WILD RED CHERRY

WILD RED CHERRYWild red cherryWild Red Cherry

Wild red cherryWild Red Cherry

Wild Red Cherry

WILD RED CHERRY(Prunus Pennsylvanica)In addition to the name wild red cherry by which this tree is known in most parts of its range, it is called bird cherry in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa; red cherry in Maine and Rhode Island; fire cherry in New York and many other localities; pin cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Michigan, Iowa, and North Dakota; pigeon cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Ontario, and North Dakota; and wild cherry in Tennessee and New York. Its range extends from Newfoundland to Hudson bay, west to British Columbia, south through the Rocky Mountains to Colorado, and in the East along the Appalachian ranges to North Carolina and Tennessee. It reaches its largest size among the Big Smoky mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina.It is ordinarily a tree thirty or forty feet high, and from eight to ten inches in diameter, though trunks are sometimes twenty inches through. It grows fast, but is very short-lived. Many stands disappear in thirty years or less, but individuals survive two or three times that long, if they stand in open ground. One of its names is fire cherry, and that fitly describes it. Like paper birch and lodgepole pine, it follows forest fires where the ground is laid bare by the burning. Nature seems to have made peculiar provisions whereby this tree clothes barren tracts which have been recently burned. In the first place, it is a prolific seeder. Its small, red cherries are borne by bushels on very young trees. Birds feed on them almost exclusively while they last, and the seeds are scattered over the surrounding country. They have such thick shells that few germinate unless they pass through a moderate fire, which cracks the shells, or at least they do not sprout until they come in direct contact with mineral soil. When a fire burns a forest, thousands of the cherry seedlings spring up. Many persons have wondered where they come from so quickly. They were already scattered among the forest leaves before the fire passed. The heat crazed their shells, and the burning of the leaflitter let them down on the mineral soil where they germinated and soon came up by thousands. The case is a little different with paper birch and with aspen, which are also fire trees. Their seeds cannot pass through fire without perishing, and when birches and aspens follow a fire it means that the seeds were scattered by the wind after the passing of the fire. Doubtless cherry seeds are often scattered after the fire has passed; but it is believed that most of those which spring up so quickly have passed through the fire without being destroyed.This small cherry is one of the means by which damage by forest fires is repaired. The tree is of little value for lumber or even for fuel; but it acts as a nurse tree—that is, it shelters and protects the seedlings of other species until they obtain a start. By the time the cherry trees die, the seedlings which they have nursed are able to take care of themselves, and a young forest of valuable species is established.Except in this indirect way, the wild red cherry is of little use to man. The wood is soft, light, and of pleasing color, but trees are nearly always too small to be worked into useful articles. About the only industry of which there is any record, which draws supplies from this source, is the manufacture of pipe stems. The straight, slender, bright-barked branches are cut into requisite lengths and bored endwise, and serve for stems of cheap pipes, and occasionally for those more expensive. The bark, like that of most cherries, is marked by dark bands running part way round the stems. These are known as lenticels, and exist in the bark of most trees, but they are usually less conspicuous in others than in cherry. It is this characteristic marking which gives the cherry pipe stem its value.Wild red cherry blooms from May to July, depending on latitude and elevation, and the fruit ripens from July to September. The cherries hang in bunches, are bright red, quite sour, and the seed is the largest part. They are occasionally made into jelly, wine, and form the basis of certain cough syrups.West India Cherry(Prunus sphærocarpa) grows near the shores of Biscayne bay, Florida. It there blooms in November and the fruit ripens the next spring. The tree attains a height of from twenty-five to thirty feet, and a diameter of five or six inches. When grown in the open at Miami, Florida, it is larger, and is much liked as an ornament. The thin, smooth bark is brown, tinged with red, and is marked by large conspicuous lenticels. The wood is hard and light, and of light clear red color. It is too scarce to be of much importance, but paper knives, napkin rings, and other novelties made of it are sold in souvenir stores in southern Florida. Its range extends south to Brazil.Willowleaf Cherry(Prunus salicifolia) is a small tree, also called Mexican cherry, is more common south of the United States than in this country, ranging as far south as Peru. It is found on some of the mountains of southern New Mexico and Arizona.Laurel Cherry(Prunus caroliniana) is a southern species which sticks close to the coast in most of its range from South Carolina to Texas. It has many names, among them wild peach, wild orange, mock orange, evergreen cherry, mock olive, and Carolina cherry. Leaves hang two years, and the fruit remains nearly one. The latter is blackand about half an inch long. The withered leaves are poisonous if eaten by cattle. The tree is thirty or forty feet high, and eight or ten inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, color light brown to dark, rich brown, sometimes of much beauty, but no record has been found of any use for it. The tree is often planted for ornament.Wild Plum(Prunus americana) is found from New Jersey to Montana, southward to New Mexico and Texas, and extends to Florida and Mexico. Its range covers about a million square miles. There are seven or more species of wild plums in the United States. The fruit of all of them is edible. They have been planted accidentally or otherwise in many localities where they were not found before the country was settled. The plum was an important fruit in the country’s early history. The pioneers gathered wild fruits before planted orchards came into bearing, and the plum was one of the best which nature supplied. Early travelers among the Indians in the South frequently spoke of Indian peaches. Such references have led some to believe that the peach was native in that region, but it is safe to conclude that what was called the peach was really some species of wild plum. These fruits were among the earliest to become domesticated. In fact, they were abundant about the sites of Indian towns and old fields, where the savages had scattered seeds without any purpose on their part of planting trees; and early settlers imitated the Indians, and plums were soon growing in the vicinity of most of the cabins. As a forest tree, it usually thrived best on the banks of streams, for there it could find more sunshine than in the deep woods, and it bore much more fruit. The ranges of several species of plums overlapped, and different sizes and colors of fruit were found in the same locality even before white men assisted the spread of species. The common plum, known to botanists asPrunus americana, is recognized under many names among laymen; among these names are yellow plum, red plum, horse plum, hog plum, August plum, native plum, and goose plum. Usually the plum’s skin is red, and the flesh yellow, which accounts for its names, both red and yellow. The tree ranges in height from twenty to thirty-five feet, and from five to ten inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, and dark rich-brown. It is suitable for turnery and small novelties, but little of it has been used.Canada Plum(Prunus nigra) appears to be the most northern member of the plum group. It grows from Newfoundland to Manitoba, and south into the northern tier of states. Its range has been much extended by planting, and a number of varieties have appeared. It is twenty or thirty feet high, and five to eight inches in diameter. Flowers appear in April and May, and the fruit is ripe in September and October. The plums are about an inch long, orange-red in color, with yellow flesh. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong. Those who cultivate this tree often do so for the beauty of the flowers, rather than for the value of the fruit. The wood is not used for commercial purposes.Black Sloe(Prunus umbellata), known also as southern bullace plum, hog plum, and wild plum, ranges from South Carolina, round the coast through Florida, to Louisiana and up the Mississippi valley into Arkansas. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet high and from six to ten inches in diameter. The fruit ripens from July to September, is black when ripe, and often nearly an inch long. The people where it grows use it for jelly. It is not reported that the wood is used for any purpose.Western Plum(Prunus subcordata) grows west of the Cascade mountains from southern Oregon to central California. It is often a low bush, but at its best forms a tree twenty feet high and six inches in diameter, but its wood is of no economicimportance. Its deep, purple-red plums ripen in autumn and are an excellent wild fruit, juicy and tart. During the fruit season the plum thickets were formerly infested by both bears and Indians, and many a fight for possession took place, with victory sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. The white inhabitants now make jam and jelly of the fruit.Alleghany Sloe(Prunus allegheniensis) is so named because it is best developed among the Alleghany mountains of Pennsylvania. The tree is eighteen or twenty feet high and six or eight inches in diameter. The wood is without value for commercial purposes, but the tree’s fruit has some local importance. It ripens about the middle of August, and is somewhat less than an inch in diameter, with dark, reddish-purple skin, covering yellow flesh.Chickasaw Plum(Prunus angustifolia) is a well-known wild plum of the South from Delaware to Texas, and north to Kansas. Its natural range is not known, because it has been so widely planted, accidentally or otherwise, near farm houses and in fence corners. Its bright, red fruit goes only to local markets. Negroes gather most of the crop in the South. The wood is not considered to have any value, but, in common with other plums, it possesses qualities which fit it for many small articles.Garden Wild Plum(Prunus hortulana) is supposed to have originated in Kentucky from a cross between the Chickasaw plum and the common wild plum (Prunus americana). It has spread from Virginia to Texas. The largest trees are thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The fruit ripens in September and October, is deep red or yellow, with hard, austere, thin flesh, quite sour. The fruit is called wild goose or simply goose plum in Tennessee and Kentucky. Horticulturists have made many experiments with this plum.Cocoa Plum(Chrysobalanus icaco), also called gopher plum, grows in southern Florida, and its insipid fruit is seldom eaten except by negroes and Seminole Indians. There is little sale for it in the local markets. Trees are sometimes thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The light brown wood is heavy, hard, and strong, but it is seldom used. The tree grows in Africa and South America as well as in Florida.Wild red cherry branch

