier,
-stronger, almost exactly equal in stiffness, but the annual rings of the
-two woods do not bear close resemblance.
-
-The tree reaches a height of from 100 to 200 feet, a diameter from three
-to seven. It is occasionally much larger. Its size depends much on its
-habitat. The best development occurs on the Sierra Nevada mountains in
-California and the best wood comes from that region, though certain
-other localities produce high-grade lumber.
-
-Western yellow pine holds and will long hold an important place in the
-country's timber resources. The total stand has been estimated at
-275,000,000,000 feet, and is second only to that of Douglas fir, though
-the combined stand of the four southern yellow pines is about
-100,000,000,000 feet larger. It is a vigorous species, able to hold its
-ground under ordinary circumstances. Next to incense cedar and the giant
-sequoias which are associated with it in the Sierra Nevada mountains, it
-is the most prolific seed bearer of the western conifers, and its seeds
-are sufficiently light to insure wide distribution. It is gaining ground
-within its range by taking possession of vacant areas which have been
-bared by lumbering or fire. In some cases it crowds to death the more
-stately sugar pine by cutting off its light and moisture. It resists
-fire better than most of the forest trees with which it is associated.
-On the other hand, it suffers from enemies more than its associates do.
-A beetle (_Dendroctonus ponderosae_), destroys large stands. In the Black
-Hills in 1903 its ravages killed 600,000,000 feet.
-
-This splendid pine has run the gamut of uses from the corral pole of the
-first settler to the paneled door turned out by the modern factory. It
-has almost an unlimited capacity for usefulness. It grows in dry regions
-of the Rocky Mountains where it is practically the only source of wood
-supply; and it is equally secure in its position where forests are
-abundant and fine. It has supplied props, stulls, and lagging for mines
-in nearly every state touched by its range. Without its ties and other
-timbers some of the early railroads through the western mountains could
-scarcely have been built. It has been one of the leading flume timbers
-in western lumber and irrigation development. It fenced many ranches in
-early times and is still doing so. It is used in general construction,
-and in finish; from the shingle to the foundation sill of houses. It
-finds its way to eastern lumber markets. Almost 20,000,000 feet a year
-are used in Illinois alone. Competition with eastern white pine is met
-in the Lake States because, grade for grade, the western wood is
-cheaper, until lower grades are reached. The western yellow pine, in the
-eastern market, is confused with the western white pine of Idaho and
-Montana (_Pinus monticola_) and separate statistics of use are
-impossible.
-
-The makers of fruit boxes in California often employ the yellow pine in
-lieu of sugar pine which once supplied the whole trade. It is also used
-by coopers for various containers, but not for alcoholic liquors.
-
-The leaves are in clusters of twos and threes, and are from five to
-eleven inches long. Most of them fall during the third year. The cones
-are from three to six inches long, and generally fall soon after they
-reach maturity.
-
-    COULTER PINE (_Pinus coulteri_) is also known as nut pine, big cone
-    pine, and long cone pine. It is a California species, scarce, but of
-    much interest because of its cones. They are larger than those of
-    any other American pine and are armed with formidable curved spines
-    from half an inch to an inch and a half in length. The cones are
-    from ten to fourteen inches long. The tree is found on the Coast
-    Range mountains from the latitude of San Francisco to the boundary
-    between California and Mexico. It thrives at altitudes of from 3,000
-    to 6,000 feet. It never occurs in pure stands and the total amount
-    is small. It looks like the western yellow pine, but is much
-    inferior in size. Trunks seldom attain a length of fifteen feet or a
-    diameter of two. There is no evidence that Coulter pine is
-    increasing its stand on the ground which it already occupies, or
-    spreading to new ground. The wood is light, soft, moderately strong,
-    and very tough. The annual rings are narrow and consist largely of
-    summerwood. The heartwood is light red, the thick sapwood nearly
-    white. It is a poor tree for lumber, and it has been little used in
-    that way, but has been burned for charcoal for blacksmith shops, and
-    much is sold as cordwood. The leaves of Coulter pine are in clusters
-    of three, and they fall during the third and fourth years.
-
-    CALIFORNIA SWAMP PINE (_Pinus muricata_) clearly belongs among minor
-    species listed as timber trees. It meets a small demand for skids,
-    corduroy log roads, bridge floors, and scaffolds in the redwood
-    logging operations in California. It is scattered along the Pacific
-    coast 500 miles, beginning in Lower California and ending a hundred
-    miles north of San Francisco. It is known as dwarf marine pine,
-    pricklecone pine, bishop pine, and obispo pine. The last name is the
-    Spanish translation of the English word bishop. The largest trees
-    seldom exceed two feet in diameter, and a height of ninety feet. The
-    average size is little more than half as much. The wood is very
-    strong, hard, and compact, and the annual growth ring is largely
-    dense summerwood. Resin passages are few, but the wood is resinous,
-    light brown in color, and the thick sapwood is nearly white. The
-    needles are in clusters of two, and are from four to six inches
-    long. They begin to fall the second year. Some of the trees retain
-    their cones until death, but the seeds are scattered from year to
-    year. Under the stimulus of artificial conditions in the redwood
-    districts this pine seems to be spreading. Its seeds blow into
-    vacant ground from which redwood has been removed, and growth is
-    prompt. The seedlings are not at all choice as to soil, but take
-    root in cold clay, in peat bogs, on barren sand and gravel, and on
-    wind-swept ridges exposed to ocean fogs. Its ability to grow where
-    few other trees can maintain themselves holds out some hope that its
-    usefulness will increase.
-
-    MONTEREY PINE (_Pinus radiata_). This scarce and local species is
-    restricted to the California coast south of San Francisco, and to
-    adjacent islands. Under favorable circumstances it grows rapidly and
-    promises to be of more importance as a lumber source in the future
-    than it has been in the past. It is, however, somewhat particular as
-    to soil. It must have ground not too wet or too dry. If these
-    requirements are observed, it is a good tree for planting. Its
-    average height is seventy or ninety feet, diameter from eighteen to
-    thirty inches. Trunks six feet in diameter are occasionally heard
-    of. The wood is light, soft, moderately strong, tough, annual rings
-    very wide and largely of springwood; color, light brown, the very
-    thick sapwood nearly white. The leaves are from four to six inches
-    long, in clusters of two and three, and fall the third year. Cones
-    are from three to five inches long. The lumber is too scarce at
-    present to have much importance, but its quality is good. In
-    appearance it resembles wide-ringed loblolly pine, and appears to be
-    suitable for doors and sash, and frames for windows and doors. Its
-    present uses are confined chiefly to ranch timbers and fuel. If it
-    ever amounts to much as a lumber resource, it will be as a planted
-    pine, and not in its natural state.
-
-    JACK PINE (_Pinus divaricata_) is a far northern species which
-    extends its range southward in the United States, from Maine to
-    Minnesota, and reaches northern Indiana and Illinois. It grows
-    almost far enough north in the valley of Mackenzie river to catch
-    the rays of the midnight sun. It must necessarily adapt itself to
-    circumstances. When these are favorable, it develops a trunk up to
-    two feet in diameter and seventy feet tall; but in adversity, it
-    degenerates into a many-branched shrub a few feet high. The average
-    tree in the United States is thirty or forty feet tall, and a foot
-    or more in diameter. Its name is intended as a term of contempt,
-    which it does not deserve. Others call it scrub pine which is little
-    better. Its other names are more respectful, Prince's pine in
-    Ontario, black pine in Wisconsin and Minnesota, cypress in Quebec
-    and the Hudson Bay country, Sir Joseph Banks' pine in England, and
-    juniper in some parts of Canada. "Chek pine" is frequently given in
-    its list of names, but the name is said to have originated in an
-    attempt of a German botanist to pronounce "Jack pine" in dictating
-    to a stenographer. The tree straggles over landscapes which
-    otherwise would be treeless. It is often a ragged and uncouth
-    specimen of the vegetable kingdom, but that is when it is at its
-    worst. At its best, as it may be seen where cared for in some of the
-    Michigan cemeteries, it is as handsome a tree as anyone could
-    desire. The characteristic thinness and delicacy of its foliage
-    distinguish it at once from its associates. The peculiar green of
-    its soft, short needles wins admiration. The wood is light, soft,
-    not strong; annual rings are moderately wide, and are largely
-    composed of springwood. The thin bands of summerwood are resinous,
-    and the small resin ducts are few. The thick sapwood is nearly
-    white, the heartwood brown or orange. It is not durable.
-
-    Jack pine can never be an important timber tree, because too small;
-    but a considerable amount is used for bed slats, nail kegs,
-    plastering lath, barrel headings, boxes, mine props, pulpwood, and
-    fuel. Aside from its use as lumber and small manufactured products,
-    it has a value for other purposes. It can maintain its existence in
-    waste sands; and its usefulness is apparent in fixing drifting dunes
-    along some of the exposed shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.
-    It lives on dry sand and sends its roots several feet to water; or,
-    under circumstances entirely different, it thrives in swamps where
-    the watertable is little below the surface of the ground. It fights
-    a brave battle against adversities while it lasts, but it does not
-    live long. Sixty years is old age for this tree. It grows fast while
-    young, but later it devotes all its energies to the mere process of
-    living, and its increase in size is slow, until at a period when
-    most trees are still in early youth, it dies of old age, and the
-    northern winds quickly whip away its limbs, leaving the barkless
-    trunk to stand a few years longer.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LODGEPOLE PINE
-
-[Illustration: LODGEPOLE PINE]
-
-
-
-
-LODGEPOLE PINE
-
-(_Pinus Contorta_)
-
-
-The common name of this tree was given it because its tall, slender,
-very light poles were used by Indians of the region in the construction
-of their lodges. They selected poles fifteen feet long and two inches in
-diameter, set them in a circle, bent the tops together, tied them, and
-covered the frame with skins or bark. The poles were peeled in early
-summer, when the Indians set out upon their summer hunt, and were left
-to season until fall, when they were carried to the winter's camping
-place, probably fifty miles distant. Tamarack is a common name for this
-pine in much of its range; it is likewise known as black pine, spruce
-pine, and prickly pine. Its leaves are from one to two inches long, in
-clusters of two. The small cones adhere to the branches many
-years--sometimes as long as twenty--without releasing the seeds, which
-are sealed within the cone by accumulated resin. The vitality of the
-seeds is remarkable. They don't lose their power of germination during
-their long imprisonment.
-
-The lodgepole pine has been called a fire tree, and the name is not
-inappropriate. It profits by severe burning, as some other trees of the
-United States do, such as paper birch and bird cherry. The sealed cones
-are opened by fire, which softens the resin, and the seeds are liberated
-after the fire has passed, and wing their flight wherever the wind
-carries them. The passing fire may be severe enough to kill the parent
-tree without destroying or bringing down the cones. The seeds soon fall
-on the bared mineral soil, where they germinate by thousands. More than
-one hundred thousand small seedling trees may occupy a single acre. Most
-of them are ultimately crowded to death, but a thick stand results. Most
-lodgepole pine forests occupy old burns. The tree is one of the slowest
-of growers. It never reaches large size--possibly three feet is the
-limit. It is very tall and slender. A hundred years will scarcely
-produce a sawlog of the smallest size.
-
-The range of this tree covers a million square miles from Alaska to New
-Mexico, and to the Pacific coast. Its characters vary in different parts
-of its range. A scrub form was once thought to be a different species,
-and was called shore pine.
-
-The wood is of about the same weight as eastern white pine. It is light
-in color, rather weak, and brittle, annual rings very narrow, summerwood
-small in amount, resin passages few and small; medullary rays numerous,
-broad, and prominent. The wood is characterized by numerous small knots.
-It is not durable in contact with the ground, but it readily receives
-preservative treatment. In height it ranges from fifty to one hundred
-feet.
-
-The government's estimate of the stand of lodgepole pine in the United
-States in 1909 placed it at 90,000,000,000 feet. That makes it seventh
-in quantity among the timber trees of this country, those above it being
-Douglas fir, the southern yellow pines (considered as one), western
-yellow pine, redwood, western hemlock, and the red cedar of Washington,
-Oregon, and Idaho.
-
-Lodgepole pine has been long and widely used as a ranch timber in the
-Far West, serving for poles and rails in fences, for sheds, barns,
-corrals, pens, and small bridges. Where it could be had at all, it was
-generally plentiful. Stock ranges high among the mountains frequently
-depend almost solely upon lodgepole pine for necessary timber.
-
-Mine operators find it a valuable resource. As props it is cheap,
-substantial, and convenient in many parts of Colorado, New Mexico,
-Wyoming, and Montana. A large proportion of this timber which is cut for
-mining purposes has been standing dead from fire injury many years, and
-is thoroughly seasoned and very light. It is in excellent condition for
-receiving preservative treatment.
-
-Sawmills do not list lodgepole pine separately in reports of lumber cut,
-and it is impossible to determine what the annual supply from the
-species is. It is well known that the quantity made into lumber in
-Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho is large. Its chief market is
-among the newly established agricultural communities in those states.
-They use it for fruit and vegetable shipping boxes, fencing plank,
-pickets, and plastering lath.
-
-Railroads buy half a million lodgepole pine crossties yearly. When
-creosoted, they resist decay many years. Lodgepole pine has been a tie
-material since the first railroads entered the region, and while by no
-means the best, it promises to fill a much more important place in the
-future than in the past. It is an ideal fence post material as far as
-size and form are concerned, and with preservative treatment it is bound
-to attain a high place. It is claimed that treated posts will last
-twenty years, and that puts them on a par with the cedars.
-
-In Colorado and Wyoming much lodgepole was formerly burned for charcoal
-to supply the furnaces which smelted ore and the blacksmith shops of the
-region. This is done now less than formerly, since railroad building has
-made coal and coke accessible.
-
-In one respect, lodgepole pine is to the western mountains what loblolly
-pine is to the flat country of the south Atlantic and other southern
-states. It is aggressive, and takes possession of vacant ground.
-Although the wood is not as valuable as loblolly, it is useful, and has
-an important place to fill in the western country's development. Its
-greatest drawback is its exceedingly slow growth. A hundred years is a
-long time to wait for trees of pole size. Two crops of loblolly sawlogs
-can be harvested in that time. However, the land on which the lodgepole
-grows is fit only for timber, and the acreage is so vast that there is
-enough to grow supplies, even with the wait of a century or two for
-harvest. The stand has increased enormously within historic time, the
-same as loblolly, and for a similar reason. Men cleared land in the
-East, and loblolly took possession; fires destroyed western forests of
-other species and lodgepole seized and held the burned tracts.
-
-If fires cease among the western mountains, as will probably be the case
-under more efficient methods of patrol, and with stricter enforcement of
-laws against starting fires, the spread of lodgepole pine will come to a
-standstill, and existing forests will grow old without much extension of
-their borders.
-
-JEFFREY PINE (_Pinus jeffreyi_) is often classed as western yellow pine,
-both in the forest and at the mill. Its range extends from southern
-Oregon to Lower California, a distance of 1,000 miles, and its width
-east and west varies from twenty to one hundred and fifty miles. It is a
-mountain tree and generally occupies elevations above the western yellow
-pine. In the North its range reaches 3,600 feet above sea level; in the
-extreme South it is 10,000 feet. The darker and more deeply-furrowed
-bark of the Jeffrey pine is the usual character by which lumbermen
-distinguish it from the western yellow pine. It is known under several
-names, most of them relating to the tree's appearance, such as black
-pine, redbark pine, blackbark pine, sapwood pine, and bull pine. It
-reaches the same size as the western yellow pine, though the average is
-a little smaller. The leaves are from four to nine inches long, and fall
-in eight or nine years. The cones are large, and armed with slender,
-curved spines. The seeds are too heavy to fly far, their wing area being
-small. It is a vigorous tree, and in some regions it forms good forests.
-Some botanists have considered the Jeffrey pine a variety of the western
-yellow pine.
-
-    GRAY PINE (_Pinus sabiniana_), called also Digger pine because the
-    Digger Indians formerly collected the seeds, which are as large as
-    peanuts, to help eke out a living, is confined to California, and
-    grows in a belt on the foothills surrounding the San Joaquin and
-    Sacramento valleys. Its cones are large and armed with hooked
-    spines. When green, the largest cones weigh three or four pounds.
-    Leaves are from eight to twelve inches long, in clusters of two and
-    three, and fall the third and fourth years. The wood is remarkable
-    for the quickness of its decay in damp situations. It lasts one or
-    two years as fence posts. A mature gray pine is from fifty to
-    seventy feet high, and eighteen to thirty inches in diameter. Some
-    trees are much larger. It is of considerable importance, but is not
-    in the same class as western yellow and sugar pine. The wood is
-    light, soft, rather strong, brittle. The annual rings are generally
-    wide, indicating rapid growth. Very old gray pines are not known. An
-    age of 185 years seems to be the highest on record. The wood is
-    resinous, and it has helped in a small way to supply the Pacific
-    coast markets with high-grade turpentine, distilled from roots. It
-    yields resin when boxed like the southern longleaf pine. There are
-    two flowing seasons. One is very early, and closes when the weather
-    becomes hot; the other is in full current by the middle of August.
-    It maintains life among the California foothills during the long
-    rainless seasons, on ground so dry that semi-desert chaparral
-    sometimes succumbs; but it is able to make the most of favorable
-    conditions, and it grows rapidly under the slightest encouragement.
-    The seedlings are more numerous now than formerly, which is
-    attributed to decrease of forest fires. The tree has enemies which
-    generally attack it in youth. Two fungi, _Peridermium harknessi_,
-    and _Daedalia vorax_, destroy the young tree's leader or topmost
-    shoot, causing the development of a short trunk. The latter fungus
-    is the same or is closely related to that which tunnels the trunk of
-    incense cedar and produces pecky cypress.
-
-    Gray pine has been cut to some extent for lumber, but its principal
-    uses have been as fuel and mine timbers. Many quartz mines have been
-    located in the region where the tree grows; and the engines which
-    pumped the shafts and raised and crushed the ore were often heated
-    with this pine. Thousands of acres of hillsides in the vicinity of
-    mines were stripped of it, and it went to the engine house ricks in
-    wagons, on sleds, and on the backs of burros. In two respects it is
-    an economical fuel for remote mines: it is light in weight, and
-    gives more heat than an equal quantity of the oak that is associated
-    with it.
-
-    CHIHUAHUA PINE (_Pinus chihuahuana_) is not abundant, but it exists
-    in small commercial quantities in southwestern New Mexico and
-    southern Arizona. Trees are from fifty to eighty feet high, and from
-    fifteen to twenty inches in diameter. The wood is medium light,
-    soft, rather strong, brittle, narrow ringed and compact. The resin
-    passages are few, large, and conspicuous; color, clear light orange,
-    the thick sapwood lighter. The tree reaches best development at
-    altitudes of from 5,000 to 7,000 feet. When the wood is used, it
-    serves the same purposes as western yellow pine; but the small size
-    of the tree makes lumber of large size impossible. The leaves are in
-    clusters of three, and fall the fourth year. The cones have long
-    stalks and are from one and a half to two inches long.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-TAMARACK
-
-[Illustration: TAMARACK]
-
-
-
-
-TAMARACK
-
-(_Larix Laricina_)
-
-
-There are three species of tamarack or larch in the United States, and
-probably a fourth is confined to Alaska. One has its range in the
-northeastern states, extending south to West Virginia and northwestward
-to Alaska. Two are found in the northwestern states. Other species are
-native of the eastern hemisphere, and some of them have been planted to
-some extent in this country. A species of Europe is of much importance
-in that country. The tamaracks lose their leaves in the fall and the
-branches are bare during the winter. The name tamarack or larch should
-be applied only to trees of the genus _larix_. This rule is not observed
-in some parts of the West where the noble fir (_Abies nobilis_) is
-occasionally called larch by lumbermen. It is not entitled to that name,
-and confusion results from such use.
-
-The larches are easily identified. They have needle leaves like those of
-pines and firs, but they are differently arranged. They are produced in
-little brush-like bundles, from twelve to forty leaves in each, on all
-the shoots, except the leaders. On these the leaves occur singly. The
-little brushes are so conspicuous, and so characteristic of this genus,
-including all its species, that there should be little difficulty in
-identifying the larches when the leaves are on. In winter, when the
-branches are bare, there are other easy marks of identification.
-
-The little brushes are interesting objects of study. Botanists tell us
-that the excrescence or bud-like knob from which the leaves grow is
-really a suppressed or aborted branch, with all its leaves crowded
-together at the end. If it were developed, it would bear its leaves
-singly, scattered along its full length, as they occur on the leading
-shoots. The warty appearance of the branches in winter is a very
-convenient means of identification when the leaves are down.
-
-The cones of larches mature in a single season, and often hang on the
-trees several years. They are conspicuous in winter when the branches
-are bare of foliage. The adhering cones are generally seedless after the
-first season, since they quickly let their winged seeds go. The male and
-female flowers are produced singly on branches of the previous year.
-
-The eastern and northern larch (_Larix laricina_) has a number of names.
-It is commonly known as tamarack in the New England states and in New
-York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan,
-Minnesota, Ohio, and in Canada. The name larch is applied in practically
-all the regions where it grows, but it is not used as frequently as
-tamarack. Hackmatack, which was the Indian name for the tree in part of
-its eastern range, is still in use in Maine, New Hampshire,
-Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, and Ontario.
-Nurserymen call it American larch to distinguish it from other larches
-on the market, particularly the European larch. Michaux, an early French
-botanist who explored American forests, called it American larch (_Larix
-americana_), and the name which he gave has been retained by many
-scientists to this day. In the Canadian provinces north of the Great
-Lakes, and also in Maine and New Brunswick, it is frequently called
-juniper, but without good reason, for it has little of the appearance
-and few of the qualities of the junipers. In some localities it is
-called black larch, and in others red larch. The first name refers to
-the color of its bark, the last to the leaves when about to fall, for
-they then change to a brown or reddish color. They fall in the autumn,
-and the branches are bare until the next spring. Some of the New York
-Indians observed that peculiarity of the tree which they thought should
-be an evergreen like the balsam and pines with which it was often
-associated, and they named it kenehtens, meaning "the leaves fall".
-Indians did not, as a rule, give separate names to tree species, and
-when they did so, it was because of food value, or from some peculiarity
-which could not fail to attract the notice of a savage.
-
-The tamarack's geographical range is remarkable. It is said to be best
-developed in the region east of Manitoba, but it extends southward into
-West Virginia and northward to the land of the midnight sun. It
-maintains its place almost to the arctic snows, and the willow is about
-the only tree that pushes farther north. It is found from Newfoundland
-and Labrador far down toward the mouth of the Mackenzie river, north of
-the arctic circle. It grows on dry land as well as wet, but is oftenest
-found in cold swamps, particularly in the southern part of its range.
-Silted-up lakes are favorite situations, and on the made-land above old
-beaver dams.
-
-Tamarack forests frequently stand on ground so soft that a pole may be
-thrust ten feet deep in the mud. The moist, monotonous sphagnum moss
-generally furnishes ground cover in such places. A tamarack swamp in
-summer is cool and pleasant--provided there is not too much water on the
-ground--but in winter a more desolate picture can scarcely be imagined.
-The leafless trees appear to be dead, and covered with lifeless cones;
-but the first warm days bring it to life.
-
-The average height of tamarack trees is from forty to sixty feet,
-diameter twenty inches or less. Leaves are one-half or one and a half
-inches long; cones one-half or three-quarter inches, and bright chestnut
-brown at maturity. They fall when two years old. The winged seeds are
-very small. The tree is neither a frequent nor abundant seeder. The
-foliage is thin, and is not sufficient to shut much sunlight from the
-ground.
-
-The wood is heavy, hard, very strong, and is durable in contact with the
-soil. The growth is slow, annual rings narrow, summerwood occupies
-nearly half the ring, and is dark-colored, resinous, and conspicuous;
-resin passages few and obscure; medullary rays numerous and obscure;
-color of wood light brown, the sapwood nearly white.
-
-The uses of tamarack go back to prehistoric times. The Indians of Canada
-and northeastern United States drew supplies from four forest trees when
-they made their bark canoes. The bark for the shell came from paper
-birch, threads for sewing the strips of bark together were tamarack
-roots, resin for stopping leaks was a product of balsam fir, and the
-light framework of wood was northern white cedar.
-
-The roots which best suited the Indian's purpose came from trees which
-grew in soft, deep mud, where lakes and beaver ponds had silted up. Such
-roots are long, slender, and very tough and pliant, and may be gathered
-in large numbers, particularly where running streams have partly
-undermined standing trees.
-
-White men likewise made use of tamarack roots in boat building, but the
-roots were different from what the Indians used. "Instep" crooks were
-hewed for ship knees. These were large roots, the larger the better.
-Trees which produced them did not grow in deep mud, for there the roots
-did not develop crooks. The ship knee operator hunted for tamarack
-forests growing on a soft surface soil two or three feet deep, underlaid
-by stiff clay or rock which roots could not penetrate. In situations
-like that the roots go straight down until they reach the hard stratum,
-and then turn at right angles and grow in a horizontal direction. The
-turning point in the root develops the crook of which the ship knee is
-made.
-
-Tamarack is seldom of sufficient size for the largest ship knees. Such
-were formerly supplied by southern live oak; and in that case crooks
-formed by the union of trunk and large branches were as good as those
-produced by the union of trunk and large roots.
-
-Tamarack is still employed in the manufacture of boat knees, but not as
-much as formerly. Steel frames have largely taken the place of wood in
-the construction of ship skeletons. Boat builders use tamarack now for
-floors, keels, stringers, and knees.
-
-Tamarack has come into much use in recent years. Sawmills cut from it
-more than 125,000,000 feet of lumber a year. Fourteen states contribute,
-but most of the lumber is produced in Minnesota, Michigan, and
-Wisconsin. Railroads in the United States buy 5,000,000 or more
-tamarack ties a year, which reduced to board measure amount to over
-150,000,000 feet. Fence posts and telegraph poles come in large numbers
-from tamarack forests.
-
-The wood is stiff and strong, its stiffness being eighty-four per cent
-of that of long leaf pine, and its strength about eighty per cent.
-Unusual variations in both strength and stiffness are found. One stick
-of tamarack may rate twice as high as another.
-
-The wood-using factories of Michigan consume nearly 20,000,000 feet of
-this wood yearly. It is made into boxes, excelsior, pails, tanks, tubs,
-house finish, refrigerators, windmills, and wooden pipes for waterworks
-and for draining mines.
-
-There is little likelihood that the supply of tamarack will run short in
-the near future. While it is not in the first rank of the important
-trees in this country, it is useful, and it is fortunate that it
-promises to hold its ground against fires which do grave injury to
-northern forests. In the swamps where the most of it is found the ground
-litter is too damp to burn. The tree does not grow rapidly, but it
-usually occupies lands which cannot be profitably devoted to
-agriculture, and it will, therefore, be let alone until it reaches
-maturity.
-
-Tamarack is a familiar tree in parks, and it grows farther south than
-its natural range extends. It is not as desirable a park tree as
-hemlock, spruce, fir, the cedars, and some of the pines, because its
-foliage is thin in summer and wanting in winter. It is in a class with
-cypress. In the early spring, however, while its soft green needles are
-beginning to show themselves in clusters along the twigs, its delicate
-and unusual appearance attracts more attention than its companion trees
-which are always in full leaf and for that reason are somewhat
-monotonous.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN LARCH
-
-[Illustration: WESTERN LARCH]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN LARCH
-
-(_Larix Occidentalis_)
-
-
-This is a magnificent tree of the Northwest, and its range lies
-principally on the upper tributaries of the Columbia river, in Idaho,
-Montana, and British Columbia, but it occurs also among the Blue
-Mountains of Washington and Oregon. It is the largest member of the
-larch genus, either in the old world or the new. The finest trees are
-250 feet high with diameters of six or eight feet, but sizes half of
-that are nearer the average. The trunk is of splendid form. In early
-life it is limby, but later it prunes itself, and a long, tapering bole
-is developed with a very small crown of thin foliage. No other tree of
-its size, with the possible exception of old sequoias, has so little
-foliage in proportion to the trunk.
-
-The result is apparent in the rate of growth after the larch has passed
-its youth. Sometimes such a tree does not increase its trunk diameter as
-much in seventy-five years as a vigorous loblolly pine or willow oak
-will in one year. The trunk of a tree, as is well known, grows by means
-of food manufactured by the leaves and sent down to be transformed into
-wood. With so few leaves and a trunk so large, the slowness of growth is
-a natural consequence. Though the annual rings are usually quite narrow,
-the bands of summerwood are relatively broad. That accounts for the
-density of larchwood and its great weight. It is six per cent heavier
-than longleaf pine, and is not much inferior in strength and elasticity.
-The leaves are from one to one and three-quarter inches long, the cones
-from one to one and a half inches, and the seeds nearly one-quarter inch
-in length. They are equipped with wings of sufficient power to carry
-them a short distance from the parent tree.
-
-The bark on young larches is thin, but on large trunks, and near the
-ground, it may be five or six inches thick. When a notch is cut in the
-trunk it collects a resin of sweetish taste which the Indians use as an
-article of food.
-
-The western larch reaches its best development in northern Idaho and
-Montana on streams which flow into Flathead lake. The tree prefers moist
-bottom lands, but grows well in other situations, at altitudes of from
-2,000 to 7,000 feet. The figures given above on the wood's weight,
-strength, and stiffness show its value for manufacturing purposes. Its
-remoteness from markets has stood in the way of large use, but it has
-been tried for many purposes and with highly satisfactory results. In
-1910 sawmills in the four western states where it grows cut 255,186,000
-feet. Most of this is used as rough lumber, but some is made into
-furniture, finish, boxes, and boats. The wood has several names, though
-larch is the most common. It is otherwise known as tamarack and
-hackmatack, which names are oftener applied to the eastern tree; red
-American larch, western tamarack, and great western larch.
-
-Some of the annual cut of lumber credited to western larch does not
-belong to it. Lumbermen have confused names and mixed figures by
-applying this tree's name to noble fir, which is a different tree. If
-the fir lumber listed as larch were given its proper name, it would
-result in lowering the output of larch as shown in statistical figures.
-In spite of this, however, larch lumber fills an important place in the
-trade of the northern Rocky Mountain region.
-
-There is little doubt that it will fill a much more important place in
-the future, for a beginning has scarcely been made in marketing this
-timber. The available supply is large, but exact figures are not
-available. Some stands are dense and extensive, and the trees are of
-large size and fine form. It is not supposed, however, that there will
-be much after the present stand has been cut, because a second crop from
-trees of so slow growth will be far in the future. Sudworth says that
-larch trees eighteen or twenty inches in diameter are from 250 to 300
-years old, and that the ordinary age of these trees in the forests of
-the Northwest is from 300 to 500 years; while larger trees are 600 or
-700. Much remains to be learned concerning the ages of these trees in
-different situations and in different parts of its range. It is
-apparent, however, that when a period covering two or three centuries is
-required to produce a sawlog of only moderate size, timber owners will
-not look forward with much eagerness to a second growth forest of
-western larch.
-
-The value of the wood of western larch has been the subject of much
-controversy. In the tables compiled for the federal census of 1880,
-under direction of Charles S. Sargent, its strength and elasticity were
-shown to be remarkably high. The figures indicate that it is about
-thirty-nine per cent stronger than white oak and fifty-one per cent
-stiffer. This places it a little above longleaf pine in strength and
-nearly equal to it in stiffness or elasticity. Engineers have expressed
-doubts as to the correctness of Sargent's figures. They believe them too
-high. The samples tested by Sargent were six in number, four of them
-collected in Washington and two in Montana.
-
-The wood of western larch is heavier than longleaf pine, and
-approximately of the same weight as white oak. It is among the heaviest,
-if not actually the heaviest, of softwoods of the United States. Sargent
-thus described the physical properties of the wood: "Heavy, exceedingly
-hard and strong, rather coarse grained, compact, satiny, susceptible of
-a fine polish, very durable in contact with the soil; bands of small
-summer cells broad, occupying fully half the width of the annual growth,
-very resinous, dark-colored, conspicuous resin passages few, obscure;
-medullary rays few, thin; color, light bright red, the thin sapwood
-nearly white." The wood is described by Sudworth: "Clear, reddish brown,
-heavy, and fine grained; commercially valuable; very durable in an
-unprotected state, differing greatly in this respect from the wood of
-the eastern larch."
-
-The seasoning of western larch has given lumbermen much trouble. It
-checks badly and splinters rise from the surface of boards. It is
-generally admitted that this is the most serious obstacle in the way of
-securing wide utilization for the wood. The structure of the annual ring
-is reason for believing that there is slight adhesion between the
-springwood and that of the late season. Checks are very numerous
-parallel with the growth rings, and splinters part from the board along
-the same lines. Standing timber is frequently windshaken, and the cracks
-follow the rings.
-
-All of this is presumptive evidence that the principle defect of larch
-is a lack of adhesion between the early and the late wood. If that is
-correct, it is a fundamental defect in the growing tree, and is inherent
-in the wood. No artificial treatment can wholly remove it. It should not
-be considered impossible, however, to devise methods of seasoning which
-would not accentuate the weaknesses natural to the wood.
-
-The form of the larch's trunk is perfect, from the lumberman's
-viewpoint, and its size is all that could be desired. It is amply able
-to perpetuate its species, though it consumes a great deal of time in
-the process. Abundant crops of seeds are borne, but only once in several
-years. It rarely bears seeds as early as its twenty-fifth year, and
-generally not until it passes forty; but its fruitful period is long,
-extending over several centuries. The seeds retain their vitality
-moderately well, which is an important consideration in view of the
-tree's habit of opening and closing its cones alternately as the weather
-happens to be damp or dry. The dispersion of seeds extends over a
-considerable part of the season, and the changing winds scatter them in
-all directions. Many seeds fall on the snow in winter to be let down on
-the damp ground ready to germinate during the early spring. The best
-germination occurs on mineral soil, and this is often found in areas
-recently bared by fire. Lodgepole pine contends also for this ground;
-but the race between the two species is not swift after the process of
-scattering seeds has been completed; for both are of growth so
-exceedingly slow that a hundred years will scarcely tell which is
-gaining. In the long run, however, the larch outstrips the pine and
-becomes a larger tree. If both start at the same time, and there is not
-room for both, the pine will kill the larch by shading it. The latter's
-thin foliage renders it incapable of casting a shadow dense enough to
-hurt the pine. The best areas for larch are those so thoroughly burned
-as to preclude the immediate heavy reproduction of lodgepole pine.
-
-Much of the natural ranges of larch and lodgepole pine lie in the
-national forests owned by the government, and careful studies have been
-made in recent years to determine the requirements, and the actual and
-comparative values of the two species. It has been shown that larch is
-one of the most intolerant of the western forest trees. It cannot endure
-shade. Its own thin foliage, where it occurs in pure stands, is
-sufficient to shade off the lower limbs of boles, and produce tall,
-clean trunks; but if a larch happens to stand in the open, where light
-is abundant, it retains its branches almost to the ground. It is more
-intolerant, even, than western yellow pine, which so often grows in
-open, parklike stands.
-
-ALPINE LARCH (_Larix lyallii_) never grows naturally below an altitude
-of 4,000 feet, and near the southern border of its range it climbs to
-8,000, where it stands on the brink of precipices, faces of cliffs, and
-on windswept summits. It is too much exposed to storms, and has its
-roots in soil too sterile to develop symmetrical forms. It is found in
-Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. The finest trees are sometimes
-seventy-five feet high and three or four in diameter, but the average
-height ranges from forty to fifty, with diameters of twenty inches or
-less. Its leaves are one and a half inches or less in length; cones one
-and a half inches long, and bristling with hair; seeds one-eighth of an
-inch long with wings one-fourth inch; wood heavy, hard, and of a light,
-reddish brown color. It is seldom used except about mountain camps where
-it is sometimes burned for fuel or is employed in constructing corrals
-for sheep and cattle. It is impossible for lumbermen ever to make much
-use of it, because it is scarce and hard to get at.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED CEDAR
-
-[Illustration: RED CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-RED CEDAR
-
-(_Juniperus Virginiana_)
-
-
-This widely distributed tree is called red cedar in New Hampshire,
-Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey,
-Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
-Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri,
-Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and
-Ontario; cedar in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, South Carolina,
-Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, and Ohio; savin in Massachusetts, Rhode
-Island, New York, Pennsylvania and Minnesota; juniper in New York and
-Pennsylvania; juniper bush in Minnesota; cedre in Louisiana.
-
-The names as given above indicate the tree's commercial range. It
-appears as scattered growth and in doubtful forms outside of that range,
-particularly in the West where several cedars closely resemble the red
-cedar, yet differ sufficiently from it to give them places as separate
-species in the lists of some botanists. They are so listed by the United
-States Forest Service; and the following names are given: Western
-Juniper, Rocky Mountain Juniper, One Seed Juniper, Mountain Juniper,
-California Juniper, Utah Juniper, Drooping Juniper, Dwarf Juniper, and
-Alligator Juniper. These species are not of much importance from the
-lumberman's viewpoint, yet they are highly interesting trees, and in
-this book will be treated individually.
-
-The red cedar grows slowly, and thrives in almost any soil and situation
-except deep swamps. It is often classed as a poor-land species, yet it
-does not naturally seek poor land. That it is often found in such
-situations is because it has been crowded from better places by stronger
-trees, and has retreated to rocky ridges, dry slopes, and thin soils
-where competitors are unable to follow. The trees often stand wide apart
-or solitary, yet they can grow in thickets almost impenetrable, as they
-do in Texas and other southern states. It is an old-field tree in much
-of its range. Birds plant the seeds, particularly along fence rows. That
-is why long lines of cedars may often be seen extending across old
-fields or deserted plantations.
-
-The extreme size attained by this cedar is four feet in diameter, and
-one hundred in height, but that size was never common, and at present
-the half of it is above the average. That which reaches market is more
-often under than over eighteen inches in diameter. The reddish-brown and
-fibrous bark may be peeled in long strips. Stringiness of bark is
-characteristic of all the cedars, and typical of red cedar.
-
-The wood is medium light and is strong, considering that it is very
-brittle. Tests show it to be eighty per cent as strong as white oak. The
-grain is very fine, even, and homogeneous, except as interfered with
-by knots. The annual rings are narrow, the summerwood narrow and
-indistinct; medullary rays numerous but very obscure. The color
-is red, the thin sapwood nearly white. The heart and sap are
-sometimes intermingled, and this characteristic is prominent in the
-closely-related western species of red cedar. The wood is easily worked,
-gives little trouble because of warping and shrinking, and the heart is
-considered as durable as any other American wood. It has a delicate,
-agreeable fragrance, which is especially marked. This odor is
-disagreeable to insects, and for that reason chests and closets of cedar
-are highly appreciated as storage places for garments subject to the
-ravages of the moth and buffalo bug. An extract from the fruit and
-leaves is used in medicine, while oil of red cedar, distilled from the
-wood, is used in making perfume. Cedar has a sweet taste. It burns
-badly, scarcely being able to support a flame; it is exceedingly
-aromatic and noisy when burning and the embers glow long in still air.
-Some of the bungalow owners in Florida buy cedar fuel in preference to
-all others for burning in open fireplaces.
-
-Its representative uses are for posts, railway ties, pails, sills, cigar
-boxes, interior finish and cabinet making, but its most general use is
-in the manufacture of lead pencils, for which its fine, straight grain
-and soft texture are peculiarly adapted. The farther south cedar is
-found, the softer and clearer it is. In the North, in ornamental trees,
-it is very hard, slow-growing, and knotty. It shows but a small
-percentage of clear lumber. In eastern Tennessee there were considerable
-quantities of red cedar brake that were for years considered of little
-value. About the only way the wood was employed a few years ago was in
-fence rails and posts, fuel, and charcoal. Of late people in localities
-where cedar grows in any abundance have awakened to its value, and cedar
-fences are rapidly disappearing, owing to the high prices now paid for
-the wood, and the excellent demand. On no other southern wood has such
-depredation been practiced. Because of its lightness and the ease with
-which it can be worked, it has been used for purposes for which other
-and less valuable woods were well adapted. On account of its slow
-growth, its complete exhaustion has often been predicted, but a second
-growth has appeared which, though much inferior to the virgin timber,
-can be used in many ways to excellent advantage. Instead of the huge
-piles of cedar flooring, chest boards, and smooth railings of the old
-days, one now sees at points of distribution great piles of knotty,
-rough poles, ten to forty feet long, which years ago would have been
-discarded. Today they represent bridge piling, the better and smoother
-among them being used for telephone and telegraph poles.
-
-Middle Tennessee has produced more red cedar than any other part of the
-United States, but the bulk of production has been confined to a few
-counties, which produce a higher class and more aromatic variety of wood
-than that found elsewhere. A century ago these counties abounded in
-splendid forests of cedar. The early settlers built their cabins of
-cedar logs, sills, studding, and rafters; their smoke houses were built
-of them; their barns; even the roofs were shingled with cedar and the
-rooms and porches floored with the sweet-scented wood. Not many years
-ago trees three feet or more in diameter were often found, but the days
-are past when timber like that can be had anywhere.
-
-Although the most general use at the present time is for lead pencils,
-few people who sharpen one and smell the fragrant wood, stop to wonder
-where it came from. One would smile were it suggested to him that
-perhaps his pencil was formerly part of some Tennessee farmer's worm
-fence. The best timber obtained now is hewn into export logs and shipped
-to Europe, particularly Germany, where a great quantity is converted
-into pencils. The red wood is made into the higher grades and the sap or
-streaked wood is used for the cheaper varieties and for pen holders. The
-smaller and inferior logs are cut into slats, while odds and ends,
-cutoffs, etc., are collected and sold by the hundred pounds to pencil
-factories. There are many such factories in the United States now, as
-well as in Europe, and pencil men are scouring the cedar sections to buy
-all they can. The farmer who has a red cedar picket or worm fence can
-sell it to these companies at a round price. Pencil men are even going
-back over tracts from which the timber was cut twenty-five years ago,
-buying up the stumps. When the wood was plentiful lumbermen were not
-frugal, and usually cut down a tree about two feet above the ground,
-allowing the best part of it to be wasted.
-
-The German and Austrian pencil makers foresaw a shortage in American red
-cedar, and many years ago planted large areas to provide for the time of
-scarcity. The planted timber is now large enough for use, but the wood
-has been a disappointment. It does not possess the softness and
-brittleness which give so high value to the forest cedar of this
-country. As far as can be seen, when present pencil cedar has been
-exhausted, there will be little more produced of like grade. It grows so
-slowly that owners will not wait for trees to become old, but sell them
-while young for posts and poles.
-
-One of the earliest demands for red cedar was for woodenware made of
-staves, such as buckets, kegs, keelers, small tubs, and firkins.
-Material for the manufacture of such wares was among the exports to the
-West Indies before the Revolutionary war. The ware was no less popular
-in this country, and the home-made articles were in all neighborhoods in
-the red cedar's range. Scarcity of suitable wood limits the manufacture
-of such wares now, but they are still in use.
-
-Cedar was long one of the best woods for skiffs and other light boats,
-and it was occasionally employed in shipbuilding for the upper parts of
-vessels. A little of it is still used as trim and finish, particularly
-for canoes, motor boats, and yachts.
-
-The early clothes chest makers selected clear lumber, because it could
-be had and was considered to be better; but modern chest manufacturers
-who cannot procure clear stock, make a merit of necessity, and use
-boards filled with knots. The wood is finished with oils, but the
-natural colors remain, and the knots give the chest a rustic and
-pleasing appearance.
-
-    SOUTHERN RED JUNIPER (_Juniperus barbadensis_) so closely resembles
-    the red cedar with which it is associated that the two were formerly
-    considered the same species, and most people familiar with both
-    notice no difference. However, botanists clearly distinguish the
-    two. The southern red cedar's range is much smaller than the
-    other's. It grows from Georgia to the Indian river, Florida, in
-    swamps. It is found in the vicinity of the Apalachicola river,
-    forming dense thickets. Its average size is much under that of the
-    red cedar, but its wood is not dissimilar. It has been used for the
-    same purposes as far as it has been used at all. One of the largest
-    demands upon it has been for lead pencils. Those who bought and sold
-    it, generally supposed they were dealing in the common red cedar.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR
-
-[Illustration: NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR
-
-(_Thuja Occidentalis_)
-
-
-This tree is designated as northern white cedar because there is also a
-southern white cedar, (_Chamaecyparis thyoides_) and the boundaries of
-their ranges approach pretty closely. The name _occidentalis_, meaning
-western, applied to the northern white cedar is employed by botanists to
-distinguish it from a similar cedar in Asia, which is called
-_orientalis_, or eastern.
-
-The American species has several names, as is usual with trees which
-grow in different regions. It is called arborvitae in Maine, Vermont,
-Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
-Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois,
-Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Ontario. White cedar is a name
-often used in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island,
-Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina,
-Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ontario. In Maine, Vermont, and New
-York it is called cedar. In New York, and where cultivated in England,
-American arborvitae is the name applied to it. The Indians in New York
-knew it as feather-leaf. In Delaware the name is abridged to vitae.
-
-The tree has been widely planted, and under the influence of cultivation
-it runs quickly into varieties, of which forty-five are listed by
-nurserymen. It is a northern species which follows the Appalachian
-mountains southward to North Carolina and Tennessee. It grows from New
-Brunswick to Manitoba, and is abundant in the Lake States.
-
-The bark of arborvitae is light brown, tinged with red on the branchlets;
-it is thin, and cracks into ridges with stringy, rough edges; the
-branchlets are very smooth.
-
-In general appearance the tree is conical and compact, with short
-branches; it attains a height of from twenty-five to seventy feet, and a
-diameter of from one to three feet. It thrives best in low, swampy land,
-along the borders of streams.
-
-The wood of arborvitae is soft, brittle, light and weak; it is very
-inflammable. The fact that it is durable, even in contact with the soil,
-permits its use for railway ties, telegraph poles, posts, fencing,
-shingles and boats. However, the trunk is so shaped that it is seldom
-used for lumber, but oftener for poles and posts, the lower section
-being flattened into ties. A cubic foot of the seasoned wood weighs
-approximately nineteen pounds. The heartwood is light brown, becoming
-darker with exposure; the sapwood is thin and nearly white, with fine
-grain.
-
-The northern white cedar varies greatly in size and shape, depending on
-the soil, climate, and situation. Though it is usually associated with
-swamps in the North, it adapts itself to quite different situations. It
-grows in narrow, rocky ravines, on stony ridges, and it clings to the
-faces of cliffs, or hangs on their summits as tenaciously as the western
-juniper of the Sierra Nevada mountains. However, little good timber is
-produced by this species on rocky soils. Trees in such situations are
-short, crooked, and limby.
-
-The wood of the northern white cedar possesses a peculiar toughness
-which is seen in its wearing qualities. A thin shaving, such as a
-carpenter's plane makes, may be folded, laid on an anvil, and struck
-repeatedly with a hammer, without breaking. It is claimed for it that it
-will stand a severer test of that kind than any other American wood.
-Toughness and wearing qualities combined make it an admirable wood for
-planking and decking for small boats. Its exceptionally light weight is
-an additional factor as a boat building material. The Indians knew how
-to work it into frames for bark canoes. Its lightness appealed to them;
-but the ease with which they could work it with their primitive tools
-was more important. It is a characteristic of the wood to part readily
-along the rings of annual growth. The Indian was able to split canoe
-ribs with a stone maul, by pounding a cedar billet until it parted along
-the growth rings and was reduced to very thin slats.
-
-The property of this cedar which appealed to the Indians is disliked by
-the sawmill man. It is hard to make thin lumber that will hang together.
-The tendency to part along the growth rings develops wind-shake while
-the tree is standing. About nine trees in ten are so defective from
-shake that little good lumber can be made from them. It is a common
-saying, which probably applies in certain localities only, that a
-thousand feet of white cedar must be sawed to get one hundred feet of
-good lumber.
-
-It is good material for small cooperage such as buckets, pails, and
-tubs, and has been long used for that purpose in the northern states.
-
-It was once laid in large quantities for paving blocks. Hundreds of
-miles of streets of northern cities were paved with round blocks sawed
-from trunks of trees from five to ten inches in diameter. They were not
-usually treated with chemicals to prevent decay, but they gave service
-ranging from six to twelve years. They are less used now than formerly.
-Southern yellow pine has largely taken the cedar's place as paving
-material. Much northern cedar has been used in the manufacture of bored
-pipe for municipal waterworks, shops, salt works, paper mills, and other
-factories.
-
-The early settlers of New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania made a
-rheumatism ointment by bruising the leaves and molding them with lard.
-This is probably not made now, but pharmacists distill an oil from twigs
-and wood, and make a tincture of the leaves which they use in the
-manufacture of pulmonary and other medicines.
-
-There is little likelihood that northern white cedar will ever cease to
-be a commercial wood in this country. It will become scarcer, but its
-manner of growth is the best guarantee that it will hold its place. It
-lives in swamps, and the land is not in demand for any other purpose.
-
-    ONE-SEED JUNIPER (_Juniperus monosperma_) is also called naked-seed
-    juniper. Its range lies in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and
-    Arizona. It attains its greatest development in the bottoms of
-    canyons in northern Arizona. It is a scrawny desert tree which lives
-    in adversity but holds its ground for centuries, if fire does not
-    cut its career short. Its growth is too scattered to attract
-    lumbermen, and the form of its trunk is uninviting. It may reach a
-    height of forty or fifty feet, and a diameter of three, but that is
-    above the average in the best of its range. The desert Indians make
-    the most of one-seed juniper. They weave its stringy bark into
-    sleeping mats, rough blankets, and saddle girts. They make cords and
-    ropes of it for use where great strength is not required, such as
-    leashes for leading dogs, strands with which to tie bundles on the
-    backs of their squaws, and cords for fastening their wigwam poles
-    together. They likewise weave the bark into pokes and pouches for
-    storing and carrying their dried meat and mesquite beans. The
-    juniper berries are an article of diet and commerce with the
-    Indians, who mix them with divers ingredients, pulp them in stone
-    mortars, and bake them in cakes which become the greatest delicacy
-    on their bill of fare. White men, when driven to it by starvation,
-    have sustained life by making food of the berries. A small quantity
-    of one-seed juniper reaches woodworkers in Texas. The lumber is
-    short and rough. The numerous knots are generally much darker than
-    the body of the wood. That is not necessarily a defect, for in
-    making clothes chests, the striking contrast in color between the
-    knots, and the other wood gives the article a peculiar and
-    attractive appearance. The trunks are sharply buttressed and deeply
-    creased. Sometimes the folds of bark within the creases almost reach
-    the center of the tree. The sapwood is thin, the heartwood irregular
-    in color. Some is darker than the heartwood of southern red cedar,
-    other is clouded and mottled, pale yellow, cream-colored, the shade
-    of slate, or streaked with various tints. The wood can be
-    economically worked only as small pieces. It takes a soft and
-    pleasing finish. It is a lathe wood and shows to best advantage as
-    balusters, ornaments, grill spindles and small posts, Indian clubs,
-    dumb-bells, balls, and lodge gavels. It has been made into small
-    game boards with fine effect, and it is an excellent material for
-    small picture frames. Furniture makers put it to use in several
-    ways, and it has been recommended for small musical instruments
-    where the variegated colors can be displayed to excellent advantage.
-    At the best it can never be more than a minor species, because it is
-    difficult of access in the remote deserts, and it is not abundant.
-
-    MOUNTAIN JUNIPER (_Juniperus sabinoides_) is a Texas tree, occupying
-    a range southward and westward of the Colorado river. It has several
-    local names, rock cedar being a favorite. This name is due to the
-    tree's habit of growing on rocky ridges and among ledges where soil
-    is scarce. It is called juniper cedar, and juniper. Under the most
-    favorable circumstances the tree may attain a height of 100 feet and
-    a diameter of two, but it nearly always grows where conditions are
-    adverse, and its size and form change to conform to circumstances.
-    It is often small and ragged. Its lead-colored bark is apt to
-    attract attention on account of its woeful appearance, hanging in
-    strings and tatters which persistently cling to the trunk in spite
-    of whipping winds. When the tree is cut for fuel, or for any other
-    purpose, the ragged bark is occasionally pulled off and is tied in
-    bales or bundles to be sold for kindling. When the mountain juniper
-    is taken from its native wilds and planted where environments are
-    different, it sometimes assumes fantastic forms. It has been planted
-    for ornament on the low, flat coast in the vicinity of the Gulf of
-    Mexico, and though it lives and grows, it often takes on a peculiar
-    appearance. The trunks resemble twisted and interwoven bundles of
-    lead-colored vines, buttressed, fluted, and gnarled. The branches
-    lose their upright position, and hang in careless abandon, with
-    drooping festoons. In winter the wind whips most of the foliage from
-    them. The leaves become brittle and may be easily brushed from the
-    twigs by a stroke of the hand. Some of the planted trees have trunks
-    so deeply creased as to be divided in two separate stems. This very
-    nearly happens with some of the wild trees among the western
-    mountains. The sapwood of mountain juniper is very thin. The average
-    tree cannot be profitably cut into lumber of the usual dimensions
-    because of the odd-shaped and irregular trunk. It lends itself more
-    economically to the manufacture of articles made up of small pieces.
-    Some of the wood is extremely beautiful, having the color and figure
-    of French walnut; but there is great difference in the figure and
-    color, and the wood of one tree is not a sure guide to what another
-    may be. Boards a foot wide, or even less, may show several figures
-    and colors. Some pieces suggest variegated marble; others are like
-    plain red cedar; some are light red in color, others have a tinge of
-    blue. It varies greatly in hardness, even in the same tree. Part of
-    it may be soft and brittle enough for lead pencils; another part may
-    be hard and tough. Clothes chests have been made of it, of most
-    peculiar appearance--resembling crazy quilts of subdued colors.
-    Sometimes the heartwood and the sapwood are inextricably mixed, both
-    being found in all parts of the trunk from the heart out. On the
-    whole, the tree can never have much importance as a source of
-    lumber, but it is a most interesting member of the cedar group.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SOUTHERN WHITE CEDAR
-
-[Illustration: SOUTHERN WHITE CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-SOUTHERN WHITE CEDAR
-
-(_Chamaecyparis Thyoides_)
-
-
-This tree is called southern white cedar to distinguish it from northern
-white cedar or arborvitae. When there is little likelihood of confusion,
-the name white cedar is applied locally in different parts of its range
-from Massachusetts to Florida. It is a persistent swamp tree and on that
-account has been called swamp cedar; but that name alone would not
-distinguish it from the northern white cedar, for both grow in swamps;
-but it does separate it from red cedar which keeps away from swamps. The
-ranges of the two are side by side from New England to Florida. Post
-cedar is a common name for it in Delaware and New Jersey, because of the
-important place it has long filled as fence material; but again, the
-name does not set it apart from red cedar or northern white cedar, for
-both are used for posts. The only name thus far applied, which clearly
-distinguishes it from associated cedars, is southern white cedar. Its
-range extends northward to Maine, but the tree's chief commercial
-importance has been in New Jersey and southward to North Carolina, very
-near the coast. Somehow, it seems to skip Georgia where no one has
-reported it for many years, though there is historical evidence that it
-once grew in that state. It grows as far west as Mississippi, but is
-scarce.
-
-The small leaves remain green two years and then turn brown but adhere
-to the branches several years longer. The fruit is about one-fourth inch
-in diameter, and the small seeds are equipped with wings.
-
-The wood is among the lightest in this country. It is only moderately
-strong and stiff. The tree usually grows slowly. Fifty years may be
-required to produce a fence post, but under favorable conditions results
-somewhat better than that may be expected. The summerwood of the yearly
-ring is narrow, dark in color, and conspicuous, making the counting of
-the rings an easy matter. The medullary rays are numerous but thin. When
-the sap is cut tangentially in very thin layers it is white and
-semi-transparent, presenting somewhat the appearance of oiled paper. The
-heartwood is light brown, tinged with red, growing darker with exposure.
-The wood is easily worked, and is very durable in contact with the soil.
-Fence posts of this wood have been reported to stand fifty years, and
-shingles are said to last longer. Trees reach a height of eighty feet
-and diameter of four; but such are of the largest size. Great numbers
-are cut for poles and posts which are little more than a foot in
-diameter. Few forest trees grow in denser stands than this. It often
-takes possession of swamps, crowds out all other trees, and develops
-thickets so dense as to be almost impenetrable. Southern white cedar is
-cut in ten or twelve states, but the annual supply is not known, because
-mills generally report all cedars as one, and the regions which produce
-this, produce one or more other species of cedar also. It has held its
-place nearly three hundred years, and much interesting history is
-connected with it. A considerable part of the Revolutionary war was
-fought with powder made from white cedar charcoal burned in New Jersey
-and Delaware. However, that was by no means the earliest place filled by
-this wood.
-
-Two hundred years ago in North Carolina John Lawson wrote of its use for
-"yards, topmasts, booms, bowsprits for boats, shingles, and poles." It
-was cut for practically the same purposes in New Jersey at an earlier
-period, and 160 years ago Gottlieb Mittelberger, when he visited
-Philadelphia, declared that white cedar was being cut at a rate which
-would soon exhaust the supply. But that prophecy, like similar
-predictions that oak and red cedar were about gone, proved not well
-founded. Seventy years after the imminent exhaustion of this wood was
-foretold, William Cobbett, an English traveler, declared with evident
-exaggeration that "all good houses in the United States" were roofed
-with white cedar shingles.
-
-After boat building, the first general use of the southern white cedar
-was for fences and farm buildings, and doubtless twenty times as much
-went to the farms as to the boat yards. In all regions where the wood
-was convenient, little other was employed as fencing material, and many
-of the earliest houses in New Jersey and some in Pennsylvania were
-constructed almost wholly of this wood. Small trees which would split
-two, three, and four rails to the cut, were mauled by thousands to
-enclose the farms. The bark soon dropped off, or was removed, and the
-light rails quickly air-dried, and decay made little impression on them
-for many years. The larger trunks were rived for shingles or were sawed
-into lumber. About 1750 the use of round cedar logs for houses and barns
-began to give way to sawed lumber. It was an ideal milling timber, for
-the logs were symmetrical, clear, and easily handled. North Carolina
-sawmills were at work on this timber many years before the Revolution.
-It was acceptable material for doors, window frames, rafters, and
-floors, but especially for shingles which were split with frow and
-mallet, and were from twenty-four to twenty-seven inches long. They were
-known in market as juniper shingles and sold at four and five dollars a
-thousand. About 1750 builders in Philadelphia were criticized because
-they constructed houses with no provision for other than white cedar
-roofs; the walls being too weak for heavier material which would have to
-be substituted when cedar could be no longer procured. Philadelphia was
-not alone in its preference for cedar roofs. Large shipments of shingles
-were going from New Jersey to New York, and even to the West Indies
-earlier than 1750.
-
-Southern white cedar is said to have been the first American wood used
-for organ pipes. The resonance of cedar shingles under a pattering rain
-suggested this use to Mittelberger when he visited America, and he tried
-the wood with such success that he pronounced it the best that he knew
-of for organ pipes.
-
-Coopers were among the early users of white cedar. The "cedar coopers of
-Philadelphia" were famous in their day. They used this wood and also red
-cedar (_Juniperus virginiana_), and their wares occupied an important
-place in domestic and some foreign markets. Small vessels prevailed,
-such as pails, churns, firkins, tubs, keelers, piggins, noggins, and
-kegs. The ware was handsome, strong, durable, and light in weight. Oil
-merchants, particularly those who dealt in whale oil which was once an
-important commodity, bought tanks of southern white cedar. It is a dense
-wood and seepage is small.
-
-A peculiar superstition once prevailed, and has not wholly disappeared
-at this day, that white cedar possessed powerful healing properties. It
-was thought that water was purified by standing in a cedar bucket, and
-even that a liquid was improved by simply running through a spigot of
-this wood. Some eastern towns at an early period laid cedar water mains,
-partly because the wood was known to be durable, and partly because it
-was supposed to exercise some favorable influence upon the water flowing
-through the pipes. It was even believed that standing trees purified the
-swamps in which they grew. Vessels putting to sea from Chesapeake bay,
-sometimes made special effort to fill their water casks with water from
-the Dismal swamp, where cedars grew abundantly in the stagnant lagoons.
-
-About 100 years ago it was found that whole forests of cedar had been
-submerged in New Jersey during prehistoric times, and that deep in
-swamps the trunks of trees were buried out of sight. No one knows how
-long the prostrate trees had lain beneath the accumulation of peat and
-mud, but the wood was sound. Mining the cedar became an important
-industry in some of the large swamps, and it has not ended yet. The wood
-is sound enough for shingles and lumber, though it has been buried for
-centuries, as is proved by the age of the forests which grew over the
-submerged logs. Sometimes a log which has lain under water hundreds of
-years, rises to the surface by its own buoyancy when pressure from above
-is removed. This is remarkable and shows how long a time this cedar
-resists complete waterlogging. The wood of green cedar has a strong
-odor, and that characteristic remains with the submerged trunks.
-Experienced men who have been long engaged in mining the timber, are
-able to tell by the odor of a chip brought to the surface from a deeply
-submerged log whether the wood is sufficiently well preserved to be
-worth recovering and manufacturing. Trunks six feet in diameter have
-been brought to the surface. Few if any living white cedars of that size
-exist now.
-
-Many of the early uses of southern white cedar have continued till the
-present time, but in much smaller quantities. Fence rails are no longer
-made of it; shingles and cooperage have declined. On the other hand, it
-now has some uses which were unknown in early times, such as telephone
-and telegraph poles, crossties, and piling for railroad bridges and
-culverts.
-
-The supply of southern white cedar is not large, and it is being cut
-faster than it is growing. The deep swamps where it grows protect white
-cedar forests from fire, and for that reason it is more fortunate than
-many other species. Not even cypress can successfully compete with it
-for possession of water soaked morasses. It does not promise great
-things for the future, for it will never be extensively planted. Its
-range has been pretty definitely fixed by nature to deep swamps near the
-Atlantic coast. Within those limits it will be of some importance for a
-long time. Where it finds its most congenial surroundings, little else
-that is profitable to man will grow. This will save it from utter
-extermination, because much of the land which it occupies will never be
-wanted for anything else.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-INCENSE CEDAR
-
-[Illustration: INCENSE CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-INCENSE CEDAR
-
-(_Libocedrus Decurrens_)
-
-
-In California and Oregon this tree is known as white cedar, cedar, and
-incense cedar; in Nevada and California it is called post cedar and
-juniper, and in other localities it is red cedar and California post
-cedar. It is a species of such strong characteristics that it is not
-likely to be confused with any other. Though different names may be
-applied to it, the identity of the tree is always clear.
-
-Its range extends north and south nearly 1,000 miles, from Oregon to
-Lower California. It is a mountain species, and it faces the Pacific
-ocean in most of its range. In the North it occupies the western slope
-of the Cascade mountains in southern Oregon and northern California; and
-it grows on the western slope of the Sierras for five hundred miles, at
-altitudes of from 4,000 to 8,000 feet, where it is mixed with sugar
-pine, western yellow pine, white fir, and sequoias.
-
-It is a fine, shapely tree, except that the butt is much enlarged. It
-has the characteristic form of a deep swamp tree, but it has nothing to
-do with swamps. Its best development is on the Sierra Nevada mountains,
-where swamps are few, and the incense cedar avoids them. It occupies dry
-ridges and slopes, but not sterile ones. It must have as good soil as
-the sugar pine demands. Its height when mature ranges from seventy-five
-to 125 feet, diameter four feet from the ground, from three to six feet,
-but some trees are larger. It is not a rapid grower, but it maintains
-its vigor a long time. As an average, it increases its diameter an inch
-in from seven to ten years.
-
-The wood is dense. It contains no pores large enough to be seen with an
-ordinary reading glass. The medullary rays are so small as to be
-generally invisible to the naked eye, but when magnified they are shown
-to be thin and numerous. The summerwood forms about one-fourth of the
-annual ring. The wood is nearly as light as white pine, is moderately
-strong, is brittle, straight grained, the heartwood is reddish, the
-thick sapwood nearly white. It is an easy wood to work, and in contact
-with the soil it is very durable.
-
-The incense cedar is the only representative of its genus in the United
-States. It has many relatives in the pine family, but no near ones. Its
-kin are natives of Formosa, China, New Zealand, New Guinea, and
-Patagonia.
-
-The name incense cedar refers to the odor of the wood rather than of the
-leaves. Those who work with freshly cut wood are liable to attacks of
-headache, due to the odor; but some men are not affected by it.
-
-The forest grown tree is of beautiful proportions. Unless much crowded
-for room, it is a tall, graceful cone, the branches drooping slightly,
-and forming thick masses. In the Sierra Nevada mountains, within the
-range of this cedar, the winter snows are very heavy. It is not unusual
-for two or three feet of very wet snow to fall in a single day. The
-incense cedar's drooping branches shed the snow like a tent roof, and a
-limb broken or seriously deformed by weight of snow is seldom seen. Deer
-and other wild animals, when surprised by a heavy fall of snow, seek the
-shelter of an incense cedar, if one can be found, and there lie in
-security until the storm passes.
-
-It is a tree which does fairly well in cultivation, and several
-varieties have been developed. It lives through the cold of a New
-England winter. Its cones are about three-fourths inch in length, and
-ripen in the autumn.
-
-Incense cedar has filled an important place in the development of the
-great central valley of California, where it has supplied more fence
-posts than any other tree. Posts of redwood have been its chief
-competitor, but generally the region has been divided, and each tree has
-supplied its part. The redwood's field has been the coast, the cedar's
-the inland valley within reach of the Sierras. It has been nothing
-unusual for ranchmen to haul cedar posts on wagons forty or fifty miles.
-
-The manufacture of posts from incense cedar has entailed an enormous
-waste of timber. The thick sapwood is not wanted, and in the process of
-converting a trunk into posts, the woodsman first splits off the sap and
-throws it away. In trunks of small and medium size, the sapwood may
-amount to more than the heartwood, and is a total loss.
-
-The tree's bark is thick and stringy, and it is generally wasted; but in
-some instances it is used as a surface dressing for mountain roads. It
-wears to pieces and becomes a pulpy mass, and it protects the surface of
-the road from excessive wear, and from washing in time of heavy rain.
-
-Approximately one-half of the incense cedar trees, as they stand in the
-woods, are defective. A fungus (_Daedalia vorax_) attacks them in the
-heartwood and excavates pits throughout the length of the trunks. The
-galleries resemble the work of ants, and as ants often take possession
-of them and probably enlarge them, it is quite generally believed that
-the pits are due to ants. The excavations are frequently filled with
-dry, brown dust, sometimes packed very hard and tight. The cedar thus
-affected resembles "pecky cypress," and it is believed that the same
-species of fungus, or a closely related species, is responsible for the
-injury to both cypress in the South and incense cedar on the Pacific
-coast. It is not generally regarded by users of cedar posts that the
-honey-combed condition of the wood lessens the service which the post
-will give, unless by weakening it and causing it to break, or by
-rendering it less able to hold the staples of wire fences, or nails of
-plank and picket fences.
-
-Post makers often prefer fire-killed timber. If a tree is found with the
-sapwood consumed, as is not unusual, it is nearly always free from
-fungous attack. The reason it stands through the fire which burns the
-sapwood off, is that the heart is sound--if it were not sound, the whole
-tree would be consumed.
-
-The wood of the incense cedar is serviceable for many purposes. The
-rejection of the sapwood by so many users is the most discouraging
-feature. The heart, when free from fungus, is a fine, attractive
-material that does not suffer in comparison with the other cedars,
-though it may not equal some of them for particular purposes. Tests show
-it fit for lead pencils, and recent purchases of large quantities have
-been made by pencil makers. Clothes chests and wardrobes are
-manufactured from this wood on the assumption that the odor will keep
-moths out of furs and other clothing stored within. It has been used for
-cigar boxes, but has not in all instances proven satisfactory. The odor
-of the wood is objected to by some smokers. Another objection and a
-somewhat peculiar one, has been filed against incense cedar as a cigar
-box material. It is claimed that the boxes are attacked voraciously by
-rats which gnaw the wood, to which they are doubtless attracted by the
-odor.
-
-Sawmills turn out incense cedar lumber which is worked into frames for
-doors and windows, and doors are made of it, and also interior finish.
-Shipments of inch boards are sold in New York and Boston, and exports go
-to London, Paris, and Berlin.
-
-The long period during which incense cedar has been used and wasted, has
-reduced the supply in most regions, but there is yet much in the forest.
-It is never lumbered separately, but only in connection with pine and
-fir; but post makers have always gone about picking trees of this
-species and passing by the associated species.
-
-ALLIGATOR JUNIPER (_Juniperus pachyphloea_) is so named from its bark
-which is patterned like the skin of an alligator. It is called
-oak-barked cedar in Arizona, mountain cedar in Texas, and
-checkered-barked juniper in other places. Its range lies in southwestern
-Texas, about Eagle pass and Limpia mountains, and westward on the desert
-ranges of New Mexico and Arizona, south of the Colorado plateau, and
-among the mountains of northern Arizona. Its range extends southward
-into Mexico. It is one of the largest of the junipers, but only when
-circumstances are wholly favorable. It is then sixty feet high, and four
-or five feet in diameter; but it is generally small and of poor form for
-lumber, because of its habit of separating into forks near the ground.
-It does best at elevations of from 4,000 to 6,000 feet in bottoms of
-canyons and ravines. The grayish green color of the foliage is due to
-the conspicuous white glands which dot the center of each leaf. The
-berries are small and blue, of sweetish taste which does not
-particularly appeal to the palate of civilized man, but the Indians of
-the region, whose normal state is one of semi-starvation, eat them with
-relish. The line separating heartwood from sap in alligator juniper is
-frequently irregular and vague, and like some of its kindred junipers of
-the West, patches of sap are sometimes buried deep in the heartwood,
-while streaks of heartwood occur in the sap. This heartwood is usually
-of a dirty color, suggesting red rocks and soil of the desert where it
-grows. Small articles which can be made of wood selected for its color
-are attractive. They may be highly polished, and the surface takes a
-satiny finish; but the wood does not show very well in panel or body
-work where wide pieces are used. The best utilization of alligator
-juniper appears to lie in small articles. It is fine for the lathe, and
-goblets, napkin rings, match safes, and handkerchief boxes are
-manufactured from the wood in Texas. Its rough uses are as fence posts
-and telephone poles. It is durable in contact with the soil.
-
-CALIFORNIA JUNIPER (_Juniperus californica_) is called white cedar,
-juniper, sweet-fruited juniper, and sweet-berried cedar. Its range is in
-California south of Sacramento, among the ranges of the coast mountains,
-and the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Its height runs from twenty to
-forty feet, diameter one to two. The leaves fall in the second or third
-year. This tree is of poor form and size for lumber. Trunks frequently
-divide into branches near the ground. The wood resembles that of other
-western junipers, and usually the fine color which distinguishes the red
-cedar of the East is wanting, and in its stead is a dull brown, tinged
-with red. The wood is soft and durable, and is strongly odorous. The
-sapwood is thin and is nearly white. Fuel and fence posts are the most
-important uses of the California juniper. Indians eat the berries raw or
-dry them and pound them to flour.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN RED CEDAR
-
-[Illustration: WESTERN RED CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN RED CEDAR
-
-(_Thuja Plicata_)
-
-
-In the eastern markets the lumber from this tree is usually called
-western cedar without further description, but that name does not always
-sufficiently identify it. There are other western cedars, notably
-incense and yellow; but they have not generally appeared in eastern
-markets. Western red cedar is the name given it when the purpose is to
-separate it from other western cedars. It is the only red cedar in the
-far West, except the scarce junipers which are totally unknown as its
-competitors in lumber centers. Gigantic cedar is a name which takes size
-into account. It is the largest of American cedars. Trunks fifteen feet
-in diameter and 200 feet high are sometimes seen, but the usual size is
-100 high, from two to four in diameter. Canoe cedar is a name bestowed
-upon this western tree for the same reason that canoe wood is one of the
-yellow poplar's names in the East. It is one of the best woods for
-dugout canoes. Botanists have called the tree giant arborvitae, but the
-name never got beyond books. When the people of Washington and Oregon
-speak of cedar without a qualifying term, they mean this species. It is
-widely known as shingle wood or shingle cedar, because more shingles are
-made of it than of all other kinds of timber in the United States
-combined.
-
-The western red cedar's range covers 300,000 square miles, not counting
-regions of small or scattered growth. For a timber tree, that range is
-large, but not nearly as large as some others. It exceeds one-hundred
-fold the commercial range of redwood, and probably a thousand fold that
-of Port Orford cedar, but its range is not one-third that of the eastern
-red cedar, though in total quantity of available lumber it surpasses the
-eastern tree a hundred fold. Its range begins in Alaska on the north,
-and follows the coast to northern California, and extends eastward into
-Idaho. The best development occurs in the regions of warm, moist Pacific
-winds, but not in the immediate fog belts. The largest quantity of this
-wood, and probably the largest trees also, are in Washington. Abundant
-rainfall is essential to western red cedar's development. It would be
-difficult to approximate the amount of the remaining stand. This cedar
-does not form pure forests, and estimates of so many feet per acre or
-square mile cannot be based on fairly exact information as may be done
-with redwood, and some of the southern pines. Though the drain upon the
-cedar forests is heavy, it is generally believed there is enough of this
-species to meet demands for a long period of years.
-
-Nature made ample provision for the spread and perpetuation of this
-tree. The seeds are fairly abundant, are light, have good wing power,
-and are great travelers in search of suitable places to germinate and
-take root. The tree's greatest enemy is fire. The cedar's bark is thin,
-even when trunks are mature, and a moderate blaze often proves fatal to
-large trees; but small ones, with all their branches close to the
-ground, have no chance when the fire burns the litter among them. Some
-tree seeds germinate readily on soil bared by fire--such as lodgepole
-pine, wild red cherry, and paper birch--but the western red cedar's do
-not, if the humus is sufficiently burned to lessen the soil's capacity
-to retain moisture. For that reason, this cedar seldom follows fire, and
-the result is that it constantly loses ground. Under normal conditions,
-it is not exacting in its requirements; but anything that disturbs
-natural conditions is more likely to harm than help this cedar. In that
-respect it is like beech and hemlock, which suffer when forest
-conditions are disturbed.
-
-Trunks are large but not shapely. They are generally fluted, and greatly
-swelled at the base. These deformities develop rather late in the tree's
-life; at least, they are not prominent in young timber. Western cedar
-poles of large size are beautiful in outline; but when maturity
-approaches, the trunk grows faster near the ground than some distance
-above; the annual rings are wider near the base than twenty feet above,
-resulting in great enlargement near the ground. At the same time ribs
-and creases slowly develop, and by the time the tree is old, it is as
-ungainly as one of the giant sequoias. Its appearance is hurt by
-characteristics other than the swelled base and the buttresses. While
-the tree is small, the limbs ascend, and maintain a graceful upright
-position. Toward middle life they begin to droop, and the limbs of old
-trees hang down the trunks--the reverse of their attitude in early life.
-
-The western red cedar lives to an old age, from 600 to 1,000 years. The
-oldest are liable to be hollow near the ground. The tree is remarkable
-for what happens after it falls. Often the trunk crashes down in a bed
-of moss, which in a few years buries it from sight. The moss holds so
-much water that the buried log is constantly too wet for fungous attack.
-Consequently decay does not take place. Fallen trees have lain for
-hundreds of years--as much as 800 having been claimed in one
-instance--and at the end of that time they are sound enough for
-shingles. The position of living trees growing upon buried logs
-furnishes the key to the length of time since the trunks fell. The long
-period during which the moss-buried wood has remained sound has led to
-the claim that western red cedar is the most enduring wood in America.
-Such is not necessarily the case. A good many others would probably last
-as long if protected in the same way.
-
-Western red cedar is strong and stiff but falls from twenty to thirty
-per cent below white oak in these factors. It is light, and the texture
-of the wood is rather coarse. The springwood and summerwood are
-distinct, the latter constituting one-half or less of the annual ring.
-The medullary rays are numerous and obscure. The wood's color is dull
-brown, tinged with red. The thin sapwood is nearly white.
-
-The ease with which western red cedar may be worked led the Indians to
-use it in their most ambitious woodcraft. The gigantic totem poles which
-have excited the curiosity and admiration of travelers near the coast in
-Alaska and southward have nearly all been of this wood. Some of them are
-the largest single pieces of wood carving in the world. Trunks three or
-four feet in diameter and forty or fifty feet long have been hewed and
-whittled in weird, uncouth, and fantastic forms, decorated with eagle
-heads, bear mouths, and with various creatures of the forest or sea, or
-from the realms of imagination. Before the northern Pacific coast
-Indians procured tools from white men they executed their carving by
-means of bone, stone, shell, and wooden tools, assisted by fire.
-
-The making of canoes was in some ways a work more laborious for the
-Indians than the manufacture of totem poles. Their canoes were dugouts
-of all sizes, from the small trough which carried one or two persons, to
-the enormous canoe which carried fifty warriors with all their
-equipment. Such a canoe, now in the National Museum at Washington, D.
-C., is fifty-nine feet long, seven feet, three inches deep at the bow,
-five feet three inches at the stern, and three feet seven inches in the
-middle, and eight feet wide. It was made on Vancouver island, and is
-capable of carrying 100 persons. The capacity of the canoe is
-thirty-five tons. Civilized man has produced no vessel with lines more
-perfect than are seen in some of these canoes made by savages; but all
-the canoes are not alike: some are crude and clumsy. It is claimed that
-large cedar canoes of Indian manufacture were early carried from the
-Pacific coast by fur traders, and New York and Boston shipbuilders took
-them as models in constructing the celebrated clipper ships which
-formerly sailed between New York and San Francisco.
-
-The Indians formerly made much use of western red cedar bark which they
-twisted into ropes and cords, braided for mats, wove for cloth, used in
-making baskets, roofing wigwams, constructing fish nets and bird snares,
-ladders for climbing cliffs, and they even pulped the inner bark by
-pounding it in mortars, and mixed it with their food.
-
-White men have put western red cedar to many uses, as shingles, lumber,
-cooperage, poles, posts, piles, car siding and roofing, boat building
-from skiffs to ships, and general furniture and interior finish.
-
-WESTERN JUNIPER (_Juniperus occidentalis_) is a high mountain tree with
-all the characteristics belonging to that class of timber. The trunks
-are short and strong, the limbs wide-spreading, the wood of slow growth,
-and dense. The tree attains a diameter of ten inches in about 130 years.
-Trunks ten feet in diameter have been reported, but trees that large
-would be hard to find now. John Muir said that the western juniper lives
-2,000 years, and that the tree is never uprooted by wind. The trunk is
-usually short, six or eight feet being a fair average, and very knotty.
-However, when a block of clear wood is found, it is high class, the
-heaviest of the cedars, straight grain, soft, compact, brittle. The
-summerwood is so narrow that it resembles a fine, black line. The
-medullary rays are numerous and very obscure. The wood is slightly
-aromatic, splits easily, works nicely, and in color is brown, tinged
-with red. In appearance, the sapwood suggests spruce. The average height
-of the trees is from twenty-five to forty-five feet, diameter two to
-four feet. The range of this tree is in Idaho, eastern Oregon, and
-through the Cascades and Sierras to southern California. It seldom
-occurs below an altitude of 6,000 feet, and ascends to 10,000 or more.
-On the highest summits it is deformed and stunted. Its fruit is eaten by
-Indians, and it furnishes fuel for mountain camps and ranches, timber
-for mines, and sometimes a little lumber. The crooked limbs and trunks
-are made into corral fences where better material cannot be had. The
-wood has been found suitable for lead pencils, but that of proper
-quality is too scarce to attract manufacturers. Other names for this
-tree are juniper cedar, yellow cedar, western cedar, western red cedar,
-and western juniper. Some of these names are applied to other species of
-the same region.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PORT ORFORD CEDAR
-
-[Illustration: PORT ORFORD CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-PORT ORFORD CEDAR
-
-(_Chamaecyparis Lawsoniana_)
-
-
-Port Orford cedar of the northwestern coast is an interesting member of
-the cedar group with a very limited range. Specimens are found
-throughout an area of about 10,000 square miles, but the district
-moderately heavily timbered does not exceed 300 or 400 miles in area. It
-lies near Coos bay in southwestern Oregon. The tree is found as far
-south in California as the mouth of Klamath river, and it was once
-reported on Mt. Shasta, but it is very scarce there if it exists at all.
-In the best of its range Port Orford cedar runs 20,000 feet to the acre,
-and a single acre has yielded 100,000 feet. Trees run from 135 to 175
-feet in height and three to seven in diameter. The largest on record
-were about 200 feet high and twelve in diameter. Few trees of any
-species have smaller leaves. They often are only one-sixteenth of an
-inch in length. They die the third year and change to a bright brown.
-The cones are about one-third of an inch in diameter. Two or four seeds
-lie under each fertile cone scale, and ripen in September and October.
-The seeds are one-eighth inch in length, and are winged for flight. The
-bark of the tree is much thicker than of most cedars, being ten inches
-near the base of large trees. This ought to protect the trunks against
-fire but it falls short of expectations. About sixty years ago much of
-the finest timber was killed by a great fire which swept the region.
-Some of the dead trunks stood forty years without exhibiting much
-evidence of decay, and those that fell remained sound many years.
-
-The whole history of this interesting tree, from its first announced
-discovery by white men until the present time, is embraced in the memory
-of living men. It had not been heard of prior to 1855. Though fire and
-storm have destroyed large quantities, it has been estimated that
-4,000,000,000 feet of merchantable timber remain, an average of 15,000
-feet per acre for an area of 400 square miles. The wood is moderately
-light, is nearly as strong as white oak, and falls only sixteen per cent
-below it in stiffness. The annual rings are generally narrow, but
-distinct. The summerwood is narrow, but dark in color in the heartwood.
-The medullary rays are numerous and obscure. The wood abounds in odorous
-resin. The odor persists long after the wood has ceased to be fresh.
-Workmen in mills where this cedar is cut, and on board of vessels
-freighted with it, are sometimes seriously affected by the odor. It is
-reputed to repel insects, and is made into clothes chests, wardrobes,
-and shelves, with the expectation that moths will be kept at a distance.
-Several other cedars bear similar reputations.
-
-One of the first uses to which the people of the Pacific coast put Port
-Orford cedar was boat building. The industry was important at Coos bay
-at an early day, and vessels constructed there sailed the seas thirty or
-forty years. Trunks of this cedar turn out a high percentage of clear
-lumber. The wood takes a good polish, and is manufactured into
-furniture, doors, sash, turnery, and matches. The latter article is
-esteemed by many persons for the peculiar odor of the burning wood. It
-has been found practicable to finish this cedar in imitation of
-mahogany, oak, and several other cabinet woods. In its natural state it
-sometimes bears some resemblance to yellow pine, and sometimes to
-spruce, there being considerable variation in the appearance of wood
-from different trees. When the visible supply of Port Orford cedar has
-been cut, the end will be reached, for not much young growth is coming
-on. Sixty-eight varieties of Port Orford cedar are recognized in
-cultivation.
-
-YELLOW CEDAR (_Chamaecyparis nootkatensis_) describes this tree quite
-well. The small twigs are of that color, and so is the heartwood. Many
-give it the name yellow cypress. Others know it as Alaska cypress,
-Alaska ground cypress, Nootka cypress, or Nootka sound cypress. The name
-of the species, _nootkatensis_, was given it by Archibald Menzies, a
-Scotch botanist who discovered it on the shore of Nootka sound in
-Alaska.
-
-Yellow cedar's geographic range extends from southeastern Alaska to
-Oregon, a distance of 1,000 miles. It does not usually go far inland,
-and consequently the range is narrow in most places. North of the
-international boundary the tree seldom reaches an altitude of more than
-2,000 or 3,000 feet, but in Washington and Oregon it is occasionally met
-with at elevations of 4,000 and 5,000 feet. The species reaches its best
-development on the islands off the coast of southern Alaska and British
-Columbia, where the air is moist, the winds warm in winter, the rainfall
-abundant, and the snowfall often deep. Well developed trees under such
-circumstances are from ninety to 120 feet high, from two to six in
-diameter. The blue-green leaves remain active two years, and then die,
-but they do not usually fall until a year later. The presence of the
-dead leaves on the twigs tones down the general color of the tree
-crowns.
-
-The cones are about half an inch long and have four, five, or six
-scales. From two to four seeds lie beneath each scale until September or
-October when they ripen and escape. Their wings are large enough to
-carry them away from the immediate vicinity of the parent tree, and
-reproduction under natural conditions is generally good. Yellow cedar is
-abundant within its range, but nature has circumscribed its range, and
-it shows no disposition to pass the boundary line.
-
-The bark is thin and exhibits cedar's characteristic stringiness. It is
-shed in thin strips.
-
-The wood is moderately light, and is strong and stiff. It is probably
-the hardest of the cedars, and the grain is so regular that high polish
-is possible. Under favorable circumstances trees grow with fair
-rapidity, but when conditions are unfavorable, as on high mountains
-where summers are short and winters severe, growth is remarkably slow,
-and twenty years or more may be required for one inch increase in trunk
-diameter. The wood of such trees is hard, dense, and strong.
-
-The grain of yellow cedar is usually straight. The bands of summerwood
-are narrow, the annual rings are indistinct, and an attempt to count
-them is often attended with considerable difficulty. The wood is easily
-worked, satiny, susceptible of a beautiful polish, and possesses an
-agreeable resinous odor. The heartwood is bright, clear yellow, and the
-thin sapwood is a little lighter in color. In common with all other
-cedars, yellow cedar resists decay many years. Logs which have lain in
-damp woods half a century remain sound inside the sapwood. Sometimes
-fallen timber in that region is quickly buried under deep beds of moss
-which preserves it from decay much longer than if the logs lie exposed
-to alternate dampness and dryness.
-
-Statistics of sawmill operations in the Northwest do not distinguish
-between the different cedars, and the cut of yellow cedar is unknown. It
-is considerable, but of course not to be compared with the more abundant
-western red cedar. Statistics of uses are as meager as of the lumber
-output. In Washington the factories which use wood as raw material
-report only 7,500 feet of yellow cedar a year. Doubtless much more than
-that is used, but under other names. There is no occasion to disguise
-this wood under other names. It has a striking individuality and
-deserves a place of its own. In some respects it is one of the best
-woods of the Pacific Northwest. In nearly every situation where it has
-been tried, it has been found satisfactory. Its rich yellow presents a
-fine appearance in furniture and interior finish, and the polish which
-it takes surpasses that possible with any other cedar, with the probable
-exception of some of the scarce, high mountain junipers. It has been
-used for pyrography and patterns, two hard places to fill, and for which
-few woods are suitable. Indians long ago in Alaska learned that it was
-the best material for boat paddles which their forests afforded. It
-possesses the requisite stiffness and strength, and it wears to a
-smoothness almost like ebony. Boat factories have many uses for the
-wood, decking, railing, and interior finish being among the most
-important. It is said to be a satisfactory substitute for Spanish cedar
-in the manufacture of cigar boxes, but its use for that purpose is not
-yet large.
-
-It is said that occasional exports of this wood go to China where it is
-finished in imitation of scarce and expensive woods of that country.
-
-Yellow cedar is a wood with a future. Its splendid properties cannot
-fail to give it a place of no small importance in factories and in
-general building operations. The supply has scarcely yet been touched,
-but it cannot much longer remain an undeveloped asset. It is apparently
-a high-class cooperage material, but it does not seem to have been used
-much if at all in that industry. The same might be said of it for doors.
-It is heavier than spruce, white pine, and redwood, but where weight is
-not a matter for objection, it ought to equal them in all desirable
-qualities.
-
-In much of its range it is generally exempt from forest fire injury,
-because its native woods are nearly always too wet to burn.
-
-    ROCKY MOUNTAIN JUNIPER (_Juniperus scopulorum_) is scattered over
-    the mountains from Dakota and Nebraska to Washington and British
-    Columbia, and southward to western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
-    Except near the Pacific coast, it is usually found at altitudes
-    above 5,000 feet. It clings closely to dry, rocky ridges where it
-    attains a height of thirty or forty feet, and a diameter of three
-    feet or less. The trunk usually divides near the ground into several
-    stems. The bright blue berries ripen the second year. The wood
-    resembles that of red cedar, and is used in the same way, as far as
-    it is used at all. It is not a source of lumber. A little is sawed
-    occasionally on mountain mills, and the lumber is used locally in
-    house building, particularly for window and door frames; but sawlogs
-    are short, and because of their poor form, the output of lumber is
-    negligible. Some of it finds its way into Texas where it is
-    manufactured into clothes chests and wardrobes, and these are sold
-    as red cedar. A choice mountain juniper log, with large, sound
-    heartwood, produces lumber with a delicate grain and is more
-    attractive than red cedar when made into chests and boxes. By habit
-    of growth, it includes patches of white sapwood in the darker
-    heartwood. When these are sawed through in converting the logs into
-    boards, the islands of white wood scattered over the surface produce
-    a unique effect not wanting in artistic value. Some of the other
-    western junipers possess similar characteristics. Sometimes patches
-    of bark are also found imbedded in the interior of the trees.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED SPRUCE
-
-[Illustration: RED SPRUCE]
-
-
-
-
-RED SPRUCE
-
-(_Picea Rubens_)
-
-
-In New York the tree is called yellow spruce, while in foreign
-literature it is known as North American red spruce. The tree is
-sometimes difficult to distinguish from black spruce (_Picea nigra_),
-the main points of difference in the appearance of the two trees being
-the size and shape of the cones and of the staminate blossoms. The cones
-of red spruce are larger than those of black, and they mature and drop
-from the branches during their first winter, while those of the latter
-named species frequently remain on the trees for several seasons.
-Certain eminent botanists incline to the belief that the two are
-different varieties of one species, inasmuch as even the timber of red
-spruce bears a close resemblance to that of the black spruce. Other
-botanists dispute this theory, saying that the trees are entirely
-different in appearance; that the red spruce is a light olive-green,
-while black spruce is inclined to a darker olive with perhaps a purplish
-tinge, so that when seen together they have no resemblance in point of
-color. They further say that the cones are not only different in size
-but that the scales are quite unlike in texture, those of black spruce
-being much thinner and more brittle. The same authorities maintain that
-the tiny twigs of red spruce are more conspicuous on account of their
-reddish tinge.
-
-Generally speaking the principal spruce growth of northern New England
-and New York is black spruce, although interspersed with it in some
-localities is a considerable quantity of red spruce. On the contrary the
-chief stand of spruce in West Virginia, Virginia, western North
-Carolina, and eastern Tennessee and the other high altitudes over the
-South Carolina line, is largely red spruce. This botanical analysis of
-the two species of wood is based entirely on the authority of botanists,
-but from the viewpoint of the average lumberman there is absolutely no
-difference between red and black spruce and none in the physics of the
-two woods except that which rises from varying conditions of growth as
-soil, rainfall, altitude or latitude, or general environment. The larger
-spruce of West Virginia and the mountain region farther south, has
-certain qualities of strength and texture, combined with a large
-percentage of clear lumber that is not approximated by the spruce of New
-England and the British maritime provinces. In shape the tree is
-pyramidal, with spreading branches. It reaches a height of from seventy
-to a hundred feet. Its bark is reddish brown, slightly scaly. The twigs
-are light colored when young and are covered with tiny hairs. The leaves
-are thickly clustered along the branches, and are simple and slender,
-pointed at the apex. They become lustrous at maturity. The staminate
-flowers are oval, bright red in color; the pistillate ones are oblong,
-with thin rounded scales. The fruit of the red spruce is a cone, from
-one to two and a half inches in length; it is green when young, turning
-dark with age, and falling from the branches when the scales open. The
-seeds are dark brown, and winged.
-
-Formerly spruce was little thought of for lumber and manufacturing
-purposes in this country, though some use was made of it from the
-earliest settlements in the regions where it grew. White pine could
-generally be had where spruce was abundant, and the former wood was
-preferred. As pine became scarce, spruce was worked in for a number of
-purposes. The tree's form is all that a sawmill man could desire. The
-trunk has more knots than white pine, for the reason that limbs are a
-longer time in dying and in dropping off; but knots are small and
-generally sound. By careful culling, a moderate amount of clear lumber
-may be obtained. The wood is light, soft, narrow-ringed, strong in
-proportion to its weight, elastic, and its color is pale with a slight
-tinge of red, the sapwood whiter and usually about two inches thick. The
-contrast between heart and sapwood is not strong. The medullary rays are
-numerous, but small and obscure. The summerwood is thin and not
-conspicuous. It is the wood's red tinge which gives the tree its
-commercial name.
-
-It is believed that the yearly cut of red spruce in the United States
-for lumber is about 500,000,000 feet, one-half of which comes from West
-Virginia and southward, where this species reaches its highest
-development; and the pulpwood cut in the same region is about one-tenth
-as much in quantity. The long fiber and white color of spruce make it
-one of the most satisfactory woods for pulp in this country. Red spruce
-is only one of several species of spruce which contribute to the supply.
-The total output of spruce pulpwood in the United States yearly is
-equivalent to about 1,000,000,000 feet of lumber.
-
-Red spruce lumber has a long list of uses. Much flooring is made of it,
-and it wears well, but not as well as hard pine from the South. It is
-more used for shipping boxes in the northeastern part of the United
-States than any other wood, except white pine. Its good stenciling
-qualities recommend it. Manufacturers of sash, doors, and blinds find it
-excellent material, combining lightness, strength, and small tendency to
-warp, shrink, or swell. Coopers make buckets, tubs, kegs, and churns of
-it; manufacturers of refrigerators use it for doors and frames; and
-makers of furniture use it for many interior parts of bureaus, tables,
-and sideboards. Textile mills use spruce clothboards as center pieces
-round which to wind fabrics; and a further use in mills is for bobbins.
-It has many places in boat building, notably as spars and yards; and
-for window and door frames.
-
-The makers of piano frames employ red spruce for certain parts; but as
-material for musical instruments its most important use is as sounding
-boards. All the commercial spruces are so used. Wood for this purpose
-must be free from defects of all kinds, and of straight and even grain.
-The sounding board's value lies in its ability to vibrate in unison with
-the strings of the instrument. Spruce has no superior for that place.
-
-Red spruce bears abundance of seeds, the best on the highest branches.
-The seeds are winged, and the wind scatters them. They germinate best on
-humus. In spruce forests, clumps of seedlings are often seen where logs
-have decayed and fallen to dust. Seedlings do not thrive on mineral
-soil, and for that reason red spruce makes a poor showing where fires
-have burned. It does not spread vigorously in old fields as white pine
-does. It must have forest conditions or it will do little good. For that
-reason it does not promise great things for the future. It grows very
-slowly, and land owners prefer white pine, where that species will grow.
-If spruce is to be planted, most persons prefer Norway spruce (_Picea
-excelsa_) of Europe. It grows faster than native spruces. It is the
-spruce usually seen in door yards and parks.
-
-    BLACK SPRUCE (_Picea mariana_) grows much farther north than red
-    spruce, but the two species mingle in a region of 100,000 square
-    miles or more northward of Pennsylvania and in New England and
-    southern and eastern Canada. Black spruce grows from Labrador to the
-    valley of the Mackenzie river, almost to the arctic circle. It is
-    found as far south as the Lake States where it constitutes the
-    principal spruce of commerce. In some of the swamps of northern
-    Minnesota and in the neighboring parts of Canada it is little more
-    than a shrub, and trees three or four feet high bear cones. On
-    better land in that region the tree is large enough for sawlogs. It
-    passes under several names, among which are double spruce, blue
-    spruce, white spruce, and water spruce. The common name black spruce
-    probably refers to the general appearance of the crown. The small
-    cones (the smallest of the spruces) adhere to the branches many
-    years, and give a ragged, black appearance to the tree when seen
-    from a distance. The wood is as white as other spruces. Trees vary
-    greatly in size. The best are 100 feet high and two and a half feet
-    in diameter; but the average size is about thirty feet high and
-    twelve inches in diameter. That size is not attractive to lumbermen;
-    but cutters of pulpwood find it valuable and convenient, and much of
-    it is manufactured into paper. The wood weighs 28.57 pounds per
-    cubic foot, and is moderately strong, and high in elasticity. It is
-    pale yellow-white with thin sapwood. In Manitoba, lumber is sawed
-    from black spruce, and it is cut also in the Lake States, but it is
-    preferred for pulp. It gives excellent service as canoe paddles.
-    Spruce chewing gum is made of resinous exudations from this tree,
-    and is an article of considerable importance. Spruce beer is another
-    by-product which has long been manufactured in New England and the
-    eastern Canadian provinces. It was made in Newfoundland three
-    hundred years ago and has been bought and sold in the markets of
-    that region ever since. Fishing vessels carry supplies of the
-    beverage on long voyages as a preventive of scurvy. The beer is
-    made by boiling leaves and twigs, and adding molasses to the
-    concoction which is allowed to pass through mild fermentation.
-    Foresters will probably never pay much attention to black spruce
-    because other species promise more profit. It is little planted for
-    ornamental purposes, as it does not grow rapidly, is of poor form,
-    and the accumulation of dead cones on the branches gives it a poor
-    appearance. Besides, planted trees do not live long.
-
-    WHITE SPRUCE (_Picea canadensis_) is of more importance in Canada
-    than in the United States, because more abundant. It is one of the
-    most plentiful timber trees of Alaska, and it is found west to
-    Bering strait and north of the arctic circle. It is said to approach
-    within twenty miles of the Arctic ocean. Its eastern limit is in
-    Labrador, its southern in the northern tier of states from Maine to
-    Idaho. A little of this species is cut for lumber in northern New
-    England and in upper Michigan, and westward, just south of the
-    Canadian line. The light blue-green foliage gives the tree its name.
-    It is known by other names as well, single spruce, bog spruce, skunk
-    spruce, cat spruce, double spruce, and pine. Some of its names are
-    due to the odor of its foliage. The largest trees are 100 feet high
-    and three in diameter, but most are smaller. Having a range so
-    extensive, and in climates and situations so different, the tree
-    naturally varies greatly in size and form. The wood of
-    well-developed trees is white and handsome, the thin, pencil-like
-    bands of summerwood having a slightly darker tone than the
-    springwood. The two parts of the annual ring possess different
-    degrees of hardness. The springwood is softer than the summerwood.
-    The medullary rays are numerous, and the surface of quarter-sawed
-    lumber has a silvery appearance, due to the exposed flat surfaces of
-    the rays. In the markets, no distinction is made between white
-    spruce lumber, and that cut from other species. The uses of the
-    different species are much the same. As a pulpwood, white spruce is
-    in demand wherever it is available. The largest output in the United
-    States comes from northern New England. The tree is often planted
-    for ornamental purposes in Europe and in northern states. When grown
-    in the open, the crown is pyramidal, like that of balsam fir. It
-    does not thrive where summers are warm and dry.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SITKA SPRUCE
-
-[Illustration: SITKA SPRUCE]
-
-
-
-
-SITKA SPRUCE
-
-(_Picea Sitchensis_)
-
-
-This is largest of the spruces. In height and in girth of trunk no other
-approaches it. The moist, warm climate of the north Pacific slope is its
-favorite home, though its range extends far northward along the islands
-and coast of Alaska. Toward the extreme limit of its habitat it loses
-its splendid form and size and degenerates into a sprawling shrub. The
-limit of the species southward lies in Mendocino county, California. Its
-range in a north and south direction is not less than 2,000 miles; but
-east and west the growth covers a mere ribbon facing the sea. It climbs
-some of the British Columbia mountains, 5,000 feet, but it prefers the
-low, wet valleys and flatlands, or the rainy and snowy slopes set to
-catch the sea winds. There it is at its best, and the largest trunks are
-200 feet high, fifteen feet in diameter, and about 850 years old. All
-sizes less than this are found. It is not easy to name an average size
-when variation runs from giants to dwarfs; but in regions where this
-spruce is cut for lumber, the average height of mature trees is about
-125 feet, with a diameter of four feet.
-
-Tideland spruce is one of its names. That has reference to its habit of
-sticking close to the sea. Its other names are Menzies' spruce, great
-tideland spruce, and western spruce. The last may be considered its
-trade name in lumber markets, for it is seldom called anything else when
-it is shipped east of the Rocky Mountains. The name is appropriate,
-except that other spruces grow in the West, and are equally entitled to
-the name. This applies particularly to Engelmann spruce of the northern
-Rocky Mountain region; but its lumber and that cut from Sitka spruce are
-not liable to be confused in the mind of anyone who is acquainted with
-the two woods. The name Sitka refers to the town of that name in Alaska.
-
-The leaves of this species are usually less than one inch in length, and
-in color are light yellowish green. They stand out like bristles on all
-sides of the twigs. Cones are from two to four inches long, and hang by
-short stems, usually at the ends of twigs. They ripen the first year,
-release their seeds, which fly away on small but ample wings, and the
-cones drop during the fall and winter. Sitka spruce bark is generally
-less than half an inch in thickness. Trunks which grow in forests prune
-themselves well, and are usually clear of limbs from forty to eighty
-feet. The bases of trees which grow on wet land are much enlarged like
-cypress and tupelo, and lumbermen frequently cut above the swell,
-leaving from 1,000 to 5,000 feet or more of lumber in the stump. Sitka
-spruce's characteristic root system is shallow; but on mountain sides
-where soil is dry, roots penetrate deep in search of moisture.
-
-The wood of this spruce varies greatly in color, but it is usually a
-very pale brown, with the faintest tinge of red. It is a little heavier
-than white pine, considerably weaker, and with less elasticity. The size
-of the trunks, with their freedom from limbs, insures a high percentage
-of clear lumber when Sitka spruce is manufactured. The tree grows
-slowly, the annual rings are narrow, and the bands of summer growth are
-comparatively broad, to which fact the rather dark color of the wood of
-the spruce is due.
-
-Sitka spruce is an important source of lumber. The total cut in
-Washington, Oregon, and California in 1910 was about 255,000,000 feet.
-It is below red spruce in quantity of sawmill cut, but above all other
-spruces in the United States. The people of the Pacific coast use much
-of it at home, but large quantities are shipped to markets in eastern
-states, and some to foreign countries. Nearly 4,000,000 feet were bought
-by Illinois manufacturers in 1909, in addition to what was used rough in
-the state. The commodities manufactured of this spruce in Illinois
-indicate with a fair degree of accuracy the uses made of the wood in
-most parts of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and north of
-the Ohio river and the Potomac. Among articles so manufactured in
-Illinois are playground apparatus, porch and stair balusters, doors,
-blinds, sash and frames, poultry brooders, sounding boards for pianos
-and other musical instruments, parts of mandolins and guitars, pipes for
-organs, cornice brackets, store and office fronts, decking and spars for
-boats, wagon beds and windmill wheel slats, refrigerators and cold
-storage rooms, ironing boards and other wooden ware.
-
-Twenty times as much Sitka spruce is made into finished commodities in
-Washington as in Illinois. That is to be expected, since Washington is
-the home of the tree and the center of supply. A partial list of its
-uses in that state will show that the wood is liked at home. Douglas fir
-was the only wood bought in larger amounts by Washington manufacturers.
-They made 55,429,000 feet of it into boxes, and coopers employed
-12,000,000 more. The next largest users were pulpmills, while 2,000,000
-feet went into sounding boards, many of which were for shipment abroad.
-Other users were basket makers, and the manufacturers of furniture,
-fixtures, finish, caskets, veneer, trunks, pulleys, vehicles, boats, and
-patterns. Sitka spruce decays quickly when exposed to rain and weather.
-
-Sitka spruce can be depended upon for the future. Though it grows slowly
-it may be expected to keep growing. Its range lies in regions generally
-too wet for woods to burn, and it will suffer less from forest fires
-than trees of inland regions. It is an abundant seeder, and its favorite
-seedbed is moss, muck, decayed wood, and wet ground litter of various
-kinds. For the first few years seedlings are sensitive to frost, but not
-in later life.
-
-Sitka spruce is often planted as an ornamental tree in western Europe,
-and occasionally in the middle Atlantic states. The New England climate
-is too severe for it.
-
-ENGELMANN SPRUCE (_Picea engelmanni_) was named for Dr. George
-Engelmann. It has other names. In Utah it is called balsam, white spruce
-in Oregon, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho, mountain spruce in Montana,
-Arizona spruce farther south, while in Idaho it is sometimes known as
-white pine. That name is misleading, for Idaho has a species of white
-pine (_Pinus monticola_). In eastern markets the wood is known as
-western spruce; but that, also, is indefinite, for Sitka spruce is also
-a western species and is found in the same markets as Engelmann spruce.
-This tree's range extends from Yukon territory to Arizona, fully 3,000
-miles. It is a mountain species and is found in elevated ranges. In the
-southern part of its habitat it ascends mountains to heights of nearly
-12,000 feet. It grows in the Cascade mountain ranges in Washington and
-Oregon. The species' best development occurs in British Columbia. At its
-best, trees are 150 feet high and four or five in diameter; but every
-size less than that occurs in different parts of its range, down to a
-height of two or three feet for fully matured trees. Such are found on
-lofty and sterile mountains where frost occurs practically every night
-in summer, and winter snows bury all objects for months at a time.
-Though the stunted spruce trees may be only two or three feet high,
-their branches spread many feet, and lie flat on the rocks. Though such
-situations are exceedingly unfavorable to tree growth, the stunted
-spruces survive sometimes for two hundred years, and during that long
-period may not grow a trunk above five inches in diameter and four feet
-high. The Engelmann spruce is naturally a long-lived tree, and large
-trunks are 500 or 600 years old; and trees ordinarily cut for lumber are
-300 or 400 years old. When the tree is young, its form is symmetrical,
-the longest branches being near the ground, the shortest near the top;
-but in crowded stands the trunk finally clears itself. Engelmann spruce
-lumber is usually full of small knots, each of which represents a limb
-which was shaded off as the tree advanced in age. The wood is lighter
-than white pine, and is the lightest of the spruces, the weight being
-21.49 pounds per cubic foot. It is not strong, and it rates low in
-elasticity. The wood is pale yellow, tinged with red. The thick sapwood
-is hardly distinguishable from the heart. It would be difficult to
-compile a list of this tree's uses, because in markets it hardly ever
-carries its right name. It is used for fuel and charcoal in the region
-of its growth; also as farm timber, and as props and lagging in mines.
-When it goes to market, it is manufactured into doors, window frames,
-sash, interior finish for houses, and for purposes along with other
-spruces. Large quantities of this wood will be accessible when lumbermen
-penetrate remote mountain regions where it grows. It may be expected to
-increase in importance. It is occasionally planted in eastern states as
-an ornament.
-
-    BLUE SPRUCE (_Picea parryana_) is found among mountains in Colorado,
-    Utah, and Wyoming, from 6,500 to 10,000 feet above sea level. It
-    attains a height of 150 feet and a diameter of three under favorable
-    circumstances, but its usual size is little more than half of that.
-    Its name is given on account of the color of its foliage, but it has
-    other names, among them being Parry's spruce, balsam, white spruce,
-    silver spruce, Colorado blue spruce, and prickly spruce, the last
-    name referring to the sharp-pointed leaves which are an inch or more
-    in length. Cones are three inches long, and usually grow near the
-    top of the tree. It is not unusual for blue spruce trees to divide
-    near the ground in three or four branches. In its youth,
-    particularly in open ground, blue spruce develops a conical crown.
-    The wood is lighter than white pine, is soft, weak, and pale brown
-    or nearly white in color. The sapwood is hardly distinguishable from
-    the heart. This is a valuable tree for ornamental planting; but in
-    later years it loses its lower limbs, and becomes less desirable.
-
-    WEEPING SPRUCE (_Picea breweriana_) is of little commercial
-    importance because of scarcity. It grows among the mountains of
-    northern California and southern Oregon, at elevations of from 4,000
-    to 8,000 feet above sea level. The leaves are an inch or less in
-    length, the cones from two to four inches long. They fall soon after
-    they scatter their seeds. This tree is named on account of its
-    drooping branchlets, some of which hang down eight feet. The wood
-    seems not to have been investigated, but its color is pale yellowish
-    to very light brown, and the annual rings are rather narrow. The
-    tree ought to be valuable for ornamental planting, but nurseries
-    have experienced much difficulty in making it grow. It grows on high
-    and dry mountains where few ever see it, but refuses to become
-    domesticated or to grace eastern parks.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CYPRESS
-
-[Illustration: CYPRESS]
-
-
-
-
-CYPRESS
-
-(_Taxodium Distichum_)
-
-
-The name cypress has been used quite loosely in this country and the old
-world, and botanists have taken particular care to explain what true
-cypress is. It is of no advantage in the present case to join in the
-discussion, and it will suffice to give the American cypresses according
-to the authorized list published by the United States Forest Service.
-Two genera, one having two and the other six species, are classed as
-cypress. These are Bald Cypress (_Taxodium distichum_), Pond Cypress
-(_Taxodium imbricarium_), Monterey Cypress (_Cupressus macrocarpa_),
-Gowen Cypress (_Cupressus goveniana_), Dwarf Cypress (_Cupressus
-pygmaea_) Macnab Cypress (_Cupressus macnabiana_), Arizona Cypress
-(_Cupressus arizonica_), and Smooth Cypress (_Cupressus glabra_). The
-first two grow in the southern states, and the others in the Far West.
-Bald cypress, which is generally known simply as cypress in the region
-where it grows, is more important as a source of lumber than are all the
-others combined. It probably supplies ninety-nine per cent of all
-cypress sold in this country. Its range is from southern Delaware to
-Florida, westward to the Gulf coast region of Texas, north through
-Louisiana, Arkansas, eastern Mississippi and Tennessee, southeastern
-Missouri, western Kentucky and sparsely in southern Illinois and
-southwestern Indiana. It is a deep swamp tree, and it is never of much
-importance far from lagoons, inundated tracts, and the low banks of
-rivers. Water that is a little brackish from the inwash of tides does
-not injure the tree, but the presence of a little salt is claimed by
-some to improve the quality of the wood. It is lumbered under
-difficulties. The deep water and miry swamps where it grows best must be
-reckoned with. Some of the ground is not dry for several years at a
-time. Neither felling nor hauling is possible in the manner practiced in
-the southern pineries. Owing to the great weight of the green wood, it
-will not float unless killed by being girdled for a year or more in
-advance of its being felled. In the older logging operations, cypress
-was girdled and snaked out to waterways and floated to the mills. Lately
-many cypress operations are carried on by the building of railroads
-through the swamps, which are largely on piling and stringers, although
-occasionally earth fills are utilized. The usual size of mature cypress
-ranges from seventy-five to 140 feet in height and three to six in
-diameter.
-
-The wood is light, soft, rather weak, moderately stiff, and the grain is
-usually straight. The narrow annual rings indicate slow growth. The
-summerwood is comparatively broad and is slightly resinous; medullary
-rays are numerous and obscure. The wood is light to dark brown, the
-sapwood nearly white. At one time specimens of the wood in the markets
-of the world were known as black or white cypress, according as they
-sank or floated. Much of the dark cypress wood is now known as black
-cypress in the foreign markets, where it is employed chiefly for tank
-and vat building. Individual specimens of the wood in some localities
-are tinted in a variety of shades and some of the natural designs are
-extremely beautiful.
-
-The wood is reputed to be among the most durable in this country when
-exposed to soil and weather. Some of it deserves that reputation, but
-other does not. Well-authenticated cases are cited where cypress has
-remained sound many years--in some instance a hundred or more--when
-subjected to alternate dampness and dryness. Such conditions afford
-severe tests. In other cases cypress has been known to decay as quickly
-as pine.
-
-Historical cases from the old world are sometimes cited to show the
-wonderful lasting properties of cypress. Doors and statues, exposed more
-or less to weather, are said to have stood many centuries. The evidence
-has little value as far as this wood is concerned. In the first place,
-the long records claimed are subjects for suspicion; and in the second
-place, it was not the American cypress that was used--and probably no
-cypress--but the cedar of Lebanon.
-
-Sound cypress logs have been dug from deep excavations near New Orleans,
-and geologists believe they had lain there 30,000 years. That would be a
-telling testament to endurance were it not that any other wood
-completely out of reach of air would last as long.
-
-The estimated stand of cypress in the South is about 20,000,000,000
-feet. The annual cut, including shingles, exceeds 1,000,000,000 feet.
-New growth is not coming on. The traveler through the South occasionally
-sees a small clump of little cypresses, but such are few and far
-between. It was formerly quite generally believed that cypress in deep
-swamps, where old and venerable stands are found, was not reproducing,
-and that no little trees were to be seen. It was argued from this, that
-some climatic or geographic change had taken place, and that the present
-stand of cypress would be the last of its race. More careful
-investigation, however, has shown that the former belief was erroneous.
-Seedling cypresses are found occasionally in the deepest swamps.
-Probably cypress which has not been disturbed by man is reproducing as
-well now as at any time in the past. The tree lives three or four
-centuries, and if it leaves one seedling to take its place it has done
-its part toward perpetuating the species. Fire, the mortal enemy of
-forests, seldom hurts cypress, because the undergrowth is not dry enough
-to burn.
-
-The uses of cypress are so nearly universal that a list is impossible.
-In Illinois alone it is reported for seventy-eight different purposes.
-There is not a state, and scarcely a large wood-using factory, east of
-the Rocky Mountains which does not demand more or less cypress.
-
-The tree is graceful when young, but ragged and uncouth when old. Though
-a needleleaf tree, it yearly sheds its foliage and most of its twigs.
-The fruit is a cone about one inch in diameter; and the seed is equipped
-with a wing one-fourth inch long and one-eighth inch wide.
-
-When cypress stands in soft ground which most of the time is under
-water, the roots send up peculiar growths known as knees. They rise from
-a few inches to several feet above the surface of the mud, and extend
-above the water at ordinary stages. They are sharp cones, generally
-hollow. It is believed their function is to furnish air to the tree's
-roots, and also to afford anchorage to the roots in the soft mud. When
-the water is drained away, the knees die.
-
-Cypress is widely planted as an ornament, and a dozen or more varieties
-have been developed in cultivation.
-
-    POND CYPRESS (_Taxodium imbricarium_) so closely resembles bald
-    cypress with which it is associated that the two were once supposed
-    to be the same. Pond cypress averages smaller and its range is more
-    circumscribed. The name pond cypress, by which it is popularly known
-    in Georgia, indicates the localities where it is oftenest found. It
-    is the prevailing cypress in the Okefenoke swamp in southeastern
-    Georgia. The general aspect of the foliage and fruit is the same as
-    of bald cypress. No detailed examination of the wood seems to have
-    been made, but in general appearance it is like the other cypress.
-    It is said that little of it ever gets to sawmills because it grows
-    in situations where logging is inconvenient.
-
-    MONTEREY CYPRESS (_Cupressus macrocarpa_). This tree has only one
-    name and that is due to its place of growth on the shores of
-    Monterey bay, California. Its range is more restricted than that of
-    any other American softwood. It does not much exceed 150 acres,
-    though the trees are scattered in a narrow strip for two miles along
-    the coast. They approach so close the breakers that spray flies over
-    them in time of storm. Trees exposed to the sweep of the wind are
-    gnarled and of fantastic shapes. Their crowns are broad and flat
-    like an umbrella, but ragged and unsymmetrical in outline. That form
-    offers least resistance to wind, and most surface to the sun. The
-    trees take the best possible advantage of their opportunities. Tall
-    crowns would be carried away by wind; and the flat tops, with a mass
-    of green foliage, catch all the sunlight possible. They need it, for
-    they grow in fog, and sunshine is scarce. Sheltered trees develop
-    pyramidal tops. It is widely planted in this and other countries,
-    and when conditions are favorable, it is graceful and symmetrical.
-    The largest trees are from sixty to seventy feet tall, others are
-    five or six in diameter; but the tallest trees and the largest
-    trunks seldom go together. The cones are an inch or more in length,
-    and each contains about 100 seeds. The leaves fall the third and
-    fourth years. Wood is heavy, hard, strong, and durable, but is too
-    scarce to be of value as lumber, even if the trunks were suitable
-    for sawlogs. The Monterey cypress is of peculiar interest to
-    botanists and also to physical geographers. The few trees on the
-    shore of Monterey bay appear to be the last remnant of a species
-    which was once more extensive. The ocean is eating away the coast at
-    that point. Fragments of hills, cut sheer down from top to the
-    breakers beneath, are plainly the last remnants of ranges which once
-    extended westward, but have been washed away by the encroaching
-    waves. No one knows how much of the former coast has been destroyed.
-    Apparently the former range of the cypress was principally on land
-    now swallowed up by the encroaching ocean. A mere fringe of the
-    trees--a belt about 200 yards wide along the beach--remains, and the
-    sea is undermining them one by one and carrying them down. So
-    rapidly is the undermining process going on that many large roots of
-    some of the trees are exposed to view.
-
-    ARIZONA CYPRESS (_Cupressus arizonica_), as its name implies, is an
-    Arizona tree. It forms considerable forests in the eastern, central,
-    and southern parts of the state, and is found also in Mexico. It
-    grows at elevations up to 6,000 feet. Because of the small
-    population in the region where this cypress grows, it has never been
-    much used, but the size of the trees and the character of the wood
-    fit it for many purposes. Its growth is often quite rapid, and the
-    timber is soft, light, and with well-defined summerwood. Its usual
-    color is gray, but occasionally faint streaks of yellow appear. The
-    leaves fall during the fourth and fifth years; cones are small and
-    flat; and the small seeds are winged. It is believed by persons
-    familiar with Arizona cypress that it will attain considerable
-    importance when the building of railroads and the settlement of the
-    country make the forests accessible. The wood is durable in contact
-    with the soil.
-
-    SMOOTH CYPRESS (_Cupressus glabra_) ranges in Arizona and is not
-    believed to have or to promise much importance as a source of lumber
-    supply. Its name was given on account of the smoothness of the bark.
-    It is one of the latest species to be given a place among the
-    cypresses, and was described and named by George B. Sudworth of the
-    United States Forest Service.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BALSAM FIR
-
-[Illustration: BALSAM FIR]
-
-
-
-
-BALSAM FIR
-
-(_Abies Balsamea_)
-
-
-Balsam fir is the usual name applied to this tree in New England, New
-York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ontario. The
-shorter name balsam suffices in some parts of that region, and
-particularly in New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Because it is
-common north of the international boundary, the name Canada balsam has
-been given it in some regions. In Delaware it is known as balm of
-Gilead, but that name belongs to a tree of the cottonwood group,
-(_Populus balsamifera_) which is a broadleaf species. In New York and
-Pennsylvania a word of distinction is added, and it is called balm of
-Gilead fir. Toward the southern limit of its range it is spoken of as
-fir pine and blister pine. New York Indians knew the tree as blisters.
-They referred to the pockets under the bark of young trees and near the
-tops of mature trunks, in which resin collected. The name balsam refers
-to that characteristic also, as does the word balm. In some parts of
-Canada the tree is known as silver pine, and as silver spruce. The
-secretion of resin in bark blisters is a characteristic of several firs.
-
-The list of names and the locality of their use indicate fairly well the
-geographical range of balsam fir. Its northern limit forms a line across
-eastern Canada from Labrador to Hudson bay. From Hudson bay its northern
-boundary trends northwestward and reaches the vicinity of Great Bear
-lake. In the United States it grows westward to Minnesota and southward
-to Pennsylvania. It is cut for lumber in eleven states.
-
-In a range so large and including situations so various, it is natural
-that the tree should vary greatly in size. In the Lake States the common
-height is fifty or sixty feet, and the diameter is twelve or fifteen
-inches. Young balsam firs grow vigorously when the ground is suitable
-and their tops receive sufficient light. In lumbered regions in the Lake
-States, this fir gets a foothold in the shade of a dense growth of paper
-birch and other quickly-growing species; and in a few years the pointed,
-intensely green spires of the balsams may be seen piercing the canopy of
-other young tree tops, and shooting above into the light. This is
-accomplished after a struggle of some years in the shade; but the firs
-ultimately win their way upward, and in a few years they shade to death
-most of their broadleaf associates. If they are in competition with
-northern white cedar or tamarack, they are not always successful in
-winning first place.
-
-The leaves of balsam fir are from one-half to one and one-fourth inches
-long. They are green and lustrous above and silver white below, the
-whiteness due to stomata on their undersides. On young twigs the leaves
-bristle out on all sides and are very numerous and crowded together, but
-on older branches the leaves are more scattered, due to the dropping of
-some of them. It is their habit to adhere to the stems about eight
-years.
-
-The leaves of balsam fir possess a pleasing and characteristic odor
-which is turned to account in a practical way. The small needles are
-stripped from the branches in large quantities, cleaned, dried, and are
-used for stuffing sofa pillows, cushions, and other kinds of upholstery.
-The odor persists a long time. Much of the collecting of the needles is
-done in summer as a pastime by summer campers in the northern woods. The
-needles are sufficiently tough to stand much wear in pillows, and they
-are still odorous when long use has ground them to powder.
-
-The cones of balsam fir follow the fashion of all species of fir, and
-stand erect on the branches. Seeds are one-fourth inch in length and are
-winged. The wood is of approximately the same weight as white pine, but
-it falls considerably below white pine in strength and stiffness. It is
-of moderately rapid growth when conditions are favorable, and the annual
-ring has a fair proportion of summerwood. The yearly rings are quite
-distinct. The medullary rays are numerous, and for a softwood they are
-prominent. When a log is quarter-sawed, and the surfaces of the boards
-are planed, the wood presents a silvery appearance, but it is too
-monotonous to be very attractive. The heartwood is pale brown, streaked
-with yellow, the thick sapwood much lighter in color. It is perishable
-in contact with the soil.
-
-Pulp manufacturers are the largest users of balsam fir. About three per
-cent of all the pulpwood cut in the United States in 1910 was from this
-species. Its use is on the increase, or appears to be; but recent
-statistics relating to this wood cannot be safely compared with returns
-for former years, because the custom of mixing fir with spruce and other
-pulpwoods formerly prevailed in New England, and it was then not
-possible to determine exactly how much fir reached the market. At the
-present time fir goes under its own name, and the output exceeds 132,000
-cords, which is equivalent to 105,000,000 feet, board measure, yearly.
-
-Eleven states contribute to the balsam fir lumber cut, but most is
-supplied by Maine, Minnesota, Vermont, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The
-total for 1910 was 74,580,000 feet. Much of it is employed in rough form
-for fences and buildings, while other is further manufactured by planing
-mills and factories. Car builders employ it in several ways. It serves
-as doors, siding, lining, and roofing for freight cars. It is not a
-durable wood when exposed to weather. The largest reported use of the
-wood in New England is by box makers. Massachusetts alone works nearly
-15,000,000 feet a year into crates and shipping boxes. Its uses in the
-Lake States are more varied. The makers of berry, fruit, and vegetable
-baskets draw supplies from the wood. Some of the product is of thin
-split slats, and other of veneer or sawed material.
-
-The light weight and white color of balsam fir make it acceptable to the
-manufacturers of excelsior. The product is employed in packing
-merchandise for shipment, and to a small extent in upholstery. The wood
-fills a rather important place in the woodenware industry, where its
-white color and light weight constitute its most important
-recommendations. It is sawed into staves for pails and tubs.
-
-Though balsam fir has little figure and its appearance is rather common,
-it finds its way to planing mills and woodworking shops where it is made
-into ceiling, newel posts, molding, railing, spindles, chair-boards, and
-other interior finish.
-
-The most widely known commercial product manufactured from this tree is
-Canada balsam. Strictly speaking, it is not a manufactured article
-except what is done in nature's laboratory, and the product is the resin
-stored under bark blisters. The resin is transparent, and is employed by
-microscopists in mounting objects for examination. Little machinery or
-apparatus is used in removing the viscid fluid from the pockets in the
-bark. With a knife the thin, soft blister is slit and the resin is
-scraped out. All kinds of claims of medicinal virtue are made for balsam
-resin in the region where the tree grows; but the treatment in most
-cases effects cures--if any cures are really effected--by appeals to
-faith and the imagination.
-
-Balsam fir owes a large part of its importance to its abundance. It is
-not exactly a swamp tree, but it does best in damp situations where the
-ground is moist and cool in summer. Only in periods of protracted
-drought does the ground litter become sufficiently dry to burn fiercely,
-and to that fact is due much of the promise of future supply of balsam
-fir. That which grows on the dry uplands may fall prey to forest fires,
-but that in the damp flats, associated with northern white cedar and
-tamarack, will hold its ground and continue to supply demand.
-
-Balsam fir has an importance which can not be wholly measured in feet,
-pounds, cords, or dollars. Many of the choicest Christmas trees which in
-December go by tens of thousands to the cities, are of this tree. Its
-form is almost perfect, being conical, broad near the bottom, and
-running to a sharp apex. The deep green of the needles, which retain
-their color from two weeks to a month after the trunk is severed, gives
-balsam Christmas trees much of their popularity. The trees are cut from
-Maine to Michigan, and many are shipped across the international
-boundary from Canada. The custom of cutting Christmas trees is often
-condemned as a waste of resources. It has been argued that the
-destruction in one month of 1,000,000 young trees is equivalent to the
-destruction of 500,000,000 feet of lumber, because, if allowed to reach
-maturity, they would yield that much lumber. That argument does not take
-into consideration the fact that not one of the young trees in ten would
-reach maturity if left to the course of nature.
-
-When Gifford Pinchot was United States forester, a protest against the
-cutting of Christmas trees was formally laid before him. It was
-generally believed that he would declare that the waste ought to be
-stopped and would set his disapproval on the practice; but he did
-nothing of the sort. He declared that the forests are for the use of the
-people and that they can serve in no better way than by supplying every
-child in the land with a Christmas tree once a year.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-FRASER FIR
-
-[Illustration: FRASER FIR]
-
-
-
-
-FRASER FIR
-
-(_Abies Fraseri_)
-
-
-The people who are acquainted with this interesting and somewhat rare
-tree have seen to it that it does not want for names. Some of these
-names are both definitive and descriptive, while others are neither.
-Tennessee, North Carolina, and West Virginia furnish the names. Within
-the tree's range in Tennessee and North Carolina it is often known as
-balsam without any qualifying word, and that is quite sufficient, for no
-other fir or balsam grows within its range. In the same region it is
-called balsam fir. That is the common name of its northern relative, but
-there is little likelihood of confusing the two species, for their
-ranges do not overlap much, if they touch at all, which they probably do
-not. In Tennessee the name is reversed and instead of balsam fir it is
-fir balsam. It is likewise known as double fir balsam, but why "double"
-is added to the name is not clear. Similar mystery attaches to the name
-"single spruce," which is applied to the balsam fir in the interior of
-British America. The southern Appalachian tree is called she balsam and
-she balsam fir. These names have no scientific basis, and they appear to
-have originated in a desire to distinguish this tree from the red spruce
-with which it is associated. The spruce is called "he balsam."
