MESQUITE

MESQUITEMequiteMesquite

MequiteMesquite

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 nameprosopisis 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 fromone 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 ingetting 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, andnumerous 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.Mesquite branch

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.

[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 nameprosopisis 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 fromone 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 ingetting 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, andnumerous 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.

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.

Mesquite branch

SWEET BIRCHSweet birchSweet Birch

Sweet birchSweet Birch

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 medullaryrays 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 ofsuch 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.Sweet birch branch

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.

[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 medullaryrays 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 ofsuch 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.

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.

Sweet birch branch

YELLOW BIRCHYellow birchYellow Birch

Yellow birchYellow Birch

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 thetrunk, 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 allkinds. 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 businesshas 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.Yellow birch branch

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 thetrunk, 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 allkinds. 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 businesshas 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.

Yellow birch branch

RIVER BIRCHRiver birchRiver Birch

River birchRiver Birch

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 inmost 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 woodenwarefind 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 thesmallest. 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.River birch branch

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 inmost 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 woodenwarefind 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 thesmallest. 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.

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.

River birch branch

PAPER BIRCHPaper birchPaper Birch

Paper birchPaper Birch

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 beensatisfactorily 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 teninches. 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, theBetula pendula.Paper birch branch

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 beensatisfactorily 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 teninches. 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, theBetula pendula.

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 teninches. 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, theBetula pendula.

Paper birch branch

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