In addition to the name wild red cherry by which this tree is known in most parts of its range, it is called bird cherry in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa; red cherry in Maine and Rhode Island; fire cherry in New York and many other localities; pin cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Michigan, Iowa, and North Dakota; pigeon cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Ontario, and North Dakota; and wild cherry in Tennessee and New York. Its range extends from Newfoundland to Hudson bay, west to British Columbia, south through the Rocky Mountains to Colorado, and in the East along the Appalachian ranges to North Carolina and Tennessee. It reaches its largest size among the Big Smoky mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina.

It is ordinarily a tree thirty or forty feet high, and from eight to ten inches in diameter, though trunks are sometimes twenty inches through. It grows fast, but is very short-lived. Many stands disappear in thirty years or less, but individuals survive two or three times that long, if they stand in open ground. One of its names is fire cherry, and that fitly describes it. Like paper birch and lodgepole pine, it follows forest fires where the ground is laid bare by the burning. Nature seems to have made peculiar provisions whereby this tree clothes barren tracts which have been recently burned. In the first place, it is a prolific seeder. Its small, red cherries are borne by bushels on very young trees. Birds feed on them almost exclusively while they last, and the seeds are scattered over the surrounding country. They have such thick shells that few germinate unless they pass through a moderate fire, which cracks the shells, or at least they do not sprout until they come in direct contact with mineral soil. When a fire burns a forest, thousands of the cherry seedlings spring up. Many persons have wondered where they come from so quickly. They were already scattered among the forest leaves before the fire passed. The heat crazed their shells, and the burning of the leaflitter let them down on the mineral soil where they germinated and soon came up by thousands. The case is a little different with paper birch and with aspen, which are also fire trees. Their seeds cannot pass through fire without perishing, and when birches and aspens follow a fire it means that the seeds were scattered by the wind after the passing of the fire. Doubtless cherry seeds are often scattered after the fire has passed; but it is believed that most of those which spring up so quickly have passed through the fire without being destroyed.

This small cherry is one of the means by which damage by forest fires is repaired. The tree is of little value for lumber or even for fuel; but it acts as a nurse tree—that is, it shelters and protects the seedlings of other species until they obtain a start. By the time the cherry trees die, the seedlings which they have nursed are able to take care of themselves, and a young forest of valuable species is established.

Except in this indirect way, the wild red cherry is of little use to man. The wood is soft, light, and of pleasing color, but trees are nearly always too small to be worked into useful articles. About the only industry of which there is any record, which draws supplies from this source, is the manufacture of pipe stems. The straight, slender, bright-barked branches are cut into requisite lengths and bored endwise, and serve for stems of cheap pipes, and occasionally for those more expensive. The bark, like that of most cherries, is marked by dark bands running part way round the stems. These are known as lenticels, and exist in the bark of most trees, but they are usually less conspicuous in others than in cherry. It is this characteristic marking which gives the cherry pipe stem its value.

Wild red cherry blooms from May to July, depending on latitude and elevation, and the fruit ripens from July to September. The cherries hang in bunches, are bright red, quite sour, and the seed is the largest part. They are occasionally made into jelly, wine, and form the basis of certain cough syrups.

West India Cherry(Prunus sphærocarpa) grows near the shores of Biscayne bay, Florida. It there blooms in November and the fruit ripens the next spring. The tree attains a height of from twenty-five to thirty feet, and a diameter of five or six inches. When grown in the open at Miami, Florida, it is larger, and is much liked as an ornament. The thin, smooth bark is brown, tinged with red, and is marked by large conspicuous lenticels. The wood is hard and light, and of light clear red color. It is too scarce to be of much importance, but paper knives, napkin rings, and other novelties made of it are sold in souvenir stores in southern Florida. Its range extends south to Brazil.

Willowleaf Cherry(Prunus salicifolia) is a small tree, also called Mexican cherry, is more common south of the United States than in this country, ranging as far south as Peru. It is found on some of the mountains of southern New Mexico and Arizona.