-Artificial names like these are not necessary to distinguish red spruce
-from Fraser fir, as very slight acquaintance should enable anybody to
-tell one from the other at sight, and to see clearly that they are not
-of the same species. Mountain balsam, a North Carolina name for this
-fir, is well taken, for it is distinctly a mountain species. The name
-healing balsam is given in acknowledgment of the supposed medicinal
-properties of the resin which collects in blisters or pockets under the
-bark of young trees and near the tops of old. In West Virginia, where
-this tree reaches the northern limits of its habitat, it is called
-blister pine, on account of the resin pockets. In the same region it is
-called stackpole pine, because farmers who mow mountain meadows use
-straight, very light poles cut from this fir round which to build
-haystacks.
-
-This tree is decidedly an inhabitant of the high, exposed localities,
-being found entirely in the upper elevations of the southern Appalachian
-mountains, either forming extensive pure stands or growing in the
-company of red spruce (_Picea rubens_), with a scattering of various
-stunted hardwoods, as birch, mountain ash, cherry and usually with an
-undergrowth of rhododendron.
-
-Fraser fir's range extends from the high mountains of North Carolina,
-where it grows 6,000 feet above sea level, northward into West
-Virginia, within a few miles of the Maryland line, at an altitude of
-3,300 feet. The tree is not found in all regions between its northern
-and southern limits. Its best development is in the southern part of its
-range.
-
-On the upper limits of its habitat the tree presents a decidedly
-picturesque appearance, being gnarled and twisted and plainly showing
-the results of its long struggle for life and development. It is always
-noticeable that on the exposed side the limbs are so short as to be
-almost missing and on the opposite side they grow out straight and long,
-appearing to fly before the wind. These limbs are sometimes of as great
-a girth for five or six feet of their length as any part of the main
-stem, and have a singular look, seeming to be all out of proportion to
-the rest of the tree. The older trees are vested in a smooth,
-yellowish-gray, mossy bark, which is quite different from that of the
-balsam fir. The bark is thin, about one-fourth of an inch on young
-trunks, and half an inch near the ground on old ones. The leaves are
-usually half an inch long, sometimes one inch, and their lower sides are
-whitish, which tint is due to abundant white stomata. In that respect
-they resemble leaves of balsam fir and hemlock.
-
-The cones, like those of other species of fir, stand erect on the
-branches, and average about two and a half inches in length. They are
-smoother than the cones of most pines. They mature in September. The
-winged seeds average one-eighth inch in length, and are fairly abundant.
-The Fraser fir grows as tall as balsam fir, from forty to sixty feet,
-and the trunk diameter is greater, being sometimes thirty inches, though
-half of that is nearer an average. When of pole size, that is, from five
-to eight inches in diameter, Fraser fir is often tall, straight and
-shapely. Its form, however, depends upon the situation in which it
-grows. If in the open, it develops a relatively short trunk and a broad,
-pyramidal crown. This fir differs from balsam fir in its choice of
-situation. The latter, though not exactly a swamp tree, prefers damp
-ground, while Fraser fir flourishes on slopes and mountain tops.
-
-On the mountains of western North Carolina fir grows in mixture with red
-spruce. Sometimes the fir is fifty per cent of the stand, but usually it
-is less, and frequently not more than fifteen per cent. Few fir trees in
-that locality are two feet in diameter. They grow with fair rapidity in
-their early years, but decline in rate as age comes on. It may be
-observed in traveling through the stands of mixed spruce and fir among
-the high ranges of the southern Appalachian mountains that the
-proportion of spruce is much higher in old stands than in young. That is
-due to the greater age to which spruce lives. Trees of that species
-continue to stand after the firs have died of old age. On the other
-hand, fir outnumbers spruce in many young stands. That is because fir
-reproduces better than spruce, and grows with more vigor at first. In
-stands of second growth the fir often predominates. It depends to some
-extent upon the conditions under which the second growth has its start.
-Fir does not germinate well if the ground has been bared by fire and the
-humus burned. Consequently, old burns do not readily grow up in fir. The
-best stands occur where the natural conditions have not been much
-disturbed further than by removing the growth. Fortunately conditions on
-the summit and elevated slopes of the southern Appalachians do not favor
-destructive forest fires. Rain is frequent and abundant, and the shade
-cast by evergreen trees keeps the humus too moist for fire. To this
-condition is due the comparative immunity from fire of the high mountain
-forests of fir and spruce. Sometimes, however, fires sweep through fine
-stands with disastrous results. The destruction is more serious because
-no second forest of evergreens is likely on tracts which have been
-severely burned.
-
-A report by the State Geological Survey on forest conditions in western
-North Carolina, issued in 1911, predicted that spruce and fir forests
-aggregating from 100,000 to 150,000 acres among the high mountain
-ranges, will become barren tracts, because of the destructive effect of
-fires stripping the ground of humus.
-
-The cutters of pulpwood in the southern Appalachian mountains take
-Fraser fir wherever they find it, mix it with spruce, and the two woods
-go to market as one. Statistics show the annual cut of both, but do not
-give them separately. The output of spruce, including fir, south of
-Pennsylvania, in 1910 was 115,993 cords, equivalent to about 80,000,000
-feet, board measure. Most of it was red spruce, but some was fir, and in
-North Carolina probably twenty-five per cent was of that species. The
-total pulpwood cut in that state was 14,509 cords of the two woods
-combined, and probably 3,800 cords were Fraser fir.
-
-The wood of Fraser fir is very light. An air dry sample from Roan
-mountain, N. C., weighed 22.22 pounds per cubic foot. That is lighter
-than balsam fir, which is classed among the very light woods. It is
-stronger than balsam fir by twenty-five per cent. The wood is soft,
-compact and the bands of summerwood in the annual rings are rather broad
-and light colored and are not conspicuous. The medullary rays are thin
-but numerous. The color is light brown, the sapwood mostly white.
-
-This wood is not of much commercial value except for pulp. It is not
-abundant, and it is not suited to many purposes. It is suitable for
-boxes, being light in weight and moderately strong; but other woods
-which grow in the same region are as good in all respects and are more
-abundant, and will be used in preference to fir for that purpose. The
-decrease in area on account of fires, and in quantity because of
-pulpwood operations, indicates that forest grown Fraser fir has seen its
-best days. On the other hand, the United States Forest Service has
-acquired tracts of land on the summits of the mountains where this
-species has its natural home, and the growth will be protected from
-fires and from destructive cutting, and there is no danger that the
-species will be exterminated.
-
-It is an interesting tree. It contributes to the pleasure of tourists
-and campers among the southern mountains. The fragrance of its leaves
-and young branches add a zest to the summer camp. The traveler who is
-overtaken in the woods by the coming of night, prepares his bed of the
-boughs of this tree and of red spruce and sleeps soundly beneath an
-evergreen canopy. Pillows and cushions stuffed with fir needles carry
-memories of the mountains to distant cities.
-
-In one respect this tree of the high mountains is like the untamed
-Indians who once roamed in that region: it refuses to be civilized. The
-tree has been planted in parks in this country and in Europe, but it
-does not prosper. Its form loses something of the grace and symmetry
-which it exhibits in its mountain home, and its life is short. Those who
-wish to see Fraser fir at its best must see it where nature planted it
-high on the southern mountains.
-
-    ARIZONA CORK FIR (_Abies arizonica_) very closely resembles forms of
-    the alpine fir, and may not be a separate species. Sudworth was
-    unable to distinguish its foliage and cones from those of alpine
-    fir, but the bark is softer. Its range is on the San Francisco
-    mountains in Arizona. It is very scarce, and only local use of its
-    wood is possible.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-NOBLE FIR
-
-[Illustration: NOBLE FIR]
-
-
-
-
-NOBLE FIR
-
-(_Abies Nobilis_)
-
-
-This tree's name is justified by its appearance when growing at its best
-in the forests of the northwest Pacific coast. It is tall, shapely, and
-imposing. It often exceeds a height of 250 feet, and a trunk diameter of
-six feet. It is sometimes eight feet in diameter. No tree is more
-shapely and symmetrical. When grown in dense stands the first limb may
-be 150 feet from the ground, and from that point to the base there is
-little taper. It over-reaches so many of its forest companions that it
-is sometimes designated locally as bigtree; but it is believed that
-lumber is never so spoken of, and that the name applies to the standing
-tree only. The Indians of the region where it grows call it tuck-tuck,
-but information as to the meaning of these words is not at hand. In
-northern California, and probably still farther north, this species is
-often called red fir, feather-cone red fir, or bracted red fir. The
-color of the heartwood and the appearance of the cone, doubtless are
-responsible for these names. There is a tendency in the fir-growing
-regions of the West to call all firs either white or red, depending upon
-the color of the heartwood. There are ten or more species of fir west of
-the Rocky Mountains, and to the layman they all look much alike, but to
-botanists they are interesting objects of study.
-
-The range of noble fir covers parts of three states, but the whole of no
-one. Its northern limit is in Washington, its southern in northern
-California, and it follows the mountains across western Oregon. It often
-forms extensive forests on the Cascade mountains of Washington. It is
-most abundant at elevations of from 2,500 to 5,000 feet in southwestern
-Washington and northwestern Oregon. On the eastern and northern slopes
-of those mountains it is of smaller size and is less abundant. Like
-several other of the extraordinarily large western trees, it keeps
-pretty close to the warm, moist coast of the Pacific.
-
-The shining, blue-green color of the leaves is a conspicuous
-characteristic of noble fir as it appears in the forest. They vary in
-length from an inch to an inch and a half. They usually curl, twist, and
-turn their points upward and backward, away from the end of the branch
-which bears them. The cones, following the fashion of firs, stand
-upright on the twigs, and are conspicuous objects. They are four or five
-inches in length, which is rather large for firs, but not the largest.
-The seeds are half an inch long, and are winged. They are well provided
-with the means of flight, but many of them never have an opportunity to
-test their wings, for the dextrous Douglas squirrel cuts the cones from
-the highest trees, and when they fall to the ground he pulls them apart
-with his feet and teeth, and the seeds pay him for his pains. If cones
-ripen on the trees and the released seeds sail away, there are birds of
-various feather waiting to receive them. Consequently, the noble fir
-plants comparatively few seeds. Their ratio of fertility is low at best,
-but that is partly compensated for by the large numbers produced.
-
-Thick stands of noble fir are not common. It generally is found, a few
-trees here and there, mixed with other species. Sawmills find it
-unprofitable to keep the lumber separate from other kinds. It does not
-pay to do so for two reasons. Extra labor is required to handle it in
-that way, and there is a prejudice against fir lumber. It does not
-appeal to buyers. For that reason some operators have called this timber
-Oregon larch, and have sent it to market under that name. That is a
-trick of the trade which has been put into practice many times and with
-many woods. The purpose in the instance of noble fir was to pass it for
-the larch which grows in the northern Rocky Mountain region. The two
-woods are so different that no person acquainted with one would mistake
-it for the other. A recent government report of woods used for
-manufacturing purposes in Washington does not list a foot of noble fir.
-The inference is that it must be going to factories under some other
-name, for it is incredible that this wood should be put to no use at all
-in the region of its best development.
-
-Noble fir is of slow growth, and the large trunks are very old, the
-oldest not less than 800 years. The summerwood forms a narrow, dark band
-in the annual ring. Medullary rays are numerous, but very thin and
-inconspicuous. The wood possesses little figure. It weighs twenty-eight
-pounds per cubic foot, which is four pounds less than the average
-Douglas fir. It is very low in fuel value, as softwoods usually are
-which have little resin. It is very weak, and it bends easily. It is
-soft, easily worked, and polishes well. This is one of its most valuable
-qualities. It is deficient in a number of properties which are desirable
-in wood, but partly makes up for them in its ability to take a smooth
-finish. It is pale brown, streaked with red, the sapwood darker. In that
-particular it is unusual, for most softwoods have sap lighter in color
-than the heart.
-
-It has been already pointed out that difficulty is met when an attempt
-is made to list the uses of noble fir, because it loses its name before
-it leaves the sawmill yard and takes the name of some other wood, and
-those who put it to use often do so without knowing what the wood really
-is. It is known that some of it is manufactured into house siding. It
-works nicely and looks well, but since it is liable to quick decay it
-must be kept well painted when it is exposed to weather. It serves as
-interior finish, and this seems to be one of its best uses. It is so
-employed for steamboats and for houses, and many shipments of it have
-been made to boat builders on the Atlantic coast. It is used for
-shipping boxes, and its light color fits it for that purpose, as the
-wood shows painting and stenciling to good advantage.
-
-European nurseries have propagated noble fir with success, but it does
-not do so well in the eastern part of the United States, though it lives
-through winters as far north as Massachusetts. It is not known to have
-been planted for other than ornamental purposes. Unless it would grow
-much faster in plantations than in its wild state, it will be too long
-in maturing to make it attractive to the timber planter.
-
-    WHITE FIR (_Abies concolor_). The whiteness of the wood and the
-    silver color of the young branches give this species its name, but
-    it is not the sole possessor of that name, but shares it with three
-    other firs. In California, Idaho, and Utah it is called balsam fir.
-    The branches and upper parts of the trunk where the bark is thin,
-    are covered with blisters which contain white resin. In Utah it is
-    known as white balsam, as silver fir in some parts of California,
-    and as black gum in Utah. The reason for that name is not apparent,
-    unless it refers to the black bark on old trees. It has several
-    other names which are combinations of white and silver with some
-    other term. Its range is mostly in the Sierras and in the Rocky
-    Mountain ranges, extending from southern Colorado to the mountains
-    of California, north through Oregon, and south through New Mexico
-    and Arizona. The immense proportions are reached only in the Sierra
-    growth, those trees in the Rockies being hardly above ordinary size.
-    In its free growth the tree is reputed to be the only one of its
-    genus found in the arid regions of the Great Basin, and similar
-    localities in Arizona and New Mexico. It is not distinguished by all
-    botanists from the similar species, _Abies grandis_.
-
-    White fir attains a height of 250 feet and a diameter of six in some
-    instances, but the average size of mature trees among the Sierra
-    Nevadas is 150 feet tall and three or four in diameter. In the Rocky
-    Mountain region the tree is smaller. It grows from 3,000 to 9,000
-    feet above sea level. The leaves are long for the fir genus, and
-    vary from two to three inches. The tree's bark is black near the
-    base of large trunks but of less somber color near the top. Near the
-    base of large trees the bark is sometimes six inches thick. The wood
-    of this species is light and soft. Carpenters consider it coarse
-    grained, by which they mean that it does not polish nicely. It is
-    brittle and weak. The rings of annual growth are generally broad,
-    with the bands of darker colored summerwood prominent. In lumber
-    sawed tangentially, rings produces distinct figure, but it is not
-    generally regarded as pleasing. The medullary rays are prominent for
-    a softwood, but quarter-sawing does not add much to the wood's
-    appearance. It decays quickly in alternate wet and dry situations.
-    Trees are apt to be affected with wind shake, and the wood's
-    disposition to splinter in course of manufacture has prejudiced many
-    users against it. However, it has some good qualities. The wood is
-    free from objectionable odor, and this qualifies it as box material.
-    Fruit shippers can use it without fear of contaminating their wares.
-    It is light in color, and stenciling looks well on it. Its weight is
-    likewise in its favor.
-
-    Trees of this species seldom occur in pure stands of large extent,
-    but are scattered among forests of other kinds. Sawmills cut the fir
-    as they come to it, but seldom go much out of their way to get it.
-    The United States census for 1910 showed that 132,327,000 feet of
-    white fir lumber were cut in the whole country, but as several
-    species pass by that name it is not possible to determine how much
-    belonged to the one under discussion, but probably about half, as
-    that much was credited to California where this tree is at its best.
-    The fir does not suffer in comparison with trees associated with it.
-    Its trunk does not average quite as large as the pines, yet larger
-    than most of the cedars; but in height it equals the best of its
-    associates, and in symmetrical form, and beauty of color of foliage,
-    it must be acknowledged superior. The dark intensity of its green
-    crown when thrown against the blue summer skies of the Sierras forms
-    a picture which probably no tree in the world can surpass and few
-    can equal. Its cones suffer from the depredations of the ever-hungry
-    Douglas squirrel which is too impatient to wait for nature's slow
-    process to ripen and scatter the seeds; but he climbs the trunks
-    which stand as straight as plummet lines two hundred feet or more,
-    and clinging to the topmost swaying branches, clips the cone stems
-    with his teeth, and the cone goes to the ground like a shot. A
-    person who will stand still in a Sierra forest in late summer, where
-    firs abound, will presently hear the cones thumping the ground on
-    all sides of him. If his eyes are good, and he looks carefully, he
-    may see the squirrels, silhouetted against the sky on far-away tree
-    tops, seeming so small in the distance that they look the size of
-    mice; yet the Douglas squirrel is about the size of the eastern red
-    squirrel. He does not always let the cones fall when he cuts their
-    stems, but sometimes carries them down the long trunk to the ground,
-    then goes back for another. The squirrel hoards the cones for
-    winter, but does not neglect to fully satisfy his appetite while
-    about the work. A single hoard--carefully covered with pine needles
-    as a roof against winter snow--may contain five or ten bushels of
-    cones, which are not all fir cones, but these predominate in most
-    hoards.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-GRAND FIR
-
-[Illustration: GRAND FIR]
-
-
-
-
-GRAND FIR
-
-(_Abies Grandis_)
-
-
-In California, Oregon, and Idaho this tree is called white fir, but it
-has several other names, silver fir and yellow fir in Montana and Idaho.
-In California some know it as Oregon fir, western white fir, and great
-California fir. Grand fir is more a botanist's than a lumberman's name.
-
-The range extends from British Columbia to Mendocino county, California,
-and to the western slopes of the continental divide in Montana. The
-coastal growth lies in a comparatively narrow strip. In the mountains an
-altitude of 7,000 feet is sometimes reached, the soil and moisture
-requirements, however, being the same. The largest trees are found in
-bottom lands near the coast where trunks 300 feet tall and six feet in
-diameter are found, but the average is much less. In mountain regions at
-considerable altitudes a height of 100 feet and a diameter of two or
-three is an average size. The leaves are about an inch and a half in
-length, occasionally two and a half. They are arranged in rows along the
-sides of the long, flexible branches. Cones are from two to four inches
-long, and bear winged seeds three-eighths of an inch long, the wings
-being half an inch or more in length. The bark of old trunks may be two
-inches thick, but generally is thinner. It is unfortunate that the wood
-of the large western firs lacks so many qualities which make it
-valuable. It is generally inferior to the woods of Douglas fir, western
-hemlock, Sitka spruce and the western cedars, sugar pine, and western
-yellow pine. The wood of grand fir is light, soft, weak, brittle, and
-not durable in contact with the soil. Its light color and the abundance
-of clear material in the giant trunks are redeeming features. These
-ought to open the way for much use in the future. It cannot find place
-in heavy construction, because it is not strong enough. That shuts it
-from one important place for which it is otherwise fitted. Box makers
-find it suitable, as all fir woods are, and large demand should come
-from that quarter. Trunks that will cut from 15,000 to 20,000 feet of
-lumber that is practically clear, and of good color, and light in
-weight, are bound to have value for boxes and slack cooperage. Trees
-grow with fair rapidity. Annual rings are usually broad, and the bands
-of summerwood are wide and distinct. This guarantees a certain figure in
-lumber sawed tangentially, but it is not a figure to compare in beauty
-with some of the hardwoods, or even with Douglas fir, or the southern
-yellow pines. It ought to be a first class material for certain kinds
-of woodenware, particularly for tubs, pails, and small stave vessels,
-and as far as it has been used in that way it has been satisfactory.
-It cannot be recommended for outside house finish, such as
-weather-boarding, cornice, and porch work, because of its susceptibility
-to decay; but it meets requirements for plain interior finish, and tests
-have shown it to be good material for cores or backing over which to
-glue veneers of hardwood.
-
-While the eastern states have not yet wakened up to the fact that this
-tree is of value in ornamental planting, its decorative qualities in
-open stands have been recognized for some time in eastern Europe, where
-trees of considerable size, promising to attain almost primeval
-proportions, are already flourishing.
-
-RED FIR (_Abies magnifica_) is the largest fir in America. At its best
-it attains a height of 250 feet and a diameter of ten, but that size is
-rare. It has several names, magnificent fir, which is a translation of
-its botanical name; redbark fir, California red fir, and golden fir. The
-reference to red which occurs in its several names, is descriptive of
-its heartwood. Its range lies on the Cascade mountains of southern
-Oregon, and along the entire length of the western slope of the Sierra
-Nevadas in California. It is common in southern Oregon and sometimes
-forms nearly pure forests at elevations of 5,000 or 7,000 feet. It is
-plentiful in the Sierra Nevada ranges at altitudes of from 6,000 to
-9,000 feet. In southern California it ascends 10,000 feet. On old trees
-the limbs, regularly whorled in collars of five, are usually pendulous
-or down-growing and are regularly and precisely subdivided into branches
-and twigs, the short, stiff blue-green leaves, which persist for ten
-years, closely covering the upper side of the latter. Its cones are the
-largest of the firs, are dark purple in color and grow erect on the
-branches.
-
-The cones are six or eight inches long, and three or four in diameter.
-They present a fine appearance as they stand erect on the branches. The
-seeds are large, but their strong wings are able to carry them away from
-the immediate presence of the parent tree. The wings are extremely
-beautiful, and flash light with the colors of the rainbow. Old trees are
-protected by hard, dark-colored bark five or six inches thick. A forest
-fire may pass through a stand of old firs without burning through the
-bark, but young trees are not so protected, and are liable to be killed.
-
-A study of the wood of the red fir reveals rather more favorable
-qualities than the other firs afford. Sap and heartwood are more easily
-distinguished than in the other species, the sapwood being much lighter
-in color than the reddish heart. Contrary to the general rule among the
-firs, this wood possesses considerable durability, especially when used
-for purposes which bring it in contact with the soil. It is, however,
-light, soft and weak, but has a close, fine grain and compact structure.
-Seasoning defects, such as checking and warping, are liable to occur
-unless properly guarded against. It weighs 29.30 pounds per cubic foot,
-or nearly three pounds less than Douglas fir. It is used for rough
-lumber, packing boxes, bridge floors, interior house finish, and fuel.
-
-SHASTA RED FIR (_Abies magnifica shastensis_) is pronounced by George B.
-Sudworth to be only a form of red fir (_Abies magnifica_) and not a
-separate species. The principal difference is in the cones. The Shasta
-form was discovered on the mountain of that name in northern California
-in 1890 by Professor J. G. Lemmon. It was supposed to be confined to
-that locality, but was subsequently found on the Cascade mountains in
-Oregon, and also at several points in northern California. It was later
-found in the Sierras five hundred miles south of Mount Shasta.
-
-    LOVELY FIR (_Abies amabilis_) is known by a number of names, red
-    fir, silver fir, red silver fir, lovely red fir, amabilis fir, and
-    larch. The last name is applied to this tree by lumbermen who have
-    discovered that fir lumber sells better if it is given some other
-    name. The range of this species extends from British Columbia
-    southward in the Cascade mountains through Washington to Oregon. It
-    is the common fir of the Olympic mountains and there reaches its
-    best development, sometimes a height of 250 feet and a diameter of
-    five or six; but the average, even in the best part of its range, is
-    much under that size, while in the northern country, and high on
-    mountains, it is a commonplace tree, averaging less than 100 feet
-    high, and scarcely eighteen inches in diameter. When this fir stands
-    in open ground, the whole trunk is covered with limbs from base to
-    top; but in dense stands, the limbs drop off, and a clean trunk
-    results.
-
-    Some of the largest trees rise with scarcely a limb 150 feet, and
-    above that is the small crown. The bark of young trees is covered
-    with blisters filled with resin. The bark is thin and smooth until
-    the tree is a century or more old, after which it becomes rougher,
-    and near the base may be two and a half inches thick. It is of very
-    slow growth, and a century hardly produces a trunk of small sawlog
-    size. The leaves are dark green above, and whitish below. They are
-    much crowded on the twigs, those on the underside rising with a
-    twist at the base, and standing nearly erect. They are longer than
-    those on the twig's upper side. The purple cones are conspicuous
-    objects on the tree, are from three and a half to six inches long,
-    and bear abundance of seeds which are well dispersed by wind.
-    However, the reproduction of this tree is not plentiful. The species
-    holds its own, and not much more. When artificial reforestation
-    takes place in this country, if that time ever comes, lovely fir
-    will receive scant consideration, because of its discouragingly slow
-    growth. It ranks with lodgepole pine in that respect. Nature can
-    afford to wait two hundred years for a forest to mature, but men
-    will not plant and protect when the prospect of returns is so
-    remote. The wood is light, weak, moderately stiff and hard. The
-    heartwood is pale brown, the sap nearly white. The summerwood
-    appears in thin but well-marked bands in the annual rings, and the
-    medullary rays are large enough to show slightly in quarter-sawed
-    lumber. Growing as it does, interspersed with really valuable woods,
-    the lovely fir is not highly thought of from a commercial
-    standpoint. However, it is exploited in conjunction with the other
-    species and turned into lumber and general structural material. A
-    considerable quantity finds a market as interior finish and other
-    millwork. It has many of the properties which fit it for the
-    manufacture of packing boxes, particularly those intended for dried
-    fruit and light merchandise. It bears considerable resemblance to
-    spruce. The utilization of this and similar species of western fir
-    for pulp has been suggested, but little has been done. It has been
-    planted ornamentally in parts of Europe, but there is no comparison
-    between the decorative appearance of this fir and its associated
-    species, the others which are in cultivation being much superior.
-    Removal from the old habitat militates greatly against its natural
-    beauty and reduces it to the level of the ordinary.
-
-    ALPINE FIR (_Abies lasiocarpa_) is so called because it thrives on
-    high mountains and in the far North. It grows in southern Alaska, up
-    to latitude 60 deg., and southward to Oregon and Colorado. Its other
-    names are balsam, white balsam, Oregon balsam, mountain balsam,
-    white fir, pumpkin tree, down-cone, and downy-cone subalpine fir. It
-    grows from sea level in Alaska up to 7,000 feet or more in the
-    South. It is not abundant, and not very well known. However, its
-    slender, spirelike top distinguishes it from all associates and it
-    may be recognized at long distances by that characteristic. It
-    endures cold at 40 degrees below zero, and summer climate at 90
-    degrees. Trees are usually small, and the trunks are covered with
-    limbs to the ground. On high mountains the lower limbs often lie
-    flat on the ground, and the twigs sometimes take root. Under very
-    favorable circumstances this fir may reach a height of 160 feet and
-    a diameter of four, but the usual size is less than half of it, even
-    when conditions are fair, while on bleak mountains mature trees may
-    be only three or four feet high, with most of the limbs prostrate.
-    The sprawling form of growth makes the tree peculiarly liable to be
-    killed by fire. The bark is thin, smooth, and flinty; and in color
-    it is ashy gray or chalky white. Leaves are one and a half inches or
-    less long; the purple cones from two to four inches. Trees bear
-    cones at about twelve years of age. The seeds are equipped with
-    violet or purplish wings, and they fly far enough to find the best
-    available places to plant themselves. The wood is narrow-ringed,
-    light, soft, and in color from pale straw to light yellowish-brown.
-    It is fairly straight grained, and splits and works easily; but
-    trunks are very knotty. Its best service in the past has consisted
-    in supplying fuel to mining camps and mountain stock ranges.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-DOUGLAS FIR
-
-[Illustration: DOUGLAS FIR]
-
-
-
-
-DOUGLAS FIR
-
-(_Pseudotsuga Taxifolia_)
-
-
-During one hundred and ten years, from 1803 until the present time,
-botanists and others have proposed and rejected names for this tree. It
-has been called a fir, pine, and spruce, with various combinations, but
-the name now seems to be fixed. Laymen have disputed almost as much as
-botanists as to what the tree should be named. It has been called red
-fir, Douglas spruce, Douglas fir, yellow fir, spruce, fir, pine, red
-pine, Puget Sound pine, Oregon pine, cork-barked Douglas spruce, and
-Douglas tree. More than a dozen varieties are distinguished in
-cultivation.
-
-The range of Douglas fir covers most of the Rocky Mountain region in the
-United States and northward to central British Columbia; on the coast
-from the latitude of southern Alaska to the Sierra Nevada mountains in
-central California. It reaches its maximum development in western
-Washington and Oregon, particularly between the Cascade mountains and
-the Pacific ocean. In these Cascade forests, stands are found which
-yield from 50,000 to 100,000 feet per acre, and mills in that region cut
-the longest timbers in the world, some two feet square and 100 feet
-long.
-
-Two forms of Douglas fir are recognized by botanists, not essentially
-different except in size and habit of growth. One is the finely
-developed form on the Pacific coast where the climate is warm and the
-air moist. The other is the Rocky Mountain form which is smaller and
-shows the effect of cold, dryness, and other adverse circumstances. When
-the seeds of the two forms are planted in nurseries, where they enjoy
-identical advantages, the coast form outgrows the other in Europe, but
-the Rocky Mountain form thrives best in the eastern part of the United
-States.
-
-Douglas fir needles are from three-quarters to one and a quarter inches
-long, and of a dark, yellow-green color. They remain on the twigs about
-eight years. Cones are from two to four and a half inches long, and are
-borne on long stems. The seeds, which ripen in August, are of light,
-reddish-brown color with irregular white spots on the lower side; are
-about a quarter of an inch long, and are provided with wings. Trees of
-this species in the moist climate of the Pacific slope average much
-larger than those in the mountains farther east. The largest are 300
-feet high, occasionally more, and from eight to ten in diameter. The
-average among the Rocky Mountains is from eighty to 100 feet high, and
-two to four in diameter. Young trees are slender with crowded branches.
-In thick stands the lower limbs die and the trunks remain bare, except
-an occasional small branch. Douglas fir at its best grows in thick
-stands, with crowns forming a canopy so dense that sunlight can scarcely
-reach the ground. The result of this is that other species have little
-show where Douglas fir prevails.
-
-The bark of large trunks attains a thickness of eight or ten inches near
-the base. Young bark contains blisters filled with resin, similar to
-those of balsam and other species of fir.
-
-The wood is light red or yellow, the sap much whiter. Lumbermen
-recognize two kinds of wood, yellow and red. The former is considered
-more valuable. Both may come from the same trunk, and the reason for the
-difference in color and quality is not well understood. It cannot be
-attributed to soil or climate, or to the age of the tree, and it does
-not seem to depend upon rate of growth. The bands of summerwood are
-broad and quite distinct. A few scattered resin ducts are visible under
-a magnifying glass of low power. The medullary rays are numerous, rather
-large, frequently yellow, conspicuous when wood is split radially. The
-wood's average weight is given by Sargent at 32.14 pounds per cubic
-foot, yet some specimens exceed forty pounds. It is hard, strong, and
-stiff. In mechanical properties it rates about the same as longleaf pine
-of the South. Elaborate tests have been made to determine which of these
-woods is the better for heavy construction, and neither appears to win
-over the other. In one respect, however, Douglas fir has a clear
-advantage over its southern rival: it may be had in much larger pieces.
-No other commercial wood of the world equals it in that particular. The
-Douglas fir flagstaff at the Kew gardens in England was 159 feet long,
-eight inches in diameter at the top, more than three feet at the base.
-The extraordinary size of squared beams cut from this species has led to
-great demand for it for heavy construction in Europe and this country.
-The pines from the Baltic sea region of northern Europe, which held
-undisputed place in heavy work during centuries, has now yielded that
-place to Douglas fir and longleaf pine.
-
-No other single species in the United States or in the world equals the
-annual sawmill cut of Douglas fir. The four species of southern yellow
-pines, if counted as one, surpass it; but singly, not one comes up to
-it. In 1910 the lumber cut from this fir amounted to 5,203,644,000 feet,
-which exceeded one-eighth of the total lumber cut in the United States.
-The importance of such a timber tree can scarcely be estimated. The
-available supply in the western forests is very large and will last many
-years, even if the demand for more than 5,000,000,000 feet a year
-continues to be met.
-
-The timber is exported to practically every civilized nation in the
-world. Shipbuilding creates a heavy demand. Some of the leading European
-nations use it as deck lining for battleships, and except mahogany and
-teak, it is said to have no equal for that purpose. Its cheapness gives
-it a decided advantage over those woods.
-
-Every important lumber market in the United States handles Douglas fir,
-and its uses are so many that it would be easier to list industries
-which do not use it than those which do. It is manufactured into more
-than fifty classes of commodities, in Illinois alone. Among these are
-boats, railroad cars, electrical apparatus, farm machinery, laundry
-supplies, ladders, refrigerators, musical instruments, fixtures for
-offices, stores, and banks, and sash, doors, and blinds. This list of
-uses shows that its place in the country's industries includes much more
-than rough construction. It may be stained in imitation of valuable
-foreign and domestic woods, including walnut, mahogany, and oak. The
-natural grain and figure of the wood may be deepened and improved by
-stains, and this is much done by manufacturers of interior finish,
-panels, and store and office fixtures. There is practically no limit to
-the size of panels which may be cut in single pieces. It is easy to
-procure planks large enough for whole counter tops.
-
-The best grain of Douglas fir is not brought out by quarter-sawing. The
-figures desired are not those produced by the medullary rays, but by the
-rings of annual growth. Therefore, the sawyer at the mill cuts his best
-logs--if intended for figured lumber--tangentially, as far as possible.
-In the state of Washington, which leads all other states in the
-production of Douglas fir, its chief use as a manufactured product is
-for doors, sash, and blinds, and the annual consumption in that industry
-exceeds 50,000,000 feet. It is cut in veneers, and it is likewise used
-as corewood to back veneers. Crossarms for telegraph and telephone poles
-demand 35,000,000 feet yearly in Washington alone, and many thousands of
-poles are of this wood. It is third among the crosstie woods of the
-United States, the combined cut of oaks standing first, and the pine
-second. It is rapidly taking high position as material for large water
-pipes and for braces, props, stulls, and lagging in mines and for paving
-blocks for streets.
-
-    BRISTLECONE FIR (_Abies venusta_) is pronounced by George B.
-    Sudworth to be "the most curious fir tree in the world." It is found
-    almost exclusively in Monterey county, California, but a few trees
-    grow outside of that circumscribed area. It has been called Santa
-    Lucia fir, because it was once supposed to exist only in canyons of
-    Santa Lucia mountains, but its range is now known to be more
-    extensive. Monterey county, California, is of peculiar interest to
-    dendrologists. Three species of trees are either confined to that
-    area, or have their best development there. They are Monterey
-    cypress (_Cupressus macrocarpa_), Monterey pine (_Pinus radiata_),
-    and bristlecone fir. All are peculiar trees: the cypress because of
-    its ragged form and extremely limited range, the pine because of
-    its exceedingly rapid growth when given a chance, and the fir,
-    because of its peculiar form of crown, odd appearance of cone, and
-    extraordinary weight of wood. No reason is apparent why that
-    particular point on the California coast should have brought into
-    existence--or at least should have gathered to itself--three
-    peculiar tree species. Bristlecone fir is well named from the
-    bristles an inch long covering the cone. The leaves, too, are
-    peculiar, bearing much resemblance to small willow leaves. Their
-    upper sides are deep yellow-green and the under sides silvery. The
-    largest leaves are two inches long, cones three inches. They ripen
-    in August, and soon afterwards scatter their seeds. The tree is not
-    a prolific seeder, and it is believed that its range is becoming
-    smaller. Bristlecone's form of crown has been compared to an Indian
-    club, the large end on the ground and the handle pointing upward.
-    Trees from sixty to eighty feet high have such "handles" twenty or
-    thirty feet long. That peculiarity of shape makes the tree
-    recognizable among associated species at a distance of several
-    miles. The recorded weight of the wood is 42.27 pounds per cubic
-    foot, which is nearly twice the weight of some other firs. The wood
-    is moderately soft, but very firm. Few uses for it have been
-    reported. Trunks are very knotty, and are too few in number to be of
-    importance as a source of lumber. The tree has been planted
-    successfully for ornament in the south of Europe.
-
-    BIGCONE SPRUCE (_Pseudotsuga macrocarpa_) is of the same genus as
-    Douglas fir and bears much resemblance to it, but is smaller, and
-    its range lies wholly outside that of its northern relative. It is a
-    southern California species, occupying mountain slopes and canyons
-    in Santa Barbara and San Diego counties. It is found from 3,000 to
-    5,000 feet above sea level. Trees average forty or fifty feet in
-    height and two or three in diameter. The leaves are approximately of
-    the same size as those of Douglas fir; but the cones are much
-    larger, hence the name by which the tree is known. It is called
-    hemlock as often as spruce. The cones are from four to seven inches
-    long, hang down, and usually occupy the topmost branches of trees.
-    The winged seeds are half an inch long. The bark is six inches or
-    less in thickness. The wood is inferior in most ways to that of
-    Douglas fir, lighter, weaker, and less elastic. Its color is reddish
-    brown. It has never contributed much lumber to the market and never
-    will. Its range is local and the form of the tree is not of the
-    best. An occasional log reaches a sawmill, but the principal demand
-    is for fuel.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BIGTREE
-
-[Illustration: BIGTREE]
-
-
-
-
-BIGTREE
-
-(_Sequoia Washingtoniana_)
-
-
-Botanists have had a hard time giving this tree a Latin name which will
-meet the requirements of technical classification, but an English name
-acceptable everywhere was early found for it--bigtree. No fewer than a
-dozen names have been proposed by botanists. Most of them attempt to
-express the idea of vastness or grandeur; but the simple English name
-comes directly to the point and ends the controversy as far as the
-common name is concerned.
-
-Everything connected with this tree is interesting. Geologically, it is
-as old as the yellow poplar. There were five species of sequoias in the
-northern hemisphere, in Europe and America, before the ice age. They
-grew in the North, nearly to the Arctic circle, at a time when the
-climate of those regions was milder than it is now. The later advance of
-the ice southward overwhelmed three species of bigtrees, and pushed two
-survivors into the region which is now California. These are the bigtree
-and the redwood. It is not known how long ago it was that the ice sheet
-did its destructive work, but it antedated human history, and the
-gigantic trees have been in California since that time.
-
-Long after the ice age ceased generally in North America it continued
-among the high Sierras of California, and the bigtrees to this day give
-a hint of it in the peculiar outlines of their range. They are scattered
-north and south along the face of the Sierra Nevada mountains in
-California, a distance of 260 miles, and at elevations from 4,500 to
-8,000 feet.
-
-The aggregate of the total areas is about fifty square miles. The stand
-is not continuous, but consists of "groves," that is, isolated stands
-with wide intervals between, where no trees of this species are found.
-The arrangement suggests that the bigtree forest was cut in sections by
-glaciers which descended from the high mountains to the plains, a
-distance of one hundred miles or more, crossing the belt of sequoias at
-right angles. The glaciers withdrew thousands of years ago, and their
-tracks down the mountain slopes have long been covered by forests; but
-the bigtree groves, for some unknown reason, never spread into the
-intervening spaces, but today are separated by wide tracts in which not
-a seedling or an old trunk or log of that species is to be found. This
-is one of the mysteries which add interest to those wonderful trees--why
-they cannot extend their range beyond the circumscribed limits which
-they occupied thousands of years ago.
-
-It was claimed for a long time and was quite generally believed that
-bigtrees were not reproducing, that there "were no little bigtrees."
-That was conclusively disproved by Fred G. Plummer, geographer of the
-United States Forest Service, who made a scientific study of a small
-grove, measured the trees, and actually counted and classified them. His
-work showed that there were in the area which he investigated:
-
-  Trees containing 100,000 to 120,000 feet each        2
-  Trees containing 80,000 to 100,000 feet each        13
-  Trees containing 60,000 to 80,000 feet each         49
-  Trees containing 40,000 to 60,000 feet each        112
-  Trees containing 20,000 to 40,000 feet each        251
-  Trees containing less than 20,000 feet each        353
-  "Little bigtrees"                                2,682
-                                                   -----
-                                            Total  3,462
-
-Bigtree is distantly related to southern cypress, and the shapes of very
-old trees of both species bear some resemblance. Bigtree leaves do not
-fall annually as those of bald cypress do. They are from one-eighth to
-one-fourth of an inch long, and on the leading shoots they may be half
-an inch in length. Cones are from two to three and a half inches long,
-and they ripen their seeds the second year, but the empty cones may
-adhere to the branches several years. The seeds are a quarter of an inch
-long, and have wings sufficient to carry them a hundred yards or more.
-The trees bear abundance of seeds, in proportion to the small number of
-branches. Though shapely and well clothed with limbs when young, the
-crown contracts with age, and consists of a few enormous, crooked limbs,
-almost destitute of twigs and small branches. One of these trees may
-actually bear more twigs when the trunk is only a foot in diameter than
-will be on the same trunk when it is fifteen or twenty feet in diameter.
-The old tree trunks are often without limbs to a height of 100 or 150
-feet.
-
-The Douglas squirrel is the bigtree's greatest enemy. In proportion to
-size, this little creature probably eats ten times as many tree seeds as
-the most ravenous hog that roams the forest. One of the first things
-that impresses a visitor in a grove of bigtrees is the rich brown of the
-bark of some of the trunks. All are not brown alike, or at all seasons.
-The trees on which the seed harvest is ready are the brownest, thanks to
-the sharp claws, the tireless energy, and keen appetite of the Douglas
-squirrel. He goes up and down the trunks for three square meals a day
-among the clusters of cone-bearing branches two hundred or three hundred
-feet above, and makes several extra trips for exercise; and at each
-scratch of his briery foot he kicks off scales of bark, until the whole
-trunk is "scratched raw." The detached scales of bark accumulate in a
-mound about the base of the tree, where they have been so accumulating
-for centuries. It is fortunate that those old trees have bark from one
-to two feet thick. They can afford to be scratched for a month or two
-each year.
-
-These are the heaviest trees in America, notwithstanding their wood is
-light. It weighs less than northern white cedar. The largest bigtree
-trunks weigh more than 2,000,000 pounds. In order to stand at all, they
-must stand plumb. It is a provision of nature that the old trees are
-almost branchless, otherwise the wind would force them out of plumb and
-they would go down. It has been claimed that the overthrow of one of
-these giants is always brought about by one of two causes. The
-development of larger limbs on one side than on another unbalances them;
-or the wash of gullies undermines the roots on one side, and draws the
-tree that way. It is currently believed that no bigtree ever dies from
-natural causes.
-
-A good deal of pure fiction has been published regarding the size and
-age of the largest of these trees. They are old enough and large enough
-without drawing upon the imagination. The tree's base is greatly
-enlarged, but tapers rapidly the first few feet. There is little doubt
-that some of the trunks are over forty feet in diameter, one foot above
-ground, but that is not a fair measurement. The point should be five or
-six feet at least. Measured thus, about twenty-five feet inside the bark
-would represent the largest. With the bark added, the diameter would be
-nearly thirty feet. Probably not one tree in fifty, taking them as they
-occur in the whole range and counting veterans only, is fifteen feet in
-diameter five feet from the ground.
-
-There is also some extravagant guessing as to height. Too many tourists
-measure with the unaided eye, or accept a guidebook's figures. An
-authentic height of 365 feet--the measurement of a fallen trunk--is
-probably the greatest. Very few reach three hundred feet. Many
-unreliable figures have been published concerning the age of bigtrees.
-One thing can be accepted without question; size is no proof of age, in
-comparing one tree with another; neither is the number of annual rings
-in a block cut from the side of a tree a reliable factor to determine
-age. The only sure way to determine the age of one of these trees is by
-counting all the rings from the pith to bark. Care should be taken not
-to count the same ring twice, as may be done when the wood is curly.
-John Muir counted 4,000 rings in a bigtree stump. It is believed that no
-higher age is backed by the evidence of yearly rings. It was twenty-four
-feet in diameter. The count of another of like size made it 2,200 years
-old; and of still another of the same size placed its age at 1,300
-years. The Forest Service has made accurate measurement and record of
-every ring of growth in a tree that was over twenty-four feet in
-diameter, and it is shown that during certain periods of years the tree
-grew three or four times as rapidly as during other periods.
-
-The wood of bigtree is very light, soft, moderately strong, brittle,
-summerwood thin and dark rendering the rings of annual growth easily
-seen; the medullary rays are thin, numerous, and very obscure. The wood
-is light to dark red, the thin sapwood nearly white; it works easily,
-splits readily, and polishes well. It is very durable in contact with
-the soil. Trunks lie in the woods long periods before decay seriously
-attacks them; but forest fires hollow them, and finally burn them up.
-Enormous depressions are found in the forest where logs once lay, but
-which disappeared long ago, judging by the size of trees which have
-since grown in the depressions. The interior of some large trunks which
-have been worked up on sawmills showed the scars of forest fires
-centuries ago. The annual rings which covered one such scar showed that
-the burning took place 1,700 years ago.
-
-Not much can be said for the commercial uses of bigtree. Many a species
-of insignificant size is much more useful. Considerable quantities have
-been cut by sawmills. The waste is great, heavy trunks crushing badly in
-fall. Logs are so large that many of them are split with gunpowder to
-facilitate handling them. Some of the wood has been exported for lead
-pencils; other has been used for fence posts, shingles, and grapevine
-stakes, while the soft bark has been worked into novelties.
-
-    MACNAB CYPRESS (_Cupressus macnabiana_) is a California tree of
-    limited range and little commercial value. It grows in Napa, Lake,
-    Mendocino, and Trinity counties; is often little more than a
-    branching shrub, but the largest specimens may be thirty feet high
-    and fifteen inches in diameter. The wood is light, soft, and usually
-    of slow growth. The medullary rays are numerous but thin, and the
-    bands of summerwood are distinct. The cones are generally less than
-    one inch long, and the seeds have narrow wings. The foliage is
-    grayish which is due to white glands in the leaves. Forest foliage
-    is fragrant. The tree is known as white cedar, Shasta cypress, and
-    California mountain cypress.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-REDWOOD
-
-[Illustration: REDWOOD]
-
-
-
-
-REDWOOD
-
-(_Sequoia Sempervirens_)
-
-
-This tree's color is responsible for its name. It is sometimes spoken of
-as coast redwood to distinguish it from bigtree which grows in the
-interior of California. In European markets it is known as California
-redwood to distinguish it from other redwoods growing in distant parts
-of the world. Its botanical name, _Sequoia sempervirens_, means
-evergreen sequoia. The other species of sequoia is also evergreen. In
-reality, the coast redwood is less of an evergreen than the bigtree is,
-because the leaves of redwood turn brown two years before they fall, but
-there are always plenty of green leaves on the branches. The leaves are
-from one-quarter to one-half inch in length.
-
-The geographical range of redwood covers about 6,000 square miles, but
-the commercial range is scarcely one-fifth as much. The redwood belt
-extends 500 miles along the Pacific coast from southern Oregon to
-central California. It varies from ten to thirty miles in width. It is
-strictly a fog belt tree, and grows poorly outside the region of ocean
-fog, which seldom reaches an altitude more than 2,800 feet above sea
-level. Where fog is thick and frequent, and soil is moist and otherwise
-suitable, redwood forests have grown in such luxuriance that no species
-in this country exceeds it. Stands running much over 100,000 feet per
-acre are frequent, and it is said 1,000,000 feet have been cut from a
-single acre.
-
-Redwood cones are one inch or less in length. They ripen in one season.
-Seeds are quite small, and are equipped with wings. The bark is thick,
-but is much thinner than the bark of bigtrees, though it is in great
-ridges like the bark of that species. The habits of the two species, as
-to form of crown, are similar. Young redwoods, particularly if they grow
-in the open, develop symmetrical and conical crowns which they retain
-until the trunks are a foot or more in diameter. Lower limbs die and
-fall off after that, and old trees have crowns so small that it would
-seem impossible that they could supply the wood-building material for
-trunks so large. That the growth should be slow under such circumstances
-is to be expected. The ages of mature trees vary from 500 to 800 years,
-but an extreme age of 1,373 years is on record. The average is,
-therefore, considerably below that of bigtrees.
-
-Redwoods grow as tall as bigtrees, but do not equal them in diameter of
-trunk, though trees twenty feet in diameter occur.
-
-A noticeable feature of the forests is that, in a given stand, nearly
-all trees are of the same height, irrespective of size of trunk. The
-crowns go up to the light and when they reach the common level of
-others, and secure a share of light, they show no disposition to go
-higher. The doctrine which they silently put into practice is to live
-and let others live. That habit makes it possible for redwoods to grow
-in very dense stands, which they could not do if a few trees domineered
-over the others, and appropriated the light to themselves.
-
-When old age overtakes the giant redwoods, they exhibit the first
-symptoms of weakened vitality by dying at the top. Most trees over five
-hundred years old are "stag-headed." From that period they die slowly,
-but usually survive two or three hundred years after the visible signs
-of approaching death strike them.
-
-Redwood has an advantage over nearly all other needle-leaf trees in that
-it propagates by both seeds and sprouts. Few softwoods send up sprouts
-from stumps or roots. Redwoods of large size are produced that way, and
-the stumps of very old trees send up many vigorous shoots. Sometimes a
-ring of large trees surrounds a depression in the ground where the
-parent tree grew, died, and decayed.
-
-Sprouts are of course confined to the immediate proximity of the parent
-tree, but redwood seeds are scattered by the wind over vacant spaces.
-This results in dense stands where other conditions are favorable, but
-the species has never been able to establish itself far inland or high
-on mountains.
-
-In 1880 the Federal census made a rough estimate of the available
-redwood, and placed it at 25,825,000,000 feet. More than twenty years
-later, with heavy cutting all the time, private estimates placed the
-remaining stand at over 50,000,000,000 feet. The second estimate was
-unquestionably nearer correct than the first. The stand of no important
-timber tree in this country is more easily estimated than redwood. The
-forests are compact, the trees large, the trunks similar in form, and
-the well-timbered area is comparatively small. Redwood has been called
-the most important timber tree of the Pacific coast. The title probably
-confers too much, though the tree's importance is beyond question. The
-annual cut of Douglas fir is nearly ten times as large as of redwood,
-and the supply still in the forests is much greater than that of
-redwood. The cut of western yellow pine likewise exceeds the output of
-redwood, and the remaining supply is larger. The cut of western red
-cedar, including shingles, is about the same, and the remaining stand of
-cedar is very large. Western hemlock, too, exists in large quantity, and
-its importance as a source of timber supply may be equal to redwood.
-
-Redwood is frequently referred to as one of the lightest in this
-country. Its weight per cubic foot, oven-dry, is 26.2 pounds. On the
-same basis, white pine is 24, southern white cedar 20.7, northern white
-cedar 19.7, and bigtree 18.2. There are woods in Florida lighter than
-any of these. Redwood is very soft, yet it dulls tools quickly. It is
-moderately strong, a little below white pine; it is brittle, again
-ranking below white pine; it splits and works easily and polishes well.
-Few, if any woods surpass this one in splitting properties. Boards
-twelve feet long and a foot wide may be rived from selected logs, and
-they present surfaces nearly as smooth as if cut with a saw. However,
-curly and wavy redwood is not uncommon, and that, too, splits well, but
-the surface is not smooth. The width of annual rings varies, usually
-wide in young timber and narrow in old. The bands of summerwood are
-narrow and clearly defined. The surface of redwood lumber absorbs water
-quickly, yet, for some reason, creosote and other preservatives can be
-forced into the wood only with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, it
-is not necessary to treat this timber to prevent decay, for, in almost
-any position, it wears out before it rots. Shingles, and window and door
-frames of the old barracks buildings at Eureka, California, remained in
-place until fifty years of wind and driven sand wore them away.
-Railroads use the wood for ties until they wear out, not until they rot
-out. Farmers near some of the California railroads gather up the
-rejected worn ties by thousands and use them for fence posts. When
-redwood is employed as city paving blocks it is wear and not decay that
-puts them out of commission.
-
-The medullary rays of redwood are thin and very obscure, but numerous.
-Few woods show them to less advantage in quarter-sawing. The lack of
-luster in the surface of polished panels is well known. The wood's
-beauty is in its sameness and richness of color. Except curly specimens
-and burls, the wood may be said to have no figure, though in planks cut
-tangentially, the contrast of spring and summerwood displays some figure
-in a modest way. It is possible to wash much of the coloring matter out
-of the wood, if it is first chipped fine. It washes from the surface by
-ordinary exposure to weather. Red rainwater runs from a roof of new
-redwood shingles, and weatherboarding, posts, and picket fences fade
-perceptibly in a few months. This coloring matter when washed out in
-large amounts in the process of paper making has been manufactured into
-fuel gas.
-
-A complete list of the uses of redwood is not practicable, for this
-material goes into most of the large wood-using factories of this
-country, and much is exported--nearly 60,000,000 feet annually going to
-foreign countries. It has been much employed in California cities and
-towns for picket fences, and as posts for wire and plank fences. It is,
-next to western red cedar, the most important shingle wood of the
-Pacific coast. One western railroad alone had in its tracks 12,000,000
-redwood ties at one time. Builders of tanks, flumes, and water pipes
-procure some of their best material, and large quantities of it, from
-redwood sawmills. Few woods are more universally found in furniture
-factories.
-
-    GOWEN CYPRESS (_Cupressus goveniana_) follows the California coast
-    from Mendocino county, California, to San Diego, and ascends
-    mountains to the height of 3,000 feet in some localities. At its
-    best it is fifty feet high and two feet in diameter; but it extends
-    as a shrub over many sandy tracts. Specimens no more than a foot
-    high sometimes bear cones. The Gowen cypress sheds its leaves the
-    third and fourth years. Cones are from one-half to one inch long,
-    and each bears about 100 seeds. The wood is light, soft, weak, light
-    brown in color, the thick sapwood nearly white. The medullary rays
-    are numerous but obscure. The wood is used for posts and other ranch
-    purposes. Woodpeckers attack the trunks, picking holes through the
-    bark to suck the juice from the cambium layer beneath.
-
-    DWARF CYPRESS (_Cupressus pygmaea_) was formerly supposed to be a
-    stunted form of Gowen cypress. The ranges of both lie in the same
-    region, on the coast of California in Mendocino county. The average
-    height of dwarf cypress is from ten to twenty feet, with trunk
-    diameter from six to twelve inches; but in peat swamps and on
-    sterile sands it may not exceed three or four feet in height. It
-    bears abundant cones at that size, and sometimes a tree no more than
-    a foot high has mature cones. They ripen the second year, but remain
-    a long time on the branches. The trees thrive in the most forbidding
-    places, and are sometimes the only occupants of bogs or sand dunes.
-    The wood is necessarily of little value, because of the small size
-    of trees. There seems to be no record of a dwarf cypress over sixty
-    years of age; but it is believed that much older trees have fallen
-    victims to fire.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-HEMLOCK
-
-[Illustration: HEMLOCK]
-
-
-
-
-HEMLOCK
-
-(_Tsuga Canadensis_)
-
-
-Seven hemlocks are known in the world, four of them in America. Two of
-these are in the East, two in the West. The eastern species are the
-Canadian and Carolinian. The former is _Tsuga canadensis_, the latter
-_Tsuga caroliniana_. The western species are, mountain hemlock (_Tsuga
-mertensiana_), and western hemlock (_Tsuga heterophylla_). The word
-_tsuga_ is Japanese and means hemlock.
-
-The hemlock lumber in eastern markets is practically all from one
-species, which is known as hemlock in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
-Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
-Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
-Kentucky, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Ontario. In Vermont,
-Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, North
-Carolina, South Carolina; in England it is called hemlock spruce; spruce
-tree in Pennsylvania and West Virginia; spruce pine in Pennsylvania,
-Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia; to the New York Indians it
-was known as oh-neh-tah, which being interpreted means "greens on the
-stick."
-
-The range of hemlock extends east and west more than fifteen hundred
-miles, from Nova Scotia to western Wisconsin; south to Delaware and
-southern Michigan, and along the Appalachian mountains to northern
-Alabama and Georgia. The original quantity of timber was enormous, for
-large areas were covered with dense stands. The largest trees are found
-near the southern part of its range, among the mountains of Tennessee
-and North Carolina; but the bulk of the timber has always been in the
-North. It thrives best in well drained soil, but it likes cool
-situations and often develops dense forests on northern slopes or in
-deep ravines; but it maintains a foothold on ridges, on the banks of
-streams, and around the borders of swamps.
-
-The cones are very small, about a half inch in length, growing singly
-from the lower side of the branchlet. Their scales are rounded and thin,
-light brown in color. The seeds are winged and even when ripe the cones
-do not spread apart perceptibly. The seeds escape, however, slowly
-during the winter following their maturity. They are very small, and
-their wings distribute them a hundred feet or more. The seeds germinate
-best on leaf mold, but the seedling takes several years to thrust its
-roots deep into the mineral soil. During that time, growth is very slow.
-A seedling five years old may not exceed five inches in height; but when
-its roots have developed, growth is fairly rapid. The distribution of
-seeds is often facilitated by the activities of red squirrels, and
-perhaps other small mammals, which climb the trees in winter and tear
-the cones apart to get at the seeds. Many of the seeds are devoured, but
-more escape and fly away on the winter winds.
-
-Hemlock leaves are narrow and about half an inch long. Examined closely,
-particularly with a magnifying glass, rows of white dots extend from end
-to end on the under side. Small as these white points are separately,
-when seen in the aggregate they change the color of the whole crown of
-the tree. This is illustrated by looking at a hemlock from a
-distance--the upper sides of the leaves on the drooping twigs being then
-visible and the tree's aspect dark green. Approach the tree, and look up
-from its base--the under side of the leaves being then visible--and the
-dark color changes to a light silvery tint. The whiteness is due to the
-white spots on the leaves. The spots are stomata (mouths), and are parts
-of the chemical laboratory which carries on the tree's living processes.
-All tree leaves have stomata, but all are not arranged in the same way
-and are not visible alike. Few trees have them as prominent as the
-hemlocks.
-
-Hemlock attains a height from sixty to 100 feet and a diameter from two
-to four. When it grows in the open, it is one of the handsomest and most
-symmetrical evergreens of any country. Its dark, dense foliage will
-permit scarcely any sunlight to filter through. When forest-grown, it
-loses its lower limbs. In the forester's language, they are "shaded
-off," and long, smooth trunks are developed; but the stubs from which
-the branches fall remain buried deep inside the smoothest bole, and the
-saws will find them when the logs are converted into lumber.
-
-Reference has been made to hemlock's slow growth during the seedling's
-first four or five years. That takes place in the dense shade of the
-hemlock forest. If the seed falls on open ground, in full sunlight, the
-chance is that it will not germinate; but if it does, the seedling is
-doomed to an early death. It cannot endure strong light. This fact is of
-great importance, for it means the end of hemlock forests. When a stand
-is cut and the sunshine reaches the ground, no seedlings bring on a new
-forest. White pine seeds grow in open ground, in old fields, in burnt
-woods, wherever they reach soil, but hemlock must scatter its seeds in
-cool, deep shade or they will do little good. Strong, vigorous, and
-healthy as hemlock trees are, they are killed more easily than almost
-any other. Cut a few trees from the center of a mature hemlock clump,
-and the chance is that several trees next to the open space thus made
-will die. The unusual light proves too much for their roots which had
-always been cool and damp; but when young hemlocks are protected until
-they get a start, they thrive nicely in the open.
-
-The wood of hemlock is light, soft, not strong, brittle, coarse and
-crooked grained, difficult to work, liable to windshake, splinters
-badly, not durable. The summerwood of the annual ring is conspicuous;
-and the thin medullary rays are numerous. The color of hemlock heartwood
-is light brown, tinged with red, often nearly white. The sapwood is
-darker. Lumbermen recognize two varieties, red and white, but botanists
-do not recognize them.
-
-The physical characters of hemlock are nearly all unfavorable, yet it
-has become a useful and widely used wood. It is largely manufactured
-into coarse lumber and used for outside work--railway ties, joists,
-rafters, sheathing, plank walks, laths, etc. It is rarely used for
-inside finishing, owing to its brittle and splintery character. Clean
-boards made into panels or similar work and finished in the natural
-color often present a very handsome appearance, owing to the peculiar
-pinkish tint of the wood, ripening and improving with age.
-
-With the growing scarcity of white and Norway pine, hemlock has become
-the natural substitute for these woods for many purposes. It has never
-been conceded that hemlock possesses the intrinsic merit of either of
-the northern pines for structural purposes, but it has proven a suitable
-substitute for a variety of uses, notably for framing and sheathing of
-medium priced structures.
-
-In 1910 hemlock lumber was cut in twenty-one states, the total output
-exceeding 2,500,000,000 feet. Only four species or groups of species
-exceeded it in amount. They were southern yellow pines, Douglas fir, the
-oaks, and white pine. The principal cut of hemlock lumber was in the
-following states in the order named: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania,
-West Virginia, New York, Maine, Vermont, Virginia, New Hampshire,
-Tennessee, and North Carolina. Ten other states produced smaller
-amounts.
-
-Hemlock possesses remarkable holding power on nails and spikes, and that
-is one reason for its large use for railroad ties. It does not easily
-split, and there is no likelihood that spikes will work loose; but the
-wood decays quickly in damp situations, and unless given preservative
-treatment, hemlock ties do not last long. They are pretty soft anyway,
-and where traffic is heavy, rails cut them badly.
-
-Manufacturers of boxes and crates use much hemlock. The annual use for
-that purpose in Massachusetts is about 27,000,000 feet, in Michigan
-practically the same quantity, in Illinois 34,000,000, and varying
-quantities in many other states. Michigan converts nearly 100,000,000
-feet a year into flooring and other planing mill products, and Wisconsin
-and other hemlock states follow it in lesser amounts. The wood is
-employed by car builders, slack coopers, manufacturers of
-refrigerators, silos, and farm implements; but the largest demand comes
-from those who use the rough lumber.
-
-Hemlock bark is the most important tanning material in this country. It
-has long been used by leather makers who generally mix it with some
-other bark or extract because leather tanned with hemlock alone has a
-redder color than is desired.
-
-Large areas of hemlock forests have been cut for the bark alone.
-Formerly the wood was of so little value that it was cheaper to leave it
-in the forest than to take it out. The peelers worked in early summer,
-cutting trees and removing the bark in four-foot lengths, which was
-measured by the cord, though often sold by weight. Care was taken that
-the bark be removed from the slashings before the dry weather of autumn,
-for fire was to be expected then, and anything combustible in the woods
-at that time was likely to be lost. The tracts on which bark peelers
-worked were called "slashings," and they were fire traps of the worst
-kind with their tangled masses of tops and branches.
-
-Large quantities of hemlock bark are still peeled every summer, but the
-practice is less destructive than formerly. The trunks are worth taking
-out, and when the fire comes late in the season it consumes little
-valuable hemlock. A permanent decline in the annual production of this
-wood has not yet begun, but it must soon set in, for the demand cannot
-be indefinitely met.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN HEMLOCK
-
-[Illustration: WESTERN HEMLOCK]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN HEMLOCK
-
-(_Tsuga Heterophylla_)
-
-
-When this wood began to go to market, its promoters found difficulties
-in securing a trial for it in eastern states, because of its name. The
-eastern hemlock was known to be a substantial wood, but a rough one with
-many faults linked with its virtues. It was naturally supposed that the
-western hemlock had all the faults of its eastern relative with possibly
-some of the good qualities left out; and there was general hesitancy to
-put the new comer to a trial. That caused a movement among western
-lumbermen to sell their hemlock under some other name. They were
-confident the wood had only to be given a trial and it would win its
-way, after which the name would make little difference. Accordingly, it
-was started to market under the name of Alaska pine, although Alaska has
-no pine large enough for good lumber. Other lumbermen thought it
-advisable to choose a name less likely to excite suspicion, and they
-called it Washington pine. Others designated it as spruce, and still
-others as fir. It was more likely to pass for fir than for pine or
-spruce.
-
-The lumber is now generally known as western hemlock, but in California
-some call it hemlock spruce or California hemlock spruce. In Idaho,
-Washington, and Oregon the name hemlock usually suffices; while western
-hemlock spruce, and western hemlock fir, and Prince Albert's fir are
-names used in speaking of lumber and of the tree in the forest.
-
-Western hemlock's range extends north and south a thousand miles, from
-southern Alaska to California south of San Francisco. It grows from the
-Pacific coast eastward to Montana, five hundred miles or more. It
-ascends to altitudes of 6,000 feet, but it is not at its best on high
-mountains, but in the warm, damp region near the coast in Washington and
-Oregon. Trees 200 feet high and eight or ten in diameter are found, but
-the average size is much less.
-
-The leaves of western hemlock are dark green and very lustrous above.
-The flowers are yellow and purple. Cones are one inch or less in length,
-and the small seeds are equipped with wings which carry them some
-distance from the base of the parent tree. The seeds will germinate and
-develop a root system without touching mineral soil. Their ability to do
-so assists them greatly in maintaining the tree's position in the damp
-climate where this hemlock reaches its best development. The ground in
-the forest, with all objects that lie upon it, is often covered with wet
-moss a foot or more thick. The seeds of most trees would inevitably
-perish if they fell upon such a bed of moss; but the seeds of western
-hemlock germinate, and the rootlets strike through the moss until they
-reach the soil beneath, and seedling trees are soon growing vigorously.
-Seeds often germinate in the moss on logs and stumps, but the roots
-strike for the ground, and generally reach it. In this habit the western
-hemlock resembles the yellow birch of the East whose seeds seem to
-germinate best on mossy logs and stumps.
-
-Western hemlock has one of the bad habits of its eastern relative: it
-does not prune itself very well, even in dense forests, and the lumber
-is apt to be knotty, but the knots are usually sound, though dark in
-color.
-
-The wood of western hemlock is moderately light, but twenty per cent
-heavier than eastern hemlock; stronger than the wood of other American
-hemlocks, and nearly twenty-five per cent stronger than the eastern
-commercial species, and nearly fifty per cent stiffer. It is tough and
-hard, but has little of the flinty texture of other hemlocks. Its color
-is pale brown, tinged with yellow, the thin sapwood nearly white. It is
-fairly durable in contact with the soil. Its growth is usually rapid,
-and trees live to a great age. Some of the largest are said to reach 800
-years. The summerwood often constitutes half of the yearly ring, and is
-dark yellow. The medullary rays are numerous and rather prominent. When
-cut radially, the appearance, size, and arrangement of the exposed
-medullary rays suggest those of sugar maple when exposed in the same
-way.
-
-The annual sawmill output of western hemlock is about 170,000,000 feet.
-The largest market for it is in the region where it grows, and it is
-used as rough lumber for ranch purposes and for buildings in towns; but
-a considerable quantity is further manufactured. About one-fourth of the
-entire sawmill output goes to the factories of Idaho, Washington, and
-Oregon. A list of the wood's principal uses in those states shows its
-intrinsic value. The largest quantity is demanded by box factories. The
-wood's nail-holding power commends it for that use, but of no less
-importance is its strength. Eighty-three per cent of all the wood used
-for boxes in Washington is western hemlock. Cooperage calls for much of
-this wood also. Fruit and vegetable barrels are made of it. Its place in
-furniture manufacture corresponds to that of the other hemlock in the
-East. The pulp business is not very extensive on the Pacific coast, but
-western hemlock is a respectable contributor. It is suitable for burial
-boxes, and probably ranks about third among the woods within its range,
-those used in larger amounts being Sitka spruce and western red cedar.
-It is coming into use as interior finish, particularly as door and
-window frame material. Fixture manufacturers employ it for drawers and
-shelves. It is made into flooring, ceiling, molding, and wainscoting.
-Door makers use a little of it as core material over which to glue
-veneers. It is made into veneer, but of the cheaper sorts, such as are
-suitable for crates and berry boxes.
-
-The Pacific coast is so abundantly supplied with excellent softwoods
-that only those of good quality have any chance in the local markets.
-The fact that western hemlock has won and is holding an important place
-in active competition with such woods as western red cedar, yellow
-cedar, Sitka spruce, and Douglas fir, is proof that it is valuable
-material. It is winning its way in the central part of the United States
-also, but not as rapidly as it has won in the West.
-
-The bark of western hemlock is rated high as a tanning material. The
-bark on young trees is thin, but as the trunks increase in size and age
-the bark thickens. It is richer in tannin than the bark of eastern
-hemlock, but is not so extensively used because the demand is less on
-the Pacific coast.
-
-The future of the western hemlock is fairly well assured. Its range is
-extensive and varied, and lumbermen will be a long time in cutting the
-last of the present stand. Reproduction is satisfactory. It will be
-important in future forestry, when people will grow much of the timber
-they need; but this tree will stick pretty close to the range where
-nature planted it.
-
-MOUNTAIN HEMLOCK (_Tsuga mertensiana_) is a near relative of western
-hemlock, and occupies the same geographical ranges but higher on the
-mountains. Near Sitka, Alaska, it occurs at sea level, but southward it
-rises higher until on the Sierra Nevada mountains in California it is
-10,000 feet above sea level. It is one of the timber line trees in many
-parts of its range, though it is nowhere above all others. It is a
-difficult matter to state what its average size is. That depends upon
-the particular region considered. At its best it is 100 feet high or
-even more; at its poorest it sprawls on the rocks like a shrub.
-Specimens of fair size are from twenty-five to sixty feet high, and ten
-to twenty inches in diameter. Cones vary in size fully as much as the
-trunks. Some are one-half inch in length, others are three inches. The
-leaves vary no less, some being a one-twelfth inch long, others one
-inch. The leaves stand out on all sides of the twig, and fall during the
-third and fourth years. They are bluish-green. The seeds fall in
-September and October, and are provided with large wings. The wood is
-light in weight, soft, and pale reddish-brown. The mountain hemlock is
-nearly always spoken of as spruce by persons who are not botanists. The
-arrangement of the leaves on the twigs gives the impression that it is a
-spruce, and among the names by which it is known in its native region
-are Williamson's spruce, weeping spruce, alpine spruce, hemlock spruce,
-Patton's spruce, and alpine western spruce. There is little prospect
-that this tree will ever become important as a source of lumber. It is
-nowhere very abundant, and what timber there is generally stands so
-remote from mills that little of it will ever be taken out. Botanists
-and mountain travelers who have made the acquaintance of the mountain
-hemlock in the wildness of its natural surroundings have spoken and
-written much in its praise. It has been called the loveliest
-cone-bearing tree of the American forest. That praise, however, applies
-only when the tree is at its best, with its broad, pyramidal crown,
-balanced and proportioned with geometrical accuracy, outlined against a
-background of rocks, peaks, snow, or sky. Its other form, prostrate and
-angular where the tree occurs on cold, bleak mountains, has never
-inspired praise from anybody, though its defiance of the elements and
-its persistence in spite of adversity, cannot but challenge the
-admiration of all who like a fair and square fighter. There are many
-intermediate forms. On mountains facing the Pacific, and at altitudes of
-6,000 or 7,000 feet, the young hemlocks are buried under deep snow weeks
-or months at a time. They are pressed down by the weight of tons, and it
-might be supposed that not a whole branch would be left on them, and
-that the main stems would be deformed the rest of their lives. But when
-the early summer sun melts the snow, the young trees spring back to
-their former faultless forms, without a twig missing or a twisted
-branch.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN YEW
-
-[Illustration: WESTERN YEW]
-
-
-
-
-WESTERN YEW
-
-(_Taxus Brevifolia_)
-
-
-The Pacific yew is an interesting tree, useful for many minor purposes,
-but it is not procurable in large quantities. Its north and south range
-covers more than 1,000 miles, from Alaska to central California; while
-the species occurs from the Pacific coast eastward to Montana. It
-approaches sea level on some of the Alaskan islands, and toward the
-southern part of its range it reaches an altitude of 8,000 feet.
-
-In Idaho it is called mountain mahogany, but apparently without good
-reason. Its color may bear some resemblance to that wood, but it is
-different in so many particulars that the name is not appropriate. The
-names western yew and Pacific yew are used interchangeably. Sometimes it
-bears the simple name yew; but since there is a yew in Florida, and
-another in Europe, it is well to give the western species a name which
-will distinguish it from others. The northwestern Indians called it
-"fighting wood," which was the best description possible for them to
-give. They made bows of it, and it was superior to any other wood within
-their reach for that purpose. In fact, if they could have picked from
-all the woods of the United States they could scarcely have found its
-equal. It is very strong, though in elasticity its rating is under many
-other woods. It is of interest to note that five hundred or more years
-ago, the European yew (a closely related but different species) had
-nearly the same name in England that the northwestern Indians gave the
-western yew. It was called "the shooter yew," because it was the bow
-wood of that time, and "bow staves," which were rough pieces to be
-worked out by the bow makers, were articles of commerce. The search for
-it was so great, and so long-continued, that yew trees were well-nigh
-exterminated in the British Isles. It was, next to oak, and possibly
-above oak, the most indispensable wood in England at that time. It is
-instructive to observe that Indians who used the bow found the western
-yew as indispensable in their life as the English armies found the
-European yew at a time when the bow was the best weapon.
-
-The northwestern Indians put this remarkable wood to other uses. They
-made spears of it, and sometimes employed them as weapons of war, but
-generally as implements of the chase, particularly in harpooning salmon
-which in summer ascend the northwestern rivers from the Pacific ocean in
-immense schools. The Indians whittled fishhooks of yew before they were
-able to buy steel hooks from traders. Some of those unique hooks are
-still in existence, and speak well of the inventive genius of the wild
-fisherman of the wilderness. A proper crook was selected where a branch
-joined the trunk, and serviceable fish hooks were made without any cross
-grain. They were strong enough to hold the largest fish that ascended
-the rivers. Sometimes a bone barb was skillfully inserted. The Indians
-found a further use for this wood as material for canoe paddles. It is
-so strong that handles can be made small and blades thin without passing
-the limit of safety. The manufacture of boat paddles from yew continues.
-
-More is used for fence posts than for any other one purpose. It is one
-of the most durable woods known where it must resist conditions
-conducive to decay. The name yew is said to be derived from a word in a
-north Europe language meaning everlasting. Yew fence posts are not named
-in statistics, and it is impossible to quote numbers. Their use is
-confined to the districts where they grow.
-
-The manufacturers of small cabinets draw supplies from this wood, but
-the fact is not mentioned in Pacific states wood-using statistics. It is
-particularly liked for turnery, such as small spindles used in furniture
-and in grill work. It takes an exceptionally fine polish, and the wood's
-great strength makes the use of slender pieces practicable. Experiments
-have shown that this wood may be stained with success, but its natural
-color is so attractive that there is little need of staining unless the
-purpose is to imitate some more costly wood. If stained black it is an
-excellent substitute for ebony.
-
-Western yew figures little in lumber output. It is not listed in the
-markets. The few logs which reach sawmills are never again heard of, but
-probably most of the lumber is disposed of locally to those who need it.
-The tree is not of good form for saw timber. Burls are said to make
-beautiful veneer. Trunks are seldom round, but usually grow lopsided.
-Most of them are too small for sawlogs. The largest are seldom two feet
-in diameter, and generally not half that large. They are short and
-branched, the tree often dividing near the ground in several stems. The
-average tree is scarcely thirty feet high, but a few are twice that. Its
-growth is very slow. A six-inch trunk is seventy-five or 100 years old,
-and the largest sizes are from 200 to 350 years. It is evident,
-therefore, that efforts to grow western yew for commercial purposes will
-be few. Wild trees will be occasionally cut as long as they last, and
-they will probably last as long as any of their associates, for they are
-scattered sparingly over several hundred thousand square miles of
-country, and some of it rough and almost inaccessible. The best
-development of the species is in western Oregon, Washington, and British
-Columbia.
-
-The leaves of western yew are one-half or five-eighths inch long. The
-fruit consists of red pulp enclosing a hard seed. Birds devour it
-eagerly. The fruit is not poisonous, as the yew berries of the Old World
-are. It ripens in September and falls in October. The wood is fine
-grained, clear rose red, becoming gradually duller on exposure. It
-weighs 39.83 pounds per cubic foot. Its fuel value is high.
-
-FLORIDA YEW (_Taxus floridana_) is extremely local in its range, and
-small in size. Few trees are more than twenty-five feet high and one
-foot in diameter. They are bushy and of poor form for manufacturing. The
-only reported use is as fence posts. The wood's durability fits it for
-that place. The species is found in Gadsden county, Florida. The leaves
-are one inch or less in length; flowers appear in March, and the fruit
-ripens in October. The wood is moderately heavy, hard, and
-narrow-ringed, for the trees grow slowly. Its color is dark, tinged with
-red, the thin sapwood being whiter. There is little prospect that the
-wood of this yew will ever be more important than it is now. It is often
-spoken of locally as savin, which name is likewise given to the red
-cedar (_Juniperus virginiana_), which is abundant in this yew's range.
-
-CALIFORNIA NUTMEG (_Tumion californicum_) is an interesting tree which
-ranges over a considerable portion of California, but is at its best in
-Mendocino county and the coast region north of San Francisco. It occurs
-also on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, in central
-California, at altitudes up to 5,000 feet. It receives its name from the
-resemblance of its seeds to nutmegs. Their surface is shriveled, but
-they do not have the nutmeg odor. The wood and the leaves, when bruised,
-give off an odor not altogether pleasing. On account of this, the tree
-has been called stinking cedar. In some localities it is called yew, and
-in others California false nutmeg, and coast nutmeg. Trees are generally
-small, with trunks of irregular form. The crown is open and usually
-extends to the ground; but in crowded situations, a rather shapely bole
-is developed, and the crown is small. The usual size of the tree does
-not exceed a height of fifty feet and a diameter of twenty inches. More
-trees are below than above that size; but in extreme cases the tree may
-reach a height of eighty-five feet and a diameter of four. The leaves in
-form and size resemble the foliage of yew, but their points are stiff
-and sharp, and if approached carelessly they will wound like cactus
-thorns. The fruit is an inch or more in length, a pulpy substance
-surrounding the seed. The wood possesses properties which ought to make
-it valuable, though reported uses are strictly local, such as small
-cabinet work and skiff making. It is bright lemon, yellow, rather hard,
-takes good polish, is of slow growth, with bands of summerwood thin but
-distinct, and medullary rays small, numerous, and obscure. Its weight is
-29.66 pounds per cubic foot; it is not stiff or strong. It cannot attain
-high place as a manufacturing material, because it is too scarce, but
-it possesses a beauty which must bring it recognition as a fine
-furniture, finish, and novelty wood. A few sawlogs go to mills in the
-region north of San Francisco, but the lumber is probably mixed with
-other kinds and it goes to market without a name. It ought to be put to
-a better use.
-
-FLORIDA TORREYA (_Tumion taxifolium_) is often called Chattahoochee pine
-in the region where it grows. That name is generally given to the tree
-when planted for ornament in yards, parks, and along streets of towns in
-northwestern Florida. It is known also as stinking cedar, stinking
-savin, and fetid yew. These names are generally applied to the
-forest-grown tree, particularly by those who cut it for fence posts,
-which is its principal use. Its range is local, being confined largely,
-if not wholly, to Gadsden county, Florida, where it grows on limestone
-soil. It can never have much importance as a commercial timber, because
-it is too scarce. In fact, it is in danger of extermination. Post
-cutters never spare it, and its range being so limited, there is not
-much hope for it. The interesting and beautiful tree is making a game
-fight for life. Many seedlings appear in the vicinity of old trees,
-while stumps, and even prostrate trunks, send up sprouts which, if let
-alone, grow to tree size. Sprouts on logs and stumps send roots to the
-ground as the seedling yellow birch does in damp northern woods. The
-yew-like leaves of Florida torreya are one and a half inch or less in
-length. The tree blooms in March and April, and the drupe-like fruit, an
-inch or more in length, is ripe by midsummer. The tree is from forty to
-sixty feet in height, and one to two feet in diameter. It is clothed in
-whorls of limbs, beginning near the ground, and tapering to the top. The
-wood is clear, bright yellow, the thin sapwood of lighter color; soft,
-easily worked, and susceptible of fine polish. It is very durable in
-contact with the soil. The green wood, and the bruised leaves and
-branches give off an odor suggesting the tomato vine. The texture and
-color of the wood indicate that it is well suited for fine cabinet work,
-but it is not a figured wood.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE OAK
-
-[Illustration: WHITE OAK]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE OAK
-
-(_Quercus Alba_)
-
-
-Oaks belong to the beech family, that is, the "foodtrees,"[3] though
-most acorns are too bitter and contain too much tannin to be edible;
-some may be eaten, and for that reason the ancients classed them among
-the food trees. "Quercus," which is the name of the genus, means oak in
-the language of northwestern Europe. The name white oak nearly always
-suffices, but in Arkansas it is often called stave oak because it is the
-best stave timber in that region. It could with equal reason be called
-stave oak nearly anywhere, for it is excellent material for tight
-cooperage. Formerly it was sometimes called Baltimore oak, because many
-of the staves of export were shipped from that city. That name, however,
-belonged more to post oak (_Quercus minor_) than to white oak, because
-the fine staves which went out of Chesapeake bay in the export trade,
-were largely post oak. It matters little now, for the name Baltimore oak
-is not much used, and white oak may be said to have only one trade name.
-After the wood is dressed, it has different names referring to the style
-of finish and not to the wood itself.
-
-    [3] The oaks of this country, which number more than fifty species,
-    have been classified in different ways, depending upon the purpose
-    in view. In the present treatment they will be divided in two
-    general groups, white oaks and black oaks. No effort will be made to
-    draw hard and fast lines, because it is not necessary. Oaks which
-    ripen their acorns in one year are listed as white oaks; those with
-    two year acorns, as black oaks. This is a botanical rather than a
-    lumberman's classification; yet lumbermen recognize it in a general
-    way. White oak (_Quercus alba_) is clearly entitled to head the list
-    of white oaks, and red oak (_Quercus rubra_) should occupy a similar
-    position with regard to the black oak group. In numbers, the white
-    oaks and black oaks are nearly equally divided, one authority giving
-    twenty-seven species of white oak and twenty-five of black oak in
-    the United States; but botanists differ as to exact numbers of each.
-    The following species are usually classed as white oaks: White oak
-    (_Quercus alba_), valley oak (_Quercus lobata_), Brewer oak
-    (_Quercus breweri_), Sadler oak (_Quercus sadleri_), Pacific post
-    oak (_Quercus garryana_), Gambel oak (_Quercus gambelii_), post oak
-    (_Quercus minor_), Chapman oak (_Quercus chapmani_), bur oak
-    (_Quercus macrocarpa_), overcup oak (_Quercus lyrata_), swamp white
-    oak (_Quercus platanoides_), cow oak (_Quercus michauxii_), chestnut
-    oak (_Quercus prinus_), chinquapin oak (_Quercus acuminata_), dwarf
-    chinquapin oak (_Quercus prinoides_), Durand oak (_Quercus
-    breviloba_), Rocky Mountain oak (_Quercus undulata_), California
-    blue oak (_Quercus douglasii_), Engelmann oak (_Quercus
-    engelmanni_), Rocky Mountain blue oak (_Quercus oblongifolia_),
-    Arizona white oak (_Quercus arizonica_), Toumey oak (_Quercus
-    toumeyi_), netleaf oak (_Quercus reticulata_), California scrub oak
-    (_Quercus dumosa_), live oak (_Quercus virginiana_), Emory oak
-    (_Quercus emoryi_).
-
-White oak grows in all the states east of the Mississippi river, and it
-crosses that stream two or three hundred miles in some places. It
-reaches eastern Nebraska and eastern Kansas, and runs southward through
-Oklahoma to the Brazos river, Texas. It is scarce in the northern parts
-of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Its total range covers an area of
-more than 1,000,000 square miles. Like all other important timber trees,
-it has regions where the species is best developed. The finest original
-stands of white oak were found in the upper Ohio valley, beginning in
-Indiana. The timber in many other districts was, and in some still is,
-very good, such as southern Michigan, eastern Arkansas, some of the
-Appalachian valleys and slopes, and in certain places along the upper
-tributaries of streams flowing into the Atlantic ocean.
-
-This tree is in the very front rank in economic importance, and it has
-held that place since the earliest settlements in this country. No
-forest tree was more evenly distributed than white oak over the eastern
-half of the United States. It did not form pure forests of large extent,
-as some of the pines did, but white oaks were within reach of almost
-every part of the country. Conditions have greatly changed. The
-establishment of farms where woods originally occupied the whole
-country, lessened the abundance of oak long before lumbermen made it a
-commodity; and since then, the cutting of billions of feet of it has
-depleted or exhausted the supply in many regions. Still, white oak is as
-widely dispersed as ever. It has not been completely exterminated in any
-extensive region. White oak of as high grade goes to market now as ever
-in the past, but in smaller amounts, and the lower grades go in
-proportionately larger quantities. In other words, prime white oak has
-passed its best day. A hundred years of use and abuse in states west of
-the Alleghany mountains, and two hundred years in some of the regions
-east, have reduced original forests to remnants. But with all that,
-white oak remains undisputed king of American hardwoods.
-
-At its best, white oak attains a height of 125 feet and a diameter of
-six, but that size is unusual. A diameter of three feet and a height of
-100 is above the average. The leaves are peculiar in that they hang on
-the branches until late winter, sometimes dropping only in time to give
-place to the new crop. They turn brown after the first hard frost. In
-some sections of the Appalachian region white oak coppice (sprout
-growth) is known as "red brush," because of the adherence of the brown
-leaves during winter. The leaves of some other species have the same
-habit.
-
-The wood of white oak is very strong, stiff, heavy, and durable when
-exposed in all kinds of weather. Scarcely any other wood which can be
-had in merchantable quantities equals white oak in these qualities. It
-rates high in fuel value, and 6,000 pounds of dry wood when burned,
-leaves about 245 pounds of ashes. The color of the heartwood is light
-brown; the sapwood is thin; medullary rays are numerous and large; pores
-large; summerwood broad and dense.
-
-The medullary rays of no wood in this or any other country are more
-utilized to commercial advantage than those of white oak. Quarter-sawing
-is for the purpose of bringing them out. They are the bright streaks,
-clearly visible to the naked eye in the end of an oak log, radiating
-from the center outward like the spokes of a wheel. Many are too thin to
-be visible without a magnifying glass. By quarter-sawing, the rays are
-cut edgewise and appear as bright streaks or patches, often called
-"mirrors," on the surface of boards. The woodworker knows how to finish
-the boards and treat them with fillers to bring out the figures.
-
-White oak is a porous wood. Some of the pores are large enough to be
-visible without a glass, and twenty times as many more can be seen only
-when magnified. The direction of the pores is up and down the trunk of
-the tree, and they are seen to best advantage in the end of a stick,
-although they are always more or less visible on the side of a board
-when the cutting is a little across the grain. The pores thus cut
-diagonally across are taken advantage of by the finisher who works
-stains and fillers into them, and changes their natural color, thereby
-accentuating the wood's figure.
-
-The possibilities of white oak are almost infinite. It is good for
-nearly anything for which any wood is used. It is not the best for
-everything, but does well for most. Hickory is more resilient, ironwood
-is stronger, locust more durable, white pine warps and checks less; but
-white oak has so many good qualities in a fair degree that it can afford
-to fall below the highest in some, and still rank above competitors on
-general averages. It ranks high in shipbuilding, general construction,
-furniture manufacturing, finish and fixtures, the making of agricultural
-implements, car building, vehicle stock, cooperage, and many more.
-
-It is one of the most important of American veneer woods. It is sawed
-very thin, and is glued upon cores of other wood, thus becoming the
-covering or outside part. The purpose of using oak veneer instead of the
-solid wood is twofold. First, it goes farther, and second, a well-built
-article with veneer outside and a core of other woods which stand well,
-is superior to a solid oak article, except in cases where great strength
-is the object sought, or where deep carving is desired.
-
-The continued use of white oak is assured. It is not necessary to seek
-new uses for it. The demand is as great as the supply can meet, but the
-supply is not assured for the distant future. There will always be some
-white oak in the country; but the best has been or is being cut. The
-tree grows slowly, and good quarter-sawed white oak cannot be cut from
-young trees. An age of about 150 years is necessary. Most good white oak
-lumber today is cut from trees 200 or more years old. When the present
-supply of venerable oaks has been exhausted, prime oak lumber will be
-largely a thing of the past. Fortunately, that time has not yet arrived.
-About eighty years are required to grow a white oak of crosstie size.
-Those who will grow oak for market in the future will probably not wait
-much longer than eighty years to cut their trees, and the result will be
-a scarcity of mature trunks for lumber and veneer.
-
-    DURAND OAK (_Quercus breviloba_). In some parts of Alabama,
-    Mississippi, and Louisiana this tree goes to the lumber yard as
-    white oak, and no one is injured by the substitution, for it is
-    heavy, hard, and strong, and is of good color. The wood weighs 59.25
-    pounds per cubic foot, which places it above the average weight of
-    white oak. It is said to be less tough than white oak. The tree
-    varies greatly in different parts of its range which extends from
-    central Alabama across Texas and into Mexico. It is known as white
-    oak, Texas white oak, shin oak, pin oak, and basket oak. Its best
-    development is in the eastern part of its range where trees eighty
-    or ninety feet high are common; but in Texas the average is scarcely
-    thirty feet high and one in diameter. Westward in Texas it becomes
-    shrubby, and forms extensive thickets of brush.
-
-    CHAPMAN OAK (_Quercus chapmani_) is put to little use, because
-    trunks are too small. They are seldom more than a foot in diameter,
-    and are often little more than shrubs. The tree grows in the pine
-    barrens near the coast from South Carolina to Florida, and it is
-    found also in great abundance, but generally of small size, on the
-    west coast of Florida from Tampa to the Apalachicola river.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BUR OAK
-
-[Illustration: BUR OAK]
-
-
-
-
-BUR OAK
-
-(_Quercus Macrocarpa_)
-
-
-This splendid oak was named by Michaux, a French traveler and botanist
-who visited many parts of eastern and southeastern United States more
-than a century ago. The botanical name _macrocarpa_, means "large
-fruit." The bur oak bears small acorns in the North, and very large ones
-in the South. They are sometimes two inches long and one and a half
-inches wide, and "large-fruit" oak is an appropriate name for the tree
-in the South, but would not be near the northern limit of its range.
-
-It is known in different regions as bur oak, mossy cup oak, overcup oak,
-scrub oak, and mossy cup white oak. Bur oak is a name suggested by the
-acorn which has a fringe round the cup like a bur. This is the oak which
-gave name to James Fenimore Cooper's book, "Oak Openings" a romance of
-early days in Michigan. Oak openings were areas where fires had killed
-the old timber, and a young growth had sprouted from stumps and roots,
-or had sprung up from seeds buried in the ground beyond the reach of the
-fire. Some of those tracts were very large, and they were not confined
-to any one state. They existed in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
-Dakota, and elsewhere. Bur oak, because it is a vigorous species, was
-able to take possession of such burned areas, to the exclusion of most
-others.
-
-Few American oaks have a wider range. It extends from Nova Scotia to
-Manitoba, and in the United States is found in most states east of the
-Rocky Mountains. It extends farther west and northwest than any other
-commercial oak of the Atlantic states. In a range of so great
-geographical extent the bur oak finds it necessary to adapt itself to
-many kinds of land. It prefers low tracts where water is sufficient but
-not excessive, but it grows well in more elevated situations, provided
-the soil is fertile. It is not a poor-land tree. In the primeval forests
-it attained largest size in Indiana and Illinois. The largest trees were
-from 150 to 170 feet high and four to seven in diameter. Sizes varied
-from that extreme down to the other extreme near the outskirts of its
-range where the growth was stunted. Large quantities of very fine logs
-have been cut from trunks from two to four feet in diameter, and forty
-to sixty feet to the limbs.
-
-The leaves of bur oak are from six to twelve inches long, simple and
-alternate; the petioles are thick with flattened and enlarged bases; the
-leaves are wedge-shaped at the base, and have from five to seven long,
-irregular lobes, the terminal one very large and broad. They are dark
-green in color, and are smooth and shiny above, silvery white and
-pubescent below. The edge of the leaf is notched somewhat like chestnut,
-but the teeth or notches are not so sharp.
-
-The twigs are provided with corky wings, or flattened keels of bark,
-along their sides. Some of the wings are an inch or more wide. They are
-apt to escape notice when the tree is in leaf, but in the winter the
-bare twigs look rough and ragged.
-
-The weight of bur oak is approximately the same as white oak, and the
-two woods are much the same in strength and elasticity. The bands of
-summerwood are broad and dense, and the springwood is filled with large
-pores. The medullary rays are broad, but not numerous in comparison with
-white oak. They are sufficiently conspicuous to show well in
-quarter-sawing.
-
-Bur oak nearly always goes to market as white oak, or simply as oak, and
-it is difficult to ascertain all the uses found for it. Some factories
-which make furniture, finish, vehicles, and other articles that figure
-in the country's trade, attempt to identify the woods they use. That is
-done as carefully in Michigan as anywhere else, though comparatively few
-of the factories carry out the plan even in that state where many of the
-best wood-using establishments of the country are located. In a report
-issued in 1912 which gave statistics collected from more than eight
-hundred Michigan factories, bur oak received separate consideration. The
-uses there are doubtless representative, and will hold throughout the
-country wherever bur oak is fairly abundant. It is listed as baseboards,
-billiard table rims, bookcases, clay working machines, filing cabinets,
-furniture, hand sleds, hay balers, interior finish, molding, tinplate
-boxes, wagon sills, work benches. The amount of wood used in the state
-was nearly 900,000 feet, according to the reports; but it certainly does
-not include all. What it does show, however, is that bur oak is one of
-the substantial woods of that region, and that it possesses properties
-which fit it for many important places in the country's industries.
-
-Bur oak contributes to the output of cooper shops. Slack coopers class
-it with many other hardwoods for the manufacture of barrels for
-vegetables and various other commodities, while the makers of barrels
-for liquids put bur oak in with white oak.
-
-The future of bur oak does not promise much after the trees which now
-remain have been cut. That does not mean that the species will become
-extinct, for that is improbable; but when the mature trees which
-developed during two or three hundred years of forest conditions have
-passed away, there is not much prospect of others being left to grow to
-the age and size which will make them valuable as lumber. Woodlot
-owners will not wait much longer than the seventy-five or one hundred
-years required to grow trees of crosstie size. Railroads pay good prices
-for this wood, for it lasts well, holds spikes in a satisfactory manner,
-and is strong and hard. As far as can be seen, bur oak will fare in the
-future about like white oak; that is, few trees will be left standing
-long enough to attain large size, because it will pay better to cut them
-while comparatively small.
-
-    CALIFORNIA BLUE OAK (_Quercus douglasii_) receives its name from the
-    color of its foliage in spring and early summer in the valleys and
-    on the rolling foothills of central California. Later in the summer,
-    when the dry season is on, the leaves lose some of their blue, on
-    account of age, but more from an accumulation of dust; but even then
-    the form of the tree, from its habit of growing in open formation
-    like an old apple orchard, presents an attractive picture. It is
-    often associated with the valley oak, which is larger and more
-    stately, but the blue oak loses nothing by the contrast. It is
-    occasionally called rock oak, but for what reason is not clear. It
-    is known, too, as mountain white oak, or simply white oak, and as
-    blue oak. Its range covers central California from Mendocino to the
-    Mojave desert, and from the immediate coast inland through the
-    valleys to the Sierras, and upward to an altitude of 4,000 feet
-    where the tree degenerates into a shrub which has neither beauty nor
-    utility. The species reaches its best development in the Salinas
-    valley from twenty to sixty miles from the coast. There the largest
-    trees are found, and also some that have assumed peculiar forms. In
-    positions exposed to the never-ceasing sea winds which sweep up the
-    valleys, the blue oaks lie prone like logs, their tops pointing away
-    from the wind. They grew in that unnatural position, having been
-    pressed flat by the wind since they were seedlings. This oak's ashen
-    gray bark harmonizes well with the dry summer grass and dull sand
-    and gravel which surround it during the hot period. The branches are
-    often covered with green-gray lichens which somewhat modify the
-    aspect of the tree under close inspection. The leaves are irregular
-    in form. Some closely resemble leaves of the eastern white oak,
-    while others are almost or quite without lobes. During the growing
-    season the acorns are deep green, but when approaching maturity they
-    change to a chestnut-brown. They vary in shape as much as the
-    leaves. Some are almost eggshaped, bulging out above the cup which
-    seems too small; but all of them do not assume that form, but may be
-    short and symmetrical, or very long and slender. Woodpeckers store
-    these acorns in large numbers, and they search out peculiar places
-    for their hoards. A knot hole in the weatherboarding of an old barn,
-    granary, or school house is considered ideal, though when the acorns
-    are so disposed of, they are out of reach of the woodpecker forever.
-    Another method is to peck holes just large enough for an acorn in
-    fence posts or dead tree trunks, and hammer the acorns tightly in,
-    small end first. The surfaces of dead trees are sometimes absolutely
-    covered with such holes, each with its acorn. The woodpecker's
-    purpose is to wait until the acorns become infested with larvae. He
-    has no intention of eating the acorn itself.
-
-    California blue oaks range in height from shrubs to trees of ninety
-    feet, with diameters of three or four feet. The average height is
-    about forty-five and the diameter two or less. The trunk frequently
-    divides a few feet from the ground into large limbs. That form
-    excludes the wood from sawmills, and only in rare cases does any of
-    it find its way there. The lumber is of poor quality, brittle,
-    black, and otherwise defective. The sapwood is white and thick. A
-    cubic foot weighs 55.64 pounds, or nearly ten more than eastern
-    white oak. It is weak, and is low in elasticity. The annual rings
-    are often nearly invisible, because the pores are scattered evenly
-    and do not form bands. The medullary rays are broad, in the heart
-    black, in the sapwood white. If the wood were otherwise suitable,
-    pleasing effects might be produced by quarter-sawing, but as far as
-    known, no attempts have been made to do this. Now and then a
-    suitable log might be found. The importance of this oak lies in its
-    fuel value. It rates above white oak in theoretical tests, but it is
-    heavier in ash, and in practice it hardly measures up to white oak.
-    It grows slowly and is destined to disappear as a source of fuel
-    supply. Reproduction has nearly ceased in most parts of its range,
-    due largely to the perseverance of hogs in eating the acorns.
-    Cordwood cutters have stripped the last tree from large areas where
-    much once grew. This oak never forms forests. The trees seldom grow
-    as close together as apple trees in an orchard.
-
-    GAMBEL OAK (_Quercus gambelii_) was destined by nature to occupy an
-    inferior place in the country's timber resources. It occupies a
-    region of stunted vegetation among the dry mountains and plateaus of
-    the Southwest, and except where it grows in better situations than
-    usual, it is too small to be properly called a tree. It is at its
-    best among the mountains of southeastern Arizona where it grows in
-    canyons that can maintain a little damp soil. There it occasionally
-    reaches a height of thirty feet and a diameter of a foot or less. In
-    most other parts of its range it is simply a tangled, sprawling
-    thicket of brush, covering the dry, rocky mountain ridges, and along
-    the bases of cliffs. It is found from Colorado to western Texas, and
-    westward into Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. The leaves are small,
-    thick, firm, and hairy, typical of desert foliage which must husband
-    the scant water supply. The acorns are pretty large for a tree so
-    stunted, and they are tempting bait for birds and rodents of the
-    region. The acorns are sweet. If this oak's reproduction depended on
-    acorns alone it is doubtful if it would hold its ground in the face
-    of perpetual adversity; but its roots send up distorted and stunted
-    sprouts which cover the ground, affording hiding places for the few
-    acorns which escape their hungry enemies. Man puts this oak to few
-    uses. It affords a pretty good class of fuel for camp fires, but
-    cordwood cutters cannot make much out of it. In rare instances
-    frontier ranches use a few of the unshapely poles for corral fences,
-    but only as a case of last resort. The names bestowed upon the tree
-    by those who know it best are uncomplimentary. They call it shin
-    oak, pin oak, scrub oak, mountain oak, and Rocky Mountain oak.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-FORKED-LEAF WHITE OAK
-
-[Illustration: FORKED-LEAF WHITE OAK]
-
-
-
-
-FORKED-LEAF WHITE OAK
-
-(_Quercus Lyrata_)
-
-
-The leaf gives this tree its name in the best part of its southern
-range. The tree bears much resemblance to the bur oak on the one hand,
-and swamp white oak on the other. The names by which it is known in
-different regions indicate as much.
-
-In North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi,
-Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Illinois it is commonly known as
-overcup; in Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and
-Missouri it is called the swamp post oak; the name water white oak is
-applied to it in Mississippi and parts of South Carolina; swamp white
-oak in Texas; forked-leaf white oak among lumbermen in several of the
-southern states. The last name scarcely describes the leaf, for no one
-is apt to notice any fork, unless his attention is called to it. The
-fact is, the name forked-leaf oak is applied oftener to the turkey oak
-(_Quercus catesbaei_) than to this one. However, since the ranges of the
-two species are not the same, misunderstandings in practice are not apt
-to arise as to which is meant when the forked leaf is referred to. The
-fact that turkey oak belongs in the black oak group, ripening its acorns
-in two years, and this one is a white oak with one year acorns, is of
-further assistance in keeping the species separate.
-
-The range of the forked-leaf white oak is from Maryland, along the
-Potomac river near the District of Columbia, southward to parts of
-Florida; westward through the Gulf states to the Trinity river in Texas;
-throughout Arkansas, sections of Missouri, central Tennessee, southern
-Illinois and Indiana.
-
-It shows preference for river swamps, and small deep depressions in rich
-bottom lands where moisture is always abundant. It has never amounted to
-much in the Atlantic states, and its best development is found in the
-moist, fertile valley of Red river in Louisiana, and in certain parts of
-Arkansas and Texas. Its geographical range is pretty large, but as a
-timber tree it is confined to a comparatively restricted region west of
-the Mississippi. Good trees are found in other parts of its range.
-Lumbermen do not find it in extensive forests or pure stands, but
-isolated trees or small groups occur with other hardwoods.
-
-This species of oak grows occasionally to a height of 100 feet, though
-its average is about seventy feet. It has a trunk two to three feet in
-diameter, which spreads out after attaining a height of fifteen or
-twenty feet, into small, often pendulous branches, forming a symmetrical
-round top. The branchlets are green, slightly tinged with red; covered
-with short hairs when first appearing, becoming grayish and shiny during
-their first winter, eventually turning ashen gray or brown.
-
-The bark is three-quarters or one inch thick, light gray in color,
-shedding in thick plates, its surface being divided into thin scales.
-The winter buds are about one-eighth of an inch long and have light
-colored scales. The staminate flowers grow in long, slender, hairy
-spikes from four to six inches long; the calyx is light yellow and
-hairy. The pistillate flowers are stalked and are also covered with
-hairs.
-
-The fruit of forked-leaf white oak is often on slender, fuzzy stems,
-sometimes an inch or more in length, but is often closely attached to
-the twig that bears it; the acorn is about one inch long, broad at the
-base, light brown and covered with short, light hairs, and usually
-almost entirely enclosed in the deep, spherical cup, which is bright
-reddish-brown on its inside surface, and covered on the outside with
-scales; thickened at the base, becoming thinner and forming an irregular
-edge at the margin of the cup. The cup often almost completely envelopes
-the acorn. The fruit then looks somewhat like a rough, nearly spherical
-button.
-
-This oak's leaves are long and slender, and are divided in from five to
-nine lobes. When the leaves unfold they are brownish green and hairy
-above and below; at maturity they are thin and firm, darker green and
-shiny on the upper surface, silvery or light green and hairy below; from
-seven to eight inches long, one to four inches broad; in autumn turning
-a beautiful bright scarlet or vivid orange.
-
-Commercially this wood is a white oak, and it is seldom or never sent to
-market under its own name. There are no statistics of cut at the mills
-or of stand in the forests. Lumbermen take the tree when they come to it
-in the course of their usual operations, but never go out of their way
-to get it. Though rather large stands occur in certain southern regions,
-and scattering trees are found in large areas, the total quantity in the
-country is known to be too small to give this tree an important place as
-a source of lumber. Neither is there expectation that the future has
-anything in store for this particular member of the tribe of oaks. The
-wood rates high in physical properties; is strong as white oak, if not
-stronger, tough, stiff, hard, and heavy. In contact with the ground it
-is very durable. The heartwood is rich, dark brown, the sapwood lighter.
-
-It may be said, generally, that since it goes to market as white oak,
-and its buyers never object, it possesses the essential properties of
-that wood, and is used in the same way as far as it is used at all.
-
-ARIZONA WHITE OAK (_Quercus arizonica_) is the common and most generally
-distributed white oak of southern New Mexico and Arizona where it
-covers the hillsides and occurs in canyons at altitudes from 5,000 to
-10,000 feet above sea level. It occasionally ascends nearly or quite to
-the summits of the highest peaks. The form of the tree varies greatly,
-as might be expected from a range extending from one to two miles above
-sea level. On the dry, windswept summits the tree degenerates into a
-shrub, with stiff, harsh branches. Lower down, in canyons and in other
-situations where moisture may be had and the soil is fertile, trunks are
-fifty or sixty feet high and three or four in diameter; but these are
-not the usual sizes even in the best of the tree's range, for it cannot
-be classed as a timber tree.
-
-The hardships of the desert have stunted it, and its form is rough. It
-is important for fuel, and this has been its chief use. The region where
-it occurs is thinly settled, and demand for lumber is small, but
-stockmen build corrals and fences to enclose sheep and cattle, and the
-Arizona white oak supplies some of the rough poles and posts for that
-purpose. The wood is heavy, hard, strong, and the heartwood is almost
-black, but the sapwood is lighter. The grain and figure of the wood are
-not attractive, and what little may be sawed into lumber in the future
-will be rather low-grade. The branches are crooked and when cut into
-cordwood the ricks are so open that it is a common saying in the region
-that "you can throw a dog through." The wood burns well, and the demand
-for fuel is large, in proportion to the population of the country.
-
-The leaves of this oak are sometimes slightly lobed, and are sometimes
-nearly as smooth as willow leaves. They are light red and covered with
-hair when they unfold in the spring, but when mature they are dark
-green, and shiny. Acorns are one inch or less in length, and rather
-slender. They are very bitter, and wild animals are inclined to let them
-alone, unless pressed by hunger, and then eat them sparingly. This
-insures good reproduction, provided other conditions are favorable.
-Though cordwood cutters may strip the large trees from the hills and
-canyons, scrub growth may be expected to continue, particularly on high
-mountains, and in ravines where roads cannot be built.
-
-    NETLEAF OAK (_Quercus reticulata_) will never attract lumbermen in
-    this country, but sometime they may send to the Sierra Madre
-    mountains of Mexico to procure it. In that region it is a tree large
-    enough for lumber; but the portion of its range overlapping on the
-    United States lies in southern Arizona and New Mexico among
-    mountains from 7,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level. Conditions are
-    unfavorable and the netleaf oak shows it by its stunted size and
-    rough form. The wood is hard, heavy, dark brown in color, with
-    lighter sapwood. The medullary rays are numerous and very broad. The
-    tree seldom exceeds forty feet in height and one foot in diameter.
-    The leaf is netted somewhat like that of the elm. The acorn is
-    usually not more than half an inch in length.
-
-    ROCKY MOUNTAIN OAK (_Quercus undulata_) bears acorns which may be
-    eaten like chestnuts, and not much more may be said for the tree in
-    the way of usefulness to man, though it is the salvation of some of
-    the small mammals of the bleak Texas and New Mexico hills where
-    there is little to eat and few places for concealment from hawks and
-    other enemies. The tree is also called scrub oak and shin oak. It
-    grows in Colorado, New Mexico, western Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and
-    Utah. At its best it rarely exceeds thirty feet high and a foot in
-    diameter, and it often forms a jungle of shrubs through which the
-    traveler must wade waist deep or go miles out of his way to pass
-    round it. Its leaf is one of the smallest of the oaks, and is
-    notched much like the chestnut leaf.
-
-    ALVORD OAK (_Quercus alvordiana_) is little known and will probably
-    never be of much importance. It grows in the region of Tehachapi
-    mountains, the northern border of the Mojave desert, in California,
-    and was named for William Alvord of that state. The leaf is toothed,
-    and the acorn smooth. No record has been found of any use of the
-    wood, and when Sudworth compiled his book, "Forest Trees of the
-    Pacific Slope," he was unable to procure enough leaves, flowers, and
-    fruit to enable him to give a botanical description. It may
-    therefore be regarded as one of the scarcest oaks in the United
-    States, which fact gives it a certain interest.
-
-    SADLER OAK (_Quercus sadleriana_) is one of the minor oaks of the
-    Pacific coast, and is popularly and properly called scrub oak by
-    those who encounter it on high, dry slopes of northern California
-    and southern Oregon mountains, from 4,000 to 9,000 feet above the
-    sea. It forms dense thickets, and passes for an evergreen. Its
-    leaves remain on the branches only thirteen months. The leaves are
-    toothed like those of chestnut. The acorns are matured in one
-    season. The name Sadler oak was given it in honor of a Scottish
-    botanist. Trees are too scarce and too small to have much value,
-    except as a ground cover.
-
-    BREWER OAK (_Quercus breweri_) grows on the west slope of the Sierra
-    Nevada mountains in California, from Kaweah river northward to
-    Trinity mountains. It is often little more than a shrub, and its
-    usefulness to man lies less in the quantity of wood it produces than
-    in the protection the dense thickets, with their network of roots,
-    afford steep hillsides. Gullying in time of heavy rain cannot take
-    place where this oak's matted masses of roots bind the soil. Sprouts
-    rise freely from the roots, and thickets are reproduced in that way
-    rather than from acorns, although in certain years crops of acorns
-    are bountiful. The trunks are too small to make any kind of lumber,
-    but are capable of supplying considerable quantities of fuel.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-POST OAK
-
-[Illustration: POST OAK]
-
-
-
-
-POST OAK
-
-(_Quercus Minor_)
-
-
-Post oak is the most common name for this tree but various sections of
-its range have given it their own names which probably have local
-significance. The following names are in use in the localities denoted:
-post oak in the eastern and Gulf states, Connecticut to Texas, and in
-Arkansas and West Virginia; box white oak in Rhode Island; iron oak in
-Delaware, Mississippi and Nebraska; chene etoile in Quebec; overcup oak
-in Florida; white oak in Kentucky and Indiana; box oak and brash oak in
-Maryland.
-
-Toward the northern portion of the range of this tree it is small, and
-in early times it was little used except for fence posts. Its durability
-fitted it for that use, and it is said the common name was due to that
-circumstance. The name iron oak was used by shipbuilders who sometimes
-bought small knees made of this wood. Baltimore oak was an early name
-which is not now in use. It was generally applied to white oak, but it
-included some post oak shipped from the Chesapeake bay region.
-
-Post oak is botanically and commercially a white oak and is seldom
-distinguished from the true white oak, _Quercus alba_, in commerce. It
-is seen at its best in the uplands of the Mississippi basin and in the
-Gulf states west of the Mississippi, where it attains a considerable
-size. In the northeastern states and in Florida it is small, becoming
-shrubby in some localities, and more or less of local growth. Limestone
-uplands or dry, sandy or gravelly soils seem to offer the best
-conditions for its existence, where it grows in company with black jack,
-red and white oak, sassafras, dogwood, gums, and red cedar.
-
-The range of growth of post oak extends from New Brunswick south through
-the Atlantic states into Florida; west through the Gulf states and
-throughout the Mississippi river system, growing west brokenly to
-Montana. It is the common oak of central Texas but in the North it is
-rather scarce, becoming more plentiful in the lower Appalachians.
-
-The broad, dense, round-topped crown of the post oak with its peculiar
-foliage make it very noticeable in the woods, even to the casual
-observer. Its dark green looks almost black at a distance. The tree has
-an average height of sixty or eighty feet and is about two feet in
-diameter, but in exceptional cases it reaches one hundred feet in height
-and has a diameter of three feet. It has a moderately thick, dark brown
-bark with a reddish tinge and deep fissures, the broad ridges being
-covered with thin scales. On the branches it becomes much thinner, and
-lighter in color, the branchlets being unfissured and glabrous in the
-second year, although fuzzy at first. They are rather heavy and rounded
-and terminate in short round buds with conspicuous scales. A noticeable
-feature of the tree is the peculiar branching. The limbs are heavy and
-crooked, separating often, with wide angles, forming knees which when
-big enough, have a commercial value.
-
-When the tree is in foliage the tufted appearance of the leaves grouped
-on the ends of the twigs gives it a distinctive look. They bear some
-resemblance to a star, and for that reason some botanists have named the
-species _stellata_. The leaves are five or seven inches long usually,
-but in some cases, especially on young specimens, they are ten or more
-inches long. They are dark, shiny-green and on a short petiole, the
-veins and midrib being heavy and conspicuous. The identification of
-these leaves is easy as they are heavy in texture, are bilaterally
-developed with a large, obtuse lobe on each side about in the middle,
-giving them a maltese cross effect. They are very persistent, staying on
-the tree until the new leaves push them off in the spring.
-
-The form of post oak is not ideal from the lumberman's viewpoint. The
-tree does not prune itself well. Straggling limbs adhere to the trunk
-and prevent the clean bole which often makes white oak so attractive.
-
-The wood weighs 52.14 pounds per cubic foot. The name iron oak referred
-to the weight as well as the strength of the wood. It is rather
-difficult to season, and is inclined to check badly. The medullary rays
-are broad and numerous, and checking is apt to develop along the rays.
-The summerwood occupies about half of the annual ring, and is dense and
-dark colored. Large pores are abundant in the springwood, and smaller
-ones in the summerwood.
-
-Formerly this tree was known in some sections as turkey oak, though the
-name is no longer heard, but is now applied to another oak in the South.
-The acorns are small enough to be eaten by turkeys, and when those game
-birds were wild in the woods they frequented parts of the forests where
-post oaks grew, and hunters knew where to find them. The uses of post
-oak for building and manufacturing purposes are the same as for white
-oak as far as they go, but post oak is not so extensively employed.
-
-The earliest railroads in America were built in the region where post
-oak of excellent quality grew, and it saw service from the first as
-crossties, and car and bridge timbers. It is still used for those
-purposes. Its other important uses are as furniture material, both as
-solid stock and veneer; interior finish and fixtures for offices, banks,
-and stores; musical instruments, including frames, braces, and veneers;
-baskets, crates, and shipping boxes; vehicles, particularly tongues,
-axles, and hounds of heavy wagons; flooring, stair work, balusters.
-
-Post oak will do well on land too gravelly and thin to sustain good
-white oak growth. To that extent the two species are not competitors for
-ground, and post oak is assured a place in future woodlots, but it
-cannot be expected ever to equal white oak in commercial importance,
-while as an ornamental tree it is not usually favored because the shape
-of its crown is not altogether pleasing. Its very dark foliage, however,
-is admired by many and gives the tree an individuality.
-
-SWAMP WHITE OAK (_Quercus platanoides_). This tree's botanical name
-means "broadleaf oak," and that is a good description as far as it goes,
-but it does not apply solely to this species. The characteristic which
-fixes it best in the minds of most people is its preference for low, wet
-soil. Its two common names are swamp oak and swamp white oak, yet it is
-not really a swamp tree, such as the northern white cedar, southern
-white cedar, cypress, and tupelo are. It does not associate with any of
-those trees. It prefers river banks, and does not object to a good deal
-of water about its roots, though it grows nicely in situations out of
-reach of all overflow, and often side by side with silver maple,
-hickory, ash, and several other oaks. The leaf resembles that of
-chestnut oak, and the bark is somewhat like chestnut oak, but the wood
-passes in market for white oak, and is a good substitute for it, though
-the resemblance is not so close that one need be mistaken for the other.
-The tree averages about seventy feet high with a diameter of two feet,
-but much larger trunks are common. The famous "Wadsworth oak," which
-stood on the bank of the Genesee river in western New York, about a mile
-from the village of Geneseo, was a swamp white oak. It had a trunk
-diameter of nine feet, but it was not tall in proportion. It met its
-overthrow by the undermining of the river bank in time of flood. That is
-a common fate for this tree, because of its preference for river banks.
-Its range is from Maine to Wisconsin and Iowa. It follows the mountains
-to northern Georgia; and west of the Mississippi it grows as far south
-as Arkansas. The species is best developed in western New York,
-northwestern Pennsylvania, and along the southern shores of Lakes Erie
-and Michigan.
-
-Trees do not clear themselves of branches on their lower trunks very
-early in life, and lumber more or less knotty results. It is possible,
-however, to cut a fairly large proportion of clear boards. The wood is
-of about the same weight as white oak, and is hard, strong, and tough.
-Its color is light brown, and the thin sapwood is hardly distinguishable
-from the heart. The medullary rays are as large as those of white oak,
-but are few. For that reason, swamp white oak does not give very
-satisfactory results when quarter-sawed. The bright patches are too
-scarce. Neither does it show as many of these rays as chestnut oak. The
-wood is very porous, but the large pores are confined to the springwood,
-while the broad bands of summerwood are dense. The contrast between the
-two parts of annual rings forms a strong, but not particularly handsome
-figure when the lumber is sawed tangentially--that is, from the side of
-the log. The wood finisher can improve this oak's natural appearance by
-employing fillers and stains to lighten shades or deepen tints. The uses
-of this oak are numerous. It is excellent fuel, and is rather low in
-ash; it is weaker and more brittle than white oak; but it is quite
-satisfactory for railroad ties, car building, house finish, furniture,
-some parts of heavy vehicles, certain kinds of cooperage, and for farm
-implements.
-
-    ROCKY MOUNTAIN BLUE OAK (_Quercus oblongifolia_) is named from the
-    blue color of its foliage, though what little lumber is cut from it,
-    is bought and sold as white oak. It is of little importance, yet in
-    the almost timberless mountains of western Texas it supplies some of
-    the urgent wants of a scattered population. It bears willow-like
-    leaves one or two inches long, and less than an inch wide; but on
-    vigorous shoots they are larger. The acorns are very small. Trees
-    seldom exceed thirty feet in height, and a diameter of twenty
-    inches; and often the trunk is divided near the ground in three or
-    four stout, crooked forks. Ordinarily, it is an impossible tree to
-    lumber, but sometimes a few logs find their way to sawmills and a
-    little passable lumber is produced. The wood weighs 58 pounds per
-    cubic foot. It is strong, but when it breaks, it snaps short. The
-    heartwood is darker than in most oaks, and the sapwood is brown. The
-    tree is useful for fuel. Charcoal for local blacksmith shops is
-    manufactured from the wood. It is abundant on many of the sterile
-    slopes and mesas of New Mexico and Arizona, but usually in the form
-    of brush about the heads of canyons.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-COW OAK
-
-[Illustration: COW OAK]
-
-
-
-
-COW OAK
-
-(_Quercus Michauxii_)
-
-
-This oak's acorns are remarkably free from the bitterness due to tannin
-and are therefore pleasant to the taste. Herbivorous animals eat them
-when they are to be had, and the eagerness with which cattle gather them
-in the fall is doubtless the reason for calling the tree cow oak. Hogs
-and sheep are as eager hunters for the acorns as cattle are, and the
-half-wild swine in the southern forests become marketable during the two
-months of the acorn season. Children know the excellency of the cow oak
-acorns, and gather them in large quantities during the early weeks of
-autumn in the South. The tree is widely known as basket oak, and the
-name refers to a prevailing use for the wood in early times, and a
-rather common use yet. Long before anyone had made a study of the
-structure of this wood, it was learned that it splits nicely into long,
-slender bands, and these were employed by basket weavers for all sorts
-of wares in that line. Tens of thousands of baskets were in use before
-the war in the southern cottonfields, and they have not gone out of use
-there yet. It is safe to say that millions of dollars worth of cotton
-has been picked and "toted" in baskets made of this oak. It was natural,
-therefore, that the name basket oak should be given it. Large, coarse
-baskets are still made of splits of this wood, and china and other
-merchandise are packed in them; while baskets of finer pattern and
-workmanship are doing service about the farms and homes of thousands of
-people.
-
-When the structure of wood became a subject of study among
-dendrologists, the secret of the cow oak's adaptability to basket making
-was discovered. The annual rings of growth are broad, and the bands of
-springwood and summerwood are distinct. The springwood is so perforated
-with large pores that it contains comparatively little real wood
-substance. The early basket maker did not notice that but he found by
-experimenting that the wood split along the rings of growth into fine
-ribbons. The splitting occurs along the springwood. Ribbons may be
-pulled off as thin as the rings of annual growth, that is, from an
-eighth to a sixteenth of an inch thick. These are the "splits" of which
-baskets are made. When subjected to rough usage, such as being dragged
-and hauled about cornfields and cotton plantations, such a basket will
-outlast two or three of willow.
-
-The tree is sometimes called swamp white oak, and swamp chestnut oak. It
-bears some resemblance to the swamp white oak (_Quercus platanoides_)
-and some people believe that both are of one species, but of slightly
-different forms. It is not surprising that there should be a conflict of
-names and confusion in identification. The leaf resembles that of the
-chestnut oak, and to that fact is due the belief which some hold that
-the chief difference between the trees is that the chestnut oak
-(_Quercus prinus_) grows on dry land and cow oak in damp situations.
-Botanists make a clear distinction between cow oak and all other
-species, though it closely resembles some of them in several
-particulars.
-
-From the northern limits of its growth in Delaware, where it is not of
-any considerable size, it extends south through the Atlantic states and
-into Florida, west in the Gulf states to the Trinity river in Texas, and
-up the Mississippi valley, including in its range Arkansas, eastern
-Missouri, southern Indiana and Illinois and western Kentucky and
-Tennessee. It is distinctly of the South and may be considered the best
-southern representative of the white oak group. It does best in swampy
-localities where it is found in company with water hickory, sweet
-magnolia, planer tree, water oak, willow oak, red maple, and red and
-black gum.
-
-In general appearance the tree gives the impression of massiveness and
-strength, offset by the delicate, silvery effect of the bark and the
-lining of the foliage. The usual height is sixty or eighty feet, but it
-often exceeds a hundred feet, the bole attaining a diameter of as high
-as seven feet and showing three log lengths clear. The characteristic
-light gray, scaly, white oak bark covers trunk and heavy limbs, which
-rise at narrow angles, forming a rounded head and dividing into stout
-branches and twigs. The winter buds are not characteristic of white oak,
-being long and pointed rather than rounded. They are about a half inch
-in length, scaly, with red hairs and usually in threes on the ends of
-the twigs. The general texture of the leaves is thick and heavy, their
-upper surfaces being dark, lustrous green and the lower white and
-covered with hairs. They are from five to seven inches long with
-petioles an inch in length and of the general outline of the chestnut
-leaf. Their rich crimson color is conspicuous in the fall after turning.
-
-The wood of cow oak is hard, heavy, very tough, strong, and durable. The
-heartwood is light brown, the sapwood darker colored. It weighs 50.10
-pounds per cubic foot, and is not quite up to white oak in strength and
-elasticity. In quarter-sawing it does not equal white oak, because the
-medullary rays, though broad, are not regularly distributed, and the
-surface of the quarter-sawed board has a splotchy appearance, and it is
-not as easy to match figures as with white oak.
-
-Cow oak is one of the most important hardwoods of the South. Its uses
-are much the same as those for white oak farther north. The custom of
-calling it white oak when it goes to market renders the collection of
-statistics of uses difficult. Sawmills seldom or never list cow oak in
-making reports of cut. Factories which further manufacture lumber, after
-it leaves the mill, sometimes distinguish between cow oak and other
-oaks. It has been found suitable material in the South for canthook
-handles where it takes the place of hickory which is more expensive. It
-is reported for that use in considerable quantity in Louisiana. The
-handles are subjected to great strain and violent shocks. The billets
-are split to the proper size, because if they are sawed they are liable
-to contain cross grain which is a fatal defect. The wood is cut in
-dimensions for chair stock and furniture, the better grades usually
-going to furniture factories. Defective logs, short lengths, and odds
-and ends may be worked into chair stock which contains a large
-proportion of small pieces. The making of large plantation baskets of
-this wood is still a fairly large business in Louisiana and Mississippi.
-Braided bottoms of cheap chairs are of the same workmanship as baskets.
-
-Vehicle makers in the South are large users of this wood. It is employed
-in heavy wagons chiefly, and is worked into many parts, including axles,
-bolsters, felloes, hubs, hounds, tongues, reaches, spokes, and
-bedbottoms.
-
-This tree is classed as white oak by coopers who accept it as stave
-material. The amount used is much less than of the true white oak, but
-the exact quantity taken yearly by barrel makers is not known because
-statistics do not list the different white oaks separately. Cow oak
-rives well when a trunk is found clear of knots. The trees are usually
-smaller and less perfect than true white oak in the North.
-
-Railroads accept crossties of this species and they give as long service
-as white oak, are as hard, and hold spikes as well. The wood is accepted
-by car shops for use in repairs and in new work. Trunks are split or
-sawed into fence posts and are used in probably larger numbers than any
-other southern oak.
-
-This tree's future seems fairly well assured. It will further decline in
-available supply, because it is cut faster than it is growing. That is
-the status of all the timber oaks of this country. This one has
-advantage over some of the others in that it occupies wet land which
-will not soon be in demand for agricultural purposes, and young growth
-will be left to develop.
-
-    ENGELMANN OAK (_Quercus engelmanni_) occupies a restricted range in
-    southwestern California where it is generally spoken of as a desert
-    tree; but its rate of growth appears to be much more rapid than is
-    usual with trees in arid situations. It occupies a narrow belt in
-    San Diego county and its range extends into Lower California. It
-    forms about one-third of the stand in Palomar mountains, and is much
-    scarcer in the Cuyamaca mountains. The tree seldom attains a height
-    greater than forty or fifty feet, or a diameter more than twenty or
-    thirty inches. The largest trees are of small value for lumber and
-    in rare instances only, if at all, do they go to sawmills. The
-    trunks fork and each branch forks, until a fairly large bole near
-    the ground is divided among numerous limbs. The tree's chief value
-    is as fuel. It rates high as such. The leaves are bluish-green and
-    are thick with sharp points on their margins. The leaves vary
-    greatly in size, and are largest on young shoots. They remain a year
-    on the tree, and are classed as evergreen. The acorns ripen in one
-    year. This interesting species was named for Dr. George Engelmann,
-    whose name is borne also by Engelmann spruce. The wood is among the
-    heaviest of the oaks, exceeding white oak by more than twelve pounds
-    per cubic foot. It is brittle and weak, and very dark brown. The
-    green wood checks and warps badly in seasoning. The medullary rays
-    are numerous and large, but are so irregularly dispersed that
-    quarter-sawing promises no satisfactory results, even if logs of
-    suitable size could be found. The annual rings are indistinct, owing
-    to no clear line of separation between springwood and summerwood.
-    Pores are numerous, diffuse, and some of them large. The species is
-    entitled to recognition only because it is found in a region where
-    forests are scarce and scrubby, and every trunk has value as fuel,
-    if for nothing else. It affords a cover for hills which otherwise
-    would be barren, and it frequently occurs in fairly dense thickets.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PACIFIC POST OAK
-
-[Illustration: PACIFIC POST OAK]
-
-
-
-
-PACIFIC POST OAK
-
-(_Quercus Garryana_)
-
-
-David Douglas named this tree the Garry oak, in honor of Nicholas Garry
-of the Hudson Bay Company, who furnished valuable assistance to
-botanists and other explorers of early times in the northwestern parts
-of America. This tree is best developed in the neighborhood of Puget
-Sound, the present state of Washington, and at the period of
-explorations in that region by Douglas, who was a Scotchman, the country
-was a sort of "no man's land." It was claimed by both England and the
-United States, and Russia had cast covetous eyes on it as a southern
-extension of her Alaska holdings. England at that time put a good deal
-of dependence in the Hudson Bay Company to get possession of and to hold
-as much country as possible, and Garry's help given to explorers was
-part of a well-laid plan to possess as much of the northwestern country
-as possible. Douglas doubtless had that in mind when he named the oak in
-honor of Garry. It was a witness and perpetual reminder that the Hudson
-Bay Company's strong arms had been stretched in that direction.
-
-The people in California and Oregon often speak of the tree simply as
-white oak, but it is sometimes called Oregon white oak, and more often
-Oregon oak without a qualifying word. When it is spoken of as western
-white oak, which frequently is the case, it is compared with the
-well-known eastern white oak. It bears more resemblance to the eastern
-post oak (_Quercus minor_) and for that reason it has been named Pacific
-post oak. The leaves and twigs, particularly when they are young,
-resemble post oak.
-
-The northern limit of the tree's range crosses southern British
-Columbia. It is found in the lower valley of Frazer river and on
-Vancouver island. It is the only oak tree of British Columbia. Its range
-extends southward to the Santa Cruz mountains in California, but near
-the southern limit of its range it is found chiefly in valleys near the
-coast. It is best developed in western Washington and Oregon. It occurs
-of good size on dry gravelly slopes of low hills; and it ascends the
-Cascade mountains to considerable elevations, but becomes stunted and
-shrubby. It is abundant in northwestern California.
-
-The tree has a height from sixty to a hundred feet; sometimes it attains
-a diameter of three and one-half feet. It carries a broad and compact
-crown, especially when the tree is surrounded by young coniferous growth
-as is the case in its best habitat where natural pruning gets rid of the
-lower limbs and causes an outward and later a pendulous growth of the
-upper part. The limbs are strong and heavy as are the branches and
-twigs. The bark is a grayish-brown with shallow fissures, the broad
-ridges being sometimes broken across forming square plates which are
-covered with the grayish flakes or scales. The buds are long and acute,
-and are coated with a red fuzz. The leaves are from four to six inches
-long and are bilaterally developed, having seven or nine coarse round
-lobes; the sinuses being rounded or rather shallow. The color is a dark
-lustrous green and the texture leathery.
-
-The acorn is rather large being about an inch and a quarter in length
-and usually about half as broad as long; has a shallow cup covered with
-pointed sometimes elongated scales.
-
-This oak is one of the most important hardwoods of the far Northwest. It
-is often compared with the eastern white oak, but its physical
-properties fall below that species in some important particulars. The
-two woods weigh about the same, but the eastern species is stronger and
-more elastic, and is of better color and figure. All oaks season
-somewhat slowly, but the Pacific post oak is hardly up to the average.
-It is a common saying that it must remain two years on the sticks to fit
-it for the shop, but that time may be shortened in many instances.
-Checking must be carefully guarded against.
-
-Some of this oak is exceedingly tough, and when carefully sorted and
-prepared it is excellent material for heavy wagons; but the best comes
-from young and comparatively small trees. When they attain large size
-they are apt to become brash. The tree usually grows rapidly, and is not
-old in proportion to the size of its trunk. An examination of the wood
-shows broad bands of summerwood and narrow, very porous springwood. The
-medullary rays are broad and numerous, and ought to show well in
-quarter-sawed stock; but it does not appear that much quarter-sawing has
-been done.
-
-Practically all of this species cut in the United States is credited to
-Oregon in the census of sawmill output in 1910. The cut was 2,887,000
-feet, and was produced by fourteen sawmills, while in Washington only
-one mill reported any oak, and the quantity was only 4,000 feet. On the
-northwest Pacific coast it comes in competition with eastern oak and
-also with Siberian or Japanese oak.
-
-Basket makers put this wood to considerable use. Young trees are
-selected on account of their toughness. The wood is either split in
-long, thin ribbons for basket weaving, or it is first made into veneer
-and then cut in ribbons of required width. The largest users are
-furniture makers, but boat yards find it convenient material and it
-takes the place of imported oak for frames, keels, ribs, sills, and
-interior finish. It is durable, and it may be depended upon for long
-service in any part of boat construction. Its toughness fits it for ax,
-hammer, and other handles. It is far inferior to hickory, but on the
-Pacific coast it can be had much cheaper. Its strength and durability
-make it one of the best western woods for insulator pins for telephone
-and telegraph lines. It is worked into saddle trees and stirrups.
-
-The scarcity of woods on the Pacific coast suitable for tight cooperage
-gives this oak a rather important place, because barrels and casks made
-of it hold alcoholic liquors. Available statistics do not show the
-quantity of staves produced from this wood, but it is known to be used
-for staves in Oregon.
-
-Much Pacific post oak is employed as rough lumber for various purposes.
-Railroads buy crossties, hewed or sawed from small trunks, and country
-bridges are occasionally floored with thick planks which wear well and
-offer great resistance to decay.
-
-The quantity of this oak growing in the Northwest is not known. It falls
-far below some of the softwoods of the same region, and the area on
-which it is found in commercial amounts is not large. It is holding its
-ground fairly well. Trees bear full crops of acorns frequently, and if
-they fall on damp humus they germinate and grow. The seedlings imitate
-the eastern white oak, and send tap roots deep into the ground, and are
-then prepared for fortune or adversity. It happens, however, that trees
-which bear the most bountiful crops of acorns do not stand in forests
-where the ground is damp and humus abundant, but on more open ground on
-grass covered slopes. Acorns which fall on sod seldom germinate, and
-consequently few seedlings are to be seen in such situations. Open-grown
-trees are poorly suited for lumber, on account of many limbs low on the
-trunks, but they grow large amounts of cordwood.
-
-    CALIFORNIA SCRUB OAK (_Quercus dumosa_) has been a puzzle to
-    botanists, and a hopeless enigma to laymen. Some would split the
-    species into no fewer than three species and three varieties, basing
-    distinctions on forms of leaves and acorns and other botanical
-    differences; but Sudworth, after a prolonged study of this matter,
-    recognized only one species and one variety, but admitted that
-    "California scrub oak unquestionably varies more than all other oaks
-    in the form and size of its leaves and acorns." He thought it might
-    possibly be equalled in that respect by _Quercus undulata_ of the
-    Rocky Mountains. Some of the leaves of California scrub oak are
-    three-fourths of an inch long and half an inch wide, while others
-    may be four inches long. The edges of some leaves are as briery as
-    the leaves of holly, others are comparatively smooth. The shapes and
-    sizes of acorns vary as much as the leaves. Some are long and
-    slender, others short and stocky. This peculiar oak is found only in
-    California, but it shows a disposition to advance as far as possible
-    into the sea, for it has gained a foothold on islands lying off the
-    California coast, and it there finds its most acceptable habitat. It
-    reaches its largest size in sheltered canyons on the islands, and
-    attains a height of twenty or twenty-five feet, and a diameter of a
-    foot or less. It is not large enough to win favor with lumbermen but
-    in its scrubby form it is abundant in many localities. It is
-    scattered over several thousand square miles, from nearly sea level
-    up to 7,000 feet in the mountains of southern California. It is
-    found scattered through the coast range and the Sierra Nevadas from
-    Mendocino county to Lower California, 700 miles or more. It grows
-    from sprouts and from acorns. The leaves adhere to the twigs
-    thirteen months, and fall after the new crop has appeared. The wood
-    is light brown, hard, and brittle. No use is made of it, except to a
-    small extent for fuel. On the mountains it grows in thickets
-    scarcely five feet high, but they cover the ground in dense jungles,
-    and the roots go deep in the ground. The species is valuable chiefly
-    for protection to steep slopes which would otherwise be without much
-    growth of any kind. Being low on the ground, forest fires are
-    particularly destructive to this oak; but its ability to send up
-    sprouts repairs the damage to some extent.
-
-    EMORY OAK (_Quercus emoryi_) grows among the mountains of western
-    Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, attains a height from thirty to
-    seventy feet, and a diameter from one to four. The largest size is
-    found only in sheltered canyons, while on high mountains and in
-    exposed situations the tree degenerates to a shrub. It always has a
-    crop of leaves. The old do not fall until the new appear. In shape,
-    the leaves somewhat resemble those of box elder. The acorns ripen
-    from June to September, the exact time depending upon the tree's
-    situation. Trunks large enough for use are not scarce, but the wood
-    is not of high class. Stair railing and balusters have been made of
-    it in Texas, but the appearance is rather poor. The grain is coarse,
-    the figure common, the color unsatisfactory. The heart is very dark,
-    but the tones are not uniform, and flat surfaces, such as boards and
-    panels, show streaks which are not sufficiently attractive to be
-    taken for figure. Trunks are apt to be full of black knots which mar
-    the appearance of the lumber. The medullary rays are numerous and
-    broad, and in quarter-sawing, the size and arrangement of the
-    "mirrors" are all that could be desired, but they have a decidedly
-    pink color which does not contrast very well with the rest of the
-    wood. The weight of this oak exceeds per cubic foot white oak, by
-    more than ten pounds; but it has scarcely half the strength or half
-    the elasticity of white oak. The springwood is filled with large
-    pores, the summerwood with smaller ones. It rates high as fuel, and
-    that is its chief value. Large quantities are cut for cordwood.
-    Railroad ties are made of it, and more or less goes into mines as
-    props and lagging. Stock ranches make fences, sheds, and corrals of
-    this oak, and live stock eats the acorns. The human inhabitants
-    likewise find the Emory oak acorn crop a source of food. Mexicans
-    gather them in large quantities and sell what they can spare. The
-    market for the acorns is found in towns in northwestern Mexico.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHESTNUT OAK
-
-[Illustration: CHESTNUT OAK]
-
-
-
-
-CHESTNUT OAK
-
-(_Quercus Prinus_)
-
-
-This tree is known as rock oak in New York; as rock chestnut oak in
-Massachusetts and Rhode Island; as rock oak and rock chestnut oak in
-Pennsylvania and Delaware; as tanbark oak and swampy chestnut oak in
-North Carolina and as rock chestnut oak and mountain oak in Alabama.
-
-There is a pretty general disposition to call this tree rock oak. The
-name refers to the hardness of the wood, and is not confined to this
-species. Other oaks are also given that name, and the adjective "rock"
-is applied to two or three species of elm which possess wood remarkable
-for its hardness. Cedar and pine are likewise in the class. In all of
-these classes "rock" is employed to denote hardness of wood. Iron as an
-adjective or ironwood as a noun is used in the same way for a number of
-trees. The name swampy chestnut oak as applied in some parts of the
-South to this tree, is hardly descriptive, for it is less a swamp tree
-than most of the oaks, though it does often grow along the banks of
-streams.
-
-Its distribution ranges from the coast of southern Maine and the Blue
-Hills of eastern Massachusetts southward to Delaware and the District of
-Columbia; along the Appalachian mountains to northern Georgia and
-Alabama; westward to the shores of Lake Champlain and the valley of the
-Genesee river, New York; along the northern shores of Lake Erie and to
-central Kentucky and Tennessee. It is rare and local in New England and
-Ontario, but plentiful on the banks of the lower Hudson river and on the
-Appalachian mountains from southern New York to Alabama. It reaches its
-best development in the region from West Virginia to North Carolina,
-pretty high on the ridges flanking the mountain ranges.
-
-Leaves are alternate, from five to nine inches long, with coarse teeth
-rounded at the top. At maturity, they are thick and firm, yellow-green
-and rather lustrous on the upper surface, paler and usually hairy
-beneath. In the autumn before falling, they turn a dull orange color or
-rusty-brown.
-
-The flowers appear in May and are solitary or paired on short spurs. The
-fruit or acorn is solitary or in pairs, one or two and one-half inches
-long, very lustrous and of a bright chestnut-brown color. The acorn cup
-is thin, downy-lined and covered with small scales. The kernel is sweet
-and edible. The bark of the chestnut oak is thin, smooth, purplish-brown
-and often lustrous on young stems and small branches, becoming a thick,
-dark, reddish-brown, or nearly black on old trunks, and divided into
-broad rounded ridges, separating on the surface into small, closely
-appressed scales. The bark of the tree is so dark in color and so deeply
-furrowed that it has often been mistaken for one of the black oak group,
-although its wavy leaf margins and annual fruit clearly differentiate it
-from those species. The bark of the chestnut oak is thicker and rougher
-on old trunks than on any other oak.
-
-The bark of chestnut oak has long been valuable for tanning. There is
-tannin in the bark of all oaks, and several of them contain it in paying
-quantities, but chestnut oak is more important to the leather industry
-than any other oak. In richness of tannin the tanbark oak of California
-occupies as high a place, but it is not supplying as much material as
-the eastern tree. Statistics showing the annual consumption of tanbark
-and tanning extracts in the United States, do not list the oaks
-separately, but it is well known that chestnut oak far surpasses all
-others in output. Hemlock bark is peeled in large quantities, but
-tanneries occasionally mix chestnut oak bark with it to lighten the deep
-red color imparted to leather when hemlock bark is the sole material
-employed.
-
-Large quantities of chestnut oak timber have been destroyed to procure
-the bark. Fortunately, it is a practice not much indulged in at present,
-because the wood now has value, but it formerly had little. It was then
-abandoned in the forest after the bark was peeled and hauled away. The
-same practice obtained with hemlock years ago. Much chestnut oak is
-still cut primarily for the bark, but the logs are worth hauling to
-sawmills, unless in remote districts.
-
-The chestnut oak is a vigorous tree and grows rapidly in dry soil, where
-it often forms a great part of the forest. It is not as large as the
-white oak or red oak, but is a splendid tree, its bole being very
-symmetrical and holding its size well. It grows usually to a height of
-from sixty to seventy feet and sometimes 100 feet, with a diameter of
-from two to five feet and occasionally as large as seven feet.
-
-The form of the tree shows great variation, depending upon the situation
-in which it grows. Trees in open ground often divide into forks or large
-limbs, and the trunks are short and of poor form. Open-grown trees show
-a decided tendency to develop crooked boles, and unduly large branches.
-No such objection can be urged against it when it grows under forest
-conditions. Trunks are straight and are otherwise of good form.
-
-The wood of chestnut oak differs little from that of white oak in
-weight, strength, and stiffness. It is hard, rather tough, durable in
-contact with the soil, and is darker in color than white oak. It has
-few large, open pores, and requires less filler in finishing than most
-oaks. There are many pores, however, and those in the springwood are
-arranged in bands. The summerwood is broad and distinct, usually
-constituting three-fourths of the annual ring. The medullary rays are as
-broad and numerous as in the best furniture oaks. They are regularly
-arranged, and spaces between them do not vary much in width. The wood
-quarter-saws well.
-
-The wood has the fault of checking badly in seasoning, unless carefully
-attended to. In recent years, these difficulties have been largely
-overcome, both in air seasoning and in the drykiln.
-
-Chestnut oak has a wide range of uses. It is classed as white oak in
-many markets, but few users buy it believing it to be true white oak. It
-is coming year by year to stand more on its own merits. Some sawmills
-which formerly piled it and sold it with other oaks, now keep it
-separate, and some factories which once took it only because it came
-mixed with other oaks, now buy it for special uses, and make high-class
-commodities of it. One of these is mission furniture, which has become
-fashionable in recent years. Chestnut oak possesses good fuming
-properties, and this constitutes much of its value as furniture
-material.
-
-The wood is found in factories where general furniture is made. It is
-largely frame material for furniture though some of it is for outside
-finish. It is employed as frames in Maryland in the construction of
-canal boats, and the annual demand for that purpose is about a quarter
-of a million feet in that state.
-
-One of the most important places for chestnut oak is in the shop which
-makes vehicles. It goes into sills for both heavy and light bodies,
-bolsters, and wagon bottoms. It has become a favorite wagon wood in
-England and in continental Europe, and there passes as white oak, though
-dealers well know that it is not the true white oak. There is no
-indication that demand for it will lessen, for it possesses many
-characters which fit it for vehicle making.
-
-In Michigan more chestnut oak is reported by car builders than by any
-other class of manufacturers, though wagon makers buy it. Car shops use
-about 220,000 feet a year, and work it into hand cars, push cars,
-track-laying cars, and cattle guards.
-
-The large remaining area of timber growth in which chestnut oak appears
-is the Appalachian range through eastern Tennessee and western North
-Carolina, and the fact that it is comparatively plentiful in the forests
-of the Appalachian range will tend to bring it more and more into
-prominence as a factor in the making of wagons, cars, boats, staves, and
-furniture as the other oaks become scarcer.
-
-The probable future of chestnut oak is an interesting problem for
-study. Few steps have yet been taken looking toward providing for
-generations to come. Chestnut oak has been left to take care of itself.
-The trees, produced in nature's way, have been ample to supply all needs
-in the past, and they will be for the near future. Chestnut oak
-possesses some advantages over most of the other oaks. Large trees will
-grow on very poor soil, where most other oaks are little more than
-shrubs. Trees so grown are little more susceptible to disease than if
-produced in good soil, though they develop more slowly and are smaller.
-There are many poor flats and sterile ridges in the chestnut oak's
-range, and they will produce timber of fairly good kind, if the chestnut
-oaks are permitted to have them. Nature gave this tree facilities for
-taking possession. Its acorns will grow without being buried. They do
-not depend on blue jays to carry them to sunny openings or squirrels to
-plant them; but they will sprout where they fall, whether on hard
-gravelly soil or dry leaves; and they at once set about getting the tap
-roots of the future trees into the ground. In many instances the
-chestnut oak's acorns do not wait to fall from the tree before they
-sprout. Like the seed of the Florida mangrove, they are often ready to
-take root the day they touch the ground. The large acorn is stored with
-plantfood which sustains the growing germ for some time, and the ground
-must be very hard and exceedingly dry if a young chestnut oak is not
-soon firmly established, and good for two or three hundred years, if let
-alone.
-
-The forester who may undertake to grow chestnut oaks must exercise great
-care in transplanting the seedlings, or the tap roots will be broken and
-the young trees will die. The best plan is to drop acorns on the ground
-where trees are expected to grow, and nature will do the rest, provided
-birds and beasts leave the acorns alone.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHINQUAPIN OAK
-
-[Illustration: CHINQUAPIN OAK]
-
-
-
-
-CHINQUAPIN OAK
-
-(_Quercus Acuminata_)
-
-
-This tree is known as yellow chestnut oak, chinquapin oak, chestnut oak,
-pin oak, yellow oak, scrub oak, dwarf chestnut oak, shrub oak, and rock
-oak. It should not be confused with _Quercus prinus_, the true chestnut
-oak, although it is commonly known in so many sections of the country by
-the latter name; the names yellow oak, pin oak, and scrub oak are
-likewise applied to many species, so that the only way to accurately
-designate members of this great family is to employ their botanical
-names. However, this species should always be known as the chinquapin
-oak, which is a distinctive term, and not applied to any other.
-
-The bark of this tree is light gray and is broken into thin flakes,
-silvery-white, sometimes slightly tinted with brown, rarely half an inch
-thick. The branchlets are marked with pale lenticels.
-
-The leaves of the chinquapin oak are from five to seven inches long,
-simple and alternate; they have a taper-pointed apex and blunt,
-wedge-shaped or pointed base; are sharply toothed. When unfolding they
-show bright bronze-green above, tinged with purple, and are covered
-underneath with light silvery down; at maturity they become thick and
-firm, showing greenish-yellow on the upper surface and silvery-white
-below. The midrib is conspicuous and the veins extending outward to the
-points of the teeth are well-defined. In autumn the leaves turn orange
-and scarlet and are very showy. The leaves are narrow, hardly two inches
-wide, and more nearly resemble those of the chestnut than do any other
-oak leaves. In their broadest forms they are also similar to those of
-the true chestnut oak, although the difference in the quality and color
-of the bark, and of the leaves, would prevent either tree from being
-mistaken for the other. They are crowded at the ends of the branches and
-hang in such a manner as to show their under surfaces with every touch
-of breeze. This characteristic gives the chinquapin oak a peculiar
-effect of constantly shifting color which is one of its most attractive
-features and which puts the observer in mind of the trembling aspen,
-although the shading and coloring of the oak is much more striking.
-
-This tree's range extends from northern New York, along Lake Champlain
-and the Hudson river westward through southern Ontario, and southward
-into parts of Nebraska and Kansas; on its eastern boundary it extends as
-far south as the District of Columbia and along the upper Potomac; the
-growth west of the Alleghany mountains reaches into central Alabama and
-Mississippi, through Arkansas and the northern portion of Louisiana to
-the eastern part of Oklahoma and parts of Texas even to the canyons of
-the Guadalupe mountains, in the extreme western part of that state. It
-is a timber tree of much importance in Texas, and in 1910 manufacturers
-reported the use of 1,152,000 feet in that state, largely for making
-furniture and vegetable crates.
-
-The chinquapin oak is named from the form of its leaf. Its acorn bears
-no resemblance to the nut of chinquapin. Trees average smaller in size
-than white oak, but when all circumstances are favorable they compare
-well with any of the other oaks. In the lower Wabash valley, trees of
-this species were found in the original forests 160 feet high and four
-or five in diameter. When it grows in crowded stands it develops a tall,
-symmetrical trunk, clear of limbs; but it is shorter in open growth. The
-base is often much buttressed.
-
-The wood is very heavy, hard, strong, stiff, and durable. In color the
-heartwood is dark, the sapwood lighter. The springwood is narrow and
-filled with large pores, the summerwood broad and dense. Medullary rays
-are less numerous and scarcely as broad as in chestnut oak, which this
-wood resembles. It checks badly in drying, both by kiln and in the open
-air; but when properly seasoned it is an excellent wood for most
-purposes for which white oak is used. It shows fewer figures when
-quarter-sawed than white oak shows, but it is satisfactory for many
-kinds of furniture, particularly when finished in mission style.
-
-Railroads throughout the region where this species is found have laid
-chinquapin oak ties in their tracks for many years and they give long
-service, because they resist decay and are hard enough to stand the wear
-of the rails. In early times in the Ohio valley it helped to fence many
-a farm when the material for such fences was the old style fence rail,
-eleven feet long, mauled from the straightest, clearest timber afforded
-by the primeval forest. It had for companions many other oaks which were
-abundant there, and it was on a par with the best of them. In the first
-years of steamboating on the Ohio river, when the engines used wood for
-fuel, they provided a market for many an old rail fence. The rails were
-the best obtainable fuel, and the chinquapin oak rails in the heaps were
-carefully looked for by the purchasers, because they were rated high in
-fuel value. It is now known that chinquapin oak in combustion develops
-considerably more heat than an equal quantity of white oak.
-
-When southern Indiana and Illinois were furnishing coopers with their
-best staves, chinquapin oak was ricked with white oak, and no barrel
-maker ever complained. The pores in the wood seem large, but in old
-timber which is largely heartwood, the pores become clogged by the
-processes of nature, and the wood is made proof against leakage. That is
-what gives white oak its superiority as stave timber. It has as many
-pores as red oak, but upon close examination under a magnifying glass,
-they are found to be plugged, while red oak's pores are wide open. The
-result is that red oak barrels leak through the wood; those made of
-white oak do not. Chinquapin oak possesses the same properties, which
-account for its reputation as stave material.
-
-The future for chinquapin oak is not quite as promising as that of
-chestnut oak. The former's choice growing place is on rich soil and in
-damp situations. These happen to be what the farmer wants, and he will
-not leave the chinquapin oak alone to grow in nature's method, nor will
-he plant its acorns in places where the trees will interfere with his
-cornfields and meadows. Consequently, the tree is apt to receive scant
-consideration after the original forests have disappeared; while its
-poor cousin, the chestnut oak, will be left to make its way on sterile
-ridges, and may even receive some help from the forester and woodlot
-owner.
-
-    VALLEY OAK (_Quercus lobata_) is often considered to be the largest
-    hardwood of the Pacific coast. Trunk diameters of ten feet have been
-    recorded, and heights more than 100; but such measurements belong
-    only to rare and extraordinary individuals. The average size of the
-    tree is less than half of that. The most famous tree of this species
-    is the Sir Joseph Hooker oak, near Chico, California, though it is
-    not the largest. It is seven feet in diameter and 100 high. It was
-    named by the botanist Asa Gray in 1877. This species is commonly
-    called California white oak, which name would be unobjectionable if
-    it were the only white oak in California. A more distinctive name is
-    weeping oak, which refers to the appearance of the outer branches.
-    It is called swamp oak, but without good reason, though the ground
-    on which it grows is often swampy during the rainy season. The name
-    valley oak is specially appropriate, since its favorite habitat is
-    in the broad valleys of central California. Its range does not go
-    outside that state, neither does the tree grow very high on the
-    mountains. Its range begins in the upper Sacramento valley and
-    extends to Tejon, south of Lake Tulare, a distance north and south
-    of about five hundred miles, while east and west the tree is found
-    from the Sierra foothills to the sea, 150 or 200 miles. Its
-    characteristic growth is in scattered stands. It does not form
-    forests in the ordinary sense. Two or three large trees to the acre
-    are an average, and often many acres are wholly missed. The form of
-    trees, and the wide spaces between them, resemble an old apple
-    orchard, though few apple trees live to attain the dimensions of the
-    valley oak of ordinary size. The best stands were originally in the
-    Santa Clara valley and in the central part of the San Joaquin valley
-    in the salt grass region north of Lake Tulare in Kings and Fresno
-    counties. Most of the largest trees were cut long ago.
-
-    The leaves are lobed like white oak (_Quercus alba_) but are
-    smaller, seldom more than four inches long and two wide. The acorns
-    are uncommonly long, some of them being two and a half inches, sharp
-    pointed, with shallow cups. The wood of this oak is brash and breaks
-    easily. It is far below good eastern oak in strength and elasticity.
-    It weighs 46.17 pounds per cubic foot. The tree grows rapidly, and
-    its wide, clearly defined annual rings are largely dense summerwood.
-    The springwood is perforated with large pores. The color of the wood
-    is light brown, the sapwood lighter. Except as fuel, the uses found
-    for valley oak hardly come up to what might be expected of a tree so
-    large. It is not difficult, or at least was not difficult once, to
-    cut logs sixteen feet long and from three to five in diameter. Such
-    logs ought to make good lumber. The medullary rays indicate that the
-    wood can be quarter-sawed to advantage; yet there is no account that
-    any serious attempt was ever made to convert the valley oak into
-    lumber. The wood has some objectionable properties, but it has
-    escaped the sawmill chiefly because hardwood mills have never been
-    numerous in California, and they have been especially few in the
-    regions where the best valley oaks grow. The tree has been a great
-    source of fuel. It usually divides twenty or thirty feet from the
-    ground into large, wide-spreading branches, tempting to the
-    woodchopper. In central California, twenty or thirty years ago, it
-    was not unusual to haul this cordwood twenty-five miles to market.
-    Stockmen employed posts and rails split from valley oak to enclose
-    corrals and pens on the open plains for holding cattle, sheep, and
-    horses. The acorns are edible, and were formerly an article of food
-    for Indians who gathered them in considerable quantities in the fall
-    and stored them for winter in large baskets which were secured high
-    in the forks of trees to be out of reach of all ordinary marauders.
-    The baskets were made rain proof by roofing and wrapping them with
-    grass. When the time came for eating the acorns, they were prepared
-    for use by hulling them and then pounding them into meal in stone
-    mortars. The hulling was done with the teeth, and was the work of
-    squaws. The custom of eating the acorns has largely ceased with the
-    passing of the wild Indians from their former camping places; but
-    the stone mortars by hundreds remain in the vicinity of former
-    stands of valley oak.
-
-    This splendid tree is highly ornamental, but it has not been
-    planted, and perhaps it will not become popular. Nature seems to
-    have confined it to a certain climate, and it is not known that it
-    will thrive outside of it. It will certainly disappear from many of
-    the valleys where the largest trees once grew. The land is being
-    taken for fields and vineyards, and the oaks are removed. Some will
-    remain in canyons and rough places where the land is not wanted, and
-    one of the finest species of the United States will cease to pass
-    entirely from earth. The largest of these oaks have a spread of
-    branches covering more than one-third of an acre.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LIVE OAK
-
-[Illustration: LIVE OAK]
-
-
-
-
-LIVE OAK
-
-(_Quercus Virginiana_)
-
-
-The history of this live oak is a reversal of the history of almost
-every other important forest tree of the United States. It seems to be
-the lone exception to the rule that the use of a certain wood never
-decreases until forced by scarcity. There was a time when hardly any
-wood in this country was in greater demand than this, and now there is
-hardly one in less demand. The decline has not been the result of
-scarcity, for there has never been a time when plenty was not in sight.
-A few years ago, several fine live oaks were cut in making street
-changes in New Orleans, and a number of sound logs, over three feet in
-diameter, were rolled aside, and it was publicly announced that anyone
-who would take them away could have them. No one took them. It is
-doubtful if that could happen with timber of any other kind.
-
-The situation was different 120 years ago. At that time live oak was in
-such demand that the government, soon after the adoption of the
-constitution, became anxious lest enough could not be had to meet the
-requirements of the navy department. The keels of the first war vessels
-built by this government were about to be laid, and the most necessary
-material for their construction was live oak. The vessels were to be of
-wood, of course; and their strength and reliability depended upon the
-size and quality of the heavy braces used in the lower framework. These
-braces were called knees and were crooked at right angles. They were
-hewed in solid pieces, and the largest weighed nearly 1,000 pounds. No
-other wood was as suitable as live oak, which is very strong, and it
-grows knees in the form desired. The crooks produced by the junction of
-large roots with the base of the trunk were selected, and shipbuilders
-with saws, broadaxes, and adzes cut them in the desired sizes and
-shapes.
-
-When the building of the first ships of the navy was undertaken, the
-alarm was sounded that live oak was scarce, and that speculators were
-buying it to sell to European governments. Congress appropriated large
-sums of money and bought islands and other lands along the south
-Atlantic and Gulf coast, where the best live oak grew. In Louisiana
-alone the government bought 37,000 live oak trees, as well as large
-numbers in Florida and Georgia. In some instances the land on which the
-trees stood was bought.
-
-Ship carpenters were sent from New England to hew knees for the first
-vessels of the navy. The story of the troubles and triumphs of the
-contractors and knee cutters is an interesting one, but too long for
-even a summary here; suffice it that in due time the vessels were
-finished. The history of those vessels is almost a history of the early
-United States navy. Among their first duties when they put to sea was to
-fight French warships, when this country was about to get into trouble
-with Napoleon. They then fought the pirates of North Africa, and there
-one of the ships was burned by its own men to prevent its falling into
-the hands of the enemy. "Old Ironsides," another of the live oak
-vessels, fought fourteen ships, one at a time, during the war of 1812,
-and whipped them all. Another of the vessels was less fortunate. It was
-lost in battle, in which its commander, Lawrence, was killed, whose last
-words have become historic: "Don't give up the ship." Another came down
-to the Civil war and was sunk in Chesapeake bay.
-
-The invention of iron vessels ended the demand for live oak knees. The
-government held its land where this timber grew for a long time, but
-finally disposed of most of it. Part of that owned in Florida was
-recently incorporated in one of the National Forests of that state.
-
-Live oak is a tree of striking appearance. It prefers the open, and when
-of large size its spread of branches often is twice the height of the
-tree. Its trunk is short, but massy, and of enormous strength; otherwise
-it could not sustain the great weight of its heavy branches. Some of the
-largest limbs are nearly two feet in diameter where they leave the
-trunk, and are fifty feet long, and some are seventy-five feet in
-length. Probably the only tree in this country with a wider spread of
-branches is the valley oak of California. The live oak's trunk is too
-short for more than one sawlog, and that of moderate length. The largest
-specimens may be seventy feet high and six or seven feet in diameter,
-and yet not good for a sixteen-foot log. The enormous roots are of no
-use now. When land is cleared of this oak, the stumps are left to rot.
-
-The range of live oak extends 4,000 miles or more northeast and
-southwest. It begins on the coast of Virginia and ends in Central
-America. It is found in Lower California and in Cuba. In southern United
-States it sticks pretty closely to the coastal plains, though large
-trees grow 200 or 300 feet above tide level. In Texas it is inclined to
-rise higher on the mountains, but live oak in Texas seldom measures up
-to that which grows further east. In southern Texas, where the land is
-poor and dry, live oak degenerates into a shrub. Trees only a foot high
-sometimes bear acorns. In all its range in this country, it is known by
-but one English name, given it because it is evergreen. The leaves
-remain on the tree about thirteen months, following the habit of a
-number of other oaks. When new leaves appear, the old ones get out of
-the way.
-
-The wood is very heavy, hard, strong, and tough. In strength and
-stiffness it rates higher than white oak, and it is twelve pounds a
-cubic foot heavier. The sapwood is light in color, the heartwood brown,
-sometimes quite dark. The pores in the sapwood are open, but many of
-them are closed in heartwood. The annual rings are moderately well
-defined. The large pores are in the springwood, and those of the
-summerwood are smaller, but numerous. The medullary rays are numerous
-and dark. Measured radially, they are shorter than those of many other
-oaks. They show well in quarter-sawed lumber, but are arranged
-peculiarly, and do not form large groups of figures; but the wood
-presents a rather flecked or wavy appearance. The general tone is dark
-brown and very rich. It takes a smooth polish. When the wood is worked
-into spindles and small articles, and brightly polished, its appearance
-suggests dark polished granite, but the similitude is not sustained
-under close examination. Grills composed of small spindles and
-scrollwork are strikingly beautiful if displayed in light which does the
-wood justice. Composite panels are manufactured by joining narrow strips
-edge to edge. Selected pieces of dressed live oak suggest Circassian
-walnut, but would not pass as an imitation on close inspection. It may
-be stated generally that live oak is far from being a dead, flat wood,
-but is capable of being worked for various effects. Its value as a
-cabinet material has not been appreciated in the past, nor have its
-possibilities been suspected. It dropped out of notice when shipbuilders
-dispensed with it, and people seem to have taken for granted that it had
-no value for anything else. The form of the trunks makes possible the
-cutting of short stock only; but there is abundance of it. It fringes a
-thousand miles of coast. Many a trunk, short though it is, will cut
-easily a thousand feet of lumber. Working the large roots in veneer has
-not been undertaken, but good judges of veneers, who know what the
-stumps and roots contain, have expressed the opinion that a field is
-there awaiting development.
-
-Published reports of the uses of woods of various states seldom mention
-live oak. In Texas some of it is employed in the manufacture of parquet
-flooring. It is dark and contrasts with the blocks or strips of maple or
-some other light wood. It is turned in the lathe for newel posts for
-stairs, and contributes to other parts of stair work. In Louisiana it is
-occasionally found in shops where vehicles are made. It meets
-requirements as axles for heavy wagons. Stone masons' mauls are made of
-live oak knots. They stand nearly as much pounding as lignum-vitae. More
-live oak is cut for fuel than for all other purposes. It develops much
-heat, but a large quantity of ashes remains.
-
-The live oak is the most highly valued ornamental tree of the South,
-though it has seldom been planted. Nature placed these oaks where they
-are growing. Many an old southern homestead sits well back in groves of
-live oak. Parks and plazas in towns have them, and would not part with
-them on any terms. Tallahassee, Florida, is almost buried under live
-oaks which in earlier years sheltered the wigwams of an Indian town.
-Villages near the coasts of both the Gulf and the Atlantic in several
-southern states have their venerable trees large enough for half the
-people to find shade beneath the branches at one time. Many fine stands
-have been cut in recent years to make room for corn, cane, and rice.
-
-Many persons associate the live oak with Spanish moss which festoons its
-branches in the Gulf region. The moss is no part of the tree, and
-apparently draws no substance from it, though it may smother the leaves
-by accumulation, or break the branches by its weight. Strictly speaking,
-the beard-like growth is not moss at all, but a sort of pine apple
-(_Dendropogon usenoides_) which simply hangs on the limbs and draws its
-sustenance from water and air. It is found on other trees, besides live
-oak, and dealers in Louisiana alone sell half a million dollars worth of
-it a year to upholsterers in all the principal countries of the world.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED OAK
-
-[Illustration: RED OAK]
-
-
-
-
-RED OAK[4]
-
-(_Quercus Rubra_)
-
-    [4] Red oak belongs to the black oak group. Other species usually
-    listed as black oaks are Pin oak (_Quercus palustris_), Georgia oak
-    (_Quercus georgiana_), Texan red oak (_Quercus texana_), Scarlet oak
-    (_Quercus coccinea_), Yellow oak (_Quercus velutina_), California
-    black oak (_Quercus californica_), Turkey oak (_Quercus catesbaei_),
-    Spanish oak (_Quercus digitata_), Black Jack oak (_Quercus
-    marilandica_), Water oak (_Quercus nigra_), Willow oak (_Quercus
-    phellos_), Laurel oak (_Quercus laurifolia_), Blue Jack oak
-    (_Quercus brevifolia_), Shingle oak (_Quercus imbricaria_),
-    Whiteleaf oak (_Quercus hypoleuca_), Highland oak (_Quercus
-    wislizeni_), Myrtle oak (_Quercus myrtifolia_), California live oak
-    (_Quercus agrifolia_--sometimes classed with white oaks), Canyon
-    live oak (_Quercus chrysolepis_), an evergreen oak with no English
-    name, (_Quercus tomentella_), Price oak (_Quercus pricei_), Morehus
-    oak (_Quercus morehus_), Tanbark oak (_Quercus densiflora_), Barren
-    oak (_Quercus pumila_).
-
-
-When a lumberman speaks of red oak he may mean any one of a good many
-kinds of trees, but when a botanist or forester uses that name he means
-one particular species and no other. For that reason there is much
-uncertainty as to what species is in the lumberman's mind when he speaks
-of red oak. It means more to him than a single species, depending to a
-considerable extent upon the part of the country where he is doing
-business. If he is in the Gulf states, and has in mind a tree which
-grows there, he does not refer to the tree known to botanists as red
-oak. He may mean the Texan or southern red oak (_Quercus texana_), or
-the willow oak (_Quercus phellos_), or the yellow oak (_Quercus
-velutina_), or any one of several others which grow in that region; but
-the typical red oak does not grow farther south than the mountains of
-northern Georgia; and any one who is cutting oak south or southwest of
-there, is cutting other than the true red oak. That does not imply that
-he is handling something inferior, for very fine oak grows there; but in
-an effort to separate the commercial black oaks into respective species,
-it is necessary to define them by metes and bounds of ranges as well as
-to describe them by characteristics of leaves, acorns, and wood. The
-time will probably never come in this country when the sawmill man will
-pile each species of oak separately in his yard, and sell separately;
-but the tendency is in that direction. The twenty-five or more black
-oaks in this country all have some characteristics in common; but they
-are by no means all valuable alike, or all useful for the same purposes.
-For that reason, the demands of trade require, and will require more and
-more as higher utilization is reached, that certain kinds of red oak or
-black oak be sold separately.
-
-What lumbermen call red oaks, speaking in the plural, botanists prefer
-to call black oaks. The difference is only a difference in name for the
-same group of trees. The general dark color of the bark suggests the
-name to botanists, while the red tint of the wood appeals more to the
-lumberman, and he prefers the general name red oaks for the group. They
-mature their acorns the second year, while the trees belonging to the
-white oak group ripen theirs the first year. There are other
-differences, some of which are apparent to the casual observer, and
-others are seen only by the trained eye--often aided by the
-microscope--of the dendrologist. Several of the black oaks have leaves
-with sharp pointed lobes, ending in bristles. This helps to separate
-them from the white oaks, but not from one another, for the true red
-oak, the scarlet oak, the yellow oak, the pin oak, and others, have the
-sharp-pointed lobes on their leaves; while the willow oaks have no lobes
-or bristles on theirs, yet are as truly in the black oak group as any of
-the others. The identification of tree species, particularly when they
-are as much alike as some of the oaks are, is too difficult for the
-layman if he undertakes to carry it along the whole line; but it is
-comparatively easy if confined to the leading woods only. An
-understanding of the geographical range of a certain tree often helps to
-separate it from others. The knowledge that a tree does not grow in a
-particular part of the country, is proof at once that a tree in that
-region resembling it must be something else. If that principal is borne
-in mind it will greatly lessen mistakes in identifying trees. In
-accounts of the black oaks in the following pages, a careful delimiting
-of ranges will be attempted in the case of each.
-
-The range of red oak extends from Nova Scotia and southern New Brunswick
-through Quebec and along the northern shore of Lake Huron, west to
-Nebraska. It covers the Ohio valley and reaches as far south as middle
-Tennessee. It runs south through the Atlantic states to Virginia, while
-among the Appalachian mountains the range is prolonged southward into
-northern Georgia. That is the tree's extreme southern limit. It reaches
-its largest size in the region north of the Ohio river, and among the
-mountain valleys of West Virginia, and southward to Tennessee and North
-Carolina. It is a northern species. Toward its southern limit it meets
-the northern part of the Texan red oak's range (_Quercus texana_). There
-is some overlapping, and in many localities the two species grow side by
-side.
-
-The red oak is known by that name in all parts of its range, but in some
-regions it is called black oak, and in others Spanish oak. The latter
-name properly belongs to another oak (_Quercus digitata_) which touches
-it along the southern border of its range.
-
-The average size of red oak in the best part of its range is a little
-under that of white oak, but some specimens are 150 feet high and six
-feet in diameter. Heights of seventy and eighty feet are usual, and
-diameters of three and four are frequent. The forest grown tree disposes
-of its lower limbs early in life, and develops a long, smooth trunk,
-with a narrow crown. The bark on young stems and on the upper parts of
-limbs of old trees is smooth and light gray. All leaves do not have the
-same number of lobes, and they are sharp pointed, and fall early in
-autumn.
-
-The acorns are bitter, and are regarded as poor mast. Hogs will leave
-them alone if they can find white oak acorns, and squirrels will do
-likewise. The best red oak timber grows from acorns, though stumps will
-send up sprouts. The sprout growth may become trees of fairly large
-size, but they are apt to decay at the butt. The acorn-grown tree is as
-free from defects as the average forest tree. Cracks sometimes develop
-in the trunk, extending up and down many feet. Unless the logs are
-carefully sawed, a considerable loss occurs where these cracks cross the
-boards. Trunks are occasionally bored by worms, as all other oaks may
-be.
-
-Red oak grows rapidly. It will produce small sawlogs in the lifetime of
-a man. It is a favorite tree for crossties, and railroads have made
-large plantings for that purpose. The ties do not last well in their
-natural state, but they are easy to treat with preservatives by which
-several years are added to their period of service. It has been a
-favorite tree with European planters for the past two hundred years; but
-the most of the plantings beyond the sea have been for ornament in parks
-and private grounds.
-
-The principal interest in red oak in this country is due to its value
-for lumber. That interest is of comparatively recent date. Some red oak
-has always been used for rails, clapboards, slack cooperage, and rough
-lumber; but while white oak was cheap and plentiful, sawmill men usually
-let red oak alone. It had a poor reputation, which is now known to have
-been undeserved.
-
-Red oak is lighter than white oak, and it is generally regarded as
-possessing less strength and stiffness. The wide rings of annual growth,
-and the distinct layers of springwood and summerwood, give the basis for
-good figure. To this may be added broad and regular medullary rays which
-are nicely brought out by quarter-sawing. The tone of the wood is red,
-to which fact the name red oak is due. It has large, open pores. A
-magnifying glass is not required to see them in the end of a stick. It
-is said that smoke may be blown through a piece of red oak a foot in
-length. These open pores disqualify the wood for use in tight cooperage.
-Liquids will leak through the pores. Statistics of sawmill output in
-this country do not separate the white and black oaks, and the quantity
-of lumber sawed from any one species is not known. Manufacturers are
-disposed to separate them. Some furniture makers use red oak exclusively
-for certain purposes, and the same rule is followed by makers of other
-commodities.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-TEXAN RED OAK
-
-[Illustration: TEXAN RED OAK]
-
-
-
-
-TEXAN RED OAK
-
-(_Quercus Texana_)
-
-
-The line between red oak (_Quercus rubra_) and Texan red oak is closely
-drawn by botanists, but lumbermen do not recognize much difference
-except toward the extreme ranges of each. Some call one simply red oak
-and the other southern red oak, but that leaves doubtful the timber on a
-large area occupied by both species. Their ranges overlap two or three
-hundred miles in the Ohio valley and on the southern tributaries of the
-Ohio river in Kentucky and Tennessee. A large amount of red oak from
-that region goes to market, and no one knows, and few care, whether it
-is of the northern or southern species. It is usually a mixture of both.
-But outside of the common zone where both trees grow, the woods of the
-two are kept fairly well separate. Thirty years ago Texan red oak
-received slight recognition from botanists. When Charles S. Sargent
-compiled in 1880 a volume of over 600 pages, "Forest Trees of North
-America," for the United States government, and which was published as
-volume 9 of the Tenth Census, he did not so much as accord this tree the
-dignity of a species, but called it a variety of the common red oak. Its
-range and its great importance were little understood at that time.
-Sargent thus described its range: "Western Texas, valley of the Colorado
-river with the species and replacing it south and west, extending to the
-valley of the Neuces river and the Limpia mountains."
-
-Compare that restricted range with that given by the same author
-twenty-five years later in his "Manual of the Trees of North America."
-He gives it thus: "Northeastern Iowa and central Illinois, through
-southern Illinois and Indiana and western Kentucky and Tennessee, to the
-valley of the Apalachicola river, Florida, northern Georgia, central
-South Carolina, and the coast plains of North Carolina, and through
-southern Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana to the mountains of western
-Texas; most abundant and of its largest size on the low bottom lands of
-the Mississippi basin, often forming a considerable part of lowland
-forests; less abundant in the eastern Gulf states; in western Texas on
-low limestone hills and on bottom lands in the neighborhood of streams."
-
-This quotation is given in full because it shows how scientific men
-change their opinions to conform to new evidence. The range of that
-particular species was as wide in 1880 as in 1905, but botanists had not
-yet worked it out. Thus knowledge increases constantly, and year by year
-the resources of American forests are better understood. In this
-instance, what in 1880 was supposed to be a rather insignificant
-variety, occupying a restricted area in Texas, was found by 1905 to be a
-separate species, covering sixteen states in whole or in part. Similar
-progress concerning the forests has been made all over the country, not
-only by botanists but by lumbermen. Trees which were formerly considered
-so nearly alike that no distinctions were made, are now recognized to be
-quite different.
-
-The Texan red oak is frequently called spotted oak. The appearance of
-the bark suggests the name. Large, irregular, whitish patches cover the
-trunks. That peculiarity is not noticeable everywhere and on all trees,
-but is common west of the Mississippi river. The tree is sometimes known
-as Spanish oak in the southwestern part of its range, but the name is
-ill-advised, for the true Spanish oak (_Quercus digitata_) occurs in the
-same region. The most usual name for this species, in nearly all parts
-of its range, is simply red oak.
-
-The Texan red oak varies greatly in size of trees, as is natural in so
-wide a geographical range. Trees have been reported 200 feet high and
-eight feet in diameter; but sizes like that are extraordinary and
-attempts to locate anything approaching them at this day have not been
-successful. The average in the lower Mississippi valley is eighty or
-ninety feet in height, and two or three in diameter. In Texas this size
-is seldom reached, the average not much exceeding half of it.
-
-The leaves of Texan red oak are about half the size of those of the
-northern species. That alone will not serve to separate them, because of
-such great variation. It applies only to averages. The southern trees'
-leaves are from three to six inches long, two to five wide; the northern
-species bears leaves from five to nine inches long and four to six wide.
-The acorns of the two species do not show so much difference in size.
-The states which use Texan red oak in largest amounts are Alabama,
-Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, though some of this wood
-finds its way to northern markets where it passes as red oak without any
-questions. That condition renders very difficult the task of separating
-the woods. It is not so difficult further south where the true red oak
-is seldom seen. Shipments go north, not south. The two red oaks mingle
-in the lumber yards north of the Ohio river, but seldom south of the
-Tennessee river.
-
-Investigations made by the Forest Service of the utilization of woods in
-various states show that factories report the annual use of Texan red
-oak as follows: Louisiana 1,777,000 feet, Mississippi 2,400,000, Texas
-2,814,000, Alabama 5,500,000, and Arkansas 39,301,000. This does not
-include lumber or other forest products used in the rough, or lumber
-shipped out of the respective states.
-
-Texan red oak is heavier than its northern relative, hard, light,
-reddish-brown, much of it of rapid growth, with wide, clearly defined
-annual rings. The medullary rays are prominent, and show well in
-quarter-sawing. The best of the wood is as strong as red oak, and
-compares favorably with it in physical properties.
-
-One of the most exacting uses of wood is for fixtures, such as counters
-in stores, bars in saloons, partitions in banks and counting rooms, and
-standing desks in offices. Extra wide and long pieces are required, and
-they must show satisfactory figure, and be finished to harmonize with
-the interior of the room where they are placed. Texan red oak is
-selected by builders in many southern cities for that class of fixtures,
-and it meets the requirements. It is used also for interior finish and
-furniture, and stair work.
-
-Like most members of the black oak group, the wood is inclined to rot
-quickly in damp situations, but it measures well up to the average of
-the group to which it belongs. It is often employed in the South as
-bridge material, particularly as flooring for wagon bridges, where the
-wood's hardness is its chief recommendation. Much is converted into
-flooring for halls, houses, and factories.
-
-The available supply of this valuable wood in the forests of the South
-is not known, but there is little doubt that it exists in larger
-quantities than any other species of oak within its range. Perhaps in
-total quantity it exceeds red oak (_Quercus rubra_) in the whole United
-States. It is quite generally distributed over an area exceeding 300,000
-square miles, and toward the western part, it is the prevailing oak. The
-future of this oak is assured. It is now cut at a rapid rate, and
-doubtless the annual growth falls short of the yearly demand; but it
-occurs in a range so extensive that scarcity will not come for a long
-period. If the time ever comes in the South when planted timber must be
-depended upon to meet the needs of the people, this oak will fill an
-important place in woodlots. It does not grow as rapidly as willow oak,
-but its range is more extensive, and it possesses certain desirable
-properties not found in willow oak. The acorns are rather poor mast, and
-this is in the tree's favor, for the seed will be left to grow instead
-of being devoured by hogs and small animals of the woods. In that
-respect it has an advantage over cow oak and the other white oaks which
-occupy parts of its range. Their acorns are sought as food by domestic
-and wild animals. Texan red oak prunes itself well when it grows in
-close stands, but is low and limby when it occupies open ground. The
-trunks vary in form, but are inclined to enlarge at the base,
-particularly when they grow in low, damp situations, as many of the best
-do in the South.
-
-    GEORGIA OAK (_Quercus georgiana_) is one of the minor oaks of the
-    South and has not been found outside of Georgia. It grows in the
-    central part of the state on Stone mountain and on a few other
-    granite hills. Whether the species originated there and was never
-    able to work its way down to the more congenial valleys below, or
-    whether it once grew lower down and was crowded to its last retreat
-    by other species, is not known. But an interest attaches to it from
-    the very fact that its range is so restricted and that its habitat
-    is on the sterile summits. Lumbermen care nothing about this tree.
-    Few of them ever saw it or heard of it. The trunk is small, the
-    acorns only from one-third to half an inch long, and the leaves are
-    of a form midway between those of pin oak and turkey oak. The
-    characters of the wood have not been reported, but since there is
-    not enough of it to have any commercial value, the matter is not
-    very important.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW OAK
-
-[Illustration: YELLOW OAK]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW OAK
-
-(_Quercus Velutina_)
-
-
-This tree is known as black oak in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
-New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia,
-North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi,
-Louisiana, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Michigan,
-Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario; quercitron oak in Delaware, South
-Carolina, Louisiana, Kansas and Minnesota; yellow oak in Rhode Island,
-New York, Illinois, Texas, Kansas and Minnesota; tanbark oak in
-Illinois; yellow-bark oak in Minnesota and Rhode Island; spotted oak in
-Missouri; dyer's oak in Texas; and yellow butt oak in Mississippi.
-
-Those who call this tree black oak have in mind the bark which is
-usually quite dark, though all members of this species do not present
-the same appearance in that respect. Some trunks are gray, and in color
-do not greatly differ from white oaks, but would hardly be mistaken for
-them. Tanbark oak, a name occasionally given to this tree, is not
-applied in the region where chestnut oak grows, because it is much
-inferior to chestnut oak as tanning material. It is not only poorer in
-tannin, but the coloring matter associated with the inner bark is
-troublesome to the tanner who is compelled to remove it or neutralize it
-unless he wants his leather given a yellow tone. Dyer's oak is a name
-which refers to the value of the bark for coloring purposes. The
-botanical name _velutina_ refers to the velvety texture of the inner
-bark.
-
-This oak is one of the easiest to identify. The inner layer of the bark
-is yellow. The point of a knife easily reaches it; cutting through a
-deep crack in the bark, and no mistake is possible, for no other oak has
-the yellow layer of bark. The tree may be identified by leaves, flowers,
-and fruit, but the process is not always easy, for other members of the
-black oak group bear more or less resemblance to this one.
-
-The yellow oak's range extends over nearly or quite a million square
-miles. It exceeds the limits of most oaks in its geographical extension.
-It endures severe winters and hot summers. The northern limit of its
-range lies in Maine; it grows westward across southern Canada to
-Minnesota; it extends two hundred miles west of the Mississippi into
-eastern Nebraska and Kansas, and follows that meridian south into Texas.
-It reaches the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi, and is found in
-many localities in all the southern states, and along the foothills of
-the Appalachian ranges. It attains its largest size in the lower Ohio
-valley. The average height is seventy or eighty feet, and its diameter
-two or three feet. In some localities the trees are scrubby and produce
-little merchantable timber.
-
-The growth rings are only moderately wide in the typical yellow oak; the
-ring is divided nearly evenly between springwood and summerwood. The
-former contains two or three rows of large, open pores. The medullary
-rays are fewer and smaller than those commonly found in oaks. A general
-average of the properties of the wood is somewhat difficult to give,
-because of remarkable variation in trees which grow under different
-conditions. In some instances, where the soil is fertile and climate
-favorable, the yellow oak produces a large, clear trunk, with sound
-wood, of good color, and equal to that of red oak; but the reverse is
-often the case--trunks are small and rough, wood hard and brittle, color
-not satisfactory, and strength not up to standard. Sometimes first class
-yellow oak passes without question as good red oak in the finish and
-furniture business, but that is not its usual course. Well developed
-wood is heavy, hard, strong, bright brown, tinged with red, with thin,
-lighter colored sapwood. Its weight is 43.9 pounds per cubic foot.
-
-The uses of yellow oak follow red oak pretty closely, but are not so
-extensive. Figures cannot be given to show the total annual cut of
-yellow oak, but the output is likely much below red oak, though it is
-found over a wider area, and some of it gets into the lumber yards in
-all regions where it grows. It is made into furniture from Maine to
-Louisiana. In cheaper grades of furniture, it may be the outside
-material, but its place is usually as frame stock, to give strength, but
-is not visible in the finished article. An exception to this is found in
-chairs where yellow oak is one of several species which go regularly to
-the sawmills which cut chair stock. Massachusetts snow plow makers use
-it, but of course it fills no such place in the South. In Mississippi,
-Louisiana, and Texas it is bought by manufacturers of agricultural
-machinery. It is worked into cotton gins in Mississippi. Some extra fine
-stands of this oak occur in the Delta region of Mississippi. Frames of
-freight cars are made of it in Louisiana and Texas, and warehouse and
-depot floors are occasionally laid of this lumber. It is floor material
-in Michigan also, but that is of a better class than is required for
-warehouses. It is not infrequently sold as red oak for flooring and
-interior finish. Throughout the whole extent of yellow oak's range it
-finds its way to wagon shops. It is less tough than white oak, but in
-many places, such as bolsters, sandboards, and hounds, it serves as
-well. Warehouse trucks and push cars are of this wood in many instances.
-
-Slack coopers convert this wood into their wares in many regions. The
-pores are too open to permit its use as tight cooperage, where liquids
-are to be contained, but for barrels and kegs of many kinds, as well as
-for boxes, baskets, and crates, it meets all requirements. It is good
-fuel. Many burners of brick and pottery show it preference, and charcoal
-burners make a clean sweep of it when it occurs in the course of their
-operations; though when it is desirable to save the by-products of
-charcoal kilns or retorts, yellow oak is considered less valuable than
-birch, beech, and maple.
-
-The bark of this tree is employed less now than formerly for dyeing
-purposes. Aniline dyes have taken its place. In pioneer times the bark
-was one of the best coloring materials the people had, and every family
-looked after its own supply as carefully as it provided sassafras bark
-for tea, slippery elm bark for poultices, and witch hazel for gargles.
-The oak bark was peeled, dried, and pounded to a powder. The mass was
-sifted, and the yellow particles, being finer than the black bark,
-passed through the screen, and were set apart for the dye kettle, while
-the screenings were rejected. Various arts and sciences were called into
-requisition to add to or take from the natural color which the bark gave
-the cloth. Salts of iron were commonly employed to modify the deepness
-of the yellow.
-
-The acorns of this oak are bitter, and escape the mast hunters. Old
-stumps have little need to send up sprouts, for acorns keep the species
-alive. Yellow oaks are in no immediate danger of extermination. Nature
-plants generously, and the tree can get along on poor soil where the
-farm hunter is not apt to molest it. It has a fairly thick bark, and is
-able to take care of itself in a moderate fire, except when the
-seedlings are quite small. The young tree's tap root is much developed,
-and goes deep for moisture, and the growing sapling flourishes on ground
-where some other species would suffer for water.
-
-    WHITELEAF OAK (_Quercus hypoleuca_). The beauty of this small
-    evergreen oak of the mountains of western Texas, New Mexico, and
-    Arizona, is in its foliage rather than its wood. Large trunks--that
-    is, those twenty inches or more in diameter--are apt to be hollow,
-    but the sound wood is employed in repairing wagons in local shops,
-    and in rough ranch timbers. Its importance will never extend beyond
-    the region where it grows, but in that region it will continue to be
-    used where nothing better can be obtained. The largest trees are
-    sixty feet high, and two in diameter, but few reach those
-    dimensions. It is an arid land oak. It grows at from 4,000 to 6,000
-    feet elevations on mountains and plateaus. The leaves remain
-    thirteen months on the twigs. They are of the willow form, ranging
-    from two to four inches in length and one-half to one in width. The
-    acorns are small and bitter. The strength of this oak is remarkable,
-    if it may be judged by the figures given by Sargent. Two samples of
-    wood procured by himself and Dr. Engelmann on a dry, gravelly ground
-    among the Santa Rita mountains in Arizona, showed breaking strength
-    sixty-one per cent greater than the average given by the same author
-    for white oak. The stiffness of the specimens was a little above
-    white oak, and the weight three pounds more per cubic foot. It
-    should be borne in mind, however, that results derived from a test
-    of only two samples are not a safe basis for concluding that the
-    wood generally will average of so great strength. The annual rings
-    of growth are not clearly marked. The wood is porous, but the pores
-    are not generally arranged in bands, although they occasionally
-    follow that arrangement. The medullary rays are broad and abundant,
-    but are rather short, measured along the radial lines. They are of
-    pink color, a characteristic not unusual with oaks in semi-arid
-    regions. The foliage is doubtless the most valuable characteristic
-    of whiteleaf oak. The leaves are silver white below, and dark green
-    above. When they are agitated by wind the flashing of the different
-    tones and tints in the sunshine presents an attractive picture. It
-    belongs to the willow oak branch of the red oak group, and bears
-    two-year acorns.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SCARLET OAK
-
-[Illustration: SCARLET OAK]
-
-
-
-
-SCARLET OAK
-
-(_Quercus Coccinea_)
-
-
-The name of scarlet oak is in use in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode
-Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North
-Carolina, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan,
-Nebraska, Iowa, and Ontario; red oak is the name in North Carolina,
-Alabama, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Minnesota; black oak in Nebraska,
-Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and Spanish oak in North Carolina.
-
-The name is descriptive of the autumn leaves. Artists dispute among
-themselves whether the leaves are scarlet, red, or crimson. In their
-opinion a good deal of difference exists between these colors, rendering
-it quite incorrect to give one color the name of another. As for the
-artists, they are probably correct in their analysis of colors, but the
-general public knows the tree as scarlet oak, and it will doubtless be
-called by that name by most people who speak of the tree in the woods,
-while those who refer to the wood after it is sawed will speak of it as
-red oak.
-
-The leaves of scarlet oak are rather persistent, and remain on the twigs
-late in the season. The brilliancy of this tree is rendered doubly
-conspicuous, when it is contrasted with the surrounding sombre, winter
-colors.
-
-In appearance the tree is striking for its delicacy of foliage and
-twigs. The crown is always narrow and open, and in forest growth is
-compressed. The height, in good specimens, is about one hundred feet,
-but it often exceeds that size. In diameter it grows as large as four
-feet. The mature bark is dark in color and broken into broad, smooth
-ridges and plates, edged with red. It shows a reddish inner bark when
-cut and this may be relied upon to identify the tree. The leaves are
-four or five inches long; deeply sinused, three or four on a side; long,
-bristle-toothed lobes, broad at the base; acorns bitter, mature in two
-years; sessile, brown; cup closely drawn in at the edge.
-
-Its range comprises the northeastern quarter of the United States.
-Beginning in southern Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, it grows through
-middle New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa to eastern Nebraska.
-Southward it extends along the coast through Virginia and inland along
-the mountains to South Carolina and Georgia. The growth is abundant over
-most of the range, the favorite habitat being dry, gravelly uplands. It
-seems to be most abundant along the northern part of the Atlantic coast
-from Massachusetts to New Jersey, and is less common in the interior,
-and on the prairies skirting the western margins of the eastern forests.
-The average size of the tree is from seventy to eighty feet high and two
-or three in diameter. In many regions it is much smaller, while no very
-large trees have been reported.
-
-The wood is heavy, strong, hard; the layers of annual growth are
-strongly marked by several rows of large, open ducts; the summerwood is
-dense and occupies half the yearly ring; the medullary rays are much
-like those of red oak, though scarcely as broad. They run in straight
-lines radially, and show well in quarter-sawing. The color of the wood
-is light brown or red, the thin sapwood rather darker.
-
-This wood is practically of the same weight as white oak; but it is
-rated considerably stronger and stiffer. A number of writers have listed
-scarlet oak low in fuel value. Theoretically, the fuel values of woods
-are proportionate to their weights, except that resinous woods must be
-compared with resinous, and non-resinous with non-resinous. In practice,
-however, every fireman who feeds a furnace with wood knows that
-different woods develop different degrees of heat, though they may weigh
-the same. Results are modified by various circumstances and conditions,
-and for that reason theory and practice are often far apart in
-determining how much heat a given quantity of wood is good for.
-
-It is difficult to procure exact information regarding the uses of
-scarlet oak. It never goes to market under its own name. An examination
-of wood-using reports from a dozen states within scarlet oak's range
-does not reveal a single mention of this wood for any purpose. It is
-certain, nevertheless, that much goes to market and that it has many
-important uses. It loses its identity and is bought and sold as red oak.
-Under the name of that wood it is manufactured into furniture, finish,
-agricultural implements, cars, boats, wagons and other vehicles, and
-many other articles. One of the most important markets for scarlet oak
-is in chair factories. Its grain is attractive enough to give it place
-as outside material, and its strength fits it for frames and other parts
-which must bear strain. Chair stock mills which clean up woodlots and
-patches of forest where scarlet oak grows in mixture with other species
-of oak, take all that comes, without being particular as to the exact
-kind of oak. Slack coopers follow much the same course. A wood strong
-enough to meet requirements, is generally acceptable. Scarlet oak is
-usually considered unsuitable for tight cooperage, on account of the
-large open pores of the wood, which permit leakage of liquids. It meets
-considerable demand in the manufacture of boxes and crates, particularly
-the latter.
-
-The size and quality of logs which a tree may furnish to a sawmill is no
-measure of its full value. Scarlet oak is far better known as an
-ornamental tree than for its wood. It has been planted in this country
-and in Europe. Its brilliant foliage is greatly admired. No other oak
-equals it, and it compares favorably with sugar maple, black gum, and
-dogwood. It is an ornament to parks and private grounds, though the
-brilliancy of its foliage is seldom exhibited to as good advantage in
-cultivation as in the native forest where contrasts are more numerous,
-and nature does its work unhindered by man. The scarlet oak is not a
-rapid grower, and the form of the tree is not perfectly symmetrical. The
-spring leaves are red, the summer foliage bright, rich green, the autumn
-scarlet--a variety not equalled by many forest trees.
-
-WILLOW OAK (_Quercus phellos_) is named for its leaves which look like
-those of willow. There is a group of such oaks with leaves similar, and
-they are known collectively as willow oaks. The one here described may
-be considered typical of the group.
-
-This oak is apt to present rather a surprising appearance to those who
-have seen nothing but those oaks whose leaves are lobed or cleft. It
-belongs to the red oaks. Like others of this division it has a tendency
-to hybridize, several varieties being known. Willow oak is a denizen of
-the southern Atlantic and southeastern states and favors rich, moist
-soil, either on uplands or on bottoms, along the margins of streams or
-swamps. It does not go inland as far as the foothills of the ranges and
-is found most abundantly in the basin of the lower Mississippi.
-Beginning in New York, the range extends southward into Florida, along
-the Gulf states, touching Texas, up through Arkansas, touching Missouri
-and Kentucky, down through western Tennessee and southern Georgia
-rounding the southern end of the Appalachians.
-
-Young trees have a slender delicate pendant appearance of twigs and
-foliage more typical of the willow than of oak; but in time they become
-more rugged, although the branching and foliage are always more delicate
-than is usual with oaks. The tree attains a height of eighty feet and a
-diameter up to four feet, but usually is about half of this. It is
-clothed in a smooth, brown bark, ridged only in older trees. The leaves
-are about five inches long and narrow in proportion, are of shiny,
-leathery texture, dark above and pale below. The acorns are on short
-stalks, solitary or in pairs, and ripen in two years, are short and
-rounded and in shallow cups.
-
-The weight of willow oak is approximately the same as white oak. It is
-slightly stronger but less elastic. Its annual rings contain broad bands
-of small open ducts parallel to the thin, dark, medullary rays. The wood
-is reddish-brown in color, the thick sapwood darker brown. The fuel
-value is rated the same as white oak, but the wood contains more ash.
-
-Willow oak is much used in the South, but usually under the name red
-oak. Lumbermen seldom speak of it as willow oak. The species is as
-highly developed in Louisiana as anywhere else, and the uses found for
-the wood in that state will probably be found for it wherever the tree
-grows in commercial quantities. A report on the manufacture of wooden
-commodities in Louisiana, published in 1912, listed the following uses
-for willow oak: Agricultural implements, balustrades, bar tops,
-bedsteads, bottoms for wagon beds, bridge approaches and floors, chairs,
-church pews, cot frames, doors, floors, frames, interior finish,
-molding, newel posts, pulpits, railing, screens, slack cooperage,
-stairwork, store fixtures, wagon axles, and other vehicle parts.
-
-These uses coincide nearly with those of red oak, and indicate the
-important position occupied by willow oak in the country's industries.
-Those who handle the wood complain that its seasoning qualities are
-poor, and that care is necessary to bring satisfactory results. It works
-nicely and stands well after the seasoning is accomplished.
-
-Willow oak grows rapidly. It is doubtful if any oak in this country
-surpasses it. It wants damp, rich soil and a warm climate, to do its
-best. Some of the bottom lands in the lower Mississippi valley have
-produced splendid stands of willow oak, the trunks being tall and clear
-of limbs, and the wood sound.
-
-The willow oak is much planted for ornamental purposes in the southern
-states. It manages to keep alive when planted as far north as
-Massachusetts, but the grace of its form is not fully developed much
-north of the Potomac river. It is a common street tree in the South, and
-its airy foliage forms a pleasing contrast with the heavy, dark-green of
-the magnolia.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-TURKEY OAK
-
-[Illustration: TURKEY OAK]
-
-
-
-
-TURKEY OAK
-
-(_Quercus Catesbaei_)
-
-
-The claim that this tree is called turkey oak because turkeys feed on
-the acorns, is not well founded. In common with nearly all members of
-the black oak group, to which this species belongs, the acorns of turkey
-oak are bitter, and unless animals are pressed by hunger they do not eat
-them. It is evident that the shape of the leaves gives this tree its
-name. They bear considerable resemblance to the foot of a turkey. There
-is at least enough similitude to suggest the name, and it is not
-inappropriate. Many people now use the term without thinking of its
-origin, and if asked their opinion say that fondness of turkeys for the
-acorns led to the name.
-
-The tree has other names in different regions. In North Carolina, South
-Carolina, Mississippi, and Florida it is known as scrub oak. The name
-fits it well in certain places, for when it grows on poor soil and in
-adversity, it degenerates into a low, straggling thicket, frequently not
-trees at all, but shrubs. It is called black jack in South Carolina but
-the name belongs to another species (_Quercus marilandica_). In the same
-state it is known as barren scrub oak, because it is very small and is
-found on poor lands popularly known as barrens. Some call it forked-leaf
-black jack, but the name is usually shorter, and forked-leaf, or
-forked-leaf oak, is a name well understood among lumbermen, and the
-people generally over much of the tree's range. Some of the leaves show
-clearly-defined three forks, the middle one longer than the others; but
-in other leaves, often from the same tree, the forks are not so
-regularly outlined. This tree, like many other oaks, exhibits
-considerable variation in the forms of leaves.
-
-There is nothing peculiar in the form and appearance of the acorns. They
-average about one inch long and three-quarters of an inch wide, and sit
-in shallow cups. They mature the second year. The bark of old trees is
-black near the ground, rather rough, and an inch or more thick.
-
-It is difficult to name an average size for turkey oak. The largest
-trunks are three or four feet in diameter and eighty feet high, but the
-trees cut for sawlogs are only fifty or sixty feet high and two in
-diameter, in most of the regions. As previously stated, much of the
-stand is stunted and some of it is only brush. All sizes are found, from
-large, first rate trunks down to shrubs. Large trees which grow in
-forests, prune themselves well and their trunks compare favorably with
-red oaks.
-
-The tree's range has its northeastern limit in North Carolina, and
-extends to Peace Creek, Florida. It is found westward to Louisiana where
-fair-sized timber grows, but in small quantities. It is usually
-considered that its best development is in South Carolina and Georgia,
-but good trees are likely to be found in any part of its range. It is
-distinctly a tree of the South. It was named by Michaux, the well-known
-French botanist who visited the southern states early in the nineteenth
-century, and he named it in honor of Mark Catesby who explored the
-region much earlier and wrote concerning its trees and other natural
-history.
-
-Turkey oak is one of the little-known trees of the South, as far as
-lumbermen are concerned. They know it well enough in the woods, but not
-at sawmills. When cut into logs it ceases to be turkey oak and becomes
-red oak, and under that name it goes to the lumber yard, and later to
-market. Users of red oak lumber do not object to the occasional piece of
-turkey oak mixed with it--if they ever find it out, which few of them
-do. Nevertheless, the consensus of opinion among sawmill men is that
-turkey oak ought to rate below red oak.
-
-Tests of the wood to determine its character and qualities do not
-justify so low an estimate of turkey oak. Sargent found it stronger and
-more elastic than white oak, while a little lighter in weight. It is
-nearly equal to white oak in fuel value. It is hard, compact, and the
-rings of annual growth are marked by several rows of large, open ducts.
-The medullary rays are broad and conspicuous. The color is light brown,
-tinged with red, the sapwood somewhat lighter.
-
-A special investigation of the uses of turkey oak in one of the southern
-states brought out the fact that it meets requirements well and fills a
-place in several wood-using industries in that region. Vehicle makers
-find it satisfactory in a number of places. It is made into bottoms of
-wagon beds, felloes, bolsters, axles, hubs, hounds, tongues, spokes,
-standards, sandboards, and reaches. These constitute nearly all parts of
-heavy vehicles. The wood is made into telegraph brackets, but apparently
-not in large quantities. Car builders employ it for frames and floors.
-It is made into ordinary matched flooring and goes in with other oaks.
-It is used as a general furniture wood, both as outside material, and
-inside frames. It may be quarter-sawed to advantage. It is employed also
-as interior finish, which demands lumber of practically the same grades
-as go into furniture. Mantels of this wood compare favorably with those
-of red oak. Chair makers cut stock from turkey oak. It is not abundant
-anywhere, otherwise it would be of much importance.
-
-The forests of the United States contain so many valuable oaks that a
-scarce and geographically restricted species like turkey oak cannot be
-expected to attract much attention in the future. Nevertheless, it is a
-strong, interesting tree. It takes advantage of every opportunity to
-develop. When an acorn germinates in good soil, and receives sufficient
-light and moisture, it produces a merchantable tree; but in poor soil
-and under unfavorable circumstances it becomes a stunted bush only.
-Woodlots of turkey oak planted in fertile land would probably do as well
-as most of the southern red oaks under like conditions. The tree is not
-apt to get justice, because of the prejudice against it.
-
-CALIFORNIA BLACK OAK (_Quercus californica_) ranges from central Oregon
-southward through the coast region of California nearly to the Mexican
-boundary. It occurs also on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas in
-California. It is not found on the plains or near the sea, but occurs on
-mountain slopes, low summits, elevated valleys, and in canyons. In the
-North, it ranges from 1,500 to 3,000 feet and in the South it ascends to
-9,000 feet. This far western oak bears more resemblance to the yellow
-oak (_Quercus velutina_) of the East than to any other. Trees have been
-reported 100 feet high and four in diameter, but they are scarce.
-Seventy-five feet high and two or three feet in diameter are usual
-dimensions of mature timber. The trees are inclined to be angular in the
-outlines of their crowns. The leaves fall in autumn, but the acorns
-persist two years. They sit deep in their rough cups. The trunk is
-habitually crooked. It leans out of plumb, and lacks the nicely balanced
-poise which adds to the attractiveness of some oaks. The large boles are
-usually hollow, dead at the tops, or otherwise defective. That condition
-is apparently due to old age. Trees stand long after they pass maturity
-and start on their decline. They die by inches, and not infrequently
-they decay and crumble by piecemeal both at the bottom and at the top.
-At best the trunk of this oak is of poor form for saw timber. It divides
-into large limbs ten or twenty feet from the ground. It is of slow
-growth, and it reaches old age--possibly as much as 350 years in extreme
-cases. The wood is very porous, but the pores are not in rows. The
-medullary rays are thin and distinct. It is not known that any
-quarter-sawing has been attempted, and it would hardly be profitable.
-The wood is pale red, exceedingly brittle, firm, light for oak, and it
-has a distinct odor of tannin with which both the wood and the bark are
-heavily charged. The principal uses to which this oak is put in
-California and Oregon are as fuel and ranch timbers, the latter being of
-the simplest and roughest sort. Its fuel value is high, compared with
-other woods of the region. Some use was made of the bark for tanning
-purposes years ago on the Pacific slope, but it does not appear to go to
-market now.
-
-    BLUE JACK OAK (_Quercus brevifolia_) bears several names, upland
-    willow oak, to distinguish it from other willow oaks which grow in
-    swamps, sand jack, referring to the land on which it grows,
-    high-ground willow oak, turkey oak, shin oak and cinnamon oak. No
-    reason is known for the last name which is not used outside of
-    Florida. The tree grows in a narrow strip along the coast from North
-    Carolina to Texas, crossing northern Florida. The blue jack oak
-    sometimes attains a height of fifty feet and a diameter of twenty
-    inches; but that is its best. It is usually fifteen or twenty feet
-    high and a few inches in diameter. The leaves are from two to five
-    inches long and quite narrow, closely resembling those of willow.
-    The acorns are abundant, but small. The tree is of so little value
-    that it does not interest the lumberman. It occupies waste land, and
-    may produce a little fuel without crowding more valuable trees, but
-    is in every way inferior to the black jack oak (_Quercus
-    marilandica_), which overlaps its range a little, but is a northern
-    species. The wood of blue jack oak is hard, strong, light brown in
-    color, with darker-colored sapwood.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SPANISH OAK
-
-[Illustration: SPANISH OAK]
-
-
-
-
-SPANISH OAK
-
-(_Quercus Digitata_)
-
-
-One of the first difficulties in an attempt to clear up the
-misunderstandings regarding Spanish oak is to confine the name to the
-species to which it belongs. That is no easy task, because the name has
-been applied to numerous oaks in various parts of the country, and
-without any apparent reason. Some of these bear little resemblance to
-Spanish oak and grow almost wholly outside its range. It is not a case
-of mistaking one for the other, for there is no mistake. Some speak of
-the common red oak as Spanish oak, others bestow that name on yellow
-oak, others on black jack oak, or scarlet oak, or any one of several
-others. It appears, however, that the name is not applied to any member
-of the white oak group.
-
-It is said that Spanish oak and Norway pine were named by the same
-process. Each got its name because it was supposed to be similar to a
-species in the old country--the pine like an evergreen of north Europe,
-and the oak like a broadleaf tree of Spain. It was learned later that
-both the American species were different from those of Europe which they
-resembled.
-
-The peculiar drooping foliage of Spanish oak gives the tree a character
-which impresses a person who sees the full-leafed crown for the first
-time. The leaves are six or seven inches long and four or five wide.
-Their forms vary within wide limits, and their shapes change from week
-to week while growing. Some have no lobes or sinuses, others have them
-in rudimentary form only, while in still others they are well developed.
-
-The tree is often called red oak, particularly by lumbermen who cut it
-and send it to market with red oak. In Louisiana it is known as Spanish
-water oak, there being much resemblance between it and water oak
-(_Quercus nigra_) with which it is associated. Its range covers more
-than 200,000 square miles, beginning at the north in New Jersey and
-following down the coast regions to central Florida. It extends westward
-into Texas to the valley of the Brazos river; northward to Missouri and
-southern Indiana and Illinois. It does not grow far inland from the
-coast in the north Atlantic states, but further south it is common on
-the coast plain between the sea and the base of the mountains. It is
-often found on dry sand hills in that region. The largest Spanish oaks
-on record grew in the lower Ohio valley, particularly along the Wabash
-river. It is usually of medium size and large trunks are seldom seen.
-The average height is seventy or eighty feet, diameter two or three. In
-the open, the crown is broad and low, but in forests the trunk prunes
-itself fairly well, and makes good saw timber, as far as form and size
-are concerned. The acorns ripen in two years, and are bitter. The bark
-is rich in tannin, but tanneries do not use much of it.
-
-The tree is not generally abundant. Some large areas within its range
-have little, and thick stands are unusual anywhere. It is one of the
-oaks which lumbermen neither reject nor seek. They cut it in course of
-operations, and saw it and sell it under the common name, red oak.
-
-The wood is heavy, very hard, and strong. It is reputed to decay more
-rapidly than most oaks, and it checks badly in seasoning. The annual
-rings of growth are broad, and the springwood is marked by several rows
-of large open pores. The medullary rays are few but conspicuous; color
-light red, the sapwood lighter. The wood weighs about three pounds less
-than white oak per cubic foot, and its fuel value is less.
-
-It is not easy to compile an account of the uses of Spanish oak by the
-various industries of this country, for the reason that other oaks pass
-by its name and it is known by names which should not be applied to it.
-It is shown, however, where special studies of its utilization have been
-made that it is a useful wood for many purposes. It is a useful
-furniture material, and though statistics do not give separate figures
-for it, evidently the total quantity consumed yearly runs into many
-millions of feet. It is much employed in the manufacture of tables,
-chiefly for frames, but occasionally as the outside material. It may be
-quarter-sawed, if good logs are selected. The chair factories in North
-Carolina use about 44,000,000 feet of oak yearly, and Spanish oak
-supplies a rather large share of the material. It is employed as
-interior finish in that state, and also for mission furniture, brackets
-for telegraph and telephone poles, refrigerators, and kitchen safes.
-Slack coopers and manufacturers of boxes and crates find the wood
-suitable for their wares; but its open pores stand in the way of its use
-for tight cooperage.
-
-Similar uses of the wood occur in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and
-it may be assumed that they occur also in all other portions of Spanish
-oak's range. It goes to wagon shops in Texas where it is substituted for
-red oak. It is employed also in the manufacture of rice hullers and
-cotton gins. Lumbermen in northern Louisiana use log trucks with axles,
-felloes, and other heavy parts of Spanish oak, and it is frequently
-preferred for stone wagons.
-
-In practically all large shipments of southern red oak to the North,
-some Spanish oak is mixed. It could not be otherwise, since this wood is
-cut in the forest with other red oaks, is sawed and stocked with them,
-and goes with them to market.
-
-BLACK JACK OAK (_Quercus marilandica_) is one of the scrub trees of this
-country, and few good words are ever heard for it; yet it has redeeming
-qualities. Lumbermen have not paid much attention to it and never will,
-for only when at its best is the trunk large enough for any kind of
-sawlog, and there has been little inclination to use it for anything
-else. It attains size fitting it for fence posts, and sometimes it
-performs service along that line; but the small trunks are nearly all
-sapwood, and decay strikes them quickly. The bark is black, hence the
-name, and it is exceedingly rough, and is broken in squares. The leaves
-are large and pear-shaped, with the broad end opposite the stem. Some
-are slightly lobed. A vigorous black jack oak, standing in open ground,
-presents a fine appearance. The crown is wide and is frequently conical,
-the limbs small, and are set in the trunk on nearly horizontal lines.
-The range of this unloved species covers 600,000 or more square miles,
-beginning in New York, running west to central Nebraska, south through
-Texas nearly to the Rio Grande, and in Florida to Tampa. It is not an
-aggressive tree and has permitted itself to be crowded off the good land
-until it has formed the habit of occupying geographical left-overs in
-the form of sand banks and wornout fields. In the northeastern part of
-its range it is often associated with scrub pine (_Pinus virginiana_),
-because the two have similar habits and are content to live in perpetual
-poverty on dry gravel or thin sand. Large trunks are not possible under
-such circumstances, and first-class wood is unusual. Black jack oak at
-its best may attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of eighteen
-inches, but it is oftener twenty feet high and six inches through. It
-grows with moderate rapidity and does not live long.
-
-The annual rings are often indistinct. The wood is hard, heavy, and
-strong, and checks badly in seasoning. The medullary rays are broad and
-conspicuous, the wood dark brown in color, the sapwood lighter. This oak
-is very high in ash contents, more than one per cent of the dry weight
-of wood going to ashes when burned. The tree reaches its best
-development in the lower Mississippi valley, and in eastern Texas.
-Comparatively few uses for it have been found. Cordwood cutters find it
-valuable where it abounds in sufficient quantity, and it has been burned
-for charcoal for iron foundries and blacksmith shops. Small amounts are
-occasionally found in wood-using factories in Texas, but only when logs
-with considerable heartwood can be procured. The sap is characterless
-and seems to be utterly rejected at the factory. Sometimes the rich
-brown of the heartwood is attractive, but more frequently the wood is
-ringed and splotched with different colors, not distributed in a way to
-give any artistic effect. When a satisfactory stick is found, it can be
-worked into balusters and small spindles which show grain well. It is
-also worked into broad panels made up of narrow, quarter-sawed strips,
-which exhibit the dark flecks of the wood to good advantage.
-
-    TRIDENT OAK (_Quercus tridentata_) is remarkable for its extreme
-    scarcity, and is of no commercial importance. It was formerly found
-    in Missouri--a single tree--which was afterwards destroyed. It
-    occurs in Washtenaw county, Michigan. It appears that no report
-    showing the character of the wood has been made.
-
-    LEA OAK (_Quercus leana_), which is believed to be a hybrid between
-    yellow oak (_Quercus velutina_) and shingle oak (_Quercus
-    imbricaria_), is interesting but not important. Trees are apt to
-    stand alone, and far apart. They occur from District of Columbia to
-    Missouri, and south to North Carolina. The range is imperfectly
-    known.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LAUREL OAK
-
-[Illustration: LAUREL OAK]
-
-
-
-
-LAUREL OAK
-
-(_Quercus Laurifolia_)
-
-
-This representative of the black oak group is found nowhere except in
-the southeastern states, and only in their borders. It never ranges far
-inland, but sticks to wet localities and the margins of swamps where its
-associates are tupelo, southern white cedar, cypress, magnolias, and,
-near its southern limit, myrtle and other semi-tropical trees and
-shrubs. It is sometimes utilized as an ornament, but that is not its
-usual function. It is not a successful competitor as a shade tree with
-willow oak and water oak.
-
-Beginning at the border of the Dismal Swamp in Virginia as the northern
-limit of growth, this interesting tree ranges southward along the coast
-to Cape Romano in Florida and westward in the lower Gulf states to
-southeastern Louisiana. It is seen at its best in eastern Florida. It
-puts forth a vigorous growth on the hummock land in the southern part of
-that state, where it develops a shapely trunk when in crowded stands. It
-grows well in very rocky ground.
-
-Although the common name laurel oak is prompted by its foliage, the tree
-bears various other sectional names. It is known as laurel oak in North
-Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Florida; Darlington oak in South
-Carolina; willow oak in Florida and South Carolina; water oak in
-Georgia. The latter name has a tendency to confuse it with another
-species which is properly called water oak (_Quercus nigra_).
-
-The ornamental qualities of this tree are due to the tall stately bole,
-its shapely and symmetrical round-topped head and slender branches and
-twigs. It sometimes attains the dignity of one hundred feet in height
-with a proportionate diameter of three or four feet. The bark is firm,
-of dark, reddish-brown color, and usually is not fissured but finely
-broken into small close, scale-like plates. On old trees, especially at
-the butt, deep fissures divide it into broad ridges. The buds are shiny
-brown, and they narrow abruptly to an acute point. The acorns are either
-sessile or have short stalks, and they usually grow alone. They are
-short and broad, and are incased in shallow, thin cups. In the flowering
-season hairy aments add to the attractiveness of the tree. The leaves
-are dark green above and lighter on the lower surface and are grouped
-rather closely on the twigs. They attain a length of four inches or
-less, and fall gradually after turning yellow.
-
-Laurel oak seems to be little used. It is occasionally referred to as
-rather inferior to other members of the black oak group, but it is not
-apparent why it bears that reputation. It may be on account of its poor
-seasoning qualities. Like other southern oaks, it is very heavy when
-green, and it is inclined to shrink and warp while in the process of
-parting with its moisture. If this can be successfully overcome, the
-wood ought to be valuable. Tests made on four samples cut on St. John's
-river, Florida, recorded in Sargent's tables, show remarkable results.
-The wood is 34 per cent stronger and 37 per cent stiffer than white oak,
-and is only one pound heavier per cubic foot of dry wood. If these
-values are fairly representative of the wood of laurel oak, it should be
-exceptionally valuable in vehicle making. It would fall considerably
-below hickory, but would stand very high among other woods, and could be
-recommended for wagon axles, tongues, and other parts of heavy vehicles.
-
-It should be borne in mind, however, that tests alone, and particularly
-when the number of samples is small, are not sufficient to decide a
-wood's place as a manufacturing material. It must be tried in actual
-practice, and that has not yet been done in the case of laurel oak as a
-wagon wood. When tried out it may exhibit defects, or undesirable
-qualities, which are not apparent in samples employed in laboratory
-tests.
-
-There is little exact information available in regard to the supply of
-laurel oak in the South. It is not abundant in the sense that willow oak
-and Texan red oak are. Neither are the trees generally of good form for
-lumber. Little has ever been cut, because the land where it grows is not
-demanded for agriculture. It occupies out-of-the-way places, and the
-hunter and fisherman are better acquainted with it than the lumberman.
-
-HIGHLAND OAK (_Quercus wislizeni_) is a California evergreen with leaves
-commonly shaped like holly, but sometimes their edges are smooth with no
-sign of teeth. The foliage remains longer on this tree than is usual
-with evergreen oaks. Old leaves generally fall within a month after the
-new crop appears; but those of highland oak remain several months
-longer, gradually falling during the second summer. When the tree is at
-its best it is a splendid representative of the vegetable kingdom. Its
-form does not please lumbermen, for the trunk is short and rough; but
-the crown rises seventy or eighty feet, is symmetrical, the foliage dark
-green, and the general appearance is that of an enormous holly tree.
-Trunks are sometimes five or six feet in diameter. The name highland oak
-is somewhat misleading, though the species ascends to an altitude of
-6,000 feet or more. It is described as a highland tree to distinguish it
-from the California live oak (_Quercus agrifolia_) which grows in the
-vicinity of the sea in California. The highland oak ranges from northern
-California to the international boundary, following the foothills of the
-mountain ranges. It occurs in dry river bottoms and washes and in
-desert mountain canyons. It is not choice as to soil but will grow in
-loam, sand, gravel, or among rocks. It is not abundant.
-
-When it grows near the sea it is apt to lose its tree form and become a
-shrub. It assumes that form on Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa islands off the
-coast of southern California. It grows slowly and is tenacious of life.
-When it has once secured a foothold it hangs on with determination,
-though exposed to severe storms and inhospitable conditions. The acorns
-do not mature until late in the autumn of their second year. They are
-sometimes an inch and a half long, and scarcely a third of an inch
-thick. The wood of this oak possesses some good qualities which are
-locally appreciated by wagon makers who use it for repair work. It is
-extensively cut for fuel, and it burns about like eastern white oak, but
-leaves more ashes. The dry wood weighs 49 pounds per cubic foot. It is
-considerably weaker than white oak and is less elastic. The summerwood
-constitutes a large part of the annual growth ring. It is very porous,
-the rows of pores running parallel with the medullary rays. This part of
-the wood structure is midway between that of deciduous and the evergreen
-oaks. The medullary rays are broad but short. When exposed on a
-tangential surface, they are from one-fourth to one-half inch long, and
-give the wood a flecked appearance. Exposed in cross section, they are
-from one inch to four inches in length. This applies, of course, only to
-large rays, easily seen with the naked eye. In quarter-sawed lumber, the
-rays have a pinkish color and glossy luster which are not pleasing. This
-tree belongs in the class with those which are in no danger of being
-extirpated by human agencies. It occupies land which man does not need
-and will never want.
-
-    MYRTLE OAK (_Quercus myrtifolia_) associates with the laurel oak in
-    some parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and closely
-    resembles it, though it is smaller, and gives little promise of ever
-    becoming important in a commercial way. It is clearly in the scrub
-    oak class, and does not approach the dignity of even a small tree in
-    most of its range. Few specimens can be found exceeding a height of
-    twenty feet and a diameter of five or six inches. Trees approaching
-    that size grow in western Florida in the region of the Apalachicola
-    river. Generally this oak covers dry, sandy ridges and islands, and
-    is shrubby. It forms thickets on some of the islands off the coast
-    of Alabama and Mississippi, and extends its range westward to the
-    low, southern parts of Louisiana where the dwarf trees are almost
-    hidden by tall reeds and grass. Its name refers to the leaf it
-    bears. It is impossible that man can ever make much use of this
-    tree.
-
-    MOREHUS OAK (_Quercus morehus_) can never be important in the lumber
-    industry, but it fills a few places in California where the ground
-    needs a cover. Its range is in the northern coast range and the
-    Sierra foothills, extending as far south as Kings river. The edges
-    of the leaves bear bent hooks like saw teeth. The foliage falls in
-    late winter. Trees are occasionally a foot or more in diameter. The
-    wood has not the appearance of possessing much value, and is too
-    scarce to be important. The most interesting thing connected with
-    this tree is that it is supposed to be a hybrid--a cross between
-    highland oak and California black oak. It was first found in 1863,
-    and a considerable range has since been established for it.
-
-    It is the opinion of some investigators that new tree species have
-    their origin in crosses between existing species. Of the countless
-    thousands of such crosses a few, at long intervals of time, may
-    develop characteristics which enable them to maintain their
-    existence and to spread into new territory. If that occurs, a new
-    kind of tree has appeared on earth and is ready to take its place
-    among the established forests of the region. Cross-fertilization
-    among trees and plants is very common, but so many adverse
-    conditions are encountered, that few hybrids ever amount to
-    anything.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PIN OAK
-
-[Illustration: PIN OAK]
-
-
-
-
-PIN OAK
-
-(_Quercus Palustris_)
-
-
-Pin oak ranges from certain sections of Massachusetts, notably the
-Connecticut river valley, and near Amherst, westward as far as the
-southeastern part of Missouri; on the south it is found along the lower
-Potomac river in Virginia, in Kentucky, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
-
-It is known as pin oak in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New
-York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, Arkansas, Missouri,
-Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Kansas; in Arkansas and Kansas it is
-called swamp Spanish oak; in Rhode Island and Illinois it is often known
-as water oak; in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kansas as swamp oak; in
-Arkansas as water Spanish oak.
-
-The name pin oak is said to belong to this tree because of a peculiarity
-of its branches. They leave the trunk and the larger limbs at nearly
-right angles, and criss-cross in all directions, resembling pins thrust
-into the wood, and bristling outward at every angle. The crowding to
-which they are subjected kills many of them as the tree reaches middle
-age, but the stubs do not drop quickly, and as many of the
-characteristic pins appear to be present as ever. Such is the usual
-explanation given to account for the name, and the facts fit the theory;
-but the fact that several other species are called pin oaks is not
-accounted for. The habit of the branches of all of them is not the same.
-The Gambel oak in its Arizona range has that name. So has the chinquapin
-oak in Arkansas and Texas, but that is apparently a shortening of its
-true name, the last syllable only being used. They call the Durand oak
-pin oak in Texas, but without any known reason.
-
-The botanical name _palustris_, belonging to this species, refers to the
-tree's habit of growing in swamps and damp land along river bottoms. It
-is not a swamp tree as cypress is, but is more like swamp white oak, and
-finds its most congenial surroundings on the borders of streams and on
-fairly well drained lowland where roots readily reach water.
-
-The leaves are three or five inches long, are simple, and alternate.
-They are broad, and have from five to nine lobes which are toothed, and
-bristle-tipped on the ends. The sinuses are broad and rounded, and
-extend well toward the midrib, which is stout, and from which the veins
-branch off conspicuously. In color the leaves are bright green above and
-lighter below when young, becoming thin, firm and darker green at
-maturity; late in autumn they turn a rich, deep scarlet. They are coated
-below with pubescence, and have large tufts of pale hairs in the axils
-of the veins.
-
-The fruit of pin oak is a small acorn which grows either sessile or on a
-very short stem; sometimes in clusters, and sometimes singly. In shape
-the acorns are nearly hemispherical, and measure about a half inch in
-diameter; they are enclosed only at the base, in a thin, saucer-shaped
-cup, dark brown, and scaly.
-
-The bark of a mature tree is dark gray or brownish-green; it is rough,
-being full of small furrows, and frequently cracks open and shows the
-reddish inner layer of bark. On small branches and young trunks, it is
-smoother, lighter, and more lustrous.
-
-Pin oak is smaller than red oak. Average trees are seventy or eighty
-feet high and two or three in diameter. Specimens 120 feet high and four
-feet in diameter are heard of but are seldom seen. Near the northern
-limit of pin oak's range large trees are not found, nor are small trees
-plentiful. This holds true in all parts of New England and northern New
-York where the species is found growing naturally. South of
-Pennsylvania, along the flood plains of rivers which flow to Chesapeake
-bay, a better class of timber is found. The best development of the
-species is in the lower Ohio valley.
-
-It grows rapidly, but falls a little short of the red oak. When young
-growth is cut, sprouts will rise from the stumps and flourish for a
-time, but merchantable trees are seldom or never produced that way. The
-acorn must be depended on. It has been remarked that pin oak does not
-prune itself well, but it does better in dense stands than in open
-ground. In the latter case the limbs are late in dying and falling.
-
-Pin oak has proved to be a valuable street and park tree. It possesses
-several characteristics which recommend it for that use. It grows
-rapidly, and it quickly attains a size which lessens its liability to
-injury by accidents. Its shade is tolerably dense; the crown is shapely
-and attractive; the leaves fall late; and it seems to stand the smoke
-and dust of cities better than many other trees. It is easily and
-successfully transplanted if taken when small. Many towns and cities
-from Long Island to Washington, D. C., have planted the pin oak along
-streets, avenues, and in parks. Several thoroughfares in Washington are
-shaded by them.
-
-Considerable planting of pin oak has been done by railroads which expect
-to grow ties. Trees of this species when cut in forests and made into
-crossties do not all show similar resistance to decay. Some ties are
-perishable in a short time, while others give satisfactory service. The
-best endure well without preservative treatment, but all are benefited
-by it. If the experimental plantings turn out well, it may be expected
-that pin oak will fill an important place in the crosstie business.
-
-Because of numerous limbs, lumber cut from pin oak is apt to be knotty,
-and the percentage of good grades small. The annual rings are wide, and
-are about evenly divided between spring and summerwood, though the
-latter often exceeds the former. Its general appearance suggests red
-oak, but it is more porous in trunks of thrifty growth. The springwood
-is largely made up of pores. The medullary rays are hardly as prominent
-as those of red oak, but in other ways resemble them. The wood weighs
-43.24 pounds per cubic foot, which is a little above red oak. It is hard
-and strong, dark brown with thin sapwood of darker color. The lumber
-checks and warps badly in seasoning.
-
-The uses to which pin oak is put must be considered in a general way
-because of the absence of exact statistics. The wood is not listed by
-the lumber trade under its own name, but goes along with others of the
-black oak group. Its uses, however, are known along a number of lines.
-Lumbermen cut it wherever it is found mixed with other hardwoods.
-Sometimes vehicle manufacturers make a point of securing a supply of
-this wood. That occurs oftener with small concerns than large. It is
-made into felloes, reaches, and bolsters. Furniture makers use it, and
-well selected, quarter-sawed stock is occasionally reduced to veneer.
-The articles produced pass for red oak, and it would be very difficult
-to detect the difference between pin oak and true red oak when finished
-as veneer. Some highly attractive mission furniture is said to be of pin
-oak.
-
-More goes to chair stock mills than to factories which produce higher
-classes of furniture. Chairs utilize very small pieces, and that gives
-the stock cutter a chance to trim out the knots and produce the maximum
-amount of clear stuff. Chair makers in Michigan reported the use of
-60,000 feet of pin oak in 1910. Slack coopers work in much the same way
-as chair mills, and pin oak is acceptable material for many classes of
-barrels and other containers. Small tight knots are frequently not
-defects sufficient to cause the rejection of staves. Tight coopers do
-not find pin oak suitable, because the wood is too porous to hold
-liquids, particularly liquors containing alcohol. The wood is mixed at
-mills with red oak and other similar species and is manufactured into
-picture frames, boxes, crates, interior finish for houses, and many
-other commodities requiring strength or handsome finish. In early years
-when the people manufactured by hand what they needed, and obtained
-their timber from the nearest forest or woodlot, they split fence rails,
-pickets, clapboards, and shingles of pin oak.
-
-Oak-apples or galls are the round excrescences formed on the limbs by
-gallflies and their eggs. They seem particularly fond of this species
-and specimens are often seen which are literally covered with them. The
-worms which live inside seem to flourish particularly well on the food
-they imbibe from pin oak. The primitive school teachers three or four
-generations ago turned these oak galls to account. They are rich in
-tannin, and were employed in manufacturing the local ink supply. The
-teachers were the ink makers as well as the pen cutters when the pens
-were whittled from quills. The process of making the ink was simple. The
-galls were soaked in a kettle of water and nails. The iron acted on the
-tannin and produced the desired blackness, but if special luster was
-desired, it was furnished by adding the fruit of the wild greenbrier
-(_Smilax rotundifolia_), which grew abundantly in the woods. It was well
-that steel pens were not then in use, for the schoolmaster's oak ink
-would have eaten up such a pen in a single day.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CALIFORNIA LIVE OAK
-
-[Illustration: CALIFORNIA LIVE OAK]
-
-
-
-
-CALIFORNIA LIVE OAK
-
-(_Quercus Agrifolia_)
-
-
-This fine western tree belongs to the black oak group, yet its acorns
-mature in one year, like those of white oaks. It is the only known black
-oak with that habit. It is properly classed with canyon live oak which
-has many characteristics of white oak, yet matures its acorns the second
-year. The two oaks with freakish fruit belong in California, and to some
-extent occupy the same range. California live oak is apparently making
-an effort to conform to the habit of other black oaks by producing two
-year acorns. It has not yet succeeded in doing so, but flowers
-occasionally appear in the fall, and young acorns set on the twigs. They
-drop during the winter, and it is not believed that any of them hang
-till the second season.
-
-The range of this tree covers most of the California coast region but
-does not reach the great interior valleys. The tree is very common in
-the southwestern part of the state. It is called an evergreen, and some
-individuals deserve that reputation, but the leaves never remain long
-after the new crop appears. Frequently the old leaves do not wait for
-the new, and when they drop, the branches remain bare for a few weeks.
-The form of the leaf is not constant. Some have smooth margins, but the
-typical leaf is toothed like holly. One of the early names by which the
-tree was known was holly-leaved oak. The bark looks much like the bark
-of chestnut oak. It is bought for tanning purposes, but its principal
-use is to adulterate the bark of another oak (_Quercus densiflora_).
-Trees range in height from twenty-five to seventy-five feet, and from
-one foot to four in diameter. The trunks are very short, and seldom
-afford clear lengths exceeding eight feet, and often not more than four.
-Trees generally grow in the open, but when in thickets, the boles
-lengthen somewhat. They are of slow growth and live to old age.
-
-The wood is hard and brittle. A cubic foot weighs 51.43 pounds when
-thoroughly dry. The wood of mature trees is reddish-brown; but young and
-middle aged trunks are all sapwood, and are white from bark to center.
-When sapwood is exposed to the air a considerable time it changes color
-and becomes very dark brown. The medullary rays of this oak are broad,
-fairly numerous, and are darker than the surrounding wood. When the log
-is quarter-sawed, the exposed flecks of bright surface are the darkest
-parts. To that extent, it resembles quarter-sawed sycamore, but the
-woods do not look alike in any other particular. This oak is very
-porous, and the pores--as is usual with live oaks--are arranged in rows
-running from bark to center rather than parallel with the annual rings.
-No clear line is distinguishable between spring and summerwood.
-
-Cordwood constitutes the most important use for California live oak. It
-rates high in fuel value, and the many large and crooked limbs make the
-tree an ideal one, from the cordwood cutter's viewpoint. By carefully
-ricking the wood, with the crooks and elbows in every possible
-direction--at which some cordwood cutters are very proficient--a cord of
-wood may be constructed in the forest, which, when sold and delivered in
-the buyer's shed, contracts like an accordion.
-
-    CANYON LIVE OAK (_Quercus chrysolepis_). This splendid California
-    oak bears many names. It is an evergreen, and therefore is called
-    live oak. It is hard when thoroughly seasoned, and this has won for
-    it the name iron oak. Wagon makers often so designate it. It is
-    called Valparaiso oak, but for what reason is not apparent. Black
-    live oak doubtless refers to the dark color of the foliage. The most
-    shapely trees grow in the bottoms of canyons, and the name, canyon
-    live oak, refers to that circumstance. Hickory oak is not an
-    appropriate name, though it doubtless implies that the wood
-    possesses the toughness of hickory. It is about as tough as white
-    oak. The name golden cup oak is a translation of its botanical name
-    which, in Greek, means "golden scale," a reference to a yellow
-    tomentum or wool which covers the cups of the acorns. The wood's
-    hardness qualifies it to serve as mauls, hence the name maul oak.
-
-    The northern limit of its growth is in southern Oregon. It goes
-    south from there on the coast ranges of California and the western
-    slopes of the Sierra Nevadas to the highlands of southern
-    California. Its growth on the mountains of southern Arizona and New
-    Mexico is always shrubby. The lowest limit of its range is about
-    1,000 feet above sea level, the best specimens occurring at low
-    altitudes in the sheltered canyons of the coast ranges of
-    California. Gradually diminishing in size, it grows to the very tops
-    of many of the high mountains, sometimes reaching 9,000 feet, being
-    not more than a foot high at the upper limits of its range. In
-    appearance this tree resembles the eastern live oak (_Quercus
-    virginiana_), having the same majestic wide-spreading crown, except
-    in the high altitudes where it forms dense thickets covering large
-    areas.
-
-    When in its favorite habitat, the massive proportions and majestic
-    appearance of this tree are imposing, the crown sometimes being 150
-    feet across, the bole short and thick, and the great branches long
-    and horizontal. It is not clothed in the somber Spanish moss that is
-    often present on the great live oaks of the southeastern states, but
-    there is a similarity of appearance in the drooping slender twigs.
-    One hundred and fifty feet across is cited as an unusual width of
-    crown, one hundred feet being a good average size, and forty or
-    fifty feet the usual height, although it sometimes reaches 100. The
-    bole is vested in a gray-brown, reddish-tinged bark, about an inch
-    thick, and broken into numerous scales which in old age become flaky
-    and pliable and fall off.
-
-    The bark is light colored, and has the stringy character of white
-    oak. The tree would readily pass for a white oak were it not for its
-    two-year acorns which class it in the black oak group. The wood
-    resembles white oak, and weighs 52.93 pounds per cubic foot.
-
-    Few oaks, if any, retain their leaves a longer time than this. They
-    remain on the branches three or four years. Most evergreen oaks shed
-    theirs at the beginning of the second year. The leaves of this tree
-    are peculiar in another way. They assume various forms. That in
-    itself is not unusual and occurs with many species; but the canyon
-    live oak has one pattern of leaf for the young tree, another for the
-    old. One form has a margin with sharp, hooked teeth; another has
-    smooth-margined leaves, and there are various intermediate forms.
-    Sizes vary no less than shapes of both acorns and leaves. Some
-    acorns are half an inch in length, others two inches.
-
-    The canyon live oak is believed to be long-lived, but further
-    information is desirable. The massive trunks represent centuries.
-    They usually occur in sheltered places which are measurably secure
-    from the ordinary perils which beset trees, notably the woodsman's
-    ax and the periodic forest fire. The bottoms of canyons where this
-    oak makes choice of situation do not usually burn fiercely, and
-    trees sheltered there escape. Cordwood cutters are the most constant
-    peril to good fuel trees in California; but many a canyon is safe
-    from their invasions, because of lack of roads. There the most
-    magnificent oaks rear their crowns in security, while trees of
-    inferior size and character, which grow on exposed slopes and flats,
-    fall before the cordwood cutter, and go to the ricks in village
-    woodyards.
-
-    The wood of canyon live oak is superior to that of any other oak in
-    its range. It is of light brown color, and is tough, strong, stiff,
-    and heavy. The trunks are generally unsuitable for sawlogs, being
-    too short, but when a chance tree is found that may be cut into
-    lumber, it is considered a prize. Trunks are seldom good for more
-    than one sawlog. In that respect this oak may be compared with the
-    southern live oak. The scarcity of good hardwoods on the Pacific
-    coast adds to the value of what may be found there. If the canyon
-    live oak grew in the East, and developed a trunk of the same size
-    and shape as it has in its present home, it would attract no more
-    attention from the users of hardwoods than the live oak in the South
-    attracts now. But place makes great difference.
-
-    Factories in California do not report the use of much of this oak,
-    yet considerable quantities of it are in service. The most important
-    place found for it is in country and village blacksmith shops, where
-    wagons are repaired. Nearly every piece of wood which goes into a
-    wagon, except the bed, may be this oak. Many persons consider it the
-    best wagon timber on the Pacific coast, and it is particularly
-    valued for tongues, not only for wagons, but for heavy log trucks
-    which are operated by several yoke of oxen. The wood is likewise
-    made into singletrees. It has always been in use in California for
-    pack saddles. That article is small, but many saddles were formerly
-    made, and the pack saddle is still an important article in the
-    mountains. Trains of mules, horses, and burros thread the narrow
-    paths, where wheeled vehicles cannot go, and deliver supplies to
-    camps and mines in remote districts. The pack saddle's strength is
-    frequently all that intervenes between the load and destruction; for
-    the snapping of a piece of wood may let the pack go over a precipice
-    beyond recovery. The pack trains are slowly passing out of use in
-    the West, as they long ago disappeared from the "bridle paths" of
-    eastern mountains and forests; but they are still to be seen among
-    the fastnesses of the Sierra Nevadas, as in the days when a western
-    poet burst into inspired song of the long pack trains going
-
-      "Up and down o'er the mountain trail
-      With one horse tied to another's tail."
-
-    HUCKLEBERRY OAK (_Quercus chrysolepis vaccinifolia_) is a variety of
-    canyon live oak, and is never large enough to supply wood for any
-    purpose, but is valuable as a covering to the ground on exposed
-    mountains. It is usually a shrub, and specimens no more than a foot
-    high are mature and bear acorns enormously out of proportion to the
-    size of the tree. If the canyon live oak of largest size in the low
-    hills bore acorns proportionately as large, they would be the size
-    of barrels. The huckleberry oak's acorns are set in their golden
-    cups. The name huckleberry is applied because of a fancied
-    resemblance of the leaves to those of huckleberries. They are
-    generally less than one inch in length, sometimes not half an inch.
-    This unique variety of oak ranges on elevated slopes and ridges of
-    the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the traveler in climbing to the
-    peaks is often grateful for the privilege of pulling himself up the
-    steep slopes by grasping in his hands the tops of full grown trees.
-
-    PALMER OAK (_Quercus chrysolepis palmeri_) is considered a variety
-    of canyon live oak by some, but Sudworth believes it is a distinct
-    species, and draws his conclusion from forms of leaves, flowers, and
-    fruit. It forms large thickets on foothills and plateaus near the
-    southern boundary of California, eighty miles or more east of San
-    Diego. The trees do not attain sufficient size to give them
-    commercial importance.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CALIFORNIA TANBARK OAK
-
-[Illustration: CALIFORNIA TANBARK OAK]
-
-
-
-
-CALIFORNIA TANBARK OAK
-
-(_Quercus Densiflora_)
-
-
-Botanists dispute the right of this tree to the name of oak, and some of
-them refuse to call it an oak. It is admitted that it possesses
-characters not found in any other oak, but these are important to the
-botanist only, while laymen have never considered the tree anything but
-an oak. It has been variously called tanbark oak, chestnut oak,
-California chestnut oak, live oak, and peach oak. The trunk, branches,
-and foliage look much like chestnut. The leaf is like the chestnut's,
-but it is evergreen. There are three or four crops on the tree at one
-time, and none fall until they are three or four years old. Young leaves
-are remarkably woolly, but late in their first summer they get rid of
-most of the fuzz, and become thick in texture.
-
-Tanbark oaks are of all sizes, from mere shrubs on high mountains in the
-northern Sierra Nevadas to fine and symmetrical timber in the damp
-climate of the fog belt between San Francisco and the Oregon line. The
-average height of mature trees is from seventy to 100 feet, with
-diameters up to six feet in rare cases, though more trunks are under
-than over two feet in diameter.
-
-The range of this oak reaches southern Oregon on the north, and runs
-southward three or four hundred miles along the Sierra Nevada mountains,
-to Mariposa county, and six hundred miles through the Coast range to
-Santa Barbara county. The tree is affected by climatic conditions, and
-where surroundings do not suit, it is small and shrubby, often less than
-ten feet high. It does best in the redwood belt where fogs from the
-Pacific ocean keep the air moist and the ground damp. It sometimes
-associates with Douglas fir, and at other times with California live
-oak. If it grows in dense side shade it loses its lower branches and
-develops a long, clean trunk; but in open ground it keeps its limbs
-until late in life.
-
-This is the most important source of tanbark on the Pacific coast, and
-up to the present it has been procurable in large quantities. The annual
-output is nearly 40,000 tons, and it commands a higher price than the
-bark of any other oak or of hemlock. The absence of other adequate
-tanning materials on the Pacific coast gives this tree much importance.
-Its range covers several thousand square miles, and the stand is fairly
-good on much of it. But on the other hand, the destruction of timber to
-secure the bark has been excessive. What occurred with chestnut oak and
-hemlock in the East, is occurring with tanbark oak in the West. Trees
-are cut and peeled, and are left by thousands to rot in the woods, or
-to feed fires and make them more destructive. The bark peelers do their
-principal work in the California redwood region, because there the oak
-is at its best. Economic conditions make the salvage of the trunks
-impossible. The bark can be hauled to market, but the wood is unsalable
-at living prices, after the long haul. It has, therefore, been usually
-abandoned, and becomes a total loss. It cannot even be sold for fuel,
-because the country within reach of it is thinly settled, and wood is
-plentiful on every side.
-
-Large oaks are felled, because the bark can not be stripped from the
-trunks in any other way, and small trees are not spared. The peelers
-often do not take the trouble to cut them down, but strip off the bark
-as high as a man can reach, and leave them standing. A future tree is
-thus destroyed for the sake of a strip of bark a few feet long. Such
-trees live a year or two, sometimes several years, before yielding to
-the inevitable. Usually, as a last expiring effort, they bear an
-abnormally large crop of acorns. That performance, in the language of
-the bark peelers, is "the last kick." A tanbark slashing, when the
-peelers are ready to abandon it, is a sorry spectacle. The barkless and
-sun-cracked trunks strew the ground, the tops and limbs are piled in
-windrows, the small peeled trees stand dying, and the last ricks of bark
-have been sledded down the tote roads, marking the close of operations
-in that district. A few months later, when fire runs through, the end of
-the tanbark oak on that tract is accomplished.
-
-Within recent years commendable efforts have been made to use the wood
-as well as the bark. One of the first steps in that direction was to
-overcome the prejudice against the wood. It was long considered to be
-valueless. That belief was founded on the single fact that this oak is
-difficult to season. Few woods in this country check as badly as this,
-when it is left exposed to sun and wind after the bark has been removed.
-It checks both radially and along the annual rings. The medullary rays
-are broad and extend much of the distance from the center to the
-outside. These are natural lines of cleavage when the log begins to
-season and the internal stresses develop. It must be admitted that the
-prospect of making anything out of timber of that character is
-discouraging; but it has been accomplished, and tanbark oak is now a
-material of considerable value.
-
-The wood has about the strength and stiffness of white oak, while it is
-four pounds lighter per cubic foot. The structure is similar to that of
-California live oak, but the pores of tanbark oak are smaller. They run
-in rows from center to circumference. The medullary rays are broad
-enough to show well in quarter-sawing, but the wood's appearance when so
-worked is not wholly satisfactory. The exposed flat surfaces of the
-rays show a faint purplish or violet tinge which is considered
-objectionable. But when the wood is worked plain it is dependable and
-substantial. It makes good flooring, fairly good furniture, finish,
-vehicles, and agricultural implements. It is perishable when placed in
-damp situations, and this detracts somewhat from its value as railway
-ties; but the wood's porous nature indicates that it will readily yield
-to preservative treatment.
-
-Since the value of the wood is coming to be understood it is to be
-expected that less of it will be destroyed than formerly, and that
-second growth will be given opportunity to hold the ground when old
-stands are cut. The tree is a prolific seeder, but not every year, and
-seedlings come up abundantly in sheltered places. Sprouts rise from
-stumps and grow to vigorous trees. It would seem, therefore, that the
-tanbark oak will hold at least part of the ground where nature planted
-it.
-
-TOUMEY OAK (_Quercus toumeyi_). No oak in this country has smaller
-leaves than this. They are usually less than three-fourths of an inch
-long and half an inch wide, and they hang on petioles one-sixteenth inch
-long. The leaves have no lobes or notches. They remain all winter and
-fall in the spring in time to make room for the new crop. The acorns are
-nearly as long as the leaves and ripen in June of the first year. Few
-persons ever see this oak, for its known range is restricted to Mule
-mountain, in Cochise county, southeastern Arizona. It attains a height
-of twenty-five or thirty feet, and a diameter of six or eight inches.
-The trunk is not only small, but is of form so poor that it can never be
-of value for anything but fuel. It divides near the ground into crooked
-branches. The heart of the tree is light brown, the thick sapwood is
-lighter.
-
-    WOOLLY OAK (_Quercus tomentella_) has apparently been crowded off
-    the American continent and has taken refuge on islands off the
-    southern California coast. As far as known, not a single tree stands
-    on the mainland, but several groves, with a few isolated specimens,
-    are found on Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and Catalina islands, where
-    they are huddled together in the bottoms of sheltered canyons. The
-    leaves are thick, leathery, and are toothed like holly. The trees
-    are evergreen. The acorns do not mature until the second season.
-    They are generally more than an inch long. The scarcity of this oak
-    relegates it to an unimportant place among commercial woods. This
-    seems unfortunate, for the appearance of the wood indicates that it
-    possesses excellent properties. No other oak looks like this wood.
-    It is decidedly yellow, and is dense and firm. The medullary rays
-    are different from those of any other oak. When seen in cross
-    section they are arranged in short, wavy lines, broadest in the
-    middle and tapering toward both ends. The pores are arranged between
-    the rays, and follow wavy lines also. Trees grow with fair rapidity,
-    and the largest on the islands are seventy-five feet high and two in
-    diameter.
-
-    BARREN OAK (_Quercus pumila_) is called dwarf black oak, or simply
-    scrub oak. Its habit of growing on barren land is responsible for
-    its common name which some people shorten to "bear" oak. It is one
-    of the poorest oaks of the East, and it seldom grows more than
-    twenty-five feet high and a few inches in diameter. Its range
-    follows the Atlantic coast southward from Mount Desert Island,
-    Maine, to North Carolina. It is probably more abundant on the pine
-    barrens of New Jersey than elsewhere. The trunks are too small to be
-    of use for anything but fuel.
-
-    PRICE OAK (_Quercus pricei_) is a California tree, supposed to be
-    very local in its range, since it has not been found outside the
-    drainage basin of a small stream in Monterey county. That locality
-    on the coast of California appears to be the starting place or
-    principal abiding place of several tree species, among which are
-    Monterey cypress and Monterey pine. The Price oak attains a height
-    of twenty-five or thirty feet, and a diameter of twelve inches or
-    less; consequently it is too small to be of value to lumbermen, even
-    if it were abundant. The leaves resemble those of California live
-    oak, and are believed to remain two summers on the tree. The acorns
-    mature the second season.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SHINGLE OAK
-
-[Illustration: SHINGLE OAK]
-
-
-
-
-SHINGLE OAK
-
-(_Quercus Imbricaria_)
-
-
-The origin of this tree's name has been the subject of considerable
-controversy. According to one account the name was first used by the
-French colonists at Kaskaskia, Illinois, nearly 150 years ago. They
-found that the wood rived well and it was abundant in the vicinity of
-their settlement. They split it for shingles and covered their cabins.
-It was the best wood obtainable for the purpose in that region, and they
-designated the tree shingle oak, a name translated into Latin by the
-botanist Michaux and still retained as the tree's botanical name. The
-story of the name appears to be well authenticated, but the fact cannot
-be denied that as much reason exists for another theory. A person who
-sees a shingle oak tree in full leaf, particularly if it stands in open
-ground where its foliage has had opportunity to develop along natural
-lines, will at once notice the peculiar and characteristic overlapping
-of the leaves. They suggest the courses of shingles nailed on a roof. No
-other oak has that arrangement. The similitude is so striking that it
-would be surprising if the name shingle oak were not applied.
-
-It is not a one-name tree, but following the fashion, it carries several
-names. It is called laurel oak in some regions. The form and appearance
-of the leaf give the name. The oak looks like a mammoth laurel tree more
-than like its own species. The shingle oak is known as jack oak in some
-parts of Illinois. That is a name liable to be applied to any tree when
-its real name is not known. In North Carolina they call the tree water
-oak, which name, like jack oak, is often used to conceal ignorance of
-the true name. Another southern species (_Quercus nigra_) is properly
-named water oak.
-
-Shingle oak requires good soil for growth but is not partial either to
-uplands or bottoms. It is found at its best in the lower Ohio river
-basin and in Missouri, but is comparatively rare in the East. From
-middle Pennsylvania its range extends southward along the Alleghanies to
-northern Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and west Arkansas. It is found in
-Michigan, Wisconsin, and westward to Kansas.
-
-It manifests a strong tendency to hybridize with other oaks, and it
-readily crosses with black jack oak, pin oak, and yellow oak. It is
-believed that a cross between yellow oak and shingle oak produced the
-species known as lea oak.
-
-A mature tree may be one hundred feet high and three or four feet in
-diameter. It has a round or pyramidal attractive crown composed of many
-slender branches and twigs. The foliage is distinctively grouped at the
-ends of the twigs in star-like clusters. The leaves are four or six
-inches long, with wedge-shaped or rounded bases, and are deep green and
-shiny on the upper side, but lighter below. The acorns are short,
-stubby, and rounded, covered one-third of the way with thin shallow
-cups.
-
-Shingle oak grows rapidly, and it is often sold by nurseries which deal
-in ornamental forest trees. It is hardy as far north as Massachusetts.
-Although it bears great abundance of leaves, they are so arranged that
-the crown seems open. One may see through the branches of a large
-shingle oak, and it suggests an airiness not common with oaks.
-
-Differences of opinion exist concerning the value of shingle oak for
-commercial purposes. It belongs in the black oak group, and its wood
-goes to market as red oak, and apparently is never listed as anything
-else. It is never named in market reports; shops and factories never
-report it, and it has been pronounced inferior to red oak in strength
-and seasoning properties. Tests have been made of some of its physical
-properties, and the results do not indicate that the wood belongs with
-inferior timbers. Its breaking strength is given at 39 per cent greater
-than white oak, and its stiffness at 28 per cent greater. However, these
-values, which are calculated from Sargent's tables, are based on tests
-of only a few specimens of the wood, and fuller investigation might make
-revision necessary.
-
-The wood is heavy, hard, and is said to check badly in drying. The pores
-are large and are arranged in rows; medullary rays are broad and
-conspicuous. The wood is light brown, tinged with red, the sapwood much
-lighter. The broad medullary rays, running radially, give the wood its
-good splitting qualities.
-
-The tree is fairly abundant in different parts of its range, and is cut
-and manufactured with other oaks and hardwoods. Slack coopers use it for
-barrels; box makers employ it for crates; chair mills saw dimension
-stock and ship it to factories to be finished; some goes to furniture
-factories; some is turned for spindles for grills, and for balusters for
-stairs; other fills various places as interior finish and molding. But
-it all goes to market and passes through factories under names other
-than its own.
-
-WATER OAK (_Quercus nigra_) has several names, some of them bestowed
-with little apparent reason. It is called possum oak and duck oak, but
-these names are neither descriptive nor definitive. Punk oak is another
-name. It may refer to a decayed condition of the wood, but this tree is
-no more affected by decay than others of the same region. In Texas it is
-sometimes known as spotted oak. It thrives in wet situations though not
-actually in swamps. It prefers margins of ponds, banks of rivers, and
-low swales where the ground water is just below the surface, but it is
-not confined to such situations. It does well, within its range,
-wherever willow oak flourishes, but willow oak has a wider range. The
-leaves take on various forms, and they change shape as they increase in
-size. Some have smooth margins, others are lobed. Some are wedge-shaped,
-others coffin-shaped. Their typical form, if it may be said of them that
-they have a typical form, is narrow at the stem end and wide at the
-other. To this is usually added rudimentary lobes, which are sometimes
-nearly as well developed as in any other oak. Their typical form is like
-the leaf of the black jack oak; but they are not half as large, and are
-thin and delicate, while the black jack's leaf is thick and leathery.
-
-The range of water oak begins in Delaware and follows the Atlantic
-coastal plain south to central Florida, and through the Gulf States to
-Texas. It grows as far north as Kentucky and Missouri. It keeps clear of
-the Appalachian mountain region, and other hilly districts. It is
-plentiful in some parts of its range, and trunks three feet in diameter
-and long enough for two or three logs are not unusual, yet large numbers
-of water oaks may be seen in the South which are not fit for sawlogs
-because they stand in open ground and are limby down to ten feet of the
-ground. Many have been planted for shade trees in streets and in parks,
-and are justly admired. They grow rapidly and are extremely graceful.
-Their leaves are deciduous, but adhere to the branches most of the year.
-South of the belt of severe frost, the old leaves frequently hang until
-the buds for the new crop are opening. The acorns are bitter, and even
-the southern pine hog passes them by until the pinch of famine edges up
-his appetite.
-
-Water oak possesses value as a source of lumber, but it belongs with the
-large class of oaks which lose their names and their identity when they
-pass the threshold of the sawmill. They come out red oak. Only in rare
-instances is water oak called by its own name in the factory and lumber
-yard. Wagon makers employ it for bolsters, axles, spokes, tongues,
-sandboards, hounds, felloes and reaches. Entire dump carts, except the
-iron, are constructed of this wood. Furniture manufacturers use it as
-frame material, but seldom as the outside visible parts, though no
-reason for not doing so is offered. Objection is made to its seasoning
-qualities, but the same objection applies to most red oaks. A
-considerable amount of water oak is cut in the South into thick planks
-for bridge floors. It is strong and hard, and satisfactorily resists
-decay in that place; though, in common with the black oaks generally, it
-is liable to decay when exposed to dampness. The wood weighs a little
-less than white oak, and is not quite as strong or as stiff. It is
-porous, but the pores are small, except one or two rows in the
-springwood. The medullary rays are thin and not numerous, but they are
-conspicuous, and the wood may be successfully quarter-sawed. The lumber
-has the appearance of red oak, though the reddish color is not so
-pronounced.
-
-    BARTRAM OAK (_Quercus heterophylla_). This interesting but
-    commercially unimportant oak was named by Michaux from a single tree
-    found in a field belonging to John Bartram near Philadelphia more
-    than a century ago. A few trees have since been found in widely
-    scattered districts as far south as North Carolina and as far west
-    as Texas. Botanists believe it is a hybrid, one parent being the
-    willow oak (_Quercus phellos_) and the other yellow oak (_Quercus
-    velutina_). It is probable that here may be witnessed the origin of
-    a tree species. The leaves seem to be a compromise between the
-    deeply cut foliage of yellow oak and the entire leaf of willow oak.
-    The new species is so scarce that few people have ever seen it.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED GUM
-
-[Illustration: RED GUM]
-
-
-
-
-RED GUM
-
-(_Liquidambar Styraciflua_)
-
-
-This tree does not belong to the same group as black gum and tupelo,
-which are in the dogwood family, while red gum is of the witch hazel
-family. If a tree is to be judged and named by its character, red gum is
-more entitled to the name "gum" than any other tree of this country,
-because it exudes a yellow resin from wounds in the bark. The botanical
-name recognizes that fact. Storax is procured from a closely related
-tree is Asia, and has been known in commerce for many centuries. The
-other popular names of red gum are sweet gum, liquid-amber gum, gum
-tree, alligator wood, bilsted, starleaved gum, and satin walnut.
-
-The last name originated in England where it was desirable to avoid the
-name gum when applied to the wood of this tree. Though botanically it is
-about as distantly related to walnut as any tree can be, the figure of
-the wood often suggests walnut. The name sweet gum refers to the
-pleasant odor of the resin which is sometimes used in France, and
-probably elsewhere, to perfume gloves. Alligator wood is descriptive of
-warty excrescences on the bark of some trees, but they are not common to
-all. Starleaved gum relates to the leaf. It is a lopsided star--a six
-point star with one point missing.