Laurel Cherry(Prunus caroliniana) is a southern species which sticks close to the coast in most of its range from South Carolina to Texas. It has many names, among them wild peach, wild orange, mock orange, evergreen cherry, mock olive, and Carolina cherry. Leaves hang two years, and the fruit remains nearly one. The latter is blackand about half an inch long. The withered leaves are poisonous if eaten by cattle. The tree is thirty or forty feet high, and eight or ten inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, color light brown to dark, rich brown, sometimes of much beauty, but no record has been found of any use for it. The tree is often planted for ornament.

Wild Plum(Prunus americana) is found from New Jersey to Montana, southward to New Mexico and Texas, and extends to Florida and Mexico. Its range covers about a million square miles. There are seven or more species of wild plums in the United States. The fruit of all of them is edible. They have been planted accidentally or otherwise in many localities where they were not found before the country was settled. The plum was an important fruit in the country’s early history. The pioneers gathered wild fruits before planted orchards came into bearing, and the plum was one of the best which nature supplied. Early travelers among the Indians in the South frequently spoke of Indian peaches. Such references have led some to believe that the peach was native in that region, but it is safe to conclude that what was called the peach was really some species of wild plum. These fruits were among the earliest to become domesticated. In fact, they were abundant about the sites of Indian towns and old fields, where the savages had scattered seeds without any purpose on their part of planting trees; and early settlers imitated the Indians, and plums were soon growing in the vicinity of most of the cabins. As a forest tree, it usually thrived best on the banks of streams, for there it could find more sunshine than in the deep woods, and it bore much more fruit. The ranges of several species of plums overlapped, and different sizes and colors of fruit were found in the same locality even before white men assisted the spread of species. The common plum, known to botanists asPrunus americana, is recognized under many names among laymen; among these names are yellow plum, red plum, horse plum, hog plum, August plum, native plum, and goose plum. Usually the plum’s skin is red, and the flesh yellow, which accounts for its names, both red and yellow. The tree ranges in height from twenty to thirty-five feet, and from five to ten inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, and dark rich-brown. It is suitable for turnery and small novelties, but little of it has been used.Canada Plum(Prunus nigra) appears to be the most northern member of the plum group. It grows from Newfoundland to Manitoba, and south into the northern tier of states. Its range has been much extended by planting, and a number of varieties have appeared. It is twenty or thirty feet high, and five to eight inches in diameter. Flowers appear in April and May, and the fruit is ripe in September and October. The plums are about an inch long, orange-red in color, with yellow flesh. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong. Those who cultivate this tree often do so for the beauty of the flowers, rather than for the value of the fruit. The wood is not used for commercial purposes.Black Sloe(Prunus umbellata), known also as southern bullace plum, hog plum, and wild plum, ranges from South Carolina, round the coast through Florida, to Louisiana and up the Mississippi valley into Arkansas. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet high and from six to ten inches in diameter. The fruit ripens from July to September, is black when ripe, and often nearly an inch long. The people where it grows use it for jelly. It is not reported that the wood is used for any purpose.Western Plum(Prunus subcordata) grows west of the Cascade mountains from southern Oregon to central California. It is often a low bush, but at its best forms a tree twenty feet high and six inches in diameter, but its wood is of no economicimportance. Its deep, purple-red plums ripen in autumn and are an excellent wild fruit, juicy and tart. During the fruit season the plum thickets were formerly infested by both bears and Indians, and many a fight for possession took place, with victory sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. The white inhabitants now make jam and jelly of the fruit.Alleghany Sloe(Prunus allegheniensis) is so named because it is best developed among the Alleghany mountains of Pennsylvania. The tree is eighteen or twenty feet high and six or eight inches in diameter. The wood is without value for commercial purposes, but the tree’s fruit has some local importance. It ripens about the middle of August, and is somewhat less than an inch in diameter, with dark, reddish-purple skin, covering yellow flesh.Chickasaw Plum(Prunus angustifolia) is a well-known wild plum of the South from Delaware to Texas, and north to Kansas. Its natural range is not known, because it has been so widely planted, accidentally or otherwise, near farm houses and in fence corners. Its bright, red fruit goes only to local markets. Negroes gather most of the crop in the South. The wood is not considered to have any value, but, in common with other plums, it possesses qualities which fit it for many small articles.Garden Wild Plum(Prunus hortulana) is supposed to have originated in Kentucky from a cross between the Chickasaw plum and the common wild plum (Prunus americana). It has spread from Virginia to Texas. The largest trees are thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The fruit ripens in September and October, is deep red or yellow, with hard, austere, thin flesh, quite sour. The fruit is called wild goose or simply goose plum in Tennessee and Kentucky. Horticulturists have made many experiments with this plum.Cocoa Plum(Chrysobalanus icaco), also called gopher plum, grows in southern Florida, and its insipid fruit is seldom eaten except by negroes and Seminole Indians. There is little sale for it in the local markets. Trees are sometimes thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The light brown wood is heavy, hard, and strong, but it is seldom used. The tree grows in Africa and South America as well as in Florida.

Wild Plum(Prunus americana) is found from New Jersey to Montana, southward to New Mexico and Texas, and extends to Florida and Mexico. Its range covers about a million square miles. There are seven or more species of wild plums in the United States. The fruit of all of them is edible. They have been planted accidentally or otherwise in many localities where they were not found before the country was settled. The plum was an important fruit in the country’s early history. The pioneers gathered wild fruits before planted orchards came into bearing, and the plum was one of the best which nature supplied. Early travelers among the Indians in the South frequently spoke of Indian peaches. Such references have led some to believe that the peach was native in that region, but it is safe to conclude that what was called the peach was really some species of wild plum. These fruits were among the earliest to become domesticated. In fact, they were abundant about the sites of Indian towns and old fields, where the savages had scattered seeds without any purpose on their part of planting trees; and early settlers imitated the Indians, and plums were soon growing in the vicinity of most of the cabins. As a forest tree, it usually thrived best on the banks of streams, for there it could find more sunshine than in the deep woods, and it bore much more fruit. The ranges of several species of plums overlapped, and different sizes and colors of fruit were found in the same locality even before white men assisted the spread of species. The common plum, known to botanists asPrunus americana, is recognized under many names among laymen; among these names are yellow plum, red plum, horse plum, hog plum, August plum, native plum, and goose plum. Usually the plum’s skin is red, and the flesh yellow, which accounts for its names, both red and yellow. The tree ranges in height from twenty to thirty-five feet, and from five to ten inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, and dark rich-brown. It is suitable for turnery and small novelties, but little of it has been used.