-
-This tree's range in the United States extends from Connecticut to Texas
-and as far northwest of the Alleghanies as Missouri and Illinois. It
-reaches its greatest size in the lower Mississippi valley in rich bottom
-land which is subject to repeated inundation. It is not, however, as
-purely a swamp tree as tupelo and cypress. It grows well on land which
-is never inundated, but it needs plenty of moisture. The largest
-specimens exceed a height of 120 feet and a diameter of four; but logs
-from eighteen inches to three feet are the usual sizes. The tree's range
-extends southward through Mexico into Central America.
-
-The rise of red gum lumber into prominence forms an interesting chapter
-in the industry. It was formerly considered so difficult to season that
-few mills cared to deal with it, but that difficulty has been largely
-overcome. In the past, gum, having no market value, was left standing
-after logging; or, where the land was cleared for farming, was girdled
-and allowed to rot, and then felled and burned. Not only were the trees
-a total loss to the farmer, but, from their great size and the labor
-required to handle them, they were so serious an obstruction as often to
-preclude the clearing of valuable land. Now that there is a market for
-the timber, it is profitable to cut gum with other hardwoods, and land
-can be cleared more cheaply. This increase in the value of gum timber
-will be of great benefit to the South in many ways.
-
-Throughout its entire life red gum is intolerant of shade. As a rule
-seedlings appear only in clearings or in open spots in the forest. It is
-seldom that an overtopped tree is found, for the gum dies quickly if
-suppressed, and is consequently nearly always a dominant or intermediate
-tree. In a hardwood bottom forest, the timber trees are all of nearly
-the same age over considerable areas, and there is little young growth
-to be found in the older stands. The reason for this is the intolerance
-of most of the swamp species.
-
-Red gum reproduces both by seed and by sprouts, fairly abundantly every
-year, but about once in three years there is a heavy production. In the
-Mississippi valley the abandoned fields on which young stands of red gum
-have sprung up are, for the most part, being rapidly cleared again. The
-second growth here is considered of little worth in comparison with the
-value of the land for agricultural purposes.
-
-A large amount of red gum growing in the South can be economically
-transported from the forests to the mills only by means of the streams,
-owing to the expense of putting in railroads solely for handling the
-timber. Green red gum, however, is so heavy that it scarcely floats and,
-to overcome this difficulty, various methods of driving out the sap
-before the logs are thrown into the river have been tried. One method is
-to girdle the trees and leave them standing a year. That partly seasons
-them, but does not give time for the sapwood to decay. The logs from
-such trees float readily, and the swamps and streams are utilized to
-carry the logs to the mills.
-
-Some years ago that method of seasoning red gum was extensively
-advertised in England by contractors who sold paving blocks of this
-wood. It was claimed that the common defects of red gum were thus
-overcome. Large sales of paving material were made, particularly in
-London, and red gum was popular for a time, but it finally lost its hold
-as a paving wood in competition with certain Australian woods. The
-theory that by girdling a tree and allowing it to die, the amount of
-heartwood will be increased has been abandoned. In selecting trees for
-cutting, those with doty tops, rotten stumps, and heavy bark,
-indications of an old tree which contains a very small proportion of
-sapwood, are now chosen. These are found mainly in the drier localities.
-In low, wet places the trees have more sapwood and are smaller. The
-heartwood forms while the tree is living, not after it dies.
-
-The rapidity with which red gum has come into use in this country and
-elsewhere is the best evidence of the wood's real value. Its range of
-uses extends from the most common articles, such as boxes and crates, to
-those of highest class, like furniture and interior finish. It is only
-moderately strong and stiff, and is not a competitor of hickory, ash,
-maple, and oak in vehicle manufacturing and other lines where strength
-or elasticity is demanded; but in nearly all other classes of wood uses,
-red gum has made itself a place. It has pushed to the front in spite of
-prejudice. As soon as the difficulties of seasoning were mastered, its
-victory was won. Its annual use in Michigan, the home and center of
-hardwood supply, exceeds 20,000,000 feet in manufactured articles,
-exclusive of what is employed in rough form. In Illinois, the most
-extensive wood-manufacturing state in the Union, red gum stands second
-in amount among the hardwoods, the only one above it being white oak. In
-Kentucky, only white oak and hickory are more important among the
-factory woods, while in Arkansas, where the annual amount of this wood
-in factories exceeds 100,000,000 feet, it heads the list of hardwoods.
-
-As a veneer material, it is demanded in four times the quantity of any
-other species. The veneer is nearly all rotary cut, and it goes into
-cheap and expensive commodities, from berry crates to pianos.
-
-The wood weighs 36.83 pounds per cubic foot. It is straight-grained, the
-medullary rays are numerous but not prominent, the pores diffuse but
-small, and the summerwood forms only a narrow band, like a line. The
-annual rings do not produce much figure, but wood has another kind of
-figure, the kind that characterizes English and Circassian walnuts,
-smoky, cloudy, shaded series of rings, independent of the growth rings.
-They have no definite width or constant color, but the color is usually
-deeper than the body of the wood. This figure is one of the most prized
-properties of red gum. It is that which makes the wood the closest known
-imitator of Circassian walnut.
-
-All red gum is not figured, and that which is figured may be worked in a
-way to conceal or make little use of the figure. It shows best in rotary
-cut veneer and tangentially sawed lumber. Various woods are imitated
-with red gum. It is stained or painted to look like oak, cherry,
-mahogany, and even maple.
-
-Some trees have thin sapwood, and others are all sapwood. This
-peculiarity sometimes leads to misunderstandings in lumber transactions.
-A buyer specifies red gum, expecting to get red heartwood, but the
-seller delivers lumber cut from the red gum tree, though light colored
-sapwood may predominate. Properly speaking, the name is applied to the
-tree as a whole and does not refer to any particular color of wood in
-the tree. The term "red" is said to have referred originally to the
-color of autumn leaves, and not to the wood.
-
-The fruit of red gum is a bur, midway in appearance and size between the
-sycamore ball and the chestnut bur. It hangs on the tree until late in
-winter. The resin which exudes from wounds in the bark is of much
-commercial importance and is shipped from New Orleans and Mexican ports.
-Near the northern limit of the species' range the trees yield little
-resin, but it is abundant farther south. In the southern states it is
-used locally as chewing gum. It is known commercially as copalm balm.
-
-    WITCH HAZEL (_Hamamelis virginiana_) is a cousin to red gum, but
-    there is small resemblance. It is known as winter bloom, snapping
-    hazel, and spotted alder. Its range extends from Nova Scotia to
-    Nebraska, Texas, and Florida. It reaches its largest size among the
-    southern Appalachian mountains where the extreme height is sometimes
-    forty feet, with a diameter of eighteen inches; but few people have
-    ever seen a witch hazel that large. It is usually fifteen or twenty
-    feet high and three or four inches in diameter. The wood is much
-    like that of red gum, being diffuse-porous with obscure medullary
-    rays, and a thin line of summerwood. It is of little commercial use;
-    in fact, no report has been found that a single foot of it has ever
-    been used for any purpose. Yet it is a most interesting little tree.
-    It blooms in the fall, sometimes as late as the middle of November.
-    Its rusty summer foliage turns yellow in autumn, and as the leaves
-    begin to fall, the tree bursts into delicately-scented golden
-    flowers, the most visible part of each consisting of four petals
-    which float out like streamers. At the same time that flowers are
-    scenting the air, the seeds are discharging. A full year is required
-    to ripen them; and when dry, cold weather comes, the contraction of
-    their envelopes shoots them with sufficient force to send them
-    fifteen or twenty feet. They depend on neither wings, birds, nor
-    squirrels to scatter them. The origin of the name witch hazel is
-    disputed; but the person who examines the open-topped button which
-    holds the black seeds, and notes the fantastic resemblance to a
-    weasen face, will feel satisfied that he can guess the origin of the
-    name. The tree's bark is used for medicine, in extracts and gargles.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK GUM
-
-[Illustration: BLACK GUM]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK GUM
-
-(_Nyssa Sylvatica_)
-
-
-Black gum grows from the Kennebec river in Maine to Tampa bay, Florida;
-westward to southern Ontario and southern Michigan; Southward through
-Missouri, as far as the Brazos river in Texas. The names by which it is
-known in different regions are black gum, sour gum, tupelo, pepperidge,
-wild pear tree, gum, and yellow gum.
-
-The leaves of black gum are simple and alternate; not serrate. They are
-attached by very short petioles, which are fuzzy when young; they are a
-rich, brilliant green above and lighter below; rather thick, with
-prominent midrib. As early as the latter part of August the leaves
-commence to turn a gorgeous red. The flowers are greenish and
-inconspicuous, growing in thick clusters, the staminate ones small and
-plentiful, the pistillate ones larger. They bloom in April, May or June.
-The fruit of black gum is a drupe about one and a half inches long;
-inside of it is a rough, oval pit; the pulp is acrid until mellowed by
-frost.
-
-The bad name given to black gum by early settlers of this country has
-stayed with it, though the faults found with it then, should hold no
-longer. The pioneers were nearly all clearers of farms. They went into
-the woods with ax, maul, mattock, wedges and gluts, and made fields and
-fenced them. The fencing was as important as the clearing, for the woods
-were alive with hogs, cattle, and horses, and the crop was safe nowhere
-except behind an eight-rail staked and ridered fence. The farmer mauled
-the rails from timber which he cut in the clearing, and there it was
-that he and black gum got acquainted. The oak, chestnut, walnut, cherry,
-yellow poplar, and red cedar were split into rails and built into
-fences; but black gum never made a fence rail. No combination of maul,
-wedge, glut, determination, and elbow grease ever split a black gum log
-within the borders of the American continent. An iron wedge, driven to
-its head in the end of a rail cut, will not open a crack large enough to
-insert the point of a pocket knife. In fact, it is as easy to split the
-log crosswise as endwise. Consequently, the early farmers heaped their
-anathemas and maranathas on black gum and passed it by.
-
-Nevertheless, the tree had its virtues even in the eyes of the
-rail-splitters; for, though it was unwedgeable, it helped along the
-fence rail industry in a very substantial way by furnishing the material
-of which mauls were made. It drove the wedges and gluts which opened
-other timbers. About the only maul that would beat out more rails than
-one of black gum was that made of a chestnut oak knot. The oak beetle's
-only advantage over gum was that it was harder and wore longer. So
-involved and interlaced are the fibers of black gum, that they cross one
-another not only at right angles, but at every conceivable angle. This
-can be seen in examining very thin pieces with a magnifying glass.
-
-The wood is not hard, but is moderately strong, and stiff. It has been
-compared with hickory, but it is so inferior in almost every essential
-that no comparison is justified.
-
-Black gum weighs 39.61 pounds per cubic foot. It is very porous, but the
-pores are too small to be seen by the naked eye, and are diffused
-through the wood and form no distinct lines or groups. The summerwood is
-a thin dark line, not prominent enough to clearly delimit the yearly
-rings of growth. The medullary rays are numerous, but very thin. In
-quarter-sawed wood they produce a luster, but the individual rays are
-practically invisible. The wood is not durable in contact with the soil.
-
-The standing tree is apt to fall a victim to the agencies of decay.
-Hollow trunks, mere shells, are not uncommon. The entire heartwood is
-liable to fall away. The pioneers cut these hollow trees, and sawing
-them in lengths of about two feet, made beehives of them. They called
-them gums because they were cut from gum trees. Larger sizes, used in
-place of barrels, were also called gums, but these were usually made
-from sycamores. The black gum is not usually large. Individuals have
-been measured that were five feet in diameter and more than a hundred in
-height, but an average of sixty feet high and two in diameter is
-probably too much, except in the southern Appalachian mountains where
-the species attains its largest size.
-
-It is a tree which will always be easily recognized after it has been
-seen and identified once. Its general outline, particularly when leaves
-are off, is different from other trees associated with it. It might
-possibly be mistaken for persimmon unless looked at closely; but there
-are easily-recognized points of difference. Its branches are very small,
-slender, and short. Its bark is rougher than that of any other gum, and
-is much darker in color. It is the bark's color that gives the tree its
-name. The leaves have smooth edges. In the fall they change to gorgeous
-red, and one of their peculiarities is that half a leaf may be red while
-the other half remains green. Toward the end of the season, the green
-disappears. The dark blue drupes ripen in October. They do not seem to
-be food for any living creature.
-
-Sawmills include black gum with tupelo in reporting lumber cut, and
-generally call both of them gum without distinction. The woods are quite
-different, and neither the standing tree nor the lumber of one need be
-mistaken for the other. The range of black gum is much more extensive
-than that of tupelo. Gum lumber cut north of the Ohio and Potomac rivers
-may be safely classed as black gum, though a little of both red and
-tupelo gum is found north of those streams. In the South, the species
-cannot be separated by regions, for all the gums grow from Texas to
-Virginia. The total annual output of black gum is not known, but some
-operators estimate it at about 20,000,000 feet a year, or nearly
-one-fourth as much as tupelo.
-
-The bulk of black gum lumber is used in the rough, for floors,
-sheathing, frames, and scaffolds; but a considerable portion is further
-manufactured. The amounts thus used annually have been ascertained for a
-few states, and furnish a basis for estimates for the whole country:
-Mississippi, 7,000 feet; Maryland, 85,000; Illinois, 120,000; Louisiana,
-120,000; Missouri, 190,000; Texas, 360,000; Massachusetts, 475,000;
-Alabama, 486,000.
-
-The uses are general, except that the wood is not employed where
-attractive figure is required, for black gum is as plain as cottonwood.
-It is not displeasing in its plainness, for the surface finishes nicely
-with a soft gloss which, except that it lacks figure, suggests the sap
-of red gum. It is specially useful in situations where noncleavability
-is required. Black gum mallets for stone masons and woodworkers are in
-the market. Mine rollers require a much larger amount. The entire 85,000
-feet reported in Maryland was made into such rollers. They furnish the
-bearing for the rope that hauls the car up the incline out of the coal
-pit. Its toughness qualifies it for wagon hubs, but it is sometimes
-objected to because its softness causes the mortises to wear larger
-where the spokes are inserted, and the wheel does not stand as well as
-when the hubs are of good oak. Early farmers and lumbermen preferred
-black gum for ox yokes, and some are still seen where oxen are used; but
-many other woods are as strong and equally as serviceable for yokes.
-Rollers of this wood for glass factories are common. It is made into
-hatters' blocks where a wood is wanted which, when thoroughly seasoned,
-will hold its shape. It is less popular for this purpose than yellow
-poplar. One of the best places for black gum is in the manufacture of
-bored water pipe. The wood's interlaced fiber prevents splitting under
-the internal stress due to hydrostatic pressure. The shell of such pipes
-can be thinner than with most woods. A drawback is found in the
-non-durable qualities of black gum. However, the internal pressure of
-water keeps the wood thoroughly saturated, and prolongs its life when
-used as pipes.
-
-The makers of firearms employ black gum as gunstocks and pistol grips.
-The wood is stained to make it darker. It is cut by the rotary process
-into cheap veneer and is made into baskets and berry crates. Less
-trouble with the veneer, on account of breaking, is experienced than
-might be expected of a wood so cross-grained. It is sawed into thin
-lumber for boxes for shipping coffee and other groceries. It is a
-substitute for cottonwood and yellow poplar in the manufacture of
-certain lines of woodenware, notably, ironing boards, rolling pins,
-potato mashers, and chopping bowls. It is made into interior finish for
-houses; and furniture manufacturers find many places where it is a
-serviceable material. Musical instrument makers employ it, particularly
-as trusses for pianos, and in frames of pipe organs. In Louisiana it is
-converted into excelsior, and in Mississippi into broom handles, and
-parts of agricultural implements, particularly hoppers and seedboxes.
-
-All gums are hard to season, and this one is no exception. It checks
-badly, but the checks are usually very small.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-TUPELO
-
-[Illustration: TUPELO]
-
-
-
-
-TUPELO
-
-(_Nyssa Aquatica_)
-
-
-Tupelo is said to be an Indian name. White men have applied it to three
-species of gum, all of the same genus, namely, black gum (_Nyssa
-sylvatica_), sour tupelo (_Nyssa ogeche_), and tupelo (_Nyssa
-aquatica_). Probably, the name tupelo applies as well to one as to the
-other, for it is said to refer to the drupe-like fruit; but custom
-confines the name to the species now under consideration. It is largest
-of the three species, most abundant, and most important. Sour gum is
-heard in Arkansas and Missouri, swamp tupelo in South Carolina and
-Louisiana, cotton gum in the two Carolinas and Florida, wild olive tree
-in Louisiana, and olive tree in Mississippi.
-
-The range of tupelo extends from Virginia along the coast to Florida,
-northward in the Mississippi valley to southern Illinois, and westward
-to Arkansas and Texas. It prefers swamps and attains largest size in low
-ground which is subject to frequent overflow. The tree will stand in
-several feet of water the greater part of the year without injury. It is
-closely associated with cypress, the planer tree, and other species
-which grow in deep swamps.
-
-Tupelo has not figured much in tree literature outside the books of
-botanists. Travelers and local writers have paid it little attention. It
-has not been remarkable for anything in the past, and has escaped
-observation to a large extent because it grows in swamps and along
-bayous, remote from the usual routes of travel. Its flowers attracted no
-attention, its fruit was worthless, and the early settlers did not put
-themselves to trouble to procure the wood for any purpose. That was the
-situation from the early settlement of the country where this species is
-found up to a very recent period when economic conditions began to bring
-tupelo into notice.
-
-It first attracted attention in the markets as a substitute for yellow
-poplar. That was brought about by an attempt to pass it as poplar. The
-growing scarcity of that wood in the region about Chesapeake bay led to
-the trial of tupelo. It was sold as bay poplar, and the purchaser was
-left to infer that it was poplar cut in the region tributary to
-Chesapeake bay. Probably few buyers were deceived, but they found the
-wood a fair substitute for the yellow poplar which they had been
-purchasing in the Baltimore and Norfolk markets. It is known as bay
-poplar yet in many localities. It goes to England as such. One of its
-most important uses in that country is as casing for electric wire
-fittings. It has, however, many other important uses in England and on
-the continent. It is claimed that it may be stained to imitate
-Circassian walnut in the manufacture of furniture. This is possible, but
-most probably tupelo has been confused with red gum which is a
-well-known substitute for Circassian walnut.
-
-Tupelo trees attain a height from seventy to a hundred feet, and a
-diameter of two to four feet above the swelled base. The general
-appearance of the bark suggests both yellow poplar and red gum. Trees
-have a habit of forking near the tops. The leaves are five or seven
-inches long, sometimes with smooth margins, and often with a few sharp
-points. Flowers appear in March and April, and fruit ripens early in
-Autumn. It is a dark purple, tough-skinned drupe, about an inch long.
-
-The wood weighs 32.37 pounds per cubic foot. It is soft, and has about
-three-fourths the strength and little more than half the stiffness of
-white oak. It is not well suited to places where strength and rigidity
-are required. The fibers are interwoven, making the wood difficult to
-split. The heart is brown, often nearly white; the sapwood is very
-thick; and the annual rings are not clearly defined, because of the
-similarity between the springwood and summerwood. The pores are small
-but numerous, and are scattered evenly through the whole annual ring.
-The wood of roots differs from that of the trunk more than is usual with
-hardwoods. It is very light, and has been long employed in the South as
-a substitute for cork as floats for fish nets.
-
-Tupelo is often logged with cypress. The two trees grow in close
-association in deep swamps. The butt cuts of tupelo are so heavy that
-they float deep, or even go to the bottom. It was formerly customary,
-and still is to some extent, to girdle trees whose trunks were to be
-floated to the mills. In the course of one season the standing trees dry
-sufficiently for the logs to float. At other times, trees are cut green,
-the logs are skidded and allowed to dry some months before they are
-rafted or floated to the mills. The sapwood is liable to decay, even in
-the brief period while the logs are on the skids. The wood may be
-protected against decay to some extent by smearing the ends of the logs
-with tar or some other substance which prevents the spores of
-decay-producing fungus from entering.
-
-The seasoning of tupelo was formerly a problem exceedingly vexatious to
-the lumberman. The wood is full of water, and warping was one of the
-troubles which was constantly encountered. Finally experience gained the
-mastery, and seasoning troubles are fewer now. Shrinkage of four or five
-per cent is not unusual in passing lumber from the green to dry state.
-
-Tupelo is like hickory in one respect--factories use more wood than the
-sawmills cut. The shops and manufacturing plants of ten states use as
-much tupelo as is cut by all the sawmills in the United States. These
-states are Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan,
-Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas. The reason for factory
-use exceeding the sawmill cut is that much reaches factories, in the
-form of veneer, which does not pass through a sawmill. The lumber output
-of most of the timber trees of this country is from one-third to
-one-half greater than the factory use. The difference represents the
-rough lumber used, and which never goes to a factory.
-
-Tupelo lately entered the general market, but the yearly demand now
-exceeds 100,000,000 feet. Its uses range from boxes and cheap handles to
-interior finish and material for musical instruments. It is particularly
-liked for containers for berries and small fruits, on their way to
-market. Its whiteness and clean appearance fit it for that use.
-
-Higher grades of shipping boxes are also made. Wholesale grocers order
-largely of this wood for spice, coffee, and tea boxes. These commodities
-are exacting in their requirements because their odor, which is often
-regarded as the criterion of their value, must not be impaired. A wood
-with an odor of its own is immediately ruled out. Cigar box makers use
-tupelo, sometimes as thin lumber for the whole box, but usually as
-backing over which to lay a thin veneer of Spanish cedar. Plug tobacco
-boxes are also made of tupelo.
-
-In Illinois and Michigan tupelo is listed among woods manufactured into
-pianos, organs, mandolins, and guitars. In Maryland they make scows and
-barges of it. In Arkansas and Louisiana it is worked into excelsior and
-slack cooperage stock. It is a favorite wood in Mississippi for pumplogs
-and broom handles. Its leading reported use in Texas is for porch
-columns. In Missouri it is manufactured into laundry appliances, such as
-washboards, clothes racks, and ironing boards. In nearly all
-manufacturing centers of the country it is made into furniture and
-interior finish. It is frequently substituted for yellow poplar in
-panels, not only in furniture and cabinet work, but in carriage bodies.
-
-The supply of tupelo in southern forests is fairly large, and will meet
-demand for some years, but it is a tree of slow growth, and when present
-stands are cut, a new supply will probably never come.
-
-    SOUR TUPELO (_Nyssa ogeche_) appears to be the only member of the
-    gum group whose fruit is of any value to man, and it is not very
-    important. The large, dull red drupes ripen in July and August, and
-    sometimes hang on the trees until late fall, allowing ample time for
-    gathering them. They are very sour, for which reason the tree is
-    called sour gum. The fruit is put through a pickling process which
-    renders it palatable and it is not an infrequent article on southern
-    pantry shelves. The range of the tree is confined to the region near
-    the coast from the southern border of South Carolina, through the
-    Ogeechee river valley in Georgia, to northern and western Florida.
-    The botanical name refers to the river along whose course the trees
-    are most abundant. Local names are gopher plum, Ogeechee lime, and
-    wild lime. The tree is sixty or seventy feet high, one or two in
-    diameter, and is often divided in several stems. Its wood is
-    lightest of the gums, weighing only 28.75 pounds per cubic foot. It
-    is diffuse-porous, and the springwood is scarcely distinguishable
-    from the summerwood. The annual rings of growth are indistinct, and
-    the medullary rays are thin and inconspicuous. The wood is weak,
-    soft, tough, and white, and little difference is apparent between
-    heart and sapwood. The flowers are rich in honey and are valuable to
-    bee keepers. It appears that no reports exist of the use of this
-    wood for any purpose. It is not abundant anywhere.
-
-    WATER GUM (_Nyssa biflora_) is a member of the gum group, and is of
-    small importance. Trees above thirty feet high are unusual, and the
-    trunk is of poor form, owing to its greatly enlarged base. This gum
-    is found on the margins of small ponds in the pine barrens from
-    North Carolina to the Gulf coast. The leaves turn purple and red in
-    the fall, and are then conspicuous objects. The fruit is a blue
-    drupe about a third of an inch long. The wood is light, tough, and
-    difficult to split.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK WALNUT
-
-[Illustration: BLACK WALNUT]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK WALNUT
-
-(_Juglans Nigra_)
-
-
-This tree has few names. It is called walnut, black walnut, and
-walnut-tree. The color of the wood and bark is responsible for the word
-black in the name, though some people use the adjective to distinguish
-the tree from butternut which is often known as white walnut. The
-natural range of black walnut covers 600,000 or 700,000 square miles,
-and it has been extended by planting. Its northern limit stretches from
-New York to Minnesota, its southern from Florida to Texas. It is
-difficult to say where the species found its highest development in the
-primeval forests, for very large trees were reported in New York, among
-the southern Appalachian mountains, in the Ohio valley, and beyond the
-Mississippi in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas. The wood cut in
-Ohio and Indiana has been of greater commercial importance than that
-from any other portion of its range, but that has been due, in part, to
-the fact that it came into market before the best of the forest growth
-had been destroyed in those states, and instead of burning it or mauling
-it into rails, as eastern farmers did in early times, the farmers of the
-Ohio valley sold their walnut. Early in the history of black walnut
-lumbering, Indiana and Ohio came to the front as the most important
-sources of supply, and they still hold that position, notwithstanding
-the original forests of those states were supposed to be nearly
-exhausted long ago. The states cutting most black walnut in 1910, in the
-order named, were Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee,
-Missouri, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Iowa.
-
-During the period from 1860 to 1880 black walnut was in much demand for
-furniture, and the largest yearly cut was 125,000,000 feet. It was
-during that period of twenty years that operators pushed into all of the
-out-of-the-way places in search of the timber. Logs were hauled on
-wagons long distances to bring them out of remote valleys and slopes
-where no timber buyer had ever gone before. The walnut buyers made such
-a thorough canvas of the country that it was generally supposed no
-merchantable tree from Kansas to Virginia would escape. Many a dooryard
-giant whose wide branches had shaded the family roof for generations,
-fell before the ax of the contractor who was willing to pay fifty
-dollars for a single trunk, though it might be twenty miles from the
-nearest railroad or navigable stream. In spite of the thoroughness of
-the search, many a walnut tree was spared. Logs have been going to
-market ever since, and still they go. They will continue to go for
-years, generations, and centuries; for walnut trees grow with rapidity.
-
-The trunk's value increases with age. The dark colored heartwood only is
-merchantable, and young trees have little heartwood. The thick, white
-sap constitutes most of the trunk until long after the tree has reached
-small sawlog size. Then the transformation to the dark, valuable
-heartwood goes on with fair rapidity, and the outer shell of sapwood
-becomes thinner as the heart increases, and in time a trunk is produced
-which is fit for good logs. Value comes only with age. The quarter or
-half a century which has passed since the country was so diligently
-ransacked for merchantable walnut, has been sufficient to develop many a
-tree which was then rejected by the purchasers. Many a tree now a foot
-in diameter had scarcely sprouted then. In a region of 700,000 square
-miles, walnut trees do not need to grow very close together to produce a
-yearly cut of 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 feet.
-
-Black walnut is valuable for its color, figure, and the fine polish it
-takes. It is stronger than white oak, weight for weight, but it is eight
-pounds lighter per cubic foot. The figure of the wood is due wholly to
-the annual rings, as its medullary rays are invisible to the naked eye.
-The wood is very porous, and the pores are diffused in all parts of the
-annual rings, except in the thin, pencil-like mark representing the
-outward boundary of the summerwood. When sapwood changes to heartwood,
-some of the pores disappear, but those which remain are abundantly
-sufficient to absorb any stains or fillers which the wood finisher may
-wish to apply.
-
-The annual sawmill cut of black walnut in the United States is from
-35,000,000 to 40,000,000 feet, but much goes to foreign countries in the
-log, and a considerable quantity goes to veneer mills--about 2,500,000
-feet a year--and a quantity finds its way to various factories where it
-is worked up without any statistical record being made of it.
-
-Black walnut is never used as rough lumber. It all goes to factories of
-some kind to be converted into finished commodities. It is not possible
-to say where it all goes, for statistics of manufacture are fragmentary
-in this country. It may be of interest to know that demand for walnut by
-factories in the following states was 11,641,137 feet in 1910: Alabama,
-Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, North
-Carolina, and Texas. The wood served so many purposes that a list of
-them would be monotonous. In Illinois the largest users are the sewing
-machine and the musical instrument industries; in Michigan the makers of
-automobiles and of musical instruments; in Kentucky the manufacturers of
-coffins, furniture, and musical instruments; in Massachusetts, the
-makers of furniture and of firearms. These uses probably afford a fairly
-accurate index for the whole country. During the Civil war the largest
-demand for walnut came from gunstock makers. Doubtless the largest use
-from 1865 to 1885 was for furniture.
-
-Much of the best black walnut is exported. The logs are flattened on the
-four sides to make them fit better in ships and cars, and also to be rid
-of most of the sapwood which is valueless. The ends are painted with red
-lead or some other substance to lessen liability to check. Sometimes
-export walnut is sawed in thick planks.
-
-Large quantities of old-time walnut furniture have been resurrected in
-recent years from granary and garret where it was stored long ago to
-have it out of the way. Some of the old beds, lounges, cupboards, and
-chairs were of heavy, solid walnut, the kind not made now. Some of it
-has been furbished, re-upholstered, and set among the heirlooms; other
-pieces have been sold to furniture makers who saw the solid wood in
-veneers, and use it again.
-
-The search for old walnut did not stop with dragging antique furniture
-from cubbyholes and attics, but two-inch lumber has been pulled from
-floors of old barns, and mills. Many old fence rails were made into gun
-stocks during the Civil war. Later, walnut stumps were pulled from field
-and wayside, and went to veneer mills. Some finely figured wood comes
-from stumps where roots and trunk join.
-
-An occasional walnut tree develops a large burl which is valued for its
-figured wood. Sometimes the burl is the form of a door knob, with the
-tree trunk growing through the center. The burl sometimes has a diameter
-three or four times as great as the trunk. The origin of such burls is
-supposed to be a mass of buds which fail to break through the bark.
-
-Black walnut has a compound leaf from one to two feet long, with from
-fifteen to twenty-three leaflets, each about three inches long and an
-inch or two wide. The nuts ripen in the fall, and are valuable. They are
-borne chiefly by trees growing in open ground; forest trees do not bear
-until old, and then only a few nuts. The walnuts which germinate are
-usually those buried by squirrels, and forgotten.
-
-Within the past twenty or thirty years plantations have been made in
-states of the Middle West. Many young planted trees have been cut for
-fence posts, with disappointing results. It was known that old walnut is
-durable, and it was supposed young trunks would be, when used for posts;
-but young trees are nearly all sapwood which rots quickly.
-
-Forest grown walnut trees vary in size from a diameter of two feet and a
-height of fifty, to a diameter of six or more and a height of 100 or
-120. Trunks which grow in the shade are tall, clear, and symmetrical;
-those in the open are shorter, with more taper.
-
-    PALE-LEAF HICKORY (_Hicoria villosa_) is a small tree but large
-    enough to be useful wherever it exists in sufficient quantity. The
-    largest specimens attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of
-    eighteen inches. The tree bears nuts when very small, and the kernel
-    is sweet. The bark of this hickory is rough but not shaggy. The
-    range extends from New Jersey to Florida and west to Missouri and
-    Texas. It is most abundant in the lower Appalachian ranges. The wood
-    possesses the common characteristics of the hickories, and it is cut
-    with them wherever it is found, but is seldom or never reported
-    separately in lumber operations.
-
-    SMALL PIGNUT HICKORY (_Hicoria odorata_) is considered a species by
-    some botanists while others regard it as a variety. It is called
-    small pignut in Maryland, and occasionally little shagbark. This
-    last name refers to the roughness of the bark which resembles the
-    bark of elm. The range of the tree extends from Massachusetts to
-    Missouri and south to the Ohio and the Potomac rivers. The wood
-    differs little from that of pignut hickory, and the uses are the
-    same. No distinction is made between them at the shop and factory.
-    This tree is by some botanists believed to be a hybrid between
-    shagbark and pignut. It is sometimes called false shagbark. The nut
-    is edible.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BUTTERNUT
-
-[Illustration: BUTTERNUT]
-
-
-
-
-BUTTERNUT
-
-(_Juglans Cinerea_)
-
-
-This tree is known as butternut or as white walnut in all parts of its
-range. Butternut is in reference to the oily kernel of the nuts, and
-white walnut is the name given by those who would distinguish the tree
-from black walnut. Persons acquainted with one of the species in its
-native woods are usually sure to be acquainted with the other, for their
-ranges are practically co-extensive, except that black walnut extends
-farther southwest, butternut farther northeast. Butternut grows from New
-Brunswick to South Dakota, from Delaware to Arkansas, and along the
-Appalachian highlands to northern Georgia and Alabama.
-
-Butternut resembles black walnut in a good many ways and differs from it
-in several. They are very closely related botanically--as closely as are
-brothers in the same household. Black walnut is larger, stronger, better
-known, and has always dominated and eclipsed the other in usefulness and
-public esteem; yet butternut is a tree both useful and interesting. No
-person acquainted with both would ever mistake one for the other, winter
-or summer. Botanists tell how to distinguish butternut from black walnut
-by noting minor differences. The person who is not a botanist needs no
-such help. He knows them at sight, and there is no possibility of
-mistaking them.
-
-Butternut in the forest may attain a height of eighty or 100 feet, and a
-diameter of three, but few persons ever see a specimen of that size, and
-never in open ground. In shade, the butternut does its best to get its
-crown up to light and sunshine, but it is weak. It often gives up the
-struggle and remains in the shade of trees which overtop it. In that
-situation its crown is small, thin, and appears to rest lightly in the
-form of a small bunch of yellowish-green leaves on the top of a tall,
-spindling bole, which is seldom straight, but is made up of slight,
-undulating curves. The pale, yellowish tinge of the bark suggests a
-plant deprived of sunshine.
-
-When butternut grows in open ground where light falls upon its crown and
-on all sides, it assumes a different form and presents another figure.
-The trunk is nearly as short as that of an apple tree. It divides in
-large branches and limbs, and these spread wide; leaves are healthy, yet
-the crown of a butternut always looks thin compared with that of the
-black walnut. Tests show that butternut wood, when thoroughly dry, is
-somewhat stiffer than black walnut; but it is light and weak. It is
-about two-thirds as heavy and two-thirds as strong as black walnut. The
-growing tree betrays the wood's weakness. Large limbs snap in storms.
-Trees become lopsided, and a symmetrical, well-proportioned butternut
-crown is an exception. The broken branches leave openings for the
-entrance of decay, and butternuts nearly always die of disease rather
-than of old age.
-
-Leaves are compound, and from fifteen to thirty inches in length. Few
-trees of this country have larger leaves. There are from eleven to
-seventeen leaflets. They are hairy and sticky. Hands that handle them
-are covered with mucilage-like substance. The nuts, which grow in
-clusters of three or five, are of the same color as the leaves and
-covered with the same sticky fuzz. The nuts are two inches or more in
-length, and are borne abundantly when trees stand in open ground. Size
-rather than age appears to determine the period when trees commence to
-bear. Those of extra vigor produce when ten or twelve years old. The
-nuts are salable in the market. They fall with the leaves, immediately
-after the first sharp frost, and all come down together. A single day
-frequently suffices to strip the last leaf from a tree, though some of
-the nuts may hang a little longer. The kernels are very rich, when the
-nuts are dry, and are apt to cloy the appetite; but they are improved by
-freezing where they lie on the ground among the leaves; but they must be
-used quickly after they thaw, or they will spoil. Nuts nearly full-grown
-but not yet hard are made into pickles, but the fuzz must first be
-washed off with hot water.
-
-Butternut bark has played a rather important role in the country's
-affairs. Doctors in the Revolutionary war made much of their medicine of
-the roots and bark of this tree. Drugs were unattainable, and physicians
-were forced to betake themselves to the woods for substitutes, and their
-pharmacopoeias were enriched by the butternut tree. Housewives dyed
-cloth a brown color with this bark long before aniline dyes found their
-way into this country. Whole companies of Confederate soldiers from the
-mountain regions in the Civil war wore clothes dyed in decoctions of
-butternut bark, and popularly known as "butternut jeans."
-
-The annual output of butternut lumber is placed at a little more than
-1,000,000 feet a year. It is widely used, but in small amounts. In
-Maryland it is made into ceiling and flooring; in North Carolina into
-cabinet work, fixtures for stores and offices, and into furniture; in
-Michigan its reported uses are boat finish, interior finish for houses,
-molding, and screen frames. In Illinois it is used for all the purposes
-listed above and also for church altars and car finish. These uses are
-doubtless typical, and hold good in all parts of the country where any
-use is made of butternut.
-
-The wood has figure similar to that of black walnut, but the color is
-lighter. It is nearer brown than black. The pores are diffused through
-the annual ring, but are more numerous and of larger size in the inner
-than in the outer part. The springwood blends gradually with the wood of
-the latter part of the season, without sharp distinction, but the ring
-terminates in a black line which is the chief element of contrast in the
-wood's figure.
-
-The future value of butternut will be less in the lumber than in the
-nuts. The tendency in that direction is now apparent. When land is
-cleared, the trees which would formerly have gone to the sawmill, are
-now left to bear nuts. The averaged price paid by factories in North
-Carolina for butternut is $40 a thousand feet. It is cheaper in the Lake
-States.
-
-    MEXICAN WALNUT (_Juglans rupestris_) will never amount to much as a
-    timber tree, though it is by no means useless. It is known by
-    several names, among them being western walnut, dwarf walnut, little
-    walnut, and California walnut. The last name is applied in Arizona
-    through a misunderstanding of the tree's identity. It is there
-    confused with the California walnut which is a different species.
-    The Mexican walnut's range extends from central Texas, through New
-    Mexico to Arizona, and southward into Mexico. It prefers the
-    limestone banks of streams in Texas where it is usually shrubby,
-    seldom attaining a height above thirty feet. It reaches its largest
-    size in canyons among the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona where
-    it reaches a height of sixty feet. Trunks are sometimes five feet in
-    diameter. The wood weighs 40.85 pounds per cubic foot, is dark in
-    color, but the tone is not as regular as that of black walnut;
-    neither is it as strong and stiff. It polishes well, and is said to
-    be durable in contact with the soil. It finds its way in small
-    amounts to local mills, shops, and factories where it is made into
-    various commodities. It is particularly liked for the lathe, and is
-    suited better for turnery than for any other purpose. It is made
-    into gavels, cups, spindles, parts of grills; and it is also worked
-    into picture frames, handles, and small pieces of furniture. It does
-    not appear that lumber sawed from this walnut ever gets into the
-    general market, but the whole output, which is small, is consumed
-    locally. Trees do not occur in pure stands and the whole supply
-    consists of isolated trees or small groups, with few trunks large
-    enough for sawlogs. The nuts are dwarfs. All are not the same size,
-    but none are as large as a hickory nut. Many that grow on the
-    diminutive trees along the water courses in western Texas are not as
-    large, husks and all, as a nutmeg, and the nut itself is about half
-    the size of a nutmeg, and not dissimilar in appearance. The kernels
-    of such a nut are too small to have any commercial value, but they
-    are rare morsels for the native Mexicans and Indians who pick them
-    by pocketfuls. Trees in the stony canyon of Devil's river, in Texas,
-    are in full bearing when so small that a man can stand on the ground
-    and pick walnuts from their highest branches. The Mexican walnut is
-    occasionally cultivated in the eastern part of the United States and
-    in Europe. It is hardy as far north as Massachusetts.
-
-    CALIFORNIA WALNUT (_Juglans californica_) is a small tree confined
-    to California, and pretty close to the coast, though it grows in
-    Eldorado county. It is most abundant within twenty or thirty miles
-    of tidewater. In the southern part of the state it ascends to an
-    elevation of 4,000 feet. It prefers the banks of streams and the
-    bottoms of canyons where the soil is moist, but it will grow in dry
-    situations. Trees occur singly or in small groups. Their average
-    size is fifteen or twenty feet high, and eight or ten inches in
-    diameter; but trees occasionally are sixty feet high and eighteen
-    inches through. The leaves are small, measuring from six to nine
-    inches in length, with from nine to seventeen leaflets. Nuts are
-    about half the size of eastern black walnuts. The kernel is edible.
-    The wood is heavier than black walnut, and somewhat lighter in
-    color. Otherwise the two woods are much alike, except in strength
-    and stiffness. In these the California wood is inferior. It has not
-    been reported for any use, but it is suitable for a number of
-    purposes, provided logs of sufficient size could be had. The trunk,
-    in addition to being small, is usually short. The tree is intolerant
-    of shade, and is not often found in forests. It grows rapidly and
-    will attain a diameter of fifteen inches in twenty years or less;
-    but it apparently does not live long. Its principal usefulness in
-    California is as a shade tree, and as a stock in nurseries on which
-    to graft English walnut.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SHAGBARK HICKORY
-
-[Illustration: SHAGBARK HICKORY]
-
-
-
-
-SHAGBARK HICKORY
-
-(_Hicoria Ovata_)
-
-
-Twelve species of hickory grow in the United States, all east of the
-Rocky Mountains. None grow anywhere else in the world, as far as known.
-They were widely dispersed over the northern hemisphere in prehistoric
-times. The records of geology, written by leaf prints in the rocks, tell
-of forests of hickory in Europe, and even in Greenland, probably a
-hundred thousand or more years ago, and certainly not in times that can
-be called recent. No records there later than the ice age have been
-found. This leads to the presumption that the sheet of ice which pushed
-down from the North and covered the larger portions of Europe and North
-America, overwhelmed the hickory forests, and all others, as far as the
-southern limit of the ice's advance.
-
-In Europe the hickory was utterly destroyed, and it never returned after
-the close of the reign of ice; but America was more fortunate. The ice
-sheet pushed little farther in its southward course than the Ohio and
-Missouri rivers, and forests south of there held their ground, and they
-slowly worked their way back north as the ice withdrew. Hickory
-recovered part but not all of its lost ground in America, for it is now
-found no farther north than southern Canada, which is more than a
-thousand miles from its old range in Greenland.
-
-The early settlers in New England and in the South at once came into
-contact with hickory. It was one of the first woods named in this
-country, and the name is of Indian origin, and is spelled in no fewer
-than seventeen ways in early literature relating to the settlements. It
-is probable that John Smith, a prominent man in early Virginia and New
-England, was the first man who ever wrote the name. He spelled it as the
-Indians pronounced it, "powcohiscora," and it has been trimmed down to
-our word hickory. The Indian word was the name of a salad or soup made
-of pounded hickory nuts and water, and was only indirectly applied to
-the tree itself.
-
-The first settlers along the Atlantic coast nearly always called this
-tree a walnut, and the name white walnut was common. They were
-unacquainted with any similar nut-bearing tree in Europe, except the
-walnut, and most people preferred applying a name with which they were
-already familiar. Hickories and walnuts belong to the same family, and
-have many points in common.
-
-Although there are twelve hickories in the United States, and in many
-respects they are similar, all are not of equal value. Some are very
-scarce, and the wood of others is not up to standard. From a commercial
-standpoint, four surpass the others. These are shagbark (_Hicoria
-ovata_), shellbark (_Hicoria laciniosa_), pignut (_Hicoria glabra_), and
-mockernut (_Hicoria alba_). The wood of some of the others is as good,
-but is scarce; and still others, particularly the pecans, are abundant
-enough, but the wood is inferior. It is impossible in business to
-separate the hickories. Lumbermen do not do it; manufacturers cannot do
-it. In some regions one is more abundant than the others, and
-consequently is used in larger quantities, but in some other region a
-different species may predominate in the forest and in the factory. It
-cannot be truthfully asserted that one hickory is always as good as
-another, or even that a certain species in one region is as good as the
-same species in another region. All parts of the same tree do not
-produce wood of equal value.
-
-Along certain general lines, hickories have many properties in common.
-The wood is ring-porous, that is, the inner edge of the yearly growth
-ring has a row of large pores. Others are scattered toward the outer
-part of the ring, generally decreasing in number and size outward. There
-is no distinct division between spring and summerwood. The medullary
-rays are thin and obscure. The unaided eye seldom notices them. The
-sapwood is white in all species of hickory, and is usually very thick.
-The heartwood is reddish. Common opinion has long held that sapwood is
-tougher and more elastic than heartwood, and therefore to be preferred
-for most purposes. Tests made a few years ago by the United States
-Forest Service ran counter to the long-established opinion of users, by
-showing that in most respects the redwood of the heart was as good as
-the white sapwood. However, where resiliency is the chief requisite, as
-in slender handles, many manufacturers still prefer sapwood.
-
-Hickory is very strong, probably the strongest wood in common use in
-this country. The statement that one wood is stronger than all others is
-hardly justified because averages of strength should be taken, and not
-isolated instances. Satisfactory averages have not yet been worked out
-for a large number of our woods; but, as far as existing figures may be
-accepted, hickory is at the head of the list for strength, toughness,
-and resiliency. Choice samples of certain woods may exceed the average
-of hickory in some of these particulars. Sugar maple, hornbeam, and
-locust occasionally show greater strength than hickory, but they lack in
-toughness and resiliency--the very properties which give hickory its
-chief value for many purposes.
-
-Considerable misunderstanding exists as to second growth hickory. Some
-suppose it consists of trees of commercial size developed from sprouts
-where old trees have been cut. That is not generally correct. When
-small hickory trees are cut, the stumps often sprout, but hoop poles are
-about the only commodity made from that kind of hickory. If sprouts are
-left to grow large, the trees produced are generally defective. Good
-hickory grows from the nut. The term "second growth" means little,
-unless it is explained in each instance just what conditions are
-included. In one sense, all young, vigorous trees are second growth, and
-that is often the idea in the mind of the speaker. Some would restrict
-it to trees which have come up in old fields or partial clearings, where
-they have plenty of light, and have grown rapidly. Their trunks are
-short, the wood is tough, and there is little red heartwood. The larger
-a pine, oak, or poplar, provided it is sound, the better the wood; but
-not so with hickory. Great age and large size add no desirable qualities
-to this wood.
-
-Shagbark is largest of the true hickories. The pecans are not usually
-regarded as true hickories from the wood-user's viewpoint. Some
-shagbarks are 120 feet high and four feet in diameter, but the average
-size is about seventy-five tall, two in diameter. There is confusion of
-names among all the hickories, and shagbark is misnamed and over-named
-as often as any of the others. Many persons do not know shagbark and
-shellbark apart, though the ranges of the two species lie only partly in
-the same territory. Shagbark is known as shellbark hickory, shagbark
-hickory, shellbark, upland hickory, hickory, scaly bark hickory, white
-walnut, walnut, white hickory, and red heart hickory. Most of the names
-refer to the bark, which separates into thin strips, often a foot or
-more long, and six inches or more wide; and this remains more or less
-closely attached to the trunk by the middle, giving the shaggy
-appearance to which the tree owes its common name.
-
-The leaf-buds are large and ovate, with yellowish-green and brown
-scales. The leaves are compound and alternate; they have rough stalks
-containing five or seven leaflets; they are sessile, tapering to a point
-and having a rounded base. The lower pair of leaflets is markedly
-different from the rest in shape; sharply serrate and thin; dark green
-and glabrous above; lighter below. The flowers do not appear until the
-leaves have fully matured. They grow in catkins; the staminate ones are
-light green, slender, and grow in groups of three on long peduncles; the
-pistillate ones grow in spikes of from two to five flowers. The fruit
-grows within a dense, green husk, shiny and smooth on the outside,
-opening in four parts. The nut is nearly white, four-angled, and
-flattened at the sides. The kernel is sweet and of a strong flavor.
-
-This tree's range is not much short of 1,000,000 square miles, but it is
-not equally abundant in all parts. It grows from southern Maine to
-western Florida; is found in Minnesota and Nebraska, and southward
-beyond the Mississippi. It is most common and of largest size on the
-western slopes of the southern Appalachian mountains and in the basin of
-the lower Ohio river. Its favorite habitat is on low hills, or near
-streams and swamps, in rich and moderately well drained soil.
-
-The hickories have long tap roots, and they do best in soils which the
-tap roots can penetrate, going down like a radish. The root system makes
-most hickories difficult trees to transplant. Early in life they do a
-large part of their growing under ground, and when that growth is
-interrupted, as it must be in transplanting, the young tree seldom
-recovers. Those who would grow hickories for timber, nuts, or as
-ornaments, should plant the seed where the tree is expected to remain.
-Most of the planting of hickory in the forest is done by squirrels which
-bury nuts, with the apparent expectation of digging them up later.
-Occasionally one is missed, and a young tree starts.
-
-The uses of this wood are typical of all the other hickories. Handles
-and light vehicles consume most of it. The markets are in all parts of
-this country, and in manufacturing centers in many foreign lands.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BITTERNUT HICKORY
-
-[Illustration: BITTERNUT HICKORY]
-
-
-
-
-BITTERNUT HICKORY
-
-(_Hicoria Minima_)
-
-
-The tannin in the thin shelled nuts which grow abundantly on this tree
-gives the name bitternut. The name is truly descriptive. Gall itself
-scarcely exceeds the intense bitterness of the kernel, when crushed
-between the teeth. The sense of taste does not immediately detect the
-bitterness in its full intensity. A little time seems to be necessary to
-dissolve the astringent principal and distribute it to the nerves of
-taste. When this has been accomplished, the bitterness remains a long
-time, seeming to persist after the last vestige of the cause has been
-removed. In that respect it may be likened to the resin of the incense
-cedar of California which is among tastes what musk is among odors,
-nearly everlasting. The bitterness of this hickory nut has much to do
-with the perpetuation of the species. No wild or tame animal will eat
-the fruit unless forced by famine. Consequently, the nuts are left to
-grow, provided they can get themselves planted. That is not always easy,
-for small quadrupeds which bury edible nuts for food, and then
-occasionally forget them, show no interest whatever in the unpalatable
-bitternut. It is left where it falls, unless running water, or some
-other method of locomotion, transports it to another locality. This
-happens with sufficient frequency to plant the nuts as widely as those
-of any other hickory. It is believed that this is the most abundant of
-the hickories.
-
-The tree bears names other than bitternut. It is called swamp hickory,
-though that name is more applicable to a different species, the water
-hickory. Pig hickory or pignut are names used in several states, but
-without good reason. Hogs may sometimes eat the nuts, but never when
-anything better can be found. Besides, pignut is the accepted name of
-another species (_Hicoria glabra_). In Louisiana they call it the bitter
-pecan tree. Bitter hickory is a common name in many localities. In New
-Hampshire it is known as pig walnut, in Vermont as bitter walnut, and in
-Texas as white hickory. The names are so many, and so often apply as
-well to other hickories as to this, that the name alone is seldom a safe
-guide to identification. It has two or three characters which will help
-to pick it out from among others. Its leaves and bark bear considerable
-resemblance to ash. The leaves are the smallest among the hickories, and
-the bark is never shaggy. The small branches always carry yellow buds,
-no matter what the season of the year. The compound leaves are from six
-to ten inches long, and consist of from five to nine leaflets, always an
-odd number.
-
-Bitternut hickory's range covers pretty generally the eastern part of
-the United States. It is one of the largest and commonest hickories of
-New England, and is likewise the common hickory of Kansas, Nebraska, and
-Iowa. It grows from Maine through southern Canada to Minnesota, follows
-down the western side of the Mississippi valley to Texas, and extends
-into western Florida.
-
-Hickory is often lumbered in ways not common with other hardwoods. It is
-not generally found in ordinary lumber yards, and is not cut into lumber
-as most other woods are. It is in a class by itself. The person who
-would consult statistics of lumber cut in the United States to ascertain
-the quantity of hickory going to market, would utterly fail to obtain
-the desired information. The statistics of lumber cut in the United
-States for the year 1910 listed the total for hickory at 272,252,000
-feet, distributed among 33 states, and cut by 6,349 mills. Reports by
-users of this wood in a number of states show that probably twice as
-much goes to factories to be manufactured into finished commodities, as
-all the sawmills cut. This means that much hickory goes to factories
-without having passed through sawmills to be first converted into
-lumber. It goes as bolts and billets, and as logs of various lengths.
-Some sawmills in the hickory region cut dimension stock and sell it to
-factories to be further worked up; but that is a comparatively small
-part of the hickory that finds its way to factories of various kinds.
-Many sawmills refuse to cut hickory, claiming that it does not pay them
-to specialize on a scarce wood. Scattered trees occur among other
-timber, but these are left when the other logging is done. Special
-operators go after the hickory, and distribute it among various
-industries which are in the market for it. That method often results in
-much waste, because the man who is specializing in one commodity, such
-as wagon poles, ax handles, sucker-rods, wheel stock, or the like, is
-apt to cut out only what meets his requirements, and abandon the rest.
-Some of the hickory camps where such stock is roughed out are spectacles
-of carelessness and waste, with heaps of rejected hickory which, though
-not meeting requirements for the special articles in view, are valuable
-for many other things. Few woods contribute to the trash heap more in
-proportion to the total cut than hickory; but the waste nearly all
-occurs before the factories which finally work up the products are
-reached. These factories are often hundreds of miles from the forests
-where the hickory grows.
-
-Hickory was not a useful farm timber in early times, as oak and chestnut
-were. It decayed quickly when exposed to weather, and was not suitable
-for fence rails, posts, house logs, or general lumber. It was sometimes
-used for barn floors, but when seasoned it was so hard to nail that it
-was not well liked. The pioneers were not able to use this wood to
-advantage, because it is a manufacturer's material, not a farmer's or a
-villager's standby. It can be said to the credit of the pioneers,
-however, that they knew its value for certain purposes, and employed as
-much of it as they needed.
-
-Fuel was the most important place for hickory on the farm. All things
-considered, it is probably the best firewood of the American forest. The
-yawning fireplaces called for cords of wood every month of winter in the
-northern states. Enough to make a modern buggy would go up the chimney
-in a rich red blaze in an hour, and no one thought that it was waste;
-and it was not waste then, because farms had to be cleared, and firewood
-was the best use possible for the hickory at that time. Every cord
-burned in the chimney was that much less to be rolled into logheaps and
-consumed in the clearing for the new cornfield.
-
-Hickory has always been considered the best material for smoking meat.
-More than 30,000 cords a year are now used that way. It was so used in
-early times, when every farmer smoked and packed his own meat. Hickory
-smoke was supposed to give bacon a flavor equalled by no other wood; and
-in addition to that it was believed to keep the skippers out.
-
-The nuts were made into oil which was thought to be efficacious as a
-liniment employed as a remedy against rheumatism to which pioneers were
-susceptible because their moccasins were porous and their feet were
-often wet. The oil was used also for illuminating purposes. It fed the
-flame of a crude lamp.
-
-No other wood equalled hickory for "split brooms," the kind that swept
-the cabins before broom corn was known or carpet sweepers and vacuum
-cleaners were invented. The toughness, smoothness, and strength of
-hickory made it the best oxbow wood, and the same property fitted it for
-barrel hoops. Thousands of fish casks in New England and tobacco
-hogsheads in Maryland and Virginia were hooped with hickory before
-George Washington was born. The wood's value for ax handles was learned
-early. The Indians used it for the long, slender handles of their stone
-hammers with which they barked trees in their clearings, and broke the
-skulls of enemies in war.
-
-Bitternut hickory has about ninety-two per cent of the strength of
-shagbark, and seventy-three per cent of its stiffness. It yields
-considerably more ash when burned, and is rated a little lower in fuel
-value.
-
-    MOCKER NUT HICKORY (_Hicoria alba_) has many names. It is called
-    mocker nut in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey,
-    Delaware, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
-    Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas; white heart hickory, Rhode Island, New
-    York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, Texas, Illinois,
-    Ontario, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska; black hickory,
-    Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri; big bud and red hickory,
-    Florida; hardback hickory, Illinois; white hickory, Pennsylvania,
-    South Carolina; big hickory nut, West Virginia; hognut, Delaware.
-    The name mocker nut is supposed to refer to the thick shell and
-    disappointingly small kernel within. The range is not as extensive
-    as some of the other hickories. Beginning in southern Ontario, it
-    extends westward and southward to eastern Kansas and the eastern
-    half of Texas. The region of its most abundant growth is in the
-    basin of the lower Ohio and in Arkansas, the best specimens
-    appearing in fertile uplands. This is said to be the only hickory
-    that invades the southern maritime pinebelt, growing on the low
-    country along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in abundance. The leaves
-    are fragrant with a powerful, resinous odor; they have five or seven
-    leaflets with hairy petioles or stems. The bark resembles that of
-    bitternut, and is not scaly like that of shagbark. The wood weighs
-    51.21 pounds per cubic foot. It is hard, strong, tough, flexible. It
-    has about ninety-four per cent of the strength of shagbark, and
-    eighty per cent of its stiffness. Certain selected specimens of this
-    species are probably as strong as any hickory; but, as is the case
-    with all woods, there is great difference between specimens, and
-    general averages only are to be relied upon. G. W. Letterman, who
-    collected woods for Sargent's tests, procured a sample of this
-    hickory near Allenton, Missouri, which showed strength sufficient to
-    sustain 20,000 pounds per square inch, and its measure of stiffness
-    was the enormous figure of 2,208,000 pounds per square inch.
-
-    The uses of mocker nut hickory do not differ from those of other
-    hickories. The tree is frequently nearly all sapwood, to which the
-    name white hickory is due. Some persons suppose that the heartwood
-    is white, but that misconception is due to the fact that some pretty
-    large trees have no heartwood, but are sap clear through.
-
-    The term "black hickory" is sometimes applied to three species with
-    dark-colored bark which bears some resemblance to the bark of ash.
-    They are bitternut (_Hicoria minima_), pignut (_Hicoria glabra_),
-    and mocker nut (_Hicoria alba_). When the word black is thus used,
-    it refers to the bark and the general outward appearance of the
-    tree, and not to the wood, which is as white as that of any other
-    hickory.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PIGNUT HICKORY
-
-[Illustration: PIGNUT HICKORY]
-
-
-
-
-PIGNUT HICKORY
-
-(_Hicoria Glabra_)
-
-
-The name of this tree is unfortunate, although so far as the nuts are
-concerned, no injustice is done. It is one of the best hickories in the
-quality of its wood, and also as an ornamental tree. It is likewise
-abundant in many parts of its range, which extends from Maine to Kansas,
-Texas, Florida, and throughout most of the territory enclosed by the
-boundary lines thus delimited.
-
-The name pignut is common in New England, New York, New Jersey,
-Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
-Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky,
-Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and
-Minnesota; bitternut in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin; black
-hickory in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and
-Indiana; broom hickory in Missouri; brown hickory in Mississippi,
-Delaware, Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota; hardshell in West Virginia; red
-hickory in Delaware; switch bud hickory in Alabama; and white hickory in
-New Hampshire and Iowa.
-
-The nuts are generally bitter, but some trees bear fruit which is not
-very offensive to the taste. The avidity with which swine feed upon it
-gives the common name. This tree is doubtless confused many times with
-bitternut, though their differences are enough to distinguish them
-readily if they grow side by side. As far as the woods of the two
-species are concerned, there is little occasion to keep them separate.
-The pignut is a forked tree more frequently than any other species of
-hickory; and the nuts vary in shape and size more than those of any
-other. The tree is more remarkable for its variations than for its
-regularity. In one thing, however, it is pretty constant: the limbs and
-branches are smooth and clean, hence the botanical name _glabra_. As a
-name for this tree, smooth hickory would be preferable to pignut. Trunks
-attain a height of eighty or ninety feet and a diameter of three or
-four, but the extreme sizes are rare. The largest specimens are found in
-the lower Ohio valley, and the species is most common in Missouri and
-Arkansas. It grows farther south and farther west than any other hickory
-except pecan. Its southern limit is in Florida and its western in Texas.
-
-The uses of hickory fall into general classes. More is manufactured into
-vehicles than into any other single class of commodities, but not more
-than into all other articles combined. The second largest users of
-hickory are the manufacturers of handles. The third largest demand comes
-from makers of agricultural implements and farm tools. Large amounts
-are required for athletic goods, meat smoking, and various miscellaneous
-purposes. The total amount used yearly in this country, and exported to
-foreign countries, is not accurately known, but it probably exceeds
-500,000,000 feet, board measure. About half of this passes through
-sawmills in the usual manner, and the other half goes directly from the
-forest to the factory or to the consumer.
-
-The superiority of American buggies, sulkies, and other light vehicles
-is due to the hickory in their construction. No other wood equals this
-in combination of desirable physical properties. Though heavy, it is so
-strong, tough, and resilient that small amounts suffice, and the weight
-of the vehicle can be reduced to a lower point, without sacrificing
-efficiency, than when any other wood is employed. It is preeminently a
-wood for light vehicles. Oak, ash, maple, and elm answer well enough for
-heavy wagons where strength is more essential than toughness and
-elasticity. Hickory is suitable for practically all wooden parts of
-light vehicles except the body. The slender spokes look like frail
-dowels, and seem unable to maintain the load, but appearances are
-deceptive. The bent rims are likewise very slender, but they last better
-than steel. The shafts and poles with which carriages and carts are
-equipped will stand severe strains and twists without starting a
-splinter. The manufacturing of the stock is little less than a fine art.
-In scarcely any other wood-using industry--probably excepting the making
-of handles--is the grain so closely watched. Hickory users generally
-speak of the annual growth rings as the grain. The grain must run
-straight in spokes, rims, shafts, and poles. If the grain crosses the
-stick, a break may occur by the simple process of splitting, and the
-hickory in that case is no more dependable than many other woods.
-
-Handle makers observe the same rule, and must have straight grain. The
-more slender the handle, the more strictly the rule must be followed. A
-cross grained golf club handle would fail at the first stroke. An ax
-handle, if it has cross grain, will last a little longer, but it will
-speedily split. Many of the best slender handles are of split hickory.
-The line of cleavage follows the grain, but a saw does not always do so.
-Heavy handles, like those for picks and sledges, are not so strictly
-straight grained, because they are made strong enough to stand much more
-strain than is ever likely to be put on them. Red heartwood is
-frequently used in handles of that kind. Peavey and canthook handles are
-generally split from billets, because the grain must be straight. Though
-they are among the largest and heaviest of handles, breakage must be
-guarded against with extra care, for the snap of a peavey handle at a
-critical moment might cost the operator his life by precipitating a
-skidway of logs upon him.
-
-The hickory which goes into agricultural implements fills many places,
-among the most important being connecting rods. It is often made into
-springs to take up or check oscillation. It is used for that purpose as
-picker sticks in textile mills.
-
-Furniture makers could get along without hickory, and they do not need
-much. It is oftenest seen in dowels, slender spindles, and the rungs of
-chairs. The makers of sporting and athletic goods bend it for rackets,
-hoops, and rims, or make vaulting poles, bats, or trapezes.
-
-SHELLBARK HICKORY (_Hicoria laciniosa_) is often mistaken for shagbark.
-The ranges of the two species coincide in part only. Shagbark grows
-farther east, north and south than shellbark. The latter occupies an
-island, as it were, inside the shagbark's range. Shellbark is found from
-central New York and eastern Pennsylvania, westward to Kansas, and
-southward to North Carolina and middle Tennessee. The species is at its
-best in the lower Ohio valley and in Missouri. The largest trees are 120
-feet high and three in diameter, and are often free from branches half
-or two-thirds of the length. The species prefers rich, deep bottom
-lands, and does not suffer from occasional inundation from overflowing
-rivers. The average tree is not quite as large as shagbark. The leaves
-are larger than those of any other hickory, ranging in length from
-fifteen to twenty-two inches. There are from five to nine leaflets,
-usually seven. The upper ones are largest, and may be eight or nine
-inches long and four or five wide. In the autumn the leaflets drop from
-the petioles which adhere to the branches and furnish means of
-identifying the tree in winter. The nuts including the hulls are as
-large as small apples. When ripe, the hulls open and the nuts fall out;
-but the hulls fall also. The nuts are as large as shagbark nuts, but the
-two are seldom distinguished in market, though the shagbark's are a
-little richer in flavor. The bark's roughness gives the tree its name.
-Strips three or four feet long and five or six inches wide curl up at
-the lower ends--sometimes at both ends--and adhere to the trunk several
-years. The species has other names. It is known as big shellbark in
-Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois,
-and Kansas; bottom shellbark in Illinois; western shellbark or simply
-shellbark in Rhode Island and Kentucky; thick shellbark in South
-Carolina, Indiana, and Tennessee; kingnut in Tennessee.
-
-The wood weighs 50.53 pounds per cubic foot, and is very hard, strong,
-tough, and flexible. The heartwood is dark brown, the sapwood nearly
-white. This hickory usually has less sapwood in proportion to heart than
-other members of the species; but the wood is not kept separate from the
-others when it goes to market, and its uses are as extensive as the
-other hickories'. It is believed by some foresters that shellbark
-hickory is worth cultivating for its nuts, as it is a vigorous bearer;
-but little planting has been done. East of the Alleghanies, particularly
-in Virginia, some planting has been carried out on old plantations for
-ornamental purposes. On account of its long taproot, the tree is
-difficult to transplant, and the nuts should be planted where the trees
-are expected to remain.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PECAN
-
-[Illustration: PECAN]
-
-
-
-
-PECAN
-
-(_Hicoria Pecan_)
-
-
-The name is pecan in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama,
-Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and
-Kansas; pecan nut and pecan tree in Louisiana. The name is of Indian
-origin, and means walnut. The tree's natural range is smaller than the
-present area in which the tree is found, for it has been extensively
-planted in recent years. It is found as far north as Iowa, south to
-Texas, and east to Alabama and Kentucky. The highest development of the
-wild tree is in the lower Ohio valley. Forest trees were once found
-there which were said to be six feet in diameter and 170 high. Specimens
-that large would be hard to find now.
-
-The pecan is a hickory. As to wood, it is the poorest of the hickories,
-and as to nuts it is the best. Its compound leaves are from twelve to
-twenty inches long with from nine to seventeen leaflets. The latter are
-from four to eight inches in length, and from one to three wide. The
-first pairs on the petiole are smallest. The fruit grows in clusters of
-from three to eleven, the number exceeding any other hickory. The nuts
-are four-angled, and long for their width.
-
-The wood of pecan has disappointed those who have attempted to use it
-like other hickories. It does not differ much from them in appearance,
-but it falls low in mechanical tests. In strength, toughness, and
-stiffness it is inferior to the poorest of the other hickories. It has
-less than half the strength and half the stiffness of shagbark hickory.
-It is a fairly good fuel, but is high in ash.
-
-The inferior quality of the wood has saved many a pecan tree from the
-sawmill and the wagon shop. Fine trunks stand near public highways,
-along river banks, and in fields, while all merchantable hickories of
-other species have been sent to market. The uses of the wood are few. If
-some of it goes to wagon shops or to factories where agricultural
-vehicles are made, it is employed for parts which are not required to
-endure strain or sustain sudden jars.
-
-Fortunately it is a tree with a value of another kind. It is the most
-important nut tree of the United States at this time, and it promises to
-remain so. The forest-grown pecans were an article of food for Indians
-who once lived in the region, and though white settlers who succeeded
-the Indians as occupants of the land, depended less upon forest fruits
-than the red men had done, yet the pecan was often of supreme importance
-in the early years of settlement. The nuts have constituted an article
-of commerce ever since the region had markets.
-
-Nurserymen were not slow to recognize the value of the pecan tree for
-planting purposes, and nursery grown stock has been on the market many
-years. Extensive orchards have been planted in Texas, Louisiana,
-Florida, and other southern states, and some of the earliest of these
-orchards are now in bearing. However, by far the largest part of pecans
-on the market is wild fruit from the forests. Many are shipped in from
-Mexico, but most grow in the rich woods of southern states. They are
-gathered like chestnuts in northern woods. The people who pick them sell
-to local stores at low prices, often taking pay in merchandise. Buyers
-collect the stock from country and village merchants, and put it on the
-general market, often at three or four times the price paid to the
-gatherers of the nuts.
-
-One of the most important matters connected with pecan is the large
-number of horticultural varieties which have been produced by
-cultivation and selection. More than seventy have been listed in nursery
-catalogues and special reports. Some of the nuts are twice the size of
-those of the forest, and shells have been reduced in thinness until some
-of them are really thinner than they should be to stand the rough usage
-which comes to them in reaching markets.
-
-Dealers occasionally polish pecans to impart the rich, brown color which
-is supposed to give them the appearance of being fresh and of high
-grade. The polishing is produced by friction, when the nuts in bulk are
-shaken violently. Last year's stock takes on as bright a polish as fresh
-stock, and the color and smoothness alone are not sufficient to prove
-that pecans are fresh from the trees.
-
-The planted pecan tree grows rapidly and is as easily raised as fruit
-trees. The wild tree is long-lived, and the cultivated varieties will
-probably be like it.
-
-    NUTMEG HICKORY (_Hicoria myristicaeformis_) is so named because the
-    nut has the size and the wrinkled surface of a nutmeg, though the
-    shape is different. The husk enclosing the nut is almost as thin as
-    paper. The only other name by which it is known is bitter waternut,
-    in Louisiana. The name scarcely applies, for the kernel is said not
-    to be bitter. The range of nutmeg hickory extends from the coast of
-    South Carolina to Arkansas. It is rather abundant in Arkansas, but
-    scarce in most other parts of its range. The tree has several
-    interesting features. It was partly discovered a long time before
-    the discovery was complete. In 1802 Andre F. Michaux saw the nut and
-    to that extent the species was discovered, but many years passed
-    before a full description was given to the world by a competent
-    botanist. The wood rates among the strongest and stiffest of all the
-    hickories, according to present information; but the calculations
-    were based on too few tests to be considered final. Two samples of
-    wood procured near Bonneau's depot, South Carolina, by W. H.
-    Revenel, showed the remarkable breaking strength of 19,822 pounds
-    per square inch, and the measure of stiffness exceeded 2,000,000
-    pounds to the square inch. That strength is sixteen per cent above
-    shagbark. The weight of nutmeg hickory is 46.96 pounds to the cubic
-    foot. The wood is hard, tough, and compact. The structure, including
-    pores, medullary rays, annual rings, springwood and summerwood, is
-    similar to the wood of other hickories. Trees grow best in sandy
-    soil but near swamps and rivers where there is plenty of water. The
-    largest trunks are eighty or one hundred feet in height and two in
-    diameter. When use is made of this hickory it serves the same
-    purposes as the wood of other trees of the group. It is never
-    reported separately in statistics of wood utilization. It is too
-    scarce to be important as a timber tree. It apparently has a future
-    as an ornament, though it has not yet been widely planted. It has
-    proved a success in the Carolinas and it thrives in the climate of
-    Washington, D. C. The luster of its foliage makes it the most
-    beautiful of the hickories. In common with other members of the
-    genus, its long taproot renders the transplanting of nursery stock
-    difficult.
-
-    WATER HICKORY (_Hicoria aquatica_) is known as swamp hickory in
-    South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana; bitter pecan in
-    Mississippi and Louisiana, and water bitternut in Tennessee and
-    South Carolina. The northern limit of this species is in Virginia
-    near Mobjack bay, the southern limit in the Caloosa valley, Florida,
-    west to the Brazos river, Texas, and north to southern Illinois. The
-    wood is hard, heavy, strong, but rather brittle; the sapwood is
-    thick and often is nearly white, while the heartwood is dark brown.
-    It is the most porous of the hickories, and the pores are
-    distributed generally through the annual rings of growth. In other
-    hickories they are largely restricted to the inner part of each
-    ring, though a few are dispersed through all parts. In swamp hickory
-    there is little difference in appearance between the wood grown
-    early in the season and that produced later. The tree is a rapid
-    grower. It is an inhabitant of deep swamps, and if the land is
-    inundated a considerable part of the year, the tree seems to grow
-    all the better. At its best it may attain a height of 100 feet, and
-    a diameter of two, but that size is unusual. The nut is small and
-    wrinkled, and when broken open, pockets of red bitter powder are
-    frequently found inside the shell. Usually the nuts are too bitter
-    to be eaten, but it is said that near the western limit of the
-    tree's range, nuts are sometimes edible.
-
-    The only reported uses for the wood are fuel and fencing. It is poor
-    fence material, because, like other hickories, it decays in a short
-    time when exposed to weather. The wood of this genus is rich in
-    foods on which decay-producing fungi feed. Fungus is a low order of
-    plant life which sends its hair-like threads into the wood cells and
-    consumes the material found there; but numerous insects bore into
-    wood to procure food. Few woods suffer from such attacks more than
-    hickory. Even after it is seasoned and manufactured into
-    commodities, it is frequently attacked by various species of powder
-    post beetles, and much injury results. Water hickory while yet
-    standing is often greatly damaged by the larvae of certain moths
-    which find their way into the soft wood just under the bark and
-    tunnel minute galleries which subsequently fill with brown
-    substance. According to R. B. Hough, these brown streaks in water
-    hickory are hard enough to turn the edge of steel tools. They not
-    only damage the structure of the wood but spoil its appearance.
-
-    BITTER PECAN (_Hicoria texana_) is a Texas species which has not
-    been reported elsewhere. The average size of the tree is from
-    fifteen to twenty-five feet in height and eight to ten inches in
-    diameter; but in rich bottom land, particularly along the Brazos
-    river, specimens sometimes attain a diameter of three feet and a
-    height of 100. The leaves are from ten to twelve inches in length,
-    with from seven to eleven leaflets. The nuts are very bitter, but
-    are of approximately the same size and shape as edible pecans. The
-    shells are thin and very brittle. The tree's range extends inland
-    100 or 150 miles from the Texas coast.
-
-    NORTH CAROLINA SHAGBARK HICKORY (_Hicoria carolinae-septentrionalis_)
-    is found in the neighboring parts of the four states: North
-    Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. In the best land this
-    tree is occasionally eighty feet high and two or three in diameter,
-    but when it occurs on dry hillsides its average height is twenty or
-    thirty feet, and its diameter about a foot. The compound leaves are
-    from four to eight inches long, with usually three, but occasionally
-    five leaflets. The sweet nuts are small and brown. The bark
-    separates into thick strips a foot or more in length and three or
-    four inches wide. The rough trunk resembles the northern shagbark
-    hickory. The wood is very tough, strong, and hard, the heart light
-    reddish-brown, the thin sapwood nearly white. It is not
-    distinguished from the other hickories in commerce, and it has the
-    same uses when any use is made of it.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE ELM
-
-[Illustration: WHITE ELM]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE ELM
-
-(_Ulmus Americana_)
-
-
-Six species of elm occur in the United States, not counting the planer
-tree as an elm, though lumbermen usually consider it as such.[5] The
-white elm is the most common, is distributed most widely, and is
-commercially the most important. More of it is used as lumber, slack
-cooperage, and other forms of forest products, than all other elms of
-this country combined. The statistics of sawmill output collected
-annually by the United States census are not compiled in a way to show
-the elms separately. All go in as one. The annual lumber cut of elm in
-the whole country is about 265,000,000 feet, distributed over
-thirty-four states, with Wisconsin leading, followed in the order named
-by Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas, New York, and Minnesota.
-In addition to lumber, elm furnishes about 130,000,000 slack cooperage
-staves yearly.
-
-    [5] The elms are white elm (_Ulmus americana_), cork elm (_Ulmus
-    racemosa_), slippery elm (_Ulmus pubescens_), cedar elm (_Ulmus
-    crassifolia_), wing elm (_Ulmus alata_), and red elm (_Ulmus
-    serotina_). They are all confined to the region east of the Rocky
-    Mountains.
-
-The elms, taken as a class, are much alike. There is more resemblance
-between the species than between species of oaks or pines, yet some
-difference exists between elms. This holds not only between different
-species, but between individuals of the same species. Climate,
-situation, and soil have much to do with the character of the wood of
-the same species. So great is the difference at times that fairly good
-judges of timber are deceived as to the species. A tree growing on dry,
-rocky soil produces wood quite different from one on rich, deep,
-well-watered soil. Not only is the wood of one different from that of
-the other, but the appearances of the standing trees are not alike. The
-differences may not show in leaves, flowers, and fruit as much as in the
-shapes and sizes of trees, and the habit of the branches.
-
-White elm is by common consent the type of the genus, the standard by
-which the other species are measured. It is proper to compare certain
-properties and characters of other elms with white elm, in order that a
-general view of all may be had. The dry weights, per cubic foot, of wood
-are as follows: White elm 40.54 pounds, slippery elm 43.35, cedar elm
-45.15, cork elm 45.26, and wing elm 46.69. Figures which show the weight
-of the southern red elm (_Ulmus serotina_) are not available. White elm
-is thus shown to be lightest of the group.
-
-Its breaking strength averages 12,158 pounds per cubic inch, under the
-usual tests by which the strength of woods is determined. Reduced to
-everyday language that means that 12,158 pounds would just break a white
-elm stick, 2-5/8 inches square, and resting on supports twelve inches
-apart. That is the meaning of "breaking strength," or "modulus of
-rupture," as the term is used in engineering text books relating to
-woods. The following figures for the breaking strength of other elms
-make comparisons with white elm easy: Cedar elm 11,000; wing elm 11,162;
-slippery elm 12,342; cork elm (often called rock elm) 15,172. It is
-shown that two elms are stronger and two weaker than white elm. This
-wood rates very little below white oak in strength.
-
-The different species of elms vary considerably in stiffness, or the
-ability to spring back when bent. This factor is expressed by engineers
-in high figures, is purely technical, and is based on a wood's ability
-to stretch and regain its former position. The only service which the
-figures can render to the layman is to furnish a basis for comparing one
-wood with another. The stiffer a wood, the greater its resistance to an
-effort to stretch it lengthwise. White elm's measure of stiffness
-(modulus of elasticity) is 1,070,000 pounds per square inch; wing elm
-853,000; cedar elm 981,000; slippery elm 1,318,000; cork elm 1,512,000.
-It is shown here, as was shown in the figures representing the strength
-of the elms, that two species rate above and two below white elm in
-stiffness.
-
-White elm is known by several names. The color of the bark is
-responsible for the name gray elm among lumbermen and woodworkers of the
-Lake States. American elm is a translation of its botanical name, and is
-neither descriptive nor definitive, because there are other elms as
-truly American as this one. White elm distinguishes its wood from the
-redder wood of slippery elm, but it would often be difficult if not
-impossible to identify the elms, or any one of them, by the color of the
-wood alone. Some persons who call this elm white doubtless refer to the
-color of the bark, as is the case with those who speak of it as gray
-elm. It is known as water elm in several states, but that name is
-applied indiscriminately to any elm that frequents river banks, as most
-of them do in some part of their range. It is called rock elm when it is
-found on stony uplands, and swamp elm on low wet ground. In some parts
-of the Appalachian mountain ranges it is called astringent elm to
-distinguish it from slippery elm.
-
-White elm surpasses the others in extent of range. Its northern boundary
-stretches from Newfoundland, across Canada to the eastern base of the
-Rocky Mountains, a distance of nearly 3,000 miles. It runs south through
-the Atlantic states to Florida, a distance of 1,200 miles or more. Its
-southwestern limit is in Texas. The area thus bounded is about
-2,500,000 square miles. A few other trees have ranges as large, but none
-much exceed it. It covers so much of America, and is so important in
-many parts of its range, that it is clearly the leading elm in this
-country. It is entitled to first place among elms for other reasons.
-
-It is not easy to give any sure features or characteristics by which the
-layman may always distinguish this elm from others with which it is
-associated; however, by carefully observing certain features, the
-identity of white elm is generally easy to establish.
-
-The leaves have teeth along the margins like beech and birch. They have
-straight primary veins running from the midrib to the points of the
-teeth. Before falling in autumn the leaves turn yellow. The foliage is
-not very thick, and most of it is near the ends of the limbs. The bloom
-comes early in the spring, ahead of the leaves, and the seeds are ripe
-and ready for flight before the leaves are grown. Sometimes the seeds
-are ripe almost before the leaves are out of the buds. The seeds are
-oblong, and about the size of a small lentil. The wing entirely
-surrounds the seed, and is about half an inch long. The flight of elm
-seeds is an interesting phenomenon. The individual seeds are so small
-that they are not easily seen as they sail away from the tall tree top
-but when they go in swarms, in fitful puffs of wind, they are not hard
-to see. It is chiefly by their fruits that they are known, that is, by
-the multitudes of seedlings that appear a few weeks later. If one
-seedling elm in a thousand should reach maturity, there would be little
-besides elms in the whole country. They spring up by highways and
-hedges, in gutters, fields, and even between cobbles and bricks of paved
-streets; but in a few days they have crowded one another to death, or
-have perished from other causes, and those which manage to live to
-maturity do not much more than make up for old trees which perish from
-natural causes.
-
-The botanist Michaux pronounced the white elm "the most magnificent
-vegetable of the temperate zone." A number of trees are larger, though
-this reaches great size. Sargent sets the limit of the tree at 120 feet
-high and eleven feet in trunk diameter. That size is, of course,
-unusual, but it has been surpassed at least in height. A tree in
-Jefferson county, Pennsylvania, was 140 feet high, and although forest
-grown, it had a spread of crown of seventy-six feet. It was sent to the
-sawmill where it made 8,820 feet of lumber. That trunk was only five
-feet in diameter.
-
-Some of the finest forest grown elms in this country have been cut in
-Michigan. Their trunks were as tall, straight, and shapely as yellow
-poplars, and their crowns surpassed those of poplars. It was formerly
-not unusual for sawlogs to be cut from elm limbs which branched from the
-trunk fifty or more feet from the ground. The best of the forest grown
-elm of this country has been cut; but it is still lumbered throughout
-the whole eastern half of the United States.
-
-The finest elms of this country, and doubtless the finest in the world,
-are the planted trees in some of the New England villages. The largest
-of them have been growing for two hundred years, and in many instances
-they still show the vigor of youth. Trunks six or seven feet through are
-not uncommon, but the glory of the trees is not alone in the trunks.
-Their spread and form of crown are magnificent. The largest are 150 feet
-across, and some of the splendid branches, rising in parabolic curves,
-are fully 100 feet long, from the junction with the tree to the tips of
-the twigs. The most apt comparison for that form of elm is the spray of
-a fountain. The upward jet of water corresponds to the trunk of the
-tree; the upward, outward, and downward curves of the spray represent
-the crown of the elm. Trees which take that form are grown in open
-ground where sunlight and air reach every side. Forest grown trees are
-less symmetrical, but even in dense woods, the elm frequently rises
-clear above the canopy of other trees, and develops the fountain form of
-crown. The new England street and park elms surpass those farther west
-only because they are older. The splendid trunks and crowns are the work
-of centuries.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CORK ELM
-
-[Illustration: CORK ELM]
-
-
-
-
-CORK ELM
-
-(_Ulmus Racemosa_)
-
-
-This tree is called cork elm in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
-New York, New Jersey, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan,
-Iowa, and Ohio; rock elm in Rhode Island, Kentucky, West Virginia,
-Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska; hickory elm in
-Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana; white elm in Ontario; Thomas elm
-in Tennessee; northern cork-barked elm in Tennessee; corkbark elm, New
-York; northern cork elm, Vermont; wahoo, Ohio; cliff elm in Wisconsin.
-
-Cork elm is the natural name. It is a descriptive term which a stranger
-would be apt to apply on seeing the tree for the first time. The bark of
-the branches, after it has attained an age of three or four years,
-becomes rough by the growth of ridges and protuberances. This feature is
-sometimes so prominent that it at once attracts attention, particularly
-when the branches are bare of leaves; hence the name cork elm.
-
-Lumbermen insist on naming the tree rock elm. They refer to the hardness
-of the wood, or they may have in mind the dry, stony situations where
-tough, strong elm grows. The latter is often the case, because the name
-is applied also to slippery elm and white elm if they grow on stony
-ground. A wide-spread opinion prevails that wood which grows among rocks
-is harder, tougher, stronger, and more durable than that produced by
-deep, fertile soil. It is possible to cite much evidence to support that
-view, and the case might be considered proved, but for the fact that an
-equal, or greater amount of evidence, in every way as trustworthy, may
-be cited on the other side. The strongest hickory, ash, and oak do not
-come from stony land. It sometimes happens that a species with tough,
-strong wood, is found on rocks, but it is not tough because it is there,
-but in spite of being there.
-
-The name cliff elm which this tree bears in Wisconsin is but another
-form of the name rock elm, and clearly has reference to the situation
-where the tree grows in that part of the country. Hickory elm, on the
-other hand, a name applied to this tree much farther south, is a
-recognition of the wood's toughness.
-
-In some particulars it does not fall much below hickory in toughness,
-but is not as strong, elastic, or capable of as smooth polish. The
-latter property is one of the recommendations of hickory when used for
-handles. It is very smooth to the touch; cork elm is less so. In the
-northern woods, elm ax handles are in use, and some axmen prefer them
-to hickory. Such is probably the case when the best cork elm and a
-medium or poor quality of hickory are in competition.
-
-The fibers of cork elm are interlaced, rendering the splitting of the
-wood difficult. For uses in which that is a desirable property, it is
-preferable to hickory. It is better for hubs for large wagons, and that
-is a very important use for this elm.
-
-The wood of all the elms is ring-porous; that is, the springwood, or
-inner part of the annual ring, consists of one or more rows of large
-ducts. The summerwood contains pores in large numbers, but they are
-small, and are usually arranged in short curved lines. The medullary
-rays are not prominent in the wood of any of the elms, and
-quarter-sawing adds no beauty to the lumber. The wood is practically
-without figure, on account of either annual rings or medullary rays; but
-it may be stained, polished, and made very attractive. That is done
-oftener with white elm than with any other.
-
-The strength of cork elm created demand for it in boat building at an
-early day. The tree is and always was scarce in the vicinity of the
-Atlantic sea board, and the earliest boat builders seem not to have been
-acquainted with the wood. It was most abundant in the forests of
-Michigan, though it extended westward to Nebraska. It was plentiful in
-the province of Ontario, and the timbers from that region acquainted
-English shipbuilders with the merits of the wood. They sent contractors
-into Michigan to buy cork elm, long before the other hardwoods of that
-region had attracted the attention of the outside world. The most
-convenient supplies of cork elm on the Lower Michigan peninsula thus
-passed through Canada to ship yards on the other side of the sea. The
-wood is reputed to be more durable than any of the other elms.
-
-It is generally understood that the country's supply of cork elm is
-running short, but there are no statistics which show how much is left
-or how much has been cut. It is doubtful if the original forests,
-including the whole country, had one tree of cork elm to twenty of white
-elm. The average size of cork elm is sixty feet high and two in
-diameter. The trunks are well shaped, if forest grown. They develop
-small crowns in proportion to the size of trunks; and the crowns are
-less graceful than those of white elm--lacking the long, sweeping curves
-of the latter. The general contour of the tree has been compared to
-white oak.
-
-Cork elm grows well when planted on the Pacific coast, in environments
-quite different from its native habitat. In the forest it increases in
-size slowly; when planted it makes much better headway. It has a
-disagreeable habit of sprouting which puts it out of favor as a park
-tree.
-
-The wood of the different elms is largely used for manufacturing
-purposes. They are sometimes kept separate, but generally not. The
-particular place where cork elm is preferred is in the manufacture of
-vehicles and boats, but it is by no means confined to those commodities.
-
-The state of Michigan alone sends 50,000,000 feet of elm a year to its
-factories to be converted into articles of general utility. Furniture
-makers take over 2,000,000 feet of it, though elm is not classed as a
-furniture wood. In certain places it is superior to almost every other
-wood. No matter how discolored it becomes by weathering and the
-accumulation of foreign substances, a vigorous application of soap,
-water, and a scrubbing brush will whiten it. It is liked in certain
-parts of refrigerators which need constant scrubbing. Elm to the extent
-of 8,000,000 feet goes into refrigerators in Michigan alone.
-
-The strength and toughness of elm make it suitable for frames of tables.
-When thus used, it is generally out of sight, but not infrequently it is
-made into table legs as well as frames. Statistics show that more than a
-million feet are manufactured yearly into handles in Michigan alone. All
-three of the northern elms--white, cork, and slippery--are listed in the
-handle industry.
-
-Many millions of feet of elm are yearly converted into automobile
-stock--3,000,000 in Michigan. Horse-drawn vehicles take more. The most
-common place for it is the hub, but it serves also as shafts, poles,
-reaches, and even as spokes for wagons of the largest size.
-
-The important place in the slack cooperage industry held by elm is well
-known. It is a flour barrel wood, but is employed for barrels of many
-other kinds. It stands high as veneer, not the kind of which the visible
-parts of furniture are made, but the invisible interior, built up of
-veneer sheets glued together. A similar kind of veneer forms the boxes
-or frames of trunks--the part to be covered by metal, leather, or cloth.
-The slats which strengthen the outside of trunks are frequently of elm.
-
-This wood is not in favor for one important purpose, hardwood
-distillation. It has escaped pretty generally also from being employed
-as a farm material, on account of its poor lasting qualities. Some
-slippery elm was mauled into fence rails in the pioneer days of Ohio,
-Indiana, and southern Michigan, but that was only because it was
-plentiful and convenient. Cork elm probably never made a fence rail,
-because it is so unwedgeable that no rail splitter would have anything
-to do with it. At the best, it is but a temporary makeshift as fence
-posts, but by applying creosote and other preservative treatments to
-lessen decay, it measures up with most other post woods.
-
-The elms are not indispensable woods in this country, but their
-exhaustion, should it ever come, will leave many places hard to fill. As
-far as known, no woodlots of any species of elm have been planted in
-this country, and there is little prospect that any will be planted,
-because the slow growth of the trees discourages foresters. A century
-or two is a long look ahead.
-
-However, the exhaustion of no species of the elms in this country need
-be expected soon. The most apparent peril lies ahead of cork elm,
-because it never was abundant, and demand, which has been large for a
-long time, is still strong. The species is scattered over more than
-200,000 square miles, and a long time must elapse before the last cork
-elm finds its way to the sawmill. The situation of white elm is more
-promising. It may be among the last trees of the American forests to
-take its final departure. Its wide range and its bounteous seed crops
-insure a supply, though not necessarily a large one, for a long time.
-The greatest peril to elms, as well as to many other forest trees, is
-that, when weakened by depletion, some disease will attack them and
-destroy the remnants. Experience in New England and elsewhere has shown
-that elm has no great resisting power when a strong attack is made upon
-it.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SLIPPERY ELM
-
-[Illustration: SLIPPERY ELM]
-
-
-
-
-SLIPPERY ELM
-
-(_Ulmus Pubescens_)
-
-
-This tree is known as slippery elm in every state where it grows, thirty
-or more; but in some localities it has other names also. It is doubtful
-if any person who is acquainted with the tree would fail to recognize it
-by the name slippery elm, though some who are acquainted with the lumber
-only might not know it by that name. Those who call it red elm have in
-mind the color of the heartwood which is of deeper red than the wood of
-any other elm, or they may refer to the tawny pubescence on the young
-shoots in winter. The botanical name describes that characteristic.
-
-In the North, the slippery elm is sometimes known as moose elm. It
-furnishes forage in winter for the moose and other herbivorous animals
-when ground plants are covered with snow. The moose is able to eat
-branches as thick as a man's thumb. The principal food element in the
-twigs is the mucilaginous inner bark. It is this which gives the tree
-its name slippery elm. The value of the bark as a food has been
-questioned. It is agreeable to the taste of both man and beast, but it
-is claimed that a human being will starve to death on it, though it will
-prolong life several days. The lower animals, however, seem able to
-derive more benefit from eating the bark. An incident of the War of 1812
-appears to prove this. The army under General Harrison, operating in the
-vicinity of Lake Erie, kept the horses of the expedition alive by
-feeding them on slippery elm bark, stripped from the trees and chopped
-in small bits.
-
-The inner bark has long been used for medicinal purposes. It is now
-ground fine and is kept for sale in drug stores, but formerly it was a
-household remedy which most families in the country provided and kept in
-store along with catnip, mandrake, sage, dogwood blossoms, and other
-rural remedies which were depended upon to rout diseases in the days
-when physicians were few. The slippery elm bark was peeled from the tree
-in long strips, the rough outer layers were shaved off, leaving the
-mucilaginous inner layer. That was from an eighth to a quarter of an
-inch thick. It was dried and put away for use. When needed it was
-pounded to a pulp, moistened with water, and applied as a poultice, if
-an external remedy was wanted. If a medicine was needed, a decoction was
-drunk as tea. There is no question that the remedy often produced good
-results when no doctor was within reach. A well-known medical writer
-said three-quarters of a century ago that the slippery elm tree was
-worth its weight in gold.
-
-The range of slippery elm extends from the lower St. Lawrence river
-through Canada to North Dakota. It is found in Texas as far west as the
-San Antonio river, and its western limit is generally from 200 to 300
-miles west of the Mississippi river. Its range extends south nearly to
-the Gulf of Mexico. It is not this tree's habit to grow in thick stands,
-but it occurs singly or in small groups on the banks of streams or on
-rich hillsides.
-
-The average size is scarcely half that of white elm. Few trees exceed a
-height of seventy feet and a diameter of two. It grows rapidly at first,
-but does not live to old age. The crown lacks the symmetry and beauty so
-conspicuous in white elm. The limbs follow no law of regularity, but
-leave the trunk at haphazard. The fruit is mature before the leaves are
-half grown. The seeds have more wing area than those of white elm; and,
-like those of white elm, the wing surrounds the flat seed on all its
-edges. The leaves are rough to the touch, and when crumpled in the hand,
-the crunching sensation is unpleasant.
-
-Next to white elm, slippery elm appears to be more abundant than any
-other member of the group; but statistics do not give the basis for
-close estimates. The factories of Michigan use 3,700,000 feet of
-slippery elm a year, and 44,000,000 of white elm. The proportion of
-slippery to white is larger in the factories of Illinois.
-
-The uses are the same as for other elms. The wood is rated more durable
-than the others, but it is not in much demand for outdoor work where
-resistance to decay is an important consideration. It is sometimes set
-for fence posts, but the results are scarcely satisfactory, particularly
-for round posts which are largely sapwood. Posts sawed from the
-heartwood of large trees would do better. The deeper red of the
-heartwood gives it an advantage over the other elms for furniture and
-finish where natural colors are shown; but this is not important because
-no elm's natural color stands for much in the estimation of users of
-fine woods. The more common use of slippery elm is for boxes and
-cooperage. Next to red gum, it is employed in larger quantities for
-cooperage in Illinois than any other wood.
-
-The supply is rapidly decreasing. The cut for lumber is the chief drain,
-but a not inconsiderable one is the peeling of trees for bark. This goes
-on all over the species' range and much of it is done by boys with
-knives and hatchets. It is often hard to find slippery elms within miles
-of a town, because all have succumbed to bark hunters.
-
-    CEDAR ELM (_Ulmus crassifolia_) appears to bear this name because it
-    is often found associated with red cedars on the dry limestone hills
-    of Texas. There is little in the form and appearance of the tree to
-    suggest the tall, tapering conical crown of cedar. There is still
-    less in the wood. In some parts of Texas the species is called red
-    elm, on account of the color of the wood, while in Arkansas, which
-    is near the northern boundary of its range, it is locally known as
-    basket elm, because basket makers find desirable qualities in its
-    wood. It is a species of rather limited range, but it is abundant in
-    certain regions. It is found as far east as Sunflower river,
-    Mississippi, north into Arkansas, west to Pecos river, Texas, and
-    south into Mexico. It is confined to three states, this side the Rio
-    Grande. Trees on dry hills are inclined to be shrubby, but in damp
-    valleys where soil is fertile, specimens attain a height of eighty
-    feet and a diameter of three, but the average is not nearly so
-    large. The leaves are small but numerous. The flowering habits of
-    this elm are somewhat erratic. The usual time for bloom to appear is
-    August, and a month or six weeks afterwards the small seeds are
-    ready for flight; but occasionally, as if not satisfied with its
-    first effort, the tree blooms again in October, and ripens a second
-    crop late in the fall. The seeds are poorly supplied with wings,
-    which are reduced to narrow margins surrounding the seed. It does
-    not appear, however, that the species is in any way handicapped in
-    securing reproduction. The small shoots are equipped with flat,
-    corky keels, similar to but much smaller than those of the wing elm.
-
-    This tree is important for the lumber it produces. It is the common
-    and most abundant elm of Texas, and it is found in a large part of
-    that state. The wood is the weakest of the elms, and is likewise
-    quite brittle; but in the region where it is most abundant it
-    compares favorably with any other. The best is cut from the largest
-    trees, which grow in valleys where moisture is abundant. The growth
-    found on the dry hills is of poor quality, and is worth little, even
-    for fuel. The highest development in Texas, and also the highest in
-    the species' range, is in the valleys of Trinity and Guadalupe
-    rivers. In Texas this wood is employed in furniture factories as
-    inside frames, to be covered by other woods, but it is not employed
-    as outside parts of furniture, unless in very cheap kinds. It is
-    suitable for drain boards and floors of refrigerators where it is
-    wet much of the time. Under such circumstances it is more easily
-    kept clean than most other woods. It whitens with repeated
-    scrubbings. One of its most common uses in Texas is for wagon hubs.
-    Some wheelwrights pronounce it next to the best native wood for that
-    purpose, the first place being accorded Osage orange. The tree is
-    often planted for shade along the streets of Texas towns, and
-    develops thick crowns and satisfactory forms.
-
-    RED ELM (_Ulmus serotina_) is a lately discovered member of the elm
-    family. It so closely resembles the cork elm that it was supposed to
-    be of the same species, and the close scrutiny of a botanist was
-    required to discover that it was a separate species. Sargent
-    observed the flowers opening in September while those of cork elm
-    appear in early spring. The seeds ripen in November, while cork
-    elm's are ripe early in the summer. The tree was named red elm, the
-    wood being reddish-brown. That name is widely applied to slippery
-    elm, but it is improbable that much confusion will result. The red
-    elm's range is quite restricted and in that area the slippery elm is
-    not important. Red elm occurs on limestone hills and river banks
-    from central Kentucky to northern Georgia and Alabama. It attains a
-    height of fifty or sixty feet and a diameter of two or three. The
-    leaves are from two to four inches in length, and one or two wide,
-    with margins toothed like the other elms. The midrib is yellow, and
-    in the autumn the leaves change to an orange yellow before falling.
-    Branches which are two or three years old develop corky wings, two
-    or three in number.
-
-    It is not known that mechanical tests of the wood have been made in
-    a regular way to determine its physical properties, but superficial
-    examination indicates that it is hard, tough, and strong, apparently
-    about the same as cork elm. Special lists of uses for this wood have
-    not been compiled for the reason that lumbermen and operators of
-    sawmills have never distinguished it from other elms of the region.
-    Since it has never been left standing in districts where other elms
-    are cut, it is evident that it has been regularly put to use for
-    vehicles, agricultural implements, boxes, crates, and slack
-    cooperage, because such articles have been manufactured in the
-    region. The red elm has been occasionally planted as a shade tree
-    along streets of towns in northern Georgia and Alabama.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PLANERTREE
-
-[Illustration: PLANERTREE]
-
-
-
-
-PLANERTREE
-
-(_Planera Aquatica_)
-
-
-This tree is a first cousin of the elms, but it is no more an elm than a
-hackberry is an elm. It is a member of the family but is of a different
-genus, and it is the sole representative of its genus in the known
-world. There is only one kind of planertree, with no nearer relatives
-than the elms on one side and hackberry, sugarberry, and palo blanco on
-the other. Except those kinsfolk, it is alone on earth. The name is in
-honor of Johann Jacob Planer, a German botanist whose efforts did much
-for science nearly two hundred years ago. The name of the species
-_aquatica_, recognizes the tree's habit of growing where water is
-abundant. It is a swamp species, or rather, it prefers situations
-subject to periodic overflow. It looks like an elm, and that has led
-people to call it water elm. That is the name by which it is usually
-known in Florida. In Alabama it is called the American planertree, which
-is an unnecessary restriction, since there is no planertree except this
-one. The Louisiana French gave it the name plene, and the abridgement of
-its name is yet heard in that state. In North Carolina it has acquired
-the name sycamore, but without good reason. It does not look in the
-least like sycamore.
-
-It has the leaf of an elm, and it resembles that tree in bark, and
-somewhat in general form. The layman detects the first important
-difference when he examines the seeds. Those of the elms have wings, but
-the planertree's are without those appendages, and they would be useless
-if it had them, unless they were as large as the parachute of the
-basswood seed. The planertree bears a sort of nut, a third of an inch
-long, and too heavy to be transported far on the ordinary membranous
-wings of tree seeds. Water is doubtless the principal agent in carrying
-the seeds from place to place. Probably few of them are transported far,
-because the water about the trees is generally stagnant; and, besides,
-the species does not seem to be extending its range or increasing in
-numbers.
-
-The planertree has a history. If the terms which the Roman historian
-Tacitus applied to people, could be applied to trees, it might be said
-of this species, as he said of certain tribes: "The cowards fly the
-farthest and are the last survivors." The planertree is now found only
-in certain southern swamps, from North Carolina to Florida, and west to
-Missouri and Texas. In former periods, as is shown by the records of
-geology, there were several species, and they had a wide range over
-portions of the northern hemisphere. They appear to have been a strong
-group of trees, able to hold their ground with the best inhabitants of
-the forest. They were in the Rocky Mountains, and far north in Alaska.
-They were in Europe also, or were represented there by some very similar
-species.
-
-For some reason which is not definitely known, they lost out when
-competition with other trees became keen, and in the course of long
-periods of time they disappeared from their former ranges in the North
-and West. They took to the swamps, just as the tribes of which Tacitus
-spoke, took to the morasses when they could no longer face their enemies
-on open ground. It was a far cry from Alaska to the Chattahoochee swamps
-in Florida, yet that was where A. H. Curtis and Charles Mohr went to
-procure typical planertree specimens for the tests which Sargent made of
-American woods.
-
-It has been suggested that tree species which have lost out in
-competition for ground, have been those which were at some decided
-disadvantage in the matter of getting their seeds properly scattered and
-planted. The case has not been proved, because there are as many facts
-and as much argument against that hypothesis as for it. The bigtrees of
-California are a noted example of a species which lost out and retreated
-to a corner, yet their seeds fly like birds. Plainly, something besides
-winged seeds is needed to keep the species in the fight. However, it is
-not difficult to see that the planertree, with wingless seeds and of so
-little use as food that no bird or rodent will carry them or bury them,
-has been much handicapped in the long contest which has crowded it from
-the arctic circle to the cotton belt.
-
-It has the habits of the subdued and conquered tree. It has adapted
-itself to swamps where few species can grow, and where competition for
-light and room is reduced to a minimum. Yet, even there, it is content
-to take the leavings of more ambitious species. The crowns make little
-effort to rise up to the light, for which many other trees battle during
-their whole existence. The planertree's low, broad top of contorted
-branches places it perpetually in the shade of any other trees which
-overtop it.
-
-The wood of the planertree is lighter in weight, poorer in fuel value,
-weaker, and more brittle than the poorest of the elms. The annual ring
-lacks the rows of large open pores common in all the elms, but it has
-many small pores scattered through the whole year's growth. It is not
-easy to note a difference between the springwood and that which grows
-later. The wood is soft, light brown in color, and the nearly white
-sapwood is thick. It is often, perhaps generally, a tree of fairly rapid
-growth, and since it does not reach large size, it is probably
-short-lived, but exact information along that line is lacking.
-
-The tallest trees seldom exceed a height of forty feet and a diameter of
-two. It is evident that a tree of that size and form does not tempt the
-lumberman to much exertion to procure it. An examination of reports of
-sawmill operations and of the utilization of woods by shops and
-factories in the southern states has failed to find a single instance
-where the planertree has been reported in use for any purpose whatever.
-Doubtless, trees are sometimes cut and the lumber gets into the market,
-but not under its own name. The species is interesting for reasons other
-than that it ever has had or ever can have a place in the country's
-lumber industry.
-
-    WING ELM (_Ulmus alata_), which is the smallest of the elms, is
-    plentifully supplied with names, but in most parts of its range it
-    is known as wing or winged elm. It is also called wahoo or wahoo
-    elm, and the West Virginians have named it witch elm; the North
-    Carolinans refer to it often as simply elm; from Florida to Texas
-    some call it cork elm; in Alabama it is water elm; in Arkansas
-    mountain elm; while in other regions it is corky elm, small-leaf
-    elm, and red elm. Some of these names are self-explanatory. Wing elm
-    does not relate to a winged seed, but to winged twigs. That
-    characteristic of the tree is very prominent. The wings consist of
-    flattened keels along opposite sides of the branches. A twig no more
-    than a quarter of an inch in diameter may be decorated with wings
-    half an inch or more wide, making the twig four or five times as
-    wide as it is thick. As the twig enlarges, the wings do not broaden
-    in proportion. The lowest branches and those nearest the trunk are
-    most generously furnished with wings. They appear to be entirely
-    ornamental, for it is not known that they serve any useful purpose.
-    The growth is different from those which give cork elm its name. The
-    latter occur on the large branches, often in the form of isolated
-    protuberances, but the wings are fairly continuous for a foot or
-    more, except that they terminate abruptly at the nodes, but
-    recommence immediately after. Branches less than a year old seldom
-    have wings. The name wahoo appears to have lost its etymology if it
-    ever had any. Dictionaries tell what it means, but they shy at its
-    origin. It is a southern word which is applied to this elm, and also
-    to other trees, and occasionally it means a fish instead of a tree.
-    Some would trace it to the cry of an owl, others to a name in
-    Gulliver's Travels, with a slight change in spelling.
-
-    Wing elm at its best is about fifty feet high and two in diameter;
-    but much of the stand is small. The best occurs west of the
-    Mississippi river. The range extends from Texas to Virginia, south
-    to Florida, and north to Illinois. In Texas it is a fairly important
-    wood in furniture factories, the annual supply being about a million
-    feet. It is used by turners for table legs. In an investigation of
-    the uses of the wood, the same difficulty is encountered that makes
-    difficult a study of the uses of all the elms--conflict and
-    uncertainty of names. There are few regions in the hardwood areas of
-    this country which produce one elm and no more; and after all
-    practical means of identification are resorted to, there is often
-    doubt and uncertainty concerning the exact species of elm lumber
-    found in use. Fortunately, it generally makes little difference,
-    because anyone of them is good enough for ordinary use. Wing elm is
-    extensively planted for shade along the streets of towns in the
-    lower Mississippi valley, but more frequently on the west side of
-    the valley. When the trees grow in the open they develop broad
-    crowns, and the branches, even of comparatively small trees, are
-    long enough to reach well over the sidewalks, and cast satisfactory
-    shade. The dark-colored winged twigs add much to the ornamental
-    value of the street trees.
-
-    FREMONTIA (_Fremontodendron californicum_) is not botanically in the
-    elm family, but it is popularly known as slippery elm in the region
-    where it occurs, and for that reason it is here given place among
-    the elms. It is known also as leatherwood. It is a California
-    species, ranging among the lower mountains and higher foothills in
-    dry, gravelly soils, from the Mexican boundary five hundred miles
-    northward in the state. The mucilaginous inner bark tastes like that
-    of the true slippery elm. The shape of the leaf much more resembles
-    sycamore than elm; and it is an evergreen. It bears a bright yellow,
-    roselike flower, and the seeds are small, reddish-brown. The wood is
-    fine grained, clear reddish-brown, with thick, whitish sapwood. It
-    is very soft. The tree attains its largest size among the foothills
-    of the Sierra Nevada mountains, but even there it is too small to
-    have much economic value, seldom exceeding thirty feet in height and
-    a foot in diameter. Its most important use is as a forage plant for
-    cattle and sheep. In that particular it resembles slippery elm in
-    northern woods. The tree is occasionally planted in the eastern
-    states and in Europe for ornament. In its native range it grows
-    slowly.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-HACKBERRY
-
-[Illustration: HACKBERRY]
-
-
-
-
-HACKBERRY
-
-(_Celtis Occidentalis_)
-
-
-Hackberry is a common name for this tree in nearly all parts of its
-range, but it has other names. It is sometimes confused with sugarberry
-(_Celtis mississippiensis_). They call it nettle tree in Rhode Island,
-Massachusetts, Delaware, and Michigan, and in Tennessee it is known as
-American nettle-tree. In Vermont it is hoop ash; in Rhode Island
-one-berry; hack-tree in Minnesota, and juniper tree in New Jersey.
-
-The name hackberry is not of American origin. It dates far back in the
-languages of western Europe and is believed to have the same origin as
-the word haw, which, in its turn meant hedge. If that etymology is
-correct, the word really means hedge berry, which is not an
-inappropriate name for the tree. The name is sometimes applied to a
-small bird cherry in Europe. The New Jersey name juniper-tree is in
-recognition of the resemblance of the berries to those of red cedar or
-red juniper. No reason has been assigned for the name nettle-tree.
-
-Its range covers about 2,000,000 square miles in the United States
-besides part of Canada. It grows from the Atlantic on the coast of New
-England to the tide water of the Pacific on Puget sound; in southern
-Florida and in Texas. It is not found in pure stands, but often as
-single trees far apart. This is the case in the northeastern part of the
-United States in particular where probably not more than one tree might
-be found in a whole county. Frequently the people in the neighborhood do
-not know what the tree is, and suppose it is the last representative on
-earth of some disappearing species.
-
-It is far from being a disappearing tree. Not only is it widely
-dispersed over the United States, but related species are scattered
-through many countries of the old world, from Denmark to India. There
-are said to be between fifty and sixty species, only two of which are in
-the United States.
-
-It has been claimed by scholars that the lotus referred to by ancient
-writers was the hackberry. It was reputed to cause forgetfulness when
-eaten, but the claim was fictitious, for the fruit does not produce that
-effect. It is not now regarded as human food. Tennyson deals with the
-fiction very beautifully in the poem "Lotus Eaters," but he took
-liberties with botany when he represented fruit and flowers on the same
-branch; for, though the berries hang several months, they drop before
-the next season's flowers appear.
-
-The hackberry belongs to the elm family, being of the same relation as
-the planertree. The leaves resemble those of the elm, but are more
-sharply pointed. The fruit is usually classed as a berry. It ripens in
-September and October, but remains on the tree several months, becoming
-dry. It is about one-fourth inch long, dark purple, with a tough, thick
-skin, and with flesh dark orange. Most of the pale brown seeds are eaten
-by birds.
-
-The tree varies greatly in size. In some remote corners of its immense
-range it is little more than a shrub, while at its best it may attain a
-height of 100 feet and a diameter of three or four. Its average size is
-about that of slippery elm. The bark varies as much in appearance as the
-tree in size. Sometimes it has the smooth surface and pale bluish-green
-appearance that suggest the bark of beech; again it is darker and
-rougher, like the elm. It frequently exhibits the harsh warty bark which
-is peculiar to the hackberry, and when present it is a pretty safe means
-of identification. The warts may be conical, oblong, or sharp-pointed,
-and probably an inch in height. When closely examined, most of them are
-found to consist of parallel strata of bark which may usually be pulled
-off without much difficulty. The warts are a decided disadvantage to the
-tree in some of the low swampy districts of Louisiana where Spanish moss
-is a pest. This moss (which is not a true moss), is propagated
-principally by tufts and strands which are carried by wind until they
-find anchorage among the branches of trees where they increase and
-multiply at a rapid rate until they finally smother or break down the
-unfortunate tree which supplied a lodging place. The hackberry's warts
-catch and hold every flying strand of moss that touches them, and
-hundreds, perhaps thousands of pounds of it may accumulate on a single
-tree. The grayish-green color of the moss often exactly matches the hue
-of the tree's bark.
-
-The reported annual cut of hackberry lumber in the United States is less
-than 5,000,000 feet. That can be only a fraction of the total output.
-Few mills report it separately, but list it as ash. The wood looks more
-like ash than elm. It is heavy, but only moderately hard and strong. Its
-color is more yellowish than ash, but the annual rings of growth
-resemble that wood. The sapwood is thick, and growth is rapid where
-conditions are favorable.
-
-It is doubtless used by industries in thirty states or more, but
-comparatively few factories report it. In Texas it is listed in the box
-and crate industry. In Louisiana it rises to more importance, for that
-is the region where the tree attains its best. Slack coopers make kegs,
-tubs, and barrels of it; vehicle manufacturers convert it into parts of
-buggy tops and the running gears of wagons; it serves for furniture and
-interior finish; and it takes the place of ash for hoe handles and parts
-of agricultural implements. The uses are nearly the same in
-Mississippi, but it is used there for rustic seats and other outdoor
-furniture. In Missouri it is found suitable for cart axles, saddle
-trees, stitching horse jaws, and wagon beds. In Arkansas it goes with
-ash into flooring, and interior finish for houses. Illinois builders
-work it into fixtures for stores. In Michigan it serves the same
-purposes as in Texas, baskets, boxes, and crates. These examples
-doubtless are representative of its uses wherever the tree is found in
-commercial quantities. The wood is not durable in contact with the soil.
-It is also liable to attack by boring insects if logs are allowed to
-retain their bark.
-
-The hackberry has been planted to a small extent as a street tree in the
-southern towns, but it is not as popular as the elms and oaks. It will
-never occupy a more important position in the country's lumber industry
-than it holds at present. It is a tree which, for some reason, inspires
-little enthusiasm in anybody; but nature takes care of it fairly well,
-and the small sweet drupes which it bears are a guarantee that the
-species will not want for seed carriers as long as birds continue to
-have access to its branches in winter.
-
-SUGARBERRY (_Celtis mississippiensis_) is frequently mistaken for
-hackberry even by persons who ought to be able to distinguish them.
-Botanists formerly confused the two, and probably some insist still that
-sugarberry is only a variety of hackberry. The leaves generally have
-smooth margins, and that would differentiate the tree from the hackberry
-were it not that sometimes the sugarberry has serrate leaves. The drupes
-are bright orange red and are usually smaller than the purple fruit of
-hackberry. As for the wood of the two species, it is not easy to tell
-one from the other. The sugarberry's range is not one-third as extensive
-as hackberry's, but covers some hundreds of thousands of square miles in
-the southeastern quarter of the United States. Its northern limit is in
-Illinois and Indiana where it occupies rich bottom lands and the banks
-of streams. It reaches its largest size in the lower Ohio river basin,
-grows southward into Florida and west into Texas, Arkansas, and
-Missouri. It crosses the Rio Grande into Mexico, appearing to outstrip
-the hackberry in that direction. It outstrips it in another direction
-also, for it is found in the Bermuda islands. The French of Louisiana
-called it bois inconnu, or the unknown wood.
-
-This tree shows a marked tendency to run into varieties, and cultivation
-would probably develop the tendency. The differences between the species
-and the varieties are plain enough to the systematic botanist, but are
-such that the lumberman or other ordinary observer would scarcely notice
-them. The variety which has been named _Celtis mississippiensis
-reticulata_, but without any English name except sugarberry, is a tree
-forty or fifty feet high, covered with blue-gray bark, very rough. It
-ranges from Dallas, Texas, to the Rio Grande and westward into New
-Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, and into southern California and Lower
-California. In eastern Texas it is found on dry limestone hills, but
-westward only in mountain canyons in the vicinity of water. In the
-southern part of Texas this tree is usually known as palo blanco, but
-those who apply that name have no idea that it is a variety of
-sugarberry but suppose it is a tree peculiar to their region. In Cameron
-and Hidalgo counties, Texas, either because an extra good quality grows
-there, or because some opinion exists in its favor, it is liked for
-wagon material, and occasionally is turned for table legs and other
-parts of furniture. It is quite common in that part of Texas as an
-ornamental tree in yards and along streets of small towns. The whiteness
-of the bark is the most striking feature.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE ASH
-
-[Illustration: WHITE ASH]
-
-
-
-
-WHITE ASH
-
-(_Fraxinus Americana_)
-
-
-This tree is generally called white or gray ash, or simply ash. American
-ash is a translation of its botanical name and is not often used in
-business transactions in this country. In some parts of the South the
-term cane ash is occasionally employed, but there seems to be no
-agreement among those who use the name as to what it means. This is the
-common ash in the lumber trade. There are more than a dozen species in
-the United States, but white ash goes to market in larger amounts than
-all others together. This is known in a general way, but exact figures
-cannot be given, because statistics of the cut of different species of
-ash are not kept separate.
-
-The range of this tree covers at least a million square miles, and all
-or part of every state east of the Mississippi river and west of it from
-Nebraska to Texas. It is reported cut for lumber in thirty states. The
-various ashes are lumbered in thirty-nine states. Ash does not occur in
-pure stands but is scattered in forests of other species, sometimes
-growing in small clumps. It is difficult to name an average size for the
-tree, because climate and soil control the growth over a large area
-where conditions vary. Trees 120 feet high and six feet in diameter are
-said to have stood in the primeval forests in the lower Ohio valley; but
-logs four feet through are seldom seen now. Trees seventy or eighty feet
-high and three in diameter are above the average in any region where
-this tree is now lumbered. Some of the old planted trees of New England
-are five or six feet through, and are finely proportioned, but growing
-as they do in the open, they have larger crowns than are found in forest
-trees.
-
-All species of ash have compound leaves, and those of white ash are from
-eight to twelve inches long. The under sides of the leaflets are white,
-and some persons have this fact in mind when they call the species white
-ash, while others refer to the bark, and still others to the wood. It is
-a characteristic of the tree that most of the leaves grow near the ends
-of the limbs. For that reason the crown appears open when viewed from
-below, and the larger limbs and branches are naked. The leaves demand
-light, and they arrange themselves on the extremities of the limbs to
-get it. When the tree is crowded, it sheds its lower limbs and its crown
-rises rapidly until it reaches abundance of light. This produces long
-trunks in forests.
-
-The boles are often not quite straight, but have several slight crooks,
-yet keep close to a general perpendicular line. That form is due to a
-peculiarity of growth. The leading shoot of a growing ash has more than
-one terminal bud. If a side bud pushes ahead, the stem leans a little in
-that direction; next, a bud on the other side may gain the ascendancy,
-producing a slight lean for a few years in that direction; or two side
-buds may develop simultaneously, causing a forked trunk. Mature trees
-often carry the history of these peculiarities of growth.
-
-The seeds of white ash are equipped for moderate flight. The wing is
-large, but the seed attached to the end of it is heavy enough to give it
-a sharp tilt downward when it begins its flight through the air, and it
-generally shoots at a steep angle toward the ground. It is not apt to
-whirl through the air with a gliding motion like a maple seed.
-Consequently, ash seeds are not great travelers. They are dispersed with
-economy, however, for all do not come down at once, but many hang on the
-tree for months, and a few go with every strong wind, thus getting
-themselves scattered in every direction. Their power of germination is
-low, and only about forty per cent of seeds are fertile. This is due to
-the fact that pistillate and staminate flowers do not grow on the same
-tree, and fertilization is imperfect.
-
-The importance of ash in the industries of the country does not depend
-on the quantity but the quality of the wood. Although the various
-species are produced in thirty-nine states, as shown by mill statistics,
-the total yield is less than 250,000,000 feet a year. That is exceeded
-by several woods, among them hickory, elm, beech, basswood, chestnut,
-and even larch.
-
-The wood of ash which has grown rapidly is generally considered superior
-to that of slow growth. The reason is found in the fact that trees of
-slow growth do most of their growing early in the season, and the wood
-is porous; but trees of rapid growth lay summerwood on abundantly, and
-it is dense. Few species show a sharper line between spring and
-summerwood than ash, for which reason the annual rings are clear-cut and
-distinct. What figure ash has is produced by the growth rings, and not
-by medullary rays. Quarter-sawing brings out no additional beauty.
-Slight crooks in many logs produce a moderate cross grain in lumber,
-which gives to finished ash its characteristic figure or grain. When
-straight-grained wood is wanted, as when it is for tool handles and
-oars, logs without crooks are selected.
-
-The wood of white ash is heavy, hard, strong, elastic, but rather
-brittle. It lacks the toughness of hickory. The medullary rays are
-numerous, but small and obscure. The color is brown, the sapwood much
-lighter, often nearly white. It is not durable in contact with the soil.
-Notwithstanding its name, the wood rates low in ash, and its fuel value
-is under that of white oak. The states which produce the largest yearly
-cut of this species are, ranging downward in the order named: Arkansas,
-Ohio, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and Tennessee.
-
-The uses of white ash are so numerous that they can be presented only in
-classes. It goes into almost every wood-using industry, but in different
-sections of country certain uses lead. Thus in Illinois the makers of
-butter tubs take more of it than any other industry; in Michigan
-automobiles lead, and in Arkansas the handle factories are largest
-buyers; in Louisiana boat oars consume most; in Alabama and Missouri car
-construction is in the lead; in Texas boxes and crates; in North
-Carolina wagons; in Kentucky handles; in Maryland musical instruments;
-and in Massachusetts furniture. The utilization of ash in these states,
-scattered over the eastern half of the United States, indicates fairly
-well the wood's most important lines of usefulness. A considerable
-quantity is made into flooring and interior finish. It is classed among
-sanitary woods, that is, it does not stain or taint food products by
-contact.
-
-The total quantity of merchantable white ash in the country is not
-known, but there is still enough to meet demand, and the extent of the
-tree's range makes supplies convenient in nearly all manufacturing
-states. The species grows rather rapidly, and trees a hundred or a
-hundred and fifty years old yield logs of good size.
-
-TEXAS ASH (_Fraxinus texensis_) has been regarded by some as a variety
-of white ash, while others, including Sudworth and Sargent, consider it
-a distinct species. It is often called mountain ash where it occurs
-among the mountains of western Texas. Its range lies wholly in that
-state, and extends from the vicinity of Dallas to the valley of Devil's
-river. The compound leaves are smaller than those of white ash, and are
-usually composed of five leaflets. The winged seeds ripen in May, and
-are an inch or less in length. The largest trees are fifty feet high and
-two or three in diameter; but generally the trees are much smaller. The
-wood is strong, heavy, and hard. The annual rings are marked by one or
-more rows of open ducts, and the medullary rays are inconspicuous. The
-heartwood is light brown, the sapwood lighter. This ash is employed
-within its range for various purposes, but it is not of sufficient
-abundance to constitute an important commodity. In market it is not
-distinguished from white ash.
-
-GREGG ASH (_Fraxinus greggii_) has some peculiarities which make it
-worthy of mention as one of the minor species. Its range is in the dry
-mountains of western Texas where a number of ashes seem to have put in
-an appearance as members of the thinly-peopled vegetable kingdom of that
-region. The compound leaves of Gregg ash are seldom three inches long,
-and the leaflets are often half an inch long and less than a quarter of
-an inch wide. The petioles are winged like the twigs of wing elm. The
-undersides of the leaves have small black dots. The winged seeds are as
-proportionately small as the leaves. The flowers have not been described
-by botanists, for the species is not well known. The largest trees are
-scarcely twenty-five feet high and eight inches in diameter. More
-frequently they are shrubs from four to twelve feet tall. The wood is
-heavy, hard, brown in color and of slow growth.
-
-DWARF ASH (_Fraxinus anomala_) might be mistaken for some other species
-were its telltale winged seeds missing. It has lost the leaflets from
-its compound leaf, and a single one remains. Occasionally, however, a
-stem bearing three leaflets is found. The seeds are equipped with wide,
-oblong wings. It is a desert species, and the desolate surroundings of
-its habitat explain why nature has dispensed with as much foliage as
-possible. It is found in southwestern Colorado, in southern Utah, and on
-the western slopes of the Charleston mountains in southern Nevada. Trees
-are small and the wood is not of much use for other than fuel, but a few
-small ranch timbers are made of it where other kinds are scarce. Trunks
-are usually not more than six or seven inches in diameter. The wood is
-heavy, hard, and light brown in color.
-
-    FRINGE ASH (_Fraxinus cuspidata_) has some difficulty in proving
-    that it is entitled to be called a tree in the United States, though
-    southward in Mexico its right to that title is unquestioned. It is
-    very small where its range extends over the dry ridges and rocky
-    slopes of southwestern Texas and southern New Mexico and Arizona.
-    Its compound leaves are five or seven inches long, and the leaflets
-    which number from three to seven have long, slender tips. The
-    trowel-shaped fruit is about one inch long. The wood resembles white
-    ash, but trunks of considerable size are not found. The name refers
-    to the flowers, and they give this small tree its value for
-    ornamental purposes. The flowers appear in April and are extremely
-    fragrant.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK ASH
-
-[Illustration: BLACK ASH]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK ASH
-
-(_Fraxinus Nigra_)
-
-
-When George Washington was a surveyor locating land on the upper waters
-of the Potomac river, and westward on the Kanawha and Ohio rivers, he
-always spoke of this ash as "hoop tree" when he marked it with two or
-with three "hacks," depending upon whether it designated a "corner" or a
-"line," or a "pointer" in the system of surveying then in use. Trees
-were used then as landmarks, and were duly recorded in the surveyor's
-field notes, and were described in the deeds when the title to the land
-passed from one party to another. It was not unusual, if subsequent
-litigation came up, to cut blocks from marked trees to prove that such a
-corner was at such a place. The "hacks" or ax marks, were sometimes
-healed over and invisible at the bark, but were found deep in the wood.
-The rings of growth covering the ax marks afforded an admissible record
-of the years that had passed since the survey was made. The selection of
-the black ash as a landmark was one of the few instances in which
-Washington showed poor judgment; because it is a tree of short life, and
-might be expected to die before a great many years.
-
-The name hoop ash is applied to this tree yet. It has always been good
-material for barrel hoops, because it splits into thin pieces, and is
-sufficiently tough. It is known as basket ash for the same reason. The
-New England Indians were making fish baskets of it when the first white
-people landed on those shores, and settlers speedily learned the art
-from the children of the wilderness. Those untutored savages knew little
-of wood technology, but they were able to take advantage of a
-peculiarity in the structure of black ash wood, which the white man's
-microscope has revealed to him. The Indians doubtless discovered it
-accidentally. The springwood in the annual ring of black ash is made up
-of large pores, crowded so closely together that there is really very
-little actual wood substance there. In other words, the springwood is
-chiefly air spaces. The result is, that billets of black ash are easily
-separated into thin strips, the cleavage following the weak lines of
-springwood. A little beating and bending causes the annual rings to fall
-apart. In some way the Indians found that out, and utilized their
-knowledge in manufacturing baskets in which to carry fish, acorns,
-hickory nuts, and other forest and water commodities.
-
-The white people extended the scope of application to include chairs and
-other furniture in which splits are manipulated. It is worthy of note
-that Indians made a similar discovery with northern white cedar or
-arborvitae, which separates into thin pieces by beating and bending.
-Barrel makers took advantage of the splitting properties of black ash to
-make hoops of it, hence the name hoop ash, or hoop tree as Washington
-called it. The name basket ash has a similar origin.
-
-The names swamp ash and water ash refer to situations in which the tree
-grows best. It is one of the thirstiest inhabitants of the forest. Its
-aggressive roots ramify through the soil and drink up the moisture so
-voraciously that if water is not abundant, neighboring trees and plants
-may find their roots robbed, and the functions of healthy growth will be
-interfered with. This has led to a general belief that black ash poisons
-trees that it touches. It simply robs their roots. Carolina and Lombardy
-poplars will sometimes do the same thing.
-
-The name black ash by which this tree is now known in most regions where
-it grows refers to the color of the large, prominent, shiny, blue-black
-buds in late winter and early spring; to the very dark green leaves in
-summer--which at a distance resemble the foliage of post oak--and, to
-some extent, to the dark brown color of the heartwood, though the wood
-is not always a safe means of identification if judged from superficial
-appearance only. The form of the tree assists in identifying it; for it
-is the slimmest of the ashes, in proportion to its height. Trunks three
-feet through are heard of, but few persons have ever seen one much over
-twenty inches, and many are about done growing when they are one foot in
-diameter. Yet the trunks of such are very tall, perhaps seventy or
-eighty feet. Their appearance has been likened to tall, slender columns
-of dark gray granite. They often stand so straight that a plummet line
-will not reveal a deviation from the perpendicular.
-
-The tree has been called elder-leaved ash. The form of the foliage has
-something to do with that name, but the odor more. Crush the leaves, and
-they smell like elder. The compound leaves are from twelve to sixteen
-inches long; the leaflets range from seven to eleven in number, and the
-side leaflets have no stalks. The leaves appear late in spring, and they
-fall early in autumn. They drop with the butternut leaves, and like
-them, all at once. The seed is winged, and the wing forms a margin
-entirely round the seed.
-
-The wood of black ash is rather soft, moderately heavy, tough, but only
-moderately strong, not durable in contact with the soil, dark brown in
-color with sapwood whiter. The species ranges farther north than any
-other ash, and grows in cold swamps and on the low banks of streams and
-lakes from Newfoundland to Winnipeg, and southward to Virginia, southern
-Illinois, southern Missouri, and Arkansas.
-
-Black ash fills many important places in the country's wood-using
-industries, but the total quantity is not large. In 1910 Michigan
-manufacturers reported the annual quantity in that state at 9,110,432
-feet, and in Illinois the total was 9,936,000 feet. The uses for the
-wood in Michigan may be regarded as typical of the whole country. The
-reported uses were, auto seats, baskets, boat finish, butter tubs, candy
-pails, carriage seats, crating, church pews, fish nets, office fixtures,
-flooring, furniture, ice chests, interior finish, jelly buckets, kitchen
-cabinets, lard tubs, piano frames, putty kegs, racked hoops, spice kegs,
-tin plate boxes, veneer, washboards, and woven splint boxes.
-
-Black ash burls are characteristic excrescences on the trunk. They begin
-as small lumps or knobs under the bark, and never cease growing while
-the tree lives. They may reach the dimensions of wash tubs, but most do
-not exceed the size of a gallon measure. The grain of the wood is
-exceedingly distorted and involved. The burls are sliced or sawed in
-veneers which are much prized by cabinet makers. Early New Englanders
-made bowls of them, which seldom checked or split during generations of
-service. The burls are believed to be due to adventitious buds; that is,
-buds which originate deep in the wood, but are never able to force their
-way through the bark. The internal structure of the ash burl indicates
-that the buried bud grows, branches, and sends shoots in various
-directions, but all of them are hopelessly enmeshed in the wood
-substance, and never are able to free themselves and burst through the
-bark. A constantly enlarging excrescence is the result.
-
-BLUE ASH (_Fraxinus quadrangulata_) is named from a blue dye procured
-from the inner bark. The botanical name relates to the square shape of
-the young twigs, particularly the twigs of young trees, and was given by
-A. F. Michaux who found the species growing in the South. It reaches its
-best development on the lower Wabash river in Indiana and Illinois and
-on the Big Smoky mountains in Tennessee. Its northern limit reaches
-southern Michigan, its western is in Missouri. It is not abundant, if
-found at all, east of the Appalachian mountains. Trees may reach a
-height of 100 feet and a diameter of three, but about seventy is the
-average height, with a diameter of two feet or less. The leaves resemble
-those of black ash in form, but the foliage when seen in mass is
-yellow-green instead of dark green like that of black ash. The seeds
-look like those of black ash. The tree bears perfect flowers, and in
-that respect differs from most other species of ash.
-
-The wood is heavier than that of any other member of the ash group,
-except Texas ash. It weighs about the same as white oak, which is six
-pounds per cubic foot more than white ash weighs. In general appearance
-the wood resembles white ash, but it is usually considered stronger and
-more springy. The trunks of young trees are largely or entirely sapwood.
-Sometimes no heartwood is formed until an age of seventy or eighty
-years is reached. Many manufacturers of ash tool handles prefer this
-species to any other ash, because of its thick, white sapwood. It is
-often made into handles for hoes, rakes, shovels, pitchforks, spades,
-and snaths for scythes. Makers of vehicles draw liberally upon this wood
-within its range, as do furniture makers and the manufacturers of
-flooring. It is regarded as harder than white ash, and consequently
-better flooring material.
-
-    LEATHERLEAF ASH (_Fraxinus velutina_) changes its velvety leaves to
-    a leathery condition, hence the conflict in the meanings of its two
-    names. _Velutina_ means velvet-like. The compound leaves are seldom
-    six inches long, often not three, and they are made up of from three
-    to nine leaflets. The small seeds are equipped with wings. The tree
-    is small and would be without any commercial importance except that
-    it grows in an arid region where any wood is welcome. It is made
-    into ax, hammer, and pick handles, and wagon makers are often glad
-    to get it. It is found among the mountains and canyons of western
-    Texas, in New Mexico, Arizona, southern Nevada, and southeastern
-    California, near the shores of Owen's lake. The largest trees are
-    scarcely forty feet high and eight inches in diameter. The wood is
-    not hard or strong, and is of slow growth. The largest trunks are
-    apt to be hollow. Sapwood is comparatively thick.
-
-    BERLANDIER ASH (_Fraxinus berlandieriana_) may not be entitled to a
-    place among native species, of the United States. Some suppose it
-    was introduced from Mexico by early Spanish settlers in western
-    Texas. It now grows wild there along Nueces and Blanco rivers where
-    specimens thirty feet high and a foot in diameter are found.
-    Southward in Mexico it is a popular street tree, and trunks reach
-    six or eight feet in diameter. The wood is soft and is used only
-    locally and in very small quantities.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-OREGON ASH
-
-[Illustration: OREGON ASH]
-
-
-
-
-OREGON ASH
-
-(_Fraxinus Oregona_)
-
-
-This tree is unusual in that it has only one common name, and that is a
-translation of its botanical name which was given it by Nuttall who
-visited the Pacific coast several years before the discovery of gold.
-
-The moist bottom lands of southwestern Oregon are best suited to its
-growth, and here the best individuals and most abundant stands are
-found. Moist soil and climate are essential to proper development of
-this tree, and in such environment it is found from Puget Sound
-southward along the coast to San Francisco. A little further from the
-coast it grows along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, to
-the low mountains in San Diego and San Bernardino counties, California,
-in the southern extension of its range occupying a rather dry region.
-
-The trunk grows to a height of eighty or 100 feet, and is often three
-feet in diameter. It is covered with a gray-brown bark, exfoliating in
-flaky scales. The leaves are from five to fourteen inches long, and have
-five or seven firm, light-green leaflets, finely toothed and bluntly
-pointed. The flowers appear in April and May and are in compact
-panicles; the fruit in clusters, broadly winged and round pointed, and
-from one to two inches long.
-
-The scarcity of good hardwoods on the Pacific coast gives this ash more
-importance than it otherwise would have, and the importance which it
-possesses has been frequently overstated. It is not abundant of form and
-size fitting it for lumber. It has long been cut in small quantities,
-but never in large. The census returns for 1910 show that less than
-400,000 feet per year are reported in its entire range. Three-fourths of
-this is sawed in Oregon, the remainder in Washington. Though the species
-has a range of 800 miles north and south through California, no sawmill
-reported a foot of it. However, it is probable that census returns fail
-to do this wood full justice; for it is well known that considerable
-quantities are manufactured into articles without passing through
-sawmills. Chief among such commodities is slack cooperage. Butter tubs
-of Oregon ash are common. Much goes to wagon shops, and some of it
-without aid of sawmills.
-
-Little or none of this wood is shipped outside its range, and its use is
-local. Boat builders work it into finish for cabins and upper parts, and
-some serves as ribs. It is often seen as handles for picks, shovels,
-spades, pitchforks, and rakes. A little finds place, combined with other
-woods, in office and store fixtures. Its grain resembles that of white
-ash. It is not as heavy, and it is not believed to be as strong. It is
-hard, brittle, brown in color, with thick, lighter-colored sapwood.
-Furniture makers list it as shop material, and such is its largest
-reported use in Washington. A moderate amount is made into saddletrees
-and stirrups, and much is used as fuel.
-
-Oregon ash has been planted for shade and ornament in both this country
-and Europe. It grows rapidly and develops a symmetrical crown. The habit
-it has of coming into leaf late in the spring and throwing its foliage
-down early in autumn is held by some as a serious objection to it as an
-ornamental tree; but it has compensating habits. It is remarkably free
-from disease, and, though leaves come late and go early, while its
-foliage is on, it is healthy and vigorous. Reproduction is satisfactory
-in the tree's wild state, and there is no danger that the species will
-disappear. No movement has yet been made to plant this ash for
-commercial timber growing.
-
-GREEN ASH (_Fraxinus lanceolata_) has been given that name on account of
-the bright color of its foliage. It has other names, however, which
-indicate that its greenness is not always preeminently prominent. In
-Iowa and Arkansas they call it blue ash; in Kansas and Nebraska white
-ash; in some regions it is known as water ash, and elsewhere swamp ash.
-Some botanists do not regard it as a separate species but call it a
-variety of red ash, but the consensus of opinion is that it is a
-distinct species, though there appear to be connecting forms grading
-from red ash into green ash. Certain it is that the two are distinct
-enough in certain parts of the country. The range of green ash is more
-extensive than that of any other ash in this country. Beginning in
-Vermont it passes southward to Florida; northwestward to the
-Saskatchewan river several hundred miles north of the international
-boundary line; along the base of the Rocky Mountains and over the ranges
-to Arizona, and through Texas. This includes more than half of the area
-of the United States. Notwithstanding a range so extensive, the total
-quantity of green ash timber in the country is not large. No pure
-forests or extensive stands exist. Trees are widely dispersed, and when
-lumbermen cut them, the wood is sold as some other, usually as white
-ash. The wood has the general characters of red ash. It weighs about
-forty-four pounds per cubic foot of dry wood; is moderately strong,
-fairly stiff and elastic, and, like other species of ash, it is not
-durable in contact with the soil.
-
-Green ash is more planted than any other in the cold and dry regions of
-the West and Northwest. It is a prairie tree and is found along highways
-and in door yards from Kansas northward into British America. It stands
-drought better than any other ash, and resists cold fully as well, and
-yet it endures the warm weather and the rains of the South and
-flourishes there. It is not a large tree, but of sufficient size for use
-as furniture, finish, and vehicle making. It is seldom listed in
-statistics of woods which go to sawmills, yet it is known that a good
-many logs find their way to mills, while wagon makers and slack coopers
-employ it in producing their commodities. The tree is an abundant
-seeder, and the seeds continue to fall during most of the winter.
-
-    RED ASH (_Fraxinus pennsylvanica_) is neither a large tree nor very
-    abundant, yet it has a wide range and is put to use wherever
-    lumbermen find it convenient. The lumber generally passes in the
-    market as white ash, and for most purposes it is as good, but is
-    rated lower than that wood in elasticity. It is called brown ash in
-    Maine, black ash in New Jersey, river ash in Rhode Island. The last
-    name is bestowed because the tree prefers moist land near rivers and
-    ponds, and largest specimens are found in such situations, where it
-    is often an associate of black ash and is frequently mistaken for
-    it, though it should not be difficult to tell the species apart. A
-    slight reddish tinge sometimes shows on the outer bark; the inner
-    layer of bark is reddish; the small twigs and the under sides of
-    leaves are clothed with hairs which sometimes suggest redness; and
-    the heartwood is reddish-brown. Persons who speak of the tree as red
-    ash probably have one or more of those characteristics in mind. As a
-    tree it has no striking peculiarities. Its usual height is forty or
-    sixty feet; its diameter from fifteen to twenty inches; its compound
-    leaves ten or twelve inches long, with seven or nine leaflets; its
-    seeds one or two inches in length, narrow, and sharply pointed, with
-    slender, graceful wing.
-
-    The range of red ash is from New Brunswick to Dakota, and from
-    Florida to Alabama, with all of the included region of a million
-    square miles. It attains its best development in the north Atlantic
-    states, while it is usually inferior west of the Alleghany
-    mountains. It develops a broad crown in open ground, but even there
-    its lower limbs die and drop, while in forests the trunk grows tall
-    and the crown is reduced. It is planted for shade and ornament, but
-    it seems to have no superiority over white ash for that purpose.
-    Some of the Michigan manufacturers list red ash separately in their
-    factories, and apparently this is not done elsewhere in the country.
-    About three-quarters of a million feet a year are used in that
-    state, and since uses there are doubtless typical of uses in the
-    country generally, the list possesses importance: Automobile frames,
-    boxes, butter tubs, crates, eveners, flooring, furniture, interior
-    finish, neck yokes, singletrees, wagon poles. Farther east in early
-    times red ash was occasionally split for fence rails, but that use
-    is important now only as history.
-
-    PUMPKIN ASH (_Fraxinus profunda_) is a tree of peculiar interest. It
-    was unknown before 1893, though the region had been settled over a
-    hundred years. It has the largest leaves, largest fruit, and largest
-    swelled base of all American ashes. Notwithstanding that, it
-    remained so deeply hidden in swamps that it escaped discovery. The
-    botanical name refers to the deep swamps in which the tree chooses
-    its habitation. Its great, swelled base enables it to stand on the
-    soft mud of lagoon bottoms, and the abnormal swelling is ribbed like
-    a pumpkin, hence the only English name the tree has ever had. These
-    are not the only remarkable things connected with this ash. Its
-    range includes three or four deep swamps, far apart. One is in
-    southern Missouri, New Madrid country, another near Varney,
-    Arkansas, and a third, in a vast morass on the Apalachicola river,
-    Florida. It is believed to have been originally a Florida species,
-    and by some freak of nature it reached the Missouri and Arkansas
-    swamps. Certain other Florida plants accompanied it, one of which
-    was corkwood (_Leitneria floridana_). It is expected that pumpkin
-    ash will be found elsewhere in deep swamps intermediate between the
-    extremes of its range. The uses of this wood are few, because it is
-    scarce, and the trees are difficult of access on account of being
-    nearly always surrounded by water. Lumbermen who operate in swamps
-    occasionally bring out a few ash logs with cypress and tupelo. No
-    tests seem to have been made of the wood. Trees are sometimes 120
-    feet high and three in diameter above the swelled bases.
-
-    WATER ASH (_Fraxinus caroliniana_) is much lighter in weight than
-    any other American ash, and the wood is also lighter in color. It is
-    weaker and less elastic than any other, and is lower in fuel value.
-    It weighs less than white pine. It grows in deep swamps from
-    southern Virginia to Florida and westward in swamps to Texas. Some
-    have confused it with pumpkin ash, but the two are quite distinct.
-    This tree is also called poppy ash. The leaves are from seven to
-    twelve inches long, with five or seven leaflets which are much
-    blunter than most other ash leaves. The seeds are nearly in the
-    center of the broad, long wing, and are better flyers than most ash
-    seeds. The tree seldom exceeds forty feet in height, or twelve
-    inches in diameter. It is not known that the wood is ever used. Its
-    scarcity will keep it from becoming important, though its uncommon
-    lightness may lead to its employment for certain purposes.
-
-    BILTMORE ASH (_Fraxinus biltmoreana_) is named from Biltmore, N. C.,
-    where the tree attains its best development, a height of forty or
-    fifty feet and a foot or less in diameter. Its range extends from
-    northern West Virginia southward along the foothills of the
-    Appalachian mountains to Georgia, Alabama, and middle Tennessee. The
-    seed wings are slender, and only slightly narrowed at the end. The
-    leaf is ten or twelve inches long, with seven or nine leaflets. The
-    twigs of young trees are hairy. An occasional log doubtless goes to
-    sawmills, but no report has been made of uses of the wood.
-
-    FLORIDA ASH (_Fraxinus floridana_) is a deep swamp tree, thirty or
-    forty feet high, and a few inches in diameter. It is found in the
-    valley of St. Mary's river, southern Georgia, and along the lower
-    Apalachicola river, Florida. The compound leaves are five or more
-    inches long with three or five leaflets. The seeds are small but
-    their wings are wide and long. No report has been made concerning
-    the quality of the wood, nor has it been used, as far as known. The
-    supply is very small.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SUGAR MAPLE
-
-[Illustration: SUGAR MAPLE]
-
-
-
-
-SUGAR MAPLE
-
-(_Acer Saccharum_)
-
-
-The makers of sugar in the North call this tree sugar maple, but
-lumbermen and users of wood nearly always speak of it as hard maple. All
-maples--and there are nearly a dozen--are tolerably hard, and sugar may
-be obtained from most of them; but this species is hardest of all, and
-the most prolific sugar maker, hence the two names are appropriate. It
-is often called rock maple, which name refers to its hard wood. In some
-regions the name most heard is sugar tree.
-
-Its range extends from Newfoundland through Canada to Lake of the Woods,
-southward through Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Arkansas to Texas. It is
-found in every state east of the Mississippi, but it is not abundant in
-the South. Its best development is found from New England across the
-northern states to Michigan. Some very fine sugar maple is found in
-fertile valleys and on slopes among the Appalachian ranges from
-Pennsylvania southward. The largest lumber cut of maple is in the
-following states, ranging in the order given: Michigan, Wisconsin,
-Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Vermont. Since
-the different species of maple are not reported separately in
-statistics, there is no way of determining how much each of the maples
-supplies. It is well known that sugar maple greatly exceeds all others.
-
-At its best this tree may exceed a height of 100 feet and a diameter of
-three; but the average for mature timber in the best part of its range
-is sixty or eighty feet in height, and two in diameter. The flowers
-appear with the leaves in early spring, but the seeds do not ripen until
-autumn, when they are bright red. They are winged, and usually two grow
-together, but they sometimes become detached, in which case each is
-capable of flight with its single wing. It is characteristic of maple
-seeds to whirl rapidly while falling, and if a moderate wind is blowing,
-they glide considerable distances. They usually fly farther than the
-seeds of ash although their wings are no larger. The immense numbers of
-seeds borne by the sugar maple insure abundant reproduction in the
-vicinity of parent trees. The seeds sprout readily, but often so closely
-crowded together that most of them die the first few weeks. Not one in
-ten thousand can even become a large tree, and yet large trees are
-exceedingly abundant in extensive regions. They often form nearly pure
-stands, crowding to death all rivals that try to obtain a foothold. On
-the other hand, this maple often contents itself with a place among
-other forest trees.
-
-It is one of the most vigorous and dependable of trees. It does not grow
-fast, but it keeps steadily at it a long time, and enjoys unusually good
-health. Its worst enemy is coal smoke, but fortunately, most sugar maple
-forests are out of reach of that disturber, though shade trees near
-factory towns and in the vicinity of coke ovens often suffer. Woodlots
-of sugar maple, occupying corners of farms in the northern states from
-Minnesota to Maine, present pictures of health, vigor, cleanliness, and
-beauty which no forest tree surpasses. The intense green and the density
-of the crowns in summer make the trees conspicuous in any landscape
-where they occur, while their brilliant colors in autumn are the chief
-glory of the forest where they abound.
-
-The wood of this tree is hard, strong, and dense. It is three pounds
-lighter per cubic foot than white oak, and theoretically it rates a
-little lower in fuel value, but those who use both woods as fuel
-consider maple worth more. It is thirty per cent stronger than white
-oak, and fifty-three per cent stiffer. The wood is diffuse-porous, that
-is, the pores are not arranged in bands or rows, as they usually are in
-oaks, but are scattered in all parts. They are too small to be seen with
-the naked eye, but under a magnifying glass they are visible in large
-numbers. The yearly ring is not very distinct, because of the slight
-contrast between spring and summerwood. The medullary rays are numerous
-but small. In wood sawed along radial lines, from heart to sap, small
-silvery flecks are numerous. These are the medullary rays. They add
-something to the appearance of quarter-sawed maple, but not enough to
-induce mills to turn out much of it.
-
-Such figures as maple has are brought out best in tangential
-sawing--that is, cut like a slab off the side of the log. Three distinct
-figures are recognized in sugar maple, and to some extent they belong to
-other maples. These forms of wood are known as birdseye, curly, and
-blister maple. They are accidental forms and exist in certain trees
-only. Students of wood structure are not wholly agreed as to the cause
-of these forms, but one of them, the birdseye effect, is believed to be
-due to adventitious buds which distort the wood in their vicinity. These
-buds start near the center of the tree when it is small, but never
-succeed in forcing their way out. They remain just beneath the bark
-during most or the whole of the tree's life. A pin-like core, resembling
-a fine thread, connects the birdseye with the tree's pith. This thread
-is the pith of the embryonic branch formed by the bud which never breaks
-through the bark. When the wood is sawed tangentially, small, dark-brown
-points or dots show the center of the buds, or the pith line connecting
-it with the tree's center. Curly maple and blister maple are not
-believed to be formed in the same way as birdseye.
-
-The uses of sugar maple are nearly universal, where a hard, white wood
-is wanted. Many large trees contain little colored heart, and trees are
-generally fifty years old before they have any. More maple is worked
-into flooring than into any other one commodity. Mills in Michigan
-alone, in 1910, made 185,611,662 feet of maple flooring. It was shipped
-to practically every civilized country in the world. Many builders
-consider it the best wooden floor that can be laid. In a test made in a
-large store in Philadelphia some years ago, a marble floor wore through
-sooner than maple, when the same wear was on both.
-
-Nearly all kinds and classes of furniture have places for maple, either
-as outside material or inside frames, drawer bottoms, or partitions.
-Vehicle manufacturers employ it for heavy axles, running gear, parts of
-automobiles, sleigh runners and frames, and hand sleds. It is made into
-handles from gimlet sizes to cant hooks. Gymnasium apparatus owes much
-to the whiteness, smoothness, and strength of maple. Woodenware from
-toothpicks to ironing boards; from butcher blocks to butter molds; from
-door knobs to die blocks, is dependent on maple for some of its best
-material. It is largely used for boxes, in both solid and veneer form.
-Only two woods are now employed in larger amounts for veneers in the
-United States than maple. They are red gum and yellow pine.
-
-Maple is one of the three woods most largely employed in hardwood
-distillation in this country; beech and birch are the others. Maple
-sugar is a product of this tree almost exclusively, and the business is
-large. In some parts of New England it is claimed that a grove is worth
-more for sugar than the land is worth for agriculture.
-
-    SILVER MAPLE (_Acer saccharinum_) is generally called soft maple by
-    lumbermen. It is known also as white maple, river maple,
-    silver-leaved maple, swamp maple, and water maple. The sinuses of
-    the leaves are very deep. The lighter color of its bark and the pale
-    green of the leaves distinguish soft maple at a glance from sugar
-    maple when both are in full leaf. The greenish-yellow flowers open
-    in early spring, and the seeds are ripe in April or May, depending
-    on the season and region. The seeds have large wings and fly well.
-    They germinate in a few days after they find suitable soil, and
-    before the end of the summer the seedlings have grown several
-    leaves. The vigor thus displayed continues until the tree is large.
-    It is a fast grower, and for that reason has been extensively
-    planted as a street and park tree. The wisdom of doing so is
-    doubtful, for this maple throws out long limbs which are often
-    broken by wind. The trunk is subject to disease, and a row of old
-    soft maples nearly always presents a ragged, unkempt, neglected
-    appearance. As to beauty of form and crown, there is little
-    comparison between it and the planted sugar maple. Soft maples in
-    forests range from seventy-five to 120 feet in height, and two to
-    four in diameter; that is, they attain about the same size as sugar
-    maples. The species covers a million square miles, practically the
-    whole country east of the Mississippi, some west of that river, and
-    most of eastern Canada.
-
-    It is a useful wood for many purposes. The custom of mixing this
-    with sugar maple makes it impossible to clearly separate the two
-    woods afterwards. It is the opinion of some well-informed
-    manufacturers that about five per cent of the total maple cut in the
-    United States is soft maple. The ratio is less in the North and more
-    in the South. The wood is hard, strong, rather brittle, easily
-    worked, pale brown with thick, white sapwood. Some rather large
-    trunks have no sapwood. It is in general use, but not for as many
-    purposes as sugar maple. The largest places found for it are as
-    flooring and woodenware, though furniture and boxes, particularly
-    veneer boxes, consume much. Its weight is three-fourths that of
-    sugar maple. The largest trees and the best wood grow in the lower
-    Ohio valley.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED MAPLE
-
-[Illustration: RED MAPLE]
-
-
-
-
-RED MAPLE
-
-(_Acer Rubrum_)
-
-
-This tree's names describe it. Some refer to color of leaves, flowers,
-and fruit, others to situation where it grows best. It is known as red
-maple and swamp maple; also as water maple, white maple, scarlet maple,
-and shoepeg maple. New York Indians called it ah-we-hot-kwah, which
-meant red flower. Most trees looked alike to Indians, and when they gave
-a name, it was descriptive.
-
-The redness of this maple is so marked that it cannot escape notice. The
-flowers, fruit, twigs, and leaves all possess the property at one time
-or another during the season. The flower comes before the leaf, during
-the first warm days of spring. That is pretty early in the South, and
-later in the North. The flowers are bright scarlet, and very
-conspicuous, growing in umbel-like, drooping clusters. The staminate and
-pistillate ones frequently grow on different trees, and always in
-separate clusters.
-
-The fruit ripens quickly, and is sometimes almost mature before the
-leaves appear. The date of ripening depends upon latitude. The tree's
-range north and south exceeds a thousand miles and that makes much
-difference in climate. In the South the fruit outstrips the leaves and
-has about reached maturity before the unfolding leaves are large enough
-to hide it; but in New England and New York the leaves are large before
-the fruit is mature. The seed is the characteristic maple key, with a
-wing to carry it. The fruit--and by that term the seed with its attached
-wing is meant--is bright red, and a tree loaded with the vivid clusters
-is a beautiful spectacle. Two seeds are generally fast together, and
-they make surprising flights in that condition, passing with whirling
-motion through the air. Gravity spins them, but wind carries them
-forward, and the random of their flight depends on the strength of the
-wind, which happens to be blowing when they sever their connection with
-the tree.
-
-The seeds germinate quickly when they light on damp soil. If they do not
-find such situations, they soon perish; because they do not retain their
-vitality long. By the middle of summer the young trees have several
-leaves, and from that time on the struggle is mainly among themselves
-for space and moisture, because they stand so thick that it is a
-survival of the fittest.
-
-The young twigs are generally red in spring, but they do not present as
-conspicuous a mass as the flowers and fruit do. The leaves are simple,
-with long reddish petioles. They have three or five lobes, the lower
-pair often entirely missing, and small if present. Each lobe has a
-pointed apex, and is irregularly serrate. The base of the leaf is
-rounded; also the sinuses, which extend far into the body of the leaf.
-The upper surface of the leaf is bright green, the lower a
-silvery-white. In the fall this tree is entitled to the name scarlet;
-for then the brilliant hues of the leaves are remarkably fine.
-
-The range of red maple covers more than a million square miles, and
-touches every state east of the Mississippi river, and west of that
-stream it extends from South Dakota to Texas. It prefers rather swampy
-ground, but wants fertile soil. It is frequently found on the banks of
-creeks and rivers, and rarely on hillsides. It is most abundant in the
-South, particularly in the lower Mississippi valley, while trees of
-larger size are found in the valley of the lower Ohio. In the North it
-takes more to low wet swamps where it sometimes grows in such thickets
-as almost to exclude other species.
-
-The best red maple trees attain a height of 100 feet or more, and a
-diameter of four feet or less. The average size is seventy feet high and
-two in diameter. The form of the tree, like that of all other maples,
-depends much upon the situation in which it grows. Good saw timber is
-not often cut from this species near the outer borders of its range.
-
-The wood is about three-fourths as strong as hard maple, and is five
-pounds lighter per cubic foot, but is about six pounds heavier than soft
-or silver maple. It may, therefore, be considered that in some important
-points red maple is midway between hard and soft maple. In color it is
-light brown, slightly tinged with red. The sapwood is thick and lighter
-in color than the heart. The tree is usually not of rapid growth. The
-contrast between the springwood and summerwood is not strong. The wood
-is very porous, but the pores are so small that the unaided eye cannot
-discern them. The medullary rays are numerous, but thin, and are seldom
-considered in working the lumber.
-
-Mills which saw this maple do not separate the lumber from other maples.
-The woodsman knows the difference, but the lumberman does not consider
-it worth while to pile the sawed stock separately. It sometimes goes to
-market as hard maple, sometimes as soft, but never under its own name.
-Consequently, it has no uses which are not also common to other maples.
-Lumbermen cut it when they find it mixed with other hardwoods where they
-are carrying on logging operations.
-
-Red maple is made into flooring, interior finish, and veneer box
-material. Veneers are also made for furniture. These are the most
-important uses for the wood, but the manufacturers of woodenware employ
-it for numerous commodities, such as trays, bowls, ironing boards, grain
-scoops, snow shovels, clothes racks, garment hangers, and clothes pins.
-This species shows birdseye effect similar to that of sugar maple, but
-less of the stock goes to market. Logs with birdseye wood are generally
-reduced to veneer by the rotary process. Curly and wavy grains also
-occur in this maple. The wavy grain was much sought after by the early
-hunters who equipped their long rifles with stocks. Having found a piece
-of timber with the desired wavy grain, the hunter proceeded to shave and
-whittle until the stock was fitted to the barrel, and the gun was
-complete. Some of the stocks made with no tools but an ax, drawing
-knife, and a pocket knife, were works of art which are worthy of
-preservation in museums.
-
-Occasionally some unknown rural Stradivari made a violin and selected
-the curly wood of red maple for the neck and sides. A few of these
-instruments are floating about the country, but an age of fifty or a
-hundred years has not yet imparted classic value to them, but the wood
-is unsurpassed in delicacy of grain and figure.
-
-Sugar may be manufactured from red maple, but in smaller quantity than
-from sugar maple. In the days when every frontier settlement did its own
-manufacturing, inks and dyes were made from the bark of this tree. The
-tannin boiled from the bark was treated with sulphate of iron, and it
-became ink; when alum was added it became black dye; when the sulphate
-of iron was omitted, and alum alone was put in, a cinnamon-colored dye
-resulted.
-
-Red maple is one of the most desirable trees for planting in parks and
-by roadsides. Nurserymen complain that seedlings are more difficult to
-manage than silver maples; nor do they grow as rapidly, but the trees
-are worth much more when once established. They have shorter and
-stronger branches than silver maple; are less liable to be attacked by
-disease; are more handsome in every way; but they demand damper soil,
-and succeed poorly in any other. That drawback tends to restrict the
-artificial planting of this tree.
-
-    MOUNTAIN MAPLE (_Acer spicatum_) is known also as moose maple, low
-    maple, and water maple. It is a small tree at its best, seldom more
-    than twenty-five feet high and eight inches in diameter, while in
-    most parts of its range it is only a shrub. Its best growth is on
-    mountain slopes of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. It
-    likes moist, rich hillsides, and does not object to shade. The
-    flowers come late, but within a month or six weeks after the bloom
-    appears, the fruit is full grown, but it remains on the tree till
-    autumn. The tree's bark is smooth and very thin. The absence of
-    stripes distinguishes this tree from striped maple, which has nearly
-    the same range. Mountain maple grows from Maine to Minnesota,
-    southward to Michigan, and along the mountains to Georgia. The wood
-    is light, soft, brown tinged with red. The small size of the trunk
-    forbids its conversion into ordinary lumber. The only commercial use
-    reported for it is in Pennsylvania where it is cut along with other
-    hardwoods for destructive distillation.
-
-    FLORIDA MAPLE (_Acer floridanum_) is a species according to some,
-    and according to others is a variety of the hard maple. Its range is
-    limited, and the available quantity of the wood is small. It is
-    found in the swamps of southern Georgia and western Florida, and
-    westward to Texas, Louisiana, and southern Arkansas. Near the
-    southwestern limits of its range in Texas and Mexico, it is often a
-    shrub; but in the best part of its range it becomes a tree fifty or
-    sixty feet high and two or three in diameter. The wood passes for
-    hard maple when sawed into lumber, but it is not often sent to
-    sawmills. The makers of bent wood rustic furniture in some of the
-    southern towns, particularly in Louisiana, have found the slender
-    branches of Florida maple well suited to that purpose.
-
-    DRUMMOND MAPLE (_Acer rubrum drummondii_) is a variety of red maple,
-    not a separate species. Its range lies in the coastal plain of
-    Alabama and Georgia, western Louisiana, eastern Texas, southwestern
-    Tennessee, and southern Arkansas. It grows in deep swamps, and has
-    three-lobed leaves, and large-winged fruit, ripening in April and
-    May. The wood is too scarce to be important in the lumber trade, but
-    where it can be had it is used. Violin makers have procured some
-    finely curled wood of this maple in Union Parish, Louisiana. Some of
-    the wood from that district has been made into gunstocks also.
-
-    WHITEBARK MAPLE (_Acer leucoderme_) has been classed as a variety of
-    sugar maple, and also as a separate species. It is named from the
-    light gray color of the bark of young stems; but the color turns
-    dark with age. The tree is usually twenty or thirty feet high with a
-    diameter of a foot or more. The wood is of good quality, but no
-    uses, except fuel, have been reported. Trees are not abundant, but
-    the range covers parts of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia,
-    Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas. It is occasionally planted as a
-    shade tree along the streets of towns of Georgia and Alabama.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-OREGON MAPLE
-
-[Illustration: OREGON MAPLE]
-
-
-
-
-OREGON MAPLE
-
-(_Acer Macrophyllum_)
-
-
-Botanists prefer to call this tree broadleaf maple. The name is not
-inappropriate, as its extraordinarily broad leaves constitute the most
-striking feature of the tree where it stands in the woods. The leaf is
-usually wider than it is long. Some exceed a foot in both measurements.
-Bigleaf maple is not an uncommon name for the tree in Oregon, where it
-attains its highest development in damp valleys where the soil is good.
-The name white maple is not particularly descriptive of any feature of
-the tree, though the name is applied in both Oregon and Washington. In
-California it is known simply as maple. There is small likelihood in
-that region that it will be confused with any other member of the maple
-household; nor is there much danger of such a thing in any part of the
-Pacific coast, for, though four species of maple occur there, no one of
-them bears close enough resemblance to this one to be mistaken for it.
-
-The Oregon maple's range north and south covers twenty degrees of
-latitude. In that particular it is not much surpassed, if surpassed at
-all, by any maple of this country. Its northern limit lies in Alaska,
-its southern close to the Mexican boundary, in San Diego county,
-California. Its range east and west is restricted. It has a width of
-about one hundred and fifty miles in California, where it grows from the
-coast to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. An altitude of
-5,600 feet appears to be the limit of its range upward. It attains
-altitudes above 5,000 feet at several points in the Sierra Nevada range.
-It descends nearly to sea level. Its geographical range is similar to
-the ranges of several other Pacific coast species which occupy long
-ribbons of territory stretching north and south parallel with the coast
-of the Pacific ocean.
-
-This maple's leaves change to a clear reddish-yellow before falling.
-Flowers appear after the leaves are grown, and the seeds ripen late in
-autumn. Some of them hang until late in winter, but the habit varies in
-different parts of the range, as is natural in view of its great
-extension north and south. The trees which stand in open ground are very
-abundant seeders, but those in dense stands produce sparingly, in that
-particular following the habit of most trees. This maple often grows in
-dense, nearly pure stands in Oregon and Washington where soil and other
-conditions are favorable.
-
-The sizes and forms of Oregon maple vary greatly. John Muir spoke of
-forests whose trees were eighty or one hundred feet high, so dense with
-leaves and so abundantly supplied with branches that moss and ferns
-formed a canopy with foliage and limbs high over head, like an aerial
-garden; while George B. Sudworth described it in certain situations as a
-short-stemmed, crooked tree from twenty-five to thirty feet high and
-under a foot in diameter.
-
-This maple has been called the most valuable hardwood of the Pacific
-coast, but that claim is made also for other trees. Some persons rate it
-with the hard maple of the East, in properties which commend it for use.
-It is doubtful if the claim can be substantiated. According to Sargent's
-figures for strength, stiffness, weight, and fuel value, it lacks much
-of equalling the eastern tree. It is twelve pounds per cubic foot
-lighter; has not three-fourths the fuel value; and is little more than
-half as strong or as stiff. The comparison is more in favor of the
-western tree when color of wood and appearance of grain are considered.
-The wood is light brown with pale tint of red. The rings of annual
-growth are tolerably distinct, with a thin, dark line separating the
-summerwood of one year from the springwood of the next. The pores are
-scattered with fair evenness in all parts of the ring. They are small
-and numerous. The medullary rays are thin and abundant. In quarter-sawed
-wood they show much the same as in hard maple, but are rather darker in
-color. The mirrors are decidedly tinged with brown. The wood is reported
-poor in resisting decay when in contact with the soil.
-
-The largest use of Oregon maple appears to be for furniture, second, for
-interior finish, and following these are numerous miscellaneous uses.
-Statistics of the cut of this wood, as shown by sawmill reports, are
-unsatisfactory. Census returns include it with all other maples of the
-country, without figures for species. The cut of maple for all the
-western states seems too small to give this wood justice. The amount
-reported used in Washington, Oregon, and California exceeds the total
-reported sawmill cut in the West.
-
-Oregon maple is an important handlewood. The smooth grain appeals to
-broom makers. The wood is made into ax handles, but for that use it is
-much below hickory, or even hard maple or white oak. It is converted
-into pulleys in Washington, also into saddle trees, and tent toggles.
-Boat makers employ it for finish material, in which capacity it fills
-the same place, and must meet the same requirements as in interior
-finish for houses. Curly or wavy wood is occasionally found and this is
-worked into finish and also into furniture. The figure is as handsome as
-in eastern maple, but birdseye is less frequent. Counter tops for stores
-and bar tops for saloons are sometimes made of figured maple. It is seen
-also in grill work and show cases, but in order to show the figured wood
-to the best advantage it should be worked in flat surfaces.
-
-Oregon maple is converted into flooring of the ordinary tongued and
-grooved kind, and also into parquet flooring. Rotary veneers are made
-into boxes and baskets. Solid logs are turned for rollers of various
-sizes and kinds. Mill yards use them for offbearing lumber, and house
-movers find them about the best local material to be had. This maple has
-been successfully stained in imitation of mahogany, and is said to pass
-satisfactory tests where the color is the principal consideration.
-
-The amount of this species available in the Northwest is not definitely
-known, but it is a relatively scarce wood. No attention has ever been
-given to planting it as a commercial proposition. It is not of very
-rapid growth, and unless it is in dense stands, it develops a short
-trunk and large crown. It is better suited for shade and ornament, and
-is to be seen as a street tree in some western towns. It does not
-flourish in the eastern states, but has found the climate of western
-Europe more congenial and is occasionally found as an ornamental tree
-there.
-
-The relative importance of this maple in the state of Washington is
-indicated by the amount used annually compared with certain other
-hardwoods. In 1911 the consumption of willow was 2,000 feet, vine maple
-10,000, Oregon ash 58,000, Oregon oak 197,000, western birch 315,000,
-Oregon maple 932,500, red alder 1,881,500, and black cottonwood
-32,572,200.
-
-VINE MAPLE (_Acer circinatum_) is sometimes called mountain maple,
-though the name is misleading. It may grow among mountains, but always
-near streams. It is found at various altitudes from near sea level to
-5,000 feet above. It ranges from the coast region of British Columbia
-southward through Washington and Oregon to Mendocino county, California.
-This tree is more useful than might be inferred from its name, or even
-from a study of it in its usual form. Only an occasional tree is good
-for the wood user. A height of twenty feet and a diameter of six inches
-are above the average. It is called vine maple because of its habit of
-sprawling on the ground like a vine. The trunk lacks sufficient
-stiffness to hold it erect. It grows upward to a certain point, then
-leans over and the branches lie on the ground. Some of them take root
-and in course of time what was first a single stem becomes a thicket of
-branches and stems. The winter snow often has much to do with bending
-the trunk, which appears to have no power to get back to the
-perpendicular when once bowed down. The damp situation where this tree
-thrives best, induces a luxuriant growth of moss and mold which help to
-bury the branches that lie on the ground.
-
-The tree prospers in deep shade. The young leaves are rose red, and in
-the fall become yellow or scarlet. The fruit is the characteristic maple
-key. The wing becomes rose-red before falling in autumn. Though this
-tree is more a curiosity than a lumberman's asset, it is not without
-value. Handle makers use 10,000 feet of it a year in the state of
-Washington. It is shaved and turned for ax and shovel handles. It has
-two-thirds the strength and less than half the stiffness of eastern hard
-maple. The tree grows slowly and the annual rings are very narrow and
-indistinct. Seventy or eighty years are required to produce a trunk five
-inches in diameter. The wood is hard, and checks badly in seasoning. The
-bark is very pale brown--suggesting the color of a potato sprout that
-has grown in a dark cellar. The Indians liked the wood for fish net
-bows, though there appears to have been no very good reason why they
-preferred it to other woods of the region. Its most extensive use at
-present is as fuel, but it is not particularly sought after. The tree's
-future is not promising. Under domestication it does not take on its
-fantastic, moldy, moss-grown form, and its forest growth will never be
-encouraged by lumbermen.
-
-DWARF MAPLE (_Acer glabrum_) is one of the smallest of the maples, but
-in a north and south direction its range is equal to that of any other.
-Its southern limit is among the canyons of Arizona, and its northern on
-the coast of Alaska within six or seven degrees of the Arctic circle. It
-extends to Nebraska, and is found east of the continental divide far
-north in British America. It reaches its largest size on Vancouver
-island and on the Blue mountains in Oregon. It here is large enough to
-make small sawlogs, but it is usually shrubby in other parts of its
-range. It grows from sea level in Alaska to 9,000 feet altitude among
-the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Two forms of leaf occur. One
-is three-lobed; the other is a compound leaf, the lobes having formed
-separate leaves. The bright upper surface of the leaf gives the species
-its botanical name. The seeds have large, wide wings. It cannot be
-ascertained that the wood of this maple has ever been used for anything.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BOX ELDER
-
-[Illustration: BOX ELDER]
-
-
-
-
-BOX ELDER
-
-(_Acer Negundo_)
-
-
-Attempts to ascertain the meaning of the word _negundo_ which botanists
-apply to this species have not been crowned with entire success. It is
-known to be a word in the Malayalam language of the Malabar coast of
-India, and is there applied to a tree, apparently referring to a
-peculiar form of leaf. The name was transferred to the box elder by
-Moench, and has been generally adopted by botanists, although at least
-seven other scientific names have been given the tree. It bears ten or
-more English names in different regions. Among these names are
-ash-leaved maple, known from Massachusetts to Montana and Texas;
-cut-leaved maple in Colorado; three-leaved maple in Pennsylvania; black
-ash in Tennessee; stinking ash in South Carolina; sugar ash in Florida;
-water ash in the Dakotas; and box elder wherever it grows.
-
-The tree's geographical range does not fall much short of 3,000,000
-square miles, and is equalled by few species of this country. It extends
-from New England across Canada to Alberta, thence to Arizona, and
-includes practically all the United States east and south of those
-lines. It thrives in hot and cold climates, and high and low elevations;
-in regions of much rain, and in those with little. That fact has been
-turned to account by tree planters, particularly in the years when the
-western plains were being settled by homesteaders. The box elder was the
-chief tree on many a timber claim where the letter of the law rather
-than the spirit was carried out. It afforded the earliest protection
-against scorching summer sun and the keen winds of winter about many a
-frontiersman's cabin on the plains. It was the earliest street tree in
-many western towns. The people planted it because they knew it would
-grow, and they were not so sure of a good many other trees. Green ash
-was often its companion in pioneer plantings on the plains. Many towns
-which set box elders along the streets when they did not know of
-anything better, still have the trees, though they would willingly
-exchange them for something else. They are not ideal street and park
-trees; do not produce shapely trunks and crowns; and drop leaves all
-summer and seeds all winter. The tree is reputed to be short lived, yet
-some of those planted a generation or two ago show no symptoms of
-decline.
-
-There is no good reason why this tree should be called an elder, or an
-ash, except that its leaves are compound. If that is a reason, it might
-be called a hickory or a walnut, since they bear compound leaves. It is
-clearly a maple. Its fruit shows it to be so, and Indians of the far
-Northwest who had no other maple, formerly manufactured sugar from this
-tree, collecting the sap in wood or bark troughs and boiling it with hot
-stones.
-
-The compound leaf does not necessarily take it out of the maple group.
-It requires no great exercise of imagination to understand how a lobed
-leaf, by deepening the sinuses between the lobes, might become a
-compound leaf in the process of evolution. There may be no visible
-evidence that the box elder's leaf reached its present form by that
-process, but there is another maple which is at the present time
-developing a compound leaf in that way, or seems to be doing so. It is
-the dwarf maple (_Acer glabrum_) of the Northwest coast. Lobed leaves
-and compound leaves may occur on the same tree.
-
-The seeds of box elder resemble those of other maples. They ripen in the
-fall, and are blown off by wind, few at a time, during several months.
-The trees are from fifty to seventy feet high, and from one and a half
-to three feet in diameter. The trunk is apt to divide near the ground in
-several large branches, and is not of good form for sawlogs, being often
-crooked as well as short. The small branches, particularly those less
-than a year old, are usually nearly as green as the leaves. This fact
-may assist in identifying the tree when the leaves are off. The bark
-bears more resemblance to ash and basswood than to maple.
-
-The wood is lightest of the maples. It weighs less than twenty-seven
-pounds to the cubic foot; has less than half the strength and about
-forty per cent of the stiffness of sugar maple; and is much inferior to
-it in most mechanical properties. It is equal, if not superior to most
-maples in whiteness. The pores are small, numerous, and scattered
-through all parts of the growth ring, as is characteristic of maple
-wood. The tree grows rapidly. The summerwood is a thin, dark line,
-separating one annual ring from another. The medullary rays are many and
-obscure, but when wood is sawed or split along a radial line, they are
-easily seen, and show the true maple luster.
-
-The uses of box elder are similar to those of soft maple. The wood is
-seldom reported under its own name. In fact, an examination of
-wood-using reports of various states, shows that in only two states,
-Michigan and Texas, has box elder been listed separately. Its uses in
-the former state were for boxes, crates, flooring, handles, woodenware,
-and interior finish, while in Texas it was made into furniture. The tree
-is of commercial size in at least thirty states, and is cut and marketed
-in all of them. Tests of the wood for pulp are said to be satisfactory,
-and it finds its way in rather large amounts to cooper shops where it is
-made into slack barrels. It is cut as acid wood along with other maples,
-beech, and birch, and is converted into charcoal and other products of
-distillation.
-
-It may be expected that box elder will exist in the United States as
-long as any other forest tree remains. It is willing to be crowded off
-good land into low places, which are almost swamps, and there it grows
-free from disturbance; but if given the opportunity it will appropriate
-the most fertile soil within reach of it; and by scattering seeds during
-four or five months of the year, it manages to do much effective
-planting.
-
-    CALIFORNIA BOX ELDER (_Acer negundo californicum_) is a variety of
-    box elder, and not a separate species. As the name implies, it is a
-    California tree, and it occurs in the valleys and among the Coast
-    Range mountains from the lower Sacramento valley to the western
-    slopes of the San Bernardino mountains. The tree is from twenty to
-    fifty feet high and from ten to thirty inches in diameter. The
-    leaves and young twigs are hairy, in that respect differing from the
-    eastern box elder. The seeds are scattered during winter. The wood
-    is very pale lemon-yellow or creamy-white, the heart and sapwood
-    hardly distinguishable. The wood is soft and brittle, but is suited
-    to the same purposes as the eastern box elder. No reports of its
-    uses appear to have been made. It is found on the borders of streams
-    and in the bottoms of moist canyons. It is believed to be a
-    short-lived tree.
-
-    STRIPED MAPLE (_Acer pennsylvanicum_) is usually thirty or forty
-    feet high, and eight or ten inches in diameter. Its range extends
-    from Quebec to northern Georgia, westward to Minnesota, and is of
-    largest size on the slopes of Big Smoky mountains of Tennessee, and
-    the Blue Ridge in North and South Carolina. It grows best in shade,
-    but maintains itself in open ground; is generally shrubby in the
-    northern part of its range. The name refers to the bark. The stripes
-    are longitudinal and are caused by the parting of the outer bark and
-    the exposure to view of the lighter colored inner layers. The bark
-    of small trees is greenish, but later in life the color is darker,
-    and the stripes largely disappear. Among its names are moosewood, so
-    called because it is good browse for moose and other deer; goosefoot
-    maple, a reference to the form of the leaf; whistlewood, an allusion
-    to the ease with which the bark slips from young branches in spring
-    when boys with jack-knives are on the search for whistle material.
-    The names mountain alder and striped dogwood are based on
-    misunderstanding of the tree's family relations.
-
-    The young leaves are rose colored when they unfold, and when full
-    grown are six inches wide. The wood is light and soft, and light
-    brown in color, the thick sapwood lighter. The wood is liable to
-    contain small brown pith flecks, which in longitudinal sections
-    appear as brown streaks an inch or less in length and as thick as a
-    pin, and in cross section they are brown dots. They are not natural
-    to the wood but are caused by the larvae of certain moths which
-    burrow into the cambium layer, or soft inner bark, and excavate
-    narrow galleries up and down the trunk. The galleries afterwards
-    fill with dark material. The insects sometimes attack other maples,
-    the birches, service, and other trees. The wood of striped maple is
-    little used, because of the small size of the trees. The species is
-    planted for ornament in this country and Europe.
-
-    BLACK MAPLE (_Acer nigrum_) has been by some considered a variety of
-    sugar or hard maple, and by others a separate species. It is as
-    large as the sugar maple and its range is much the same, but it is
-    more abundant in the western part of its range than in the East. The
-    name refers to the color of the bark of old trunks. If the name had
-    considered the bark of young twigs it would have been yellow or
-    orange maple, because the twigs are of that color. In summer the
-    peculiar drooping posture of the leaves calls attention to this
-    tree. However, the bark, twigs, and leaves combined are not
-    sufficient to set it apart, in the eyes of most people, for it
-    generally passes without question as sugar maple, even when it
-    stands side by side with that tree. It yields sugar abundantly. The
-    wood is a little heavier than that of sugar maple, but the
-    difference cannot be noticed except when the two woods are weighed.
-    Their uses are the same. No maker of furniture, flooring, or finish
-    ever protests against black maple. The tree generally prefers lower
-    and damper ground than sugar maple, and is often found along
-    streams.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SERVICEBERRY
-
-[Illustration: SERVICEBERRY]
-
-
-
-
-SERVICEBERRY
-
-(_Amelanchier Canadensis_)
-
-
-This tree will never be other than a minor species in the United States,
-but it is not a worthless member of the forest. It belongs to the rose
-family, and therefore is near akin to the haws, thorns, and crabapples.
-The genus is found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as in the United
-States. Two tree species occur in this country, or, according to some
-botanists, three, one west of the Rocky Mountains, two east.
-
-The serviceberry has a number of names: June berry, service-tree, May
-cherry, Indian cherry, wild Indian pear, currant tree, shadberry,
-savice, and sarvice. The northern limit of its range is in Newfoundland,
-the southern in Florida. It grows westward to Minnesota and Arkansas;
-but it is not plentiful except in certain restricted localities. It is
-most abundant among the ranges of the Appalachian mountains, and of its
-largest size toward the south. It is dispersed through forests
-generally, a tree or bush here and there; but it prefers the borders of
-forests, the brinks of cliffs, banks of streams, or some other open
-space where light is abundant. It prospers most in rich soil but does
-fairly well in ground thin and dry.
-
-The bloom, where it occurs, is a conspicuous feature of the landscape,
-though generally a tree on ten or twenty acres represents the density of
-its stand. The white, showy bloom comes early in spring, when most trees
-are yet bare of leaves. Occasionally, however, the serviceberry is more
-abundant, and the rows and clumps of blooming trees along creek banks or
-about the margins of glades or other openings in the forests, look like
-distant snowdrifts.
-
-The fruit is a berry a half inch or less in diameter, bright red when
-fully grown in early summer, and changing to purple when ripe. The seeds
-are brown and very small, and each berry contains from five to ten. When
-circumstances are favorable, the tree is a prolific bearer, the slender
-branches bending beneath the weight. The tree need not reach any
-particular size before beginning to bear. On some of the severely burned
-summits of the Alleghany mountains in West Virginia, 4,000 feet or more
-above sea level, this tree, when only two or three feet high, bears
-abundantly. Such trees are probably sprouts from roots of older trunks
-destroyed by fire. At its best, it reaches a height of forty or fifty
-feet and a diameter of one or possibly two feet. Trunks of largest size
-occur among the southern Appalachian ranges.
-
-The wood is heavy and very hard and strong. It is liable to check and
-warp in seasoning, is satiny, and is susceptible of a good polish.
-Medullary rays are very numerous, but obscure; color, dark brown, often
-tinged with red. The wood is stronger, stiffer and heavier than white
-oak. It possesses most of the properties to make it a wood of great
-value, but its scarcity, and the usual small size of the trees, relegate
-it to the class of minor woods. Some use is made of it in turnery and
-for other small articles. It is frequently planted in gardens for its
-bloom and berries. In such situations it lacks some of the charm which
-it holds as part and parcel of the wildwoods where its early spring
-bloom is thrown against a background of leafless branches.
-
-WESTERN SERVICEBERRY (_Amelanchier alnifolia_) is also called
-pigeonberry and sarvice. Its botanical name refers to the resemblance of
-its leaves to those of alder. Its range covers a million square miles,
-and the species reaches its best development on islands and rich bottom
-lands of the lower Columbia river. It is found as far south as
-California, north to Yukon territory, east to Lake Superior and northern
-Michigan. It is nowhere a tree of attractive size, and is usually a
-shrub about ten feet tall and one inch thick. Trees are sometimes thirty
-feet high and six or eight inches in diameter. The fruit is blue-black
-and sweet, and pleasant to the taste if not overripe. Indians in the
-northern and western range of this tree gather the berries industriously
-while they last, and many of the white settlers do likewise. The birds
-flock to the thickets for their share, and though the berries are small,
-the bears in the region consider them worthy of prompt and continued
-attention. The berries are generally a little more than half an inch in
-diameter, and ripen in July or August, depending on latitude. Cattle,
-sheep, goats, and deer find this small tree or bush a source of food.
-They do not object to eating the berries when obtainable, but their
-principal attack is on the leaves and tender shoots which afford
-excellent browse. Fortunately, the serviceberry is so tenacious of life
-that it is next to impossible to browse it to death. If eaten down to
-the ground, with little left but bare and barked trunks sticking up like
-bean poles, the roots will throw up sprouts year after year, making the
-service thicket a permanent browse-pasture. Fire is not able to destroy
-such a thicket, for, when the tops are burned off, the sprouts will
-quickly spring up with vigor unimpaired. As a source of food for
-insects, birds, beasts, and men, few trees, in proportion to size and
-quantity, are the equal of western serviceberry. Flowers, fruit, leaves
-and sprouts are all food for something.
-
-LONGLEAF SERVICE TREE (_Amelanchier obovalis_) is by some regarded a
-variety rather than a species. It occupies in part the same range as
-serviceberry, but runs much farther north, reaching the valley of
-Mackenzie river in latitude 65. It is found in North Carolina and
-Alabama, but it is only a shrub in the extreme southern part of its
-range. The fruit ripens in early summer and is reddish purple. Trees are
-seldom more than thirty feet high and eight inches in diameter. A
-variety with large fruit is occasionally planted as an ornamental tree.
-Unless the crop of serviceberries is unusually plentiful in a locality,
-the most of it is eaten by birds which temporarily abandon nearly all
-other sources of food and give their undivided attention to the
-perishable harvest which must be garnered in at once or it will be lost.
-
-NARROWLEAF CRAB (_Malus angustifolia_) is one of the wild crabapples of
-the United States. They are of the genus _Malus_ and the thousands of
-varieties of cultivated apples are derived from them, or from other
-species found in the old world which are very similar. They belong to
-the rose family. The narrowleaf crab is found from Pennsylvania to
-Florida and westward to Tennessee and Louisiana. It thrives best in open
-spaces in the forest and is often found in glades and along the banks of
-streams in the North, while in the South it occurs in depressions in the
-pine barrens. The flowers are much like those of apple, very fragrant,
-and in color are white, pink, or rose. When in full bloom, the tree is a
-beautiful object, and its odor is carried long distances. The fruit is
-an apple in all respects except size and taste. It is somewhat
-flattened, and is an inch or less across. It is fragrant when fully
-ripe, and many a person has been led by appearances to taste, only to
-meet disappointment. The flesh is hard and sour, and unfit for food in
-its natural state, but by cooking and artificial sweetening, it is made
-into preserves. The tree reaches a height of twenty or thirty feet and a
-diameter of eight or ten inches. It is smaller than the sweet crab. The
-wood is hard, heavy, light brown, tinged with red, with thick yellow
-sapwood. It is not put to many uses, but is occasionally made into small
-handles, and levers. It has been much used as stock on which to graft
-apples. Farmers who wanted orchards formerly dug up small crabapples in
-the surrounding woods and fields, planted them in an orchard, and when
-securely rooted, the apples of desired kinds were grafted on. If
-successful, the apple finally replaced the crab by spreading its own
-bark and wood over the entire trunk, until no part of the original stock
-remained visible. The sweet crab was also employed as a stock on which
-to graft apples.
-
-SWEET CRAB (_Malus coronaria_) is the wild crab of the northeastern
-states, although it intrudes on the region to the southwest to a limited
-extent. It finds use in ornamental planting in the region of best
-growth. It is known as American crab, sweet scented crab, crab apple,
-wild crab, crab, American crab apple, and fragrant crab. Its range
-extends from the shores of Lake Erie in Canada, south through New York
-and Pennsylvania, along the Alleghany mountains to Alabama; west to
-Minnesota, eastern Nebraska, Kansas, Louisiana, and eastern Texas. It
-needs moist soil for good growth and the best types are found in the
-lower Ohio basin. In height this tree rarely exceeds thirty feet and it
-is bushy, having short rigid limbs. The leaves are rounded and sharply
-toothed, the blossoms generally white and very fragrant; the fruit
-small, dry, yellow, tinged with red. The wood is heavy, not strong,
-heart light red, sapwood yellow. It is used for tool handles, small
-turned articles, and for carving and engraving.
-
-OREGON CRABAPPLE (_Malus rivularis_) grows wild from the Aleutian
-Islands, Alaska, southward to central California, and is of largest size
-in Washington and Oregon where trees are occasionally forty feet high
-and eighteen inches in diameter, but they are generally about ten feet
-high and form dense thickets. The fruit is oblong, ripens late in
-autumn, is greenish, or reddish, or clear lemon yellow in color, and
-rather pleasant to the taste. The tree grows slowly, the wood is hard,
-and light reddish-brown in color, and is suitable for tool handles.
-
-IOWA CRAB (_Malus ioensis_) grows from Minnesota to Texas and is the
-common crabapple of the Mississippi basin. Large trees are twenty-five
-feet high and a foot in diameter. It is believed that this tree crosses
-with the common apple, and produces a variety known as the soulard apple
-(_Malus soulardi_). Wild apple (_Malus malus_) is a European species
-introduced into this country and now running wild.
-
-    MOUNTAIN ASH (_Pyrus americana_) is closely related to the crabs. It
-    occurs from Newfoundland to Manitoba, and southward along the
-    mountains to North Carolina. Trees have compound leaves, red berries
-    the size of small cherries, and reach a height of thirty feet and a
-    diameter of a foot or more. There are several forms or varieties,
-    among them the small fruit mountain ash (_Pyrus americana
-    microcarpa_) of the Alleghany mountains.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED HAW
-
-[Illustration: RED HAW]
-
-
-
-
-RED HAW
-
-(_Crataegus Coccinea_)
-
-
-This tree belongs to the rose family, and the genus _Crataegus_ consists
-of a large group of small, thorny trees, scattered through many parts of
-the world. They are known by their thorns, but comparatively few of them
-are known by name to the ordinary observer, and they afford a perpetual
-source of study, victory, and bewilderment to the trained botanist. "No
-other group of American trees," says Sudworth, "presents such almost
-insurmountable difficulties in point of distinctive characters. It is
-impossible, and fortunately unnecessary, for the practical forester to
-know them all, and exceedingly difficult even for the specialist." More
-than one hundred species of these thorn trees occur in the United
-States, exclusive of shrubs. Their bloom resembles that of apple and
-pear trees. Bees and insects swarm round the flowering trees, assisting
-in cross fertilization. The various species are aggressive. They force
-their way into vacant spaces, and their thorns protect them against
-browsing animals. The wood is sappy and heavy, and for most of the
-species it is valueless. The growing brambles, however, perform an
-important service in forest economy. Seeds of various valuable trees are
-blown by wind or carried by birds and mammals into the thickets where
-they germinate and get a start under the protecting shelter of the
-thorns. Finally the seedlings overtop the brambles, gain the mastery,
-shade the thorns to death, and develop valuable forests. The thorn trees
-shed their leaves annually. Their seeds are slow to germinate, some not
-sprouting until the second year. The fruit is worthless for human
-consumption, but some of it has a tart and not unpleasant taste. It is
-of many colors and sizes, depending on species.
-
-No attempt is here made to name or to list the species. Such a list
-would, for most people, be a dull catalogue of names, and many of them
-in Latin because there are no English equivalents. A few representative
-species are given. The red haw, though not the most abundant, is widely
-distributed, and is probably as well known as any. Its range extends
-from Newfoundland westward through southern Canada to the eastern base
-of the Rocky Mountains, thence south to Texas and Florida. It covers
-one-half of the United States. In the northern part of its range the red
-haw is confined to the slopes of low hills and along water courses, but
-south in the Appalachian mountains it grows at an elevation of several
-thousand feet.
-
-It has various names in different regions. It is called scarlet haw,
-red haw, white thorn, scarlet thorn, scarlet-fruited thorn, red thorn,
-thorn, thorn bush, thorn apple, and hedge thorn. The fact is worthy of
-note that it is well known and is clearly recognized in every region
-where it grows, though various names are given it.
-
-The red haw never reaches large size. In rare cases it may attain a
-height of thirty feet and a diameter of ten inches, but it is usually
-less than half that size. Where it grows in the open it develops a round
-crown. The branches are armed with chestnut-brown thorns from an inch to
-an inch and a half in length. The bright scarlet color of the fruit
-gives name to the tree. It ripens late in September or in October, and
-at that time the tree presents a beautiful appearance. The branches
-frequently remain laden with fruit after the leaves have fallen.
-
-The wood of red haw is of a high character and but for its scarcity
-would have wide commercial use. It is among the heavy woods of this
-country. A cubic foot of it, thoroughly seasoned, weighs 53.71 pounds.
-The tree is of slow growth and therefore the annual rings are narrow,
-and the wood is dense. The evenness and uniformity of the rings of
-yearly growth make the wood susceptible of a high polish. The medullary
-rays are very obscure in red haw, and for that reason the appearance of
-the wood is much the same, irrespective of the direction in which it is
-cut. In that respect it is similar to the wood of most members of the
-thorn family--usually being too small to be quarter-sawed. However, even
-if the trees were large enough, quarter-sawing would bring out little
-figure.
-
-Red haw is a lathe wood. It is well suited to some other purposes, and
-has been used for engraving blocks, small wedges, and rulers, but the
-best results come from the lathe. If it is thoroughly seasoned it is not
-liable to crack or check, though cut thin in such articles as goblets
-and napkin rings. The turner sometimes objects to the wood because of
-its hardness and the rapidity with which it dulls tools. This drawback,
-however, is compensated for by the smoothness and fine polish which may
-be given to the finished article. Red haw checker pieces have been
-compared with ebony for wearing quality. In color the ebony is more
-handsome, and on that account is generally preferred.
-
-Perhaps the most extensive use of red haw is in the manufacture of
-canes. Most of the species of thorn are suitable for that purpose on
-account of their weight, strength, and hardness. Red haw is not
-specially preferred, but is used with others. As a source of wood
-supply, the tree will never be important, but as an adornment to the
-landscape it will always be valuable, and at the same time will fill a
-minor place in the country's list of commercial woods.
-
-SUMMER HAW (_Crataegus aestivalis_) is a southern species which
-contributes more or less to the food supply of the people within its
-range. It is known also as May haw and apple haw. The flowers appear in
-February and March, are about one inch in diameter, and flushed with red
-toward the apex. The fruit ripens in May, is bright red, very fragrant,
-and is from half to three-fourths of an inch in diameter. The flesh is
-of a pleasant taste, and is gathered in large quantities by country
-people for making preserves and jelly. It is sold in town and city
-markets, particularly in New Orleans. The range of this thorn tree is
-from South Carolina and Florida, to Texas. It attains a height of twenty
-or thirty feet, and a diameter sometimes as great as eighteen inches. It
-reaches its largest size in Louisiana and Texas. It grows well on land
-which may be submerged several weeks in winter. The wood has not been
-reported for any use.
-
-COCKSPUR (_Crataegus crus-galli_) may be taken as the type of more than
-twenty species of cockspur thorns growing in this country. Its other
-names are red haw, Newcastle thorn, thorn apple, thorn bush, pin thorn,
-haw, and hawthorn. It grows southwestward from Canada to Texas, and
-extends into Florida. The largest trees are twenty-five feet high and a
-foot in diameter. The fruit is dull red, half inch in diameter, ripens
-in September and October, and hangs on the branches until late winter.
-Hogs eat the fruit when they can get it, and boys utilize the small
-apples as bullets for elder pop guns. The thorns are formidable slender
-spines from three to eight inches long, strong, and extremely sharp.
-They were formerly used as pins to close wool sacks in rural carding
-mills. The many species of cockspur thorns are multiplied by numerous
-varieties. Fence posts and fuel are cut from the best trunks.
-
-PEAR HAW (_Crataegus tomentosa_) is a representative of at least ten
-species. It is called pear haw without any very satisfactory reason,
-since the fruit bears little resemblance to pears. It is half an inch in
-diameter, dull orange red in color, and sweet to the taste, but it is of
-little value as food. The tree has been occasionally planted for
-ornament, but never for fruit. The flowers are showy. Trees at their
-best are fifteen or twenty feet high and five or six inches in diameter.
-They have few thorns and such as they have are small. The tree's range
-extends from New York to Missouri, and along the Appalachian mountains
-to northern Georgia, and west to Texas and Arkansas. It is known in
-different parts of its range as black thorn, red haw, pear thorn, white
-thorn, common thorn, hawthorn, thorn apple, and thorn plum.
-
-HOG HAW (_Crataegus brachyacantha_) is distinguished by its blue fruit.
-The name indicates that the fruit is unfit for human food but is eaten
-by swine. In some parts of Louisiana the dense thickets produce
-considerable quantities of forage for hogs. The range is not extensive,
-being confined to Louisiana and eastern Texas where the tree occurs in
-low, wet prairies. The largest specimens are forty or fifty feet high
-and eighteen inches in diameter. It is one of the largest of the thorns,
-and the best trunks are of size to make small, very short sawlogs, but
-it does not appear that the wood has ever been manufactured into
-commodities of any kind. The tree is occasionally planted for ornament.
-
-BLACK HAW (_Crataegus douglasii_) reaches its best development on the
-Pacific coast where trees occur thirty or more feet in height and a foot
-and a half in diameter. The principal range is west of the Rocky
-Mountains, from British Columbia to northern California, but it extends
-eastward to Wyoming, and the tree is found also in northern Michigan.
-The fruit is black or very dark purple, is edible, and matures in early
-autumn, falling soon after. The heartwood is brownish-red. No use for
-the wood has been found on the Pacific coast.
-
-WASHINGTON HAW (_Crataegus cordata_), also known as Washington thorn,
-Virginia thorn, heart-leaved thorn, and red haw, grows on banks of
-streams from the valley of the upper Potomac river southward through the
-Appalachian ranges to northern Georgia, and westward to Missouri and
-Arkansas. Flowers are rose-colored, the fruit ripens in the fall and
-hangs till late winter. Trees are twenty or thirty feet high, and a foot
-or less in diameter. Washington haw is frequently planted in this
-country and in Europe.
-
-ENGLISH HAWTHORN (_Crataegus oxyacantha_) was introduced into this
-country from Europe and has become naturalized in some of the eastern
-states. Thirty or more varieties are distinguished in cultivation. It is
-worthy of note that, although the United States has more than 130
-species of thorn trees of its own, with varieties so numerous that no
-one has yet named or counted all of them, a foreign thorn has been
-introduced and added to the number.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MAHOGANY
-
-[Illustration: MAHOGANY]
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-
-MAHOGANY
-
-(_Swietenia Mahagoni_)
-
-
-This tree belongs to the family _Meliaceae_ which has about forty genera,
-all of which are confined to the tropic except _Swietenia_ to which
-mahogany belongs. This tree has made its way up from southern latitudes
-and has secured a foothold in Florida where it is confined to the
-islands and the most southern part of the mainland.
-
-No attempt is here made to settle or even to take part in the disputes
-among dendrologists as to what mahogany is. There are said to be more
-than forty different trees which pass as mahogany in lumber markets.
-Various descriptions and keys have been published for the purpose of
-separating and identifying different woods which are bought and sold as
-mahogany. These woods grow on every continent except Europe; but those
-which pass as mahogany nearly all come from Africa or America. Some are
-well known, both as to origin and botany, while others are doubtful.
-Logs sometimes appear in markets and no one knows where they come from,
-or the species which produce them. It has been maintained that annual
-rings will separate true mahogany from the false--that the true has no
-annual rings. At the best, this evidence is only negative and is worth
-little, since many tropical trees show no annual rings, and yet are no
-kin to mahogany. Neither is it certain that true mahogany shows no
-yearly rings. Some trees do not, but others may. The ring, as is well
-known, is produced because the tree grows part of the year and rests
-part. In the tropics where growth is continuous, the ring may not exist,
-but it sometimes does exist, and thus upsets the theory. Besides, it
-proves little in the case of mahogany which has a range extending from
-south of the equator northward into the temperate zone, where there are
-seasonal changes. It also grows near sea level and at considerable
-altitudes, and elevation alone might make considerable variation in the
-character of the wood.
-
-The two most important mahoganies of commerce--leaving botany out of the
-question--grow in Africa and in America. The most important of the
-African mahoganies is _Khaya senegalensis_, and of the American is
-_Swietenia mahagoni_. It is the latter which extends its range into the
-United States, and it alone will be considered in these pages as true
-mahogany; the status of foreign woods which pass as mahogany will not be
-discussed.
-
-Leaves of the mahogany tree are three or four inches long, and an inch
-or more wide. They are compound, with from three to five pairs of
-leaflets. The tree is an evergreen and presents a fine appearance. The
-flowers appear in July and August, are small and cup-shaped. Fruit is
-four or five inches long and two or more wide. It ripens in late fall or
-early winter. The nearly square seeds are three-fourths of an inch long.
-In Florida the tree rarely exceeds fifty feet in height and two in
-diameter; but in tropical countries it may exceed a height of 100 and a
-diameter of eight or ten. The bark is thin.
-
-The wood is practically of the same weight as white oak, but is stronger
-and more elastic. It is exceedingly hard, very durable, and is
-susceptible of high polish. Medullary rays are numerous but small and
-obscure. The color is rich reddish-brown, turning darker with age, but
-the thin sapwood is yellow. It is known in Florida as mahogany, madeira,
-and redwood.
-
-The uses of mahogany are so many and so well-known that it is
-unnecessary to speak of them in detail. There were importations into the
-United States nearly three hundred years ago, and it has been coming
-ever since. One thing about this wood deserves mention: the price has
-not varied much in three hundred years. Different prices have prevailed,
-owing to distance from supply and differences in grade and quality; and
-that holds true today; but for similar grades, the prices have been
-remarkable for their evenness.
-
-Florida never figured largely in the world's supply of mahogany. At
-their best, the trees were neither large nor numerous, but their quality
-was good. Cutting of this timber ceased in Florida about three-quarters
-of a century ago. The islands and the small area of the mainland where
-the timber grew, were stripped. The logs were shipped to the Bahama
-islands and it is said they found their ultimate market in England. A
-few trees were overlooked here and there, and some that were small
-seventy-five years ago, have grown to merchantable size since. These
-have been cut, a few at a time, and the cutting is still going on. The
-total is now only a few thousand feet a year, and one of the markets for
-the logs, probably the chief market, is Miami, Florida. The logs are
-small, and are generally cut and brought in by negroes who find a tree
-now and then, cut the logs, and float them as near to market as
-possible, and haul them the rest of the way. The scarcity of the trees
-may be inferred from the fact that the average resident of south
-Florida, where the range of the mahogany lies, never saw one. In
-appearance the tree when seen at a little distance, resembles a young,
-vigorous black walnut tree.
-
-CHINA TREE (_Melia azedarach_) belongs to the same family as mahogany
-but is of a different genus. It is not native in the United States, but
-has been extensively planted and is running wild. It is a forest tree in
-some parts of Louisiana, but is found under pure forest conditions only
-here and there. As such, the trunk and thin crown look like a forest
-grown butternut tree in Wisconsin. It is abundant in yards and along
-streets, where it is often called Chinaball tree. A little of the wood
-is used. The color resembles mahogany, but the texture is much coarser.
-Annual rings are clearly marked by rows of large pores, and the wood
-does not polish well. It is sometimes known as pride of India, which
-country is its native home, or it was carried there from Persia at an
-early date. A variety, commonly known as the Texas Umbrella tree (_Melia
-azedarach umbraculifera_), has been widely planted, and is known by its
-short trunk and dense, round crown.
-
-SOAPBERRY (_Sapindus saponaria_), known also as false dogwood, is a
-species of south Florida, and is one of three soap trees in this
-country. It has no family kinship with mahogany, but the appearance of
-the trees leads some persons to conclude that they are related to the
-China tree. In fact, one of the species is locally known as wild China
-and Chinaberry. They are called soap trees because their fruit has a
-property which causes water to foam, and the natives of the West Indies
-once used it for soap. The botanical name _Sapindus_ means "Indian
-soap." The tree is twenty-five or thirty feet high, and ten or twelve
-inches in diameter. The bloom appears in November in Florida, and the
-fruit ripens the following spring. The wood is heavy, rather hard, and
-is light brown, tinged with yellow. It reaches largest size on the
-Thousand Islands, Florida. Another species is _Sapindus marginatus_
-which attains size similar to that of the first. It is found in southern
-Florida, but is not abundant. It grows as far north as the mouth of the
-St. John river. A third species is _Sapindus drummondi_ which has its
-range from western Louisiana, Arkansas, and southern Kansas, through
-Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, to Mexico. The flowers appear in May and
-June, and the fruit ripens in September and October, but it hangs on the
-trees until the following spring. When first ripe, it is half an inch in
-diameter, and yellow, but when it dries it turns black. Trees attain
-diameters up to two feet, and heights of forty or fifty. It is commonly
-supposed to be the Chinaberry, by persons who judge by general
-appearances, but the two are not related. The wood's appearance suggests
-the heartwood of ash. It probably reaches its best development in Texas
-where it is manufactured into boxes, crates, and even furniture, but not
-in large amounts. It is reputed to be a rapid grower, and it may be
-under the most favorable circumstances, but it is usually of rather slow
-growth. The wood splits readily into thin strips which are employed in
-making baskets for harvesting cotton. In western Texas it is made into
-pack saddle frames.
-
-    MOUNTAIN MAHOGANY (_Cercocarpus ledifolius_) is not a mahogany, and
-    is not even in the same family. It belongs to the rose family, and
-    is closely related to the crabapple; but since it is commonly known
-    as mahogany, it is proper to mention it here. Extensive
-    consideration is unnecessary, for the tree is not important as a
-    source of wood. Three species are recognized by some botanists, four
-    by others. All are western, and are noted for their long-tailed
-    fruit. The generic name refers to that feature. The seed, with its
-    tail, is carried by the wind, or it catches in the wool of sheep and
-    the hair of cattle and goats, or the feathers of birds, and is
-    carried far and near. The mountain mahogany sometimes is thirty feet
-    high, and two in diameter. It grows from 5,000 to 9,000 feet
-    elevation, sometimes on steep cliffs. Its range extends from Wyoming
-    and Montana to Oregon, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. The wood
-    is bright, clear red, or rich dark brown. It reaches its largest
-    size on the mountains of central Nevada. Another species is known as
-    valley mahogany (_Cercocarpus parvifolius_). It ranges from Nebraska
-    to Oregon, and Texas to California. Its rate of growth is very slow,
-    and it seldom exceeds a height of thirty feet and a diameter of ten
-    inches. The wood is reddish-brown. A third species, called Trask
-    mahogany (_Cercocarpus traskiae_) is chiefly notable on account of
-    its restricted range. It occurs as far as known, in a single canyon
-    of Santa Catalina island, off the southern coast of California. Some
-    of the specimens are twenty feet high and six inches in diameter. A
-    fourth species, or a variety, is known as short-flower mahogany
-    (_Cercocarpus parvifolius breviflorus_). It occurs in western Texas,
-    southern New Mexico and Arizona, usually at elevations about 5,000
-    feet above sea level where the largest trees are not more than eight
-    inches in diameter and twenty-five feet high.
-
-    VAUQUELINIA (_Vauquelinia californica_) belongs to the same family
-    as the so-called western mahoganies, that is, the rose family; but
-    it is of a different genus. Its range is largely south of the
-    international boundary, but it extends into southern Arizona where
-    the best development of the species occurs about 5,000 feet above
-    the sea on grassy slopes. It is seldom more than a bush, and the
-    wood is very heavy and hard, and is dark-brown, streaked with red.
-
-[Illustration]
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-BLACK WILLOW
-
-[Illustration: BLACK WILLOW]
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-
-BLACK WILLOW
-
-(_Salix Nigra_)
-
-
-The willows and the cottonwoods belong to the same family of trees,
-_Salicaceae_, and the family is fairly numerous, and it has some
-well-defined traits of character. The quinine-bitter of the bark is ever
-present, but more marked in willows than in cottonwoods. Though quite
-unpleasant to the taste, it is harmless. The leaves never grow in pairs,
-and in most instances they fall early in autumn, and some without
-changing color. Male and female flowers are borne on different trees,
-and fertilizing is done by insects, often by honey bees and bumblebees.
-Fruit ripens in late spring, and the seeds are equipped for flight by
-being provided with exceedingly fine silky hairs. The wind carries them
-long distances. The trees generally grow in the immediate vicinity of
-streams or in situations where the soil is damp, but there are
-exceptions.
-
-The willow family consists of two genera, one the cottonwoods or
-poplars, the other the willows proper. There are about seventy-five
-species of willow in America, twenty of them trees. Some, however, are
-quite small and only occasionally attain sizes which place them in the
-tree class. The willows are old residents of this continent. They grew
-in the central portion of what is now the United States in the
-Cretaceous age, as is proved by their leaf prints in the rocks. They
-have held their ground ever since, and there is no likelihood that they
-are about to give it up. Few species are better fitted for holding what
-they have. A few trees are capable of seeding a large region in a few
-years, and if soil and situation are suitable, reproduction will be
-abundant. The willows' tenacity of life is often remarkable. It
-sometimes seems next to impossible to kill them by cutting off their
-tops. There are said to be instances in Europe where willows have been
-pollarded successively during hundreds of years, the crops of sprouts
-being used for wickerwork and other purposes. No such records exist in
-this country, but the willow's sprouting habit is well known. A shoot
-stuck in the ground will grow, and a fence post will sprout. Many
-willows develop large stools, or roots, and repeatedly send up numerous
-sprouts, and it makes little difference how often they are cut, others
-will come up.
-
-Comparatively few willows that start in life ever become trees. They are
-suppressed by crowding, or meet misfortunes of one kind or another which
-keep them small, but occasionally a tree of good size results. Willow
-trees are usually not old. Probably few reach an age exceeding 150
-years. Large trunks, in old age, are apt to be hollow or otherwise
-defective, though a willow tree will live many years after much of its
-trunk has disappeared. A little green bark on the side, and sprouts from
-the stump will maintain life long after all usefulness has ceased.
-
-Young willows are usually pliant and tough, old are stiff and brash.
-They range from sea level up to 10,000 feet or more; grow profusely in
-the wet lands about the gulf of Mexico, and likewise on the bleak coasts
-of the Arctic ocean. Commander Peary found willows blooming in
-considerable profusion on the extreme northern shore of Greenland, where
-they produce enough growth during the few weeks of summer sunshine to
-afford the muskox the means of eking out a living during his sojourn in
-those inhospitable regions.
-
-The identification of willows is one of the most difficult tasks that
-fall to the botanists. Black willow is unquestionably the most important
-willow in this country from the lumberman's standpoint. It is the common
-tree willow that attains size suitable for sawlogs. If a forest grown
-willow of large size is encountered east of the Rocky Mountains in the
-United States, it is pretty safe to class it as black willow. There are
-some others which grow large, but not many. Planted willows, both large
-and small, may be foreign species, and white willows, which are not
-native in this country, but have been widely planted, and are running
-wild, may be occasionally found of ample size for saw timber.
-
-Black willow's range extends from New Brunswick to Florida, west to the
-Dakotas, and south to Texas, thence passing into Mexico, New Mexico,
-Arizona, and California. It attains its best size in the Ohio and
-Mississippi valleys, though large trees are found in other parts of its
-range. It is difficult to say what its average size is, for some black
-willows are only a few feet high and an inch or two in diameter. The
-largest trees exceed 100 feet in height and three in diameter. An
-extreme size of seven feet in diameter has been reported. It is not
-unusual to see willow logs three feet in diameter in mill yards in
-Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, and logs four feet in diameter are
-not so unusual as to excite much comment. The average sizes, however, of
-willow sawlogs in that region are from eighteen inches to two feet.
-
-The wood of black willow is pale reddish-brown. When freshly cut it is
-sometimes purple, almost black. When sawed in lumber and exposed to the
-air the dark color fades. The wood is soft but firm. It has about fifty
-per cent of the strength of white oak, and forty per cent of its
-stiffness. It weighs 27.77 pounds per cubic foot; and considering its
-weight, it is tolerably strong and stiff.
-
-Probably no other wood in the United States is as systematically cheated
-out of its just credit as this one. Many of the oaks are seldom given
-their proper names, but they are listed as oak in sawmill output, and
-thus the genus, if not the species is given credit. But willow is almost
-totally ignored. The United States census in 1910 credited to all the
-willow lumber in this country an amount less than a million and a half
-feet; yet a single mill in Louisiana, and not a large mill at that, cut
-and sold four times that much during that year. The wood was cut by
-hundreds of other mills, some a few logs only, others considerable
-quantities.
-
-It is sold for various purposes, and much of it goes as cottonwood. In
-some instances it is called brown cottonwood. Probably ninety per cent
-is made into boxes, but it has many other uses. It is cut into
-excelsior, made into rotary cut veneer, and finds place in the
-manufacture of furniture; it is a common woodenware material; slack
-coopers make barrels of it; and it is turned for baseball bats.
-
-The supply of black willow in this country is not small. It is usually
-found in wet situations along streams. Sometimes islands and low flats
-are taken possession of and pure stands result. The growth is sometimes
-phenomenal. Trunks may add nearly or quite an inch to their diameter per
-year when conditions are exceptionally favorable. Instances, apparently
-well authenticated, are reported of abandoned fields along the
-Mississippi, which in sixty years grew 100,000 feet of willow per acre.
-
-    LONGSTALK WILLOW (_Salix longipes_) sometimes grows to a height of
-    thirty feet with a diameter of six or eight inches. Its range
-    extends from Maryland to Texas, and is at its best in the Ozark
-    region of southwestern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas.
-
-    ALMONDLEAF WILLOW (_Salix amygdaloides_) grows across northern
-    United States and southern Canada from New York to Oregon, and
-    occurs as far south as Missouri and Ohio, and is abundant in the
-    lower Ohio valley. At its best it is seventy feet high and two feet
-    in diameter. The wood is light, soft, and the heartwood is brown.
-
-    SMOOTHLEAF WILLOW (_Salix laevigata_) attains a diameter of one foot
-    and a height of forty or fifty. It is a Pacific coast tree,
-    occurring in California on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevadas
-    up to an altitude of 3,000 feet. It is known as black willow. The
-    wood is pale reddish-brown.
-
-    SILVERLEAF WILLOW (_Salix sessilifolia_) looks like longleaf willow,
-    and though usually a shrub it sometimes is twenty-five feet high and
-    ten inches in diameter. It grows from the mouth of the Columbia
-    river to southern California.
-
-    YEWLEAF WILLOW (_Salix taxifolia_) ranges from western Texas,
-    through southern Arizona into Mexico and Central America. Trees are
-    occasionally forty feet high and more than one foot in diameter. A
-    little fuel and fence posts are cut from this willow.
-
-    BEBB WILLOW (_Salix bebbiana_) is nearly always shrubby, but
-    occasionally reaches a trunk diameter of six or eight inches and a
-    height of twenty feet. Its northern limit lies within the Arctic
-    circle, its southern in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Arizona. West of
-    Hudson bay it forms almost impenetrable thickets, and in Colorado it
-    ascends mountains to elevations of 10,000 feet.
-
-    GLAUCOUS WILLOW (_Salix discolor_), commonly known as silver or
-    pussy willow, ranges from Nova Scotia to Manitoba, and southward to
-    Delaware, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. It is one
-    of the best known willows within its range, on account of its
-    flowers which are among the earliest of the season, and very showy.
-    The largest specimens are scarcely twenty-five feet high and twelve
-    inches in diameter.
-
-    MACKENZIE WILLOW (_Salix cordata mackenzieana_) is not abundant, and
-    is one of the smallest of the tree willows. It is nearly always a
-    shrub. Its range extends from California nearly to the Arctic
-    circle, where it occurs in gravelly soil on the borders of mountain
-    streams.
-
-    MISSOURI WILLOW (_Salix missouriensis_) is so named because it
-    occurs principally in Missouri, but its range extends into Kansas
-    and Iowa. It is occasionally forty feet high and a foot in diameter.
-    It is used for fence posts.
-
-    BIGELOW WILLOW (_Salix lasiolepis_) is generally called white willow
-    on account of its gray bark. It occurs in California and Arizona,
-    and at its best it is twenty-five feet high and ten inches in
-    diameter. Some use is made of it as fuel, where other wood is
-    scarce.
-
-    NUTTALL WILLOW (_Salix nuttallii_), called also mountain willow in
-    Montana, ranges from British America, east of the Rocky Mountains,
-    to southern California. Its usual height is twenty or twenty-five
-    feet, and its diameter six or eight inches. In southern California
-    it grows 10,000 feet above sea level.
-
-    HOOKER WILLOW (_Salix hookeriana_) occurs in the coast region from
-    Vancouver island to southern Oregon, and varies in height from a
-    sprawling shrub to a height of thirty feet and a diameter of one.
-    Little use is made of it.
-
-    SILKY WILLOW (_Salix sitchensis_), known also as Sitka willow,
-    ranges from Alaska to southern California. The largest specimens are
-    twenty-five feet high and ten inches in diameter. Trunks are largely
-    sapwood and are of little commercial importance.
-
-    BROADLEAF WILLOW (_Salix amplifolia_), known also as feltleaf
-    willow, was discovered in Alaska in 1899. The leaves are woolly. The
-    largest trees rarely exceed a height of thirty feet and a diameter
-    of six inches. Its range extends to the valley of the Mackenzie
-    river.
-
-    A number of foreign willows have become naturalized in the United
-    States. Among them is white willow (_Salix alba_), which grows to
-    large size, probably as large as black willow; crack willow (_Salix
-    fragilis_), so named on account of the brittleness of its twigs; and
-    weeping willow (_Salix babylonica_). The botanical name is based on
-    the supposition that it was this willow, growing by the rivers near
-    Babylon, on which the captive Hebrews hung their harps. Basket
-    willow is planted for its osiers in several eastern states. It is
-    not a single species, but a group of varieties developed by
-    cultivation.
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-[Illustration]
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-HARDY CATALPA
-
-[Illustration: HARDY CATALPA]
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-
-
-HARDY CATALPA
-
-(_Catalpa Speciosa_)
-
-
-This tree belongs to the family _Bignoniaceae_ which has its name from
-Abbe Bignon, librarian of Louis XV. About one hundred genera belong to
-this family, only three of which reach the size of trees in the United
-States. These include the catalpas, the desert willow, and the black
-calabash tree.
-
-Seven species of catalpa are known, two of them occurring in the United
-States. Others are found in China and the West Indies. The name is an
-Indian word and was first heard among the tribes of the Carolinas. It
-seems probable that the name catalpa as applied to a tree and catawba,
-applied to a grape, have the same origin, and in some way refer to the
-Catawba Indians, a small tribe--said to be Sioux--that lived two hundred
-years ago in the western part of the Carolinas and neighboring regions
-where one of the catalpa species was first heard of by Europeans. The
-tree in that region is still often called catawba.
-
-The two catalpas of this country are known to botanists as _Catalpa
-speciosa_ and _Catalpa catalpa_. Much confusion has resulted from
-attempts to distinguish one from the other. Botanists are able to clear
-the matter up among themselves, but the general public has not been so
-successful. John P. Brown, of Connersville, Indiana, specialized on
-catalpas during many years, and published numerous tracts, pamphlets,
-and books for the purpose of educating the public to the point where the
-differences between common catalpa and hardy catalpa could be
-distinguished. His labor was likewise directed toward inducing land
-owners to plant catalpa for commercial purposes. Due to his efforts, and
-otherwise, catalpa was for a time the most advertised plantation tree in
-this country. Some supposed that hardy catalpa was the wood which was to
-save the country from a threatened timber famine. Claims made for it
-were wide and far reaching.
-
-The judgment of history has been--if it may be classed as a matter of
-history--that the tree fell short of expectation. This does not imply an
-inferiority of the wood itself, or a slower rate of growth than was
-claimed for it; but exceptional cases were interpreted as averages, and
-for that reason the whole situation was overestimated. When all
-conditions are perfect, hardy catalpa grows rapidly and grows large, but
-it demands nearly perfect conditions or it will disappoint. It wants
-ground rich enough and damp enough to grow good crops of corn, and
-farmers are not generally willing to put that class of land to growing
-fence posts and railroad ties.
-
-The range of hardy catalpa before the species was spread by artificial
-planting, was through southern Illinois and Indiana, southeastern
-Missouri and northeastern Arkansas, western Louisiana and eastern Texas,
-and western Kentucky and Tennessee. Its position on the fertile banks of
-streams, and on flood plains subject to frequent inundation, indicates
-that the spread of the species was effected by running water. In that
-case, the dispersal of seeds would be down stream, implying that the
-starting place of the species was along the lower reaches of the Wabash
-river.
-
-The catalpa may reach a height of 100 or 120 feet and a diameter of four
-feet; but few trees attain that size. The leaves are ten or twelve
-inches long and seven or eight wide, and are considerably larger than
-those of common catalpa. The flowers appear late in May or early in
-June, and are showy. The prevailing colors are white and purple, and the
-blossoms are about two inches long and two and a half wide.
-
-The fruit is a pod from eight to twenty inches long, and the enclosed
-seeds are nearly an inch long, shaped like beans. The trees are prolific
-bearers.
-
-The tree is known by several names in different parts of its range,
-including the territory where it is known only from plantings. It is
-called western catalpa to distinguish it from the other species found
-farther east and south. In Missouri and Iowa it is known as cigar tree.
-The name Indian bean is an allusion to the large seeds. Shawneewood is
-another name referring to the supposed interest of Indians in the tree.
-Shawnee was the name of a tribe of Indians in the Ohio valley in early
-times.
-
-The wood weighs less than twenty-six pounds per cubic foot, and is soft
-and weak. It is rated very durable in contact with the soil, and this is
-one of the chief advantages claimed for it. The annual rings are clearly
-marked by several bands or rows of large open ducts, and the denser
-summerwood forms a narrow band. The medullary rays are numerous and
-obscure. The heartwood is brown, the sapwood lighter. In appearance, the
-heartwood suggests butternut, but it is coarser, and lacks the gloss
-shown by polished butternut. Quarter-sawing produces no figure, but when
-sawed at right angles to the radial lines, the annual rings are cut in a
-way to give figure resembling that of ash or chestnut.
-
-The wood of this catalpa has been thoroughly tried out for a number of
-purposes. Furniture and finish have been made of it with varying
-success, and molding and picture frames are listed among its uses. It is
-not a sawlog tree. Statistics of lumber cut seldom mention it, though
-now and then a log finds its way to a mill. Efforts have been made to
-pass the wood as mahogany, but with poor success. The counterfeit is
-easily detected, since the artificial color which may be imparted to
-catalpa is about the only resemblance to mahogany.
-
-In the lower Mississippi valley some success, but on a very small scale,
-has resulted from attempts to induce catalpa to grow in crooks suitable
-for small boat knees. The young trunk, after being hacked on one side,
-is bent and induced to grow the crook or knee. Natural crooks have been
-utilized in the manufacture of knees for small boats in Louisiana.
-
-Probably ninety per cent of all the catalpa ever cut has gone into fence
-posts. It is habitually crooked. A straight bole is the exception;
-though in plantations trees are crowded and pruned until they grow
-fairly straight, and sometimes trunks of forest grown trees of large
-size are nearly faultless in their symmetry.
-
-It was once believed in some quarters that catalpa would solve the
-railroad tie problem by growing good ties quickly. It must be admitted,
-however, that in spite of extensive plantings, the railroad tie problem
-has not yet been solved by catalpa.
-
-COMMON CATALPA (_Catalpa catalpa_) originated many hundred miles outside
-the range of hardy catalpa, to judge by the localities in which it was
-first found by white men. It is supposed to have been indigenous in
-southwestern Georgia, central Alabama, and Mississippi, and northwestern
-Florida. Its range has been greatly extended by planting, and it grows
-in most parts of the country east of the Rocky Mountains, as far north
-as New England. It has been planted in many parts of Europe. Its leaves,
-flowers, fruit, and the tree itself are smaller than hardy catalpa. The
-pods hang unopened all winter. The trunks sometimes are three feet in
-diameter and sixty high, but are generally small, crooked, rather
-angular, and poor in appearance, but the leaves and flowers are
-ornamental. The wood is durable in contact with the ground, and its
-largest use has been for posts, crossties, and poles.
-
-DESERT WILLOW (_Chilopsis linearis_) does not even belong to the willow
-family, notwithstanding its names, all of which are based on the
-presumption that it is a willow. The shape and size of its leaves are
-responsible for that misapprehension. The very narrow leaves may be a
-foot long. It is called flowering willow and Texas flowering willow. Its
-flowers are always emphasized when it is compared with willow, for they
-are totally different from the willow's characteristic catkins. The
-flowers appear in early summer in racemes three or four inches long, and
-continue open during several months in succession. The fruit is a pod
-seven or nine inches long, and as slender as a lead pencil. It is this
-pod which gives the plainest hint of its relationship to the catalpas,
-for it is in good standing in the family with them. The seeds resemble
-very small beans with wings at each end. They are light, and the wind
-disperses them. The tree is a prolific seeder.
-
-The range of this small tree extends across western Texas, New Mexico,
-Arizona, Utah, Nevada, into San Diego county, California. The tree
-occurs in dry, gravelly, porous soil near the banks of streams and in
-depressions in the desert. The wood is weak and soft, the heart brown,
-streaked with yellow. No use has been found for it. The tree is
-cultivated for ornament in Mexico and sometimes in the southern states.
-The flowers look well when they are encountered in the desert. They are
-white, faintly tinged with purple, with bright yellow spots inside. They
-are funnel shaped and have the odor of violets.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CUCUMBER
-
-[Illustration: CUCUMBER]
-
-
-
-
-CUCUMBER
-
-(_Magnolia Acuminata_)
-
-
-This tree is a member of the magnolia family which has ten genera in
-North America, two of them, magnolia and liriodendron, being trees.
-The family has its name from Pierre Magnol, a French botanist who died
-in 1715. The genus magnolia has seven species in the United States,
-all of which are of tree size. They are evergreen magnolia (_Magnolia
-foetida_), sweet magnolia (_Magnolia glauca_), cucumber (_Magnolia
-acuminata_), largeleaf umbrella (_Magnolia macrophylla_), umbrella
-tree (_Magnolia tripetala_), Fraser umbrella (_Magnolia fraseri_), and
-pyramidal magnolia (_Magnolia pyramidata_). The remaining member of the
-magnolia family is the yellow poplar (_Liriodendron tulipifera_). Though
-of the same family it is of a different genus from the seven other
-magnolias.
-
-The cucumber is the hardiest member of the magnolia family. It is found
-in natural growth farther north than any other, yet it has the
-appearance of a southern tree. All magnolias look like trees belonging
-in the South. Their large leaves indicate as much, and some of them do
-not venture far outside of the warm latitudes. It is one of the oldest
-of all the families of broadleaf trees, and it has been a family that
-during an immense period of the earth's history has clung near the old
-homestead where it came into existence countless ages ago. There were
-magnolias growing in the middle Appalachian region, and eastward to the
-present Atlantic coast, so far in the past that the time can be measured
-only by hundreds of thousands of years. Leaf prints in rocks, which were
-once mud flats, tell the story--though but a page here and there--of the
-magnolia's ancient history, doubtless antedating by long periods the
-earliest appearance of man on earth.
-
-Next to the yellow poplar, the cucumber tree is the most important
-species of the magnolia family, at least as a source of lumber. As an
-ornamental tree it may not equal some of the others, particularly
-certain of the southern species which are evergreen and produce large,
-showy flowers.
-
-The cucumber tree receives its name from its fruit, which looks like a
-cucumber when seen at a distance, but it is far from being one. Its
-intense bitter makes it safe from the attacks of birds and beasts. So
-far as known, it is not eaten, tasted, or touched by any living
-creature--except man. Some of the pioneer settlers, in the days when
-there was precious little to eat on the frontiers, discovered a way of
-extracting the bitter from the wild cucumber, and making some sort of a
-pickle of the remainder; but the art seems to have been lost with the
-passing of the pioneers of the Daniel Boone type, and the wild cucumber
-now hangs untouched, and tempts nobody. It is three inches or less in
-length, generally slightly curved, and is green in color until fully
-ripe. Even the flowers which produce the fruit are green, with the
-merest suggestion of yellow. They are so inconspicuous that few persons
-ever notice them, even though cucumber trees stand in door yards. The
-ripe cucumbers are dark red or scarlet, or rather the seeds are, which
-grow on the surface like grains of corn on a cob, though fewer in number
-and farther apart. Something seems to be lacking in the machinery by
-which the flowers are fertilized, with the result that often nearly half
-the seeds which ought to cover the surface of the cucumber, fail to
-materialize. There are many blank spaces representing flowers which the
-pollen missed.
-
-There is likewise something missing in the modus operandi of scattering
-the seeds. They have no wings, and the wind is powerless to carry them.
-They are as bitter as quinine and no bird, squirrel, or mouse will
-plant, carry, or touch them. Nature appears to have forgotten to provide
-any other means for dispersing the seeds of this remarkable tree. When
-seeds are fully ripe, they drop away from the parent fruit--the
-cucumber--but the fall of each seed is arrested by a small thread which
-suspends it from one to three inches below the fruit. There the seeds
-hang, swinging and dangling in the wind. What part the threads play in
-the economy of nature is not apparent, unless their purpose is to expose
-the seeds to a chance of becoming entangled with the wings, feet, or
-feathers of flying birds, whereby they may be carried away and dropped
-in suitable places for growing. There can be no doubt that this happens
-occasionally, and constitutes one of the methods of seed dispersal.
-Others are transported by flowing water.
-
-The chances seem to be greatly against the survival of the cucumber tree
-in competition with maples, birches, pines, and cottonwoods, whose
-winged seeds are wind-borne; or with oaks, hickories, and walnuts whose
-heavy, wingless nuts are planted hither and thither by accommodating
-squirrels which are intent only on providing for their own winter wants,
-but in reality are industrious and effective forest planters.
-Notwithstanding the disadvantages under which the cucumber tree is
-placed, it has managed to hold its ground in the forest during immense
-periods of time, and it seems to be as firmly established now as ever.
-
-The leaves of this tree are from seven to ten inches long, and four to
-six wide. In autumn before they fall they turn a blotched yellow-brown
-color. The first severe frost brings them all down in a heap. At sunset
-the tree may be laden with leaves, and by the next noon all will be on
-the ground. They are so heavy that the wind does not move them far, and
-they drop in heaps beneath the branches. In color they resemble owl
-feathers, and the suggestion that comes to one's mind, who happens to
-pass under a cucumber tree the morning following the first frost, is
-that during the night some prowler picked a roost of owls and scattered
-the feathers on the ground.
-
-The range of cucumber extends from western New York to Alabama,
-following the Appalachian mountains; and westward to Illinois and
-Mississippi, appearing west of the Mississippi river in Arkansas. It
-occurs on low rocky slopes, the banks of mountain streams, and on rich
-bottom land. It is of largest size and is most abundant in the narrow
-valleys in eastern Tennessee and the western parts of the Carolinas. The
-tree is from two to four feet in diameter, and sixty to ninety feet
-high. The trunk is of good form for sawlogs. Among its local names are
-pointed-leaf magnolia, black lin, magnolia, and mountain magnolia.
-
-The wood of cucumber resembles that of yellow poplar in appearance and
-in physical properties, except that it is ten per cent heavier than
-poplar. It usually passes for that wood at sawmill and factory. The
-Federal census credits it with less than a million feet a year as
-lumber. That is much too small. It is valuable and finds ready sale.
-Manufacturers of wooden pumps regard it as the best material for the
-bored logs. It is worked into interior finish for houses, flooring for
-cars, interior parts of furniture, woodenware, boxes and crates, slack
-cooperage, including veneer barrels.
-
-The tree is planted for ornament in the northern states and Europe. The
-chief value lies in its large, green leaves and symmetrical crown. The
-red fruit adds to the tree's attractiveness late in summer.
-
-    LARGELEAF UMBRELLA (_Magnolia macrophylla_) is valuable chiefly as a
-    sort of ornamental curiosity, on account of its enormous leaves and
-    flowers. The leaf is from twenty to thirty inches long and ten to
-    twelve wide. It drops in autumn before its green color has undergone
-    much change. The leaves lack toughness, and the wind whips them into
-    strings long before the summer is ended. Thus what otherwise would
-    be highly ornamental becomes somewhat unsightly. When well protected
-    from wind by surrounding objects, the leaves fare better and last
-    longer. The white, fragrant flowers are likewise remarkable on
-    account of size. They are cup-shaped and some of them are almost a
-    foot across. They pay a penalty no less severe than the leaves pay,
-    on account of large size, and are liable to be thumped and bruised
-    by swinging leaves and branches.
-
-    The largeleaf umbrella is a tree of the southern Appalachian
-    mountains although its range extends southwest to Louisiana, and
-    northward from there to Arkansas. It is at its best in deep rich
-    soil of sheltered valleys, occurring in isolated groups, but never
-    in pure forests. It is known as large-leaved cucumber tree,
-    great-leaved magnolia, large-leaved umbrella tree, and long-leaved
-    magnolia. The fruit is nearly a sphere, from two to three inches in
-    diameter, and bright rose color when fully ripe. The seeds are
-    two-thirds of an inch long. The smooth, light gray bark is usually
-    less than a quarter of an inch thick. Large trees are forty or fifty
-    feet high and twenty inches in diameter. It is not considered
-    valuable for lumber, because of scarcity and small size. The wood is
-    considerably heavier than yellow poplar, and is hard but not strong;
-    light brown in color with thick, light yellow sapwood. Reports do
-    not show that the wood is put to any use. Planted trees are hardy as
-    far north as Massachusetts, and success has attended the tree's
-    introduction in the parks and gardens of southern Europe.
-
-    YELLOW FLOWERED CUCUMBER TREE (_Magnolia acuminata cordata_) is
-    usually considered a variety of the common cucumber tree, rather
-    than a separate species. The most noticeable feature is the yellow
-    blossom which gives the names by which it is generally known, among
-    such being yellow-flowered magnolia, and yellow cucumber tree. It is
-    not a garden variety, for it grows wild; but it has been cultivated
-    during more than a century, and has undergone changes which are not
-    matched by wild trees. The finest forms of the forest variety are
-    found on the Blue Ridge in South Carolina, and in central Alabama.
-    The cultivated tree is distinguished by its darker green leaves, and
-    by its smaller, bright, canary-yellow flowers. The variety has no
-    value as a timber tree, but is widely appreciated as an ornament.
-    Cultivated trees generally remain small in size, and do not develop
-    the long, clean trunks common with the cucumber tree under forest
-    conditions.
-
-    UMBRELLA TREE (_Magnolia tripetala_) is one of the magnolias and
-    should not be confounded with the Asiatic umbrella tree often
-    planted in yards. The flower is surrounded by a whorl of leaves
-    resembling an umbrella, hence the name. It is also known as
-    cucumber, magnolia, and elkwood. The range of the tree extends from
-    Pennsylvania to Alabama and west to Arkansas. It prefers the margins
-    of swamps and the rich soil along mountain streams. Leaves are
-    eighteen inches long and half as wide. They fall in autumn. Flowers
-    are cup-shaped and creamy-white. The fruit somewhat resembles that
-    of the common cucumber tree, but is rose colored when fully ripe.
-    Trees are thirty or forty feet high and a foot or more in diameter.
-    The brown heartwood is light, soft, and weak, and is used little or
-    not at all for commercial purposes. The tree is cultivated for
-    ornament in the northern states and in Europe.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW POPLAR
-
-[Illustration: YELLOW POPLAR]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW POPLAR
-
-(_Liriodendron Tulipifera_)
-
-
-In diameter of trunk the yellow poplar is, next to sycamore, the largest
-hardwood tree of the United States, and if both height and trunk
-diameter are considered, it surpasses the sycamore in size. It belongs
-to a very old group of hardwoods which have come down from remote
-geological ages, and the species is now found only in the United States
-and China. Mature trees are from three to eight feet in diameter and
-from 90 to 180 in height.
-
-It has many names in different parts of its range, but it is never
-mistaken for any other tree. The peculiar notched leaf is a sure means
-of identification. The resemblance of the flower to the tulip has given
-it the name tulip tree in some localities, and botanists prefer that
-name. It is so called in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
-Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
-West Virginia, District of Columbia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
-Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Ontario. Wood
-users in New England and in some of the other northern states prefer the
-name whitewood and it is so known, in part at least, in New England, New
-York, New Jersey, Delaware, South Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan,
-and Illinois. Yellow poplar is the name preferred by lumbermen in nearly
-all regions where the tree is found in commercial quantities, notably in
-New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia,
-North and South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana,
-Illinois, Missouri, and Tennessee. The name is often shortened to
-poplar, which is used in Rhode Island, Delaware, North and South
-Carolina, Florida, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana. The name
-tulip poplar is less frequently heard, and blue poplar and hickory
-poplar are terms used in West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina,
-but generally under the impression that they refer to a different form
-or species. In Rhode Island it is called popple, in New York cucumber
-tree, and canoe wood in Tennessee and in the upper Ohio valley.
-
-The botanical range of yellow poplar is wider than its commercial range;
-that is, a few trees are found in regions surrounding the borders of the
-district where the tree is profitably lumbered. The boundaries of its
-range run from southwestern Vermont, westward to Lake Michigan near
-Grand Haven, southward to northern Florida, and west of the Mississippi
-river in Missouri and Arkansas. The productive yellow poplar timber belt
-has never been that large but has clung pretty closely to the southern
-Appalachian mountain ranges and to certain districts lying both east and
-west of them. The best original stands were in Pennsylvania, Maryland,
-Virginia, West Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Kentucky and
-Tennessee, and in some parts of Ohio and Indiana. However, considerable
-quantities of good yellow poplar have been cut in other regions.
-
-The physical properties of the wood of yellow poplar fit it for many
-purposes but not for all. It is not very strong and is tolerably
-brittle. It is light in weight, medium soft, and is easily worked. The
-annual rings of growth are not prominent compared with some of the oaks,
-yet select logs show nicely in quarter-sawing. The medullary rays are
-numerous, but small and not prominent, for which reason bright streaks
-and flecks are not characteristic of the wood. Yellow poplar is fairly
-stiff and elastic, but is not often selected on account of those
-qualities. In color it is light yellow or brown. The color gives name to
-the tree. The sapwood is whiter, and it is the abnormally thick sapwood
-of some trees which causes them to be called white poplar. The wood has
-little figure, and it is seldom employed for fine work without stain or
-paint of some kind. It is not usually classed as long lasting when
-exposed to the weather, yet cases are known where weather boarding of
-houses, and bridge and mill timbers of yellow poplar have outlasted the
-generation of builders.
-
-The quantity of yellow poplar in the country is but a remnant of the
-former enormous supply that covered the rich valleys and fertile coves
-in a region exceeding 200,000 square miles. It occupied the best land,
-and much was destroyed by farmers in clearing fields. It was not
-generally found in groves or dense stands, but as solitary trees
-scattered through forests of other woods. The trunks are tall and
-shapely, the crowns comparatively small. The form is ideal for sawlogs,
-and very few trees of America produce a higher percentage of clear,
-first class lumber. That is because the forest-grown poplar early sheds
-its lower branches, and the trunks lay on nothing but clear wood. In the
-yellow poplar's region it was the principal wood of which the pioneers
-made their canoes for crossing and navigating rivers. It is still best
-known by the name canoewood in some regions. It worked easily and was
-light, and a thin-shelled canoe lasted many years, barring floods and
-other accidents. Builders of pirogues, keelboats, barges, and other
-vessels for inland navigation in early times when roads were few and
-streams were the principal highways of commerce, found no timber
-superior to yellow poplar. It could be had in planks of great size and
-free from defects, and while not as strong as oak, it was strong enough
-to withstand the usual knocks and buffetings of river traffic.
-
-Yellow poplar sawlogs have probably exceeded in number any other wood,
-except white pine, floated down rivers and creeks to market. The wood
-floats well and lumbermen have usually pushed far up the rivers, ahead
-of other lumber operations, to procure it. Enormous drives have gone and
-are still going out of rivers in the Appalachian region.
-
-The uses of yellow poplar are so many that an enumeration is
-impracticable, except by general classes. These are boxes and
-woodenware, vehicles, furniture, interior finish, and car building.
-There is another class consisting of low-grade work, such as common
-lumber, pulpwood, and the like.
-
-There is a class of commodities which are usually packed in boxes and
-require a wood that will impart neither taste nor stain. That
-requirement is met by yellow poplar. It has been an important wood for
-boxes in which food products are shipped. It is so used less frequently
-now than formerly because of increased cost, but veneer is employed to a
-large extent, and while the total quantity of wood going into box
-factories is smaller than formerly, the actual number and contents of
-poplar boxes are perhaps about the same. It is a white wood and shows
-printing and stenciling clearly. That is an important point with many
-manufacturers who wish to print their advertisements on the boxes which
-they send out. Woodenware, particularly ironing boards, bread boards,
-and pantry and kitchen utensils, are largely made of poplar because it
-is light, attractive, and easily kept clean. It is popular as pumplogs
-for the same reason.
-
-As a vehicle wood, yellow poplar is not a competitor of oak and hickory.
-They are for running gear and frames; poplar for tops and bodies. No
-wood excels it for wide panels. It receives finish and paint so well
-that it is not surpassed by the smoothest metals. Many of the finest
-carriage and automobile tops are largely of this wood. In case of slight
-accidents it resists dints much better than sheet metal.
-
-Cheap furniture was once made of yellow poplar. It now enters into the
-best kinds, and is finished in imitation of costly woods, notably
-mahogany, birch, and cherry. No American wood will take a higher polish.
-It is also much employed as an interior wood by furniture manufacturers.
-It fills an important place as cores or backing over which veneers are
-glued.
-
-When used as an interior house finish and in car building, it is nearly
-always stained or painted. Many of the broad handsome panels in
-passenger cars, which pass for cherry, birch, mahogany, or rosewood, are
-yellow poplar, to which the finisher and decorator have given their best
-touches.
-
-All poplar lumber is not wide, clear stock, though much of it is. The
-lower grades go as common lumber and small trees are cut for pulpwood. A
-large part of the demand for high-grade yellow poplar is in foreign
-countries, and a regular oversea trade is carried on by exporters.
-Foreign manufacturers put the wood to practically the same uses as the
-best grades in this country.
-
-Yellow poplar seasons well, and is a satisfactory wood to handle. When
-thoroughly dry it holds its shape with the best of woods. Bluing is apt
-to affect the green wood if unduly exposed. Fresh poplar chips in damp
-situations sometimes change to a conspicuous blue color within a day or
-two. However, millmen do not experience much difficulty in preventing
-the bluing of the lumber.
-
-GYMINDA (_Gyminda grisebachii_) is also called false boxwood, and
-belongs to the staff family. The name gyminda is artificial and
-meaningless. The genus has a single species which occurs in the islands
-of southern Florida where trees of largest size are scarcely twenty-five
-feet high and six inches in diameter. The wood is very heavy, hard,
-fine-grained, and is nearly black. It is suitable for small articles,
-but it is not known to be so used, and its scarcity renders improbable
-any important future use of the wood. The fruit is a small berry,
-ripening in November. The range of the species extends to Cuba, Porto
-Rico, and other islands of the West Indies.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-EVERGREEN MAGNOLIA
-
-[Illustration: EVERGREEN MAGNOLIA]
-
-
-
-
-EVERGREEN MAGNOLIA
-
-(_Magnolia Foetida_)
-
-
-This is not a timber tree of first importance. A few years ago it was
-seldom cut except in very small quantities; but it was found to possess
-good qualities, and now it goes regularly to the mills which saw
-hardwoods in the region where it grows. The wood of different magnolia
-trees, or even the wood of the same tree, shows lack of uniformity. Some
-of it looks like yellow poplar and compares favorably with it in several
-particulars, while other of it is very dark, with hard flinty streaks
-which not only present a poor appearance, but dull the tools of the
-woodworking machines and create an unfavorable impression of the wood
-generally. This magnolia holds pretty closely to the damp lands in all
-parts of its range. The amount of the annual cut is not known, because
-it goes in with the minor species in most places and no separate account
-is taken. It is coming into more notice every year, and some
-manufacturers have been so successful in finding ways to make it
-serviceable that the best grades are easily sold. The wood does not hold
-its color very well. The light-colored sapwood is apt to become darker
-after exposure to the air, and the dark heartwood fades a little. The
-tree is so handsome in the forest that it is occasionally spared when
-the surrounding trees are removed.
-
-It is doubtful if any American tree surpasses it as an ornament when its
-leaves, trunk, flowers, and bark are considered. It is not perfect in
-all of these particulars; in fact, it possesses some serious faults. The
-crown is often too small for the tree's height; the branches straggle,
-many on some parts of the trunk and few on others; the flowers are
-objectionable because of strong odor which is unpleasant to most people.
-But these shortcomings are more than compensated for by splendid
-qualities. The rich, dark green of the leaves, their size and profusion,
-their changeless luster, place them in a position almost beyond the
-reach of rivalry from any other tree.
-
-Those who see this splendid inhabitant of the forest only where it has
-been planted in northern states, and elsewhere outside of its natural
-range, miss much of the best it has to give. It belongs in the South.
-The wet lands, the small elevations in deep swamps, the flat country
-where forests are dense, are its home. The yellowish-green trunk rises
-through the tangled foliage that keeps near the ground, and towers fifty
-feet above, and there spreads in a crown of green so deep that it is
-almost black. It likes company, and seldom grows solitary. Its
-associates are the southern maples, red gum, tupelo, cypress, a dozen
-species of oak, and occasionally pines on nearby higher ground.
-Festoons of grayish-green Spanish moss often add to the tropical
-character of the scene. The moss seldom hangs on the magnolia, but is
-frequently abundant on surrounding trees.
-
-Lumbermen formerly left the evergreen magnolia trees on tracts from
-which they cut nearly everything else. Large areas which had once been
-regarded as swamps were thus converted into parks of giant magnolias,
-many of which towered seventy or eighty feet. The tracts were left wild,
-and those who so left them had no purpose of providing ornament, but
-they did so. Many a scene was made grand by its magnolias, after other
-forest growth had been cut away.
-
-The range of evergreen magnolia is from North Carolina to Florida and
-west to Arkansas and Texas. The species reaches largest size in the
-vicinity of the Mississippi, both east and west of it. Trees eighty feet
-high and four feet in diameter occur, and trunks are often without limbs
-one-half or two-thirds their length, when they grow in forests.
-
-The common name for the tree in most parts of its range is simply
-magnolia, though that name fails to distinguish it from several other
-species, some of which are associated with it. Occasionally it is called
-big laurel, great laurel magnolia, laurel-leaved magnolia, laurel, and
-laurel bay. Bull bay is a common name for it in Georgia, Alabama, and
-Mississippi. It is called bat tree, but the reason for such a name is
-not known.
-
-Leaves are from five to eight inches long and two or three wide, and
-dark green above, but lighter below. They fall in the spring after
-remaining on the branches two whole years.
-
-The odor of the flowers is unpleasant, but they are attractive to the
-sight, being six or eight inches across, with purple bases. The
-flowering habit of this tree is all that could be desired. It is in
-bloom from April till August.
-
-The fruit resembles that of the other magnolias and is three or four
-inches long and two or less wide. Its color is rusty-brown. The ripe
-seeds hang awhile by short threads, according to the habit of the
-family. The wood is stronger than poplar, fully as stiff, and nearly
-fifty per cent heavier. The annual rings are rather vaguely marked by
-narrow bands of summerwood. Pores are diffuse, plentiful, and very
-small. Medullary rays are larger than those of yellow poplar, and show
-fairly well in quarter-sawed stock. The wood is compact and easily
-worked, except when hard streaks are encountered. The surface finishes
-with a satiny luster; color creamy-white, yellowish-white, or often
-light brown. Occasionally the wood is nearly diametrically the opposite
-of this, and is of all darker shades up to purple, black, and blue
-black. The appearance of the dark wood suggests decay, but those who
-pass it through machines, or work it by hand, consider it as sound as
-the lighter colored wood.
-
-The uses of magnolia are much the same in all parts of its range, and
-those of Louisiana, where the utilization of the wood has been studied
-more closely than in other regions, indicate the scope of its
-usefulness. It is there made into parts of boats, bar fixtures, boxes,
-broom handles, brush backs, crates, door panels, dugout canoes,
-excelsior, furniture shelving, interior finish, ox yokes, panels, and
-wagon boxes. In Texas where the annual consumption probably exceeds a
-million feet, it is employed by furniture makers, and appears in window
-blinds, packing boxes, sash, and molding. In Mississippi, fine mantels
-are made of carefully selected wood, quarter-sawed to bring out the
-small, square "mirrors" produced by radial cutting of the medullary
-rays.
-
-Evergreen magnolia has long been planted for ornament in this country
-and Europe. It survives the winters at Philadelphia. Several varieties
-have been developed by cultivation and are sold by nurseries.
-
-Southern forests have contributed, and still contribute, large
-quantities of magnolia leaves for decorations in northern cities during
-winter. The flowers are not successfully shipped because they are easily
-bruised, and they quickly lose their freshness and beauty.
-
-    SWEET MAGNOLIA (_Magnolia glauca_) ranges from Massachusetts to
-    Texas and south to Florida. It reaches its largest size on the
-    hummock lands of the latter state. Trees are occasionally seventy
-    feet high and three or more in diameter, but in many parts of its
-    range it is small, even shrubby. Among the names by which it is
-    known are white bay, swamp laurel, swamp sassafras, swamp magnolia,
-    white laurel, and beaver-tree. It inhabits swamps in the northern
-    part of its range, hence the frequency of the word "swamp" in
-    coining names for it. Beaver-tree as a name is probably due to its
-    former abundance about beaver dams, where impounded water made the
-    ground swampy. In the North, sweet magnolia's chief value is in its
-    flowers, which are two or three inches across, creamy-white, and
-    fragrant. They were formerly very abundant near the mouth of the
-    Susquehanna river in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and northward
-    through New Jersey; but the traffic in the flowers has destroyed the
-    growth in many places where once plentiful. It is not important as a
-    timber resource, but it is employed for a number of useful purposes
-    where logs of fair size may be had. The sapwood is creamy-white, but
-    the heart is nearly as dark as mahogany, and in Texas it is used to
-    imitate that wood. The brown and other shades combine with fine
-    effect. One of its common uses is for broom handles. Heartwood is
-    worked into high-grade chairs. It takes a beautiful polish.
-
-    FRASER UMBRELLA (_Magnolia fraseri_) ranges south from the Virginia
-    mountains to Florida and west to Mississippi. It is of largest size
-    in South Carolina where trees are sometimes thirty feet high and a
-    foot or more in diameter. The leaves fall in autumn of the first
-    year; the creamy-white, sweetly-scented flowers are eight or ten
-    inches in diameter, and the fruit resembles that of the other
-    magnolias. The wood is weak, soft, and light. The heart is clear
-    brown, the sapwood nearly white. It has not been reported in use for
-    any commercial purpose. Among its other names it is known as
-    long-leaved cucumber tree, ear-leaved umbrella tree, Indian bitters,
-    water lily tree, and mountain magnolia. In cultivation this species
-    is hardy as far north as Massachusetts, and it is planted for
-    ornament in Europe.
-
-    PYRAMID MAGNOLIA (_Magnolia pyramidata_) seems to have generally
-    escaped the notice of laymen, and it therefore has no English name
-    except the translation of the Latin term by which botanists know it.
-    Its habitat lies in southern Georgia and Alabama, and western
-    Florida, and it is occasionally seen in cultivation in western
-    Europe. It is a slender tree, twenty feet or more in height. Its
-    flowers are three or four inches in diameter, and creamy-white in
-    color. A tree so scarce cannot be expected to be commercially
-    important.
-
-    WESTERN BLACK WILLOW (_Salix lasiandra_) is a rather large tree when
-    at its best, reaching a diameter of two feet or more, and a height
-    of fifty, but in other parts of its range it rarely exceeds ten feet
-    in height. It follows the western mountain ranges southward from
-    British Columbia into California. The wood is soft, light, and
-    brittle, and is used little if at all. Lyall willow (_Salix
-    lasiandra lyalli_) is a well marked variety of this species and is a
-    tree of respectable size.
-
-    GLOSSYLEAF WILLOW (_Salix lucida_) is a far northern species which
-    has its southern limit in Pennsylvania and Nebraska. It grows nearly
-    to the Arctic circle. Trees twenty-five feet high and six or eight
-    inches in diameter are the best this species affords.
-
-    LONGLEAF WILLOW (_Salix fluviatilis_) is known also as sandbar
-    willow, narrowleaf willow, shrub, white, red, and osier willow, and
-    by still other names. It ranges from the Arctic circle to Mexico,
-    reaching Maryland on the Atlantic coast, and California on the
-    Pacific. In rare cases it is sixty feet high, and two in diameter,
-    but it is usually less than twenty feet high.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WAHOO
-
-[Illustration: WAHOO]
-
-
-
-
-WAHOO
-
-(_Evonymus Atropurpureus_)
-
-
-No one seems to know what the original meaning of the word wahoo was. It
-is applied to no fewer than six different trees in this country, four of
-them elms, one a basswood, and one the tree now under consideration. The
-generic name, _Evonymus_, appears to be an effort to put somebody's seal
-of approval on the name, for it means in the Greek language "of good
-name."
-
-It belongs to the family _Celastraceae_, which means the staff family.
-Some designate members of this group as "Spindle trees," because
-formerly in Europe the wood was employed for knitting needles, hooks for
-embroidering, spindles for spinning wheels, and the like. Unless the
-members of the family in Europe have wood quite different from that of
-the wahoo tree in this country, no adequate reason can be found for the
-use of the wood for spindles or staffs, because it is poor material for
-that purpose. It may be compared with basswood.
-
-This beautiful little tree, scarcely more than a shrub in most regions
-of its growth, is a widely distributed species, its range extending
-through western New York to Nebraska, southeastern South Dakota and
-eastern Kansas, and in the valley of the upper Missouri river, Montana,
-southward to northern Florida, southern Arkansas and Oklahoma. In these
-localities it is generally a shrub, rarely reaching a height of more
-than nine or ten feet. It attains the proportions of a tree only in the
-bottom lands of southern Arkansas, Oklahoma, and in the lower
-Appalachian regions. The most favorable habitat of the tree is moist
-soil along the banks of streams. In the southern and western parts of
-its range, under favorable conditions of soil and climate, and when
-isolated from other species, the wahoo tree grows to rather large size
-and develops a wide flat top of slender spreading branches.
-
-The largest and most beautiful specimens of wahoo grow in the
-mountainous regions of West Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and western
-North Carolina. In these sections it is no unusual thing for a tree of
-this species to attain a height of sixty or seventy feet and a diameter
-of twenty or twenty-four inches. It is never found in pure stands but is
-isolated along the edge of the forest, and thrives best near water
-courses.
-
-The tree is known by a variety of names in the different parts of the
-country. The Indians are said to have called it wahoo. Burning bush, a
-very popular name, is especially appropriate, as no brighter dash of
-color is displayed by any tree than the scarlet fruit of this growth,
-which remains on the branches long after the leaves have fallen, often
-until the winter storms beat it to the ground. The growth is also
-called occasionally by the name bleeding-heart tree, in reference to the
-blood-red contents revealed by the bursting fruit.
-
-The wahoo in the fall of the year may be identified by the flaming color
-of its fruit, or rather the seeds of the fruit. The hull bursts and
-exposes the bright red seeds within. These, contrary to the usual run of
-red fruits, are not of a glossy surface, and in this the tree is unique.
-During the summer season, however, identification is not such a simple
-matter, for the foliage is quite ordinary, and the flat, unassuming
-flowers have little that is distinctive about them; but as the autumn
-approaches and the leaves turn a pale yellow color, the tree becomes a
-conspicuous and beautiful object with its scarlet berries.
-
-The bark of the wahoo is ashen gray, thin, furrowed, and divided into
-minute scales. On the branchlets it is a dark purplish-brown, later
-becoming brownish-gray.
-
-The heartwood of wahoo is white, with a slight tinge of orange. The
-sapwood, scarcely distinguishable from the heartwood, is more nearly
-white in tone. The wood is heavy and close-grained but not very hard. It
-weighs when seasoned a little less than forty pounds to the cubic foot.
-Such of this wood as is sawed into lumber, which is but a small
-quantity, sells commercially with poplar saps, thus masquerading like
-its forest fellow, the cucumber tree. The character of the wood is such
-that it will not stand exposure to the weather any length of time. It is
-far from durable, but is remarkably clear from defects and answers
-admirably many purposes for which sap poplar is desirable.