Canada Plum(Prunus nigra) appears to be the most northern member of the plum group. It grows from Newfoundland to Manitoba, and south into the northern tier of states. Its range has been much extended by planting, and a number of varieties have appeared. It is twenty or thirty feet high, and five to eight inches in diameter. Flowers appear in April and May, and the fruit is ripe in September and October. The plums are about an inch long, orange-red in color, with yellow flesh. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong. Those who cultivate this tree often do so for the beauty of the flowers, rather than for the value of the fruit. The wood is not used for commercial purposes.

Black Sloe(Prunus umbellata), known also as southern bullace plum, hog plum, and wild plum, ranges from South Carolina, round the coast through Florida, to Louisiana and up the Mississippi valley into Arkansas. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet high and from six to ten inches in diameter. The fruit ripens from July to September, is black when ripe, and often nearly an inch long. The people where it grows use it for jelly. It is not reported that the wood is used for any purpose.

Western Plum(Prunus subcordata) grows west of the Cascade mountains from southern Oregon to central California. It is often a low bush, but at its best forms a tree twenty feet high and six inches in diameter, but its wood is of no economicimportance. Its deep, purple-red plums ripen in autumn and are an excellent wild fruit, juicy and tart. During the fruit season the plum thickets were formerly infested by both bears and Indians, and many a fight for possession took place, with victory sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. The white inhabitants now make jam and jelly of the fruit.

Alleghany Sloe(Prunus allegheniensis) is so named because it is best developed among the Alleghany mountains of Pennsylvania. The tree is eighteen or twenty feet high and six or eight inches in diameter. The wood is without value for commercial purposes, but the tree’s fruit has some local importance. It ripens about the middle of August, and is somewhat less than an inch in diameter, with dark, reddish-purple skin, covering yellow flesh.

Chickasaw Plum(Prunus angustifolia) is a well-known wild plum of the South from Delaware to Texas, and north to Kansas. Its natural range is not known, because it has been so widely planted, accidentally or otherwise, near farm houses and in fence corners. Its bright, red fruit goes only to local markets. Negroes gather most of the crop in the South. The wood is not considered to have any value, but, in common with other plums, it possesses qualities which fit it for many small articles.

Garden Wild Plum(Prunus hortulana) is supposed to have originated in Kentucky from a cross between the Chickasaw plum and the common wild plum (Prunus americana). It has spread from Virginia to Texas. The largest trees are thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The fruit ripens in September and October, is deep red or yellow, with hard, austere, thin flesh, quite sour. The fruit is called wild goose or simply goose plum in Tennessee and Kentucky. Horticulturists have made many experiments with this plum.

Cocoa Plum(Chrysobalanus icaco), also called gopher plum, grows in southern Florida, and its insipid fruit is seldom eaten except by negroes and Seminole Indians. There is little sale for it in the local markets. Trees are sometimes thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The light brown wood is heavy, hard, and strong, but it is seldom used. The tree grows in Africa and South America as well as in Florida.