-
-The leaves of the tree are waxy in appearance, opposite, entire,
-elliptical or ovate in shape, from two to four inches long, one to two
-broad. They are finely serrate and pointed at both apex and base, and
-the stems are short and stout.
-
-The flowers, which appear in May and June, are definitely four-parted,
-presenting a Maltese cross in shape. They are half an inch across, and
-their rounded petals are deep purple in color. The fruit which succeeds
-these flowers and which ripens in October is also four-parted. It is
-about half an inch across, a pale purple when full size, and hangs on
-long slender stems. When ripe the purple husk bursts and reveals the
-seed enveloped in a scarlet outer coat that fits it loosely. The leaves,
-bark, and fruit of the wahoo are acrid and are reputed to be poisonous.
-
-The wood is one-third heavier than that of yellow poplar, and it is
-evident that it would not pass as poplar with any one disposed to reject
-it. It is also much harder than poplar, and is more difficult to season,
-as it checks badly. The medullary rays are so thin as to be scarcely
-discernible. The wood contains many very small pores. The bark is said
-to possess some value for medicinal purposes. No special uses for the
-wood have been reported, and it is too scarce to be of much value. The
-tree's principal importance is as an ornament, and it shows well in
-winter borders where the bright colors of the seeds are exposed. It is
-planted both in this country and in Europe. The plantings seldom or
-never reach tree size.
-
-FLORIDA BOXWOOD (_Schaefferia frutescens_) is of the same family as wahoo
-but of another genus, and is quite a different kind of tree. The generic
-name is in honor of Jakob Christian Schaeffer, a distinguished German
-naturalist who died in 1790. Two species of this tree occur in the
-United States, one the Florida boxwood, the other a small, shrubby
-growth in the dry regions of western Texas and northern Mexico. Florida
-boxwood is a West Indies tree which flourishes in the Bahamas and
-southward along the other islands to Venezuela. It has gained a foothold
-on the islands of southern Florida where it has found conditions
-favorable and it grows to a height of thirty or forty feet, and reaches
-a trunk diameter of ten inches, but such are trees of the largest size.
-The leaves are bright yellow-green, about two inches long, and one or
-less in width. They appear in Florida in April and persist a full year,
-until the foliage of the succeeding crop displaces them. The flowers
-which are small and inconspicuous, open about the same time as the
-leaves. The fruit is a scarlet berry which ripens in November, and has a
-decidedly disagreeable flavor. The bark is very thin.
-
-When sound wood in sufficiently large pieces is obtainable it is
-valuable for a number of purposes, but chiefly as a substitute for
-Turkish boxwood as engraving blocks. The trees are always small in
-Florida, which is the only place in the United States where they occur,
-and the largest are often hollow or otherwise defective. The wood weighs
-48.27 pounds per cubic foot, thoroughly dry, which is about two pounds
-heavier than white oak. It is rich in ashes, having about four times as
-much as white oak. The color of the heartwood is a bright, clear yellow
-to which is due the name yellow-wood occasionally applied to the tree in
-the region where it grows, as well as in markets where it is sold. This
-is not the tree known in commerce as West Indies boxwood, though it may
-be an occasional substitute. It is said that Florida boxwood was
-formerly much more abundant in this country than it is now. It was
-lumbered for the European market at about the same time that the south
-of Florida was stripped of its mahogany. It is suitable for many small
-articles where a hard, even-grained wood is wanted.
-
-IRONWOOD (_Cyrilla racemiflora_) ranges from the coast region of North
-Carolina to Florida, and west near the coast to Texas. It is known as
-leatherwood, burnwood, burnwood bark, firewood, red titi, and white
-titi. Ten woods besides this are called ironwood in some parts of this
-country. The name is applied because the hardness of the wood suggests
-iron. It is not remarkable for its weight nor its strength. The
-medullary rays are thin and inconspicuous. In color it is brown, tinged
-with red. It is not apparent why it is a favorite fire wood, for its
-fuel value does not rate high theoretically, being much below many
-species with which it is associated. The largest trees rarely exceed a
-height of thirty feet and a diameter of twelve inches. They flourish in
-shady river bottoms and along the borders of sandy swamps and shallow
-ponds.
-
-The tree occasionally assumes the form of a bush and sends up many stems
-which produce almost impenetrable thickets. Aside from its use as fuel,
-it is in small demand anywhere. In Texas it is sometimes made into
-wedges, and similar uses for it are doubtless found in other regions
-where it is abundant. It is named from Domenico Cirillo, an Italian
-naturalist who died in 1799.
-
-TITI (_Cliftonia monophylla_) is of the _cyrilla_ family and is one of
-three species which occasionally pass under that name. It sometimes
-reaches a height of fifty feet and a diameter of one or more. Its range
-follows the coast region from South Carolina to Louisiana. It betakes
-itself to swamps and flourishes in situations that would be fatal to
-many species. Half under water during many months of the year it is
-placed at no disadvantage. It grows equally well in shallow swamps which
-are rarely overflowed. Near the southern limits of its range in Florida
-it is reduced to a shrub. It is known as ironwood and buckwheat tree.
-The last name is due to its seeds which are about the size of a
-buckwheat grain and otherwise resemble it. The flowers appear in early
-spring on long racemes, and are very fragrant. The wood weighs about
-thirty-nine pounds per cubic foot, is not strong, but is moderately
-hard. It is valuable as fuel and burns with a clear, bright flame.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MOUNTAIN LAUREL
-
-[Illustration: MOUNTAIN LAUREL]
-
-
-
-
-MOUNTAIN LAUREL
-
-(_Kalmia Latifolia_)
-
-
-This tree belongs to the heath family and not to the laurels, as the
-name seems to imply. The same is true of rhododendron. The kalmia genus
-has five or six species in this country, but only one of tree size, and
-then only when at its best. Mountain laurel reaches its best development
-in North and South Carolina in a few secluded valleys between the Blue
-Ridge and the western mountains of the Appalachian ranges. The largest
-specimens are forty or fifty feet high and a foot or a foot and a half
-in diameter. Trunks are contorted and unshapely, and lumber is never
-sawed from them.
-
-The tree has many names, most of them, however, are applied to the
-species in its shrubby form. A common name is simply laurel, but that
-does not distinguish it from the great laurel which is often associated
-with it. Calico bush is one of its names, and is supposed to be
-descriptive of the flowers. Spoonwood is one of its northern names,
-dating back to the times when early settlers, who carried little
-silverware with them to their frontier homes, augmented the supply by
-making spoons and ladles of laurel roots. Ivy is a common name,
-sometimes mountain ivy, or poison ivy. Poison laurel and sheep laurel
-are among the names also. The leaves are poisonous, and if sheep feed on
-them, death is apt to follow. The exact nature of the poison is not
-understood. Sheep seldom feed on the leaves, and do so only when driven
-by hunger. Other names are small laurel, wood laurel, and kalmia. The
-last is the name of the genus, and is in honor of Peter Kalm, a Swedish
-naturalist.
-
-The species is found from New Brunswick to Louisiana, but principally
-among the ranges of the Appalachian mountains. Its thin bark makes it an
-easy prey to fire and the top is killed by a moderate blaze. The root
-generally remains uninjured and sends up sprouts in large numbers.
-Thickets almost impenetrable are sometimes produced in that way.
-
-Flowers and foliage of mountain laurel are highly esteemed as
-decorations, foliage in winter, and the flowers in May and June. The
-bloom appears in large clusters, and various colors are in evidence,
-white, rose, pink, and numerous combinations. The seeds are ripe in
-September, and the pods which bear them burst soon after.
-
-The wood of mountain laurel weighs 44.62 pounds per cubic foot. It is
-hard, strong, rather brittle, of slow growth, brown in color, tinged
-with red, with lighter colored sapwood. This description applies to the
-wood of the trunk; but in nearly all cases where mention is made of the
-wood of this tree, it refers to the roots. These consist of enlargements
-or stools, often protruding considerably above the ground. If the area
-has been visited repeatedly by fire, the roots are generally out of
-proportion to the size of the tops. In that respect they resemble
-mesquite, except that the enlarged root of mesquite penetrates far
-beneath the surface while that of mountain laurel remains just below the
-surface or rises partly above it.
-
-The utilization of mountain laurel is not confined to the trunks which
-reach tree size. Generally it is the root that is wanted. Roots are
-usually sold by weight, because of the difficulty of measuring them as
-lumber or even by the cord. The annual product of this material in North
-Carolina alone amounts to about 85,000 pounds, all of which goes to
-manufacturers of tobacco pipes and cigar holders. The use of the laurel
-root for pipes is as old as its use for spoons. Pioneers who raised and
-cured their own tobacco smoked it in pipes which were their own
-handiwork. The laurel root was selected then as now because it carves
-easily, is not inclined to split, does not burn readily, and darkens in
-color with age. It is cheap material, is found throughout an extensive
-region, and the supply is so large that exhaustion in the near future is
-not anticipated.
-
-The wood is employed in the manufacture of many small articles other
-than tobacco pipes. Paper knives, small rulers, turned boxes for pins
-and buttons, trays, plaques, penholders, handles for buckets, dippers,
-and firewood, are among the uses for which laurel is found suitable.
-
-It is of no small importance for ornamental purposes, and is often seen
-growing in clumps and borders in public parks and private yards, where
-its evergreen foliage and its bloom make it a valuable shrub. It is
-planted in Europe as well as in this country.
-
-GREAT LAUREL (_Rhododendron maximum_) is also in the heath family. More
-than two hundred species of _rhododendron_ are known, and seventeen are
-in this country, but only one attains tree size. The generic name means
-"rose tree," and the name is well selected. The flowers are the most
-conspicuous feature belonging to this species, and few wild trees or
-shrubs equal it for beauty. It is not native much west of the Alleghany
-mountains, but grows north and east to Nova Scotia. It is at its best
-among the mountains, thrives in deep ravines where the shade is dense,
-and on steep slopes and stony mountain tops. It forms extensive thickets
-which are often so deep and tangled that it is difficult to pass through
-them. This laurel is seldom found growing on limestone. It reaches its
-largest size in the South. Trees thirty or forty feet high and a foot in
-diameter occur in favored localities. It grows on the Alleghany
-mountains in West Virginia at an elevation exceeding 4,000 feet and
-there forms vast thickets. Some use is made of the wood for engraving
-blocks and as tool handles. It is hard, strong, brittle, of slow growth,
-and light clear brown. It is frequently planted in parks in this country
-and Europe, and three or more varieties are distinguished in
-cultivation. This laurel's leaves have a peculiar habit of shrinking and
-rolling up when the thermometer falls to zero or near it. Among the
-names applied to it are great laurel, rose bay, dwarf rose bay tree,
-wild rose bay, bigleaf laurel, deer tongue, laurel, spoon hutch, and
-rhododendron.
-
-CATAWBA RHODODENDRON (_Rhododendron catawbiense_) is a rare,
-large-flowered species of the mountain regions from West Virginia
-southward to Georgia and Alabama. The wood is not put to use, and the
-species is chiefly valuable as an ornamental shrub. It seldom reaches
-large size.
-
-SOURWOOD (_Oxydendrum arboreum_) follows the Alleghany mountain ranges
-south from Pennsylvania, and extends into Florida, reaching the Atlantic
-coast in Virginia, and Indiana, Tennessee, and Louisiana westward. The
-best development of the species is found among the western slopes of the
-Big Smoky mountains in Tennessee. It is called sorrel-tree, sour gum,
-and sour gum bush, on account of the acidity of the leaves when chewed.
-Arrow-wood, another name, refers to the long, straight stems between the
-whorls of branches of young trees--those three or four feet high. The
-stems are of proper size for arrows, and amateur bowmen use them. Those
-who designate the tree as lily-of-the-valley have in mind the flowers.
-The shape suggests an opening lily, but the size does not. The flower is
-about one-third of an inch long, but panicles several inches long are
-covered with them. They open in July and August, and in September the
-fruit is ripe. The seed is pale brown and one-eighth of an inch long.
-
-The sourwood tree at its best is fifty or sixty feet high and from
-twelve to eighteen inches in diameter. The bark of young trees is
-smooth, but on mature trunks it resembles the exceedingly rough bark of
-an old black gum. In fact, many people suppose this tree to be black
-gum, never having noticed the difference of leaf, fruit, and flower. The
-genus consists of a single species. The wood is heavy, hard, compact,
-and it takes good polish. The medullary rays are numerous, but thin, and
-they contribute little or nothing to the figure of the wood. The annual
-rings show little difference between springwood and summerwood, and
-consequently produce poor figure when the lumber is sawed tangentially.
-The pores are many and small and are regularly distributed through the
-yearly ring. Heartwood is brown, tinged with red, the sapwood lighter.
-The strength and elasticity of sourwood are moderate. The wood is made
-into sled runners in some of the mountain districts where it occurs, but
-no particular qualities fit it for that use. It is occasionally employed
-for machinery bearings. It has been reported for mallets and mauls, but
-since it is not very well suited for those articles, the conclusion is
-that those who so report it have confused it with black gum which it
-resembles in the living tree, but not much in the wood. Small handles
-are made of it, and it gives good service, provided great strength and
-stiffness are not required. Sourwood is not abundant anywhere, and
-seldom are more than a few trees found in a group.
-
-    TREE HUCKLEBERRY (_Vaccinium arboreum_) is the only tree form of
-    twenty-five or thirty species of huckleberry in this country. The
-    cranberry is one of the best known species. The range of tree
-    huckleberry extends from North Carolina to Texas, and it reaches its
-    largest size in the latter state where trunks thirty feet high and
-    ten inches in diameter occur, but not in great abundance. The fruit
-    which this tree bears has some resemblance to the common
-    huckleberry, but is inferior in flavor, besides being dry and
-    granular. It ripens in October and remains on the branches most of
-    the winter. The fruit is about a quarter of an inch in diameter,
-    dark and lustrous, and is a conspicuous and tempting bait for
-    feathered inhabitants of swamp and forest. The bark of the roots is
-    sometimes used for medicine, and that from the trunk for tanning,
-    but it is too scarce to become important in the leather industry.
-    The tree is known in different parts of its range as farkleberry,
-    sparkleberry, myrtle berry, bluet, and in North Carolina it is known
-    as gooseberry. The wood is hard, heavy, and very compact; is liable
-    to warp, twist, and check in drying; polishes with a fine, satiny
-    finish. Medullary rays are numerous, broad, and conspicuous; wood
-    light brown, tinged with red. Small articles are turned from it.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-OSAGE ORANGE
-
-[Illustration: OSAGE ORANGE]
-
-
-
-
-OSAGE ORANGE
-
-(_Toxylon Pomiferum_)
-
-
-Osage orange belongs to the mulberry family. There are fifty-four
-genera, three of which are found in the United States, the mulberries,
-the Osage orange, and the figs. Osage orange is known by several names,
-the principal one of which refers to the Osage Indians, who formerly
-lived in the region where the tree grows. It is called orange because
-the fruit, which is from two to five inches in diameter, looks like a
-green orange, but it is unfit for food. In its range most people call it
-bodark or bodock, that being a corruption of the name by which the
-French designated it, bois d'arc, which means bow wood. It was so called
-from the fact that Indians made bows of it when they could get nothing
-better. Its value as material for bows seems to be traditional and
-greatly overestimated. It is lower in elasticity than white oak and very
-much lower than hickory, and, theoretically, at least, it is not well
-suited for bows. The wood is known also as mock orange, bow-wood, Osage
-apple tree, yellow-wood, hedge, and hedge tree. The last name is given
-because many hedges have been made of it.
-
-Osage orange has been planted in perhaps every state of the Union, and
-grows successfully in most of them. It is one of the most widely
-distributed of American forest trees, but its distribution has been
-chiefly artificial. It was found originally in a very restricted region,
-from which it was carried for hedge and ornamental planting far and
-wide. Its natural home, to which it was confined when first discovered,
-embraced little more than ten thousand square miles, and probably half
-of that small area produced no trees of commercial size. Its northern
-limit was near Atoka, Oklahoma, its southern a little south of Dallas,
-Texas; a range north and south of approximately one hundred miles. Its
-broadest extent east and west was along Red River, through Cooke,
-Grayson, Fanning, Lamar, and Red River counties, Texas, about 120 miles.
-Some Osage orange of commercial size grew outside the area thus
-delimited, but no large amount. Much of that region, particularly south
-of Red River, was prairie, without timber of any kind; but scattered
-here and there were belts, strips, thickets, and clumps of Osage orange
-mixed with other species. On the very best of its range, and before
-disturbed by white men, this wood seldom formed pure stands of as much
-as 100 acres in one body, and since the country's settlement, the stands
-have become smaller or have been entirely cleared to make farms. All
-accounts agree that the Osage orange reaches its highest development on
-the fertile lands along Boggy and Blue rivers in Oklahoma, though fine
-bodies of it once grew south of the Red River in Texas, and much is
-still cut there though the choicest long ago disappeared. Few trees are
-less exacting in soil, yet when it can make choice it chooses the best.
-In its natural habitat it holds its place in the black, fertile flats
-and valleys, and is seldom found on sandy soil. It is not a swamp tree,
-though it is uninjured by occasional floods. The tracts where it grows
-are sometimes called "bodark swamps," though marshy in wet weather only.
-
-The tree attains a height of fifty or sixty feet when at its best, but
-specimens that tall are unusual. Trunks are occasionally two or three
-feet in diameter, but that size is very rare. At the present time
-probably ten trees under a foot in diameter are cut for every one over
-that size.
-
-Rough and unshapely as Osage trees are, they have been more closely
-utilized than most timbers. Fence posts are the largest item. The board
-measure equivalent of the annual cut of posts has been placed at
-18,400,000. The posts are shipped to surrounding states, in addition to
-fencing nearly 40,000 square miles of northern Texas and southern
-Oklahoma. Houseblocks constitute another important use. These are short
-posts set under the corners of buildings in place of stone foundations.
-The annual demand for this kind of material amounts to about 1,000,000
-board feet. An equal amount goes into bridge piling. The principal
-demand comes from highway commissioners. Telephone poles take a
-considerable quantity, and insulator pins more.
-
-One of the most important uses of Osage orange is found in the
-manufacture of wagon wheels, though the total quantity so used is
-smaller than that demanded for fence posts.
-
-About 10,000 or 12,000 wagons with Osage orange felloes or rims are
-manufactured annually in the United States. That use of the wood is not
-new. It began in a small way soon after the settlement of the region. At
-first the work was hand-done by local blacksmiths and wheelwrights. They
-found the wood objectionable, from the workman's standpoint, on account
-of its extreme hardness and the difficulty of cutting it. That objection
-is still urged against it though machines have taken the place of the
-hand tools of former times. Saws and bits are quickly dulled, and the
-cost of grinding, repair, and replacement increases the operator's
-expense much above ordinary mill outlay for such purposes. On that
-account many prefer to work the wood green. It is then softer, and cuts
-more smoothly. If seasoned before it is passed through the machines it
-is liable to "pull." That term is used to indicate a rough-breaking of
-the fibres by the impact of knives. The readiness with which the wood
-splits calls for extraordinary care in boring it, and many felloes are
-spoiled in finishing them to receive the tenoned ends of spokes.
-
-A number of commodities are made of Osage orange but in quantities so
-small that the total wood used does not constitute a serious drain upon
-the supply. Police clubs are occasionally made as a by-product of the
-rim mill. Some years ago at the Texas state fair at Dallas, a piano was
-exhibited, all visible wood being Osage orange, handsomely polished. The
-rich color of this wood distinguishes it from all other American
-species. When oiled it retains the yellow color, but unoiled wood fades
-on long exposure. Clock cases of Osage have been manufactured locally,
-and gun stocks made of it are much admired, though the wood's weight is
-an argument against it for gun stocks. Canes split from straight-grained
-blocks, and shaved and polished by hand, are occasionally met with, but
-none manufactured by machinery have been reported. Sawmills in the Osage
-orange region use the wood as rollers for carriages and off-bearing
-tables. Rustic rockers and benches of the wood, with the bark or without
-it, figure to a small extent in local trade. It has been tried
-experimentally for parquetry floors, with satisfactory results. Sections
-of streets have been paved with Osage orange blocks. The wood wears well
-and is nearly proof against decay, but no considerable demand for such
-blocks appears ever to have existed. Railroads which were built through
-the region years ago cut Osage for ties and culvert timber, but no such
-use is now reported. The demand for the wood for tobacco pipes is
-increasing, more than 100,000 blocks for such pipes having been sold
-during a single year.
-
-Osage orange weighs 48.21 pounds per cubic foot. It is twenty-eight per
-cent stronger than white oak, but is not quite as stiff, is very
-brittle, and under heavy impact, will crumble. For that reason, Osage
-wagon felloes will not stand rocky roads. The bark is sometimes used for
-tanning, and the wood for dyeing.
-
-    RED MULBERRY (_Morus rubra_) is frequently spoken of simply as
-    mulberry, and is sometimes called black mulberry. The full grown
-    fruit is red, but turns black or very dark purple when ripe. The
-    berry is composed of a compact and adhering cluster of drupes, each
-    drupe about one thirty-second of an inch long. What seems to be a
-    single berry is really an aggregation of very small fruits, each
-    resembling a tiny cherry. The mulberry is naturally a forest tree,
-    but it is permitted to grow about the margins of fields, and is
-    often planted in door yards for its fruit and its shade. It is
-    looked upon by many as a tame species.
-
-    Two mulberries grow naturally in this country. The red species
-    ranges from Massachusetts west to Kansas, and south to Texas and
-    Florida. Its best growth is found in the lower Ohio valley and the
-    southern foot hills of the Appalachian mountains. The largest trees
-    are seventy feet high and three or four in diameter. If this tree
-    were abundant the wood's place in furniture and finish would be
-    important. The heartwood is dark, of good figure, and fairly strong.
-    It takes a fine polish, and resembles black walnut, though usually
-    of a little lighter shade. Its largest use is as fence posts. It is
-    durable in contact with the soil. The effect when made into
-    furniture, finish, and various kinds of turnery, is pleasing. Farm
-    tools, particularly scythe snaths, are made of it, and it has been
-    reported for slack cooperage and boat building, but such uses are
-    apparently infrequent. The wood is evidently sold under some other
-    name, or without a name, for the total sawmill output in the United
-    States is given in government statistics at only 1,000 feet, which
-    is probably not one per cent of the cut.
-
-    MEXICAN MULBERRY (_Morus celtidifolia_) ranges from southern Texas
-    to Arizona. Trees are seldom more than thirty feet high and one in
-    diameter. The berry is about half an inch long, black, and made up
-    of a hundred or more very small drupes. It is edible, but its taste
-    is insipid. The wood is heavy and is of dark orange or dark brown
-    color. It is suitable for small turnery and other articles, but no
-    reports of uses for it have been found. The tree is occasionally
-    planted for its fruit by Mexicans, but Americans care little for it.
-
-    Two foreign mulberries have been extensively planted in this
-    country, and in some localities they are running wild and are
-    mistaken for native species. One is the white mulberry (_Morus
-    alba_), a native of China; the other is the paper mulberry
-    (_Broussonetia papyrifera_) a different genus, but of the same
-    family. It is a native of Japan, and has been naturalized in some of
-    the southern states. Nine varieties of the white mulberry have been
-    distinguished in cultivation.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PERSIMMON
-
-[Illustration: PERSIMMON]
-
-
-
-
-PERSIMMON
-
-(_Diospyros Virginiana_)
-
-
-Persimmon belongs to the ebony family, and the family has contributed to
-the civilization of the human race since very early times. Some of the
-oldest furniture in existence, that which was found hidden in the ruins
-of ancient Egypt, is ebony, and there is evidence among the old records
-in the land of the Nile that the Egyptians made voyages southward
-through the Red sea and brought back cargoes of ebony from Punt, a
-region in eastern Africa. The name ebony is believed to be derived from
-a Hebrew word, probably brought to Palestine by some of Solomon's
-captains who traded along the south coast of Asia or the east coast of
-Africa about the time of the building of the first temple. The botanical
-name for the genus (_diospyros_) is made up of two words meaning
-"Jupiter's wheat"--supposed to be a reference to the value of persimmons
-as food. The name, however, is not as old as the Hebrew word, nor is the
-Hebrew as old as the references to ebony in the records of Egypt. A
-piece of the old furniture--not less than 4,000 years old--is still in
-existence. It probably matches in age the cedar of Lebanon coffins in
-the oldest Egyptian tombs.
-
-The ebony family consists of five genera, one of which is persimmon
-(_diospyros_). This genus consists of 160 species, only two of them in
-the United States. Thus the persimmon trees of this country are a very
-small part of the family to which they belong, but they are a highly
-respectable part of it. The word persimmon is of Indian origin, and was
-used by the tribes near the Atlantic coast. The original spelling was
-"pessimin," and that was probably about the pronunciation given it by
-the aborigines.
-
-It has never been called by many names. It is known as date plum in New
-Jersey and Tennessee, and as possumwood in Florida. The avidity with
-which opossums feed on the fruit is responsible for the name.
-
-The range of persimmon extends from Connecticut to Florida, and westward
-to Iowa, Missouri, and Texas. It reaches its largest size in the South.
-It is of vigorous growth, spreading by means of seeds, and also by
-roots. The latter is the most common method where the ground is open.
-Such situations as old, abandoned fields invite the spread of
-persimmons. Roots ramify under the ground, and sprouts spring up, often
-producing thickets of an acre or more. Trees do not generally reach
-large size if they grow in that way, but their crowded condition does
-not make them fruitless as can be attested to by many a boy who
-penetrates the persimmon thickets by means of devious paths that wind
-with many a labyrinthic turn which takes in all that is worth finding.
-
-The variation in the quality of persimmons is greater than that of most
-wild fruits. Nature usually sets a standard and sticks closely to it,
-but the rule is not adhered to in the case of persimmons. Some are twice
-as large as others; some are never fit to eat, no matter how severely or
-how often they are frosted; others require at least one fierce frost to
-soften their austerity; but some may be eaten with relish without the
-ameliorating influence of frost.
-
-The austerity of a green persimmon is due to tannin. It is supposed that
-cultivation might remove some of this objectionable quality, but no
-great success has thus far attended efforts in that direction. Japanese
-persimmons, which are of a different species, are cultivated with
-success in California.
-
-The sizes of persimmon trees vary according to soil, climate, and
-situation. They average rather small, but occasionally reach a height of
-100 feet and a diameter of nearly two. Mature trunks are usually little
-over twelve inches in diameter, and many never reach that size.
-
-The dry wood weighs 49.28 pounds per cubic foot, which is about the
-weight of hickory. It is hard, strong, compact, and is susceptible of a
-high polish. The yearly rings are marked by one or more bands of open
-ducts, and scattered ducts occur in the rest of the wood. The medullary
-rays are thin and inconspicuous; color of heartwood dark brown, often
-nearly black; the sapwood is light brown, and frequently contains darker
-spots.
-
-The value of persimmon depends largely upon the proportion of sapwood to
-heartwood. That was the case formerly more than it is now; for until
-recent years the heartwood of persimmon was generally thrown away, and
-the sapwood only was wanted; but demand for the heart has recently
-increased. There is much difference in the proportion of heartwood to
-sapwood in different trees. It does not seem to be a matter of size, nor
-wholly of age. Small trunks sometimes have more heart than large ones. A
-tree a hundred years old may have heartwood scarcely larger than a lead
-pencil, and occasionally there is none. In other instances the heart is
-comparatively large.
-
-Persimmon has never been a wood of many uses, as hickory and oak have
-been. In early times it was considered valuable almost wholly on account
-of its fruit, and that had no commercial value, as it was seldom offered
-for sale in the market. In the language of the southern negroes who
-fully appreciated the fruit, it was "something good to run at"--meaning
-that the ripe persimmons were gathered and eaten from the trees while
-they lasted, but that few were preserved.
-
-It is recorded that the "small wheel" of the pioneer cabins was
-occasionally made of persimmon wood. The wheel so designated was the
-machine on which wool and flax were spun by the people in their homes.
-Spinning wheels were of two kinds, one large, with the operator walking
-to and fro, the other small, with the operator sitting. It was the small
-wheel which was sometimes made of persimmon. There is no apparent reason
-why it should have been made of that wood in preference to any one of a
-dozen others.
-
-The demand for persimmon in a serious way began with its use as shuttles
-in textile factories. Weavers had made shuttles of it for home use on
-hand looms for many years before the demand came from power looms where
-the shuttles were thrown to and fro by machinery. Up to some thirty
-years ago, shuttles for factories were generally made of Turkish
-boxwood, but the supply fell short and the advance in price caused a
-search for substitutes. Two satisfactory shuttlewoods were found in this
-country, persimmon and dogwood. The demand came not only from textile
-mills in America but from those of Europe. The manufacture of shuttle
-blocks became an industry of considerable importance.
-
-Persimmon wood is suitable for shuttles because it wears smooth, is
-hard, strong, tough, and of proper weight. Most woods that have been
-tried for this article fail on account of splintering, splitting,
-quickly wearing out, or wearing rough. The shuttle is not regarded as
-satisfactory unless it stands 1,000 hours of actual work. Some woods
-which are satisfactory for many other purposes will not last an hour as
-a shuttle.
-
-The manufacture of shuttles, after the square has been roughed out,
-requires twenty-two operations. Probably more shuttlewood comes from
-Arkansas than from any other section, though a dozen or more states
-contribute persimmon. The total sawmill cut of this wood in the United
-States is about 2,500,000 feet, but this does not include that which
-never passes through a sawmill.
-
-The wood has other uses. It has lately met demand from manufacturers of
-golf heads. Skewers are made of it in North Carolina, and billiard cues
-and mallets in Massachusetts.
-
-The heartwood is dark and shuttle makers and golfhead manufacturers will
-not have it. Until recently it was customary to throw it away, because
-no sale for it could be found. It is now known to be suitable for
-parquet flooring and for brush backs, and the demand for the heartwood
-is as reliable as for the sapwood. A little of the dark wood is cut in
-veneer and is employed in panel work, and other is used in turnery.
-
-The seeds of persimmon furnished one of the early substitutes for coffee
-in backwoods settlements when the genuine article could not be obtained.
-They were parched and pounded until sufficiently pulverized. During the
-Civil war many a confederate camp in the South was fragrant with the
-aroma of persimmon seed coffee, after the soldiers had added the fruit
-to their rations of cornbread.
-
-MEXICAN PERSIMMON (_Diospyros texana_) grows in Texas and Mexico. It is
-most abundant in southern and western Texas, where it suits itself to
-different soils, is found on rich moist ground near the borders of
-prairies, and also in rocky canyons and dry mesas. The largest trees are
-fifty feet high and twenty inches in diameter, but trunks that large are
-not abundant. The tree differs from the eastern persimmon in that the
-sapwood is thinner, and the heartwood makes up a much greater proportion
-of the trunk; the uses are consequently different, since it is taken for
-its dark wood, the eastern tree for its light-colored sap. The fruit of
-the Mexican persimmon is little esteemed. It is small, black, and the
-thin layer of pulp between the skin and the seed is insipid. Until fully
-ripe it is exceedingly austere. The Mexicans in the Rio Grande valley
-make a dye of the persimmons and use it to color sheep skins. The
-fruit's supply of tannin probably contributes to the tanning as well as
-the dyeing of the sheep pelts. The wood is heavier than eastern
-persimmon, and has more than three fold more ashes in a cord of wood,
-amounting to about 160 pounds. The bark is thin and the trunk gnarled.
-The dark color of the wood gives it the name black persimmon in Texas.
-Mexicans call it chapote. Sargent pronounces it the best American
-substitute for boxwood for engraving purposes, but it does not appear to
-be used outside of Texas. The wood is irregular in color, even in the
-same piece, being variegated with lighter and darker streaks, and cloudy
-effects. It ought to be fine brush-back material. It is worked into tool
-handles, lodge furniture, canes, rules, pen holders, picture frames,
-curtain rings, door knobs, parasol handles, and maul sticks for artists.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-FLOWERING DOGWOOD
-
-[Illustration: FLOWERING DOGWOOD]
-
-
-
-
-FLOWERING DOGWOOD
-
-(_Cornus Florida_)
-
-
-The dogwood or cornel family is old but not numerous. It originated
-several hundred thousand years ago and spread over much of the world,
-but preferred the temperate latitudes. One species at least crossed the
-equator and established itself in the highlands of Peru. There are forty
-or fifty species in all, about one-third of them in the United States,
-but most are shrubs. Black gum and tupelo are members of the family, and
-are giants compared with the dogwoods. In Europe the tree is usually
-called cornel, and that has been made the family name. It is a very old
-word, coined by the Romans before the days of Caesar. They so named it
-because it was hard like horn (_cornus_ meaning horn in the Latin
-language). They used it as shafts of spears, and so common was that use
-that when a speaker referred to a spear he simply called it by the name
-of the wood of the handle or shaft, as when Virgil described a combat
-which was supposed to have occurred 800 years before the Christian era,
-and used the words: "Clogged in the wound the Italian _cornel_ stood."
-
-The qualities of this wood which led to important uses among the Romans,
-have always made dogwood a valuable material. Civilized nations do not
-need it for spear shafts, but they have other demands which call for
-large amounts.
-
-The flowering dogwood has other names in this country. It is generally
-known simply as dogwood, but it is called boxwood in Connecticut, Rhode
-Island, New York, Mississippi, Michigan, Kentucky, and Indiana; false
-box-dogwood in Kentucky; New England boxwood in Tennessee; flowering
-cornel in Rhode Island; and cornel in Texas.
-
-Its range extends from Massachusetts through Ontario and Michigan to
-Missouri, south to Florida, and west to Texas. The area where it grows
-includes about 800,000 square miles. It is most common and of largest
-size in the South, comparatively rare in the North, generally occurs in
-the shade of taller trees, and prefers well-drained soil, but is not
-particular whether it is fertile or thin.
-
-The dogwood is valuable as ornament and for its wood. It was formerly a
-source of medicine, from roots, bark, and flowers; but it seems to have
-been largely displaced by other drugs; was once considered a good
-substitute for quinine, that use having been learned from Indian
-doctors. The Indians dug roots for a scarlet dye with which the vain
-warrior stained escutcheons on buckskin, and colored porcupine quills
-and bald eagle feathers for decorating his moccasins and his hair.
-
-The dogwood varies in size from a shrub with many branches to a tree
-forty feet high, eighteen inches in diameter, and with a flat but
-shapely crown. The trunk rises as a shaft with little taper, until the
-first branches are reached. All the branches start at the same place,
-and the trunk ends abruptly--divides into branches. Flowers are an
-important part of the tree, as might be inferred from the prominence
-given them in the tree's names. In the South the flowers appear in
-March, in the North in May, and in both regions before the opening of
-the leaves. The flowers on vigorous trees are three or four inches
-across, white, and very showy. A dogwood tree in full bloom against a
-hillside in spring is a most conspicuous object, and is justly admired
-by all who have appreciation of beauty. The flowers fall as leaves
-appear, and for some months the tree occupies its little space in the
-forest unobserved; but in the autumn it bursts again into glory, and
-while not quite as conspicuous an object as when in bloom, it is no less
-worthy of admiration. The fall of the leaves reveals the brilliant
-scarlet fruit which ladens the branches. The berries are just large
-enough for a good mouthful for a bird, but birds spare them until fully
-ripe to the harvest, and they then harvest them very rapidly. The tree
-is thus permitted to display its fruit a considerable time before
-yielding it to the feathered inhabitants of the air whose mission in
-forest economy is to scatter the seeds of trees, when nature provides
-the seeds themselves with no wings for flying.
-
-The two periods in the year when dogwood is highly ornamental, the
-flowers in spring before leaves appear, and fruit in autumn after leaves
-fall, are responsible for this tree's importance in ornamental planting.
-It is a common park tree, but it is small, generally not more than
-fifteen feet high, and it occupies subordinate places in the plans of
-the landscape garden. It is a filler between oaks, pines, and spruces,
-and it passes unnoticed, except when in bloom and in fruit.
-
-Dogwood is about four pounds per cubic foot heavier than white oak, has
-the same breaking strength, and is lower in elasticity. It is quite
-commonly believed that this tree has no heartwood, but the belief is
-erroneous. It seldom has much, and small trunks often none; but when
-dogwood reaches maturity it develops heart. Sometimes the heartwood is
-no larger than a lead pencil in trunks forty or fifty years old. The
-heart is brown, sapwood is white, and is the part wanted by the users of
-dogwood. Annual rings are obscure and it is a tree of slow growth. The
-wood is as nearly without figure as any in this country. It seldom or
-never goes to sawmills. The logs are too small. Most of the supply is
-bought by manufacturers of shuttles and golf stick heads, in this
-country and Europe. They purchase it by the cord or piece. It does not
-figure much in any part of the lumber business, but is cut and marketed
-in ways peculiar to itself. Log cutters in hardwood forests pay little
-attention to it. The dogwood harvest comes principally from southern
-states. Village merchants are the chief collectors, and they sell to
-contractors who ship to buyers in the manufacturing centers. The village
-merchants buy from farmers, who cut a stick here and there as they find
-it in woodlots, forests, or by the wayside, on their own land or
-somebody else's. When the cutter next drives to town he throws his few
-dogwoods in the wagon, and trades them to the store keeper for groceries
-or other merchandise. It is small business, but in the aggregate it
-brings together enough dogwood to supply the trade.
-
-Dogwood has many uses, but none other approaches shuttle making and
-golfhead manufacture in importance. The wood is made into brush blocks,
-wedges, engraver's blocks, tool handles, machinery bearings as a
-substitute for lignum-vitae, small hubs, and many kinds of turnery and
-other small articles.
-
-WESTERN DOGWOOD (_Cornus nuttallii_) is a larger, taller tree than the
-eastern flowering dogwood. A height of 100 feet is claimed for it in the
-low country along the coast of British Columbia, but there are no
-authentic reports of trees so large anywhere south of the boundary
-between Canada and the United States. Its height ranges from twenty to
-fifty feet, and its diameter from six to twenty inches. The appearance
-is much the same as its eastern relative. Its berries are red, and grow
-in clusters of forty or less; the bark on old trunks is rough, but is
-smooth on those of medium size; the flowers are generally described as
-very large and showy, but the true flower is quite an inconspicuous
-affair, being a small, greenish-yellow, button-like cluster, surrounded
-by four or six snowy-white or sometimes pinkish scales which are
-popularly but erroneously supposed to form a portion of the real flower.
-The western dogwood in its native forest often puts out flowers in
-autumn; is well supplied with foliage which assumes red and orange
-colors in the fall when the showy berries are at their best. However,
-the tree has not yet won its way into the good graces of landscape
-gardeners, and has not been much planted in parks. It wants some of the
-good points possessed by the flowering dogwood. The western tree shows
-to best advantage in its native forest where it thrives on gentle
-mountain slopes and in low bottoms, valleys, and gulches, provided the
-soil is well drained and rich. It runs southward fifteen hundred miles
-from Vancouver island to southern California. It cares little for
-sunshine, and often is found growing nicely in dense shade. Seedlings do
-better where shade is deep. The wood is lighter but somewhat stronger
-than that of the flowering dogwood; is pale reddish-brown, with thick
-sapwood; is hard, and checks badly in seasoning. Mature trees are from
-100 to 150 years.
-
-BLUE DOGWOOD (_Cornus alternifolia_) is given that name because of the
-blue fruit it bears. It has a number of other names, among them being
-purple dogwood, green osier, umbrella tree, pigeonberry, and
-alternate-leaved dogwood, the last being simply a translation of its
-botanical name. It grows in more northern latitudes than the flowering
-dogwood, and does not range as far south. It is found from Nova Scotia
-to Alabama, and westward to Minnesota, but its southern habitat lies
-along the Appalachian mountain ranges. It attains size and assumes form
-similar to the flowering dogwood. The wood is heavy, hard, brown, tinged
-with red, the sapwood white. It is a deep forest tree, but has been
-domesticated in a few instances where it has been planted as ornament.
-The wood seems to possess the good qualities of flowering dogwood, but
-no reports of uses for it have been made.
-
-Two varieties of flowering dogwood have been produced by cultivation,
-weeping dogwood (_Cornus florida pendula_), and red-bract dogwood
-(_Cornus florida rubra_). English cornel or dogwood (_Cornus mas_) has
-been planted in many parts of this country. The so-called Jamaica
-dogwood is not in the dogwood family.
-
-
-    ANDROMEDA (_Andromeda ferruginea_) is a small southern tree of South
-    Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and in the latter state is sometimes
-    known as titi, though other trees also bear that name. The largest
-    are thirty feet high, if by chance one can be found standing erect,
-    for most of them prefer to sprawl at full length on the ground. The
-    fruit is a small berry of no value. The wood is weak, but hard and
-    sufficiently compact to receive fine polish. The heartwood is light
-    brown, tinged with red.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CALIFORNIA LAUREL
-
-[Illustration: CALIFORNIA LAUREL]
-
-
-
-
-CALIFORNIA LAUREL
-
-(_Umbellularia Californica_)
-
-
-This tree's range lies in southern Oregon and in California. It is a
-member of the laurel family and is closely related to the eastern
-sassafras and the red and the swamp bays of the southern states; but it
-is not near kin to the eastern laurels which, strange as it may appear,
-do not belong to the laurel family, notwithstanding the names they bear.
-
-The people of California and Oregon have several names for this
-interesting tree. It is known as mountain laurel, California bay tree,
-myrtle tree, cajeput, California olive, spice tree, laurel, bay tree,
-oreodaphne, and California sassafras.
-
-Those who call it laurel name it on account of its large, lustrous,
-thick leaves which adhere to the branches from two to six years. All new
-leaves do not come at once, as with most trees, but appear a few at a
-time during the whole summer.
-
-The names which connect this tree with sassafras, spice and cajeput are
-based on odor and taste. All members of the laurel family in this
-country are characterized by pungent, aromatic odor and taste, and the
-one under consideration shares these properties in a remarkable degree.
-When the leaves and the green bark are crushed, they give off a light,
-volatile oil in follicles which float in the air, like those of an
-onion, and when inhaled it produces severe pain over the eyes, and may
-induce dizziness and violent sneezing. Though the symptoms are alarming
-to one who is undergoing the experience for the first time, no serious
-inconvenience follows. Dried leaves are capable of producing a similar
-effect but with less violence. The California laurel's close
-relationship to the camphor tree is readily believed by persons who
-inhale some of the oily spray from the crushed leaves.
-
-Attempts have been made to produce the commercial oil of cajeput, or a
-substitute for it, by distilling the leaves and bark of this laurel. A
-passable substitute has been manufactured, but it cannot be marketed as
-the genuine article. By distilling the fruit a product known as
-umbellulic acid has been obtained.
-
-The California laurel carries a very dense crown of leaves. This is due
-partly to the old crops which hang so long, and to the tree's habit of
-lengthening its leading shoots during the growing season, and the
-constant appearance of young leaves on the lengthening shoots. It can
-stand an almost unlimited amount of shade itself, and is by no means
-backward in giving abundance of shade to small growth which is trying
-to struggle up to light from below. It delights in dense thickets, but
-it prefers thickets of its own species.
-
-Its fruiting habits and its disposition to occupy the damp, rich soil
-along the banks of small water courses, are responsible for the thick
-stands. The fruit itself is an interesting thing. It is yellowish-green
-in color, as large as a good-sized olive, and looks much like it. The
-fruit ripens in October, and falls in time to get the benefit of the
-autumn rains which visit the Pacific coast. Since the trees generally
-grow along gulches, the fruit falls and rolls to the bottom. The first
-dashing rain sends a flood down the gulches, the laurel drupes are
-carried along and are buried in mud wherever they can find a resting
-place. Germination takes place soon after. The fruit remains under the
-mud, attached to the roots of the young plants, until the following
-summer.
-
-The result is that if a laurel gets a foothold in a gulch through which
-water occasionally flows, lines of young laurels will eventually cover
-the banks of the gulch as far down stream as conditions are favorable.
-
-The wood of California laurel weighs 40.60 pounds per cubic foot when
-kiln-dried. That is nine pounds heavier than sassafras. It is very heavy
-when green and sinks when placed in water. It is hard and very firm,
-rich yellowish brown in color, often beautifully mottled; but this
-applies to the heartwood only, and not to the thick sapwood.
-
-Lumbermen have discovered that the wood's color can be materially
-changed by immersing the logs when green, and leaving them submerged a
-long time. The beautiful "black myrtle," which has been so much admired,
-is nothing more than California laurel which has undergone the cold
-water treatment.
-
-The annual rings of growth are clearly marked by dark bands of
-summerwood. The rings are often wide, but not always, for sometimes the
-growth is very slow. The wood is diffuse-porous, and the pores are small
-and not numerous. The wood's figure is brought out best by tangential
-sawing, as is the case with so many woods which have clearly-marked
-rings but small and obscure medullary rays. Figure is not uniform; that
-is, one trunk may produce a pattern quite different from another. The
-figure of some logs is particularly beautiful; these logs are selected
-for special purposes. Sudworth says that none of our hardwoods excels it
-in beautiful grain when finished, and Sargent is still more emphatic
-when he declares that it is "the most valuable wood produced in the
-forests of Pacific North America for interior finish of houses and for
-furniture."
-
-The wood of this tree has more than ninety per cent of the strength of
-white oak, is considerably stiffer, and contains a smaller amount of
-ash, weight for weight of wood. The species reaches its best development
-in the rich valleys of southwestern Oregon, where, with the broadleaf
-maple, it forms a considerable part of the forest growth. The largest
-trees are from sixty to eighty feet high, and two to four in diameter.
-In crowded stands the trunks are shapely, and often measure thirty or
-forty feet to the first limbs; but more commonly the trunk is short.
-
-The boat yards in southwestern Oregon were the first to use California
-laurel for commercial purposes, but early settlers made a point of
-procuring it for fuel when they could. The oil in the wood causes it to
-burn with a cheerful blaze, and campers in the mountains consider
-themselves fortunate when they find a supply for the evening bonfire.
-
-Shipbuilders have drawn upon this wood for fifty years for material. It
-is made into pilot wheels, interior finish, cleats, crossties, and
-sometimes deck planking. Furniture makers long ago made a specialty of
-the wood for their San Francisco trade. For thirty years travelers
-admired the superb furniture of the Palace hotel in that city, and
-wondered of what wood it was made. It was the California laurel. The
-hotel's furniture was hand-made, or largely so, at a time when
-woodworking factories were few on the Pacific coast. The furniture was
-finally destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake. Furniture is still
-one of the products made of the wood, but the quantity is small. Other
-products are interior finish; fixtures for banks, stores and offices;
-musical instruments, including organs; mathematical instruments, and
-carpenters' tools, including rulers, straight-edges, spirit levels,
-bench screws and clamps, and handles of many kinds.
-
-Makers of novelties and small turnery find it serviceable for paper
-knives, pin trays, match safes, brush backs, and many articles of like
-kind. One of the largest uses for it is as walking beams for pumping
-oilwells in central and southern California. The beauty of grain has
-nothing to do with this use.
-
-Country blacksmiths repair wagons and agricultural implements with this
-wood. Farmers have long employed it about their premises for posts,
-gates, floors, and building material. Cooks flavor soup with the leaves,
-and poultrymen make henroosts of poles, believing that the wood's odor
-will keep insects away. This is probably the old sassafras superstition
-carried west by early California settlers.
-
-
-    RED BAY (_Persea borbonia_) is a southern member of the laurel
-    family, and close akin to sassafras and the California laurel. The
-    bark is red, hence the name; but it is known also as bay galls,
-    laurel tree, Florida mahogany, false mahogany, and sweet bay. It
-    grows from Virginia to Texas, but is most abundant near the coast,
-    yet it ascends the Mississippi valley to Arkansas. The leaves remain
-    on the tree a full year, but turn yellow toward the last, in
-    consequence of which the species is not evergreen. In shape and
-    color the leaves resemble laurel. The fruit is a small, dark blue
-    drupe, with thin flesh. The wood is heavy, hard, very strong,
-    rather brittle, bright red, with thin, lighter-colored sapwood. It
-    was once very popular in the South for furniture. Rare pieces, some
-    150 years old, are still found in southern homes. The wood was
-    exported prior to 1741 from the Carolinas, and the quantity seems to
-    have been considerable. It was then regarded as a finer wood than
-    mahogany. It was exported to the West Indies, where mahogany was
-    abundant, and was made into furniture and finish for the homes of
-    wealthy planters and merchants. An old report describes the wood as
-    resembling "watered satin." It was in early demand by shipbuilders,
-    but it has now ceased to go to boat yards. Except in rare instances,
-    it is not reported by any wood-using industries. In Texas a little
-    is made into pin trays, small picture frames, canes, and shelves. It
-    deserves a more important place, for when polished and finished, it
-    is one of the handsomest woods of this country. Trees attain a
-    height of sixty or seventy feet, and a diameter of two or three.
-
-    SWAMP BAY (_Persea pubescens_) attains a height of thirty or forty
-    feet, but is seldom more than a foot in diameter, and is too small
-    for saw timber. The wood is strong, heavy, rather soft, orange
-    colored, streaked with brown, and not as handsome as its larger
-    relative, red bay, which is associated with it from North Carolina
-    to Mississippi. It is an evergreen in some cases, but in others the
-    leaves turn yellow the second spring. The black fruit is a drupe
-    nearly an inch long. The wood is without attractive figure, since
-    its medullary rays are obscure, and the annual rings are indistinct
-    and produce little contrast when the trunks are sawed tangentially.
-    Color is the chief attraction that can be claimed for the wood. A
-    little is occasionally worked into interior finish.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LOCUST
-
-[Illustration: LOCUST]
-
-
-
-
-LOCUST
-
-(_Robinia Pseudacacia_)
-
-
-Locust belongs to the pea family, known in botany as _Leguminosae_.[6] In
-most parts of its range it is known simply as locust, but in some
-localities it is called black locust, an allusion to the color of the
-bark; yellow locust, descriptive of the heartwood; white locust,
-referring to the bloom; red locust, probably a reference to the wood,
-and green locust for the same reason; acacia and false acacia; honey
-locust, a name which belongs to another species; post locust, because it
-has always been a favorite tree for fence posts; and pea-flower locust,
-a reference to the bloom.
-
-    [6] This is a very large family, containing trees, shrubs, and
-    vines, such as locusts, acacias, beans, and clovers. There are 430
-    genera in the world, and many times that many species. The United
-    States has seventeen genera and thirty species of the pea family
-    that are large enough to be classed as trees. Their common names
-    follow: Florida Cat's Claw, Huajillo, Texan Ebony, Wild Tamarind,
-    Huisache, Texas Cat's Claw, Devil's Claw, Leucaena, Chalky Leucaena,
-    Screwbean, Mesquite, Redbud, Texas Redbud, Honey Locust, Water
-    Locust, Coffeetree, Horsebean, Small-leaf Horsebean, Greenbark
-    Acacia, Palo Verde, Frijolito, Sophora, Yellow-wood, Eysenhardtia,
-    Indigo Thorn, Locust, New Mexican Locust, Clammy Locust, Sonora
-    Ironwood, Jamaica Dogwood. These species are treated separately in
-    the following pages, and are given space according to their relative
-    commercial importance in the particular regions where they grow.
-
-Several of the names refer to the color of the wood, and seem
-contradictory, for yellow, green, and red are not the same; yet the
-names describe with fair accuracy. Color of the heartwood varies with
-different trees, yellow with some, tinged with red with others, and
-sometimes it might be appropriately called blue locust, for the
-heartwood is nearer that color than any other.
-
-The natural range of locust seems to have been confined to the
-Appalachian mountain ranges from Pennsylvania to Georgia. It probably
-existed as a low shrub in parts of Arkansas and Oklahoma. Its range has
-been extended by planting until it now reaches practically all the
-states, but is running wild in only about half of them. It has received
-a great deal of attention from foresters and tree planters. It attracted
-notice very early, because of its hardness, strength, and lasting
-properties. At one time the planting of locust came nearly being a fad.
-In England it was supposed that it would rise to great importance in
-shipbuilding, and in France it was looked upon as no less important.
-Books were written on the subject in both English and French. All the
-details of planting and utilization were discussed. Its generic name,
-_Robinia_, is in honor of a Frenchman, Robin. Extravagant claims were
-once made for the wood. When American ships were gaining victory after
-victory over English vessels in the war of 1812, it was asserted in
-England that the cause of American success was the locust timber in
-their ships. The claim may have been partly true, but other factors
-contributed to the phenomenal series of successes.
-
-The locust craze died a natural death. Too much was claimed for the
-wood. Possibilities in the way of growth were over estimated. It was
-assumed that the tree, if planted, would grow everywhere as vigorously
-as on its native mountains in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia,
-where trees two or three feet in diameter and eighty feet high were
-found. Experience proved later that nature had planted the locust in the
-best place for it, and when transplanted elsewhere it was apt to fall
-short of expectations. Outside of its natural range it grows vigorously
-for a time, and occasionally reaches large size; but in recent years the
-locust borer has defeated the efforts of man to extend the range of this
-species and make it profitable in regions distant from its native home.
-The tree is often devoured piecemeal, branches and twigs breaking and
-falling, and trunks gradually disappearing beneath the attacks of the
-hungry borers. No effective method of combating the pest is known. The
-planting of locust trees, once so common, has now nearly ceased.
-
-Within its native range, and beyond that range when it has a chance,
-locust is a valuable and beautiful tree. It is valuable at all times on
-account of the superior wood which it furnishes, and beautiful when in
-bloom and in leaf. A locust in full flower is not surpassed in
-ornamental qualities by any tree of this country. It is a mass of white,
-exceedingly rich in perfume. It blooms in May or June. During the summer
-its foliage shows tropical luxuriance with exquisite grace. Its compound
-leaves are from eight to fourteen inches long, with seven to nine
-leaflets. They come late in spring and go early in autumn. The tree's
-thorns, resembling cat claws, are affixed to the bark only, and usually
-fall with the leaves. The fruit is a pod three or four inches long, and
-contains four or eight wingless seeds. They depend on animals to carry
-them to planting places. The pods dry on the branches, and rattle in the
-wind most of the autumn. The tree spreads by underground roots which
-send up sprouts. A locust in winter is not a thing of beauty. It appears
-to be dead; not a bud visible. Its black, angular branches lack every
-line of grace.
-
-Locust wood is remarkable for strength, hardness, and durability. It is
-about one pound per cubic foot lighter than white oak, but is
-thirty-four per cent stiffer and forty-five per cent stronger. Its
-strength exceeds that of shagbark hickory, and it is doubtful whether a
-stronger wood exists in the United States. Its hardness is equally
-remarkable, and is said to be due to crystals formed in the wood cells,
-and known as "rhaphides." Its durability is probably equal to that of
-Osage orange, mesquite, and catalpa, but it is not easy to fix a
-standard of durability by which to compare different woods. Locust is
-the best fence post wood in this country, because it is usually much
-straighter than other very durable woods. The posts are expected to last
-at least thirty years, and have been known to stand twice that long.
-
-For more than 150 years locust was almost indispensable in shipbuilding,
-furnishing the tree nails or large pins which held the timbers together.
-It supplied material for other parts of ships also, but in smaller
-quantities. The substitution of steel ships for wooden lessened demand
-for locust pins, and in many instances large iron nails are used to
-fasten timbers together. In spite of this, the demand for locust tree
-nails is nearly always ahead of supply.
-
-The wood's figure is fairly strong, due to the contrast between the
-springwood and that grown later, but not to the medullary rays, which
-are small and inconspicuous. The wood is not in much demand for
-ornamental purposes. Small amounts are made into policemen's clubs, rake
-teeth, hubs for buggy wheels, ladder rungs, and tool handles.
-
-The tree grows rapidly where conditions are favorable, and very slowly
-when they are not. Usually trees of fence post size are twenty years old
-at least, but trunks thirty five years old have been known to produce a
-post for each two years of age, though that was exceptional. Railroads,
-especially in Pennsylvania, planted locust largely a few years ago for
-ties. It has been reported that in some instances expectations of growth
-have not been fully realized.
-
-    CLAMMY LOCUST (_Robinia viscosa_) was originally confined to the
-    mountains of North Carolina and South Carolina where its attractive
-    flowers brought it to the notice of nurserymen who have enlarged its
-    natural range a hundred if not a thousand fold. It is now grown in
-    parks and gardens not only in the United States east of the
-    Mississippi river and as far north as Massachusetts, but in most
-    foreign countries that have temperate climates. It is usually a
-    shrub, but on some of the North Carolina mountains it attains a
-    height of forty feet and a diameter of twelve inches. The wood is
-    seldom or never used for any commercial purpose. The leaves are from
-    seven to twelve inches long, and contain thirteen to twenty-one
-    leaflets. The flowers appear in June, possess little odor, and are
-    admired solely for their beauty. They are mingled red and rose
-    color. The pods are from two to three and a half inches long, and
-    contain small, mottled seeds. The wood is hard and heavy, the heart
-    brown and the sap yellow. In its wild haunts it is usually a shrub
-    five or six feet high.
-
-    NEW MEXICAN LOCUST (_Robinia neo-mexicana_) is a small southwestern
-    tree, seldom exceeding a height of twenty-five feet or a diameter of
-    eight inches. It ranges from Colorado to Arizona, and takes its name
-    from its presence in New Mexico. It reaches its largest size near
-    Trinidad, Colorado. It is found at elevations of 7,000 feet. Leaves
-    are from six to twelve inches long, and the leaflets number from
-    fifteen to twenty-one. The flowers appear in May and are less showy
-    than those of the eastern locust. The wood is heavy, exceedingly
-    hard, the heartwood yellow, streaked with brown, the thin sapwood
-    light yellow. This locust is occasionally used locally for small
-    posts or stakes, but is generally too small. It is sometimes met
-    with in cultivation in Europe and the eastern states.
-
-    TEXAN EBONY (_Zygia flexicaulis_) ranges from the Texas coast
-    through Mexico to Lower California. It reaches a height of thirty
-    feet or more, and a diameter of two or less. It is a beautiful tree
-    along the lower Rio Grande where it reaches its largest size. The
-    light yellow or cream-colored, very fragrant flowers bloom from June
-    till August; the fruit ripens in Autumn but adheres several months
-    to the branches. Mexicans roast the seeds as a substitute for
-    coffee. The color of the heartwood gives this tree its name, but it
-    is not a true ebony. The wood of the roots is blacker than that of
-    the trunk, and small articles made of roots resemble black ebony of
-    Ceylon. The trunk wood is liable to be streaked with black, brown,
-    and medium yellow. The rings of annual growth are frequently of
-    different colors. Considerable demand is made upon this wood in
-    Texas for crossties. It is very durable, but is so hard that holes
-    must be bored for the spikes. It is sold in large amounts as
-    cordwood, and it burns well. Other articles made of this so-called
-    ebony are foundation blocks for buildings and rollers for moving
-    houses. It is used also for small turnery.
-
-    HUAJILLO (_Zygia brevifolia_) has no English name, but Americans in
-    the Rio Grande valley where this tree grows call it by its Mexican
-    name. It is a larger tree in Mexico than on this side of the river.
-    It is not often more than thirty feet high and six inches in
-    diameter, and is generally a shrub. Its beautiful foliage looks like
-    masses of ferns, and the flowers range from white to violet-yellow.
-    The wood is dark, hard, heavy, and is seldom used for anything but
-    fuel.
-
-    FLORIDA CAT'S CLAW (_Zygia unguis-cati_), with a Latin name that
-    would make Julius Caesar stare and gasp, reaches its largest size in
-    the United States on Elliott's Key, Florida. Its name refers to its
-    curved thorns. Trunks twenty-five feet high and eight inches in
-    diameter are the largest in this country. It bears pods, but the
-    leaves are not compound, thus differing from most trees of the pea
-    family. The wood is not put to any use, though it is very hard and
-    heavy, rich red, varying to purple, with clear yellow sapwood. It is
-    said to check badly in drying. The bark is used for medicine in some
-    of the islands of the West Indies.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-HONEY LOCUST
-
-[Illustration: HONEY LOCUST]
-
-
-
-
-HONEY LOCUST
-
-(_Gleditsia Triacanthos_)
-
-
-This tree has never suffered for want of names, but most of them refer
-either to the sweetness of the pod or to the fierceness of the thorns.
-The belief has long prevailed that it was the pods of this tree on which
-John the Baptist fed while a recluse in the Syrian desert. The tradition
-should not be taken seriously. It was certainly not this tree, if any,
-which furnished food to the prophet in the wilderness, for it does not
-grow in Syria. Some related species may grow there, for species of
-_Gleditsia_ occur in western Asia as well as in China, Japan, and west
-Africa. The generic name is in honor of Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch, a
-German botanist who died in 1786.
-
-The name honey locust refers to the pod, not the flowers. The latter are
-greenish, inconspicuous, and though eagerly sought by bees, they offer
-no particular attractions to people. Few persons ever notice them.
-
-In some of the southwestern states the tree is called black locust,
-though for what reason it is not apparent. Sweet locust, by which name
-it is known in several states, has reference to the pods, as do the
-names honey, and honey-shucks locust, applied in different localities.
-Many persons in naming the tree have thorns in mind. It is known as
-three-thorned acacia, thorn locust, thorn tree, thorny locust, and
-thorny acacia. The botanist who named it considered thorns a
-characteristic, for _Triacanthos_ means "three-thorned."
-
-No one who has ever had dealings with the thorns, will fail to duly
-consider them. They are about the most ferocious product of American
-forests. The tree's trunk and largest branches bristle with them,
-standing out like porcupine quills, and sharper than any needle devised
-by human ingenuity. Microscopists use them for picking up and handling
-minute objects, their points being smooth and delicate though their
-shafts may be strong and rough. Thorns are arrested branches, coming
-from deep down in the wood. No more can one of them be pulled out than a
-limb can be extracted by the roots. They come from the center of the
-tree or limb. Some put out leaves and become true branches, but others
-sharpen their points, assume an attitude of hostility, and remain thorns
-to the end of their lives. Some of them are a foot long, and are so
-strong that birds flying against them are impaled and meet cruel death.
-A well-armed trunk is proof against the agility and skill of the
-squirrel. He cannot negotiate the thorns, and probably he tries only
-once. The hot pursuit of a dog will not compel him to attempt it. All
-trees, however, are not formidably thorned; some have few, and certain
-varieties have none.
-
-The honey locust is sometimes called the Confederate pin tree in the
-South. This is a reference to the Civil war, and the use occasionally
-made of the thorns by soldiers in mending the rents in their torn
-uniforms. The thorns were once put to a somewhat similar use among the
-Alleghany mountains where local factories for carding and spinning
-country wool employed them to pin up the mouths of wool sacks.
-
-The natural range of honey locust has been greatly extended by man. It
-was not originally found east of the Alleghany mountains. It grew from
-western Pennsylvania to northern Alabama and Mississippi, and westward
-to Nebraska and Texas. It is now naturalized east of the Alleghanies,
-and southward to the Gulf of Mexico. Planting for ornamental purposes
-and for hedges has been the cause of its extension into new territory.
-In spite of thorns, it is ornamental. Its foliage is thin, and its
-flowers inconspicuous, but the tree possesses a grace which wins it
-favor. It grows very rapidly, and in a short time a seedling becomes a
-respectable tree, and continues its rapid growth a long time. In
-southern Indiana and Illinois, which is the best part of its range,
-trees have attained a height of 140 feet and a diameter of six. The
-average size of forest-grown specimens is seventy-five feet in height,
-and two or more in diameter.
-
-The leaves are seven or eight inches long, doubly compound; the fruit a
-pod a foot or more in length, which assumes a twist when ripe, or
-sometimes warps several ways. The green pod contains a sweet substance
-often eaten by children, but it is believed to be of little value for
-human food. Cattle devour the pods when in the sugary condition; but
-they cannot often obtain them, because thorns intervene, when the pods
-would otherwise be in reach. In rural districts, a domestic beer is
-brewed from the young fruit. The juice extracted from it is permitted to
-ferment, but the beverage is probably never sold in the market.
-
-The pods are in no hurry to let go and fall, even after they are fully
-ripe. They become dry, distort themselves with a number of corkscrew
-twists, and hang until late fall or early winter, rattling in the wind
-and occasionally shaking out a seed or two.
-
-Honey locust has never been considered important from the lumberman's
-standpoint. Sawlogs go to mills here and there, but never many in one
-place. The wood is not listed under its own name, but is put in with
-something else. Occasionally, it is said, it passes as sycamore in the
-furniture factory, though the difference ought not be difficult to
-detect. It doubtless depends to a considerable degree on the particular
-wood, for all honey locust does not look alike when converted into
-lumber. Some of that in the lower Mississippi valley might pass as
-sycamore if inspection is not too conscientiously carried out. The
-medullary rays, being darker than the body of the wood, suggest sycamore
-in quarter-sawed stock. Some of it goes into furniture, finish,
-balusters, newel posts, panels, and molding, particularly in eastern
-Texas. In Louisiana, where wood of similar texture and appearance might
-be expected, it is not looked on with favor, but is employed only in the
-cheapest, roughest work.
-
-The principal use of the wood is for posts and railroad ties. It lasts
-well, and is strong. Claims have been made that it is generally equal
-and in some ways superior to locust. It is difficult to see on what
-these claims are based. It is lighter, less elastic, and much weaker.
-Figures showing the comparative durability of the two woods are not
-available, but in like situations, locust would doubtless last much
-longer. As timber trees, the former may have the advantage over locust
-in being free from attacks of borers, attaining greater size, and
-thriving in a much larger area. It has been planted for ornament in
-other lands than this, and is now prospering in all the important
-countries of the temperate zone. One variety is thornless, and is known
-to botanists as _Gleditsia triacanthos laevis_; another has short thorns.
-
-    WATER LOCUST (_Gleditsia aquatica_) looks so much like honey locust
-    that the two are often supposed to be the same species in Louisiana;
-    yet there are a number of differences. Water locust has fewer thorns
-    and they are smaller, and often flat like a knife blade. The pods
-    are entirely different from those of honey locust, being short and
-    wide. The two species share the same range to some extent, but that
-    of water locust is smaller, extending from South Carolina to Texas,
-    Illinois, and Missouri; but the best of the species is west of the
-    lower Mississippi where trees may reach a height of sixty feet and a
-    diameter of two. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, the heartwood
-    rich bright brown, tinged with red, the sapwood yellow. The wood is
-    much like that of honey locust, and when used at all is employed in
-    the same way.
-
-    TEXAS LOCUST (_Gleditsia texana_) is of no importance as a timber
-    tree, and deserves mention only because its extremely restricted
-    range gives it an interest. It exists, as far as known, in a single
-    grove on the bottom lands of the Brazos river, near Brazoria, Texas,
-    where some of the trees exceed 100 feet in height, and a diameter of
-    two. The bark is smooth and thin, the leaves resemble those of honey
-    locust, and the pods are about one-third as long.
-
-    HUISACHE (_Acacia farnesiana_) is native along the Rio Grande in
-    Texas, but it is running wild in Florida from planted trees. It is
-    one of the most widely distributed species in the world, both by
-    natural dispersal and by planting; and it is one of the handsomest
-    members of the large group of acacias which includes more than 400
-    species. It bears delicate double-compound leaves, small and
-    graceful. A tree in full leaf in its native wilds along the Rio
-    Grande looks like a trembling fluffy mass of green silk. Nature
-    formed the tree for ornament, not for timber. It attains a height of
-    from twenty to forty feet, diameter eighteen inches or less. Trunk
-    usually divides into several branches near the ground. Perhaps the
-    only place in this country where the wood is used is in southern
-    Texas where is it called "cassie," a shortening of acacia. The wood
-    so much resembles mesquite that locally they are considered the
-    same. Huisache warps and checks in seasoning, but it is employed in
-    a small way for furniture, usually as small table legs, spindles,
-    knobs, and ornaments. It takes high polish, and resembles the best
-    grades of black walnut, but is much heavier, harder, and stronger.
-    It is next to impossible to drive a nail into it without first
-    boring a hole. When used as crossties, holes must be bored for the
-    spikes. The heartwood resists decay a long time, but the thin
-    sapwood is liable to be riddled by small boring insects, which
-    seldom or never enter the heartwood.
-
-    TEXAS CAT'S CLAW (_Acacia wrightii_) is a hardluck tree of western
-    Texas where it is usually found on dry, gravelly hills and in stony
-    ravines. Its twice-compound leaves are among the smallest of the
-    acacias, seldom exceeding two inches in length. The fragrant, light
-    yellow flowers appear from March to May, and the short pods ripen in
-    midsummer, but like so many trees of the pea family, they are in no
-    hurry to fall. The largest trees are thirty feet high and one in
-    diameter, but most people associate cat's claw with low, tangled
-    brush, tough as wire, and armed with curved thorns so strong that
-    their hold on clothing can hardly be broken. When a cat's claw bush
-    strikes out to become a tree--which is infrequent--it grows rapidly.
-    It has been known to attain a diameter of nine inches in
-    twenty-three years. The heart is dark in color and exceedingly hard.
-    The color varies from nearly red to nearly black, and takes a polish
-    almost like ivory. The thin yellow sapwood is preyed on by boring
-    insects. Heartwood is made into canes, umbrella sticks, tool
-    handles, rulers, and turned novelties.
-
-    DEVIL'S CLAW (_Acacia greggii_) has such paradoxical names as
-    paradise flower, ramshorn, and cat's claw. It deserves them all
-    where it grows wild on the semi-deserts of the Southwest from Texas
-    to California. The double-compound leaves are one or two inches
-    long, its bright, creamy-yellow and exquisitely fragrant flowers are
-    the glory of desert places, while its masses of thorns readily
-    suggest the common name by which it is known. The wood is scarce,
-    but extraordinarily fine. It is dark rich red, but clouded with
-    streaks and patches of other shades, becoming at times gray, at
-    others green. No nail can be driven into it, and an ordinary gimlet
-    will hardly bore it. It is so saturated with oil that it is greasy
-    to the touch. It is manufactured into small articles, but apparently
-    is not used outside of the locality where it grows. The wood is
-    often contorted, due to pits and cavities which slowly close as the
-    tree advances in age. They add to rather than detract from the
-    wood's beauty.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-COFFEE TREE
-
-[Illustration: COFFEE TREE]
-
-
-
-
-COFFEETREE
-
-(_Gymnocladus Dioicus_)
-
-
-This tree is scarce though its range covers several hundred thousand
-square miles, from New York to Minnesota, and from Tennessee to
-Oklahoma. It never occurs in thick stands, and usually the trees are
-widely scattered. Many districts of large size within the limits of its
-range appear to have none.
-
-The names coffeetree and Kentucky coffeetree refer to the custom of the
-pioneers, who settled the region south of the Ohio river, and who used
-the grotesque fruit as a substitute for coffee at a time when the
-genuine article could not be procured. The seed is a very hard bean that
-can be procured in abundance, where trees abound.
-
-The beans were softened by roasting or parching, and were then pounded
-into meal with hammers, and boiled for coffee. The beverage was black
-and bitter, and a little of it would go a long way with a modern coffee
-drinker. When the Kentuckians were able to procure coffee they let the
-wild substitute alone.
-
-The name was sometimes varied by calling it coffeenut or coffeenut tree,
-and sometimes it was known as coffeebean and coffeebean tree. It is less
-easy to explain why it was called mahogany in New York, and virgilia in
-Tennessee. Some knew it as the nicker tree, but the reason for the name
-is not known. Stump tree was another of its names. This was meant to be
-descriptive of the tree's appearance after it had shed its leaves. It
-has remarkable foliage, double compound leaves two or three feet long,
-with four or five dozen leaflets. When leaves fall in autumn it looks as
-if the tree is shedding its twigs; and when all are down, the stripped
-and barren appearance of the branches suggests the name stump tree.
-
-The flowers are greenish-purple and are inconspicuous. In this respect
-they differ from many trees of the pea family which are noted for their
-attractive bloom. The fruit is among the largest of the tree pods of
-this country, ranging in length from six to ten inches and from one and
-a half to two in width. When fully grown they are heavy enough to make
-their presence felt if they drop on the heads of persons beneath. They
-are slow to fall, however, and it is not unusual for them to cling to
-the branches until late winter or early spring.
-
-The coffeetree has been known to attain a diameter of five feet and a
-height of more than a hundred, but the usual size is about half of that.
-It prefers rich bottom lands, and the trunks generally separate into
-several stems a few feet above the ground. Only one species exists in
-this country, and as far as known, only one other species elsewhere, and
-that grows in southern China where it is said the natives make soap of
-the pods. It is not known that any such utilization has been attempted
-in this country.
-
-The coffeetree's range has been considerably extended by planting for
-ornament. In summer it is attractive, but from the first autumn frost
-until the leaves put out the following spring, it is uninteresting. The
-spring leaves are late, and the branches are bare more than half the
-year.
-
-The wood is heavy, strong, and durable in contact with the soil. The
-heart is rich light brown, tinged with red, the sapwood thin and lighter
-colored. Annual rings are distinct. The springwood is porous and wide,
-the summerwood dense. The medullary rays are inconspicuous and of no
-value in giving figure to the wood. When the annual rings are cut
-diagonally across they give figure like that of ash. The wood of the
-coffeetree has never been in much demand. Furniture makers may use it
-sometimes, but specific instances of such use do not exist in
-manufacturers' reports. There are many places in furniture and finish
-which it might fill in a satisfactory manner.
-
-It is suitable for fence posts, and that is where it commonly gives
-service. It is occasionally employed as frame work in house and barn
-building, but is not sought for that purpose, and is used only when it
-happens to be at hand. Though the tree has the habit of branching, some
-of the trunks grow tall and shapely, and are good for two or three
-sawlogs or railcuts. An occasional tree serves as fuel. Medicine is
-sometimes made of a decoction of the fresh green pulp of unripe pods;
-and the leaves are reported to produce a fly poison if soaked in water.
-
-REDBUD (_Cercis canadensis_) is also known as Judas tree, red Judas
-tree, Canadian Judas tree, and salad tree. The last name refers to a
-custom in some parts of its range of making salad of the flowers. It is
-the flower rather than the bud that is red and gives the tree its name,
-the bloom being conspicuous in early spring. The tree ranges from New
-Jersey to Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, but reaches its
-fullest development in southern Arkansas, Oklahoma, and eastern Texas
-where trunks fifty feet high and a foot in diameter are found. It is
-shrubby in many parts of its range. Leaves are not compound. The fruit
-is a pink or rose-colored pod two or three inches in length, and by some
-is considered nearly as ornamental though not as showy as the flowers.
-No one ever thinks of redbud as a timber tree or considers its wood, yet
-it might be used for a number of purposes. It is heavy and hard, but
-weak; and the heartwood is rich dark brown tinged with red. The tree is
-planted for ornament in this country and Europe.
-
-TEXAS REDBUD (_Cercis reniformis_) differs somewhat from the common
-redbud, but it takes a botanist to point out the differences. The
-largest trees are forty feet high and a foot in diameter; the range
-extends from eastern Texas into Mexico; the wood closely resembles that
-of the other species, and is not known to be used for any purpose.
-
-CALIFORNIA REDBUD (_Cercis occidentalis_) is often classed as a shrub,
-but Sudworth gives it a place among the forest trees of the Pacific
-coast. The pea-shaped flowers are a clear magenta color. The pods turn
-purple when ripening but afterwards change to russet-brown. The wood is
-dark yellowish-brown, but because of the smallness of the trunks, it can
-never be important. The tree is found along the California mountains,
-six hundred miles north and south; is an abundant seeder, and is
-valuable as a protection to slopes and ravines, and as an ornament.
-
-HORSEBEAN (_Parkinsonia aculeata_) is generally called retama in the
-valley of the lower Rio Grande in Texas where the species attains its
-largest size. Trees are occasionally thirty feet high and a foot or more
-in diameter. Trunks usually separate in several stems near the ground.
-The range extends from southern Texas to California, and the species is
-naturalized in south Florida, the West Indies, and many tropical
-countries. Leaves vary in form, and are occasionally eighteen inches
-long. Fruit consists of pods, each containing from two to eight beans.
-The yellow flowers are small and fragrant; the bark on young twigs is
-green, but on older trunks is brown. The brown, however, is easily
-rubbed off, exposing the green beneath, as may be seen in school grounds
-in some of the southern towns in Texas where this tree has been planted
-for ornament, and abrasions, due to children climbing about the
-spreading stems, keep the bark green. The upper branches are armed with
-thorns which discourage the climbing propensities of children. The wood
-is heavy, hard, tinged with yellow, and is made into small novelties,
-but is not of much importance.
-
-SMALL-LEAF HORSEBEAN (_Parkinsonia microphylla_) is well named, for the
-compound leaves, with four or six pairs of leaflets, are about an inch
-long, covered with hairs, and fall at the end of a few weeks.
-Consequently, the tree is bare most of the year, except for the pale
-yellow flowers which appear in spring before the leaves, and the
-clusters of striped pods, each containing from one to three beans. The
-pods are nearly always present, for they have the pea family habit of
-adhering to the branches a long time. Trees reach a height of fifteen or
-twenty feet, and a diameter of ten inches or less. The wood is very hard
-and dense, in color deep yellowish-brown, often mottled and streaked
-with dull red; the sapwood thick and yellow. The wood is suitable for
-small articles, but its scarcity renders it of little importance. It is
-found in the deserts of southern Arizona and the adjacent parts of
-California, and is usually a small shrub.
-
-JAMAICA DOGWOOD (_Ichthyomethia piscipula_) is the lone representative
-of the genus, and is found in this country only in southern Florida. It
-is not in the same family with the dogwoods, and its name is misleading.
-The Carib Indians formerly used the leaves to stupify fish and render
-them easier to catch; hence the botanical name. The leaves are compound,
-but bear little resemblance to the foliage of most members of the pea
-family to which this tree belongs. The flowers are the tree's chief
-source of beauty, and are delicately clustered, hanging in bunches a
-foot long. The fruit is a pod three or four inches long, with four wings
-running the full length. The wings are useless for flying. Trees are
-forty or fifty feet high and two or three feet in diameter; are common
-in southern Florida and on the islands. The wood is of considerable
-importance in the region where it grows but figures little in general
-markets. It weighs 54.43 pounds per cubic foot, and is moderately strong
-and stiff. In color it is a clear yellow-brown, with thick, lighter
-colored sapwood. It is very durable in contact with the ground, and in
-Florida it is used for posts, and occasionally for railway ties. It has
-been commonly reported as a wood for boatbuilding in Florida, but its
-importance for that purpose has probably been overstated, since an
-investigation of the boatbuilding industry in Florida failed to find one
-foot of this wood in use, although some may be employed but not listed
-in reports.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW-WOOD
-
-[Illustration: Yellow-wood]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW-WOOD
-
-(_Cladrastis Lutea_)
-
-
-This wood's color is evidently responsible for its names yellow ash,
-yellow locust, and yellow-wood in Tennessee, North Carolina, and
-Kentucky, but no reason is offered for the name gopherwood by which it
-is known in some parts of Tennessee. The botanical name is based on the
-brittleness of the twigs. It is the only species of the genus, and it is
-not known to grow anywhere, except by planting, outside of Kentucky,
-Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina.
-
-It occurs in an area not much exceeding 60,000 square miles, and it is
-not abundant in that area. It prefers limestone ridges and slopes, and
-does best where the soil is fertile. It often overhangs the banks of
-mountain streams, and is most abundant and of largest size in the
-vicinity of Nashville, Tennessee, where a few trees have reached a
-diameter of three or four feet and a height of fifty or sixty. A
-diameter of eighteen or twenty-four inches is a good average.
-
-The tree's habit of dividing six or seven feet from the ground into two
-or more stems is responsible for the scarcity of trunks suitable for saw
-timber, even in localities where trees of large size are found. However,
-an occasional trunk develops a shapely form. It goes to sawmills so
-seldom that it is never mentioned in statistics of lumber cut or
-wood-utilization.
-
-Most people who are acquainted with this tree, know it as planted stock
-in parks and yards where it is a favorite on account of its flowers. The
-bloom may properly be described as rare from two viewpoints. The beauty
-of its large clusters of white flowers differs from those of all
-associated trees; and it seldom blooms. One year of plenty is generally
-followed by several lean years. Those who plant the tree understand
-this, and feel amply repaid for the long wait, when the flowering year
-arrives. The planted tree is often known as virgilia, that being the
-name under which nurseries sell it. Flowers appear about the middle of
-June, in clusters a foot or more in length. It is claimed, but with what
-correctness cannot at present be stated, that the odor of flowers of
-different trees varies greatly, being faint with some, and strong and
-luxurious with others.
-
-The leaves are compound, but have no resemblance to those of locust and
-the acacias. They are eight or twelve inches long, with five or seven
-leaflets. In autumn before falling they change to a clear yellow, but
-adhere to the branches until rather late in the season. The fruit, which
-consists of small pods hanging in clusters, is ripe in September.
-
-Yellow-wood is a little below white oak in strength and seven pounds per
-cubic foot under it in weight; is hard, compact, and susceptible of a
-beautiful polish. Rings of yearly growth are clearly marked by rows of
-open ducts, and contain many evenly-distributed smaller ducts. The wood
-is bright, clear yellow, changing to brown on exposure; sapwood nearly
-white. Trunks of largest size are generally hollow or otherwise
-defective.
-
-The uses of yellow-wood have been few. In the days when families in
-remote regions were under the necessity of manufacturing, growing, or
-otherwise producing nearly every commodity that entered into daily life,
-the settlers among the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee discovered
-that the wood of this tree, particularly the roots, yielded a clear,
-yellow dye. The process of manufacture was simple. The wood was reduced
-to chips with an ordinary ax, and the chips were boiled until the yellow
-coloring matter was extracted. The resulting liquor was the dye, and it
-gave the yellow stripe to many a piece of home-made cloth in the cabins
-of mountaineers.
-
-The women usually attended to the dye making and the manufacture of yarn
-and cloth; but the men found a way to utilize yellow-wood in producing
-an article once so common in Tennessee and Kentucky that no cabin was
-without it--the trusty rifle. The gunsmith, assisted by the blacksmith,
-made the barrel and the other metal parts, but the hunter generally was
-able to whittle out the wooden stock. Yellow-wood's lightness, strength,
-and color suited the gun stock maker's purpose, and he slowly hewed and
-whittled the article, fitted it to the barrel, adjusted it to his
-shoulder, and completed a weapon which never failed the owner in time of
-need.
-
-FRIJOLITO (_Sophora secundiflora_) is found in Texas, New Mexico, and
-southward in Mexico. The name is Spanish and means "little bean." A
-common name for it in English is coral bean. Sophora is said to be an
-Arabic word of uncertain meaning, except that it refers to some kind of
-a tree that bears pods. It is a species, therefore, which draws its
-names from four languages, while the name applied to it by Comanche
-Indians is translated "sleep-bush." The bright scarlet seeds, as large
-as beans, but in shape like door-knobs, grow from one to eight in a pod,
-and contain a narcotic poison, "sophorin." It is probable that Indians
-discovered that the beans, if eaten, produced sleep, hence the name. The
-tree is from twenty-five to thirty-five feet high, and from six to ten
-inches in diameter. The leaves are compound, and consist of seven or
-nine leaflets. The small, violet-blue flowers appear in early spring.
-They are not conspicuous, but their presence cannot escape the notice of
-a traveler in the dry, semi-barren canyons and on the bluffs where the
-tree holds its ground. Their odor calls attention to their presence. The
-perfume is powerful but pleasant, unless the contact is too close. The
-pods are from one to seven inches long, and hang on the boughs until
-late winter. It is not believed that birds or mammals distribute the
-seeds, as their poison renders them unfit for food. Running water
-appears to be the principal agent of distribution. The tree reaches its
-largest size in the vicinity of Metagorda bay, Texas. Among the dry
-western canyons it is usually a shrub. The small size of this tree
-stands in the way of extensive use of the wood. It burns well and its
-principal importance is as fuel. The weight is 61.34 pounds per cubic
-foot; it is hard, compact, susceptible of a beautiful polish; medullary
-rays are numerous and thin; color is orange, streaked with red, the
-sapwood brown or yellow. The wood is worked into a few small articles.
-
-SOPHORA (_Sophora affinis_) ranges through portions of Arkansas and
-Texas. It is popularly supposed to be a locust, and is called pink
-locust or beaded locust, the first name based on the color of the wood,
-the last on the appearance of the pod which looks like a short string of
-beads, sometimes three inches in length, but usually shorter. In early
-times the pioneers manufactured ink from the pods. It was a fairly
-serviceable article, but was never sold, each family making its own.
-This tree's flowers appear in early spring with the leaves. Trunks reach
-a height of twenty feet and a diameter of eight or ten inches; but the
-habit of separating into several stems a few feet above the ground
-lessens the use of the wood, even as posts, for the stems are usually
-very crooked. The tree's preferred habitat is on limestone bluffs, or
-along the borders of streams, or in depressions in the prairie where
-small groves often occur. The wood weighs fifty-three pounds per cubic
-foot, and is very hard and strong. The annual rings are clearly marked
-with bands of large, open pores; medullary rays are thin and
-inconspicuous; color of the heartwood light red, the sapwood yellow. The
-wood is not sawed into lumber, but is whittled into canes and tool
-handles.
-
-GREENBARK ACACIA (_Cercidium floridum_) is properly named. Its green
-bark makes up for its scarcity of leaves, and answers the purpose of
-foliage. The manufacture of the tree's food goes on in the bark, because
-the leaves are too small to do the work. The foliage resembles that of
-locust and acacia in form, but the compound leaves are about an inch in
-length, and the leaflets are one-sixteenth of an inch long. Flowers are
-small, but the tree puts on three or four crops of them in a single
-summer. The pods are two inches long. The tree is found in the United
-States only in the south and west of Texas, where it is occasionally
-called palo verde. It attains a height of twenty feet and a diameter of
-ten inches when at its best. The wood is pale yellow tinged with green,
-and, because of small size, is of little importance.
-
-PALO VERDE (_Cercidium torreyanum_) sheds its leaves and its pods so
-early in the season that its branches are bare most of the year. Trees
-are from fifteen to thirty feet high, and some are considerably more
-than a foot in diameter. Its range covers a portion of southern
-California, the lower part of the Gila valley in Arizona, and extends
-southward into Mexico. It is a typical tree of the desert, and its
-extreme poverty of foliage enables it to live in a dry, hot climate. It
-clings to the sides of desert gulches and canyons, ekes out a dreary
-life in depressions among desolate dunes and hills of sand and gravel,
-and spends its allotted period of years in solitude, growing either
-singly or in small groups where the full foliage at the best time of
-year is insufficient to offer much obstruction to the full glare of the
-sun from a cloudless sky. The small flowers have little beauty or
-sweetness, but what they have is wasted on the desert air. Wayfarers in
-the barren country use the wood for camp fires.
-
-    INDIGO THORN (_Dalea spinosa_) receives its name from the color of
-    its flowers which appear in June. The tree has few leaves and they
-    fall in a short time. This appears to be a provision of nature to
-    enable the tree to endure the heat and dryness of its desert home.
-    Its range covers the lower Gila valley in Arizona, and extends into
-    the Colorado desert in southern California. It is not abundant, and
-    if it were, it is of a size so small that it is practically
-    valueless for commercial purposes. Some trees are a foot in diameter
-    and twenty feet high. The wood is light, soft, and of a rich
-    chocolate-brown color. It is known also as indigo bush and dalea.
-
-    EYSENHARDTIA (_Eysenhardtia orthocarpa_) is so little known that it
-    has no English name. It grows from western Texas to southern
-    Arizona, but reaches tree size only near the summit of Santa
-    Catalina mountains in Arizona where it is twenty feet or less in
-    height and seldom more than eight inches in diameter. It inhabits an
-    arid region, and bears fruit sparingly, with usually a single seed
-    in a pod. The wood is heavy and hard, light reddish-brown in color,
-    with thin yellow sap. It is not of commercial importance and
-    probably never will be.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MESQUITE
-
-[Illustration: MESQUITE]
-
-
-
-
-MESQUITE
-
-(_Prosopis Juliflora_)
-
-
-There are known to be sixteen species at least of mesquite in the world,
-in Asia, Africa, and North and South America. The one here considered
-has a geographical range of at least seven thousand miles north and
-south, from Kansas to Patagonia, and an east and west range of four
-thousand miles, if the naturalized growth in Hawaii may be considered
-the western outpost of the species.[7]
-
-    [7] Botanists have had much controversy among themselves concerning
-    mesquite, particularly as to what is its correct name. In giving in
-    these pages some of the important facts concerning this interesting
-    tree, or group of species and varieties, it is not necessary to
-    touch the points in dispute.
-
-The generic name _prosopis_ is a Greek word meaning "burdock;" the rest
-of the botanical name is Latin, meaning "July flower." Mesquite is an
-Aztec word (mezquitl), coming down through the Spanish. Other names for
-the tree are algaroba, honey locust, honey pod, and ironwood.
-
-The largest size of mesquite is found along the Rio Grande in southern
-Texas where trees three feet in diameter and fifty feet high are found,
-but individuals of that size are rare. The species is supposed not to
-extend west of New Mexico, but varieties grow farther west.
-
-The leaves are compound, with twenty or more leaflets. The foliage is
-thin and casts a penumbrous shadow; trees generally occur wide apart,
-and there is enough sunshine reaching the ground to satisfy grass and
-other plants growing there. The pods are from four to nine inches long,
-and each contains from ten to twenty seeds. The principal growth of this
-tree in the United States is in Texas. It has been planted in Hawaii and
-has run wild in some of the islands of the group. It is of slow growth,
-but of remarkable vitality, holds its own, and gains ground in the face
-of obstacles.
-
-Persons well acquainted with conditions in Texas, both past and present,
-say that the mesquite area is at least double now what it was when the
-state came into the Union. Old stands were scattered here and there, but
-hundreds of square miles which were in grass only, and little of that,
-half a century ago, now support forests of mesquite. It is perhaps a
-misnomer to designate some of these stands as forests, for they present
-a rather ragged and sorry appearance, but they are forests in the
-process of forming. The old growth, which is found principally in the
-counties bordering on the lower Rio Grande, is made up of trunks of
-large size, but the stands that have come on within the past fifty or
-sixty years are of smaller trees. A large mesquite trunk is from one to
-three feet in diameter; a small one from one foot down to an inch or
-two. A person would need to hunt from center to circumference of Texas
-to find many mesquite trunks that would make a straight sawlog twelve
-feet long. The tree is generally one of the most crooked, deformed and
-unpromising in the whole country; and its habit of dividing into forks
-near the ground, like a peach tree, makes it still more difficult to
-make use of. In fact, in winter when mesquite trees are bare of leaves
-the appearance of a forest reminds the observer of an old, neglected,
-diseased, moss-grown peach orchard in the eastern states; but in summer
-the leaves conceal much of the trunk scaliness and deformity, and there
-is something positively restful and attractive in the prospect of a wide
-range of these trees, covering hills and prairies. The leaves are
-compound like the acacias, and are delicate and graceful.
-
-The spread of mesquite in the last fifty or seventy-five years has been
-attributed to the checking of grass fires which Indians once set yearly
-to keep the prairies open. The dispersion of the trees is facilitated by
-the scattering of seeds by cattle which feed on the pods. It is a tree
-hard to kill. Roots send up sprouts year after year during long periods.
-Sometimes, but not often in Texas, when adverse circumstances become so
-severe that the mesquite tree can no longer survive above the surface,
-it grows beneath the ground, sending only a few sprouts up for air. "Dig
-for wood" is a term applied to trees of that kind, when fuel is dragged
-out with mattocks, grab hooks, and oxen.
-
-The roots of the mesquite penetrate farther beneath the surface for
-water than any other known tree in this country. Depths of fifty or
-sixty feet are occasionally reached. Well diggers on the frontiers
-learned to go to the mesquite for water. Large trunks never develop
-unless their roots are abundantly supplied with moisture. Railroad
-engineers on the "Staked Plains" of northwestern Texas turned that
-knowledge to account in boring wells.
-
-Though mesquite is seldom or never mentioned in the lumber business, it
-is and has been one of the most important trees of the region. Its fuel
-value is very great. It has cooked more food, warmed more buildings,
-burned more bricks, than any other wood in Texas. The tannic acid in it
-injures boilers and it is not much used for steam purposes. It is very
-high in ash. A cord of mesquite wood when burned leaves from ninety to
-one hundred pounds of ashes. This exceeds five fold the ashes left when
-white oak is burned.
-
-Mesquite is a high-grade furniture material, though it is difficult to
-work because of its exceeding hardness. Ordinary wood-working tools and
-machinery will not stand it. Suites of nine pieces are sold in some
-southwestern cities at $200 or $300. The merchants find difficulty in
-getting mesquite furniture made. Factories do not want to handle it,
-though the articles sell higher than mahogany. Large, heavy tables,
-deeply carved, are sold in some of the cities, but all seem to be made
-to order and largely by hand. The appearance of the polished and
-finished wood is a little lighter in color than mahogany. It is not
-uniform in color, but shades from tone to tone in the same piece. A
-little of the lighter colored sapwood is worked in with pleasing effect.
-Some of the tones resemble black walnut, and some suggest the luster of
-polished cherry.
-
-Mesquite is brittle. Pieces of large size may be broken by a few blows
-with an ax. It has about half the strength of white oak, and is very low
-in elasticity. The wood has been used for two hundred years--possibly
-for thousands of years--as beams and sills for adobe houses; but it is
-not required to carry much weight. Spaniards employed it in building
-their churches and forts within its range. A timber taken from the
-Alamo, at San Antonio, Texas, in 1912, was said to have served more than
-190 years with no sign of decay. Fence posts survive the men who set
-them. Paving blocks outlast sandstone subjected to the same use.
-Railroads in southern Texas employ this wood for crossties, but it is so
-hard that holes must be bored for the spikes.
-
-Mesquite baskets are made by hand of splits the size of knitting
-needles, some of white sapwood, others of dark heartwood. Such baskets,
-large enough to contain five quarts, sell in the curio shops at San
-Antonio for $1.25 each. Some wagon makers insist that mesquite is in the
-same class with Osage orange for wagon felloes in hot, dry regions; but
-it does not appear that much of it is so used. The brittleness of the
-wood is against it, in use as felloes, except for vehicles of the
-heaviest sort where large pieces are demanded.
-
-Among the uses of mesquite, by-products are an important consideration.
-The pods are food for farm stock. Before the first railroad reached San
-Antonio mesquite pods were a regular market commodity. The Mexicans know
-how to make bread and brew beer from the fruit; tan leather with the
-resin; dye leather, cloth, and crockery with the tree's sap; make ropes
-and baskets of the bark. Parched pods are a substitute for coffee; bees
-store honey from the bloom which remains two months on the trees; riled
-water is purified with a decoction of mesquite chips; vinegar is made
-from the fermented juice of the legumes; tomales of mesquite bean meal,
-pepper, chicken, and cornshucks; mucilage from the gum; and candy and
-gum drops from the dried sap.
-
-One of the most promising uses for this wood is in turnery. Short
-lengths can be utilized to advantage. The artistic color fits it for the
-manufacture of lodge gavels, curtain rings, goblets, plaques, trays,
-and numerous kinds of novelties. Spindles for grills and stairways do
-not suffer in comparison with black walnut, mahogany, cherry, and teak.
-The wood is porous, annual rings narrow and indistinct, and the
-medullary rays thin and inconspicuous.
-
-A variety (_Prosopis juliflora glandulosa_) is found from Kansas to
-eastern Texas, and also in Arizona and California. It is the common
-mesquite of eastern Texas. Another variety (_Prosopis juliflora
-velutina_) occurs in some of the hot valleys of southern Arizona and
-southward in Mexico.
-
-    SCREWBEAN (_Prosopis odorata_) is known also as screwpod mesquite,
-    and tornillo. The name is due to the pod's habit of growing in
-    spiral form, there being a dozen or more tight twists. The flowers
-    appear in early spring and new crops follow until summer. The pods
-    ripen early in autumn or late in summer, and many become infested
-    with grubs. The tree is from twenty-five to thirty feet high, and a
-    foot or less in diameter. Its range extends from western Texas and
-    Utah and Nevada through New Mexico and Arizona to southern
-    California. The wood is stronger and stiffer than common mesquite,
-    but a little lighter. Its uses are much the same, and it has the
-    same habits of growth, including its disposition to develop enormous
-    roots. The name might lead to the conclusion that the flower is rich
-    in perfume, but such is not the case. The tree grows slowly and
-    lives to old age, if it escapes fire and other accidents.
-
-    CHALKY LEUCAENA (_Leucaena pulverulenta_), commonly called mimosa,
-    occurs in the United States only in southern Texas, but is somewhat
-    abundant in Mexico, where trees sixty feet high and nearly two feet
-    in diameter are sometimes manufactured into lumber. Along the Rio
-    Grande it is called "tepeguaja" by Mexicans. This name is said to be
-    equivalent to "hardwood," which is an appropriate name. It is very
-    smooth and handsome when finished, and is used for tool handles,
-    small spindles, grills, and other small articles, particularly
-    products of the lathe. In color it resembles the lighter shades of
-    mahogany; weighs about forty-two pounds per cubic foot; foliage
-    extremely delicate and the tree is highly valuable for ornamental
-    purposes. It has been planted outside of its natural range. The pods
-    sometimes exceed a foot in length.
-
-    LEUCAENA (_Leucaena glauca_) is small and probably will never be of
-    much importance. Trunks are seldom more than five inches in diameter
-    and twenty feet high. The tree grows in canyons and ravines in
-    western Texas. The compound leaves are six or seven inches long,
-    with thirty or less pairs of leaflets; fruit is a pod six or eight
-    inches long. The rich brown wood is streaked with red.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SWEET BIRCH
-
-[Illustration: SWEET BIRCH]
-
-
-
-
-SWEET BIRCH
-
-(_Betula Lenta_)
-
-
-Ten species of birch occur in the United States, including Alaska. Six
-are eastern and four western.[8] Sweet birch is known by that name in
-many localities, but in others as black birch, cherry birch, river
-birch, mahogany birch, and mountain mahogany. Its range extends from
-Newfoundland to northwestern Ontario, south to southern Indiana,
-Kentucky, and along the Appalachian mountains to Tennessee and North
-Carolina. Probably the best development of the species is found in the
-Adirondack region of northern New York, in the northern peninsula of
-Michigan, through southern Ontario, and along the mountain ranges
-southward through Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
-
-    [8] The eastern species, which do not extend west of the continental
-    divide, are, Sweet Birch (_Betula lenta_), Yellow Birch (_Betula
-    lutea_), River Birch (_Betula nigra_), Paper Birch (_Betula
-    papyrifera_), White Birch (_Betula populifolia_) and Blue Birch
-    (_Betula caerulea_). The western birches, none of which are known to
-    extend much east of the continental divide, are: Western Birch
-    (_Betula occidentalis_), Mountain Birch (_Betula fontinalis_), White
-    Alaska Birch (_Betula alaskana_), and Kenai Birch (_Betula
-    kenaica_). The last two occur in Alaska, but not in United States
-    proper.
-
-It attains a height of seventy or eighty feet, and a diameter of two or
-three. It prefers deep, moist, rich soil, but will grow in comparatively
-dry, rocky ground. Its seeds are produced in large numbers and are
-scattered by the wind a hundred feet or more from the parent tree. They
-lack the wing power and the buoyancy of the seeds of some of the other
-birches, but they manage to get themselves sown in sufficient numbers,
-and their powers of germination are good.
-
-The young seedling comes into existence with smooth bark, but it does
-not keep it through life. As age increases, the bark becomes rough and
-black. It is not shed in papery rolls and flakes as is the bark of river
-birch, yellow birch, and paper birch, with which it is associated in
-some parts of its range. It is generally an easy tree to identify and
-the black, rough bark is generally a sufficient guide.
-
-The sweet birch is tapped like sugar maple, but not for the same purpose
-or to the same extent--only an occasional tree. Immense quantities of
-sap will flow from it during the two or three weeks when the buds are
-swelling in the spring. It is said that as much as two tons has been
-known to flow from a medium sized birch in a single season. The sap is
-made into a beer which has some commercial value, but is chiefly used
-locally. One of the ways of making it, employed by farmers and woodsmen,
-is to jug the sap, put in a handful of shelled corn, and let
-fermentation do the rest.
-
-A substance known in commerce as oil of wintergreen is procured almost
-exclusively from this birch, though occasionally it is made from the
-small wintergreen plant (_Gaultheria procumbens_). The product is
-manufactured in very crude stills made by mountaineers in Pennsylvania
-and southward along the mountains where sweet birch is abundant.
-Frequently the woodsman's whole family go into the business, chopping
-down birch bushes and hacking them with hatchets into chips of the
-desired sizes. The oil is extracted from the hogged mass by a steaming
-and roasting process. It is sold by the quart to country storekeepers
-who ship it to wholesale druggists where it is refined and used to
-flavor candy, medicine, and drugs. The woodsman who manufactures the oil
-prefers young birches from half an inch to two or three inches in
-diameter, and he usually procures them in old logging grounds where
-seedlings have sprung up. It is said that on an average one hundred
-small birch trees are destroyed for each quart of oil that goes to
-market. It is a process wasteful in the extreme.
-
-In the open ground, sweet birch develops a full crown, short trunk,
-abundance of limbs, with numerous slender, graceful twigs and small
-branches. Its leaves form a dense mass, and they are so free from
-attacks by insects and worms that diseased foliage is unusual. That
-cannot be said, however, of the trunk. It is not particularly liable to
-disease, but many old trees show the results of decay. It is of slow
-growth, and a small tree may be much older than its size indicates. The
-sapwood is generally thick, heartwood forms slowly, and the contrast in
-color between sap and heart is strong.
-
-The wood of sweet birch had few uses in early times, except fuel. The
-pioneer sawmill had little to do with it. Lumber was hard to saw and was
-seasoned with difficulty. Its tendency to warp was too great a tax on
-the lumberman's patience and ingenuity. The only way he could hold it
-straight was to cob a few layers in the bottom of a pile, and stack
-thousands of feet of other lumber on top, and leave it a year or two.
-That was generally too much trouble, particularly when the wood had slow
-sale, and the price was low. Birch reached market in large quantities
-only when modern mills and improved drykilns came into existence.
-
-The wood is heavy, strong, hard, in color dark brown tinged with red.
-The light brown or yellow sapwood generally makes up seventy or eighty
-annual rings. The difference between springwood and that of the later
-season is not clearly marked, and consequently the rings are often
-indistinct. The wood is very porous, and the pores are diffused through
-all parts of the ring. They are too small to be seen with the naked eye,
-except under the most favorable conditions. The medullary rays are
-numerous but so small that they appear on the quartered wood merely as a
-gloss, which, however, gives the surface a rich appearance.
-
-Forms known as curly and wavy birch are highly esteemed. They are
-accidents of growth, well developed in birch, and occurring in several
-other woods. Difficulties are encountered in assigning sweet birch its
-individual place in the industrial world. As a tree it is well known,
-but that is not the case when its lumber goes to market. The sweet birch
-log goes into the sawmill, but when the lumber goes out at the other end
-of the mill, it is often simply birch having lost the adjective "sweet"
-somewhere in the operation. The reason is that sweet birch and yellow
-birch, quite distinct in the forest, are often mixed and become one, to
-all intents and purposes, when they reach the market. That is not always
-the case, but it frequently is. Something depends on the region. The
-yellow birch's range is more extensive, and in areas where it is
-abundant, and sweet birch is not, it prevails in the lumber markets. But
-south and southeast of the great lakes, as well as in the northeastern
-part of the country, the two species mingle, and they are apt to go to
-market simply as birch. The woods may be distinguished by a microscopic
-examination, but the ordinary observer would make many mistakes if he
-attempted to tell one from the other in the lumber yard.
-
-The two woods are different in several physical properties. Both are
-heavy, but sweet birch weighs 47.47 pounds per cubic foot, while yellow
-birch weighs only 40.84 pounds, according to tests averaged by Sargent.
-Yellow birch rates a little above the other in breaking strength. Both
-are very stiff, but yellow birch rates superior. In most respects the
-two woods are put to similar uses--flooring, interior finish,
-furniture--but for some purposes sweet birch is preferred. It is
-substituted oftener for cherry and mahogany, and for that reason is
-known as cherry birch or mahogany birch. Its color makes the
-substitution easy, and the appearance of the grain, with a little
-doctoring with stains and fillers, helps in the deception. The buyer may
-be deceived as to the exact kind of wood he is getting, but he is not
-cheated in the quality. Birch is substituted where strength is required,
-as in the rails of beds, the frames of sofas, davenports, large chairs,
-and certain parts of large musical instruments. It is much stronger, and
-fully as hard as cherry or mahogany, and as its appearance is so much
-like them, the article is actually better on account of the
-substitution. Sweet birch is largely employed for various parts of
-vehicle manufacture, particularly for wagon hubs and frames of
-automobiles. It is also much used in the manufacture of sleds, boats,
-and handles.
-
-The demand is heavy and the supply is diminishing. The tree is of such
-slow growth that few timber owners will be inclined to wait for a second
-crop, after the old trees have been cut, since 150 years are necessary
-under forest conditions to produce a merchantable tree.
-
-    SONORA IRONWOOD (_Olneya tesota_) is a desert tree, and the only
-    representative of the genus. It takes its name from the Mexican
-    state where it is most abundant and where it was discovered in 1852.
-    It grows in southern California and Arizona, and there it thrives in
-    gulches and depressions in the desert, frequently associated with
-    mesquite. It is so heavy that perfectly dry wood will sink in water.
-    The heartwood is deep chocolate-brown, mottled with red, the thin
-    sapwood is lemon-yellow. Its hardness renders it difficult to work,
-    and it can scarcely be split. The wood is made into canes and other
-    small articles of great beauty. It is not abundant, and the small
-    supply is remote from manufacturing centers; otherwise it would be
-    more valuable. It is excellent fuel, but it is burned chiefly by
-    stockmen and miners in their camps. The largest trees are thirty
-    feet high and eighteen inches in diameter. It is an evergreen, and
-    its pea-like flowers brighten many a remote desert place.
-
-    WILD TAMARIND (_Lysiloma latisiliqua_) is forty or fifty feet high,
-    two or three in diameter, grows in southern Florida, and has
-    double-compound leaves, four or five inches long. The fruit is a pod
-    one inch wide and five or less in length. The wood weighs forty
-    pounds to the cubic foot, is neither strong nor tough, very low in
-    elasticity, is rich dark brown tinged with red, the sapwood white.
-    It has been reported for boatbuilding, and claims have been made
-    that it is equal to mahogany for that purpose, but the claim is of
-    doubtful validity, in view of the rather poor showing it makes in
-    several physical properties, though it takes good polish.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW BIRCH
-
-[Illustration: YELLOW BIRCH]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW BIRCH
-
-(_Betula Lutea_)
-
-
-There is little likelihood of mistaking the yellow birch for any other
-as it stands in the woods. Its points of individuality may be discovered
-on slight acquaintance, and there is little need of studying leaves,
-flowers, and fruit to find ways of distinguishing this birch from other
-members of the family. Its tattered, yellow and gray bark fixes it in
-the memory of all who have seen it a few times. Two other eastern
-birches have tattered, curling bark also, but they do not look like
-this. They are the paper birch and the river birch. The former is too
-white to be mistaken for yellow birch, and the river birch is too much
-the color of bronze or copper. Yellow birch is named from the color of
-its bark, the part which shows when the outer layers break and roll
-back, disclosing the fresh, smooth, satiny layers below. Sometimes the
-tree is called silver birch, gray birch, or swamp birch.
-
-Its geographic range is bounded by a line drawn from Newfoundland to
-northern Minnesota, southward through the Lake States, and along the
-Atlantic coast to Delaware. It follows the Appalachian ranges of
-mountains to eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. Generally the
-tree is small near the southern limit of its range. The best grows in
-Michigan and Wisconsin, but it is of considerable importance in
-Minnesota.
-
-Few trees are better equipped than yellow birch to perpetuate their
-species. It is an abundant seeder, and the seeds are light, winged, and
-they are scattered by wind over long distances. Sometimes they are
-carried miles. Of course, most of them fall in unfavorable places, and
-either do not germinate or perish soon after; but they are not
-particularly choice in situations, and will grow on bare mineral soil,
-even in old fields, where they are flooded with sunshine, or they will
-grow in deep shade where a beam of sunlight seldom touches them. They
-often germinate without touching mineral soil, and take root quickly and
-grow vigorously.
-
-It is not unusual in the northern part of the tree's range, and on high
-mountains farther south, to see yellow birches standing on high,
-spreading roots, two, three, or four feet above the ground. That
-peculiar attitude is brought about by the manner in which the seed
-begins to grow. It falls on moss which occupies the top of a log or a
-stump. The moss in the deep shade retains much moisture, and the seed
-germinates, grows, sends roots down the sides of the log or the stump
-until they strike mineral soil, and become firmly fixed. In course of
-time the log or stump decays, and the spreading roots continue to
-sustain the trunk, high above the ground. This attitude of the yellow
-birch tree is very common in damp woods. Occasionally the seed finds
-lodgment in the moss on top of a large rock. The roots descend the sides
-until they reach the ground, and as the rock does not decay, the tree
-grows to maturity on the rock. The most favorable seed bed for this
-species is a mass of rotten wood where a log has decayed and fallen to
-pieces. Frequently such a plot is covered with yellow birch seedlings.
-They have the space all to themselves, because the seeds of few trees or
-plants will grow in rotten wood, unmixed with mineral soil.
-
-The trunk of yellow birch averages a little smaller than that of sweet
-birch, but may equal it in some instances. Trees reach a height of 100
-feet and a diameter of three or four, but a more common size, even in
-the regions of best development, is a height of sixty or seventy feet,
-and a diameter of two or less.
-
-Yellow birch was a long time coming into use. One of the first things
-learned about it by early settlers in the region where it was abundant,
-was that it decays quickly in situations alternately wet and dry. That
-prejudiced the woodsmen against it, and they were not disposed to give
-it a fair trial, as long as there was plenty of other timber. All
-birches are subject to quick decay, if conditions are right to produce
-it. Yellow birch in the woods sometimes dies standing, and when that
-happens, the wood falls to pieces so quickly that the bark may remain
-standing with very little inside of it except powder of decayed wood.
-This tree is seldom mentioned in early accounts of lumber operations,
-and practically never with a good word. Operators generally left it
-standing when they cut the timber which grew with it.
-
-Yellow birch is heavy, very strong, hard, light brown tinged with red,
-with thin, nearly white sapwood. The color of the heartwood varies
-considerably. The pores are very numerous, rather small, and are
-scattered through the wood with little tendency to run in bands or
-groups. The springwood blends gradually with the summerwood in a way to
-make the boundaries of the annual rings somewhat indistinct. Medullary
-rays are numerous, but very thin and obscure. Quarter-sawing adds little
-or nothing to the appearance of the wood. It has poor figure, except an
-occasional tree with wavy or curly grain, or with burls.
-
-The wood may be readily stained. The pores hold the coloring matter
-applied, and by varying the application, the appearance of the surface
-can be varied. The colors of mahogany and of cherry are easily imparted,
-and yellow birch often imitates those woods.
-
-Vehicle makers choose this wood for its strength and elasticity. In the
-North it is manufactured into frames for cutters and sleighs of all
-kinds. It is a competitor of sugar maple for that purpose. Hubs are made
-of it for horse-drawn vehicles, and its hardness gives long wear where
-the spokes are inserted. That is one of the first points of failure when
-a soft, inferior wood is used for hubs. The spokes work loose.
-
-Manufacturers of automobiles have tried out yellow birch as material for
-frames; it has stood the test, and is much used in competition with
-other woods. The amount demanded for that purpose is not necessarily
-large, but it must be the best wood that can be had.
-
-This material reaches the markets in all grades. Large amounts are used
-for packing boxes, crates, and shipping containers. Low grades answer
-for these purposes, leaving the better sorts for the more exacting
-industries. The logs are cut in rotary veneer for baskets, and for ply
-work. Some of the veneer in three-ply is worked into commodities of high
-class, such as seats and backs of theater chairs.
-
-Birch flooring competes closely with maple for popular favor. It may
-lack something of maple's whiteness, but it takes no second place in
-hardness, smoothness, and wearing qualities. It is made into parquet
-flooring as well as the ordinary tongued and grooved article. As such,
-the sap matches the light colored woods, and the heart the dark.
-
-It goes into all kinds of interior house finish, from floor to ceiling,
-and the finest grades are often devoted to stair work. Door and window
-frames are made of it in large quantities, but it is not suited to
-outside work exposed to weather, because of its tendencies to decay. It
-is much employed as door material. Furniture demands the same class of
-wood. Medium priced articles may be of solid birch, but the best
-commodities are made of veneers laid upon other woods. Figured birch is
-a favorite material for that class of work.
-
-The more common commodities manufactured of this wood can be listed only
-by groups, because of their great number. Novelties constitute a large
-class. One of the earliest demands was from the manufacturers of pill
-boxes, such as apothecaries use. That was before anyone had tried to
-sell yellow birch in the general market, and the demand came principally
-from New England and New York. Another early demand came from coopers
-who found that barrel hoops of yellow birch were highly satisfactory for
-certain kinds of vessels. Fish kits were among the first to appear in
-birch hoops. Small saplings were used, not over two inches in diameter.
-They are large enough to make two hoops by splitting. The bark was left
-on, and the identity of the wood was never in doubt, because when the
-sapling is of that size, the bark is a fine yellow. It has not yet
-commenced to crack open and roll up, as it does later. Millions of birch
-hoops are still produced yearly in the United States, but all of them
-are not of this species. The hoop business has existed much more than a
-century, and millions of young birches have been cut every year to meet
-the demand.
-
-Birch broom handles have been a commodity since the first lathe went to
-work on that product. They are made of all the commercial birches, but
-yellow birch contributes a large part. Other handles are manufactured of
-it also, such as are fitted to hand saws, planes, drawing knives,
-chisels, and augers.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RIVER BIRCH
-
-[Illustration: RIVER BIRCH]
-
-
-
-
-RIVER BIRCH
-
-(_Betula Nigra_)
-
-
-This tree is known as red birch, river birch, water birch, blue birch,
-black birch, and simply as birch. The name red birch refers to the color
-of the bark which is exposed to view in the process of exfoliation. The
-trunk is constantly getting rid of its outer bark, and in doing so, the
-exterior layers are rolled back, hang a while, and are gradually whipped
-off by the wind. The new bark which is exposed to view when the old is
-rolled back is reddish. Its color varies considerably, sometimes
-suggesting the tint of old brass, again it is brown, but people in
-widely separated regions have seen fit to call the tree red birch
-because of the color of its bark. The name black birch is not
-appropriate, though the old bark near the base of large trunks may
-suggest it. No reason can be assigned for calling it blue birch, unless
-the foliage in early summer may warrant such a term. River birch and
-water birch are more appropriate, as these names indicate the situations
-where the species grows. It clings to water courses almost as closely as
-sycamore. A favorite attitude of the tree is to lean over a river or
-pond, with the long, graceful limbs almost touching the water.
-
-Nature seems to recognize the tree's habit of hanging over muddy banks,
-and has prepared it for that manner of life. Seeds are ripe early in
-summer when the rivers are falling. They are scattered by myriads on the
-muddy shores and upon the water. Those which fall in the mud find at
-once a suitable place for germination, and those whose fortune it is to
-drop in the water float away with the current or they are driven by the
-wind until they lodge along the shores, and the receding water leaves
-them in a few days, and they spring up quickly. Before the autumn or
-early winter high water comes, they are well rooted in the mud and sand,
-ready to put up a fight for their lives.
-
-The provision is a wise one. If the seeds matured in the fall, when
-water is low, they would be strewn along the low shores, and before they
-could take root and establish themselves, the high water and the ice of
-winter would destroy them. The seeds need mud to give them a start in
-life, and they need that start early in summer.
-
-The range of river birch is less extensive than that of the other
-important eastern birches, yet it is by no means limited. Its eastern
-boundary is in Massachusetts, its western in Minnesota, and it adheres
-fairly well to a line drawn between the two states. Its range extends
-200 miles west of the Mississippi and covers most of the southern
-states. It is found in an area of nearly 1,000,000 square miles, but is
-scarce in most of it. In certain restricted localities it is fairly
-abundant, but there are thousands of square miles in the limits of its
-range which have not a single tree. Its greatest development is in the
-south Atlantic states, and in the lower Mississippi basin.
-
-Trees at their best are from eighty to ninety feet high and from two to
-four in diameter, but most trunks are less than two feet in diameter.
-The tree frequently forks fifteen or twenty feet from the ground, or
-occasionally sends up several stems from the ground. Forms of that kind
-are practically useless for lumber.
-
-The wood is among the lightest of the birches and weighs 35.91 pounds
-per cubic foot. It is rather hard, medium strong, the heartwood light
-brown in color, with thick, pale sapwood. It rates below sweet and
-yellow birch in stiffness, is very porous, but the pores are quite
-small, and can scarcely be seen without a magnifying glass. They are
-diffused throughout the entire annual ring. There is no marked
-difference in the appearance of the springwood and that of the late
-season. The medullary rays are very small and have little effect on the
-appearance of the wood, no matter in what way the sawing is done.
-
-The wood is apt to contain pith flecks and streaks. These are small,
-brown spots or lines scattered at random through the wood. They are a
-blemish which is not easily covered up if the wood is to be polished;
-but they are small and may not be objectionable. The flecks are caused
-by insects which, early in the season, bore through the bark into the
-cambium layer (the newly-formed wood), where eggs are deposited. The
-young insect cuts a tunnel up or down along the cambium layer, an inch
-or less in length and a sixteenth of an inch wide. This gallery
-subsequently fills with brown deposits which remain permanently in the
-wood. Sometimes these deposits are sufficiently hard to turn the edge of
-tools.
-
-River birch is widely used but in small amounts. It may properly be
-described as a neighborhood wood--that is, wherever it grows in
-considerable quantity it is put to use, but nearly always in a local
-way. For example, in Louisiana, where it is as abundant as in any other
-state, it is a favorite material for ox yokes, and no report from that
-state has been made of its employment for any other purpose. The reason
-given for its extensive use for ox yokes there is that it is very strong
-for its weight, and that it resists decay. The yokes there are usually
-left out of doors when not in use, and the dampness and hot weather
-cause rapid decay of most woods. The birches are usually listed as
-quick-decaying woods, but the verdict from Louisiana seems to be that
-river birch is an exception.
-
-Plain furniture is made of it, and the manufacturers of woodenware find
-it suitable for most of their commodities. It is sometimes listed as
-wooden shoe material, but no particular instance has been reported where
-it has been so used in this country. In Maryland some of the
-manufacturers of peach baskets make bands or hoops of it, and pronounce
-it as satisfactory for that purpose as elm.
-
-The supply is not in much danger of exhaustion. The species is equipped
-to take care of itself, occupying as it does, ground not in demand for
-farming purposes. When a tree once gets a start it has a chance to
-escape the ax until large enough for use.
-
-WHITE ALASKA BIRCH (_Betula alaskana_) is usually called simply white
-birch where it grows. It is not exclusively an Alaska species though
-that is the only place where it touches the territory of the United
-States. It is supposed by some to be closely related to the white
-birches of northern Asia, but the relationship, if it exists, has not
-been established. In Alaska it grows as far north as any timber extends.
-It was first discovered and reported in 1858 on the Saskatchewan river,
-east of the Rocky Mountains, and its range is now known to extend down
-the valley of the Mackenzie river toward the Arctic ocean to a point
-more than 100 miles north of the Arctic circle. It is common in many
-parts of Alaska both along the coast and in the interior. In some
-portions of that territory it is an important source of fuel. Trees are
-from twenty-five to sixty feet high, and from six to eighteen inches in
-diameter. The bark is thin and often nearly white, separating into thin
-scales. The tree bears typical birch cones, but larger than those of
-some of the other species. No tests of the wood's physical properties
-have been made, but it looks like the wood of paper birch, and will
-probably attain to considerable importance in the future, since it grows
-over a large area, and in many parts is abundant. There remain many
-things for both botanists and wood-users to investigate concerning this
-tree which has a range of more than half a million square miles.
-
-WESTERN BIRCH (_Betula occidentalis_) is believed to be the largest
-birch in the world, and yet it is not of much commercial importance in
-the United States, because of scarcity, occurring only in northwestern
-Washington and in the adjacent parts of British Columbia, as far as its
-range has been determined. It resembles paper birch, and has often been
-supposed to be that tree. The people in the restricted region where it
-grows speak of it simply as birch. The largest trees are 100 feet high
-and four feet in diameter, clear of limbs forty or fifty feet. A height
-of seventy feet and a diameter of two are common. The general color of
-the trunk is orange-brown, the new bark, exposed by exfoliation, is
-yellow. The tree prefers the border of streams and the shores of lakes.
-Though it is the largest of the birches, its seeds are among the
-smallest. They are provided with two wings and are good flyers.
-Manufacturers of flooring and interior finish in Washington reported the
-use of 315,000 feet of this birch in 1911. That was the only use found
-for it in the only state where it grows. Information is meager as to the
-probable quantity of this birch available. It has been reported in
-Idaho, but exact information on the subject is lacking.
-
-    MOUNTAIN BIRCH (_Betula fontanalis_) is a minor species concerning
-    which there has been much contention among botanists. It has finally
-    been called mountain birch because it grows on mountains, as high as
-    10,000 feet among the Sierra Nevadas in California. It has many
-    local names for a tree so small as to be almost a shrub throughout
-    most of its range: Black birch, sweet birch, cherry birch, water
-    birch, and canyon birch. Its bark is of the color of old copper;
-    wood is light yellowish-brown, with thick white sapwood; trunks
-    seldom exceed ten inches in diameter and thirty feet high; range
-    extends from northern British Columbia to California, and along the
-    Rocky Mountains to Colorado and possibly further south. The uses of
-    the wood are few.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-PAPER BIRCH
-
-[Illustration: PAPER BIRCH]
-
-
-
-
-PAPER BIRCH
-
-(_Betula Papyrifera_)
-
-
-This tree is called paper birch because the bark parts in thin sheets
-like paper. It is known as canoe birch from the fact that Indians and
-early white explorers and travelers constructed canoes of the bark. The
-name silver birch is an allusion to the color of the bark; and big white
-birch is the name used when the purpose is to distinguish it from the
-white birch with which it is associated in the northeastern part of its
-range. It grows as far north as Arctic British America, east to
-Labrador, south to Michigan and Pennsylvania, and west nearly or quite
-to the base of the Rocky Mountains. This indicated area exceeds
-1,000,000 square miles. The quantity of birch of this species in the
-forests is unknown, but it runs into billions of feet, probably
-exceeding any other single species of birch. The tree sometimes grows
-dispersed through forests of other woods, sometimes in nearly pure
-stands. Persons well acquainted with the species have expressed the
-opinion that paper birch exists in larger quantities now than at the
-time when the country was first explored by white men. That can be said
-of few other species; but probably holds true of lodgepole pine in the
-West, loblolly pine in the Southeast, and mesquite in the Southwest.
-Each of these species took advantage of man's presence and influence to
-extend its range. Cattle spread the mesquite; the lodgepole pine came up
-in fire-burned tracts; loblolly pine spread into abandoned fields; and
-paper birch profited by fires which destroyed large tracts of timber.
-
-The seeds are light, are furnished with wings which sail them long
-distances through the air, and they are quickly scattered over the
-burned areas where they spring up. In the contest, they are competitors
-of aspen. Birch often captures the ground, but does not always do it.
-Some of the largest stands in the Northeast occupy tracts bared by fire
-half a century or more ago. When paper birch does not find open tracts,
-it contents itself with sharing ground with other species. That was the
-usual manner of its growth in the original forests; but it has been
-quick to seize opportunities to take full possession.
-
-It does not like shade and, if crowded, one of the first things it does
-is to rid its lower trunk of all branches. Only limbs remain which are
-at the top where they receive plenty of light. Therefore, forest-grown
-paper birches have long, clean trunks, though they are not always
-straight. The largest trees are seventy feet high and three in diameter,
-but those fifty feet in height and eighteen inches in diameter are above
-rather than under the average.
-
-The bark of paper birch has played an important part in American
-history, story, and poetry. It was the canoe material, the roof, and the
-utensil in its region. The Indians had brought the art of canoe making
-to perfection before white men went among them. The bark peels from the
-trunks in large pieces, and may be separated into thin sheets, which are
-very tough, strong, and durable. The Indians sewed pieces of bark
-together, using the long, slender roots of tamarack for thread. The bark
-was stretched and tied over a frame, the shape of the canoe, and made of
-northern white cedar, or some other light wood. Holes in the bark, and
-the partings at the seams, were stopped with resin from balsam fir, wax
-from balm of Gilead, or resin from pine. The forest supplied all the
-material needed by the Indian, and a canoe thus made, and large enough
-to carry 800 or 1,000 pounds, weighed no more than fifty pounds. Frail
-as it seemed, it was good for long service on rivers and lakes, and
-could weather storms of no small severity.
-
-White men adopted the bark canoes at once, and learned from Indians how
-to make them. The daring explorers and venturesome fur traders who
-threaded every river and navigated every important lake of British
-America, found the birch canoe equal to every requirement, even to
-attacking whales in the tidewater of the Arctic ocean. The bark from
-this birch was used for tents and the roofs of cabins; vessels in which
-to store or carry food were made of it, as well as beds on which to
-sleep, and wrapping material for bundles. These uses have now
-practically ceased; but as sport, recreation, and for the novelty,
-articles, from canoes to visiting cards, are still made of the bark.
-
-The wood of paper birch is valuable for certain purposes. The trees are
-largely white sapwood, which is without figure. It is as plain a wood as
-grows in the forest, but it may be stained. That, however, is seldom
-done. The heartwood is dark or red, and is made into brush backs and
-parquet flooring, but the hearts are small, and no large quantity of
-that wood is used. The largest use of paper birch is for spools, the
-common kind for thread. Some of larger size are made for use in mills.
-The sapwood only is accepted by makers of spools. The heart is cut out,
-and most of it is thrown away or burned under the boilers. The qualities
-of paper birch which appeal to spool makers are, white color, small
-liability to warp, and the ease with which it may be cut without dulling
-the tools. The logs are worked into bars of the various spool sizes, and
-are carefully seasoned. One of the problems that must be constantly
-solved is the prevention of sap stain while the bars are seasoning. The
-wood discolors quickly and deeply.
-
-Tooth picks, shoe pegs, and shoe shanks are other important commodities
-manufactured from paper birch. It has not yet been satisfactorily
-converted into lumber, because it is more valuable for spools, tooth
-picks, pegs, and the like. This wood is frequently listed as a pulpwood,
-and it is quite generally believed that its use for that purpose is
-important. This is apparently an error, as the wood is not even
-mentioned in statistics of pulpwood output in this country.
-
-Paper birch weighs 37.11 pounds per cubic foot, is strong, hard, tough;
-medullary rays are numerous but very small and obscure; wood is
-diffuse-porous, and earlywood blends gradually with latewood in the
-annual rings which are not very distinct.
-
-This is one of the woods which does not threaten to become soon
-exhausted. A supply for half a century, at present rate of use, is in
-sight, if no more should grow; but in fifty years new forests, now
-young, will be large enough to use.
-
-    KENAI BIRCH (_Betula kenaica_) is an Alaska species concerning which
-    comparatively little is known, except that its botanical identity
-    and something of its range have been established. Its small size,
-    and the remote regions where it grows, do not necessarily indicate
-    that it can never be important. Scarcity of other woods may give it
-    a place which it does not now occupy. No reports on the properties
-    of the wood have been made. The bark is deep brown in color. Trees
-    are from twenty to thirty feet high and from twelve to eighteen
-    inches in diameter. The trunks are very short. Cones are an inch or
-    less in length and the double winged seeds are very small. The name
-    applied to this species relates to the region where the best
-    developed trees have been found. As far as known, the species is
-    confined to the coast region of Alaska and to adjacent islands from
-    the head of Lynn canal westward. It has been reported on Koyukuk
-    river above the Arctic circle.
-
-    WHITE BIRCH (_Betula populifolia_) is known also as gray birch,
-    old-field birch, poverty birch, poplar-leaved birch, and small white
-    birch. It is chiefly confined to the northeastern part of the United
-    States, but grows as far east as Nova Scotia, and west to the
-    southern shore of Lake Ontario. It occurs on the Atlantic coast
-    south to Delaware, and along mountain ranges to West Virginia. The
-    names describe either the habits or the appearance of the tree. The
-    bark is white, and is the most prominent feature of a thicket of
-    these graceful but practically worthless little birches. It is
-    called an old-field species because it quickly scatters its small,
-    winged seeds over abandoned farmland and takes possession when it
-    does not have to compete with stronger species. Poverty birch is an
-    allusion, either to the poor ground it occupies or the unpromising
-    nature of the tree itself. The resemblance of its leaves to those of
-    cottonwood leads some people to prefer the name poplar-leaved birch.
-    The tree at its best is seldom more than forty feet high and
-    eighteen inches in diameter. A height of twenty or thirty feet is
-    the usual size. The stem is generally clothed with branches nearly
-    to the ground. The wood is light, soft, not strong or durable, heart
-    light brown, thick sap nearly white. The form and size of the trunk
-    exclude it from sawmills, but it has some special uses: Spools, shoe
-    pegs, and hoops. Its small size does not disqualify it for service
-    along those lines. The tree springs up quickly, grows with fair
-    rapidity, and dies young. It is cut for cordwood in New England and
-    makes good fuel. It takes possession of areas bared by fire, and
-    protects the ground, furnishing shelter for more valuable species
-    which come later.
-
-    BLUE BIRCH (_Betula caerulea_) is a small tree of which more
-    information is to be desired. It is rarely more than thirty feet
-    high with a diameter of eight or ten inches. Its leaves are
-    long-pointed, its cones about an inch in length, the bark is thin,
-    white tinged with rose, and is lustrous. Bark is not easily
-    separated into layers, in that respect differing from the paper
-    birch. The inner bark is of light orange color. It is probably put
-    to no use, unless for fuel or as hoops. It is smallest of New
-    England birches, and its range has not been fully determined, but it
-    is known to grow in Maine and Vermont, and probably will be found in
-    other parts of New England and in the adjacent regions of Canada. It
-    has been compared with a European species of birch, the _Betula
-    pendula_.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RED ALDER
-
-[Illustration: RED ALDER]
-
-
-
-
-RED ALDER
-
-(_Alnus Oregona_)
-
-
-Many species of alder are found in various parts of the world, and on
-both sides of the equator, but chiefly in the northern hemisphere. Some
-of these are trees, others are shrubs. Six species belonging in the tree
-class grow in the United States, besides others which remain shrubs.
-Some trees are burdened with names, changing them with locality, but not
-so with alder. An adjective may accompany the name, as red, white,
-seaside, or mountain, to describe it, but it is always alder, no matter
-where it grows. The different species cover much of the United States,
-and few large areas are found which have not one or more species. It
-grows from sea level up to 7,000 feet or more, but some species thrive
-at one elevation, and others above or below.
-
-The alders are old inhabitants of the earth. They had a place in the
-Eocene and Miocene forests of the old world and new. It is not apparent
-that they have either gained or lost in extent of range during the
-hundreds of thousands of years which measure their tenancy on the earth.
-They have not been aggressive in pushing their way, nor have they shown
-a disposition to retire before the aggression of other trees. Some
-alders bear seeds equipped with wings for wind distribution, others
-produce wingless seeds which depend on water to bear them to suitable
-situations and plant them. Of course, the water-borne seeds are planted
-on muddy shores or on the banks of running streams, and the trees of
-those species are confined to such situations. The alders belong to the
-birch family.
-
-Red alder is the largest of the alder group in this country. Mature
-trees are from forty to ninety feet high, and from one to three feet in
-diameter. The northern limit of its range crosses southern Alaska; its
-southern border is in southern California. It is a Pacific coast tree,
-with a north and south range of 2,000 miles. Trunks are straight, and
-branches are generally slender. The largest specimens grow in the
-vicinity of Puget Sound. The bark is thin, leaves are from three to ten
-inches long, cones from one-half to one inch in length, seeds have very
-narrow, thin wings, and are about the size of radish seeds. The cones
-remain green in color until the seeds are fully ripe, but they finally
-turn brown, and seeds are liberated during the fall and winter.
-
-Red alder is given that name because the newly cut wood is liable to
-change quickly to a reddish-brown. This applies to the whitish sapwood
-only; but since the trunk is largely sapwood, it is an important matter.
-It is not apparent whether the change in color is due to attack by
-fungi, or to some chemical change in the sap. It is not believed that
-the change in color weakens the wood, at least it does not appear to do
-so immediately. The heart is reddish, and when dressed and polished, it
-presents a fine appearance.
-
-Red alder when thoroughly air dry weighs about thirty pounds per cubic
-foot, which is slightly above the weight of basswood. It is strong for
-its weight, rating only eight per cent below white oak, while in
-stiffness or elasticity it is about twelve per cent above white oak. It
-is not difficult to season, is soft, stands well when made up, and is
-one of the most important hardwoods of the northwest Pacific coast. More
-than 2,000,000 feet a year go to wood-using factories in Washington and
-Oregon.
-
-The Indians of the Northwest, when they had only stone hatchets or the
-crudest kinds of metal tools, found red alder a wood which worked so
-easily that they specialized with it. They made canoes of the largest
-trunks, and all manner of troughs, trays, trenches, platters, and
-dugouts, some of no more than a pint in capacity, others holding three
-or four bushels. The Field Museum in Chicago has a collection of these
-Indian utensils made of alder. The workmanship shows considerable skill
-mixed with barbaric art. There are carvings of eagles and bears which
-are not entirely grotesque. The utensils were designed primarily to
-contain food at ceremonial feasts, or it was stored for times of
-scarcity. Among them are cooking vessels of alder in which meat was
-boiled by filling the troughs with water and dropping in hot stones.
-
-Furniture manufacturers are the largest users of red alder. Carefully
-selected heartwood, finished in the proper color, looks much like
-cherry, though it lacks something of the characteristic cherry luster.
-The sapwood in its natural color resembles the sapwood of yellow birch.
-The annual rings are defined by narrow bands of dense summerwood. The
-pores are small and diffused through the entire ring, as with birch.
-Medullary rays are very thin and do not show much figure; neither do the
-rings of growth, in tangential sawing, display much contrast. It is,
-therefore, a figureless wood, entering into practically all grades of
-furniture, in the region where alder is plentiful, but it shows to
-particularly good advantage in panels.
-
-Reports on wood-utilization on the Pacific coast list this wood for
-archery bows but particulars as to amount used, and why it is used at
-all, are not given. The physical properties of the wood do not seem to
-fit it for that use. It is wanting in both strength and elasticity which
-are the prime, almost the only, factors considered in selecting bow
-wood. No account has been found of any employment of alder for bows by
-Indians of the region where it grows.
-
-Broom handle turners in Washington use 350,000 feet of alder a year. The
-smooth finish which may be imparted to the wood constitutes its chief
-value for broom handles. It is well liked for porch columns. When the
-center is bored out, the wood seldom checks. In that respect it
-resembles yellow poplar. It takes paint well and holds it a long time.
-Comparatively large amounts are converted into interior finish. It is
-made into spindles, newel posts, railing, panels, molding, ornaments,
-and pedestals. Occasionally it is finished in the wood's natural color.
-
-Many minor places are found for red alder. Frames of pack saddles are
-made of it; it forms parts of pulleys; is available for small turnery;
-and it is sometimes worked into bodies and compartments for business
-wagons, such as butchers and bakers use. The bark is rich in tannin and
-is said to be employed in local tanneries, but no statistics are
-available showing the annual supply.
-
-WHITE ALDER (_Alnus rhombifolia_) is known simply as alder in the region
-where it grows. Where this tree and red alder occupy the same range they
-are commonly supposed to be the same. The range of white alder extends
-from northern Idaho to southern California. It is the common alder of
-central California where it attains its best development, and the only
-alder at low altitudes in southern California. Trees vary in height from
-thirty to eighty feet, and in diameter from one to three. A common size
-is fifty feet high and fifteen inches in diameter. Like most alders, it
-sticks close to water courses, and is usually found in the bottoms of
-gulches where water flows most of the year. The flowers begin to appear
-in midsummer as dark, olive-brown catkins less than an inch in length.
-By midwinter they are fully developed, and the tree is loaded with
-catkins from four to six inches long and thick as lead pencils. In the
-gulches among the elevated foothills it is not unusual for trees to be
-bending beneath snow and flowers at the same time. That is about the
-period when the seeds of the preceding year complete their dispersal.
-The cones hang closed nearly a whole twelve months, and when they give
-up their seeds, they often do it slowly. The seeds are the size of pin
-heads, and seem to have had wings once, but lost them. The remnants
-remain, but are of no use. If running water does not carry seeds to new
-grounds they lie beneath the parent tree. The wood of white alder is
-five pounds lighter per cubic foot than red alder. Its structure is less
-satisfactory. Medullary rays are irregular, some being thin as those of
-sweet birch, while others are as broad as rays of chestnut oak. Those of
-large size seem to be scattered at haphazard, and are so irregular and
-uncertain that no dependence can be placed in them for figure. Trees are
-largely sapwood, which is nearly white when freshly cut, but it quickly
-turns brown; heartwood is pale, yellowish-brown. This is said to be one
-of most quickly-decaying woods of the western forests when logs are left
-lying in damp woods. The white alder ought to be suitable for nearly
-every purpose for which red alder is used.
-
-    MOUNTAIN ALDER (_Alnus tenuifolia_) is too small to contribute much
-    to the lumber supply of the country, though it may yield fuel in
-    some localities where there is little else. Its range extends from
-    Yukon territory to Lower California, a distance of 4,000 miles, and
-    it nearly touches both the torrid and frigid zones. It is found from
-    the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific in the United States. Few trunks
-    exceed twenty-five feet in height or six inches in diameter; but the
-    form is generally brush, in tangled thickets along the courses of
-    mountain streams, and on boggy slopes, up to 7,000 feet in altitude.
-    The wood is light brown, and there are no reports showing its use
-    for any purpose except firewood.
-
-    SITKA ALDER (_Alnus sitchensis_) is one of the smallest of the
-    arborescent species, and in most instances it is a shrub a few feet
-    high. At its best it is thirty feet high and eight inches in
-    diameter. It grows from Alaska to Oregon, and eastward to Alberta
-    and Montana. It is found in mountain regions 4,000 feet above the
-    sea. The wood is valuable for fuel only. This species was discovered
-    about eighty years ago, but was practically lost sight of until
-    recently. Many persons saw it but supposed it to be one of the other
-    alders.
-
-    LANCELEAF ALDER (_Alnus acuminata_) is a southwestern species,
-    ranging through southern New Mexico and southern Arizona and south
-    4,000 miles to Peru. In the United States it ascends to altitudes of
-    4,000 or 6,000 feet where it fringes the banks of streams, and
-    flourishes in the bottoms of canyons. The largest trees are thirty
-    feet high and eight inches in diameter. Flowers open in February
-    before the appearance of the leaves. The seeds have small wings
-    which are of little or no use.
-
-    SEASIDE ALDER (_Alnus maritima_) grows in Maryland, Delaware, and
-    Oklahoma, and the largest trunks are thirty feet high and five
-    inches in diameter. It is found on the banks of ponds and streams.
-    The flowers appear in July, and the seeds of last year's crop ripen
-    at the same time. The wood is light, soft, and brown, heart and sap
-    being scarcely distinguishable. The wood is not used.
-
-    The European Alder (_Alnus glutinosa_) has been naturalized in a few
-    places in the United States, and several varieties are distinguished
-    in cultivation. A native shrubby species (_Alnus rugosa_) is common
-    in many parts of the eastern states. It is not usually listed as a
-    tree, being too small, but it is sometimes twenty-five feet high and
-    three or four inches in diameter. In Europe the charcoal made from
-    alder is considered excellent material for the manufacture of gun
-    powder, and considerable areas of alder in England are held in
-    reserve against an emergency. It is probable that the American
-    alders would answer as well as the European species.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-HORNBEAM
-
-[Illustration: HORNBEAM]
-
-
-
-
-HORNBEAM
-
-(_Ostrya Virginiana_)
-
-
-This tree belongs to the birch family and is closely related to the
-alders and to blue beech. Four species of hornbeam are known in the
-world, and two of them are in the United States. One is well known to
-most persons who are familiar with eastern hardwood forests, but the
-other is seldom seen because of the limited extent of its range.
-
-The well-known hornbeam is found in the valley of the St. Lawrence
-river, throughout Nova Scotia and Ottawa, along the northern shore of
-Lake Huron to northern Minnesota, south through the northern states and
-along the Alleghany mountains to the Chattahoochee region of western
-Florida; through eastern Iowa, southeastern Missouri and Arkansas,
-eastern Kansas, Oklahoma and the Trinity river region of Texas. It is
-known as ironwood, hop-hornbeam, leverwood, and hardhack.
-
-The Indians were small users of wood except for fuel, but they had
-places where they put wood to special uses. They chose hornbeam, when
-they could get it, for one of these places. It was a favorite material
-for the handles of their stone warclubs. The stone heads were chipped to
-various forms, but were usually egg-shaped with a groove round the
-middle for fixing the handle. This was made fast with thongs of rawhide,
-and was generally nearly or quite two feet long, and slender as a golf
-stick. Great strength and a high degree of elasticity were required to
-stand the strain when a warrior swung his club in battle. Hornbeam meets
-these requirements exactly, and doubtless the Indian found this out by
-experience. It is about thirty per cent stronger than white oak, and
-forty-six per cent more elastic. The demand for warclub handles made no
-great inroads on the hornbeam supply, but it affords proof that the
-Indians sometimes used good judgment.
-
-The different names of this tree describe some characteristic of the
-wood or foliage. The fruit resembles hops, hence one of the names.
-Hardness gives it the other names by which it is known. It is the custom
-nearly everywhere to call any wood ironwood if it is extra hard. No
-fewer than eleven species of the United States are known as ironwood in
-some parts of their ranges.
-
-The leaves of hornbeam are simple and alternate; they taper to a sharp
-point at the end, while the base is rounded. They are doubly and sharply
-serrate. In color they are dark green above, and lighter below, tufted
-in places, resembling birch leaves in some respects, although they are
-quite different in texture, the leaves of birch being glossy, while
-those of ironwood are rough. They are joined to the twig with a short
-petiole, hardly a fourth of an inch in length.
-
-The flowers grow in long catkins, staminate ones sometimes more than two
-inches long, covered with fringed scales. The pistillate catkins are
-usually shorter. Hornbeam blooms in April and May and its fruit ripens
-in August and September. The seed is a small nut equipped with
-balloon-like wings, intended for wind distribution. The seeds are often
-carried, rolled, and tumbled considerable distances. They keep on going
-until their wings are torn off or wear out, or until they become
-inextricably entangled among twigs or other obstacles. Comparatively few
-of the seeds ever find lodgment in situations suitable for germination.
-Consequently, hornbeam is scarce.
-
-It is not easy to state the average size of the hornbeam, though it is
-usually small and never very large. Sometimes it reaches a height of
-fifty or sixty feet and a diameter of two or more, but such sizes are
-unusual. Trees a foot in diameter and forty feet high are more common.
-The foliage is thin, and the tree is satisfied to grow in shade,
-provided the shadows are not too dense. The leaves must have a little
-sunshine, and the flecks that fall through the open spaces in the forest
-canopy high above, suffice. The hornbeam makes no effort to overtop its
-fellow trees; but when it grows in the open, as on a rocky bank or
-ridge, where it catches the full light, the crown puts on more leaves,
-and multiplies its branches, and it is no longer the lean tree which
-some of the Indians called it. Forest grown specimens produce clear
-trunks, but those in the open are limby almost to the ground.
-
-Hornbeam has neither smell nor taste. It burns well, the embers glowing
-brightly in still air. The weight of a cubic foot of seasoned wood is
-fifty-one pounds. It is strong, hard, heavy, tough, and exceedingly
-durable when exposed to variable weather, or when in contact with the
-soil. It takes a beautiful polish. Trees more than a foot in diameter
-are often found to be hollow.
-
-The wood is strong, hard, tough, durable in contact with the soil;
-heartwood light brown, tinged with red, or often nearly white; thick,
-pale sapwood which generally does not change to heart for forty or fifty
-years. The annual rings are not uniform in appearance. Some are easily
-distinguishable, while others are vague. This variation is due to the
-irregular development of the dark summerwood in the outer portion of the
-rings. It is at times distinct and again is hardly discernible.
-
-The wood is diffuse-porous, and the pores are too small to be easily
-seen by the naked eye. The medullary rays are small and obscure. In
-quarter-sawed wood they show as a silvery gloss, but the appearance is
-too monotonous to be attractive. Neither is there striking figure when
-the wood is sawed tangentially, because of the small contrast in the
-different parts of the yearly ring. Hornbeam may, therefore, be listed
-among woods which have little or no figure. No one ever thinks of using
-it for the sake of its beauty. Because of the small size and limited
-quantity hornbeam will never come into commercial prominence. Its uses
-are almost entirely local and domestic. The lumberman or the farmer
-selects a hornbeam sapling as being the best material obtainable for
-making a wagon or sleigh tongue, a skid, or a lever. The farmer often
-laboriously works a section of the flint-like wood into minor
-agricultural implements.
-
-The statistics of sawmill cut in the United States do not mention
-hornbeam even among such minor species as holly, Osage orange, alder,
-and apple. However, it is known that an occasional log goes to sawmills
-in the Lake States, and doubtless in other regions, and in some
-instances the wood is kept separate from others and is sold to fill
-special orders. Manufacturers of farm tools consider it the best wood
-for rake teeth. That use has come down from the time when farmers made
-their own rakes and pitchforks. They learned the wood's value by
-experience, and manufacturers cater to the trade.
-
-It is sometimes called lever wood, and that name dates from long ago
-when the man who needed a lever went into the woods and cut one to suit
-his needs. The modern lever is usually somewhat different and partakes
-more of the nature of a handle. They are seen in sawmills where they
-manipulate the carriage machinery; on certain agricultural implements
-where their function is to throw clutches in and out of gear; sometimes
-they are used as the handle by which the rudder of a small boat is
-controlled; and occasionally the lever has a place as an adjunct of a
-wagon or log-car brake. In all of these uses strength and stiffness are
-required, and durability is duly considered.
-
-Wagon makers and repairers find several uses for hornbeam. It would be
-more frequently employed if it were more plentiful. Nearly any
-blacksmith who runs a repair shop for vehicles will testify to that. It
-fulfills every requisite for axles; is made into felloes for heavy
-wagons; and is considered the best obtainable wood for the tongues of
-heavy logging wheels and stone wagons.
-
-Among various occasional uses of this wood it is listed by the
-manufacturers of reels for garden hose; rungs for long ladders; stakes
-for sleds, and also for cross pieces and parts of runners of sleds;
-wedges for the makers of machinery; and hammer and hatchet handles. It
-is a pretty active competitor of dogwood for some of these uses, and it
-has been suggested for shuttles, but no report of its use in that
-capacity seems to have been made.
-
-One of its most common uses is as fence posts. Few lines of fence are
-built exclusively of hornbeam posts, because not enough can be had in
-one place; but posts are cut singly or a few together from Maine to
-Arkansas, and the aggregate number is large. The wood is said to outlast
-the heartwood of white oak when in contact with the ground, and it is so
-strong that posts of small size stand the pull of wires or the weight of
-planks or pickets.
-
-Hornbeam is of slow growth and there is little reason to believe that it
-will ever be seriously considered by timber growers; but it will
-doubtless win its way to favor as an ornamental tree. It has been
-planted in city parks in New England and elsewhere, and its form,
-foliage, and habits are much liked. The pale green pods or cones--they
-are not exactly the one or the other--remain a long time on the branches
-and are delicately ornamental until after the autumn frosts change their
-green into brown. Then comes the flying time of the balloon seeds, and
-that is an interesting period in parks and yards where the tree's habits
-may be closely studied.
-
-    KNOWLTON HORNBEAM (_Ostrya knowltoni_) is interesting chiefly on
-    account of its extremely limited range, and its far removal from all
-    its kin. It is an exile in a distant country. It has thus far been
-    found only on the southern slope of the canyon of the Colorado river
-    in Arizona, about seventy miles north of Flagstaff. It occurs at an
-    elevation of 6,000 or 7,000 feet above the sea. Trees are twenty or
-    thirty feet high and twelve or eighteen inches in diameter, and
-    trunks usually divide a foot or two above the ground into three or
-    more branches, which are often crooked and contorted. Such sizes and
-    forms could not be of much value for anything but fuel, even if
-    abundant. The heart is light reddish-brown, sapwood thin. The leaves
-    are round instead of pointed at the apex, as with the other
-    hornbeam; but the flowers and fruit are much the same. Botanists
-    speculate in vain as to how this species happens to be so far
-    removed from other members of its family.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SILVERBELL
-
-[Illustration: SILVERBELL]
-
-
-
-
-SILVERBELL TREE
-
-(_Mohrodendron Carolinum_)
-
-
-This tree belongs to the storax family, which is not a very numerous
-family as forest families are generally counted, but it is old and
-highly respectable. Its members are found in the old world and the new
-in both North and South America, in Europe, Asia, and the Malay
-Archipelago. Trees of the storax family produce, or they are supposed to
-produce, resins and gums, balsams, and aromatic exudations, but some
-give little or none. The priests and soothsayers of idolatrous nations
-of ancient times laid great stress on storax. They insisted on having
-the resin as an adjunct to their superstitious rites. It was the incense
-offered in their worship, and they compassed sea and land to obtain it
-for that purpose. It is not improbable that the southern peninsulas of
-Asia and the far-off Molucca islands were visited in ancient times to
-procure the incense which ultimately found its way to the Mediterranean
-regions.
-
-It is, therefore, interesting to find that two members of the old storax
-family are quietly living in the coast region and among the mountains of
-the southeastern part of the United States. No one has ever suspected
-that they might be capable of yielding resinous incense suitable for the
-altars of heathen gods. They are the silverbell tree, and its little
-cousin, the snowdrop tree (_Mohrodendron dipterum_). They have had
-common names a long time, but their botanical names are the result of a
-recent christening. They are named from Charles Mohr who wrote an
-interesting book on the flora of Alabama. The silverbell tree is the
-larger of the two and deserves first consideration.
-
-It has a somewhat extensive range, but in some parts it is so scarce
-that few persons ever see it. It is found from the mountains of West
-Virginia to southern Illinois, south to middle Florida, northern
-Alabama, and Mississippi, and through Arkansas and western Louisiana to
-eastern Texas. Under cultivation, this tree is known as the snowdrop
-tree in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina,
-Florida, and Louisiana. In Rhode Island, under cultivation, it is also
-sometimes known as the silverbell tree, and bears the same name in
-Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi. In parts of Tennessee it is known as
-the wild olive tree, and in other parts of the state as the bell tree.
-In various localities in Alabama it is referred to as the four-winged
-halesia; and in others as opossumwood. It is indiscriminately known in
-various sections of Texas as the rattlebox and calicowood, and some of
-the furniture manufacturers in North Carolina list it as box elder,
-though it is only distantly related to the true box elder. In the Great
-Smoky mountains in Tennessee, where the species reaches its greatest
-development, it bears a variety of names, among them being tisswood,
-peawood, bellwood, and chittamwood.
-
-The tree varies in size from a shrubby form so small that it is scarcely
-entitled to the name of tree, up to a height of eighty, ninety, and even
-more than 100 feet with diameters up to nearly four feet. The largest
-sizes occur only among the ranges of the Great Smoky mountains in
-Blount, Sevier, and Monroe counties, Tennessee. No reason is known why
-this tree in that region should so greatly exceed its largest dimensions
-in other areas; but most species have a locality where the greatest
-development is reached, and this has found the favorable conditions in
-the mountains of eastern Tennessee. Some of the trees measure sixty feet
-or more to the first limbs.
-
-Lumbermen of the country are not generally acquainted with silverbell,
-as is natural since its commercial range is so limited. It is not listed
-in statistics of sawmill cut or of veneer mills. The wood-using
-industries of the country do not report it, except in the one state,
-North Carolina, and there in very small amounts. Doubtless, it is
-occasionally used elsewhere, but it escapes mention in most instances.
-It has been made into mantels at Knoxville, Tennessee, and passes as
-birch.
-
-The wood is light, soft, usually narrow-ringed, color light brown, the
-thick sapwood lighter. It weighs thirty-five pounds per cubic foot, and
-when burned it yields a low percentage of ash. The wood's chief value is
-due to its color and figure. Best results are not obtained by sawing the
-logs into lumber, because the handsomest part of the figure is apt to be
-lost. It is preeminently suited to the cutting of rotary veneer. By that
-method of conversion the birdseye and the pitted and mottled effects are
-brought out in the best possible manner. Veneers so cut from logs
-selected for the figure, possess a rare beauty which no other American
-wood equals. There is a pleasing blend of tones, which are due to the
-direction in which the distorted grain is cut. This distinguishes the
-wood from all others and gives it an individuality. Much of the figure
-appears to be due to the presence of adventitious buds, similar to those
-supposed to be responsible for the birdseye effect in maple.
-
-The leaves of silverbell are bright green at maturity and are from four
-to six inches long and two or three wide. They turn yellow before
-falling in autumn. The flowers give the tree its name, for they resemble
-delicate bells, about one inch in length. They appear in early spring
-when the leaves are one-third grown, on slender, drooping stems from one
-to two inches long. The trees are loaded throughout the whole crown,
-and present an appearance that is seldom surpassed for beauty in the
-forests of this country.
-
-The fruit is peculiar and is not particularly graceful. It has too much
-the appearance of the load carried by a well-fruited vine of hops. It
-ripens late in autumn and persists during most of the winter. There is
-nothing in its color, shape, or taste to tempt birds or other creatures
-to make food of it, though, under stress of circumstances, they may
-sometimes do so. The fruit is two inches or less in length and an inch
-wide, and has four wings, which seem to be practically useless for
-flight. The seed is about half an inch long.
-
-The bark of the trunk is bright red-brown and about half an inch thick,
-with broad ridges which separate on the surface into thin papery scales.
-The young branches wear an early coat of thick, pale wool or hairs,
-light, reddish-brown during the first summer, but later changing to an
-orange color.
-
-The botanical range of the species is extensive, though the tree-form is
-confined to a few counties among the southern Appalachian mountains. The
-northern limit of its range is in West Virginia where it is so scarce
-that many a woodsman never recognizes it. Unless it is caught while in
-the full glory of its bloom, it attracts no attention. It is not there a
-tree, but a shrub, hidden away among other growth, along mountain
-streams or on slopes where the soil is fertile. The blooming shrub
-might, at a distance, be mistaken for a dogwood in full blossom, but a
-closer inspection corrects the mistake.
-
-It is true of this species as of many others that the range has been
-greatly extended by planting. The bell-like white flowers early drew
-attention of nurserymen who were on the lookout for trees for ornamental
-planting. It was carried to Europe long ago, and graces many a yard and
-park in the central and northern countries of that continent. It now
-grows and thrives in the United States six hundred miles northeast of
-its natural range, where it endures the winters of eastern
-Massachusetts, blooms as bounteously as in its native haunts among the
-shaded streams of the Alleghany mountains.
-
-SNOWDROP TREE (_Mohrodendron dipterum_) is a near relative of the
-silverbell tree, and looks much like it, except that it is smaller, has
-larger leaves, and the flowers are creamy-white. The two occupy the same
-territory in part of their ranges, but they differ in one respect. The
-silverbell tree grows with great luxuriance among the mountains while
-the snowdrop tree keeps to the low country and is seldom or never found
-growing naturally at any considerable elevation. It prefers swamps or
-damp situations near the coast. While the silverbell tree's range
-includes West Virginia, that of the snowdrop extends no farther north
-than South Carolina. It follows the coast to Texas, and runs north
-through Louisiana to central Arkansas. Its range has been greatly
-enlarged by planting, and the northern winters do not kill it on the
-southern shores of Lake Erie. The largest trees are about thirty feet
-high and six inches in diameter, but the growth in most places is
-shrubby. Leaves are four or five inches long and three or four wide.
-Flowers are one inch long and are borne in profusion. They constitute
-the tree's chief value as an ornament, though the foliage is attractive.
-The bloom lasts a month or six weeks, from the middle of March till the
-last of April. The fruit has two wings instead of four, as with
-silverbell, but occasionally two rudimentary wings are present. The wood
-is light, soft, strong, color light brown, with thicker, lighter
-sapwood. The smallness of the trunks makes their use for lumber
-impossible. The species is valuable for ornamental purposes only, and
-has been planted both in this country and Europe. It has a number of
-names by which it is known in different localities, among them being
-cowlicks in Louisiana, and silverbell tree in the North where it has
-been planted outside of its natural range.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SYCAMORE
-
-[Illustration: SYCAMORE]
-
-
-
-
-SYCAMORE
-
-(_Platanus Occidentalis_)
-
-
-Probably no person with a practical knowledge of trees ever mistakes
-sycamore for anything else. The tree stands clear-cut and distinct.
-Until the trunk becomes old, it sheds its outer layer of bark yearly, or
-at least frequently, and the exfoliation exposes the white, new bark
-below. The upper part of the trunk and the large branches are white and
-conspicuous in the spring, and are recognizable at a long distance. No
-other tree in the American forest is as white. The nearest approach to
-it is the paper birch of the North, or the white birch of New England.
-
-Notwithstanding the tree's individuality, it has a good many names. It
-is generally known as sycamore throughout the states of the Union, but
-it is frequently called buttonwood in Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode
-Island, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
-South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
-Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Ontario;
-buttonball tree in several of the eastern states and occasionally in
-Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, and Nebraska; the plane tree in Rhode
-Island, Delaware, South Carolina, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa; the water
-beech in Delaware; the platane, cottonier, and bois puant in Louisiana.
-Probably the finest growth of the sycamore ever encountered was in Ohio
-and Indiana, and these states still contain isolated patches of
-magnificent specimens of the wood. The Black Swamp of Ohio was
-originally a famous sycamore country, of which Defiance was the center
-of lumber manufacture. Many parts of Indiana produced a good sycamore
-growth, and a considerable amount of timber of excellent quality still
-exists, but is now largely owned by farmers who are generally holding it
-out of the market.
-
-The range of sycamore extends from Maine to Nebraska, and south to Texas
-and Florida. It is one of the largest of American hardwoods, and in
-diameter of trunk it is exceeded by none. Trees are on record that were
-from ten to fourteen feet in diameter, and it was not unusual in the
-primeval forests for them to tower nearly or quite 125. In height a
-number of hardwoods exceed it, the yellow poplar in particular; but none
-of them has a larger trunk than the largest sycamores. However, the
-mammoths are generally hollow. The heart decays as rings of new growth
-are added to the outside of the shell. So large were the cavities in
-some of the sycamores in the original forests that more than one case is
-on record of their being used by early settlers as places of abode.
-
-The tree thrives best in the immediate vicinity of rivers and creeks. It
-needs abundance of water for its roots, but is not insistent in its
-demand for deep, fertile soil, for it grows on gravel bars along water
-courses, provided some soil and sand are mixed with the gravel. Great
-age is doubtless attained, but records are necessarily lacking in cases
-where the annual rings of growth must be depended upon; because the
-hollow trunks have lost most of their rings by decay.
-
-Sycamore bears abundance of light seed which is scattered short
-distances by wind and much farther by running water. Its ideal place for
-germinating is on muddy shores and wet flats. Here the seeds are
-deposited by wind and water, and in a short time multitudes of seedlings
-spring up. Though most of them are doomed to perish before they attain a
-height of a few feet, survivors are sufficient to assure thick stands on
-small areas. The trunks grow tall rapidly, and until they reach
-considerable size, they remain solid and make good sawlogs; but at an
-age of seventy-five or 100 years, deterioration is apt to set in; some
-die, others become hollow, and the result is a good stand of large
-sycamores is unusual. The veterans are generally scattered through
-forests of other species.
-
-The statement has often been made in recent years that sycamore is
-becoming very scarce and that the annual output is rapidly declining.
-Statistics do not show a declining output. The cut of sycamore in 1909
-was approximately twice as great as in 1899. It is true that the supply
-is not very large, and it never was large compared with some other
-hardwoods; but it appears to be holding its own as well as most forest
-trees. The cut in the United States in 1910 was 45,000,000, and it was
-credited to twenty-six states. Indiana was the largest contributor, and
-it had held that position a long time. States next below it in the order
-named were Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois.
-Doubtless some of the sycamore lumber now going to market has grown
-since old settlers cut the primeval stands when they cleared their
-fields. It will continue to grow, and since it usually occupies waste
-places, it may be depended upon to contribute pretty regularly year by
-year during time to come. It is one of the forest trees which have never
-suffered much from fires, because it grows in damp situations.
-
-The wood of sycamore weighs 35.39 pounds per cubic foot, is hard, but
-not strong, difficult to split and work; the annual rings are limited by
-narrow bands of dark summerwood. The rings are very porous. The
-medullary rays are rather small, but can be easily seen without a glass.
-They run in regular, radial lines, close together, and the pores are in
-rows between. The rays of sycamore vary from the rule with most woods,
-in that they are darker than the body of the wood.
-
-One of the earliest uses of sycamore was by farmers who cut hollow
-trunks, sawed them in lengths of three or four feet, nailed bottoms in
-them, and used them for barrels for grain. They were called gums. Solid
-logs two or three feet in diameter were cut in lengths of a foot or
-less, bored through the center, and used as wheels for ox carts. The ox
-yoke was often made of sycamore. Butchers used sycamore sections about
-three feet high for meat blocks. The wood is tough, and continual
-hacking fails to split it. The use for meat blocks continues at the
-present time. In Illinois 1,600,000 feet were so employed in 1910.
-
-One of the earliest employments of the wood for commercial purposes was
-in the manufacture of boxes for plug tobacco; but it has now been
-largely replaced by cheaper woods. Its freedom from stain and odor is
-its chief recommendation for tobacco boxes. Some of it is in demand for
-cigar boxes.
-
-The modern uses of sycamore are many. It is made into ordinary crates
-and shipping boxes in most regions where it grows. Rotary cut veneer is
-worked into berry crates and baskets, and into barrels. Ice boxes and
-refrigerators are among the products. Slack coopers are among the
-largest users, but some of the manufactured stave articles belong more
-properly to woodenware, such as tubs, washing machines, candy buckets,
-and lard pails.
-
-Furniture makers demand the best grades, and most of the quarter-sawed
-stock goes to them, though the manufacturers of musical instruments buy
-some of the finest. Use is pretty general from pipe organs and pianos
-down to mandolins, guitars and phonographs. It enters extensively into
-the making of miscellaneous commodities. As small a toy as the
-stereoscope consumes much sycamore. Makers of trunks find it suitable
-for slats, and it serves as small squares and borders in parquetry. It
-is a choice wood for barber poles and saddle trees, and its fine
-appearance when worked in broad panels leads to its employment as
-interior finish for houses, boats, and passenger cars.
-
-    CALIFORNIA SYCAMORE (_Platanus racemosa_) is one of the three
-    species of sycamore now found growing naturally in the United
-    States. They are survivors of a very old family and appear to have
-    been crowded down from the far North by the cold, or to have made
-    their way south for some other reason. Sycamores flourished in
-    Greenland in the Cretaceous age, some millions of years ago, as is
-    shown by fossil remains dug up in that land of ice and eternal
-    winter. They grew in central Europe, about the same time, but long
-    ago disappeared from there. Sycamores were growing in the United
-    States an immense period of time ago, and were doubtless lifting
-    their giant white branches high above the banks of ancient rivers
-    while the gorgeous bloom of yellow poplars brightened the forests on
-    the rich bottom lands farther back. Several species of sycamores
-    which grew in the United States during the Tertiary age are now
-    extinct. All seem to have been much like those which have come down
-    to the present day.
-
-    The California sycamore is found in the southern half of that state,
-    and in Lower California. It grows from sea level up to 5,000 feet,
-    and has the same habits as the larger sycamore of the East, and
-    prefers the banks of streams and the wet land in the bottoms of
-    canyons. It attains a height of from forty to eighty feet, and a
-    diameter of from two to five. Some trees are larger, one in
-    particular near Los Angeles having a trunk diameter of nine feet.
-    The tree is usually extremely distorted and misshaped, leaning,
-    twisted, and forking and reforking until a practical lumberman would
-    pronounce it a hopeless proposition. This applies, however, to
-    trunks which grow in the open, and that is where most of them grow.
-    When they are found crowded in thick stands in the bottoms of
-    canyons, their trunks are shapely enough for short sawlogs. The wood
-    is very similar to that of eastern sycamore, and it is used for
-    similar purposes, when used at all. The balls are strung five on one
-    tough stem, which is from six to ten inches long. The eastern
-    sycamore usually has a stem for each ball. The seeding habits of
-    both trees are the same.
-
-    ARIZONA SYCAMORE (_Platanus wrightii_) has its range in southern New
-    Mexico, southern Arizona, and neighboring regions in Mexico, where
-    it grows in the bottoms of canyons up to 6,000 feet above sea. The
-    tree attains a height of from thirty to eighty feet, and a diameter
-    of two to five. The trunk is seldom shapely, but often divides in
-    large branches, some of which are fifty or sixty feet long. There
-    are usually three balls on a stem, and the leaf is shaped much like
-    the leaf of red gum, but there is considerable variation in form.
-    The wood resembles eastern sycamore in color and most other
-    features, but when quarter-sawed the flecks produced by the
-    medullary rays are generally smaller, and give a mottled effect. The
-    wood has not been much used, but apparently it is not inferior to
-    eastern sycamore.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK CHERRY
-
-[Illustration: BLACK CHERRY]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK CHERRY
-
-(_Prunus Serotina_)
-
-
-This widely distributed tree supplies the cherry wood of commerce. Its
-natural range extends from Nova Scotia westward through the Canadian
-provinces to the Kaministiquia river; south to Tampa bay in Florida and
-west to North Dakota, eastern Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and eastern
-Texas. The tree is known as wild black cherry, wild cherry, black
-cherry, rum cherry, whiskey cherry, and choke cherry.
-
-Cherry belongs to a remarkably large family and the ordinary observer
-would never suspect the relationship that exists between it and other
-growths to which it bears little resemblance. It is in the rose family
-(_Rosaceae_). It has multitudes of small and large cousins, most of them
-small, however. Among them are the crabapple, the serviceberry, the
-haws, thorns, plums, and the peach, besides plants which do not rise to
-the dignity of trees.
-
-The crown of black cherry is narrow and the branches are horizontal. In
-height the tree ranges from fifty to one hundred or more feet. The bark
-is a dark reddish-brown, rough and broken into plates, becoming smoother
-toward the top. The branchlets are a rich reddish-brown, and are marked
-with tiny orange-colored dots. The leaves are small, alternate, oblong
-or oval lanceolate, taper-pointed at the apex and pointed or rounded at
-the base, finely serrate; at maturity glabrous, firm, glossy, the light
-colored midrib being very distinct. The flowers are white and grow on
-pedicels in long slender racemes, which terminate leafy shoots. The
-fruit is almost black, showing deep red coloring beneath and is a small
-round drupe; vinous, although not disagreeable to the taste. In most
-instances a liking for it must be acquired, but comparatively few people
-ever take the trouble to acquire it. The old settlers among the
-Alleghany mountains had a way of pressing the juice from the drupes and
-by some simple process converting it into "cherry bounce," a beverage
-somewhat bitter but it never went begging when the old-time mountaineers
-were around. This was doubtless what persons had in mind who called it
-rum cherry. Few fruits, either wild or tame, contain more juice in
-proportion to bulk. Ripe fruit is employed as a flavor for alcoholic
-liquors. The bark contains hydrocyanic acid and is used in medicine. The
-peculiar odor of cherry bark is due to this acid.
-
-In early years the ripening of the cherry crop among the ranges of the
-Appalachian mountains was a signal for bears to congregate where cherry
-trees were thickest. The cubs were then large enough to follow their
-mothers--in August--and it was considered a dangerous season in the
-cherry woods, because the old bears would grow fierce if molested while
-feeding. The mountaineers knew enough to stay away from the danger
-points at that time, unless they went there purposely to engage in a
-bear fight. It was a common saying among those people that "cherry
-bears" should be let alone.
-
-The cherry's chief importance in this country has been due to its
-lumber. Unfortunately, that value lies chiefly in the past, for the
-supply is running low. It never was very great, for, though the species
-has a large range, it is sparingly dispersed through the forests. In
-many parts of its range a person might travel all day in the woods and
-see few cherry trees, and perhaps none. The best stands hardly ever
-cover more than a few acres. Generally the trees grow singly or in
-clumps. It appears to be nearly wholly a matter of soil and light, for
-the seeds, which are carried by birds, are scattered in immense numbers,
-and only those grow which chance to find conditions just right. The tree
-wants rich ground and plenty of room, which is a combination not often
-found in primeval forest regions; but, since the country has been
-largely cleared, cherry trees spring up along fence rows and in nooks
-and corners. If let alone they grow rapidly, but trunks so produced are
-of little value for lumber, because too short and limby. In the forest
-the tree lifts its light crown high on a slender trunk to reach the
-sunshine, and such trunks supply the cherry lumber of commerce. Near the
-northern limit of its range it seems to abandon its demand for good soil
-and is content if it is supplied with light only. It betakes itself to
-the face of cliffs, sometimes overhanging the sea, and so near it that
-the branches are drenched in spray thrown up by breakers. It is needless
-to say that no good lumber is produced under such circumstances.
-
-The first loss of cherry occurred when the farms were cleared. It stood
-on the best ground, and the land-hungry Anglo-Saxon wanted that for
-himself. He cut the tall shapely cherry trees, built fences and barns of
-some of the logs, and burned the balance in the clearing. Then came the
-pioneer lumberman who did not take much, because his old up-and-down
-saw, which was run by water, would cut only about a thousand feet a day,
-and there was plenty of other kinds of timber. But when the steam mill
-put in its appearance, cherry went fast. Its price was high enough to
-pay for a long haul. From that day till this, cherry has gone to market
-as rapidly as millmen could get to it.
-
-Next to walnut, it is the highest priced lumber produced in the United
-States. The average cut per mill, according to returns of those who
-sawed it in 1909, was only 11,200 feet, and the total output that year
-was only 24,594,000 feet, contributed by twenty-nine states. The five
-leading producers were, in the order named, West Virginia,
-Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and Indiana. The next year the total
-output fell to 18,237,000 feet, and cherry went down to a place among
-the "minor species," such as dogwood, alder, locust, and buckeye. The
-day of its importance in the lumber industry is past. It has become too
-scarce to attract much attention, but there will always be some cherry
-in the market, though veteran trunks, three and four feet through and
-good for four sixteen-foot logs, will be seldom seen in the years to
-come.
-
-While good taste ordinarily dictates that cherry be finished in a tone
-approximating its natural color, it is quite frequent that it
-masquerades as mahogany. A well-known and perfect method of making
-cherry look like mahogany is to have the wood rubbed with diluted nitric
-acid, which prepares it for the materials to be subsequently applied;
-afterwards, to a filtered mixture of an ounce and a half of dragon's
-blood dissolved in a pint of spirits of wine, is added one-third that
-quantity of carbonate of soda, the whole constituting a very thin liquid
-which is applied to the wood with a soft brush. This process is repeated
-at short intervals until the wood assumes the external appearance of
-mahogany. While cherry is employed as an imitation of mahogany, it is in
-its turn imitated also. Sweet birch is finished to look like cherry, and
-for that reason is sometimes known as cherry birch.
-
-Cherry weighs 36.28 pounds per cubic foot; it is very porous, but the
-pores are small and are diffused through all parts of the annual ring.
-The wood has no figure. Its value is due to color and luster. The
-medullary rays are numerous but small, and in quarter-sawing they do not
-show as mirrors, like oak, but as a soft luster covering the whole
-surface.
-
-The principal uses of cherry have always been in furniture and finish,
-but it has many minor uses, such as tool handles, boxes for garden
-seeds, spirit levels and other tools, and implements, patterns,
-penholders, actions for organs and piano players, baseblocks for
-electrotypes and other printing plates, and cores for high-class panels.
-Aside from its color, its chief value is due to its comparative freedom
-from checking and warping. This cherry is one of the few trees that
-cross the equator. It extends from Canada far down the west coast of
-South America.
-
-    CHOKE CHERRY (_Prunus virginiana_) is widely distributed in North
-    America from Canada to Mexico. It is said to attain its largest size
-    in the Southwest where trees are sometimes forty feet high and a
-    foot in diameter. The name is due to the astringency of the half
-    ripe fruit which can scarcely be eaten. When fully ripe it is a
-    little more tolerable, and is then black, but is red before it is
-    ripe. The color of immature cherries deceives the unsophisticated
-    into believing they are ripe. In Canada the fruit is made into pies
-    and jelly, and it is said the tree is occasionally planted for its
-    fruit. The Indians of former times made food of it. The tree is
-    small, and bruised branches emit a disagreeable odor; leaves contain
-    prussic acid, and when partly withered, they are poisonous to
-    cattle. The trunks are nearly always too small for commercial
-    purposes, and are apt to be affected with a fungous disease known as
-    black knot.
-
-    WESTERN CHOKE CHERRY (_Prunus demissa_) grows from the Rocky
-    Mountains to the Pacific in the United States. It is often regarded
-    as the western form of choke cherry, but it has more palatable
-    fruit, and trees are a little larger, while trunks are so crooked
-    that no user of wood cares to have anything to do with them. The
-    wood is weak, but is hard and heavy.
-
-    BITTER CHERRY (_Prunus emarginata_) belongs to the far West, and is
-    found from British Columbia to southern California. In size it
-    ranges from a low shrub to a tree a foot in diameter and forty feet
-    high. The largest sizes are found in western Washington and Oregon.
-    The wood is soft and brittle, brown streaked with green. It is not
-    known that any attempt has been made to put the wood of this tree to
-    any useful purpose. The bark and the leaves are exceedingly bitter.
-    Fruit ripens from June to August, depending on region and elevation,
-    and it is from one-fourth to one-half inch in diameter, black, and
-    intensely bitter.
-
-    HOLLYLEAF CHERRY (_Prunus ilicifolia_) is a California species
-    growing in the bottoms of canyons from San Francisco bay to the
-    Mexican line. It is rarely more than thirty feet high, but has a
-    large trunk, sometimes two feet in diameter. The wood is heavy,
-    hard, and strong, and it ought to be valuable in the manufacture of
-    small articles, but fuel is the only use reported for it. The fruit
-    is insipid, and ripens late in autumn. The foliage is much admired
-    and has led to the planting of the species for ornamental purposes.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WILD RED CHERRY
-
-[Illustration: WILD RED CHERRY]
-
-
-
-
-WILD RED CHERRY
-
-(_Prunus Pennsylvanica_)
-
-
-In addition to the name wild red cherry by which this tree is known in
-most parts of its range, it is called bird cherry in Maine, New
-Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa; red cherry in Maine
-and Rhode Island; fire cherry in New York and many other localities; pin
-cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Michigan, Iowa, and North
-Dakota; pigeon cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York,
-Ontario, and North Dakota; and wild cherry in Tennessee and New York.
-Its range extends from Newfoundland to Hudson bay, west to British
-Columbia, south through the Rocky Mountains to Colorado, and in the East
-along the Appalachian ranges to North Carolina and Tennessee. It reaches
-its largest size among the Big Smoky mountains in Tennessee and North
-Carolina.
-
-It is ordinarily a tree thirty or forty feet high, and from eight to ten
-inches in diameter, though trunks are sometimes twenty inches through.
-It grows fast, but is very short-lived. Many stands disappear in thirty
-years or less, but individuals survive two or three times that long, if
-they stand in open ground. One of its names is fire cherry, and that
-fitly describes it. Like paper birch and lodgepole pine, it follows
-forest fires where the ground is laid bare by the burning. Nature seems
-to have made peculiar provisions whereby this tree clothes barren tracts
-which have been recently burned. In the first place, it is a prolific
-seeder. Its small, red cherries are borne by bushels on very young
-trees. Birds feed on them almost exclusively while they last, and the
-seeds are scattered over the surrounding country. They have such thick
-shells that few germinate unless they pass through a moderate fire,
-which cracks the shells, or at least they do not sprout until they come
-in direct contact with mineral soil. When a fire burns a forest,
-thousands of the cherry seedlings spring up. Many persons have wondered
-where they come from so quickly. They were already scattered among the
-forest leaves before the fire passed. The heat crazed their shells, and
-the burning of the leaflitter let them down on the mineral soil where
-they germinated and soon came up by thousands. The case is a little
-different with paper birch and with aspen, which are also fire trees.
-Their seeds cannot pass through fire without perishing, and when birches
-and aspens follow a fire it means that the seeds were scattered by the
-wind after the passing of the fire. Doubtless cherry seeds are often
-scattered after the fire has passed; but it is believed that most of
-those which spring up so quickly have passed through the fire without
-being destroyed.
-
-This small cherry is one of the means by which damage by forest fires is
-repaired. The tree is of little value for lumber or even for fuel; but
-it acts as a nurse tree--that is, it shelters and protects the seedlings
-of other species until they obtain a start. By the time the cherry trees
-die, the seedlings which they have nursed are able to take care of
-themselves, and a young forest of valuable species is established.
-
-Except in this indirect way, the wild red cherry is of little use to
-man. The wood is soft, light, and of pleasing color, but trees are
-nearly always too small to be worked into useful articles. About the
-only industry of which there is any record, which draws supplies from
-this source, is the manufacture of pipe stems. The straight, slender,
-bright-barked branches are cut into requisite lengths and bored endwise,
-and serve for stems of cheap pipes, and occasionally for those more
-expensive. The bark, like that of most cherries, is marked by dark bands
-running part way round the stems. These are known as lenticels, and
-exist in the bark of most trees, but they are usually less conspicuous
-in others than in cherry. It is this characteristic marking which gives
-the cherry pipe stem its value.
-
-Wild red cherry blooms from May to July, depending on latitude and
-elevation, and the fruit ripens from July to September. The cherries
-hang in bunches, are bright red, quite sour, and the seed is the largest
-part. They are occasionally made into jelly, wine, and form the basis of
-certain cough syrups.
-
-WEST INDIA CHERRY (_Prunus sphaerocarpa_) grows near the shores of
-Biscayne bay, Florida. It there blooms in November and the fruit ripens
-the next spring. The tree attains a height of from twenty-five to thirty
-feet, and a diameter of five or six inches. When grown in the open at
-Miami, Florida, it is larger, and is much liked as an ornament. The
-thin, smooth bark is brown, tinged with red, and is marked by large
-conspicuous lenticels. The wood is hard and light, and of light clear
-red color. It is too scarce to be of much importance, but paper knives,
-napkin rings, and other novelties made of it are sold in souvenir stores
-in southern Florida. Its range extends south to Brazil.
-
-WILLOWLEAF CHERRY (_Prunus salicifolia_) is a small tree, also called
-Mexican cherry, is more common south of the United States than in this
-country, ranging as far south as Peru. It is found on some of the
-mountains of southern New Mexico and Arizona.
-
-LAUREL CHERRY (_Prunus caroliniana_) is a southern species which sticks
-close to the coast in most of its range from South Carolina to Texas. It
-has many names, among them wild peach, wild orange, mock orange,
-evergreen cherry, mock olive, and Carolina cherry. Leaves hang two
-years, and the fruit remains nearly one. The latter is black and about
-half an inch long. The withered leaves are poisonous if eaten by cattle.
-The tree is thirty or forty feet high, and eight or ten inches in
-diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, color light brown to
-dark, rich brown, sometimes of much beauty, but no record has been found
-of any use for it. The tree is often planted for ornament.
-
-    WILD PLUM (_Prunus americana_) is found from New Jersey to Montana,
-    southward to New Mexico and Texas, and extends to Florida and
-    Mexico. Its range covers about a million square miles. There are
-    seven or more species of wild plums in the United States. The fruit
-    of all of them is edible. They have been planted accidentally or
-    otherwise in many localities where they were not found before the
-    country was settled. The plum was an important fruit in the
-    country's early history. The pioneers gathered wild fruits before
-    planted orchards came into bearing, and the plum was one of the best
-    which nature supplied. Early travelers among the Indians in the
-    South frequently spoke of Indian peaches. Such references have led
-    some to believe that the peach was native in that region, but it is
-    safe to conclude that what was called the peach was really some
-    species of wild plum. These fruits were among the earliest to become
-    domesticated. In fact, they were abundant about the sites of Indian
-    towns and old fields, where the savages had scattered seeds without
-    any purpose on their part of planting trees; and early settlers
-    imitated the Indians, and plums were soon growing in the vicinity of
-    most of the cabins. As a forest tree, it usually thrived best on the
-    banks of streams, for there it could find more sunshine than in the
-    deep woods, and it bore much more fruit. The ranges of several
-    species of plums overlapped, and different sizes and colors of fruit
-    were found in the same locality even before white men assisted the
-    spread of species. The common plum, known to botanists as _Prunus
-    americana_, is recognized under many names among laymen; among these
-    names are yellow plum, red plum, horse plum, hog plum, August plum,
-    native plum, and goose plum. Usually the plum's skin is red, and the
-    flesh yellow, which accounts for its names, both red and yellow. The
-    tree ranges in height from twenty to thirty-five feet, and from five
-    to ten inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, and
-    dark rich-brown. It is suitable for turnery and small novelties, but
-    little of it has been used.
-
-    CANADA PLUM (_Prunus nigra_) appears to be the most northern member
-    of the plum group. It grows from Newfoundland to Manitoba, and south
-    into the northern tier of states. Its range has been much extended
-    by planting, and a number of varieties have appeared. It is twenty
-    or thirty feet high, and five to eight inches in diameter. Flowers
-    appear in April and May, and the fruit is ripe in September and
-    October. The plums are about an inch long, orange-red in color, with
-    yellow flesh. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong. Those who
-    cultivate this tree often do so for the beauty of the flowers,
-    rather than for the value of the fruit. The wood is not used for
-    commercial purposes.
-
-    BLACK SLOE (_Prunus umbellata_), known also as southern bullace
-    plum, hog plum, and wild plum, ranges from South Carolina, round the
-    coast through Florida, to Louisiana and up the Mississippi valley
-    into Arkansas. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet high and from six
-    to ten inches in diameter. The fruit ripens from July to September,
-    is black when ripe, and often nearly an inch long. The people where
-    it grows use it for jelly. It is not reported that the wood is used
-    for any purpose.
-
-    WESTERN PLUM (_Prunus subcordata_) grows west of the Cascade
-    mountains from southern Oregon to central California. It is often a
-    low bush, but at its best forms a tree twenty feet high and six
-    inches in diameter, but its wood is of no economic importance. Its
-    deep, purple-red plums ripen in autumn and are an excellent wild
-    fruit, juicy and tart. During the fruit season the plum thickets
-    were formerly infested by both bears and Indians, and many a fight
-    for possession took place, with victory sometimes on one side,
-    sometimes on the other. The white inhabitants now make jam and jelly
-    of the fruit.
-
-    ALLEGHANY SLOE (_Prunus allegheniensis_) is so named because it is
-    best developed among the Alleghany mountains of Pennsylvania. The
-    tree is eighteen or twenty feet high and six or eight inches in
-    diameter. The wood is without value for commercial purposes, but the
-    tree's fruit has some local importance. It ripens about the middle
-    of August, and is somewhat less than an inch in diameter, with dark,
-    reddish-purple skin, covering yellow flesh.
-
-    CHICKASAW PLUM (_Prunus angustifolia_) is a well-known wild plum of
-    the South from Delaware to Texas, and north to Kansas. Its natural
-    range is not known, because it has been so widely planted,
-    accidentally or otherwise, near farm houses and in fence corners.
-    Its bright, red fruit goes only to local markets. Negroes gather
-    most of the crop in the South. The wood is not considered to have
-    any value, but, in common with other plums, it possesses qualities
-    which fit it for many small articles.
-
-    GARDEN WILD PLUM (_Prunus hortulana_) is supposed to have originated
-    in Kentucky from a cross between the Chickasaw plum and the common
-    wild plum (Prunus americana). It has spread from Virginia to Texas.
-    The largest trees are thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The
-    fruit ripens in September and October, is deep red or yellow, with
-    hard, austere, thin flesh, quite sour. The fruit is called wild
-    goose or simply goose plum in Tennessee and Kentucky.
-    Horticulturists have made many experiments with this plum.
-
-    COCOA PLUM (_Chrysobalanus icaco_), also called gopher plum, grows
-    in southern Florida, and its insipid fruit is seldom eaten except by
-    negroes and Seminole Indians. There is little sale for it in the
-    local markets. Trees are sometimes thirty feet high and a foot in
-    diameter. The light brown wood is heavy, hard, and strong, but it is
-    seldom used. The tree grows in Africa and South America as well as
-    in Florida.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BEECH
-
-[Illustration: BEECH]
-
-
-
-
-BEECH
-
-(_Fagus Atropunicea_)
-
-
-There is only one beech in the United States, and four or five in Europe
-and Asia. The southern portion of South America has several species
-which usually pass for beech. One or more of them are evergreen. Old
-world species are sometimes planted in parks and cemeteries in this
-country, but as forest trees they have no importance in the United
-States and probably never will have. It becomes a simple matter,
-therefore, to deal with the tree in this country. It is alone, and has
-no nearer relatives than the chestnuts, chinquapins, and the oaks, all
-of which are members of the same family, and the beech gives the name to
-the family--_Fagaceae_. The blue beech, which is common in most states
-east of the Mississippi river and in some west, is not a member of the
-same family, though it looks enough like beech to be closely related to
-it.
-
-The name has come down from remote antiquity. It is one of the oldest
-names in use. It is said to have descended through thousands of years
-from old Aryan tribes of Asia which were among the earliest to use a
-written language. For the want of better material, they cut the letters
-on beech bark, and a piece of such writing was called "boc." It was but
-a step from that word to book--a collection of writings. Both beech and
-book came from the same word "boc" and the connection between them is
-very evident. The pronunciation has been little changed by the Germanic
-races during thousands of years, but the Romans translated it into Latin
-and called it "liber," from which we have the word library. Doubtless in
-very ancient times, say 5,000 years before the building of Solomon's
-temple, the libraries beyond the Euphrates river consisted of several
-cords of trimmed and lettered beech bark. Such material being
-perishable, it has wholly disappeared. The matter is not now directly
-connected with the lumber interests, but it increases one's respect for
-beech to know how important a part it must have played in the ancient
-world, whereby it stamped its name so indelibly upon the language of the
-most intelligent portion of the human race.
-
-The word buckwheat has the same origin. It means beech wheat, so named
-because the grains are triangular like beech nuts. The tree is always
-known as beech in this country, though it may have a qualifying word
-such as red, white, ridge.
-
-It usually grows in mixed forests of hardwoods, but it is often found in
-the immediate presence of hemlock and spruce, grows from Maine to
-Florida, and west to Arkansas. Considerable areas are often occupied by
-little else. This is attested by the frequency with which such names as
-"beech flat," "beech ridge," "beech woods," and "beech bottom" are
-encountered in local geography. Perhaps the finest examples of beech
-growth in the United States occur in the higher altitudes of the lower
-Appalachian range in eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina,
-where trees are frequently encountered, showing a bole of perfectly
-symmetrical form, of from three to more than four feet in diameter, and
-of a sheer height of seventy feet before a limb is encountered. The wood
-which grows in this section is nearly as hard as that of the North, but
-that growing on lower levels in the South is of a much softer texture
-and lighter color, the heart being pinkish rather than reddish-brown.
-
-Beech is one of the truly beautiful trees of the forest. In the eyes of
-many, the beech is as much to be admired as the American elm or sugar
-maple. Certainly in spring when it is covered with its staminate
-blossoms, it is a splendid sight, and its perfect leaves are seldom
-spotted or eaten by insects. In winter, it is particularly interesting.
-Its beautiful bark then appears very bright. After its fine leaves have
-fallen, though many of them, pale and dry, cling to the branches
-throughout the winter, the structure of its massive head is seen to
-advantage. In the Canadian markets and those of many of the middle and
-western states, its nuts are gathered and sold in considerable
-quantities. These nuts are favorite food of both the red and gray
-squirrel and these rodents collect them in considerable quantities
-during the late fall, and store them in tree hollows for their winter's
-supply of food. It often happens, in felling beech trees in the winter,
-that shelled beech nuts to the quantity of a quart or more will be found
-secreted in some hollow by these provident little animals.
-
-Formerly beech was little used for lumber, but was long ago given an
-important place as firewood and material for charcoal. Its excellent
-qualities as lumber have now made it popular in most markets. The
-sapwood is comparatively thin and the heart is very much esteemed for
-many purposes. Many millions of feet of it are converted into flooring
-and the "pure red" product is very highly esteemed for ornamental
-floors. It has not as good working qualities as maple, but still it
-stays in place even better than does that famous flooring material.
-Nearly all the large flooring factories of the North, whose principal
-output is maple, have a side line of beech flooring, and in the South,
-notably in Nashville, a considerable quantity of the wood is made into
-flooring. In full growth this beautiful tree is round topped, with wide
-spreading and horizontal branches, and shows a normal altitude of about
-sixty feet. In this form of growth branches appear on the body very
-close to the ground, and their ends often trail upon it. In its forest
-form, where trees of any sort are of commercial importance, it often
-attains a height of ninety or 100 feet, with smooth rounded bole as
-symmetrical as the pillar of a cathedral, with a diameter of from two to
-four feet. Its time to bloom is April or May, and its nuts ripen in
-October. The bark is a light bluish-gray, and remarkably smooth; the
-leaves are simple, alternate, with very short petioles, oblong with
-pointed apex and rounded or narrowed base. The ribs are straight,
-unbranching, and terminate in remote teeth. The fruit is a pair of
-three-sided nuts with a sweet and edible kernel which grows in a
-four-celled prickly burr, splitting when ripe.
-
-Beech is an excellent fuel and it has long been used for that purpose.
-It is so regularly dispersed over the country that most neighborhoods
-were able to get it in the years when families cut their own firewood.
-Later, when charcoal was burned to supply primitive iron furnaces,
-before coke could be had, beech was always sought for. Still later, when
-large commercial plants were built to carry on destructive distillation
-of wood, beech was still a favorite. Its modern uses are many. There is
-scarcely a plant east of the Rocky Mountains, engaged in the manufacture
-of hardwood commodities, which does not use beech. In Michigan alone
-nearly 30,000,000 feet a year are demanded by box makers, and more than
-that much more by manufacturers of other commodities. It is widely
-employed for furniture, filing cabinets, vehicles, interior finish,
-agricultural implements, woodenware, and musical instruments. It is one
-of the heaviest and strongest of the common hardwoods, and gives long
-service when kept dry, but does not last well in damp situations.
-
-Beech is strictly a forest tree. This does not mean that it will not
-grow in the open, but when it does grow there it makes poor lumber,
-short and limby. The seedlings must have shade if they are to do any
-good, but after they attain a certain size they can endure the light.
-The roots lie close to the surface of the ground, and the trampling of
-cattle often kills large trees.
-
-BLUE BEECH (_Carpinus caroliniana_) is not in the beech family, but the
-name by which it is commonly known, and its resemblance to beech,
-justify its consideration with beech. The bluish color of the bark is
-responsible for its common name, but it is known by several others,
-among them being water beech, because it often grows on or near the
-banks of streams, and it seldom seems more at home than when it is
-hanging over the bank of a creek where shade is deep and moisture
-plentiful. It is often called hornbeam and ironwood, and it is closely
-related to hop hornbeam (_Ostrya virginiana_). It grows from Quebec, to
-Florida and from Dakota to Texas, reaching its largest size in eastern
-Texas where it is sometimes sixty feet high and two in diameter, though
-this size is unusual. Few trees develop a bole less acceptable to
-lumbermen. In addition to being short, crooked, twisted, and covered
-with limbs, it is nearly always ribbed and fluted, so that a log, even
-if but a few feet long, is apt to be almost any shape except round. The
-thick sapwood is pale white, heart pale brown. The annual rings are
-usually easily seen, but they are vague, because of so little difference
-between the springwood and summerwood; diffuse-porous; medullary rays
-thin and usually seen only in the aggregate as a white luster where wood
-is sawed radially. The uses of this wood are many, but the amounts very
-small. It is made into singletrees and ax and hammer handles in
-Michigan, wagon felloes in Texas and other parts of the Southwest;
-levers and other parts of agricultural implements in various localities.
-It seldom goes to sawmills, is generally marketed in the form of bolts,
-and is hard, stiff, and strong.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHESTNUT
-
-[Illustration: CHESTNUT]
-
-
-
-
-CHESTNUT
-
-(_Castanea Dentata_)
-
-
-Five species of chestnut are known, three of them in the United States.
-One of these, _Castanea alnifolia_, is a shrub and has no place in a
-list of trees. Chestnut and chinquapin are the two others. They are in
-the beech family to which oaks belong also. The ancient Greeks
-designated these as food trees (_Fagaceae_), not an inappropriate name
-for chestnut which probably furnishes more human food than any other
-wild tree. Its range extends from Maine to Michigan and southward to
-North Carolina and Tennessee. It attains its greatest size in western
-North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. It is one of the few well-known
-woods of the United States that does not bear a half dozen or more local
-names in the various localities of its growth, but the wood is
-invariably known as chestnut.
-
-Trees vary in size from sixty to 100 feet in height, and from two to
-four in diameter. Trunks six feet through occur where trees have grown
-in the open, but such are not tall, and are not valuable for lumber.
-Chestnut trees are sometimes heard of in this country with trunks ten
-and twelve feet through, but such must be very scarce, because no one
-seems to know just where they are located. It is not improbable that in
-rare cases such sizes have existed. In France and Italy trees much
-larger are well authenticated, but that chestnut is of a species
-different from ours.
-
-Chestnut is a very long-lived tree where it is fortunate enough to
-escape the attacks of worms and disease; but as age comes on, it is
-almost certain to be attacked. Insects bore the wood, and fungus induces
-decay. Frequently the heartwood of large trunks is all gone, and the
-trees stand mere shells with scarcely enough sound wood left to support
-the diseased tops.
-
-Few species sprout with more vigor than chestnut. In the mountains of
-eastern Tennessee, W. W. Ashe found that ninety-nine per cent of stumps
-sprout. This applies as well to veterans of three hundred years as to
-young growth. Sprouts which rise from the top of a high stump are liable
-to meet misfortune, because, under their disadvantage they cannot
-develop adequate root systems; but sprouts which spring from the root
-collar, or near it, may grow to large trees. It is claimed by some that
-a chestnut which grows from a sprout has straighter grain than one
-springing from seed. The latter's trunk is liable to develop a spiral
-twist, not only of the wood, but also of the bark; but the sprout-grown
-tree lacks the twist.
-
-Chestnut blooms in midsummer, and the profusion of pale golden catkins
-makes the isolated tree a conspicuous object at that time. Bloom is
-nearly always abundant, but the nut crop fails frequently. Several
-accidents may happen, but the most frequent cause of scarcity in the
-chestnut crop is a spell of rainy weather while the trees are in bloom.
-The rain hinders proper pollenization.
-
-Many thousands of bushels of chestnuts are sent to market yearly in the
-United States. The nuts are smaller but sweeter than those of European
-chestnut. The largest part of the crop is collected from trees in open
-ground. Those in dense forests bear only a few nuts at the top.
-Open-grown trees develop enormous and shapely crowns; and it is not
-unusual for farmers who value their nut bearing trees to pollard them.
-This puts the tree out of consideration as a source of lumber. Its
-branches multiply, but the trunk remains short. It is claimed that a
-chestnut orchard of good form and in a region where large crops are
-frequent, is more profitable than an apple orchard. The tree does not
-demand rich land, but must have well-drained soil. It grows on rocky
-slopes and ridges, and will prosper where most other valuable trees will
-barely exist.
-
-It grows rapidly in its early life, but does not maintain the rate many
-decades. Large trees are old. In the southern Appalachians the ages of
-telegraph poles forty feet long and six inches in diameter at the top
-range from forty-five to sixty-five years. Trees of round fence-post
-size may grow in fifteen years. Few trees will produce posts more
-quickly or in larger numbers per acre. In some instances nearly a
-thousand saplings large enough for posts stand on a single acre.
-Sprout-growth chestnut often forms nearly pure stands of considerable
-extent.
-
-The value of this tree is in its wood as well as its nuts. More than
-500,000,000 feet of lumber are cut from it yearly. Long before it was
-much thought of as a sawmill proposition, it was manufactured in large
-amounts into rails and posts by farmers, particularly in New England and
-in the Appalachian region. Axes, crosscut saws, mauls, and wedges were
-the means of manufacture. Untold millions of fence rails were split
-before wire fences were thought of. It is a durable wood, made so by the
-tannic acid it contains. As fence rails, it was more durable than the
-best oak, and where both were equally convenient, farmers nearly always
-chose chestnut. On high and dry ridges a chestnut rail fence would last
-from twenty-five to fifty years, and in extreme cases very much longer,
-even a full century it is claimed.
-
-Dry chestnut wood weighs 28.07 pounds per cubic foot, which makes it a
-light wood. Its annual rings are as clearly marked as those of any tree
-in this country. The springwood is filled with large open pores, the
-summerwood with small ones. The medullary rays are minute, and of no
-value in giving figure to the wood. Nevertheless, chestnut has strong
-figure, but it is due solely to the arrangement of the spring and
-summerwood of the annual rings. It is commonly classed as a
-coarse-grained wood. The finisher can greatly alter its appearance by
-rubbing the pores full of coloring matter. The wood is likewise
-susceptible to change in tone in the fumes of ammonia, and by similar
-treatment with other chemicals. The light colors of mission furniture
-are generally the result of treatment of that kind.
-
-The largest cut of chestnut lumber comes from West Virginia,
-Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Connecticut. The largest use by any single
-industry is probably by the manufacturers of musical instruments, though
-the honor may be divided with furniture, interior house finish, and
-coffins and caskets. It is much employed as core or backing on which to
-glue veneers. The lumber of old, mature trees is best liked for this
-purpose, because it is not apt to shrink and swell, and it holds glue.
-It is no detriment that it is riddled with worm holes the size of pins.
-That kind of chestnut is known in the trade as "sound wormy." Some
-persons claim that such lumber is better as backing for veneer than
-sound pieces, because it is lighter, is sufficiently strong, and the
-small holes seem to help the glue to stick. Wormy chestnut is frequently
-not objected to for outside work because the small holes are not hard to
-fill and cover up. The uses of chestnut are many. Between 6,000,000 and
-7,000,000 crossties go into railroad construction yearly. From 16,000 to
-20,000 tons of wood are demanded annually for tanning extract. Every
-part of the tree is available.
-
-In recent years a disease due to fungus has attacked chestnut forests of
-Pennsylvania and neighboring regions. It has destroyed the timber on
-large areas, and the loss threatens to increase. A tree usually dies in
-one or two years after it is attacked. The fungus works beneath the bark
-and completely girdles the tree. The spores of the fungus are believed
-to be carried from tree to tree on the feet of birds, on the bodies of
-insects, and by the wind.
-
-    GOLDENLEAF CHINQUAPIN (_Castanopsis chrysophylla_) occurs on the
-    Pacific coast from the Columbia river to southern California. It is
-    of its largest dimensions in the coast valleys of northern
-    California where it occasionally attains a size equal to the
-    chestnut tree of the eastern states, but in many other parts of its
-    range it is shrubby. It is an evergreen, and its name is descriptive
-    of the underside of the leaf. Late in summer, flowers and fruit in
-    several stages of growth may be seen at the same time. The nuts are
-    sweet and edible. In northern California the bark is sometimes mixed
-    with that of tanbark oak and sold to tanneries. The wood is
-    considerably heavier than chestnut, and is sometimes employed in the
-    making of agricultural implements. It has small and obscure
-    medullary rays, and its pores are arranged more like those of live
-    oak than of chestnut; that is they run in wavy, radial lines and not
-    in concentric rings as in chestnut. The heartwood is darker than
-    chestnut.
-
-    CHINQUAPIN (_Castanea pumila_) is a little chestnut that grows from
-    Pennsylvania to Texas. It is generally a shrub or a bush ten or
-    fifteen feet high east of the Alleghany mountains, but in some of
-    the southern states it reaches a height of fifty feet and a diameter
-    of two or more, and is of largest size in southern Arkansas and
-    eastern Texas. It has no name but chinquapin which is an Indian word
-    supposed to have the same meaning that it now has. The nut is from
-    one-fourth to one-half as large as a chestnut, and is fully as
-    sweet. It is sold in the markets of the South and Southwest, but is
-    not an important article of commerce. Where the trees are large
-    enough, the wood is put to the same uses as chestnut. It is
-    manufactured into furniture in Texas, and is bought by railroads for
-    ties.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BASSWOOD
-
-[Illustration: BASSWOOD]
-
-
-
-
-BASSWOOD
-
-(_Tilia Americana_)
-
-
-There are about twenty species of basswood in the world, and from three
-to six of them are in the United States. Authors do not agree on the
-number of species in this country. There are at least three, and they
-occupy, in part, the same range, with consequent confusion. They are
-much alike in general appearance, and not one person in twenty knows one
-from the other. The same names apply to all, when they occur in the same
-region. Few trees carry more names, and with less reason. Basswood is
-generally not difficult to identify in summer, but in winter a person
-only slightly acquainted with different trees might take it for
-cucumber, and if of small size, it might possibly be mistaken for ash or
-mountain maple. When the tree is bearing leaves, flowers, and fruit,
-there is no excuse for mistaking it for any other. The fruit, a cluster
-of four or five berry-like globes, hangs under a leaf, fixed by a short
-stem to the midrib. This feature alone should be sufficient to identify
-the basswood in this country.
-
-Among the many names by which this tree is known, in addition to
-basswood, are American linden, linn, lynn, limetree, whitewood, beetree,
-black limetree, wickup, whistle wood, and yellow basswood.
-
-The range is extensive, its northeastern boundary lying in New
-Brunswick, its southwestern in Texas. It reaches Lake Winnipeg, and is
-found in Georgia. This delimited area is little short of a million
-square miles. It reaches a height of from sixty to 120 feet, and a
-diameter of from eighteen inches to four feet. It has a decided
-preference for rich soil, and the best lumber is cut in fertile coves
-and flats, or in low land near streams. The largest trees formerly grew
-in the forests of the lower Ohio valley, but few of the giants of former
-times are to be found in that region now. They went to market a
-generation or two ago. The largest cut of basswood lumber now is in
-Wisconsin, Michigan, and West Virginia, but most of that from West
-Virginia is white basswood (_Tilia heterophylla_).
-
-The wood weighs 28.20 pounds per cubic foot, which is more than the
-other basswoods in this country weigh. The rings of annual growth are
-not very clearly marked. They may be distinguished, in most cases, by a
-narrow, light-colored line. This is the springwood. In some trees it is
-much more distinct than in others. The wood is very porous, but the
-pores are small, cannot readily be seen with the naked eye, and are
-scattered pretty evenly through the yearly ring. The medullary rays are
-small but numerous. They give quarter-sawed lumber a pleasing luster,
-but are too minute to develop much figure. The general tone of the wood
-is white. It is soft, works easily, holds its shape well, and is tough,
-but is in no sense a competitor of oak and hickory in toughness, though
-it shows the quality best in thin panels which resist splitting and
-breaking.
-
-In the days when it was customary to ceil houses with boards, both
-overhead and the walls of rooms, carpenters were partial to basswood
-because of its softness. Dressing lumber was then nearly always done by
-hand, and the carpenter who pushed the jack plane ten or twelve hours a
-day, looked pretty carefully to the softness of the wood he handled. In
-tongued and grooved work, as in ceiling and wainscoting, it was not
-necessary to dress the fitting edges as carefully when basswood was used
-as in using some others, because it is so soft that fittings can be
-forced, and cracks may be closed by driving the boards together.
-
-Slack coopers have long employed basswood for barrel headings, and also
-in the manufacture of various kinds of small stave ware, such as pails,
-tubs, and kegs. In this use, as in ceiling, the softness of the wood is
-a prime consideration, because the pressure of the hoops will close any
-small openings. Its whiteness and its freedom from stains and unpleasant
-odors are likewise important when vessels are to contain food products.
-Box makers like the wood on that account, and large quantities are
-manufactured into containers for articles of food.
-
-Much basswood is cut into veneer, some of which serves in single sheets
-as in making small baskets and cups for berries and small fruits, but a
-large part of the output is devoted to ply work. Usually three sheets
-are glued together, but sometimes there are five. By crossing the
-sheets, to make the grain of one lie at right angles to the next, plies
-of great strength and toughness are produced. Trunk makers are large
-users of such, and many panels of that kind are employed by
-manufacturers of furniture and musical instruments.
-
-Woodenware factories find basswood one of their most serviceable
-materials, and it is made into ironing boards, wash boards, bread
-boards, and cutting boards for cobblers, saddlers, and glass cutters.
-Its lightness and toughness make it serviceable as valves and other
-parts of bellows for blacksmiths, organs, and piano players. Makers of
-gilt picture frames prefer it for molding which is to be overlaid with
-the gilt or gold. It is serviceable for advertising signs because its
-whiteness contrasts well with printing. Makers of thermometers use it
-frequently for the wooden body of the instrument, and yard sticks are
-made of it. Apiarists find no wood more suitable for the small, light
-frames in which bees build the comb.
-
-The uses of this wood are so many and so various that lists would prove
-monotonous. The annual cut in this country, exclusive of veneer, is
-nearly 350,000,000 feet, and the demand for veneer takes many millions
-more.
-
-Basswood is named for the bark, and the spelling was formerly bastwood.
-The manufacture of articles from the bark was once a considerable
-industry, not so much in this country as in Europe. However, some use
-has been made of the bark here. Louisiana negroes make horse collars of
-it by braiding many strands together, and chair bottoms are woven of it
-in lieu of cane and rattan, and it is likewise woven into baskets of
-coarse kinds. Bark is prepared for this use by soaking it in water, by
-which the annual layers of the bark are separated, long, thin sheets are
-produced, and these are reduced to strips of the desired width.
-
-The annual cut of basswood lumber is declining with no probability that
-it will ever again come up to past figures; but basswood is in no
-immediate danger of disappearing from American forests. It is not
-impossible that it may be planted for commercial purposes. In central
-Europe, forests of basswood, there called linden, are maintained for the
-honey which bees gather from the bloom. In this country it is often
-called beetree because of the richness of its flowers in nectar.
-Possibly bee owners may grow forests for the honey, and when trees are
-mature, dispose of them for lumber.
-
-    WHITE BASSWOOD (_Tilia heterophylla_) attains a trunk diameter as
-    great as that of the common basswood, but is not as tall. Trees
-    sixty or seventy feet high are among the tallest. This species
-    ranges from New York to Alabama, and is found as far west as
-    southern Illinois, and its best development is among the rich
-    valleys and fertile slopes of the Appalachian mountains from
-    Pennsylvania southward. It is the prevailing basswood of West
-    Virginia, and reaches its largest size on the high mountains of
-    North Carolina and Tennessee. It averages about two pounds lighter
-    per cubic foot than the common basswood, but ordinarily neither the
-    lumber nor the standing trees of the two species are distinguished.
-    Only persons somewhat skilled in botany are able to tell one species
-    of basswood from another as they occur in the forests of this
-    country.
-
-    DOWNY BASSWOOD (_Tilia pubescens_) is a southern member of the
-    basswood group, and is scarce. Its range extends from North Carolina
-    to Arkansas and Texas. Trees are rarely more than forty feet high
-    and fifteen inches in diameter. The wood is light brown, tinged with
-    red, and the sap is hardly distinguishable from the heart. As far as
-    it is used at all, its uses are similar to those of other basswoods.
-
-    SOUTHERN BASSWOOD (_Tilia australis_) is confined, as far as is now
-    known, to a small section of Alabama, where it attains a height of
-    sixty feet in rich woodlands. No reports on the quality of the wood
-    have been published, and the species is too scarce to possess much
-    interest to others than systematic botanists.
-
-    FLORIDA BASSWOOD (_Tilia floridana_), as its name suggests, is a
-    Florida species, and has not been reported elsewhere. It seems to be
-    the smallest of American basswoods, the largest trees being little
-    more than thirty feet high. No tests of the wood have been made and
-    no uses reported.
-
-    MICHAUX BASSWOOD (_Tilia michauxii_) has been listed for a long
-    time, but is still not well known. Its range extends from Canada to
-    Georgia and westward to Texas. Trees three feet in diameter and
-    eighty feet high have been reported. Only botanists distinguish it
-    from other species of basswood with which it is associated.
-
-    PAWPAW (_Asimina triloba_) is of more value for its fruit than its
-    wood. It grows from New York to Texas, but in certain localities
-    only. It is the most northern species of the custard apple family,
-    and is usually of little importance above an altitude of 1,500 feet.
-    In Arkansas and some other southwestern regions it is called banana.
-    It is usually a shrub, but may reach a height of forty feet and a
-    diameter of twelve inches. The wood is light, soft, and weak. Pond
-    apple (_Annona glabra_), called custard apple in some parts of its
-    range in Florida, is a member of the same family. It attains the
-    size of pawpaw, and the wood is similar.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-AMERICAN HOLLY
-
-[Illustration: AMERICAN HOLLY]
-
-
-
-
-AMERICAN HOLLY
-
-(_Ilex Opaca_)
-
-
-Holly is a characteristic member of a large family scattered through
-most temperate and tropical regions of the world. It belongs to the
-family _Aquifoliaceae_, a name which conveys little meaning to an English
-reader until botanists explain that it means trees with needles on their
-leaves, _acus_ meaning needle, and _folium_ leaf. How well holly, with
-its spiny leaves, fits in that family is seen at once.
-
-About 175 species of holly are dispersed in various parts of the world,
-the largest number occurring in Brazil and Guiana. _Ilex_ is the
-classical name of the evergreen oak in southern Europe.
-
-The glossy green foliage and the brilliant red berries of the holly tree
-have long been associated in the popular mind with the Christmas season.
-Mingled with the white berries and dull green foliage of the mistletoe,
-it is the chief Yuletime decoration, and many hundred trees are annually
-stripped of their branches to supply this demand. The growth is still
-quite abundant, but if the destruction and waste continue, American
-holly will soon be exhausted.
-
-Its range extends from Massachusetts to Texas and from Missouri to
-Florida. In New England, the trees are few and small, and the same holds
-true in many parts of the Appalachian region. The largest trees are
-found in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. In the North it grows in
-rather dry, gravelly soil, often on the margins of oak woods, but in the
-South it takes to swamps, and does best on river bottoms where the soil
-is rich. It is often associated with evergreen magnolia, which it
-resembles at a distance, though differences are plain enough on close
-examination. The light, grayish-green barks of the two trees look much
-alike; but the magnolia's leaves are larger, thicker, and lack the
-briers on the margins.
-
-Holly varies in size from small straggling bushes to well-formed trees
-fifty or sixty feet high and two or three in diameter. The principal
-value of holly is not in its wood, but in its leaves and berries. Some
-persons suppose that holly leaves never fall. That is true of no tree
-that attains any considerable age. An examination of a holly thicket, or
-a single tree, in the spring of the year will reveal a fair sprinkling
-of dead leaves on the ground, though none may be missed from the
-branches. Those that fall are three years old, and they come down in the
-spring. There are always two full years of leaves on the trees.
-
-Flowers are the least attractive part of holly. Few people ever notice
-the small, unobtrusive cymes, scattered along the base of the young
-shoots in the early spring, with the crop of young leaves. Nothing showy
-about them attracts attention.
-
-The fruit is the well-known berry, the glory of winter decorations. It
-is usually red, but sometimes yellow. The latter color is not often seen
-in decorations because it is a poor contrast with the glossy green of
-the leaves. The berries ripen late in autumn and hang until nearly
-spring, provided they are let alone. That is seldom their fortune, for
-if they escape the wreath hunter at Christmas, they remain subject to
-incessant attacks by birds. Fortunately, the berries are not very choice
-food for the feathered bevies that fly in winter; otherwise, the trees
-would be stripped in a day or two. Birds are attracted by the color, and
-they keep pecking away, taking one or two berries at a bait, and in the
-course of a long winter they get most of them.
-
-The gathering of holly leaves and berries is an industry of much
-importance, taken as a whole; but it lasts only a short time, and is
-carried on without much system. The greatest source of supply is
-northern Alabama, and the neighboring parts of surrounding states; but
-some holly is gathered in all regions where it is found. Those who
-collect it for market make small wages, but the harvest comes at a
-season when little else is doing, and the few dimes and dollars picked
-up are regarded as clear gain--particularly since most of the holly
-harvesters have no land of their own and forage for supplies on other
-people's possessions.
-
-The seeds of holly are a long time in germinating, and those who plant
-them without knowing this are apt to despair too soon. The great
-differences in the germinating habits of trees are remarkable. Some of
-the maples bear seeds which sprout within a few days after they come in
-contact with damp soil, certain members of the black oak group of trees
-drop their acorns with sprouts already bursting the hulls, and mangroves
-are in a still greater hurry, and let fall their seeds with roots
-several inches long ready to penetrate the mud at once. But holly is in
-no hurry. Its seeds lie buried in soil until the second year before they
-send their radicles into the soil. They are so slow that nurserymen
-usually prefer to go into the woods and dig up seedlings which are
-already of plantable size.
-
-Users of woods find many places for holly but not in large amounts. The
-reported output by all the sawmills in the United States in 1909 was
-37,000 feet, and Maryland produced more than any other state. The wood
-is employed for inlay work, parquetry, marquetry, small musical
-instruments, and keys for pianos and organs. Engravers find it suitable
-for various classes of work, its whiteness giving the principal value.
-It approaches ivory in color nearer than any other American wood. Brush
-back manufacturers convert it into their choice wares. It is
-occasionally worked into small articles of furniture, but probably never
-is used in large pieces.
-
-The wood is rather light, and the vague boundaries between the annual
-rings, and the smallness and inconspicuousness of the medullary rays,
-are responsible for the almost total absence of figure, no matter in
-what way the wood is worked. The so-called California holly
-(_Heteromeles arbutifolia_) is of a different family, and is not a
-holly.
-
-DAHOON HOLLY (_Ilex cassine_) grows in cold swamps and on their borders
-in the coast region from southern Virginia to southern Florida, and
-westward to Louisiana. It is often found on the borders of pine barrens,
-is most common in western Florida and southern Alabama, and when at its
-best, is from twenty-five to thirty feet high and a foot or more in
-diameter. The leaves are nearly twice as long as those of common holly,
-and are generally spineless or nearly so. The fruit ripens late in
-autumn and hangs on the branches until the following spring. The berries
-are sometimes bright red, oftener dull red, and those fully up to size
-are a quarter of an inch in diameter. Some hang solitary, others in
-clusters of three. The wood is light and soft, weighing less than thirty
-pounds per cubic foot. The heart is pale brown, and the thick sapwood
-nearly white. The tree is known locally as yaupon, dahoon, dahoon holly,
-and Henderson wood. This species passes gradually into a form designated
-as _Ilex myrtifolia_, which Sargent surmises may be a distinct species.
-Another form, narrowleaf dahoon (_Ilex cassine angustifolia_), is listed
-by Sudworth.
-
-YAUPON HOLLY (_Ilex vomitoria_) is a small, much-branched tree, often
-shrubby, and at its best is seldom more than twenty-five feet high and
-six inches in diameter. Its range follows the coast from southern
-Virginia to St. John's river, Florida, and westward to eastern Texas. It
-sticks closely to tidewater in most parts of its habitat, but when it
-reaches the Mississippi valley it runs north into Arkansas. It attains
-its largest size in Texas, and is little more than a shrub elsewhere.
-Berries are produced in great abundance, are red when ripe, but they
-usually fall in a short time and are not much in demand for decorations.
-The wood weighs over forty-five pounds per cubic foot, is hard, and
-nearly white, but turns yellow with exposure. The leaves of this holly
-were once gathered by Indians in the southeastern states for medicine.
-The savages journeyed once a year to the coast where the holly was
-abundant, boiled the leaves in water, and produced what they called the
-"black drink." It was nauseating in the extreme, but they drank copious
-draughts of it during several days, then departed for their homes,
-confident that good health was assured for another year.
-
-    MOUNTAIN HOLLY (_Ilex monticola_) is so named because it grows among
-    the Appalachian ranges from New York to Alabama. It is best
-    developed in the elevated district where Tennessee and North and
-    South Carolina meet near one common boundary. It is elsewhere
-    shrubby. The leaves are deciduous, and the bright scarlet berries
-    are nearly as large as cherries. They fall too early to make them
-    acceptable as Christmas decorations. The wood is hard, heavy, and
-    creamy-white, and if it could be had in adequate quantities, would
-    be valuable. The trees are sometimes a foot in diameter and forty
-    feet high, but they are not abundant. Their leaves bear small
-    resemblance to the typical holly leaf, but look more like those of
-    cherry or plum.
-
-    DECIDUOUS HOLLY (_Ilex decidua_) is called bearberry in Mississippi
-    and possum haw in Florida, while in other regions it is known as
-    swamp holly because of its habit of clinging to the banks of streams
-    and betaking itself to swamps. It keeps away from mountains, though
-    it is found in a shrubby form between the Blue Ridge and the sea in
-    the Atlantic states, from Virginia southward. It runs west through
-    the Gulf region to Texas, and ascends the Mississippi valley to
-    Illinois and Missouri, attaining tree size only west of the
-    Mississippi. The wood is as heavy as white oak, hard, and
-    creamy-white, both heart and sap. Doubtless small quantities are
-    employed in different industries, but the only direct report of its
-    use comes from Texas where it is turned for drawer and door knobs in
-    furniture factories. Most but not all of the leaves fall in early
-    winter. The berries obey the same rule, some fall and others hang
-    till spring. They are orange or orange-scarlet.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW BUCKEYE
-
-[Illustration: YELLOW BUCKEYE]
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW BUCKEYE
-
-(_Aesculus Octandra_)
-
-
-Four species and one variety of buckeye are native in the United States,
-yellow buckeye, Ohio buckeye, California buckeye, small buckeye, and
-purple buckeye. They belong in the horse chestnut family. The so-called
-Texas buckeye is in a different family, and is not a true buckeye, but
-is close kin to the soapberry. The buckeyes are named for the large
-white spot on the smooth, brown nut, resembling the eye of a deer. The
-yellow buckeye is the most important of the group, is the largest and
-most abundant. It is known by the name of buckeye in North Carolina,
-South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Kentucky. It
-is called sweet buckeye in West Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, Missouri,
-and Indiana, probably owing to the fact that it does not exhale the
-disagreeable odor characteristic of other members of the family. Yellow
-buckeye is the term applied to it in South Carolina and Alabama; large
-buckeye in Tennessee; big buckeye in Tennessee and Texas. It flourishes
-from Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, southward along the Alleghany
-mountains to northern Georgia and Alabama, westward along the valley of
-the Ohio river to southern Iowa, through Oklahoma and the valley of the
-Brazos river in eastern Texas. It thrives best along streams and in
-dense, rich woods. It reaches its fullest development on the slopes of
-the Alleghany mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee.
-
-The leaves of the buckeye are compound, with from five to seven
-leaflets; flowers appear in May or June and are dull yellow; the fruit
-is a large brown nut, one or two of which are enclosed in a rough,
-uneven husk, about two inches or more in diameter. The tree grows from
-forty to 100 feet in height, and attains a diameter of from one to three
-and a half feet.
-
-Buckeye grows intermingled with poplar, oak, maple, beech and a variety
-of other hardwoods. From its comparatively limited growth as compared
-with the totality of the average hardwood forest, it never has been
-recognized, and probably never will be, as a distinctive type of
-American commercial wood. The timber is felled with the other valuable
-trees surrounding it, and its appearance, when manufactured into lumber
-is so similar to that of the sap of poplar or whitewood that almost
-without exception it is assorted with poplar saps, and goes on the
-market masquerading as that wood. There is probably not one lumberman in
-a thousand, handling poplar, that is able to distinguish buckeye from
-sap poplar in his shipments of that wood.
-
-Sawmills make no distinction between the different species. All that
-comes is buckeye, but nearly all of it is the yellow species, though
-doubtless a little of all the others is cut into lumber and veneer, or
-goes to the slack cooperage shop, or to the pulp mill. The woods of all
-are quite similar, and they are used for the same purposes. If one is
-employed in larger quantities than another, it is because it is more
-convenient, or of better form or larger size.
-
-Early uses of buckeye were as important as those of the present day,
-though amounts were smaller. Many an Ohio statesman of former times
-boasted that, as a baby, he was rocked in a buckeye sugar trough for a
-cradle. They claimed with pride that the prevalance of the custom caused
-Ohio to be known as the buckeye state, a name which clings to it still.
-Next to yellow poplar, buckeye was considered the best wood from which
-to hew the small troughs which collected the sugar water from the tapped
-maples in early spring; but the range of buckeye did not extend
-northward into the real maple area, and the troughs like those which
-rocked the inchoate Ohio statesmen were unknown in the North, but were
-familiar along the mountain ranges southward. Dough trays, bread boards,
-chopping bowls, and troughs in which to salt bacon and pork, were hewed
-from buckeye by farmers and village woodworkers.
-
-It weighs 27.24 pounds per cubic foot; is diffuse-porous, and the slight
-difference between the wood grown in spring and that of late summer
-renders the annual rings indistinct. It has little figure, no matter how
-it is sawed; medullary rays are thin and obscure. Softness is one of the
-principal qualities, and it is also weak, and is wanting in rigidity.
-These are its faults, but it has virtues. It is tasteless and odorless,
-and these properties make it valuable in the manufacture of boxes in
-which food products are shipped. The reported cut of buckeye in the
-United States is from 11,000,000 to 13,000,000 feet a year. The reports
-of factories which use the wood in making commodities throw light on the
-question of actual use. North Carolina works 10,000 feet a year into
-cabinets and office fixtures; Michigan 100,000 into candy and chocolate
-boxes, dishes, and bowls; Maryland uses 200,000 feet yearly for
-practically the same purposes, but with the added commodities of spice
-drawers and tea chests. Makers of artificial limbs consider buckeye one
-of their best materials, but it is second to willow. The "cork legs" are
-usually either buckeye or willow. Pulp mills grind the wood for paper,
-but it is not separately listed in pulp statistics, and the total cut
-cannot be stated. It is converted into veneer and finds many places of
-usefulness, but here, also, no separate figures are to be had.
-
-The nuts are large and abundant, but almost wholly useless for man or
-beast. Bookbinders make paste of them, as a substitute for flour, and
-with satisfactory results. The paste resists ferments much better than
-that manufactured from flour; but the demand upon the nut supply for
-that purpose is very small. Squirrels and other small animals leave
-buckeyes alone. Some writers, whose acquaintance with this tree was
-apparently acquired at long range, state that the nuts are food for
-cattle. No person with knowledge of the buckeye says that. Cattle
-occasionally eat a few, but are poisoned thereby, and if they recover,
-they never again have anything to do with buckeyes.
-
-This tree is ornamental during a few months of the year. Its flowers are
-attractive, and its large, vigorous leaves and conspicuous fruit are
-admired in summer; but early in the fall the leaves come down, the husks
-burst from the nuts and strew the ground with unsightly fragments. The
-tree is seldom planted, but the horse chestnut, a foreign species, takes
-its place.
-
-OHIO BUCKEYE (_Aesculus glabra_) was once thought to be more abundant in
-Ohio than elsewhere, hence the name; but its best development is in
-Tennessee and northern Alabama. The disagreeable odor emitted by the
-bark gives it the names fetid and stinking buckeye, and it is known also
-as American horse chestnut. Its range is approximately the same as that
-of yellow buckeye, but it is a smaller tree, rarely more than thirty
-feet high, though it is seventy in exceptional cases. In common with
-other trees of the species, it prefers rich soil along water courses.
-The wood was formerly in demand for chip hats, but that use has
-apparently ceased. The sapwood is darker than the heart which is an
-exception to the general rule. Dark streaks, probably stains due to
-fungus, occasionally run through the trunk. In weight, strength, and
-stiffness the wood is approximately the same as yellow buckeye. Its odor
-is sufficient to distinguish it from that species, and it associates
-with no other except on rare occasions when it may be found with the
-small buckeye in western Tennessee and southern Missouri.
-
-CALIFORNIA BUCKEYE (_Aesculus californica_) occurs only in the state
-whose name it bears. It is a short, much-branched, ill-formed tree; root
-large and shaped somewhat like an inverted tub, often standing a foot or
-more above the ground, and the branches rising from it. A tree so formed
-is without value to the general lumberman, but cabinet makers sometimes
-grub out the root and saw it transversely into thin lumber or veneer and
-make small articles which possess considerable figure, due to the
-involved growth, but little variety of color. Its tone is light yellow.
-The tree is found in the central part of California, from near sea level
-up to 4,500 in the Sierra Nevadas. It gets away from the immediate
-vicinity of water courses and grows on hillsides. It is heavier than any
-other American buckeye, and has very thin sapwood. The other properties
-of the wood, and the botanical characters of the tree are common to
-other members of the species. The seeds depend for their dispersal on
-running water, when the tree grows by a stream, or on gravity, if
-situated on a hillside. The seed will not grow unless buried in moist
-soil, and it retains its vitality only a few months. Few trees in the
-United States have larger seeds than buckeyes. The tree is short-lived,
-reaching maturity in most cases in less than a hundred years. It is
-sometimes planted for ornament in this country and in Europe.
-
-SMALL BUCKEYE (_Aesculus austrina_) is one of the latest recognized
-members of the buckeye household. It seldom attains a diameter above
-five or six inches, or a height of twenty-five feet. It is, therefore,
-too small to be seriously considered as a source of lumber, and even if
-trunks were large enough, the species is too scarce to furnish many
-logs. It grows on rich uplands from western Tennessee and southern
-Missouri to Texas. The bright red flowers open in April, the fruit falls
-in October.
-
-PURPLE BUCKEYE (_Aesculus octandra hybrida_) is a variety characterized
-by red or purple flowers and by leaves woolly on the under sides, and
-bark of lighter color than that of yellow buckeye. The range follows the
-Appalachian mountains from West Virginia southward. It has been reported
-in Texas also. If the wood is used at all, it goes for the same purposes
-as yellow buckeye.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SASSAFRAS
-
-[Illustration: SASSAFRAS]
-
-
-
-
-SASSAFRAS
-
-(_Sassafras Sassafras_)
-
-
-The French settlers in Florida were the first white men to give the name
-sassafras to this tree, but the Indians called it by that name long
-before. It was a tree which Indians were sure to name, because it had an
-individuality which appealed to them. It is not known what the real
-meaning of the word was, when the southern Indians used it. After the
-French adopted the name in Florida, it passed to other colonies and
-other languages, and has led to numerous disputes since. Many have
-erroneously supposed that the name is of Latin origin. When the English
-colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, the tree was well
-known by that name, but it was pronounced so variously and spelled in so
-many ways that it was often almost unrecognizable. It is pronounced
-variously and spelled differently yet. It is called sassafras in most
-regions, and in others is saxifrax, sassafas, sassafac, sassafrac, and
-saxifrax tree.
-
-Its range covers the territory from Massachusetts to Iowa and Kansas,
-and south to Florida and Texas. Some of that range it has occupied for
-vast periods of time, for sassafras leaves have been found embedded in
-the Cretaceous formations of Long Island. Near the northern limit of its
-range it is generally small, often of brush size; but further south it
-becomes a tree which sometimes exceeds 100 feet in height, and three or
-four in diameter. The best development of the species is in Arkansas and
-Missouri.
-
-Sassafras belongs to the laurel family. Strangely enough, the two trees
-which are usually supposed to be typical laurels--namely, mountain
-laurel (_Kalmia latifolia_) and great rhododendron, do not belong to the
-laurel family, but the heath family. The laurel family to which
-sassafras belongs includes many species in all parts of the world, some
-are evergreen, others are not, but all characterized by the strong,
-pungent odor of their wood or bark, and all having fruit with a single
-seed like a plum or cherry. The camphor tree from the distillation of
-whose wood commercial camphor (except synthetic camphor made largely
-from turpentine) is derived, belongs to this family, as do certain bay
-trees of the southern states. It was formerly supposed that sassafras
-existed only in the eastern half of the United States; but a species
-closely resembling ours, if not identical with it, has recently been
-found in China. The California laurel (_Umbellularia californica_) is in
-the same family with sassafras.
-
-This tree has had a peculiar history. It was once supposed to possess
-miraculous healing powers, and was shipped from Virginia to England in
-one of the first cargoes to go to that country from the present
-territory of the United States. Its supposed value did not consist in
-its use as lumber, but in some medicinal property which it was reputed
-to possess. People appeared to believe that it would renew the youth of
-the human race. Some portion of this superstition has clung round
-sassafras to this day, and it is not entirely confined to ignorant
-people. Bedsteads made of sassafras were supposed to drive away certain
-nightly visitors which disturb slumber. In southeastern Arkansas and
-northwestern Mississippi, bedsteads are still made of this wood, with
-the belief that sleep will be sounder. The same custom doubtless
-prevails elsewhere. In northern Louisiana floors of sassafras are
-occasionally laid in negro cabins because of the same superstition, and
-in the firm belief that it will keep out animals as large as rats and
-mice. Some of the mountaineers of Kentucky, where each family makes its
-own soap, insist that the kettle must be stirred with a sassafras stick
-or it will produce a poor quality of soap. Among the mountains of West
-Virginia many a farmer equips his henhouse with sassafras poles for
-roosts, fully convinced that he has put an effective quietus on all
-tribes, shoals, and kindred of _menopon pallidum_, and the hens will
-sleep better.
-
-The production of sassafras oil is perhaps the largest industry
-dependent upon this tree. Roots are grubbed by the ton and are subjected
-to destructive distillation. Much of this work is carried on in Virginia
-where sassafras spreads quickly into abandoned fields, springing up from
-seeds carried by birds. Veritable thickets soon take possession. Here is
-where the sassafras oil supply comes from. Contractors often clear the
-old fields and make them ready for tillage, taking the roots for pay.
-
-The wood weighs 31.42 pounds per cubic foot; is very durable when
-exposed to dampness; is slightly aromatic; inclined to check in drying;
-the layers of annual growth are marked by rings of large pores;
-summerwood is quite distinct from the earlier growth; medullary rays are
-many and thin; color dull orange-brown, the thin sapwood light yellow.
-
-Sassafras goes to sawmills in all regions where it is large enough for
-lumber, but the total cut is small. Reports from sawmills in 1909
-credited this species with only 25,000 feet in the United States, and it
-was still less in 1910. It is evident that this is only a small portion
-of the total output, and probably Tennessee alone produces that much.
-The wood is sold with other species and loses its name, frequently
-passing as ash. The wood bears considerable resemblance to ash, in grain
-and color, but is lighter in weight, and much lower in strength.
-
-Sassafras was one of the canoe woods of early times along the lower
-Mississippi and its tributaries. Its two principal advantages over most
-woods with which it was associated was its light weight and lasting
-qualities. Canoes of this timber in Louisiana have given continued
-service for a third of a century.
-
-In all parts of its range, wherever it is of sufficient size, it has
-been used for posts. It is generally considered good for about twenty
-years. Large trunks were formerly split for rails, and a few are
-utilized in that way still, but most timber large enough for rails, now
-goes to sawmills. In Texas most of the sassafras supplied by sawmills is
-manufactured into furniture, but is listed as ash. The same thing is
-done in Arkansas and Missouri, but the use in the latter state is
-extended to interior house finish and office and bank fixtures.
-Sometimes it is made the outside wood, and the figure caused by sawing
-the logs tangentially is accentuated by stains and fillers. The figure
-of quarter-sawed wood is not attractive because the medullary rays are
-too small. It lasts well as railroad ties and a few are found in service
-in many parts of the tree's range, but those who see it in the track are
-liable to mistake it for chestnut.
-
-A by-product of sassafras deserves mention--tea made from the flowers or
-from the bark of the roots. It is relished in the early spring, and is
-popular in most regions where the tree is known. The bark is a
-commercial commodity. It is tied in small bundles, and the price at
-retail ranges from a nickel to a dime each. Drug stores and grocers sell
-it. In the city of Washington in early spring sassafras peddlers canvas
-the city from center to circumference. They are generally negro men and
-women who dig the roots on the neighboring hills of Virginia and
-Maryland, strip the bark, tie it in small bundles, and by diligence and
-perseverance, succeed in converting the merchandise into money.
-
-Sassafras is often cited as an example of a tree with leaves of
-different forms. Three shapes are common, and all frequently occur on
-the same tree, and even on the same twig. One has no lobes, another has
-one lobe like the thumb of a mitten, and another has three.
-
-LANCEWOOD (_Ocotea catesbyana_) is a small evergreen tree, looks much
-like laurel, and grows in southern Florida, on the islands and on the
-mainland in the vicinity of Biscayne bay. It is closely related to
-sassafras, and the bark has an aromatic odor. It belongs to a group of
-trees with nearly 200 species scattered in hot regions of both
-hemispheres. This is the only one belonging to the United States, and it
-appears to be a newcomer on these shores, from the fact that it has
-succeeded in obtaining so limited a foothold. It keeps well south of the
-region where it is likely to be frosted and it seldom exceeds a height
-of thirty feet and a diameter of eighteen inches. The fruit ripens in
-autumn and is dark blue with flesh thin and dry. The wood is hard,
-heavy, strong, checks badly in drying, and has a rich brown color, the
-sapwood being yellow. Rings of annual growth are marked with many small,
-regularly-distributed open ducts; medullary rays are thin and numerous;
-wood weighs 47.94 pounds per cubic foot; durable in contact with the
-soil, beautifully colored, and is highly prized for small cabinet work
-and novelties. At Miami, Florida, small trunks cut on neighboring
-hummocks, or brought from the keys, are worked into souvenirs to be sold
-to visitors. Lancewood fishing rods are among the strongest and most
-expensive on the market; but little of the material of which they are
-made grows in Florida. It is also manufactured into billiard cues and
-small handles.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MADRONA
-
-[Illustration: MADRONA]
-
-
-
-
-MADRONA
-
-(_Arbutus Menziesii_)
-
-
-Madrona is an interesting tree which ranges from British Columbia
-southward to central California, attaining its greatest development in
-the redwood forests of northern California, where trees are sometimes
-one hundred feet high and six or seven feet in diameter. It is not only
-an interesting tree itself, but it has many interesting relatives, some
-of which are trees, others shrubs, and still others only small plants or
-vines. It may be called a second cousin to the common huckleberry, the
-mountain laurel, trailing arbutus, the azaleas, the tiny wintergreen,
-and the great rhododendron. It has some poor relations, but many that
-are highly respectable. It belongs to the heath family, of which there
-are seventy genera, and more than a thousand species; but less than half
-of them are in America, the others being scattered widely over the
-world.
-
-The madrona, when at its best, is one of the largest members of the
-family; but it is not always at its best. It sometimes degenerates into
-a sprawling shrub, where it grows on poor ground and on cold, dry
-mountain tops. It is manifestly not fair to study any tree at its worst,
-and it is particularly not fair to the madrona, which varies so greatly
-in its appearance. At one place it may be scarcely large enough to shade
-the lair of a jackrabbit, and at another it spreads its branches wide
-enough to shade an army--a small army, however, say, about two thousand
-men. A tree of that size may be found within a few hours' ride of San
-Francisco. Its branches cover an area of from eight thousand to ten
-thousand square feet.
-
-When madrona grows in the open it throws out wide limbs like a southern
-live oak, though not so large or long. Its crown is rounded and
-graceful; but when it grows in forests, where other trees crowd it, the
-trunk rises straight up to lift the crown into the sunlight and fresh
-air. The madrona is seen in all its glory in northwestern California,
-where it catches some of the warmth and the moist air from the Pacific.
-It follows the ranges of the Siskiyou mountains eastward near the
-boundary of California and Oregon. It is usually mixed with other forest
-trees, but sometimes large stands nearly pure are encountered, and there
-the long trunks, rather gray near the ground, but wine-colored above,
-rise in imposing beauty and are lost in the evergreen crowns.
-
-The leaves suggest those of laurel, but are broader. The large clusters
-of white flowers are among the glories of the vegetable kingdom. George
-B. Sudworth, dendrologist of the United States Forest Service, who
-usually describes in strictly prosaic terms, breaks away from that habit
-long enough to compare madrona flowers to lilies of the valley, in his
-"Forest Trees of the Pacific Slope." The flowers appear from March to
-May, depending on latitude and elevation.
-
-The brilliant orange-red fruit ripens in the fall, and is often borne in
-great abundance. It renders the crowns of the trees very beautiful. The
-fruit is about half an inch long and contains many small angular seeds.
-The fruit is said to contain a substance which puts to sleep wild
-creatures that feed on it. The claim is probably mythical, for birds
-breakfast extravagantly on it in the morning, and apparently do not do
-any sleeping until after sunset.
-
-This tree was discovered by and named for Archibald Menzies, a Scotch
-botanist who traveled in the Northwest more than a hundred years ago. It
-has several local names, among them being madrove, laurel wood,
-madrone-tree, laurel, and manzanita. The last is the proper name of
-another small tree which is associated with madrona and is closely
-related to it.
-
-The wood weighs 43.95 pounds per cubic foot. It is a little below
-eastern white oak in fuel value, a little above it in strength, and
-somewhat under it in stiffness. The color is pale reddish-brown,
-resembling applewood in tone, but generally not quite so dark. The wood
-is porous, but the pores are very small. Medullary rays are numerous but
-thin. On account of the rays being of a little deeper red than the other
-wood, quarter-sawed stock is handsome and of somewhat peculiar
-appearance. The figure is much like quarter-sawed beech, but of deeper,
-more handsome color. The contrast between springwood and summerwood is
-not strong, though easily seen. Generally, the summerwood constitutes
-about one-fourth of the annual ring. The tree grows slowly, but with
-much irregularity. The increase in one season may be four or five times
-as great as in another. The bark exfoliates, and is quite thin.
-
-Madrona has never been put to much use. Difficulties in seasoning it
-have stood in the way. The wood warps and checks. Similar difficulties
-with other woods have been overcome, and such troubles should not be
-unduly discouraging. The beauty of the wood is unquestioned. It presents
-a fine appearance when worked into furniture, particularly in small
-panels and turned work, like spindles, knobs, and small posts. When made
-into grills it shows a surprising richness of tone. The wood polishes
-almost to the smoothness of holly. Small quantities are made into
-flooring; a little goes to the furniture makers; lathes turn some of it
-for novelties and souvenirs; fuel cutters sell it as cordwood; and
-tanbark peelers cut the trees for the thin, papery bark. In that case
-the trunks are left to decay, unless they happen to be convenient to a
-cordwood market.
-
-One of the most extensive uses for the wood of madrona is for charcoal
-burning. Blacksmiths buy it because it is cheaper than coal, and some is
-used in shops where soldering and welding are done; but the most
-exacting demand comes from gunpowder manufacturers. They find this wood
-almost equal to alder and willow as a source of charcoal suitable for
-powder.
-
-MEXICAN MADRONA (_Arbutus xalapensis_) might properly be called Texas
-madrona as it occurs in that state and probably in no other, but its
-range extends southward into Mexico. It produces a poorly shaped trunk
-seldom much more than twenty feet high and one foot in diameter, and
-usually divided into several branches near the ground. It blooms in
-March and ripens its fruit in midsummer. The tree is found on dry
-limestone hills, and in the valley of the Rio Blanco, and among the
-Eagle mountains. Cabinet makers in Texas put the wood to rather exacting
-uses after they have carefully seasoned it to overcome its natural
-tendency to check. It is very hard; its color is a little lighter than
-applewood which it resembles; annual rings are scarcely visible, so
-regular and even is the year's growth. In Texas the wood is made into
-plane stocks, tool handles, and mathematical instruments.
-
-ARIZONA MADRONA (_Arbutus arizonica_) has a restricted range on the
-Santa Catalina and Santa Rita mountains of southern Arizona, where it
-ascends to an altitude of 8,000 feet. The species extends southward into
-Mexico. The largest trees attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter
-of two. Trunks are usually straight and shapely, and show the thin, red
-bark common to the genus. The wood resembles that of the species in
-Texas, and doubtless is suited to the same purposes, but no utilization
-of it has been reported, except for fuel, and for fences and sheds on
-mountain ranches. When the region becomes more thickly settled, the
-value of the wood will be appreciated.
-
-    MANZANITA (_Arctostaphylos manzanita_) is not generally welcomed by
-    botanists into the tree class. They say it is too small; but it is
-    as large as some of the laurels which go as trees without question,
-    and is shaped much like them. There are several species of
-    manzanita. The word is Spanish and means "little apple." The name is
-    natural, for one of the most noticeable things about manzanita is
-    the fruit, the size of well-grown huckleberries. It is shaped like
-    an apple, and its tart taste suggests that fruit. The Digger Indians
-    along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California
-    gather the berries by the sack, dry them, and keep them for
-    winter--if they can. It is often impossible to keep them because,
-    like other fruit, they are apt to become wormy. When the Indians
-    discover them in that condition they display rare thrift and economy
-    for savages, by soaking the fruit and pressing out the juice, which
-    is said to pass for a pretty fair quality of cider, but it must be
-    quickly consumed or it will mother and change to vinegar. Indians
-    now put the berries to use less frequently than in early times when
-    they were nearly always hungry.
-
-    Manzanita is of the same family as madrona. Its range extends along
-    the mountains of the Pacific coast ranges from Oregon to Mexico, and
-    inland to Utah. The largest trees are about twenty feet high and a
-    foot or less in diameter; very much divided and branched, with limbs
-    crooked in more ways, perhaps, than those of any other
-    representative of the vegetable kingdom. Thousands of canes are cut
-    from the branches, and if any living man ever saw a straight one he
-    failed to report it. Manzanita grows in almost impenetrable thickets
-    on dry slopes and ridges. Its thin foliage casts so pale a shadow
-    that the tree's shade is little cooler than the boiling sun upon the
-    open naked ground and rocks. The bark is a reddish-chocolate color,
-    and exfoliates in scales of papery thinness. The heart is nearly of
-    the same color as the bark, but the sap is white and very thin. The
-    wood is hard, strong, stiff, but exceedingly brittle. If a branch is
-    sharply bent it will fly into splinters.
-
-    The uses of the wood are numerous, but the total quantity demanded
-    is moderate. Novelty stores sell small articles to tourists in
-    California, sometimes passing the wood off as mountain mahogany
-    which does not so much as belong to the same family. The most common
-    articles manufactured by novelty shops from manzanita are canes,
-    paper weights, paper knives, rulers, spoons, napkin rings, curtain
-    rings, cuff buttons, dominos, manicure sticks, jewel boxes, match
-    safes, pin trays, and photo frames.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-COTTONWOOD
-
-[Illustration: COTTONWOOD]
-
-
-
-
-COTTONWOOD[9]
-
-(_Populus Deltoides_)
-
-    [9] The following species grow in the United States: Cottonwood
-    (_Populus deltoides_), Aspen (_Populus tremuloides_), Largetooth
-    aspen (_Populus grandidentata_), Swamp Cottonwood (_Populus
-    heterophylla_), Balm of Gilead (_Populus balsamifera_), Lanceleaf
-    Cottonwood (_Populus acuminata_), Narrowleaf Cottonwood (_Populus
-    angustifolia_), Black Cottonwood (_Populus trichocarpa_), Fremont
-    Cottonwood (_Populus fremontii_), Mexican Cottonwood (_Populus
-    mexicana_), Texas Cottonwood (_Populus wislizeni_).
-
-
-Eleven species of cottonwood are found in the United States, if all
-trees of the genus _Populus_ are classed as cottonwoods. It is not
-universally admitted, however, that they should be so classed. The
-common cottonwood is the most widely known of all of them, but it is
-recognized under different names in different regions, viz.: Big
-cottonwood, yellow cottonwood, cotton tree, Carolina poplar, necklace
-poplar, broadleaf poplar, and whitewood.
-
-Its range covers practically all of the United States east of the Rocky
-Mountains. It is rare or missing in eastern New England and southern
-Florida, and most abundant in the Mississippi valley, and there the
-largest trees are found. Some exceed 100 feet in height, and four in
-diameter. Extreme sizes of 140 feet in height with diameters of from
-seven to nine have been reported. The cottonwood was a frontier tree on
-the western plains when settlers began to push into the region. It grew
-as far west as any hardwood of the eastern forests, and was found beyond
-meridian 100, which was supposed to be the boundary between the region
-of rains and the semi-arid country. The cottonwood clung to the river
-banks and to islands in the rivers, and by that means escaped the
-Indian's prairie and forest fires which he kindled every year to improve
-the range for the buffalo. It is supposed that most of the open country
-east of meridian 100 was originally timbered, and that the Indians
-destroyed the forests by their long-continued habit of burning the woods
-and prairies every year to improve the pasture. Cottonwood was the
-longest survivor, because it grew in damp places where fires did not
-burn fiercely. Black willow was its most frequent companion on the
-western outposts of the forests.
-
-The cottonwood was fitted for holding its ground, and pushing forward.
-Its light seeds are carried by millions on the wind and by water. The
-tree bears large quantities of cotton (hence the name), and when the
-wind whips it from the tree, seeds are caught among the fibers and
-carried along, to be scattered miles away.
-
-This tree was not much thought of by eastern people who had plenty of
-other kinds of wood, but pioneers on the plains who had a hard time to
-get any, found cottonwood useful. It made fences, corncribs, stables,
-cabins, ox yokes, and fuel. The first canoes made by white men on the
-upper Missouri river were of cottonwood. Lumber cut from this tree is
-inclined to warp and check unless carefully handled, and this prejudiced
-it in the eyes of many; but difficulties of that kind were easily
-mastered, and instead of being a neglected wood it became popular. Some
-of the largest early orders came from Germany. Vehicle makers in this
-country employed it for wagon beds, as a substitute for yellow poplar
-when that wood's cost advanced. Manufacturers of agricultural implements
-were pioneers in its use, it being excellent material for hoppers,
-chutes, and boxes.
-
-Cottonwood weighs 24.24 pounds per cubic foot, which is approximately
-the weight of white pine. It has about the stiffness of white oak, but
-only about eighty per cent of white oak's strength, and fifty per cent
-of its fuel value. The wood is very porous, but the pores are small,
-usually invisible to the naked eye. The medullary rays are small and
-obscure. The appearance of the wood is not improved by quarter-sawing.
-The summerwood forms a thin, dark line, so faint that the annual rings
-are often scarcely distinguishable. The tree is generally a rapid
-grower; heartwood is brown, sapwood lighter, but as a whole, this tree
-produces white wood.
-
-The annual cut is declining. It was little more than half in 1910 what
-it was in 1899. Some regions where large trees were once abundant now
-have few. The sawmill output in 1910 for the United States--including
-several species--was 220,000,000 feet. The veneer cut was 33,000,000
-feet, log measure; the slack cooperage staves, chiefly for flour
-barrels, numbered 44,000,000; and pulpwood amounted to about 18,000,000
-feet. The lumber cut was largest in the following states in the order
-named: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Iowa,
-Wisconsin, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Minnesota. The tree was lumbered in
-forty-one states.
-
-Cottonwood is a standard material in several lines of manufacturing. It
-is made into nearly every kind of box that goes on the market, from the
-cigar box to those in which pianos are shipped. Manufacturers of food
-products are particularly anxious to procure this wood, and it is one of
-the best for woodenware, such as dough boards, ironing boards, and cloth
-boards. It is used by manufacturers of agricultural implements, interior
-finish, bank and office fixtures, musical instruments, furniture,
-vehicle tops, trunks, excelsior, saddle trees, caskets and coffins, and
-numerous others.
-
-There is no danger that cottonwood will disappear from this country, but
-it will become scarce. It is being cut much faster than it is growing,
-and is losing favor as a planted shade and park tree, because of its
-habit of shedding cotton in the spring and its leaves in the early
-autumn.
-
-SWAMP COTTONWOOD (_Populus heterophylla_) is known also as river
-cottonwood, black cottonwood, downy poplar, and swamp poplar. Its range
-describes a crude horseshoe, running from Rhode Island down the Atlantic
-coast in a narrow strip, where it is neither abundant nor of large size;
-touching northern Florida; running westward to eastern Texas and thence
-up the Mississippi basin and the Ohio river to southwestern Ohio. There
-is nothing handsome about its appearance with its heavy limbs and
-sparse, rounded crown. In the eastern range the average height is
-probably not more than fifty feet but in the fertile Mississippi valley
-it reaches 100 and has a long merchantable bole three feet in diameter.
-Its bark is rugged, dirty-brown and broken into loose, conspicuous
-ridges. It is easily distinguished from the other cottonwoods by the
-orange-colored pith in the twigs. The buds are rounded and red and have
-a resinous odor. Sawmills and factories never list this wood separately.
-It comes and goes as cottonwood. Its uses are the same as those of
-common cottonwood. The two species grow in mixture throughout the entire
-range of the swamp cottonwood.
-
-TEXAS COTTONWOOD (_Populus wislizeni_) is a rather large tree and is the
-common cottonwood in the upper valley of the Rio Grande in New Mexico
-and western Texas. The yellowish color of the twigs is apt to attract
-attention. The wood is used about ranches and occasionally a log finds
-its way to local sawmills; but its importance is limited to the region
-where it grows.
-
-MEXICAN COTTONWOOD (_Populus mexicana_) extends its range north of the
-Mexican boundary into southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. It
-is abundant in Mexico where the largest trees are eighty feet high and
-three or four in diameter. It is smaller near the northern limits of its
-range, and there it hugs the banks of mountain streams. Stockmen use the
-trunks, which are usually small enough to be called poles, to make
-fences and sheds.
-
-NARROWLEAF COTTONWOOD (_Populus angustifolia_)is a mountain species
-which manages to live in the semi-arid regions from the Rocky Mountains
-of Canada to Arizona, but is seldom found below an elevation of 5,000
-feet, and it ranges up to 10,000. Trunks are eighteen inches or less in
-diameter, and fifty or sixty feet high. The seeds are larger than those
-of most other cottonwoods. It being a semi-desert species, its wood is
-appreciated where it is accessible, and it has local uses only.
-
-LANCELEAF COTTONWOOD (_Populus acuminata_) is a small tree with limited
-range, growing in the arid region along the eastern base of the Rocky
-Mountains, southward from the Black Hills. It is found also north of the
-Canadian border. It is usually fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter,
-and thirty or forty feet high. Trunks seldom go to sawmills, but some
-local use is made of the wood. Trees are occasionally planted for shade
-in towns of western Nebraska and Wyoming.
-
-FREMONT COTTONWOOD (_Populus fremontii_), called white cottonwood in New
-Mexico, but elsewhere simply cottonwood, grows from western Texas to
-California, and as far north as Utah and Colorado. It sometimes attains
-a diameter of five or six feet and a height of 100. The Indians in New
-Mexico formerly made rude, clumsy ox carts of this wood, without a scrap
-of iron or other metal in the vehicles. One of the carts is preserved in
-the National Museum, Washington, D. C. The wood is tough and light, but
-it is dull white, with no attractive figure. Even the annual rings are
-hardly distinguishable. Logs are occasionally sawed into lumber, and
-farmers in western Texas make wagon beds of it.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BALM OF GILEAD
-
-[Illustration: BALM OF GILEAD]
-
-
-
-
-BALM OF GILEAD
-
-(_Populus Balsamifera_)
-
-
-This tree is known in different regions by the following names: Balsam,
-balm of Gilead, cottonwood, poplar, balsam poplar, and tacamahac. The
-usual name, balm of Gilead, is applied in recognition of the supposed
-healing virtue of the wax which covers the buds and young leaves. It has
-long been used in medicine, but its exact value is still a matter of
-discussion. The wild Indians of the North discovered a use for the
-balsam in mending their bark dishes, and plugging knot holes in the
-wooden trenchers. The wax is slow to dissolve in water, and it resisted
-for a long time such soups as were known to the redman's culinary art.
-Bees know the value of the wax and use it to seal cracks and crevices in
-their hives and to hold the comb in place. It is popularly believed that
-the economy of the wax on the buds is to keep them from freezing. That
-view is erroneous, for it would take more than a coating of wax to keep
-the buds warm with the thermometer from fifty to seventy degrees below
-zero, as it is every winter in some parts of this tree's range.
-
-Balm of Gilead is a native of the North from the Atlantic to the
-Pacific, but its finest growth is about the headwaters of the Mackenzie
-river, on Peace and Laird rivers, and the lower valley of the Athabaska.
-Sixty years ago Sir John Franklin reported that most of the driftwood of
-the Arctic ocean was this species. Since that time the range has been
-more definitely determined, and it is now known that the tree grows so
-far north that it is for some weeks in darkness, and again in summer for
-some weeks in unbroken sunshine. It grows in Alaska nearly 200 miles
-north of the Arctic circle. Its natural range southward reaches New
-England, New York, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, and Oregon.
-
-Trees of all sizes abound, from mere shrubs in the outskirts of its
-range to trunks 100 feet high and six feet in diameter in favored
-localities. In the United States the best timber seldom exceeds thirty
-inches in diameter and sixty or seventy feet in height. The bark on
-limbs and young trunks is brownish-gray, frequently so tinged with green
-that it is noticeable at a considerable distance; but usually large
-trees have reddish-gray bark with deep furrows and wide ridges. Year-old
-twigs are clear, shiny reddish-brown; end buds are about an inch long,
-the side buds somewhat shorter.
-
-The wood is not distinguishable in appearance from that of the other
-poplars or cottonwoods, but it is lighter than most of them, weighing
-22.65 pounds per cubic foot, has a breaking strength which places it
-among the weakest woods, but in stiffness making a much better showing.