Wild red cherry branch

BEECHBeechBeech

BeechBeech

Beech

BEECH(Fagus Atropunicea)There is only one beech in the United States, and four or five in Europe and Asia. The southern portion of South America has several species which usually pass for beech. One or more of them are evergreen. Old world species are sometimes planted in parks and cemeteries in this country, but as forest trees they have no importance in the United States and probably never will have. It becomes a simple matter, therefore, to deal with the tree in this country. It is alone, and has no nearer relatives than the chestnuts, chinquapins, and the oaks, all of which are members of the same family, and the beech gives the name to the family—Fagaceæ. The blue beech, which is common in most states east of the Mississippi river and in some west, is not a member of the same family, though it looks enough like beech to be closely related to it.The name has come down from remote antiquity. It is one of the oldest names in use. It is said to have descended through thousands of years from old Aryan tribes of Asia which were among the earliest to use a written language. For the want of better material, they cut the letters on beech bark, and a piece of such writing was called “boc.” It was but a step from that word to book—a collection of writings. Both beech and book came from the same word “boc” and the connection between them is very evident. The pronunciation has been little changed by the Germanic races during thousands of years, but the Romans translated it into Latin and called it “liber,” from which we have the word library. Doubtless in very ancient times, say 5,000 years before the building of Solomon’s temple, the libraries beyond the Euphrates river consisted of several cords of trimmed and lettered beech bark. Such material being perishable, it has wholly disappeared. The matter is not now directly connected with the lumber interests, but it increases one’s respect for beech to know how important a part it must have played in the ancient world, whereby it stamped its name so indelibly upon the language of the most intelligent portion of the human race.The word buckwheat has the same origin. It means beech wheat, so named because the grains are triangular like beech nuts. The tree is always known as beech in this country, though it may have a qualifying word such as red, white, ridge.It usually grows in mixed forests of hardwoods, but it is often found in the immediate presence of hemlock and spruce, grows fromMaine to Florida, and west to Arkansas. Considerable areas are often occupied by little else. This is attested by the frequency with which such names as “beech flat,” “beech ridge,” “beech woods,” and “beech bottom” are encountered in local geography. Perhaps the finest examples of beech growth in the United States occur in the higher altitudes of the lower Appalachian range in eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina, where trees are frequently encountered, showing a bole of perfectly symmetrical form, of from three to more than four feet in diameter, and of a sheer height of seventy feet before a limb is encountered. The wood which grows in this section is nearly as hard as that of the North, but that growing on lower levels in the South is of a much softer texture and lighter color, the heart being pinkish rather than reddish-brown.Beech is one of the truly beautiful trees of the forest. In the eyes of many, the beech is as much to be admired as the American elm or sugar maple. Certainly in spring when it is covered with its staminate blossoms, it is a splendid sight, and its perfect leaves are seldom spotted or eaten by insects. In winter, it is particularly interesting. Its beautiful bark then appears very bright. After its fine leaves have fallen, though many of them, pale and dry, cling to the branches throughout the winter, the structure of its massive head is seen to advantage. In the Canadian markets and those of many of the middle and western states, its nuts are gathered and sold in considerable quantities. These nuts are favorite food of both the red and gray squirrel and these rodents collect them in considerable quantities during the late fall, and store them in tree hollows for their winter’s supply of food. It often happens, in felling beech trees in the winter, that shelled beech nuts to the quantity of a quart or more will be found secreted in some hollow by these provident little animals.Formerly beech was little used for lumber, but was long ago given an important place as firewood and material for charcoal. Its excellent qualities as lumber have now made it popular in most markets. The sapwood is comparatively thin and the heart is very much esteemed for many purposes. Many millions of feet of it are converted into flooring and the “pure red” product is very highly esteemed for ornamental floors. It has not as good working qualities as maple, but still it stays in place even better than does that famous flooring material. Nearly all the large flooring factories of the North, whose principal output is maple, have a side line of beech flooring, and in the South, notably in Nashville, a considerable quantity of the wood is made into flooring. In full growth this beautiful tree is round topped, with wide spreading and horizontal branches, and shows a normal altitude of about sixtyfeet. In this form of growth branches appear on the body very close to the ground, and their ends often trail upon it. In its forest form, where trees of any sort are of commercial importance, it often attains a height of ninety or 100 feet, with smooth rounded bole as symmetrical as the pillar of a cathedral, with a diameter of from two to four feet. Its time to bloom is April or May, and its nuts ripen in October. The bark is a light bluish-gray, and remarkably smooth; the leaves are simple, alternate, with very short petioles, oblong with pointed apex and rounded or narrowed base. The ribs are straight, unbranching, and terminate in remote teeth. The fruit is a pair of three-sided nuts with a sweet and edible kernel which grows in a four-celled prickly burr, splitting when ripe.Beech is an excellent fuel and it has long been used for that purpose. It is so regularly dispersed over the country that most neighborhoods were able to get it in the years when families cut their own firewood. Later, when charcoal was burned to supply primitive iron furnaces, before coke could be had, beech was always sought for. Still later, when large commercial plants were built to carry on destructive distillation of wood, beech was still a favorite. Its modern uses are many. There is scarcely a plant east of the Rocky Mountains, engaged in the manufacture of hardwood commodities, which does not use beech. In Michigan alone nearly 30,000,000 feet a year are demanded by box makers, and more than that much more by manufacturers of other commodities. It is widely employed for furniture, filing cabinets, vehicles, interior finish, agricultural implements, woodenware, and musical instruments. It is one of the heaviest and strongest of the common hardwoods, and gives long service when kept dry, but does not last well in damp situations.Beech is strictly a forest tree. This does not mean that it will not grow in the open, but when it does grow there it makes poor lumber, short and limby. The seedlings must have shade if they are to do any good, but after they attain a certain size they can endure the light. The roots lie close to the surface of the ground, and the trampling of cattle often kills large trees.Blue Beech(Carpinus caroliniana) is not in the beech family, but the name by which it is commonly known, and its resemblance to beech, justify its consideration with beech. The bluish color of the bark is responsible for its common name, but it is known by several others, among them being water beech, because it often grows on or near the banks of streams, and it seldom seems more at home than when it is hanging over the bank of a creek where shade is deep and moisture plentiful. It is often called hornbeam and ironwood, and it is closelyrelated to hop hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana). It grows from Quebec, to Florida and from Dakota to Texas, reaching its largest size in eastern Texas where it is sometimes sixty feet high and two in diameter, though this size is unusual. Few trees develop a bole less acceptable to lumbermen. In addition to being short, crooked, twisted, and covered with limbs, it is nearly always ribbed and fluted, so that a log, even if but a few feet long, is apt to be almost any shape except round. The thick sapwood is pale white, heart pale brown. The annual rings are usually easily seen, but they are vague, because of so little difference between the springwood and summerwood; diffuse-porous; medullary rays thin and usually seen only in the aggregate as a white luster where wood is sawed radially. The uses of this wood are many, but the amounts very small. It is made into singletrees and ax and hammer handles in Michigan, wagon felloes in Texas and other parts of the Southwest; levers and other parts of agricultural implements in various localities. It seldom goes to sawmills, is generally marketed in the form of bolts, and is hard, stiff, and strong.Beech branch

There is only one beech in the United States, and four or five in Europe and Asia. The southern portion of South America has several species which usually pass for beech. One or more of them are evergreen. Old world species are sometimes planted in parks and cemeteries in this country, but as forest trees they have no importance in the United States and probably never will have. It becomes a simple matter, therefore, to deal with the tree in this country. It is alone, and has no nearer relatives than the chestnuts, chinquapins, and the oaks, all of which are members of the same family, and the beech gives the name to the family—Fagaceæ. The blue beech, which is common in most states east of the Mississippi river and in some west, is not a member of the same family, though it looks enough like beech to be closely related to it.

The name has come down from remote antiquity. It is one of the oldest names in use. It is said to have descended through thousands of years from old Aryan tribes of Asia which were among the earliest to use a written language. For the want of better material, they cut the letters on beech bark, and a piece of such writing was called “boc.” It was but a step from that word to book—a collection of writings. Both beech and book came from the same word “boc” and the connection between them is very evident. The pronunciation has been little changed by the Germanic races during thousands of years, but the Romans translated it into Latin and called it “liber,” from which we have the word library. Doubtless in very ancient times, say 5,000 years before the building of Solomon’s temple, the libraries beyond the Euphrates river consisted of several cords of trimmed and lettered beech bark. Such material being perishable, it has wholly disappeared. The matter is not now directly connected with the lumber interests, but it increases one’s respect for beech to know how important a part it must have played in the ancient world, whereby it stamped its name so indelibly upon the language of the most intelligent portion of the human race.

The word buckwheat has the same origin. It means beech wheat, so named because the grains are triangular like beech nuts. The tree is always known as beech in this country, though it may have a qualifying word such as red, white, ridge.

It usually grows in mixed forests of hardwoods, but it is often found in the immediate presence of hemlock and spruce, grows fromMaine to Florida, and west to Arkansas. Considerable areas are often occupied by little else. This is attested by the frequency with which such names as “beech flat,” “beech ridge,” “beech woods,” and “beech bottom” are encountered in local geography. Perhaps the finest examples of beech growth in the United States occur in the higher altitudes of the lower Appalachian range in eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina, where trees are frequently encountered, showing a bole of perfectly symmetrical form, of from three to more than four feet in diameter, and of a sheer height of seventy feet before a limb is encountered. The wood which grows in this section is nearly as hard as that of the North, but that growing on lower levels in the South is of a much softer texture and lighter color, the heart being pinkish rather than reddish-brown.