-The pores are small, numerous, and are distributed equally through all
-parts of the wood.
-
-Balm of Gilead bears seeds abundantly and scatters them widely. It must
-do its planting quickly in the short summers of the cold North. It
-sticks close to alluvial flats, banks of rivers, borders of lakes and
-swamps, and gravelly soils. It grows to a diameter of fifteen inches in
-about forty-five years.
-
-Though balm of Gilead is not one of the most important timber trees of
-this country, its place is by no means obscure. No separate tally is
-kept of it among woods cut for pulp, but it goes with aspen and other
-similar species as "poplar." A little better account is kept of the
-amount passing through wood-using factories. The annual quantity so
-reported in Illinois is 2,775,000 feet, and it is made into boxes and
-crates. The lumber is shipped from the North, since it does not grow as
-far south as Illinois. The situation is different in Michigan, for balm
-of Gilead grows there. The amount going yearly into factories in that
-state is reported at 4,912,000 feet. It is made into many commodities,
-but boxes and crates take most of it. The wood is reduced to veneer and
-converted into berry buckets, grape baskets, fruit and egg crates, and
-other small shipping containers. It is made into excelsior and woodwool
-which are used as packing material. Druggist's barrels are manufactured
-from this wood. These are small, two-piece vessels, bored hollow, with a
-closely fitting lid, and varying in size from a couple of inches high,
-to nearly a foot. They contain powders, perfumes, pills, and other
-commodities in small bulk. The wood is worked into pails, tubs, and
-kegs. Furniture makers put balm of Gilead to use in several ways. It is
-cut thin for shelving; it is made into panels, and is employed as cores
-over which to lay veneers of more expensive materials. Woodenware
-factories generally keep it in stock in the northern states.
-
-The supply is ample at present to meet all demands. Cutters of pulpwood
-probably take more than sawmills, and are satisfied with smaller timber.
-Trees are often planted for ornament, but few if any have yet been
-propagated for forestry purposes.
-
-HAIRY BALM OF GILEAD (_Populus balsamifera candicans_) is not a species
-but a variety, and it is so different from balm of Gilead that it is
-entitled to a place of its own. Ordinarily it passes under the common
-names applied to balm of Gilead. It is a cultivated tree in eastern
-Canada and northeastern United States, where it has escaped from
-cultivation and is running wild. Both Sargent and Sudworth say that
-nothing is definitely known of the tree's native range; while it has
-been claimed by others that it once grew wild in Michigan but was
-destroyed by lumbermen. Probably most planted balm of Gileads are of
-this variety, as they are very ornamental. It is a large tree with
-branches less upright and crowns more open than in the wild species. The
-leaves are wide, heart-shaped, and are usually silvery white beneath
-with minute hairs on the margins, on the veins, and leaf stems. It is
-not improbable that this variety could be more profitably planted for
-forestry purposes than the species which grows wild; but there is no
-present indication that foresters favorably consider either of them.
-
-LARGETOOTH ASPEN (_Populus grandidentata_) is named on account of the
-shape of the leaves. It is sometimes called aspen, popple, white poplar,
-and large poplar. The wood weighs 28.87 pounds per cubic foot, and is
-the heaviest of the poplar group except Fremont cottonwood of the arid
-southwestern regions. The wood is white, attractive, but not strong. It
-was formerly manufactured into chip hats and shoe heels in New England,
-and is now used for baskets, crates, boxes, buckets, refrigerators,
-excelsior, and pulp. Northern factories usually give it the general name
-"poplar," and for that reason its importance in the lumber trade is
-underestimated. Trees may reach a height of seventy feet with a diameter
-of two; but a height of forty or fifty is more usual. The species' range
-extends from Nova Scotia to Minnesota, southward to Delaware and
-Illinois, and along the Appalachian mountains to North Carolina and
-Tennessee.
-
-GUMBO LIMBO (_Bursera simaruba_) is a south Florida species and is known
-also as West Indian birch. It is in a family by itself with no near
-relative. It is not a birch. The wood is spongy and very light, weighing
-less than nineteen pounds per cubic foot. It decays with remarkable
-rapidity. Branches thrust in the ground take root and grow. An aromatic
-resin, exuding from wounds in the bark, is manufactured into varnish.
-The leaves are substituted for tea, and gout remedies are made from the
-resin. Large trees are fifty feet high and two feet or more in diameter.
-Another Florida tree, not in the same family as this, is also called
-gumbo limbo (_Simarouba glauca_), paradise tree, and bitter wood.
-Ailanthus (_Ailanthus glandulosa_) is in the same family as paradise
-tree, but is not native in this country, though extensively planted
-here.
-
-ANGELICA TREE (_Aralia spinosa_). This is a small tree, which usually
-develops little or no heartwood. The springwood, or the inner and porous
-part of the ring, is broad and yellow, the summerwood, or exterior part
-of the ring, is narrow and dark. The wood's figure, due to the marked
-contrast between the outer and inner portions of the rings, is strong.
-When finished it shows a rich yellow, but somewhat lighter than dwarf
-sumach which it resembles. It is made into small shop articles, like
-button boxes, photograph frames, pen racks, stools, and arms for
-rocking chairs. Its range extends from Pennsylvania to Texas. It is
-sometimes known as Hercules' club.
-
-    ASPEN (_Populus tremuloides_) is widely known but not everywhere by
-    the same name. It is called quaking asp, mountain asp, aspen leaf,
-    white poplar, popple, poplar, and trembling poplar. The peculiarity
-    of the tree which is apt to attract attention, and which gives it
-    most of the names it carries, is the leaf's habit of being nearly
-    always in motion. The day is remarkably still if aspen foliage is
-    not stirring. This is due to the long, flat leaf stem, which is so
-    limber that it offers little resistance to air currents. The
-    difference in color between the upper and lower sides of the leaves
-    affords sufficient contrast to attract notice, and for that reason a
-    person will observe the motion of aspen leaves when he might fail to
-    see a similar movement among the leaves of other species where the
-    contrast of colors is not so marked. Aspen is credited with being
-    the most widely distributed tree of North America. It grows from
-    Tennessee to the Arctic ocean, from Mexico to northern Alaska, from
-    Labrador to Bering strait. It is found at sea level, and at 10,000
-    feet elevation among the mountains of California. Its very small
-    seeds grow in enormous numbers. Winds carry them miles, and scatter
-    them by millions. They spring up quickly when they fall on mineral
-    soil. This places it in the class with "fire trees"--those which
-    take possession of burned tracts. Paper birch is in this class.
-    Aspen has replaced pines over large burned areas of the Rocky
-    Mountains. It grows quickly but is weak if it has to contend with
-    other trees. If crowded it speedily gives up the fight and dies. The
-    wood is not strong, but is useful for several purposes. Next to
-    spruce and hemlock, it is the most important pulpwood in this
-    country, and it is coming into considerable use as lumber. The
-    whiteness of the wood--it looks much like holly--makes it a favorite
-    for small boxes and vessels for shipping and containing foods. It is
-    made into jelly buckets, lard pails, fish kits, spice kegs, sugar
-    buckets and a long line of similar articles. It turns well, and is
-    made into wooden dishes. Michigan alone uses two and a half million
-    feet of it a year; and it is in demand along the whole northern tier
-    of states from Maine to Washington, but because it is not separately
-    listed in lumber output, it is difficult to say how much is used.
-    Trees are usually small, though trunks three feet in diameter are
-    not unknown. It grows rapidly, and may be expected to fill an
-    important place in this country's future timber supply. There will
-    be no occasion to plant it by artificial means, for nature will
-    attend to the planting.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK COTTONWOOD
-
-[Illustration: BLACK COTTONWOOD]
-
-
-
-
-BLACK COTTONWOOD
-
-(_Populus Trichocarpa_)
-
-
-This member of the cottonwood group is a strong tree that holds its
-ground in various latitudes and at many elevations, ranging from sea
-level up to eight or nine thousand feet, and in latitude from Alaska to
-southern California, a distance of nearly three thousand miles. Its east
-and west extension is more restricted and seldom exceeds four hundred
-miles. Its habitat covers an area of half a million square miles, and in
-that space it finds conditions which vary so greatly that the tree which
-can meet them must possess remarkable powers of adaptation.
-
-Beginning in Alaska and the interior of Yukon territory, it has an
-arctic climate. It there not only grows on the coast, but it strikes the
-interior. It appears on the headwaters of several streams which flow
-into the Mackenzie or Hudson bay. It passes south through British
-Columbia and enters the United States west of the Rocky Mountains. It
-has been reported as far east as Idaho and Montana, but further
-information is needed before its limits in that direction can be
-definitely fixed.
-
-When it enters California it prefers the elevated valleys and canyons of
-the Sierra Nevadas, though it occurs sparingly among the coast ranges.
-It is generally found in the Sierras at elevations of from 3,000 to
-6,000 feet, though it occurs between 8,000 and 9,000. Among the San
-Jacinto mountains of southern California it grows at an altitude of
-6,000 feet.
-
-When it occurs at low levels it is usually found on river bottoms and
-sand bars, in sandy and humous soils, and there the largest trees are
-found. At higher elevations it is more apt to occur in canyon bottoms
-and gulches, in moist, sandy or gravelly soil, and in such situations
-the black cottonwood is smaller. The best growth occurs where the
-climate is humid and the precipitation is great. Beyond the reach of sea
-fogs, where the tree depends on soil moisture chiefly, it is smaller.
-
-It is an intolerant tree. It must have light. When it is crowded a tall,
-slender trunk is developed and the small crown is lifted clear above its
-competitors into the full light. If it cannot succeed in gaining that
-position its growth is stunted or the tree meets an early death.
-
-The black cottonwood is the greatest of the cottonwoods. This country
-produces no other to match it, and, as far as known, the whole world has
-none. The Pacific coast is remarkable for the giant trees it produces,
-but most of them are softwoods--the redwoods, the bigtree, the sugar
-pine, Douglas fir, western larch, noble fir, Sitka spruce and western
-red cedar. This cottonwood is the largest of the Pacific coast
-hardwoods. In trunk diameter it is excelled by the weeping oak in the
-interior valleys of California, but when both height and diameter are
-considered, the black cottonwood is in the West what yellow poplar is in
-the East, the largest of the hardwoods.
-
-Sargent says this tree reaches a height of two hundred feet and a
-diameter of eight, but Sudworth is more conservative and places the
-trunk limit at six feet. The average size is much below the figures
-given, but abundance of logs exceeding three feet in diameter reach the
-sawmills of Washington and Oregon.
-
-Old trees range from 150 to 200 years in age, but trees under 100 years
-old are large enough for saw timber. Records of the ages of the largest
-trunks have not been reported.
-
-Black cottonwood is a prolific seeder, but the seeds do not long retain
-their vitality. If they find lodgment in damp situations, where other
-conditions are favorable, the rate of germination is high. Seedlings are
-often very numerous on wet bars.
-
-The excellent quality of the wood and its suitability for many purposes
-bring it much demand on the Pacific coast. In the state of Washington
-more than 30,000,000 feet were used by wood-using industries in 1910.
-Smaller quantities were reported in Oregon and California.
-
-In strength the wood is approximately the same as common cottonwood, but
-in stiffness it much exceeds the eastern species. Its elasticity rates
-high, and compares favorably with some of the valuable eastern
-hardwoods. In weight it is slightly under common cottonwood. Trees are
-of fine form, nearly always straight, and are generally free from limbs
-to a considerable height.
-
-The wood is grayish-white, soft, tough, odorless, tasteless,
-long-fibered, nails well, is easily glued, and cuts into excellent
-rotary veneer with comparatively small expenditure of power. It does not
-split easily after it has undergone seasoning, and this property
-commends it to box makers. It is little disposed to shrink and swell in
-atmospheric changes. The absence of odor and taste gives it much of its
-value for box making, because foods are not contaminated by contact with
-it.
-
-It is manufactured into veneer berry baskets and is one of the most
-suitable woods on the Pacific coast for that purpose. Candy barrel
-makers use it in preference to most others, and a long line of
-woodenware articles draw much of their material from this source. Many
-thousands of cords are cut yearly for the pulp mills, where material for
-paper is produced. Black cottonwood and white fir are the principal
-woods used for pulp on the Pacific coast.
-
-Not only is it used for rotary-cut veneer, but it is made into cores or
-backing on which veneers of costly woods are glued in the manufacture of
-furniture, interior finish and fixtures for banks, stores and offices.
-It serves in the same way in casket making, and is demanded in millions
-of feet.
-
-It is employed in amounts larger than any other wood by excelsior mills
-in the northern Pacific coast region. It is the only wood demanded by
-that industry in Washington and 6,400,000 feet were cut into that
-product in 1910.
-
-Slack coopers find it as valuable in their business in the far West as
-the common cottonwood is in the East, and hundreds of thousands of
-staves are made yearly. It is in demand for the manufacture of flour
-barrels and those intended for other food products.
-
-Trunk makers use it in three-ply veneers for the bodies, trays, boxes
-and compartments of trunks and for suit cases. Though soft and light, it
-is very tough, and sheets of veneer with the grains placed transversely
-resist strains much better than solid wood of the same thickness.
-
-Vehicle makers employ black cottonwood for the tops and shelves of
-business wagons. Another of its uses is as bottoms of drawers for
-bureaus, wardrobes, and chiffoniers, and as partitions in desk
-compartments. A full line of kitchen and pantry furniture is made wholly
-or in part of this wood in the regions where it is cheap and abundant.
-
-The cottonwoods belong to a very ancient race of broadleaf trees, and
-like several others, they seem to have had their origin, or at least a
-very early home, in the far North, where intense cold now excludes
-almost every form of vegetable growth except the lowest orders. The
-Cretaceous age saw cottonwoods growing in Greenland. The cotton which
-then, as now, carried the seeds and planted them fell on more hospitable
-shores then than can now be found in the far frozen North. The genus was
-not confined to the arctic and subarctic regions, however, for there
-were cottonwoods at that time, or later, in more southern latitudes.
-There were many species in the central portion of this country, and also
-in Europe, long before the ice age destroyed all the forests north of
-the Ohio and the Missouri rivers. Some of the old species long ago
-ceased to exist, but others appear to have come down to the present time
-without great change.
-
-The cottonwood shows wonderful vitality, which is doubtless a survival
-of the characteristic which enabled it to come down from former geologic
-epochs to the present time. A damaged and mutilated tree will recover. A
-broken limb, thrust in the ground, will grow.
-
-    BLACK POPLAR (_Populus nigra_) is quite distinct from black
-    cottonwood, though both belong to the same family. The latter is a
-    Pacific coast species, while the former belongs in Europe, although
-    it may have been introduced into that country from Persia or some
-    other eastern region. It is common in the United States, on account
-    of having escaped from cultivation. The best known variety of this
-    tree is the Lombardy poplar (_Populus nigra italica_). It is easily
-    recognized by the characteristic attitude of the branches which grow
-    upward close against the trunk. The crowns of the trees are very
-    long and slender, sometimes not ten feet across though fifty feet
-    high. Their slimness gives the trees the appearance of being much
-    taller than they really are. They were formerly popular for planting
-    along lanes and in door yards. Their slender and pointed spires cut
-    the horizon with a peculiar effect. Planting is less common now than
-    formerly, because people have come to know the trees better. They
-    are probably the most limby of all the members of the cottonwood
-    group. The long trunks are masses of knots when the limbs have been
-    trimmed away, and any desire to make lumber of the trees is apt to
-    be discouraged, though not infrequently logs go to local sawmills,
-    and farmers haul the boards home to put them to some use about the
-    place. In Michigan and Ohio, box makers use the lumber for the
-    rougher and cheaper articles which they turn out.
-
-    The most discouraging thing about Lombardy poplar is the tendency of
-    the trees to send up sprouts. The living trees do it, and the stumps
-    are worse. The sprouts are not confined to the ground immediately
-    round the base of the tree, but spring up many feet or many yards
-    distant, until they produce a veritable jungle. Years are often
-    required to complete their extermination by grubbing and cutting.
-
-    WHITE POPLAR (_Populus alba_) is a European species but has become
-    naturalized in the United States. It is widely planted as a shade
-    tree, and has escaped from cultivation. It may be known by the white
-    undersides of its small leaves, and by its yellowish-green bark
-    which remains smooth, except on large trunks. It is not yet
-    important as a source of lumber, but the vigor of its growth
-    indicates that it may sometime become so. The wood is soft, white,
-    and light. Some persons consider the tree objectionable as an
-    ornament because of its habit of sending up sprouts from the roots,
-    and because its woolly leaves collect dust and smoke until they are
-    almost black by the end of summer.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MANGROVE
-
-[Illustration: MANGROVE]
-
-
-
-
-MANGROVE
-
-(_Rhizophora Mangle_)
-
-
-The mangrove family is large and widely scattered, but only one member
-has gained a foothold in the United States, and it occupies only limited
-areas in south Florida, at the delta of the Mississippi, and on the
-coast of Texas. The family's fifteen genera are confined to the tropics,
-with a little overlapping on the temperate zones. The botanical name
-_Rhizophora_ refers to the tree's peculiar roots, and _mangle_ is the
-Spanish for mangrove. This is one of the few trees in this country which
-are known by a single name. It is always called mangrove, and attains
-its best development in Florida.
-
-The leaves hang two years, are from three to five inches long and one or
-two wide. Flowers are not showy, but they are nearly always present,
-blooming the year round, the yellow blossom about an inch in diameter.
-The fruit proper is about an inch long, but its habit of sprouting while
-still on the tree and sending down a long stem-like root, gives the
-impression that the fruit is several inches long, sometimes a foot.
-
-It is not an easy matter to state the average size of mangrove trees.
-Peculiar habits of growth make measurements difficult. Neither is it
-easy to tell where a tree begins and where it ends. Mangrove thickets
-along some of the rivers of south Florida, within the influence of tide
-water, are strange forms of vegetation. If the foliage alone is
-considered from a little distance, it reminds one of a row of fig trees
-in Louisiana or California. The color and general appearance suggests
-fig trees. A nearer approach reveals beneath the crowns a mass of roots,
-stems, and limbs, joined with the ground beneath and the crowns above.
-In addition to these, there are many others that dangle from above, like
-rope ends, some nearly touching the ground, others several feet above.
-These are roots or limbs, by whichever name one cares to call them. They
-grow from overhead branches, and strike for the ground. When they touch
-the soil, they quickly anchor themselves, and become stems. They then
-look like slender poles set as props under the branches of an overladen
-fruit tree.
-
-This strange habit of growth gives the tree its character. Most
-mangroves stand in water. They fringe the banks of rivers and bayous,
-extending the fringe as far as the water is shallow. Growth of that kind
-is generally from ten to twenty feet high, and the largest stems from an
-inch in diameter up to three or four; but these dimensions cannot be
-taken as limits to size. Sometimes the trees are sixty or seventy feet
-high, but those which stand in water seldom reach that size. Trees
-which have their beginning in the water sometimes end their days high
-and dry on the land.
-
-The mangrove is a land builder. The sycamore and willow are land
-builders on a small scale, along northern water-courses, but mangrove
-excels them a hundred or a thousand fold where it grows on the low
-shores of Florida. The seed is prepared for land-building work before it
-drops from the tree. It sprouts a long, peculiar root--it looks like a
-very slender, big-ended cucumber--the large, heavy end down. This
-attains a length of several inches or a foot. When it drops from the
-branch, the end sticks in the mud and takes root, grows, and produces a
-tree. But generally it falls in water, and not on a mud bank. In that
-case it floats away, the heavy end down, the light end barely appearing
-on the surface. Winds and currents drive it about until the lower tip
-finally touches bottom in some shallow place. There it takes root, and
-unless circumstances are extremely adverse, it holds fast, finally
-becomes a tree, sends branches down from above to take root at the
-bottom of the water, and a clump is produced. The tangled mass of stems
-and roots catches driftwood and mud, resulting finally in a little
-island, and later the island is joined to the mainland. Thus the land is
-built. Many large flats in Florida owe their origin to this tree. When
-land is permanently above water, the mangrove loses, to some extent, its
-ability to send roots down from the limbs. Nature seldom does something
-for nothing, and since the mangrove's aerial roots no longer serve a
-useful purpose in nature's economy, they are dispensed with. Trunks then
-reach much larger size, and become timber instead of thickets. The
-accompanying picture shows a mangrove that no longer stands in water,
-and its habit of growth is changing.
-
-Thickets of mangrove are useful, not only in building new land, but in
-protecting that already built. Frequently the force of waves is broken,
-which otherwise would destroy low shores. Tremendous seas, in time of
-storms, will roll over thickets of mangrove without uprooting them or
-breaking the stems. Again nature's fine engineering is apparent. When
-men build lighthouses which must endure the shocks of waves, they have
-learned to construct them of open beams and lattice work. The wave
-passes through without delivering the full impact of the blow to the
-structure. No solid masonry will stand what a comparatively light open
-frame will endure without injury, because it allows the waves to pass
-on. A large wave may strike with a force of 6,000 pounds to the square
-foot. The mangrove thickets are like the open-framed lighthouse--they
-let the waves pass through and spend their force gradually beyond, but
-they hold the shore against washing.
-
-Admirable and wonderful as is nature's provision for protecting the
-land by a fringe of lattice work of branches and stems, the marvelous
-efficiency of the provision has been greatly increased in another way.
-Suppose, for illustration, that cottonwood instead of mangrove formed
-the protective thickets along stormy shores. The first hour of heavy
-seas would reduce the trees to fragments. The weak, brittle trunks and
-limbs would quickly break to pieces. But mangrove passes through storm
-after storm unharmed. It is scarcely believable that accident accounts
-for the fact that the best wood for the place is in the place; but it is
-probable, rather, that ages of development and natural selection gave to
-mangrove the qualities which make possible the accomplishment of its
-work. It is one of the strongest, and as far as available data may be
-depended upon, it is absolutely the most elastic wood in the United
-States. Shellbark hickory is rated high in both strength and elasticity;
-but mangrove rates higher. Sargent gives hickory's measure of elasticity
-at 1,925,000 pounds per square inch; but mangrove's is 2,333,000 pounds.
-
-It is thus fitted in the highest manner to perform the work needed. It
-plants itself in the right place; develops stems which will endure most
-and suffer least; possesses enormous strength for resisting force, yet
-is so extremely elastic that the force of waves is exhausted upon the
-trunks and branches without flattening them upon the ground or crushing
-them. Few things of the vegetable world show more perfect adaptation to
-environment. The wood's very heaviness seems to add one more quality
-fitting it for its place. When a trunk falls in the water, it does not
-float away as most trees would, but sinks like iron, lies on the bottom,
-helps to hold the forming island or bar in place, and in its death as in
-its life it is a land-builder. Its efficiency in that particular is
-increased by the fact that it is little affected by marine borers which,
-in the warm, brackish waters, usually destroy wood in a short time.
-
-Mangrove is not important commercially, though it is used for a number
-of purposes. The wood weighs 72.4 pounds per cubic foot, takes good
-polish, though it is inclined to check in drying; it contains many small
-pores; medullary rays numerous and thin; color reddish-brown streaked
-with lighter brown. The principal use of the bark is for tanning and the
-trunks for piles. It is well fitted for fence posts, but not many have
-been used in the region where it grows. It rates high as fuel, but its
-great weight increases transportation charges if the haul is long.
-
-Tanbark peelers in Florida have cut much of the large mangrove forest.
-They took the bark, and abandoned the trunks. There is no likelihood
-that the species will be exterminated. Much of the growth is practically
-inaccessible, and the trunks are too small to tempt bark peelers, and
-cordwood cutters find plenty of material more convenient.
-
-    OTHER SPECIES.--Two other trees of this country are called mangrove
-    though they are not even in the same family. One is the black
-    mangrove (_Avicennia nitida_), called also blackwood and black tree.
-    It is a Florida species of the family Verbenaceae, and has some of
-    the mangrove's habits. It takes root and grows on muddy shores and
-    is a land builder. The largest trees are sixty or seventy feet high
-    and two in diameter, but are usually less than thirty feet high. The
-    bark is used in tanning, and no use for the wood is reported, except
-    for fuel. White mangrove (_Laguncularia racemosa_), known also as
-    white buttonwood, is a Florida species. It attains a height of
-    thirty or forty feet and a diameter of a foot or more. It reaches
-    its largest size on the shores of Shark river, Florida. The wood is
-    dark yellow-brown, and the bark is rich in tannin, and the tree may
-    become valuable as a source of tanbark.
-
-    Near akin to white mangrove is Florida buttonwood (_Conocarpus
-    erecta_) which is highly esteemed as fuel. It burns slowly like
-    charcoal. Trees are from twenty to fifty feet high. Its range lies
-    in southern Florida. Black olive tree (_Terminalia buceras_) belongs
-    in the south Florida group, and the wood is exceedingly hard and
-    heavy. The trunk is often two or three feet in diameter, but lies on
-    the ground like a log, with upright stems growing from it. Tanners
-    make use of the bark.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CABBAGE PALMETTO
-
-[Illustration: CABBAGE PALMETTO]
-
-
-
-
-THE PALMS
-
-
-Lumbermen in this country could get along very well without the palms,
-as they are little used for ordinary lumber. Their wood does not grow in
-concentric rings, like that of the ordinary tree. The stems are usually
-single, cylindrical, and unbranched. The fruit is berry-like, and is
-usually one seeded, though sometimes there are two or three. When a seed
-sprouts, it puts out at first a single leaf, like a grain of corn. About
-130 genera of palms are recognized in the world, most of them in the
-tropics, but several in the United States are of tree size. Botanists
-divide the palms of the United States into two groups, the palm family
-and the lily family. The yuccas belong in the lily family. In the very
-brief treatment that can be given the subject here, it is not necessary
-to recognize strict family divisions.
-
-CABBAGE PALMETTO (_Sabal palmetto_) grows in the coast region from North
-Carolina to southern Florida, and west to the Apalachicola river. It is
-sometimes called Bank's palmetto, cabbage tree, and tree palmetto. The
-name cabbage is due to the large leaf-bud in the top of the stem which
-is cooked as a substitute for cabbage. A sharp hatchet and some
-experience are necessary to a successful operation in extracting the bud
-from the tough fibers which surround it.
-
-This palm is a familiar sight in the coast region within its range. The
-tall trunks, with tufts of leaves at the tops, suggest the supposed
-scenery of the Carboniferous age. Usually the trunks, in thick stands,
-rise straight like columns from twenty to forty feet high, but
-occasionally they bend in long, graceful curves, as if the weight of the
-tops caused them to careen, which is probably what does happen. They
-vary in diameter from eight inches to two feet.
-
-The leaves are five or six feet long, and seven or eight wide, with
-stems six or seven feet long. Flowers occur in racemes two feet or more
-in length. The fruit is spherical and about a third of an inch in
-diameter. The roots are an important part of this palm, and are adapted
-to their environment, forming a rounded mass four or five feet in
-diameter, while small rope-like roots, half an inch in diameter,
-penetrate the wet marshy soil fifteen or twenty feet. The large,
-globe-like mass gives support in the soft soil, and the stringy roots
-supply water and mineral substances essential to growth. The wood is
-light, soft, pale-brown, with numerous hard, fibro-vascular bundles, the
-outer rim about two inches thick and much lighter and softer than the
-interior. The most important use for the wood at present is as wharf
-piles. It lasts well and is ideal in form. It is of historical interest
-that Fort Moultrie which defended Charleston, South Carolina, in the
-Revolutionary war, was built of palmetto logs. When the British made
-their memorable attack in 1776, their cannon balls buried in the spongy
-logs without dislodging them, and the fort successfully withstood the
-bombardment of ten hours, and disabled nine of the ten British ships
-taking part in the assault.
-
-The wood is employed to a small extent in furniture making, and the bark
-for scrubbing brushes. Some of the finest forests of palmetto in Florida
-are much injured by fire that runs up the trunks to feed on stubs of
-leaves.
-
-SILKTOP PALMETTO (_Thrinax parviflora_) and silvertop palmetto (_Thrinax
-microcarpa_) are species met with on some of the islands off the coast
-of southern Florida.
-
-MEXICAN PALMETTO (_Sabal mexicana_) is much like cabbage palmetto in
-size and general appearance, and is put to similar uses, except that the
-leaf-bud does not appear to be used as food. The tree occurs in Texas
-along the lower Rio Grande, and southward into Mexico where the leaves
-are employed as house thatch by improvident Mexicans and Indians who do
-not care to exert themselves to procure better roofing material. In the
-vicinity of Brownsville, Texas, trunks of this palm are employed as
-porch posts and present a rustic appearance. They are said to last many
-years. The average size of trunks in Texas is fifteen or twenty feet
-high and a foot or less in diameter, but some much larger are found in
-Mexico. Some of the wharfs along the Texas coast are built on palmetto
-piles. It is said the trunks are not as strong as those of the cabbage
-palmetto in Florida.
-
-SARGENT PALM (_Pseudophoenix sargentii_) is interesting but not
-commercially important, but may become so as an ornamental plant. It is
-occasionally planted on lawns in south Florida. Leaves are five or six
-feet long with stems still longer. The clusters of flowers are sometimes
-three feet in length. A single species is known, occurring on certain
-keys in southern Florida, and is so limited in its range that it would
-be possible to count every tree in existence. A grove of 200 or 300
-trees occurs on Key Largo.
-
-ROYAL PALM (_Oreodoxa regia_) is one of the largest palms of this
-country. It is said to reach a height of eighty feet, but such sizes are
-rare. The trunk rises from an enlarged base, and may be two feet in
-diameter. Bark is light gray in color, and its appearance suggests a
-column of cement. Leaves are ten or twelve feet long, and the stems
-increase the total length to twenty feet or more. Flowers are two feet
-in length, and in Florida open in January and February. The fruit is
-smaller than would be expected of a tree so large. It is a drupe about
-the size of a half-grown grape. The wood is spongy, but the outer
-portion of the stem is strong and is made into canes and other small
-articles. Trunks are sometimes used as wharf piles. This palm's range is
-confined to south Florida in this country, but it is common in the West
-Indies. In Miami and other towns of southern Florida it is much planted
-for ornament.
-
-FANLEAF PALM (_Neowashingtonia filamentosa_) also called Washington
-palm, California fan palm, Arizona palm, and wild date, ranges through
-southern California, and occupies depressions in the desert west of the
-Colorado river. There are said to be several forms and varieties. It
-ranges in height from thirty-five to seventy feet and in diameter from
-twenty to thirty inches. Trunks are of nearly the same diameter from
-bottom to top, or taper very gradually. They usually lean a little. Dead
-leaves hang about the trunks and blaze quickly when fire touches them,
-but the palm is seldom killed by fire. The small black fruit is about a
-third of an inch in diameter, and of no commercial importance; wood is
-little used; and the tree is chiefly ornamental, and has been much
-planted in California.
-
-MOHAVE YUCCA (_Yucca mohavensis_) is one of a half dozen or more palms
-of the yucca genus and the lily family. Trees of this group are
-characterized by their stiff, sharp-pointed leaves, some of which are
-called daggers and others bayonets. Both names are appropriate. The
-Mohave yucca takes its name from the Mohave desert in California, where
-it is occasionally an important feature of the doleful landscape. The
-ragged, leather-like leaves, forming the tops of the short, weird trees,
-rattle in the wind, or resound with the patter of pebbles when
-sandstorms sweep across the dry wastes. It is believed to be one of the
-most slowly-growing trees of this country. Trunks are seldom more than
-fifteen feet high and eight or ten inches in diameter. The wood is
-spongy and interlaced with tough, stringy fibers. Stockmen whose ranges
-include this tree, make corrals of the stems by setting them in the
-ground as palisades. When weathered by wind and made bone dry by the
-sun's fierce heat, the trunks are reduced to almost cork-lightness.
-Other yuccas are the Spanish bayonet (_Yucca treculeana_) of Texas;
-Joshua-tree (_Yucca arborescens_), which ranges from Utah to California
-and is known as tree yucca, yucca cactus, and the Joshua; Schott yucca
-(_Yucca brevifolia_) of southern Arizona; broadfruit yucca (_Yucca
-macrocarpa_) of southwestern Texas; aloe-leaf yucca (_Yucca aloifolia_)
-with a range from North Carolina near the coast to Louisiana; and
-Spanish dagger (_Yucca gloriosa_), on the coast and islands of South
-Carolina.
-
-    GIANT CACTUS (_Cereus giganteus_) is a leafless tree of Arizona and
-    attains a height of forty or sixty feet, diameter of one or two.
-    About twenty genera of cactus are known in the world and a large
-    number of species. Two genera, the cereuses and opuntias, have
-    representatives of tree size in this country. The two genera differ
-    in form. Cereus in the Latin language means a candle, and the
-    cactuses of that genus stand up in straight stems like candles, or
-    have branches like old-fashioned candlesticks. The opuntias have
-    flat, jointed stems, like thick leaves. Giant cactus bears flowers
-    four inches long and two wide; fruit two inches long and one wide,
-    and edible. Indians derive a considerable part of their food from
-    this cactus. They use the wood for rafters, fences, fuel, lances,
-    and bows. The trunks consist of bundles of fiber, very hard and
-    strong. In the dry region where this cactus grows, the woody parts
-    of fallen stems last long periods, some say for centuries, but there
-    are no records. Schott cactus (_Cereus schottii_) and Thurber cactus
-    (_Cereus thurberi_) are found in southern Arizona and southward in
-    Mexico.
-
-    CHOLLA (_Opuntia fulgida_) ranges from Nevada southward into Mexico.
-    It is popularly called "divil's tongue cactus," but there are other
-    species with the same name. Trunks are occasionally ten or twelve
-    feet high, and the wood is made into canes and small articles of
-    furniture, but as lumber it is not important. The fruit is not
-    eaten. A closely-related species is known as tassajo (_Opuntia
-    sponsior_). It is found on the dry mesas of southern Arizona where
-    trunks may be ten feet high and a few inches in diameter. It has the
-    same uses as cholla. A third species is _Opuntia versicolor_ of
-    southern Arizona. It is similar to the other opuntias. Attempts have
-    been made to grow spineless varieties of this group of cactuses. It
-    is believed that cattle, sheep, and goats would thrive on the pulpy
-    growth, if the thorns could be gotten rid of. The semi-desert
-    regions of the Southwest produce enormous quantities of cactus of
-    many kinds, and if those worthless species could be made way with
-    and thornless varieties substituted, it is probable that much land
-    now worthless would become valuable.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration: YELLOW CEDAR]
-
-
-
-
-MINOR SPECIES
-
-
-A considerable number of trees grow in this country which, taken singly,
-are of small importance, but in the aggregate they fill a place which
-would be difficult to fill without them. Most of them are local, and are
-seldom heard of outside of the regions where they grow. Some are small,
-and for that reason are not demanded by the ordinary user of lumber; but
-small size is not necessarily a bar to the use of a wood. Many places
-may be filled by pieces too small for the sawmill. Sometimes a
-diminutive trunk contains material of extraordinary hardness, or it may
-be polished to a rare smoothness, or the colors may be exquisite.
-Numerous commodities can be successfully manufactured from blocks or
-billets which are only a few inches in diameter and a foot or two in
-length. This is particularly true of some of the rare hardwoods of
-Florida and southern Texas where tropical species have extended their
-ranges northward over the borders of the United States. Some of the
-small trees in that group are known by name in only the immediate
-locality where they grow, and their qualities are scarcely appreciated
-even there. In some instances railroad ties are hewed from wood which is
-fit for the finest furniture.
-
-It is no uncommon thing for Mexicans along the Rio Grande to warm their
-huts and cook their meals with fuel chopped from trunks of Texas ebony,
-algarita, cat's claw, bluewood, huisache, retama, and junco. Those who
-have traveled among the Indian rancherias of New Mexico and Utah have
-grown familiar with the peculiar odor filling the air in the vicinity of
-camp fires. It is the smoke of the rare junipers which the Indians burn
-for fuel; and yet it is wood of such soft tones and exquisite blending
-of colors that the shades of a Persian rug suffer by comparison. Among
-the ten thousand islands which fringe the coasts of south Florida, and
-also among the hummocks of the mainland, are rare trees whose wood is
-unsurpassed in hardness, fineness of texture, and beauty. These are not
-being used at all, or only as fuel to feed some fisherman's or camper's
-fire, or to make a smoke to drive away mosquitoes. The time will come
-when small and scarce woods will be sought, if they are valuable for any
-special purpose. In preceding pages of this book many minor species have
-been listed and briefly described in connection with those more
-important, and with which they are closely related. There are more than
-a hundred others which were necessarily omitted from former pages. A few
-of these deserve at least a brief mention, and are listed in the
-following paragraphs.
-
-KOEBERLINIA (_Koeberlinia spinosa_) is commonly considered a
-curiosity; a tree without a relative in the world, and without leaves,
-flowers, or fruit. The popular notion is wrong, of course, for no tree
-is without relatives, and none without leaves, flowers, and fruit, or
-something that takes their place. The flowers, leaves, and fruit of this
-tree are small and escape notice of the casual observer, but they exist.
-Its nearest relative in this country is the paradise tree of Florida and
-the ailanthus introduced from China. It has a small, thorny, crooked
-trunk; the wood is dark, turning nearly black with exposure; it is rich
-with oil; and it is very hard. The species grows in certain places along
-the Rio Grande. The wood is made into canes, rulers, knife handles,
-turned articles, and a little furniture of the smaller kinds. The trunks
-are too small for ordinary sizes of lumber.
-
-GUM ELASTIC (_Bumelia lanuginosa_) ranges from Georgia to Texas, and in
-Florida is called black haw. Children in Texas mix its berries with
-chewing gum, to increase the quantity, and the name which they apply to
-it is "gum stretch it." An exuded resin is also used for chewing gum.
-Trees are sometimes sixty feet high and two in diameter, and a
-considerable number of logs go to hardwood mills, where they lose their
-name, and possibly appear as ash lumber, or occasionally as maple. The
-wood is white, tinged with yellow, and is manufactured into agricultural
-implements. A scarce and smaller species, known as buckthorn bumelia and
-ironwood (_Bumelia lycioides_) covers nearly the same range. From a tree
-of the same family in southern Asia the gutta percha of commerce is
-obtained. Other woods of the same family in this country are mastic
-(_Sideroxylon mastichodendron_) of south Florida, a tree sometimes sixty
-feet high and three feet in diameter, useful for boat building;
-satinleaf (_Chrysophyllum monopyrenum_), also of Florida, a tree
-twenty-five feet high and one in diameter, the wood very heavy, hard,
-and strong; tough bumelia (_Bumelia tenax_), ranging from South Carolina
-to Florida, a tree twenty feet high and six inches in diameter, called
-black haw in some parts of its range; saffron plum or ant's wood
-(_Bumelia angustifolia_), growing in Florida and Texas, the trunk twenty
-feet high and six inches in diameter; wood orange colored, and the fruit
-sweet; bustic (_Dipholis salicifolia_), in south Florida, a tree forty
-feet high and eighteen inches in diameter, with wood exceedingly hard,
-strong, and heavy, and dark brown or red in color; wild sapodilla or
-dilly (_Mimusops sieberi_), a tree of south Florida with rich, very dark
-brown wood, height of tree twenty feet, diameter one foot.
-
-DWARF SUMACH (_Rhus copallina_) is known by many names. It is
-distinguished from staghorn sumach by its smooth branches, those of
-staghorn being hairy. Sumach's chief importance is due to its value as
-tanning material. Leaves and small branches are used. The family has
-some well-known members in other parts of the world, among them the
-mangoes. The name dwarf sumach is not well selected, for the species is
-nearly as large as any other sumach. Trees are sometimes thirty feet
-high and ten inches in diameter. The tree's range extends from New
-England to Florida and Texas. It reaches its largest size west of the
-Mississippi river. In the East and North it is usually a shrub. Trees of
-largest size are not believed to exceed fifty years in age. The wood is
-richly striped with yellow and black. Balls turned of it, seven inches
-in diameter, are used for newel-post ornaments, and smaller balls are
-made for use in darning stockings. Cups are turned on the lathe, and the
-bright stripes in the wood give the wares a striking appearance. It was
-formerly much employed for spiles in tapping maple trees for sugar
-making. Staghorn sumach (_Rhus hirta_) is of a different species but of
-the same genus. Its range extends from New Brunswick nearly to the
-Mississippi river. Its name refers to the down on the young branches
-resembling the velvet on the horns of a deer at certain seasons. The
-tree is known as Virginia sumach and hairy sumach. Its compound leaves
-are sometimes two feet long--two or three times the size of dwarf
-sumach's. Trunks have been reported forty feet high and more than a foot
-through. The uses of this wood are the same as of dwarf sumach,
-including tanning. It is more abundant east than west of the
-Alleghanies. Poisonwood (_Rhus metopium_) belongs to the same family. It
-is known in Florida as doctor gum, hog plum, coral sumach, bumwood, and
-mountain manchineel. The juice is exceedingly poisonous, and gum
-produced by wounding the bark is reported to have medicinal value. Trees
-are sometimes forty feet high and two feet in diameter. The American
-smoke tree (_Cotinus cotinoides_) is another member of the sumach
-family. It is found in the southern states from eastern Tennessee to
-Texas. It is nowhere common, and its only reported use is as fence
-posts. Trees may be a foot in diameter and thirty feet high. The wood is
-a bright clear orange color, and a yellow dye has been manufactured from
-it. Poison sumach (_Rhus vernix_) is not the same as poisonwood, though
-sometimes the two are confounded. It is usually a shrub, and rarely
-twenty feet high. It is overloaded with names, as might be expected of a
-plant considered as dangerous as this. Among its names are poison elder,
-poison dogwood, swamp sumach, poison oak, poisonwood, poisontree, and
-thunderwood. It grows from New England to Georgia, and west to Minnesota
-and Louisiana. It is apt to occur in wet swamps, and Sargent pronounces
-it "one of the most dangerous plants of the North American flora." A
-black, lustrous varnish can be made of the acrid poisonous juice, and
-this may sometime give the species a commercial value. When the skin is
-poisoned by contact with this tree, an effective remedy may be found in
-a saturated alcoholic solution of acetate of lead, if applied as a wash
-within an hour or two after the poisoning occurs. A wash with pure
-alcohol is also effective if applied within an hour. Following either
-treatment the skin should be thoroughly washed with soap and water.
-Western sumach (_Rhus integrifolia_), a closely related California
-species, is a small evergreen, seldom more than twenty feet high and a
-foot in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and red, is used as fuel, and
-occasionally in small turnery. The fruit is a berry half an inch long.
-
-CASCARA BUCKTHORN (_Rhamnus purshiana_) is of the buckthorn family, and
-is known by many names on the Pacific coast where the species is best
-developed. It grows as far east as Colorado and Texas. Cascara sagrada,
-its Mexican name, is often used for this tree. It is known also as
-bearberry, bearwood, yellow-wood, pigeonberry, coffeeberry, bayberry,
-and California coffee. The tree's usual size is from ten to thirty feet
-high and twelve to twenty inches in diameter. It is often shrubby, and
-is more valuable for its bark than its wood. Large quantities are peeled
-for medicinal uses, and many trees are thus destroyed. A little of the
-wood is burned as fuel, and some is made into handles. Yellow buckthorn
-(_Rhamnus caroliniana_), with a range from New York to Texas, and
-evergreen buckthorn (_Rhamnus crocea_), a California species, are
-closely related to cascara buckthorn, but are of comparatively little
-importance. Blue myrtle (_Ceanothus thyrsiflorus_) is a California
-species, sometimes called wild lilac or blue blossoms. It ranges in
-height from thirty-five feet, among the redwoods on the Santa Cruz
-mountains, to only one foot high on some of the wind-swept coasts. The
-wood is pale yellowish-brown, and is somewhat used for novelties. Tree
-myrtle (_Ceanothus arboreus_), often known as lilac, is also a
-California tree, closely related to blue myrtle, but is of smaller size
-and of very restricted range. Its prospective value lies more in its
-bloom than in its wood. Naked-wood (_Colubrina reclinata_), a Florida
-species, is of a kindred genus. Trees are sometimes fifty feet high and
-three in diameter. The wood is hard, very strong, and is dark brown
-tinged with yellow.
-
-LIGNUM-VITAE (_Guajacum sanctum_) grows in Florida, and a species which
-is probably the same is found in south Texas along the Rio Grande. In
-Texas the tree is known as guayacon, which name has come down from the
-times when the Carib Indians ruled the West Indies. That was their name
-for the tree. The annual rings are usually too vague and too involved to
-be counted, but the tree is known to be of slow growth. The wood is
-pitted and it contains cavities and creases; but the clear wood is very
-hard and of fine and various colors. It is dark green, brown, black,
-yellow and of mixed colors, and clouded effects, all in the same block.
-Small pieces of furniture, like bureau cabinets, present attractive
-combinations of colors. The wood is of such exceeding hardness that it
-turns, breaks, or batters the carpenter's tools. Candlesticks, egg cups,
-goblets, vases, checker pieces, dominos, boxes, trays, canes, paper
-knives, and souvenirs are manufactured in a small way. Trees attain a
-height of thirty feet and a diameter of two or more. The compound leaves
-adhere to the branches until those of the following season appear. The
-fruit is an orange-colored pod three-fourths of an inch long.
-
-PRICKLY ASH (_Xanthoxylum clava-herculis_). Some know this species as
-toothache tree, tear-blanket, sting-tongue, and Hercules' club. The wood
-shows little difference in color between heartwood and sap, and bears
-some resemblance to buckeye. It takes good polish and some of it looks
-like birdseye maple, but the figure does not seem to be due to
-adventitious buds. It has been made into picture frames and looks well.
-It is a rapid grower, and since its color fits it for the stencil, it
-might be worthy of consideration for box material. Trees reach a height
-of twenty-five or thirty feet, and a diameter of a foot or more. Its
-range extends from Virginia to Texas. Satinwood (_Xanthoxylum
-cribrosum_) is of the same genus, but it does not grow north of Florida
-where it is sometimes called yellow-wood. Mature trees are a foot or
-more in diameter and twenty-five or thirty-five feet high; wood heavy,
-exceedingly hard and brittle, but not strong; color light orange. It has
-some use as furniture material, and for certain classes of handles which
-need not be strong. Wild lime (_Xanthoxylum fagara_) is a similar tree,
-growing in both Florida and Texas, but it is of small size. Hoptree
-(_Ptelea trifoliata_) is another member of the family. Its fruit is
-sometimes substituted for hops for brewing beer. It is known also as
-wafer ash, wahoo, and quinine tree; the last name being due to its
-bitter bark. It grows from Canada to Florida, and west to New Mexico,
-and seldom exceeds twenty feet in height. Baretta (_Helietta
-parvifolia_) which occurs as a small tree in southern Texas, is a near
-relative. Torchwood (_Amyris maritima_), so named because of its fine
-properties as fuel, grows in southern Florida, sometimes reaching a
-height of forty feet and a diameter of one. Canotia (_Canotia
-holacantha_) is a small, scarce tree of Arizona and California and has
-fine-grained, rich brown wood.
-
-NANNYBERRY (_Viburnum prunifolium_), known as black haw, sloe,
-sheepberry, and stagbush, grows from Connecticut to Oklahoma and is
-usually a shrub which springs up along highways and hedges, but it
-sometimes reaches a height of twenty feet and a diameter of eight
-inches. It is valuable in some localities in the manufacture of canes
-and umbrella sticks. Rusty nannyberry (_Viburnum rufotomentosum_) is a
-similar species, but attains a larger size, and grows from Virginia to
-Texas. The wood may be known by its disagreeable odor. Sheepberry
-(_Vibernum lentago_) has a more northern range, from Quebec to
-Saskatchewan, and south along the mountains to Georgia.
-
-BLUE ELDER (_Sambucus glauca_) is one of three tree elders in the United
-States, the others being Mexican elder (_Sambucus mexicana_) and
-red-berried elder (_Sambucus callicarpa_). They are ornamental rather
-than useful. The three species occur on the Pacific coast. The largest
-recorded size of an elder was forty feet high and twenty-eight inches in
-diameter. Its age was about fifty years.
-
-FRINGE TREE (_Chionanthus virginica_) is known also as white fringe,
-American fringe, white ash, old man's beard, flowering ash, and
-sunflower tree. Its natural range extends from Pennsylvania to Florida
-and west to Texas, but it has been widely planted in this country and
-Europe. It is seldom more than twenty feet high and eight inches in
-diameter. The bark possesses medicinal value. Devilwood (_Osmanthus
-americanus_) belongs to the same family, but to a different genus. It
-grows from North Carolina to Florida and west to Louisiana. The largest
-trunks are a foot in diameter and forty feet high. The wood is strong,
-heavy, hard, dark brown, and difficult to work.
-
-BLACK IRONWOOD (_Rhamnidium ferreum_) of Florida is among the heaviest,
-probably is the heaviest, wood of the United States. It weighs 81.14
-pounds per cubic foot, and when a hundred pounds of the wood is burned,
-it leaves eight pounds of ashes--the highest in ash of all woods of the
-United States. Its fuel value is very high. Trees are small, seldom more
-than thirty feet high and six inches in diameter. Bluewood (_Condalia
-obovata_) is a related Texas species, called also logwood and purple
-haw. It produces heavy, hard, close-grained wood, light red in color.
-Trees six inches in diameter and twenty-five feet high are fully up to
-the average. Along the lower Rio Grande it forms dense, tangled
-thickets. Red ironwood (_Reynosia latifolia_) of southern Florida
-belongs to a related species, and is sometimes called darling plum,
-because its purple fruit is edible. The tree is small, the wood heavy,
-hard, strong, and of rich brown color. White ironwood (_Hypelate
-trifoliata_) belongs to a different family. It occurs in Florida where
-trees are sometimes thirty-five feet high and eighteen inches in
-diameter. The heavy, hard, rich brown wood is durable in contact with
-the ground, and is used for fence posts, handles, and boats. Inkwood
-(_Exothea paniculata_) is of the same family as white ironwood but of a
-different genus. It is also a Florida species and is known in some
-localities as ironwood. The tree is occasionally a foot in diameter and
-forty feet high, wood very hard, heavy, and strong, and bright red in
-color. It is used by boat builders, for wharfs, and as handle wood.
-
-CINNAMON BARK (_Canella winterana_), also called whitewood and wild
-cinnamon, is a south Florida species seldom more than twenty-five feet
-high and ten inches in diameter. The wood is exceedingly heavy, hard,
-and strong, and of dark reddish-brown color. The wild cinnamon bark of
-commerce comes from this tree.
-
-JOEWOOD (_Jaquinia armillaris_) grows in the Florida everglades. The
-dark and beautiful medullary rays of this wood may sometime make it
-valuable for turnery and small novelties. Trunks seldom exceed six or
-seven inches in diameter. Marlberry (_Icacorea paniculata_) belongs in
-the same family with joewood. Trunks are small, but the hard, rich brown
-wood is beautifully marked with dark medullary rays.
-
-CRABWOOD (_Gymnanthes lucida_) is known chiefly by the fine canes made
-of it. The tree occurs in southern Florida where it is sometimes known
-as poisonwood. It is dark brown, streaked with yellow. Trunks more than
-eight inches in diameter are unusual. Manchineel (_Hippomane
-mancinella_) is of the same family, and occurs in Florida. The wood is
-light and soft.
-
-SINGLELEAF PINON (_Pinus monophylla_). This is the only pine in this
-country with single needles. They are one and one-half inches long, and
-are curved like the old fashioned sewing awl used by shoemakers. The
-needles fall during the fourth and fifth years. The cones are one and
-one-half or two and one-half inches long. The trees are small, averaging
-fifteen or twenty feet high and eight or twelve inches in diameter. Its
-range covers portions of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California, but it
-occupies dry, sterile regions as nearly under desert conditions as can
-be found in this country. The tree maintains a foothold on the eastern
-slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains at an altitude of 9,000 feet and it
-descends into the Colorado desert in California at an elevation of 2,000
-feet. It endures winter cold below zero on the mountains, and summer
-temperature of 122 in the Mojave desert. It is fitted to live in a dry,
-sterile region. The leaves are small and the branches bear few of them.
-The thin foliage uses little water, which is a fortunate circumstance,
-for there is little to use. Slow growth is the result. The trunk often
-adds less than an inch to its diameter in twenty years. The trees form
-very open forest, resembling old orchards, and the greenness usually
-associated with pine landscapes is generally wanting. The singleleaf
-pine has filled an important place in the development of the region, and
-furnishes an example of the great service which a small, crooked tree
-can give when it is the only one to be had. Mines worth many millions of
-dollars have been worked with little of any other wood. This has been
-the fuel for the kitchen, the engine house, the blacksmith shop. It has
-supplied the props, posts, stulls, and lagging for the underground
-operations. Fences for stock corrals, sheds, stables, cabins, and
-bridges have been constructed of the small, crooked trunks and the
-distorted limbs, when no other wood could be had in fifty or a hundred
-miles. Extensive tracts have been cut clean in the vicinity of mines.
-The product of the singleleaf pine forest cannot be measured in board or
-log feet, because of the smallness of the trunks and branches, but by
-the cord. The wood is medium heavy, rather high in fuel value, very
-weak, brittle, and soft. The resin passages are few and small, color
-yellow or light brown, the sapwood nearly white. In contact with the
-soil the wood is not durable, but its principal use has been in a very
-dry climate, and it lasts well there. It is the most important of the
-nut pines.
-
-It produces enormous crops which are larger some years than others. John
-Muir believed that the singleleaf pinon's annual nut yield surpassed
-California's yield of wheat. Only a small part of the nut crop is ever
-put to use by man. Scattered over mountains, mesas, and deserts, 100,000
-square miles in extent, most of the nuts fall and decay, though the
-animals of the rocks and sands, and the birds of the air live on them
-while they last. The Indians of the region long looked upon the nut
-crop, as the Egyptians upon the overflow of the Nile--a guarantee
-against famine. The Indians are not so dependent on the nuts now as
-formerly because scattered settlements throughout the region supply
-other sources of food. Many nuts are still gathered, and are sold in
-stores from San Francisco to Denver. They look like peanuts, but are
-richer in oil, and if eaten raw they speedily cloy the appetite. The
-Indians usually roast them, and frequently crush them into meal. When
-the harvest is ripe the Indians gather from all sides and camp during a
-month or more, thrash the cones from the trees with poles, extract the
-nuts, and keep up the operation until all present needs are supplied,
-and every available basket is filled for future use. The packhorses and
-burros of the mining country in Nevada where this pine grows, acquire a
-liking for the nuts. They are as nourishing as oats, and the pack
-animals like them better. Indians do considerable business collecting
-the nuts and selling them by the gunny sack to pack trains, for horse
-feed. A single Indian will sometimes gather thirty or forty bushels, for
-which he can get a dollar a bushel when he has carried them to market.
-
-The singleleaf pine's future will be about as its past has been, as far
-as can now be foreseen. Little planting will ever be done, nor is it
-necessary. Nature plants all that the sterile soil will support. It is
-of too slow growth to tempt the forester. A century is required to
-produce a fence post, and 200 years for a crosstie. Forest fires do
-little injury, for the ground is generally so bare that fire dies out of
-its own accord in a short distance. The tree can never be planted much
-for ornament. Even if it would grow outside of its dry habitat, it
-possesses no more beauty than a half-dead apple tree in a neglected
-orchard. The trunks resemble mesquite in Texas; but the Texas tree is
-redeemed by the beauty of its foliage in summer, while the foliage of
-the singleleaf pine is so pale and thin that it attracts no attention.
-
-CAROLINA HEMLOCK (_Tsuga caroliniana_) is of far less importance than
-its northern neighbor which goes south along the Appalachian mountains
-to meet it. The two species mingle on the mountain tops from
-southwestern Virginia to northern Georgia. The Carolina hemlock is
-usually confined to altitudes 2,500 or 3,000 feet above sea level, and
-prefers rocky banks of streams. It does not usually occur in dense
-stands of even moderate size, as the northern hemlock does. A few trees
-in clumps or scattered solitary represent its habit of growth. Typical
-development of the species occurs on the headwaters of the Savannah
-river in South Carolina. For a long time this hemlock and its northern
-relative were supposed to be the same. Botanists did not formerly
-separate them, and the mountaineers do not generally do so now. There
-are several differences, however, which may be observed upon close
-examination, and by comparing the two species. The Carolina hemlock's
-leaves have more rows of stomata and therefore are a little whiter on
-the under side. The leaves are also longer, and the cones are larger.
-The tree does not attain the dimensions of the northern species, its
-average size being forty or fifty feet in height, and two or less in
-diameter. It is not abundant, and has never been and never can be much
-used for commercial purposes. It is an attractive park tree and has been
-widely planted.
-
-LIMBER PINE (_Pinus flexilis_) owes its name to its long, drooping
-branches. It is often called white pine, Rocky Mountain white pine,
-western white pine, and limber twig pine. It is not the tree usually
-called western white pine (_Pinus monticola_), but is a high mountain
-species, ranging from the Rocky Mountains of Montana to western Texas;
-it grows also on the mountains of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California.
-The upper limit of its range in the Sierra Nevadas is 12,000 feet. It
-descends to an altitude of only 4,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, and
-forms open, scattered stands of round-topped trees of little commercial
-value, and is usually associated with western yellow pine or Rocky
-Mountain cedar. At altitudes of 8,500 or 10,000 feet it is more stunted,
-and associates with Lyall larch and other high mountain species.
-Intermediate between its lower and its higher belts it produces a little
-merchantable lumber. The wood is light, soft, medium brittle, of slow
-growth and with narrow bands of summerwood. The resin passages are large
-and numerous. The wood, when a choice trunk is found, resembles that of
-eastern white pine; but generally the trunks are inferior in size and
-form. The heartwood is light, clear yellow, the sapwood nearly white.
-Trees range in height from thirty to fifty feet, and one to three in
-diameter. A sawlog ten feet long is about as much as can be had from a
-trunk, and of course, when compared with commercial trees, it holds a
-low place; but in some remote mountain regions it is the principal wood
-available, and to that extent it is of importance. When green, the wood
-is very heavy, and sometimes will sink. It is used for posts and in the
-mines. The farmer seasons posts on the stump. He peels the trees six
-months before cutting them. They immediately exude resin over the whole
-peeled surface, and the tree quickly dies. At the end of six months the
-trunk is seasoned, and is cut for posts. The ends are smeared with
-resin. Such posts have lasted twenty years with little decay. Railroads
-make ties of fire-killed limber pine. Charcoal burners use it also. The
-growing trees resist the fumes of copper smelters better than any other
-species associated with it.
-
-    PARRY PINON (_Pinus quadrifolia_). The names by which this tree is
-    known in the region where it grows indicate one of its leading
-    features, a bearer of nuts. It is called nut pine, Parry's nut pine,
-    pinon, and Mexican pinon. The nuts exceed half an inch in length,
-    are reddish-brown, and the wings narrow and small. They cannot carry
-    the nuts far, and the species is not spreading. Reproduction takes
-    place beneath the parent tree, and frequently the old trunk dies
-    without having succeeded in planting a single seed to perpetuate the
-    species. The nuts are nutritious, and are eagerly sought by birds,
-    rodents, and larger animals, including human beings. The cones are
-    seldom two inches long, and the leaves are little more than an inch.
-    They are usually in clusters of four, and fall the third year. The
-    tree's characteristics betray its environment. It is fitted for dry,
-    sterile situations. Its abnormally large seeds provide food for the
-    seedling until it can get its rootlets deep enough in the poor soil
-    to get a start. The Parry pinon's range is confined to the extreme
-    southern part of California and to Lower California where it
-    occupies arid mesas and low mountain slopes. It is common on Santa
-    Rosa mountains, California, at an elevation of 5,000 feet. It is too
-    small to be worth much for lumber, the usual height being less than
-    thirty feet, the trunk diameter from ten to sixteen inches. The wood
-    is medium heavy, weak, low in elasticity, but rather high in fuel
-    value. The annual rings are very narrow, and the thin bands of
-    summerwood are not conspicuous. It is one of the slowest-growing of
-    the pines, and probably it is surpassed in that respect by lodgepole
-    pine alone. Its only uses are fuel, a few fence posts, and small
-    ranch timbers.
-
-    KNOBCONE PINE (_Pinus attenuata_). This pine is known as
-    prickly-cone pine, sun-loving pine, sunny-slope pine, narrow-cone
-    pine, and knobcone pine. Its leaves are in clusters of three, and
-    are four and five inches long. The cones are from three to six
-    inches long. They often adhere to the branches thirty or forty
-    years, and may become entirely overgrown and hidden by bark and
-    wood--hence the name knobcone. The wood is light, soft, weak,
-    brittle; the growth is slow and the annual rings are narrow. The
-    resin passages are large and numerous. The average height of the
-    mature knobcone pine is from twenty-five to forty feet, and the
-    trunk diameter eight to twelve inches. It grows on dry mountain
-    regions of California and Oregon, and is not a valuable timber tree.
-    A little is occasionally sawed in small dimensions, but the
-    principal use is for mine props. It is short lived, even when it
-    does not fall a victim to accidents. In accordance with the
-    provisions of nature, it prepares for early death by bearing seeds
-    when only five or six feet high. The cones act as storing places for
-    seed, sometimes during the whole life of the tree. Thus a knobcone
-    pine may hold in its tightly closed cones the seeds produced during
-    the tree's whole life. When death overtakes it, the cones open and
-    scatter the seeds. The accumulated crops may total three or four
-    pounds of seeds. Fire usually kills the trees, but the heat is
-    generally not sufficient to burn the cones. When they open soon
-    after the fire has passed, they find a bared mineral soil ready to
-    receive them. The knobcone pine lives in adversity and usually dies
-    by violence.
-
-    ARIZONA PINE (_Pinus arizonica_). This tree is confined to the
-    mountains of southern Arizona at from 6,000 to 8,000 feet above sea
-    level. It is the prevailing pine near the summit of the Santa
-    Catalina mountains. Much of the timber is of small size and yields
-    only inferior lumber; but when larger trunks are obtainable, the
-    lumber grades with western yellow pine, and goes to market with it.
-    Arizona pine is medium light, soft, not strong, rather brittle, of
-    slow growth, with the summerwood comparatively broad and very
-    resinous; color, light red or often yellow, the sapwood lighter
-    yellow or white. The leaves are in clusters of five and are tufted
-    at the ends of the branches. They are from five to seven inches
-    long, and are deciduous the third year.
-
-    DWARF JUNIPER (_Juniperus communis_) is an interesting tree because
-    its range practically runs round the world in the north temperate
-    and frigid zones, but in the United States the only reported use of
-    the wood is in southern Illinois where it grows on the limestone
-    hills and is occasionally cut for fence posts. In nearly all other
-    parts of its range in this country it is little more than a shrub.
-    Some trees with a spread of limbs twenty feet across are only three
-    or four feet high. The seeds mature slowly, not ripening until the
-    third year; and they often hang a year or two after ripening. The
-    wood is narrow-ringed, hard, very durable in contact with the soil,
-    of light brown color, with pale sapwood. In Europe the aromatic
-    fruit of this tree is used in large quantities to flavor gin, but
-    there is no report that it has been so employed in this country. In
-    the United States it occurs in Pennsylvania and northward, and
-    northward from Illinois, and throughout the Rocky Mountains north of
-    Texas. It occurs on the Pacific coast north of California. It grows
-    from Greenland to Alaska, and through Siberia, and northern Europe.
-
-    DROOPING JUNIPER (_Juniperus flaccida_) is confined in the United
-    States to the Chisos mountains in western Texas, but grows in
-    Mexico. The tree attains a height of thirty feet and a diameter of
-    one. Its name refers to its graceful branches. It has been planted
-    in this country less than in southern Europe and northern Africa.
-    The bark is light cinnamon-brown, and easily separates in loose,
-    papery scales. The lumberman will never go far to procure drooping
-    juniper logs. They are too small, scarce, and of form too poor. The
-    wood has the usual characteristics of the junipers which grow in
-    western mountains. It looks more like alligator juniper than any
-    other. In Texas it goes to the lathe to be manufactured into
-    candlesticks, pin boxes, picture molding, and other articles of
-    turnery.
-
-    UTAH JUNIPER (_Juniperus utahensis_) is known also as juniper,
-    desert juniper, and western red cedar. The last name is properly
-    applied to a different tree in Washington and Oregon. The Utah
-    juniper occupies the great basin between the Rocky Mountains and the
-    Sierra Nevadas, particularly in Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona,
-    and Colorado. It thrives best about 8,000 feet above the sea, but
-    descends to 5,000 feet or less. It is a desert tree, usually small,
-    often a mere shrub, but occasionally attaining a height of twenty
-    feet or more and a diameter of one or two. The trunk is irregular in
-    shape, and is generally deeply fluted. The wood is light brown in
-    color, though it varies greatly in different specimens, and even in
-    the same tree. The sapwood is thick and nearly white. The tree has
-    not been much used except for fence posts and fuel. The Indians of
-    the region eat the berries raw or bake them in cakes.
-
-
-
-
-INDEX TO COMMON NAMES
-
-
-  Acacia, 535
-  African mahogany, 463
-  Ailanthus, 676
-  Alaska cypress, 121
-  Alaska pine, 193
-  Alder, 589
-  Algaroba, 559
-  Alleghany sloe, 622
-  Alligator juniper, 111
-  Alligator wood, 325
-  Almondleaf willow, 471
-  Aloe-leaf yucca, 693
-  Alpine fir, 166
-  Alpine larch, 88
-  Alpine spruce, 195
-  Alpine western spruce, 196
-  Alpine whitebark pine, 37
-  Alternate-leaved dogwood, 526
-  Alvord oak, 220
-  Amabilis fir, 165
-  American apple, 553
-  American arborvitae, 97
-  American ash, 409
-  American crab, 453
-  American fringe, 700
-  American holly, 643
-  American larch, 80
-  American linden, 637
-  American planertree, 397
-  American smoke-tree, 697
-  Andromeda, 526
-  Angelica-tree, 676
-  Ant's wood, 696
-  Apple haw, 459
-  Arborvitae, 97
-  Arizona cork fir, 154
-  Arizona cypress, 142
-  Arizona madrona, 663
-  Arizona palm, 693
-  Arizona pine, 705
-  Arizona spruce, 135
-  Arizona sycamore, 610
-  Arizona white oak, 218
-  Arrow-wood, 507
-  Ash-leaved maple, 445
-  Aspen, 667, 675
-  Aspen-leaf, 675
-  August plum, 621
-
-  Bald cypress, 139
-  Balm of Gilead, 145, 667, 673
-  Balm of Gilead fir, 145
-  Balsam, 135, 136, 151, 166, 673
-  Balsam fir, 145, 151, 159
-  Balsam poplar, 673
-  Baltimore oak, 205
-  Banana, 640
-  Baretta, 699
-  Barren oak, 316
-  Barren scrub oak, 283
-  Bartram oak, 322
-  Basket elm, 393
-  Basket oak, 208, 229
-  Basket willow, 472
-  Basswood, 637
-  Bat-tree, 494
-  Bayberry, 698
-  Bay poplar, 337
-  Bay tree, 529
-  Beaded locust, 555
-  Bearberry, 646, 698
-  Bear oak, 315
-  Bearwood, 698
-  Beaver-tree, 495
-  Bebb willow, 471
-  Beech, 625
-  Beetree, 637
-  Bell-tree, 601
-  Bellwood, 602
-  Berlandier ash, 418
-  Big buckeye, 649
-  Big-bud, 363
-  Big-bud hickory, 363
-  Bigcone pine, 68
-  Bigcone spruce, 172
-  Big cottonwood, 667
-  Bigelow willow, 472
-  Big hickory nut, 363
-  Big laurel, 494
-  Bigleaf laurel, 507
-  Bigleaf maple, 439
-  Big pine, 31
-  Big shellbark, 369
-  Bigtree, 175
-  Big white birch, 583
-  Biltmore ash, 424
-  Birch, 565
-  Bird cherry, 619
-  Bishop's pine, 69
-  Bitter cherry, 616
-  Bitter hickory, 361
-  Bitternut, 367
-  Bitternut hickory, 361
-  Bitter pecan, 361, 375
-  Bitter walnut, 361
-  Bitter waternut, 374
-  Bitterwood, 676
-  Black ash, 415, 416, 423, 445
-  Blackbark pine, 75
-  Black birch, 565, 577, 580
-  Black calabash, 475
-  Black cherry, 613
-  Black cottonwood, 667, 669, 679
-  Black gum, 159, 331
-  Black haw, 460
-  Black hickory, 364, 367, 696, 699
-  Black ironwood, 700
-  Black jack, 283
-  Black jack oak, 291
-  Black larch, 80
-  Black limetree, 637
-  Black locust, 535, 541
-  Black mangrove, 688
-  Black maple, 447
-  Black mulberry, 513
-  Black oak, 259, 260, 271, 277
-  Black olivetree, 688
-  Black pine, 63, 67, 70, 75
-  Black poplar, 681
-  Black slash pine, 55
-  Black sloe, 621
-  Black spruce, 129
-  Black thorn, 459
-  Blacktree, 688
-  Black walnut, 343
-  Black willow, 469
-  Black wood, 688
-  Bleeding-heart tree, 500
-  Blister pine, 145, 151
-  Blue ash, 417, 422
-  Blue beech, 627
-  Blue birch, 565, 577, 585
-  Blue blossoms, 698
-  Blue dogwood, 526
-  Blue elder, 700
-  Blue jack oak, 285
-  Blue myrtle, 698
-  Blue oak, 205, 213, 226
-  Blue spruce, 136
-  Bluet, 508
-  Bluewood, 700
-  Bodark, 511
-  Bodock, 511
-  Bog spruce, 130
-  Bois d'arc, 511
-  Bois inconnu, 405
-  Bottom shellbark, 369
-  Bow-wood, 511
-  Box elder, 445, 601
-  Box oak, 223
-  Box white oak, 223
-  Boxwood, 523
-  Bracted fir, 157
-  Brash oak, 223
-  Brewer oak, 220
-  Bristlecone fir, 171
-  Bristlecone pine, 19, 38
-  Broadfruit yucca, 693
-  Broadleaf maple, 439
-  Broadleaf willow, 472
-  Broom hickory, 367
-  Brown ash, 423
-  Brown hickory, 367
-  Brown pine, 43
-  Buckeye, 649
-  Buckthorn bumelia, 696
-  Buckwheat-tree, 502
-  Bullace plum, 621
-  Bull bay, 494
-  Bull pine, 49, 75
-  Bumwood, 697
-  Burning bush, 499
-  Burnwood, 502
-  Bur oak, 211
-  Bustic, 696
-  Butternut, 349
-  Buttonball, 607
-  Buttonwood, 607
-
-  Cabbage palmetto, 691
-  Cabbage-tree, 691
-  Cactus, 693
-  Cajeput, 529
-  Calico-bush, 505
-  Calicowood, 601
-  California bay tree, 529
-  California black oak, 285
-  California blue oak, 229
-  California box elder, 447
-  California buckeye, 649, 651
-  California chestnut oak, 313
-  California coffee, 698
-  California fan palm, 693
-  California hemlock spruce, 193
-  California holly, 645
-  California juniper, 112
-  California laurel, 529, 655
-  California live oak, 307
-  California nutmeg, 201
-  California olive, 529
-  California post cedar, 109
-  California red bud, 549
-  California red fir, 164
-  California sassafras, 529
-  California scrub oak, 237
-  California swamp pine, 69
-  California sycamore, 609
-  California tanbark oak, 313
-  California walnut, 351
-  California white oak, 249
-  California white pine, 67
-  Canada plum, 621
-  Canadian Judas tree, 548
-  Canadian red pine, 61
-  Canoe birch, 583
-  Canoe cedar, 115
-  Canoewood, 487
-  Canotia, 699
-  Canyon birch, 580
-  Canyon live oak, 308
-  Carolina cherry, 620
-  Carolina hemlock, 703
-  Carolina pine, 49
-  Carolina poplar, 667
-  Cascara buckthorn, 698
-  Cascara sagrada, 698
-  Catalpa, 475
-  Catawba, 475
-  Catawba rhododendron, 507
-  Cat spruce, 130
-  Cedar, 91, 97, 109, 118
-  Cedar elm, 380, 392
-  Cedar pine, 57
-  Cereuses, 693
-  Chalky leucaena, 562
-  Chapman oak, 208
-  Chattahoochee pine, 202
-  Check pine, 70
-  Checkered-barked juniper, 111
-  Cherry birch, 565, 580
-  Chestnut, 631
-  Chestnut oak, 241, 313
-  Chickasaw plum, 622
-  Chihuahua pine, 76
-  Chinaberry, 665
-  China-tree, 664
-  Chinquapin, 634
-  Chinquapin oak, 247
-  Chittamwood, 602
-  Cholla, 691
-  Cigartree, 476
-  Cinnamon bark, 701
-  Cinnamon oak, 286
-  Clammy locust, 537
-  Cliff elm, 385
-  Cockspur, 459
-  Cocoa plum, 622
-  Coffeebean, 547
-  Coffee-berry, 698
-  Coffeenut, 547
-  Coffeetree, 547
-  Colorado blue spruce, 136
-  Common catalpa, 475, 477
-  Common thorn, 459
-  Cornel, 523
-  Coral bean, 554
-  Coral sumach, 697
-  Cork-barked Douglas spruce, 169
-  Cork elm, 380, 385, 399
-  Cork pine, 19
-  Corkwood, 423
-  Corky elm, 399
-  Cotton gum, 337
-  Cottonwood, 667, 673
-  Cotton-tree, 667
-  Coulter pine, 68
-  Cowlicks, 604
-  Cow oak, 229
-  Crab, 453
-  Crab apple, 453
-  Crabwood, 701
-  Crack willow, 472
-  Creeping pine, 37
-  Cuban pine, 45
-  Cucumber, 481
-  Cucumber tree, 487
-  Currant-tree, 451
-  Custard apple, 640
-  Cut-leaved maple, 445
-  Cypress, 70, 139
-
-  Dahoon holly, 645
-  Darling plum, 700
-  Darlington oak, 295
-  Date plum, 517
-  Deciduous holly, 646
-  Deer tongue, 507
-  Delmar pine, 64
-  Desert juniper, 705
-  Desert willow, 477
-  Devil's claw, 544
-  Devil's tongue cactus, 694
-  Devilwood, 700
-  Digger pine, 75
-  Dilly, 696
-  Doctor gum, 697
-  Dogwood, 523
-  Double fir, 151
-  Double spruce, 130
-  Douglas fir, 169
-  Douglas spruce, 169
-  Douglas-tree, 169
-  Down-cone, 166
-  Downy basswood, 639
-  Downy-cone subalpine fir, 166
-  Downy poplar, 669
-  Drooping juniper, 705
-  Drummond maple, 436
-  Duck oak, 320
-  Durand oak, 208
-  Dwarf ash, 412
-  Dwarf chestnut oak, 247
-  Dwarf cypress, 184
-  Dwarf juniper, 705
-  Dwarf maple, 442, 446
-  Dwarf marine pine, 69
-  Dwarf rose bay, 507
-  Dwarf sumach, 696
-  Dwarf walnut, 351
-  Dyer's oak, 271
-
-  Ebony, 517
-  Elder, 700
-  Elderleaf ash, 416
-  Emory oak, 238
-  Engelmann oak, 231
-  Engelmann spruce, 135
-  English cornel, 526
-  English dogwood, 526
-  English hawthorn, 460
-  European alder, 592
-  Evergreen buckthorn, 698
-  Evergreen cherry, 620
-  Evergreen magnolia, 481, 493
-  Eysenhardtia, 526
-
-  False acacia, 535
-  False box-dogwood, 523
-  False mahogany, 531
-  False shagbark, 346
-  Fanleaf palm, 693
-  Farkleberry, 508
-  Fat pine, 43
-  Feather-cone red fir, 157
-  Feather-leaf, 97
-  Fetid buckeye, 651
-  Fetid yew, 202
-  Fighting wood, 199
-  Finger-cone pine, 25
-  Fir balsam, 151
-  Fire cherry, 619
-  Firewood, 502
-  Fir pine, 145
-  Florida ash, 412
-  Florida basswood, 639
-  Florida boxwood, 501
-  Florida buttonwood, 688
-  Florida cat's claw, 538
-  Florida mahogany, 531
-  Florida maple, 435
-  Florida pine, 43
-  Florida torreya, 202
-  Florida yew, 201
-  Flowering ash, 700
-  Flowering cornel, 523
-  Flowering dogwood, 523
-  Flowering willow, 477
-  Forked-leaf black jack, 283
-  Forked-leaf oak, 217, 283
-  Forked-leaf white oak, 217
-  Four-winged halesia, 601
-  Foxtail pine, 19, 38, 39
-  Fragrant crab, 453
-  Fraser fir, 151
-  Fraser umbrella, 481, 495
-  Fremont cottonwood, 667, 670
-  Fremontia, 400
-  Frijolito, 554
-  Fringe ash, 412
-  Fringetree, 700
-
-  Gambel oak, 214
-  Garden wild plum, 622
-  Georgia oak, 267
-  Georgia pine, 43
-  Giant arborvitae, 115
-  Giant cactus, 693
-  Gigantic cedar, 115
-  Glaucous willow, 472
-  Glossyleaf willow, 496
-  Golden cup oak, 308
-  Golden fir, 164
-  Goldenleaf chinquapin, 633
-  Gooseberry, 508
-  Goose plum, 621, 622
-  Gopherwood, 553
-  Gowen cypress, 184
-  Grand fir, 163
-  Gray birch, 585
-  Gray elm, 380
-  Gray pine, 75
-  Great California fir, 163
-  Great laurel, 494, 505
-  Great western larch, 86
-  Green ash, 422
-  Greenbark acacia, 555
-  Green osier, 526
-  Gregg ash, 411
-  Guayacon, 698
-  Gum, 325
-  Gumbo limbo, 676
-  Gum elastic, 696
-  Gum stretch it, 696
-  Gum-tree, 325
-  Gyminda, 49
-
-  Hackberry, 403
-  Hackmatack, 80, 86
-  Hack-tree, 403
-  Hairy balm of Gilead, 674
-  Hardbark hickory, 363
-  Hardhack, 595
-  Hard maple, 427
-  Hard pine, 43, 61, 63
-  Hardshell, 363
-  Hardwoods, 4
-  Hardy catalpa, 475
-  Haw, 459
-  Hawthorn, 459
-  Healing balsam, 151
-  Heart-leaved thorn, 460
-  Heart pine, 43
-  Heartwood, 5
-  Heavy pine, 67
-  Heavy-wooded pine, 67
-  Hedge, 511
-  Hedge-tree, 511
-  Hemlock, 187
-  Hemlock spruce, 187, 193, 195
-  Hercules' club, 676, 699
-  Hickory, 357
-  Hickory elm, 385
-  Hickory oak, 308
-  Hickory pine, 38, 52
-  Hickory poplar, 487
-  High-ground willow oak, 286
-  Highland oak, 296
-  Hog haw, 459
-  Hog plum, 621, 697
-  Holly, 643
-  Hollyleaf cherry, 616
-  Honey locust, 535, 541, 559
-  Honey-shucks locust, 541
-  Honey pod, 559
-  Hooker's oak, 249
-  Hooker willow, 472
-  Hoop ash, 403, 415
-  Hooptree, 415
-  Hop hornbeam, 595
-  Hoptree, 699
-  Hornbeam, 595, 627
-  Horsebean, 549
-  Horse chestnut, 651
-  Horse plum, 621
-  Huajillo, 538
-  Huckleberry, 508
-  Huckleberry oak, 309
-
-  Incense cedar, 109
-  Indian bean, 476
-  Indian cherry, 451
-  Indian pear, 451
-  Indigo thorn, 556
-  Inkwood, 700
-  Iowa crab, 454
-  Iron oak, 223, 308
-  Ironwood, 501, 502, 559, 595, 627, 696
-  Ivy, 505
-
-  Jack oak, 319
-  Jack pine, 69
-  Jamaica dogwood, 526, 550
-  Jeffrey pine, 75
-  Jersey pine, 57
-  Joewood, 701
-  Joshua-tree, 693
-  Judas tree, 548
-  June berry, 451
-  Juniper, 70, 91, 99, 109, 118, 706
-  Juniper-bush, 91
-  Juniper cedar, 99
-  Juniper tree, 403
-
-  Kalmia, 505
-  Kenai birch, 565, 585
-  Kingnut, 369
-  Kingstree, 51
-  Knobcone pine, 704
-  Knowlton hornbeam, 598
-  Koeberlinia, 697
-
-  Lanceleaf alder, 592
-  Lanceleaf cottonwood, 667, 670
-  Lancewood, 657
-  Larch, 79, 165
-  Large buckeye, 649
-  Largeleaf umbrella, 481, 483
-  Large poplar, 675
-  Largetooth aspen, 667, 675
-  Laurel, 494, 505, 507, 529
-  Laurel bay, 494
-  Laurel cherry, 620
-  Laurel-leaved magnolia, 494
-  Laurel oak, 295, 319
-  Laurel tree, 531
-  Lea oak, 292
-  Leatherleaf ash, 418
-  Leatherwood, 400, 502
-  Leucaena, 562
-  Leverwood, 595
-  Lignum-vitae, 698
-  Lilac, 698
-  Limber pine, 19, 703
-  Limber-twig pine, 703
-  Linn, 637
-  Liquid-amber, 325
-  Little shagbark, 346
-  Little sugar pine, 25
-  Little walnut, 351
-  Live oak, 253, 313
-  Loblolly pine, 55
-  Locust, 535
-  Lodgepole pine, 73
-  Logwood, 700
-  Lombardy poplar, 682
-  Longcone pine, 68
-  Longleaf pine, 43
-  Longleaf service, 452
-  Longleaf willow, 496
-  Longleaved pine, 63
-  Longschat, 63
-  Longshucks pine, 55
-  Longstalk willow, 471
-  Longstraw pine, 55
-  Lovely fir, 165
-  Lovely red fir, 165
-  Lowland spruce pine, 51
-  Low maple, 435
-  Lyall willow, 496
-  Lynn, 637
-
-  Mackenzie willow, 472
-  Macnab cypress, 178
-  Madrona, 661
-  Magnificent fir, 164
-  Magnolia, 494
-  Mahogany, 463, 547
-  Mahogany birch, 565
-  Manchineel, 701
-  Mangrove, 685
-  Manzanita, 663
-  Maple, 439
-  Marlberry, 701
-  Mastic, 696
-  Maul oak, 308
-  May cherry, 451
-  May haw, 459
-  Meadow pine, 45, 55
-  Menzies' spruce, 133
-  Mesquite, 559, 562
-  Mexican cottonwood, 667, 669
-  Mexican elder, 700
-  Mexican madrona, 663
-  Mexican mulberry, 514
-  Mexican palmetto, 692
-  Mexican persimmon, 517
-  Mexican pinon, 19, 33, 704
-  Mexican walnut, 351
-  Mexican white pine, 19
-  Michaux basswood, 639
-  Mimosa, 562
-  Minor species, 695
-  Missouri willow, 473
-  Mocker nut, 356, 363
-  Mocker nut hickory, 363
-  Mock olive, 620
-  Mock orange, 511, 620
-  Mohave yucca, 693
-  Monterey cypress, 141
-  Monterey pine, 69
-  Moose elm, 391
-  Moose maple, 435
-  Morehus oak, 297
-  Mountain alder, 592
-  Mountain ash, 411, 454, 675
-  Mountain balsam, 151, 166
-  Mountain birch, 580
-  Mountain cedar, 111
-  Mountain elm, 399
-  Mountain hemlock, 195
-  Mountain holly, 645
-  Mountain ivy, 505
-  Mountain juniper, 99
-  Mountain laurel, 505, 529
-  Mountain mahogany, 199, 465
-  Mountain manchineel, 697
-  Mountain maple, 435, 441
-  Mountain pine, 25
-  Mountain spruce, 135
-  Mountain white oak, 213
-  Mulberry, 513
-  Myrtleberry, 508
-  Myrtle-tree, 529
-  Myrtle oak, 297
-
-  Naked-wood, 698
-  Narrowberry, 699
-  Narrowcone pine, 704
-  Narrowleaf cottonwood, 667, 669
-  Narrowleaf crab, 453
-  Narrowleaf willow, 496
-  Native plum, 621
-  Necklace poplar, 667
-  Netleaf oak, 219
-  Nettle-tree, 403
-  New England boxwood, 523
-  Newcastle thorn, 459
-  New Mexican locust, 537
-  New Mexican pinon, 28
-  Noble fir, 157
-  Nootka cypress, 121
-  North American red spruce, 127
-  North Carolina pine, 49
-  North Carolina shagbark hickory, 376
-  Northern cork elm, 385
-  Northern spruce pine, 19
-  Northern white cedar, 97
-  Norway pine, 61
-  Nutmeg hickory, 374
-  Nutpine, 28, 33, 68, 704
-  Nuttall willow, 472
-
-  Oak-barked cedar, 111
-  Obispo pine, 69
-  Ohio buckeye, 649, 651
-  Old-field birch, 585
-  Old-field pine, 49
-  Old man's beard, 700
-  Olivetree, 337
-  One-berry, 403
-  One-seed juniper, 99
-  Opossum wood, 601
-  Opuntias, 694
-  Oregon ash, 421
-  Oregon balsam, 166
-  Oregon crabapple, 454
-  Oregon fir, 163
-  Oregon maple, 439
-  Oregon oak, 235
-  Oregon pine, 169
-  Oregon white oak, 235
-  Oreodaphne, 529
-  Osage apple tree, 511
-  Osage orange, 511
-  Osier willow, 496
-  Overcup oak, 217, 223
-
-  Pacific post oak, 235
-  Pacific yew, 199
-  Pale-leaf hickory, 345
-  Palmer oak, 310
-  Palms, 691
-  Palmetto, 691
-  Palo blanco, 406
-  Palo verde, 556
-  Paper birch, 565, 583
-  Paper mulberry, 514
-  Paradise-tree, 676
-  Parry nut pine, 19, 704
-  Parry pinon, 703
-  Parry's spruce, 136
-  Patton's spruce, 196
-  Peach oak, 313
-  Pea-flower locust, 535
-  Peawood, 602
-  Pear haw, 459
-  Pear thorn, 459
-  Pecan, 357, 373
-  Pecan nut, 373
-  Pecan tree, 373
-  Persimmon, 517
-  Pessimin, 517
-  Pigeonberry, 452, 526
-  Pigeon cherry, 619
-  Pignut, 356, 361, 367
-  Pignut hickory, 367
-  Pig walnut, 361
-  Pin cherry, 619
-  Pine, 19
-  Pink locust, 555
-  Pin oak, 208, 247, 301
-  Pinon, 19, 28
-  Pinon pine, 28, 33
-  Pin thorn, 459
-  Pitch pine, 43, 45, 49, 63
-  Planertree, 397
-  Plane-tree, 607
-  Plum, 621, 622
-  Poison dogwood, 697
-  Poison elder, 697
-  Poison ivy, 505
-  Poison laurel, 505
-  Poison oak, 697
-  Poison sumach, 697
-  Poisontree, 697
-  Poisonwood, 697, 701
-  Pond apple, 640
-  Pond cypress, 141
-  Pond pine, 57
-  Poorfield pine, 49
-  Poor pine, 51
-  Poplar, 487, 673
-  Poplar-leaved birch, 585
-  Popple, 487, 675
-  Poppy ash, 424
-  Possum haw, 646
-  Possum oak, 320
-  Possumwood, 517
-  Port Orford cedar, 123
-  Post cedar, 103, 109
-  Post locust, 535
-  Post oak, 223
-  Poverty birch, 585
-  Powcohiscora, 355
-  Price oak, 315
-  Pricklecone pine, 69, 704
-  Prickly ash, 699
-  Prickly pine, 52
-  Prickly spruce, 136
-  Prince's pine, 70
-  Puget sound pine, 169
-  Pumpkin ash, 423
-  Pumpkin pine, 19
-  Pumpkin-tree, 166
-  Punk oak, 320
-  Purple buckeye, 649, 652
-  Purple dogwood, 526
-  Purple haw, 700
-  Pyramidal magnolia, 481, 496
-
-  Quaking asp, 675
-  Quinine-tree, 699
-
-  Rattlebox, 601
-  Red alder, 589
-  Red ash, 423
-  Redbark fir, 164
-  Redbark pine, 75
-  Red bay, 531
-  Red-berried elder, 700
-  Red birch, 577
-  Red-bract dogwood, 526
-  Redbud, 548
-  Red cedar, 91, 109
-  Red elm, 393, 399
-  Red fir, 157, 164, 169
-  Red gum, 325
-  Red haw, 457, 459, 460
-  Redheart hickory, 357
-  Red hickory, 363
-  Red ironwood, 700
-  Red larch, 80
-  Red locust, 535
-  Red maple, 433
-  Red mulberry, 513
-  Red oak, 259, 265, 277, 280, 289
-  Red pine, 61, 169
-  Red plum, 621
-  Red silver fir, 165
-  Red spruce, 127
-  Red thorn, 458
-  Red titi, 502
-  Red willow, 496
-  Redwood, 181
-  Retama, 549
-  Rhododendron, 507
-  River ash, 423
-  River birch, 565, 577
-  River cottonwood, 667
-  Rock chestnut oak, 241
-  Rock elm, 380, 385
-  Rock maple, 427
-  Rock oak, 241
-  Rocky Mountain juniper, 124
-  Rocky Mountain oak, 219, 226
-  Rocky Mountain white pine, 703
-  Rose bay, 507
-  Rosemary pine, 49, 55
-  Royal palm, 692
-  Rum cherry, 603
-  Rusty nannyberry, 700
-
-  Sadler oak, 220
-  Saffron plum, 696
-  Salad-tree, 548
-  Sandbar willow, 496
-  Sand jack, 286
-  Sand pine, 46
-  Sapwood pine, 75
-  Sargent palm, 692
-  Sarvice, 451
-  Sassafac, 655
-  Sassafas, 655
-  Sassafrac, 655
-  Sassafras, 655
-  Satinleaf, 696
-  Satin walnut, 325
-  Satinwood, 699
-  Savice, 451, 452
-  Savin, 91
-  Saxifrax, 655
-  Scaly bark hickory, 357
-  Scarlet haw, 457
-  Scarlet maple, 433
-  Scarlet oak, 277
-  Schott cactus, 694
-  Schott yucca, 693
-  Screwbean, 562
-  Screw-pod, 562
-  Scrub oak, 220, 247, 283
-  Scrub pine, 37, 57, 70
-  Seaside alder, 592
-  Second growth, 357
-  Serviceberry, 451
-  Service-tree, 451
-  Shadberry, 451
-  Shagbark hickory, 355, 357
-  Shasta red fir, 165
-  Shawneewood, 476
-  She balsam, 151
-  Sheepberry, 699, 700
-  Sheepbush, 554
-  Sheep laurel, 505
-  Shellbark, 356, 357
-  Shellbark hickory, 369
-  Shingle cedar, 115
-  Shingle oak, 301, 319
-  Shin oak, 208, 286
-  Shoepeg maple, 433
-  Short-flower mahogany, 466
-  Shortleaf pine, 49
-  Shortleaved pine, 57
-  Shortshat, 49
-  Shrub willow, 496
-  Sierra brownbark pine, 67
-  Silktop palmetto, 692
-  Silky willow, 472
-  Silverbell tree, 601, 604
-  Silver fir, 159, 163, 165
-  Silverleaf willow, 471
-  Silver-leaved maple, 429
-  Silver maple, 429
-  Silver pine, 145
-  Silver spruce, 136, 145
-  Silvertop palmetto, 692
-  Singleleaf pinon, 19, 701
-  Single spruce, 130
-  Sir Joseph Banks' pine, 70
-  Slash pine, 45, 49, 55
-  Sitka alder, 592
-  Sitka spruce, 133
-  Skunk spruce, 130
-  Slippery elm, 380, 391, 400
-  Sloe, 699
-  Small buckeye, 649, 652
-  Small fruit mountain ash, 454
-  Small-leaf elm, 399
-  Small-leaf horsebean, 549
-  Small laurel, 505
-  Small pignut, 346
-  Small pignut hickory, 346
-  Small white birch, 585
-  Smooth cypress, 142
-  Smoothleaf willow, 471
-  Snowdrop-tree, 601, 603
-  Soapberry, 465
-  Soap-tree, 465
-  Soft maple, 429
-  Soft pine, 19, 25
-  Softwoods, 4
-  Soledad pine, 64
-  Sonora ironwood, 568
-  Sophora, 555
-  Sorrel-tree, 507
-  Soulard crab, 454
-  Sour gum, 337, 339, 507
-  Sour gum bush, 507
-  Sour tupelo, 339
-  Sourwood, 507
-  Southern basswood, 639
-  Southern mountain pine, 52
-  Southern red juniper, 94
-  Southern red oak, 265
-  Southern white cedar, 103
-  Southern yellow pine, 43
-  Spanish bayonet, 693
-  Spanish dagger, 693
-  Spanish moss, 256
-  Spanish oak, 200, 277, 289
-  Spanish red oak, 289
-  Sparkleberry, 508
-  Spice-tree, 529
-  Spoon-hutch, 507
-  Spoonwood, 505
-  Springwood, 7
-  Spotted oak, 266, 271, 320
-  Spruce, 127, 169
-  Spruce pine, 45, 49, 51, 57, 187
-  Spruce-tree, 187
-  Stackpole pine, 151
-  Stagbush, 699
-  Staghorn sumach, 697
-  Star-leaved gum, 325
-  Stave oak, 205
-  Stiffness of wood, 11
-  Sting-tongue, 699
-  Stinking ash, 445
-  Stinking buckeye, 651
-  Stinking cedar, 201, 202
-  Stinking savin, 202
-  Strength of wood, 11
-  Striped maple, 447
-  Stone-seed Mexican pinon, 33
-  Stump tree, 547
-  Sugar ash, 445
-  Sugarberry, 403, 405, 406
-  Sugar maple, 427
-  Sugar pine, 19, 31
-  Sugar-tree, 427
-  Sumach, 696
-  Summer haw, 458
-  Summerwood, 7
-  Sunflower-tree, 700
-  Sun-loving pine, 704
-  Sunny-slope pine, 704
-  Swamp ash, 416, 422
-  Swamp bay, 531
-  Swamp cedar, 103
-  Swamp chestnut oak, 229
-  Swamp cottonwood, 667, 669
-  Swamp hickory, 361, 375
-  Swamp holly, 646
-  Swamp laurel, 495
-  Swamp magnolia, 495
-  Swamp maple, 429, 433
-  Swamp oak, 225, 249, 301
-  Swamp poplar, 669
-  Swamp sassafras, 495
-  Swamp Spanish oak, 301
-  Swamp tupelo, 337
-  Swamp white oak, 217, 229
-  Swampy chestnut oak, 241
-  Sweet bay, 531
-  Sweet birch, 565, 580
-  Sweet crab, 453
-  Sweet gum, 325
-  Sweet locust, 541
-  Sweet magnolia, 481, 495
-  Sweet scented crab, 453
-  Switch-bud hickory, 367
-  Sycamore, 397, 607
-
-  Table mountain pine, 52
-  Tacamahac, 673
-  Tamarack, 79, 86
-  Tanbark oak, 241, 271
-  Tassajo, 694
-  Tear-blanket, 699
-  Texan ebony, 538
-  Texan red oak, 265
-  Texas ash, 411
-  Texas buckeye, 649
-  Texas cottonwood, 667, 669
-  Texas flowering willow, 477
-  Texas redbud, 549
-  Texas umbrella-tree, 465
-  Thick shellbark, 369
-  Thomas elm, 385
-  Thorn apple, 459
-  Thorn bush, 459
-  Thorn locust, 541
-  Thorn plum, 459
-  Thorn-tree, 541
-  Thorny acacia, 541
-  Thorny locust, 541
-  Three-leaved maple, 445
-  Three-thorned acacia, 541
-  Thunderwood, 697
-  Thurber cactus, 694
-  Tideland spruce, 133
-  Tisswood, 602
-  Titi, 502, 526
-  Toothache-tree, 699
-  Torch pine, 55
-  Torchwood, 699
-  Tornillo, 562
-  Torrey pine, 64
-  Tough bumelia, 696
-  Tourney oak, 315
-  Trask mahogany, 466
-  Tree huckleberry, 508
-  Tree myrtle, 698
-  Tree palmetto, 691
-  Tree yucca, 693
-  Trident oak, 292
-  Tuck-tuck, 157
-  Tulip poplar, 487
-  Tulip-tree, 487
-  Tupelo, 337
-  Turkey oak, 283, 286
-
-  Umbrella tree, 481, 484, 526
-  Upland hickory, 357
-  Upland willow, 285
-  Utah juniper, 706
-
-  Valley mahogany, 466
-  Valley oak, 249
-  Valparaiso oak, 308
-  Vauquelinia, 466
-  Vine maple, 441
-  Virgilia, 547
-  Virginia pine, 55
-  Virginia thorn, 460
-
-  Wadsworth oak, 225
-  Wafer ash, 699
-  Wahoo, 385, 399, 492, 499, 699
-  Wahoo elm, 399
-  Walnut, 343
-  Walnut-tree, 343
-  Washington haw, 460
-  Washington palm, 693
-  Washington pine, 193
-  Washington thorn, 460
-  Water ash, 422, 424, 445
-  Water beech, 607
-  Water birch, 577, 580
-  Water bitternut, 375
-  Water elm, 380
-  Water hickory, 375
-  Water maple, 429, 433, 435
-  Water oak, 295, 319, 320
-  Water Spanish oak, 301
-  Water white oak, 217
-  Weeping dogwood, 526
-  Weeping oak, 249
-  Weeping spruce, 136, 195
-  Weeping willow, 472
-  Western birch, 565, 579
-  Western black willow, 496
-  Western catalpa, 476
-  Western cedar, 115, 118
-  Western choke cherry, 616
-  Western dogwood, 525
-  Western hemlock, 193
-  Western hemlock fir, 193
-  Western hemlock spruce, 193
-  Western juniper, 118
-  Western larch, 85
-  Western plum, 621
-  Western red cedar, 115, 118, 706
-  Western serviceberry, 452
-  Western shellbark, 369
-  Western spruce, 133
-  Western sumach, 698
-  Western walnut, 351
-  Western white fir, 163
-  Western white oak, 235
-  Western white pine, 19, 25, 703
-  Western yellow pine,  67
-  Western yew, 199
-  West Indian birch, 676
-  West Indian cherry, 620
-  Weymouth pine, 19
-  Whiskey cherry, 613
-  Whistlewood, 637
-  White alder, 591
-  White Alaska birch, 565, 579
-  White ash, 409, 422, 700
-  White balsam, 159, 166
-  White bark, 37
-  Whitebark maple, 436
-  Whitebark pine, 19, 37
-  White basswood, 639
-  White bay, 495
-  White birch, 565, 579, 585
-  White buttonwood, 688
-  White cedar, 97, 103, 109
-  White cottonwood, 670
-  White elm, 379, 385, 397
-  Whiteheart hickory, 363
-  White hickory, 357, 361, 367
-  White fir, 159, 163, 166
-  White ironwood, 700
-  White laurel, 495
-  Whiteleaf oak, 273
-  White locust, 535
-  White mangrove, 688
-  White maple, 433, 439
-  White mulberry, 514
-  White oak, 205, 208, 213, 223, 235
-  White pine, 19, 51, 703
-  White poplar, 675, 682
-  White spruce, 130, 135, 136
-  White stem pine, 37
-  White thorn, 459
-  White titi, 502
-  White walnut, 355, 357
-  White willow, 472
-  Whitewood, 487, 667, 701
-  Wickup, 637
-  Wild apple, 454
-  Wild black cherry, 613
-  Wild cherry, 613, 619
-  Wild China, 465
-  Wild cinnamon, 701
-  Wild crab, 453
-  Wild date, 693
-  Wild lilac, 698
-  Wild lime, 699
-  Wild olive-tree, 337, 601
-  Wild orange, 620
-  Wild peach, 620
-  Wild plum, 621
-  Wild red cherry, 619
-  Wild rose bay, 507
-  Wild sapodilla, 696
-  Wild tamarind, 568
-  Wild thorn, 459
-  Williamson's spruce, 195
-  Willow, 469
-  Willow-leaf cherry, 620
-  Willow oak, 279, 295
-  Wing elm, 399
-  Witch elm, 399
-  Witch hazel, 328
-  Wood laurel, 505
-  Woolly oak, 315
-
-  Yaupon, 645
-  Yaupon holly, 645
-  Yellow ash, 553
-  Yellow bark oak, 271
-  Yellow basswood, 637
-  Yellow birch, 565, 571
-  Yellow buckeye, 649
-  Yellow buckthorn, 698
-  Yellow-butt oak, 271
-  Yellow cedar, 118, 121
-  Yellow chestnut oak, 247
-  Yellow cottonwood, 667
-  Yellow cypress, 121
-  Yellow fir, 163, 169
-  Yellow-leaf willow, 471
-  Yellow-flowered cucumber tree, 484
-  Yellow locust, 535, 553
-  Yellow oak, 247, 271
-  Yellow pine, 43, 63
-  Yellow plum, 621
-  Yellow poplar, 481, 487
-  Yellow spruce, 127
-  Yellow-wood, 511, 553, 698, 699
-  Yew, 199, 201
-  Yucca, 693
-
-
-
-
-INDEX TO LATIN NAMES
-
-
-  Abies amabilis, 165
-  Abies arizonica, 154
-  Abies balsamea, 145
-  Abies concolor, 159
-  Abies fraseri, 151
-  Abies grandis, 163
-  Abies lasiocarpa, 166
-  Abies magnifica, 164
-  Abies nobilis, 79, 157
-  Abies shastensis, 165
-  Abies venusta, 171
-  Acacia farnesiana, 543
-  Acacia greggii, 544
-  Acacia wrightii, 544
-  Acer circinatum, 441
-  Acer floridanum, 435
-  Acer glabrum, 442, 446
-  Acer leucoderme, 436
-  Acer macrophyllum, 439
-  Acer negundo, 445
-  Acer negundo californicum, 447
-  Acer nigrum, 447
-  Acer pennsylvanicum, 447
-  Acer rubrum, 433
-  Acer rubrum drummondii, 436
-  Acer saccharinum, 429
-  Acer saccharum, 427
-  Acer spicatum, 435
-  Aesculus austrina, 652
-  Aesculus californica, 651
-  Aesculus glabra, 651
-  Aesculus octandra, 649
-  Aesculus octandra hybrida, 652
-  Ailanthus glandulosa, 676
-  Alnus acuminata,592
-  Alnus glutinosa, 592
-  Alnus maritima, 592
-  Alnus oregona, 589
-  Alnus rhombifolia, 591
-  Alnus rugosa, 592
-  Alnus sitchensis, 592
-  Alnus tenuifolia, 596
-  Amelanchier alnifolia, 452
-  Amelanchier canadensis, 451
-  Amelanchier obovalis, 452
-  Amyris maritima, 699
-  Andromeda ferruginea, 526
-  Annona glabra, 640
-  Aralia spinosa, 675
-  Arbutus arizonica, 663
-  Arbutus menziesii, 661
-  Arbutus xalapensis, 663
-  Arctostaphylos manzanita, 663
-  Asimina triloba, 640
-  Avicennia nitida, 688
-
-  Betula alaskana, 579
-  Betula caerulea, 565, 585
-  Betula fontinalis, 565, 580
-  Betula kenaica, 565, 585
-  Betula lenta, 565
-  Betula lutea, 565, 571
-  Betula nigra, 565, 577
-  Betula occidentalis, 565, 579
-  Betula papyrifera, 565, 583
-  Betula pendula, 586
-  Betula populifolia, 565, 585
-  Broussonetia papyrifera, 514
-  Bumelia angustifolia, 696
-  Bumelia lanuginosa, 696
-  Bumelia lycioides, 696
-  Bumelia tenax, 696
-  Bursera simaruba, 677
-
-  Camaecyparis lawsoniana, 123
-  Camaecyparis nootkatensis, 121
-  Camaecyparis thyoides, 103
-  Canella winterana, 701
-  Canotia holacantha, 699
-  Carpinus caroliniana, 627
-  Castanea dentata, 631
-  Castanea pumila, 634
-  Castanopsis chrysophylla, 633
-  Catalpa catalpa, 475, 477
-  Catalpa speciosa, 475
-  Celastraceae, 499
-  Celtis mississippiensis, 403, 405
-  Celtis occidentalis, 403
-  Celtis reticulata, 406
-  Cercidium floridum, 555
-  Cercidium torreyanum, 556
-  Cercis canadensis, 548
-  Cercis occidentalis, 549
-  Cercis reniformis, 549
-  Cercocarpus ledifolius, 466
-  Cercocarpus parvifolius, 466
-  Cercocarpus parvifolius breviflorus, 466
-  Cercocarpus traskiae, 466
-  Cereus giganteus, 693
-  Cereus schottii, 694
-  Cereus thurberi, 694
-  Chilopsis linearis, 477
-  Chionanthus virginica, 700
-  Chrysobalanus icaco, 622
-  Chrysophyllum monopyrenum, 696
-  Cladrastis lutea, 553
-  Cleanothus arboreus, 698
-  Cleanothus thyrsiflorus, 698
-  Cliftonia monophylla, 502
-  Colubrina reclinata, 698
-  Condalia obovata, 700
-  Conocarpus erecta, 688
-  Cornus alternifolia, 526
-  Cornus florida, 523
-  Cornus florida pendula, 526
-  Cornus florida rubra, 526
-  Cornus nuttallii, 525
-  Cotinus cotinoides, 697
-  Crataegus, 457
-  Crataegus aestivalis, 458
-  Crataegus brachyacantha, 459
-  Crataegus coccinea, 457
-  Crataegus cordata, 460
-  Crataegus crus-galli, 459
-  Crataegus douglasii, 460
-  Crataegus oxyacantha, 460
-  Crataegus tomentosa, 459
-  Cupressus arizonica, 139, 142
-  Cupressus glabra, 139, 142
-  Cupressus goveniana, 139, 184
-  Cupressus macnabiana, 139, 178
-  Cupressus macrocarpa, 139, 141
-  Cupressus pygmaea, 139, 184
-  Cyrilla racemiflora, 501
-
-  Dalea spinosa, 556
-  Dendropogon usenoides, 256
-  Diospyros texana, 520
-  Diospyros virginiana, 517
-  Dipholis salicifolia, 696
-
-  Evonymus atropurpureus, 499
-  Exothea paniculata, 700
-  Eysenhardtia orthocarpa, 556
-
-  Fagus atropunicea, 625
-  Fraxinus americana, 409
-  Fraxinus anomala, 412
-  Fraxinus berlandieriana, 418
-  Fraxinus biltmoreana, 424
-  Fraxinus caroliniana, 424
-  Fraxinus cuspidata, 412
-  Fraxinus floridana, 424
-  Fraxinus greggii, 411
-  Fraxinus lanceolata, 422
-  Fraxinus nigra, 415
-  Fraxinus oregona, 421
-  Fraxinus pennsylvanica, 423
-  Fraxinus profunda, 423
-  Fraxinus quadrangulata, 417
-  Fraxinus texensis, 411
-  Fraxinus velutina, 418
-  Fremontodendron californicum, 400
-
-  Gaultheria procumbens, 566
-  Gleditsia aquatica, 543
-  Gleditsia texana, 543
-  Gleditsia triacanthos, 541
-  Guajacum sanctum, 698
-  Gyminda grisebachii, 490
-  Gymnanthes lucida, 701
-  Gymnocladus dioicus, 547
-
-  Hamamelis virginiana, 328
-  Helietta parvifolia, 699
-  Heteromeles arbutifolia, 645
-  Hicoria alba, 356, 363, 364
-  Hicoria aquatica, 375
-  Hicoria carolinae-septentrionalis, 376
-  Hicoria glabra, 356, 361, 364, 367
-  Hicoria laciniosa, 369
-  Hicoria minima, 361, 364
-  Hicoria myristicaeformis, 374
-  Hicoria odorata, 346
-  Hicoria ovata, 355, 356
-  Hicoria texana, 375
-  Hicoria villosa, 345
-  Hippomane mancinella, 701
-  Hypelate trifoliata, 700
-
-  Icacorea paniculata, 701
-  Ichthyomethia piscipula, 550
-  Ilex cassine, 645
-  Ilex cassine angustifolia, 645
-  Ilex decidua, 646
-  Ilex monticola, 645
-  Ilex myrtifolia, 645
-  Ilex opaca, 643
-  Ilex vomitoria, 645
-
-  Jaquinia armillaris, 701
-  Juglans californica, 351
-  Juglans cinerea, 359
-  Juglans nigra, 243
-  Juglans rupestris, 351
-  Juniperus barbadensis, 94
-  Juniperus californica, 112
-  Juniperus communis, 705
-  Juniperus flaccida, 705
-  Juniperus monosperma, 99
-  Juniperus occidentalis, 118
-  Juniperus pachyphloea, 111
-  Juniperus sabinoides, 99
-  Juniperus scopulorum, 124
-  Juniperus utahensis, 706
-  Juniperus virginiana, 91
-
-  Kalmia latifolia, 505, 655
-  Khaya senegalensis, 463
-  Koeberlinia spinosa, 695
-
-  Laguncularia racemosa, 688
-  Larix americana, 80
-  Larix laricina, 79
-  Larix lyallii, 88
-  Larix occidentalis, 85
-  Leitneria floridana, 423
-  Leucaena glauca, 562
-  Leucaena pulverulenta, 562
-  Libocedrus decurrens, 109
-  Liquidambar styraciflua, 325
-  Liriodendron tulipifera, 481
-  Lysiloma latisiliqua, 568
-
-  Magnolia acuminata, 481
-  Magnolia acuminata cordata, 484
-  Magnolia foetida, 481, 493
-  Magnolia fraseri, 481
-  Magnolia glauca, 481, 495
-  Magnolia macrophylla, 481, 483
-  Magnolia pyramidata, 481, 496
-  Magnolia tripetala, 481, 484
-  Malus angustifolia, 453
-  Malus coronaria, 453
-  Malus ioensis, 454
-  Malus malus, 454
-  Malus rivularis, 454
-  Malus soulardi, 454
-  Meliaceae, 463
-  Melia azedarach, 464
-  Melia azedarach umbraculifera, 165
-  Mimusops sieberi, 696
-  Mohrodendron carolinum, 601
-  Mohrodendron dipterum, 601
-  Morus alba, 514
-  Morus celtidifolia, 514
-  Morus rubra, 513
-
-  Neowashingtonia filamentosa, 693
-  Nyssa aquatica, 337
-  Nyssa biflora, 340
-  Nyssa ogeche, 337, 339
-  Nyssa sylvatica, 337
-
-  Ocotea catesbyana, 657
-  Olneya tesota, 568
-  Opuntia fulgida, 694
-  Opuntia sponsior, 694
-  Opuntia versicolor, 694
-  Oreodoxa regia, 692
-  Osmanthus americanus, 700
-  Ostrya knowltoni, 598
-  Ostrya virginiana, 595
-  Oxydendrum arboreum, 507
-
-  Persea borbonia, 531
-  Persea pubescens, 532
-  Picea breweriana, 136
-  Picea canadensis, 130
-  Picea engelmanni, 135
-  Picea mariana, 129
-  Picea parryana, 136
-  Picea rubens, 127
-  Picea sitchensis, 133
-  Pinus albicaulis, 19, 37
-  Pinus aristata, 19, 38, 43
-  Pinus arizonica, 43, 705
-  Pinus attenuata, 704
-  Pinus balfouriana, 19, 38
-  Pinus cembroides, 19, 33
-  Pinus chihuahuana, 43, 76
-  Pinus clausa, 43, 46
-  Pinus contorta, 43, 73
-  Pinus coulteri, 43, 68
-  Pinus divaricata, 43, 69
-  Pinus echinata, 43, 49
-  Pinus edulis, 19, 28
-  Pinus flexilis, 19, 703
-  Pinus glabra, 43, 51
-  Pinus heterophylla, 43, 45
-  Pinus jeffreyi, 75
-  Pinus lambertiana, 19, 25, 31
-  Pinus monophylla, 19, 701
-  Pinus monticola, 19, 25
-  Pinus muricata, 43, 69
-  Pinus palustris, 43
-  Pinus ponderosa, 43, 67
-  Pinus pungens, 43, 52
-  Pinus quadrifolia, 19, 704
-  Pinus radiata, 43, 69
-  Pinus resinosa, 43, 61
-  Pinus rigida, 43, 63
-  Pinus sabiniana, 43, 75
-  Pinus serotina, 43, 57
-  Pinus strobiformis, 19, 27
-  Pinus strobus, 19, 25
-  Pinus taeda, 43, 55
-  Pinus torreyana, 43, 64
-  Pinus virginiana, 43, 57
-  Planera aquatica, 397
-  Platanus occidentalis, 607
-  Platanus racemosa, 609
-  Platanus wrightii, 610
-  Populus acuminata, 667, 670
-  Populus alba, 682
-  Populus angustifolia, 667, 669
-  Populus balsamifera, 667, 673
-  Populus balsamifera candicans, 673
-  Populus deltoides, 667
-  Populus fremontii, 667, 670
-  Populus grandidentata, 667, 675
-  Populus heterophylla, 667, 669
-  Populus mexicana, 667, 669
-  Populus nigra, 681
-  Populus nigra italica, 682
-  Populus tremuloides, 667, 676
-  Populus trichocarpa, 667, 669
-  Populus wislizeni, 667, 669
-  Parkinsonia aculeata, 549
-  Parkinsonia microphylla, 549
-  Prosopis juliflora, 559
-  Prosopis juliflora glandulosa, 562
-  Prosopis juliflora velutina, 562
-  Prosopis odorata, 562
-  Prunus allegheniensis, 622
-  Prunus americana, 621
-  Prunus angustifolia, 622
-  Prunus caroliniana, 620
-  Prunus demissa, 616
-  Prunus emarginata, 616
-  Prunus hortulana, 622
-  Prunus ilicifolia, 616
-  Prunus nigra, 621
-  Prunus pennsylvanica, 619
-  Prunus salicifolia, 620
-  Prunus serotina, 613
-  Prunus sphaerocarpa, 620
-  Prunus subcordata, 621
-  Prunus umbellata, 621
-  Prunus virginiana, 615
-  Pseudophoenix sargentii, 692
-  Pseudotsuga macrocarpa, 172
-  Pseudotsuga taxifolia, 169
-  Ptelea trifoliata, 699
-  Pyrus americana, 454
-  Pyrus microcarpa, 454
-
-  Quercus acuminata, 247
-  Quercus agrifolia, 307
-  Quercus alba, 205
-  Quercus alvordiana, 220
-  Quercus arizonica, 205, 218
-  Quercus brevifolia, 285
-  Quercus breviloba, 208
-  Quercus breweri, 205, 220
-  Quercus californica, 285
-  Quercus catesbaei, 259, 283
-  Quercus chapmani, 208
-  Quercus chrysolepis, 308
-  Quercus chrysolepis palmeri, 301
-  Quercus chrysolepis vaccinifolia, 309
-  Quercus coccinea, 277
-  Quercus densiflora, 313
-  Quercus digitata, 259, 289
-  Quercus douglasii, 213
-  Quercus dumosa, 205, 237
-  Quercus emoryi, 205, 238
-  Quercus engelmanni, 205, 231
-  Quercus gambelii, 205, 214
-  Quercus garryana, 205, 235
-  Quercus georgiana, 259, 267
-  Quercus heterophylla, 322
-  Quercus hypoleuca, 259, 273
-  Quercus imbricaria, 259, 319
-  Quercus laurifolia, 259, 319
-  Quercus leana, 292
-  Quercus lobata, 205, 249
-  Quercus lyrata, 205, 217
-  Quercus macrocarpa, 205, 211
-  Quercus marilandica, 259, 291
-  Quercus michauxii, 205, 229
-  Quercus minor, 223, 241
-  Quercus morehus, 259, 297
-  Quercus myrtifolia, 259, 297
-  Quercus nigra, 259, 320
-  Quercus oblongifolia, 205, 226
-  Quercus palustris, 259, 301
-  Quercus phellos, 259, 279
-  Quercus platanoides, 205, 225
-  Quercus pricei, 259, 315
-  Quercus prinoides, 205
-  Quercus prinus, 205, 241
-  Quercus pumila, 259, 315
-  Quercus reticulata, 205, 219
-  Quercus rubra, 259
-  Quercus sadleri, 205, 220
-  Quercus texana, 259, 265
-  Quercus tomentella, 315
-  Quercus toumeyi, 205, 315
-  Quercus tridentata, 292
-  Quercus undulata, 205, 219
-  Quercus velutina, 259, 271
-  Quercus virginiana, 205, 253
-  Quercus wislizeni, 259, 296
-
-  Reynosia latifolia, 700
-  Rhamnidium ferreum, 700
-  Rhamnus caroliniana, 698
-  Rhamnus crocea, 698
-  Rhamnus purshiana, 698
-  Rhizophora mangle, 685
-  Rhododendron catawbiense, 507
-  Rhododendron maximum, 506
-  Rhus copallina, 696
-  Rhus hirta, 697
-  Rhus integrifolia, 698
-  Rhus metopium, 697
-  Rhus vernix, 697
-  Robinia neo-mexicana, 537
-  Robinia pseudacacia, 535
-  Robinia viscosa, 537
-
-  Sabal mexicana, 692
-  Sabal palmetto, 691
-  Salix alba, 472
-  Salix amplifolia, 472
-  Salix amygdaloides, 471
-  Salix babylonica, 472
-  Salix bebbiana, 471
-  Salix cordata mackenzieana, 472
-  Salix discolor, 472
-  Salix fluviatilis, 496
-  Salix hookeriana, 472
-  Salix laevigata, 471
-  Salix lasiandra, 496
-  Salix lasiandra lyalli, 496
-  Salix lasiolepis, 472
-  Salix longipes, 471
-  Salix lucida, 496
-  Salix missouriensis, 472
-  Salix nigra, 496
-  Salix nuttallii, 472
-  Salix sessilifolia, 471
-  Salix sitchensis, 472
-  Salix taxifolia, 471
-  Sambucus callicarpa, 700
-  Sambucus glauca, 700
-  Sambucus mexicana, 700
-  Sapindus drummondi, 465
-  Sapindus marginatus, 465
-  Sapindus saponaria, 465
-  Sassafras sassafras, 655
-  Schaefferia frutescens, 501
-  Sequoia sempervirens, 181
-  Sequoia washingtoniana, 175
-  Sideroxylon mastichodendron, 692
-  Simarouba glauca, 676
-  Sophora affinis, 555
-  Sophora secundiflora, 554
-  Swietenia mahagoni, 463
-
-  Taxodium distichum, 139
-  Taxodium imbricarium, 139, 141
-  Taxus brevifolia, 199
-  Taxus floridana, 201
-  Terminalia buceras, 688
-  Thrinax microcarpa, 692
-  Thrinax parviflora, 692
-  Thuja occidentalis, 97
-  Thuja plicata, 115
-  Tilia americana, 637
-  Tilia australis, 639
-  Tilia floridana, 639
-  Tilia heterophylla, 637, 639
-  Tilia michauxii, 639
-  Tilia pubescens, 639
-  Toxylon pomiferum, 511
-  Tsuga canadensis, 187
-  Tsuga caroliniana, 187, 703
-  Tsuga heterophylla, 187, 193
-  Tsuga mertensiana, 187, 195
-  Tumion californicum, 201
-  Tumion taxifolium, 202
-
-  Ulmus alata, 379, 399
-  Ulmus americana, 379
-  Ulmus crassifolia, 379, 392
-  Ulmus pubescens, 379, 391
-  Ulmus racemosa, 379, 385
-  Ulmus serotina, 379, 393
-  Umbellularia californica, 529, 655
-
-  Vaccinium arboreum, 508
-  Vauquelinia californica, 466
-  Viburnum lentago, 700
-  Viburnum prunifolium, 699
-  Viburnum rufotomentosum, 700
-
-  Xanthoxylum clava-herculis, 699
-  Xanthoxylum cribrosum, 699
-  Xanthoxylum fagara, 699
-
-  Yucca aloifolia, 693
-  Yucca arborescens, 693
-  Yucca brevifolia, 693
-  Yucca gloriosa, 693
-  Yucca macrocarpa, 693
-  Yucca mohavensis, 693
-  Yucca treculeana, 693
-
-  Zygia brevifolia, 538
-  Zygia flexicaulis, 538
-  Zygia unguis-cati, 538
-
-
-
-
-      *      *      *      *      *      *
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's note:
-
-This text follows the text of the original publication; inconsistent
-hyphenation, spacing, capitalisation, punctuation etc. have been
-retained except as mentioned below.
-
-Non-English words have not been corrected, except as mentioned below.
-
-Some entries in the indexes have been moved to their proper alphabetical
-order.
-
-Remarks on the text:
-
-Page 111, Juniperus pachyphlaea/pachyphloea: both spellings seem to be
-used, the original gives pachyphloea; this has been retained.
-
-Page 187: ... in England it is called ... should possibly read ... in
-New England it is called ....
-
-Page 423: New Madrid country: should possibly read New Madrid County.
-
-Page 433: ... and the random of their flight ...: probably there is a
-word missing from this sentence.
-
-Page 627: ... and more than that much more by manufacturers of ...
-should possibly read ... and much more than that by manufacturers of
-....
-
-Changes made:
-
-The pages with photographs of the Tamarack and the Western Larch have
-been interchanged.
-
-Some obvious punctuation errors and missing punctuation have been
-corrected silently.
-
-Page 7: Spring and summerwood changed to Spring- and summerwood
-
-Page 13: possess then changed to possess them
-
-Page 32: wastful changed to wasteful
-
-Page 63: Norway pine has past changed to Norway pine has passed
-
-Page 91: oldfield changed to old-field
-
-Page 104: Gottleib Mittelberger changed to Gottlieb Mittelberger
-
-Page 105: stagnant logoons changed to stagnant lagoons
-
-Page 111: separating into forkes changed to separating into forks
-
-Page 118: juniper, cedar changed to juniper cedar
-
-Page 124: interoir changed to interior
-
-Page 128: careful culling changed to careful cutting
-
-Page 130: Eruope changed to Europe
-
-Page 139: pygmaea changed to pygmaea as elsewhere; ninty-nine changed to
-ninety-nine
-
-Page 146: are quit distinct changed to are quite distinct
-
-Page 171: Cupressus macrocorpa changed to Cupressus macrocarpa
-
-Page 188: which carriers on changed to which carries on
-
-Page 248: Guadaloupe river changed to Guadalupe river
-
-Page 255: lignum-vitae changed to lignum-vitae
-
-Page 273: sappling changed to sapling
-
-Page 289: anyone changed to any one
-
-Page 301: pubescense changed to pubescence
-
-Page 325: liquid-amber, gum changed to liquid-amber gum
-
-Page 363: hogshead changed to hogsheads
-
-Page 364: ferquently changed to frequently; Sargents' changed to
-Sargent's
-
-Page 385: the woods toughness changed to the wood's toughness
-
-Page 399: Vriginians changed to Virginians
-
-Page 403: new Jersey name changed to New Jersey name
-
-Page 404: doubltess changed to doubtless
-
-Page 410: traveller changed to traveler as elsewhere
-
-Page 412: drawing rotated 90 deg.
-
-Page 415: in other woods changed to in other words
-
-Page 422: concensus changed to consensus
-
-Page 429: sinuouses changed to sinuses; unkept, neglected appearance
-changed to unkempt, neglected appearance
-
-Page 433: New York Indianas changed to New York Indians
-
-Page 436: drawing rotated 90 deg.
-
-Page 463: Swientenia changed to Swietenia
-
-Page 465: Soapbeery changed to Soapberry
-
-Page 475: Abbe Bignon changed to Abbe Bignon
-
-Page 502: Domenico Civillo changed to Domenoci Cirillo
-
-Page 518: specie changed to species
-
-Page 529: pugent changed to pungent
-
-Page 537: as for north changed to as far north
-
-Page 544: clowded changed to clouded
-
-Page 555: mammels changed to mammals
-
-Page 566: Gualtheria procumbens changed to Gaultheria procumbens
-
-Page 573: manufactures changed to manufacturers
-
-Page 580: Betula fontanalis changed to Betula fontinalis
-
-Page 589: raddish changed to radish
-
-Page 592: aborescent changed to arborescent
-
-Page 595: Trintiy river changed to Trinity river
-
-Page 619: it a prolific seeder changed to it is a prolific seeder
-
-Page 622: Chikasaw Plum changed to Chickasaw Plum
-
-Page 633: course-grained changed to coarse-grained
-
-Page 656: losses its name changed to loses its name
-
-Page 675: Simaruba glauca changed to Simarouba glauca
-
-Page 693: Mahave desert changed to Mohave desert
-
-Page 694: opunitas changed to opuntias.
-
-In the indexes the folowing changes have been made so that the indexes
-use the same spelling as the text:
-
-Page i: Alligator-wood to Alligator wood, Bay-tree to Bay tree
-
-Page ii: California bay-tree to California bay tree, Calico-bush to
-Calico bush
-
-Page iii: Cucumber-tree to Cucumber tree
-
-Page iv: Glaucus willow to Glaucous willow, Holly-leaf cherry to
-Hollyleaf cherry, Forked-leaf blackjack to Forked-leaf black jack
-
-Page v: Juneberry to June berry, Kingtree to Kingstree, Longchat to
-Longschat, Judas-tree to Judas tree, Juniper-tree to Juniper tree,
-Liquidamber to Liquid-amber
-
-Page vi: Oldfield to Old-field (2x), Nakedwood to Naked-wood, Osage
-appletree to Osage apple tree
-
-Page vii: Scalybark hickory to Scaly bark hickory, Single-leaf pinon to
-Signleleaf pinon, Smooth-leaf willow to Smoothleaf willow
-
-Page ix: Wild china to Wild China
-
-Page x: cucumber-tree to cucumber tree
-
-Page xi: Andromida ferruginea to Andromeda ferruginea, Cledrastris lutea
-to Cladrastris lutea, Columbrina reclinata to Colubrina reclinata,
-Candalia obovata to Condalia obovata, Canotia holocantha to Canotia
-holacantha, Acer leucoderma to Acer leucoderme, Bumelia lycoides to
-Bumelia lycioides, Alnus tennuifolia to Alnus tenuifolia
-
-Page xii: Juglans cinera to Juglans cinerea, Delea spinosa to Dalea
-spinosa, Crataegus oxacantha to Crataegus oxyacantha
-
-Page xiii: Pinus jefferi to Pinus jeffreyi, Neowashingtoniana
-filamentosa to Neowashingtonia filamentosa, Oxydendron arboreum to
-Oxydendrum arboreum
-
-Page xiv: Tilia amerciana to Tilia americana, Robinia neomexicana to
-Robinia neo-mexicana, Salix sessifolia to Salix sessilifolia.
-
-
-
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