Beech is one of the truly beautiful trees of the forest. In the eyes of many, the beech is as much to be admired as the American elm or sugar maple. Certainly in spring when it is covered with its staminate blossoms, it is a splendid sight, and its perfect leaves are seldom spotted or eaten by insects. In winter, it is particularly interesting. Its beautiful bark then appears very bright. After its fine leaves have fallen, though many of them, pale and dry, cling to the branches throughout the winter, the structure of its massive head is seen to advantage. In the Canadian markets and those of many of the middle and western states, its nuts are gathered and sold in considerable quantities. These nuts are favorite food of both the red and gray squirrel and these rodents collect them in considerable quantities during the late fall, and store them in tree hollows for their winter’s supply of food. It often happens, in felling beech trees in the winter, that shelled beech nuts to the quantity of a quart or more will be found secreted in some hollow by these provident little animals.

Formerly beech was little used for lumber, but was long ago given an important place as firewood and material for charcoal. Its excellent qualities as lumber have now made it popular in most markets. The sapwood is comparatively thin and the heart is very much esteemed for many purposes. Many millions of feet of it are converted into flooring and the “pure red” product is very highly esteemed for ornamental floors. It has not as good working qualities as maple, but still it stays in place even better than does that famous flooring material. Nearly all the large flooring factories of the North, whose principal output is maple, have a side line of beech flooring, and in the South, notably in Nashville, a considerable quantity of the wood is made into flooring. In full growth this beautiful tree is round topped, with wide spreading and horizontal branches, and shows a normal altitude of about sixtyfeet. In this form of growth branches appear on the body very close to the ground, and their ends often trail upon it. In its forest form, where trees of any sort are of commercial importance, it often attains a height of ninety or 100 feet, with smooth rounded bole as symmetrical as the pillar of a cathedral, with a diameter of from two to four feet. Its time to bloom is April or May, and its nuts ripen in October. The bark is a light bluish-gray, and remarkably smooth; the leaves are simple, alternate, with very short petioles, oblong with pointed apex and rounded or narrowed base. The ribs are straight, unbranching, and terminate in remote teeth. The fruit is a pair of three-sided nuts with a sweet and edible kernel which grows in a four-celled prickly burr, splitting when ripe.

Beech is an excellent fuel and it has long been used for that purpose. It is so regularly dispersed over the country that most neighborhoods were able to get it in the years when families cut their own firewood. Later, when charcoal was burned to supply primitive iron furnaces, before coke could be had, beech was always sought for. Still later, when large commercial plants were built to carry on destructive distillation of wood, beech was still a favorite. Its modern uses are many. There is scarcely a plant east of the Rocky Mountains, engaged in the manufacture of hardwood commodities, which does not use beech. In Michigan alone nearly 30,000,000 feet a year are demanded by box makers, and more than that much more by manufacturers of other commodities. It is widely employed for furniture, filing cabinets, vehicles, interior finish, agricultural implements, woodenware, and musical instruments. It is one of the heaviest and strongest of the common hardwoods, and gives long service when kept dry, but does not last well in damp situations.

Beech is strictly a forest tree. This does not mean that it will not grow in the open, but when it does grow there it makes poor lumber, short and limby. The seedlings must have shade if they are to do any good, but after they attain a certain size they can endure the light. The roots lie close to the surface of the ground, and the trampling of cattle often kills large trees.

Blue Beech(Carpinus caroliniana) is not in the beech family, but the name by which it is commonly known, and its resemblance to beech, justify its consideration with beech. The bluish color of the bark is responsible for its common name, but it is known by several others, among them being water beech, because it often grows on or near the banks of streams, and it seldom seems more at home than when it is hanging over the bank of a creek where shade is deep and moisture plentiful. It is often called hornbeam and ironwood, and it is closelyrelated to hop hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana). It grows from Quebec, to Florida and from Dakota to Texas, reaching its largest size in eastern Texas where it is sometimes sixty feet high and two in diameter, though this size is unusual. Few trees develop a bole less acceptable to lumbermen. In addition to being short, crooked, twisted, and covered with limbs, it is nearly always ribbed and fluted, so that a log, even if but a few feet long, is apt to be almost any shape except round. The thick sapwood is pale white, heart pale brown. The annual rings are usually easily seen, but they are vague, because of so little difference between the springwood and summerwood; diffuse-porous; medullary rays thin and usually seen only in the aggregate as a white luster where wood is sawed radially. The uses of this wood are many, but the amounts very small. It is made into singletrees and ax and hammer handles in Michigan, wagon felloes in Texas and other parts of the Southwest; levers and other parts of agricultural implements in various localities. It seldom goes to sawmills, is generally marketed in the form of bolts, and is hard, stiff, and strong.

Beech branch

CHESTNUTChestnutChestnut

ChestnutChestnut

Chestnut

CHESTNUT(Castanea Dentata)Five species of chestnut are known, three of them in the United States. One of these,Castanea alnifolia, is a shrub and has no place in a list of trees. Chestnut and chinquapin are the two others. They are in the beech family to which oaks belong also. The ancient Greeks designated these as food trees (Fagaceæ), not an inappropriate name for chestnut which probably furnishes more human food than any other wild tree. Its range extends from Maine to Michigan and southward to North Carolina and Tennessee. It attains its greatest size in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. It is one of the few well-known woods of the United States that does not bear a half dozen or more local names in the various localities of its growth, but the wood is invariably known as chestnut.Trees vary in size from sixty to 100 feet in height, and from two to four in diameter. Trunks six feet through occur where trees have grown in the open, but such are not tall, and are not valuable for lumber. Chestnut trees are sometimes heard of in this country with trunks ten and twelve feet through, but such must be very scarce, because no one seems to know just where they are located. It is not improbable that in rare cases such sizes have existed. In France and Italy trees much larger are well authenticated, but that chestnut is of a species different from ours.Chestnut is a very long-lived tree where it is fortunate enough to escape the attacks of worms and disease; but as age comes on, it is almost certain to be attacked. Insects bore the wood, and fungus induces decay. Frequently the heartwood of large trunks is all gone, and the trees stand mere shells with scarcely enough sound wood left to support the diseased tops.Few species sprout with more vigor than chestnut. In the mountains of eastern Tennessee, W. W. Ashe found that ninety-nine per cent of stumps sprout. This applies as well to veterans of three hundred years as to young growth. Sprouts which rise from the top of a high stump are liable to meet misfortune, because, under their disadvantage they cannot develop adequate root systems; but sprouts which spring from the root collar, or near it, may grow to large trees. It is claimed by some that a chestnut which grows from a sprout has straighter grain than one springing from seed. The latter’s trunk is liable to develop a spiral twist, not only of the wood, but also of the bark; but the sprout-grown tree lacks the twist.Chestnut blooms in midsummer, and the profusion of pale golden catkins makes the isolated tree a conspicuous object at that time. Bloom is nearly always abundant, but the nut crop fails frequently. Several accidents may happen, but the most frequent cause of scarcity in the chestnut crop is a spell of rainy weather while the trees are in bloom. The rain hinders proper pollenization.Many thousands of bushels of chestnuts are sent to market yearly in the United States. The nuts are smaller but sweeter than those of European chestnut. The largest part of the crop is collected from trees in open ground. Those in dense forests bear only a few nuts at the top. Open-grown trees develop enormous and shapely crowns; and it is not unusual for farmers who value their nut bearing trees to pollard them. This puts the tree out of consideration as a source of lumber. Its branches multiply, but the trunk remains short. It is claimed that a chestnut orchard of good form and in a region where large crops are frequent, is more profitable than an apple orchard. The tree does not demand rich land, but must have well-drained soil. It grows on rocky slopes and ridges, and will prosper where most other valuable trees will barely exist.It grows rapidly in its early life, but does not maintain the rate many decades. Large trees are old. In the southern Appalachians the ages of telegraph poles forty feet long and six inches in diameter at the top range from forty-five to sixty-five years. Trees of round fence-post size may grow in fifteen years. Few trees will produce posts more quickly or in larger numbers per acre. In some instances nearly a thousand saplings large enough for posts stand on a single acre. Sprout-growth chestnut often forms nearly pure stands of considerable extent.The value of this tree is in its wood as well as its nuts. More than 500,000,000 feet of lumber are cut from it yearly. Long before it was much thought of as a sawmill proposition, it was manufactured in large amounts into rails and posts by farmers, particularly in New England and in the Appalachian region. Axes, crosscut saws, mauls, and wedges were the means of manufacture. Untold millions of fence rails were split before wire fences were thought of. It is a durable wood, made so by the tannic acid it contains. As fence rails, it was more durable than the best oak, and where both were equally convenient, farmers nearly always chose chestnut. On high and dry ridges a chestnut rail fence would last from twenty-five to fifty years, and in extreme cases very much longer, even a full century it is claimed.Dry chestnut wood weighs 28.07 pounds per cubic foot, which makes it a light wood. Its annual rings are as clearly marked as those of any tree in this country. The springwood is filled with large openpores, the summerwood with small ones. The medullary rays are minute, and of no value in giving figure to the wood. Nevertheless, chestnut has strong figure, but it is due solely to the arrangement of the spring and summerwood of the annual rings. It is commonly classed as a coarse-grained wood. The finisher can greatly alter its appearance by rubbing the pores full of coloring matter. The wood is likewise susceptible to change in tone in the fumes of ammonia, and by similar treatment with other chemicals. The light colors of mission furniture are generally the result of treatment of that kind.The largest cut of chestnut lumber comes from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Connecticut. The largest use by any single industry is probably by the manufacturers of musical instruments, though the honor may be divided with furniture, interior house finish, and coffins and caskets. It is much employed as core or backing on which to glue veneers. The lumber of old, mature trees is best liked for this purpose, because it is not apt to shrink and swell, and it holds glue. It is no detriment that it is riddled with worm holes the size of pins. That kind of chestnut is known in the trade as “sound wormy.” Some persons claim that such lumber is better as backing for veneer than sound pieces, because it is lighter, is sufficiently strong, and the small holes seem to help the glue to stick. Wormy chestnut is frequently not objected to for outside work because the small holes are not hard to fill and cover up. The uses of chestnut are many. Between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 crossties go into railroad construction yearly. From 16,000 to 20,000 tons of wood are demanded annually for tanning extract. Every part of the tree is available.In recent years a disease due to fungus has attacked chestnut forests of Pennsylvania and neighboring regions. It has destroyed the timber on large areas, and the loss threatens to increase. A tree usually dies in one or two years after it is attacked. The fungus works beneath the bark and completely girdles the tree. The spores of the fungus are believed to be carried from tree to tree on the feet of birds, on the bodies of insects, and by the wind.Goldenleaf Chinquapin(Castanopsis chrysophylla) occurs on the Pacific coast from the Columbia river to southern California. It is of its largest dimensions in the coast valleys of northern California where it occasionally attains a size equal to the chestnut tree of the eastern states, but in many other parts of its range it is shrubby. It is an evergreen, and its name is descriptive of the underside of the leaf. Late in summer, flowers and fruit in several stages of growth may be seen at the same time. The nuts are sweet and edible. In northern California the bark is sometimes mixed with that of tanbark oak and sold to tanneries. The wood is considerably heavier than chestnut, and is sometimes employed in the making of agricultural implements. It has small and obscure medullary rays, and its pores are arranged more like thoseof live oak than of chestnut; that is they run in wavy, radial lines and not in concentric rings as in chestnut. The heartwood is darker than chestnut.Chinquapin(Castanea pumila) is a little chestnut that grows from Pennsylvania to Texas. It is generally a shrub or a bush ten or fifteen feet high east of the Alleghany mountains, but in some of the southern states it reaches a height of fifty feet and a diameter of two or more, and is of largest size in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. It has no name but chinquapin which is an Indian word supposed to have the same meaning that it now has. The nut is from one-fourth to one-half as large as a chestnut, and is fully as sweet. It is sold in the markets of the South and Southwest, but is not an important article of commerce. Where the trees are large enough, the wood is put to the same uses as chestnut. It is manufactured into furniture in Texas, and is bought by railroads for ties.Chestnut branch

Five species of chestnut are known, three of them in the United States. One of these,Castanea alnifolia, is a shrub and has no place in a list of trees. Chestnut and chinquapin are the two others. They are in the beech family to which oaks belong also. The ancient Greeks designated these as food trees (Fagaceæ), not an inappropriate name for chestnut which probably furnishes more human food than any other wild tree. Its range extends from Maine to Michigan and southward to North Carolina and Tennessee. It attains its greatest size in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. It is one of the few well-known woods of the United States that does not bear a half dozen or more local names in the various localities of its growth, but the wood is invariably known as chestnut.

Trees vary in size from sixty to 100 feet in height, and from two to four in diameter. Trunks six feet through occur where trees have grown in the open, but such are not tall, and are not valuable for lumber. Chestnut trees are sometimes heard of in this country with trunks ten and twelve feet through, but such must be very scarce, because no one seems to know just where they are located. It is not improbable that in rare cases such sizes have existed. In France and Italy trees much larger are well authenticated, but that chestnut is of a species different from ours.

Chestnut is a very long-lived tree where it is fortunate enough to escape the attacks of worms and disease; but as age comes on, it is almost certain to be attacked. Insects bore the wood, and fungus induces decay. Frequently the heartwood of large trunks is all gone, and the trees stand mere shells with scarcely enough sound wood left to support the diseased tops.

Few species sprout with more vigor than chestnut. In the mountains of eastern Tennessee, W. W. Ashe found that ninety-nine per cent of stumps sprout. This applies as well to veterans of three hundred years as to young growth. Sprouts which rise from the top of a high stump are liable to meet misfortune, because, under their disadvantage they cannot develop adequate root systems; but sprouts which spring from the root collar, or near it, may grow to large trees. It is claimed by some that a chestnut which grows from a sprout has straighter grain than one springing from seed. The latter’s trunk is liable to develop a spiral twist, not only of the wood, but also of the bark; but the sprout-grown tree lacks the twist.

Chestnut blooms in midsummer, and the profusion of pale golden catkins makes the isolated tree a conspicuous object at that time. Bloom is nearly always abundant, but the nut crop fails frequently. Several accidents may happen, but the most frequent cause of scarcity in the chestnut crop is a spell of rainy weather while the trees are in bloom. The rain hinders proper pollenization.

Many thousands of bushels of chestnuts are sent to market yearly in the United States. The nuts are smaller but sweeter than those of European chestnut. The largest part of the crop is collected from trees in open ground. Those in dense forests bear only a few nuts at the top. Open-grown trees develop enormous and shapely crowns; and it is not unusual for farmers who value their nut bearing trees to pollard them. This puts the tree out of consideration as a source of lumber. Its branches multiply, but the trunk remains short. It is claimed that a chestnut orchard of good form and in a region where large crops are frequent, is more profitable than an apple orchard. The tree does not demand rich land, but must have well-drained soil. It grows on rocky slopes and ridges, and will prosper where most other valuable trees will barely exist.

It grows rapidly in its early life, but does not maintain the rate many decades. Large trees are old. In the southern Appalachians the ages of telegraph poles forty feet long and six inches in diameter at the top range from forty-five to sixty-five years. Trees of round fence-post size may grow in fifteen years. Few trees will produce posts more quickly or in larger numbers per acre. In some instances nearly a thousand saplings large enough for posts stand on a single acre. Sprout-growth chestnut often forms nearly pure stands of considerable extent.

The value of this tree is in its wood as well as its nuts. More than 500,000,000 feet of lumber are cut from it yearly. Long before it was much thought of as a sawmill proposition, it was manufactured in large amounts into rails and posts by farmers, particularly in New England and in the Appalachian region. Axes, crosscut saws, mauls, and wedges were the means of manufacture. Untold millions of fence rails were split before wire fences were thought of. It is a durable wood, made so by the tannic acid it contains. As fence rails, it was more durable than the best oak, and where both were equally convenient, farmers nearly always chose chestnut. On high and dry ridges a chestnut rail fence would last from twenty-five to fifty years, and in extreme cases very much longer, even a full century it is claimed.

Dry chestnut wood weighs 28.07 pounds per cubic foot, which makes it a light wood. Its annual rings are as clearly marked as those of any tree in this country. The springwood is filled with large openpores, the summerwood with small ones. The medullary rays are minute, and of no value in giving figure to the wood. Nevertheless, chestnut has strong figure, but it is due solely to the arrangement of the spring and summerwood of the annual rings. It is commonly classed as a coarse-grained wood. The finisher can greatly alter its appearance by rubbing the pores full of coloring matter. The wood is likewise susceptible to change in tone in the fumes of ammonia, and by similar treatment with other chemicals. The light colors of mission furniture are generally the result of treatment of that kind.

The largest cut of chestnut lumber comes from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Connecticut. The largest use by any single industry is probably by the manufacturers of musical instruments, though the honor may be divided with furniture, interior house finish, and coffins and caskets. It is much employed as core or backing on which to glue veneers. The lumber of old, mature trees is best liked for this purpose, because it is not apt to shrink and swell, and it holds glue. It is no detriment that it is riddled with worm holes the size of pins. That kind of chestnut is known in the trade as “sound wormy.” Some persons claim that such lumber is better as backing for veneer than sound pieces, because it is lighter, is sufficiently strong, and the small holes seem to help the glue to stick. Wormy chestnut is frequently not objected to for outside work because the small holes are not hard to fill and cover up. The uses of chestnut are many. Between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 crossties go into railroad construction yearly. From 16,000 to 20,000 tons of wood are demanded annually for tanning extract. Every part of the tree is available.

In recent years a disease due to fungus has attacked chestnut forests of Pennsylvania and neighboring regions. It has destroyed the timber on large areas, and the loss threatens to increase. A tree usually dies in one or two years after it is attacked. The fungus works beneath the bark and completely girdles the tree. The spores of the fungus are believed to be carried from tree to tree on the feet of birds, on the bodies of insects, and by the wind.

Goldenleaf Chinquapin(Castanopsis chrysophylla) occurs on the Pacific coast from the Columbia river to southern California. It is of its largest dimensions in the coast valleys of northern California where it occasionally attains a size equal to the chestnut tree of the eastern states, but in many other parts of its range it is shrubby. It is an evergreen, and its name is descriptive of the underside of the leaf. Late in summer, flowers and fruit in several stages of growth may be seen at the same time. The nuts are sweet and edible. In northern California the bark is sometimes mixed with that of tanbark oak and sold to tanneries. The wood is considerably heavier than chestnut, and is sometimes employed in the making of agricultural implements. It has small and obscure medullary rays, and its pores are arranged more like thoseof live oak than of chestnut; that is they run in wavy, radial lines and not in concentric rings as in chestnut. The heartwood is darker than chestnut.Chinquapin(Castanea pumila) is a little chestnut that grows from Pennsylvania to Texas. It is generally a shrub or a bush ten or fifteen feet high east of the Alleghany mountains, but in some of the southern states it reaches a height of fifty feet and a diameter of two or more, and is of largest size in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. It has no name but chinquapin which is an Indian word supposed to have the same meaning that it now has. The nut is from one-fourth to one-half as large as a chestnut, and is fully as sweet. It is sold in the markets of the South and Southwest, but is not an important article of commerce. Where the trees are large enough, the wood is put to the same uses as chestnut. It is manufactured into furniture in Texas, and is bought by railroads for ties.

Goldenleaf Chinquapin(Castanopsis chrysophylla) occurs on the Pacific coast from the Columbia river to southern California. It is of its largest dimensions in the coast valleys of northern California where it occasionally attains a size equal to the chestnut tree of the eastern states, but in many other parts of its range it is shrubby. It is an evergreen, and its name is descriptive of the underside of the leaf. Late in summer, flowers and fruit in several stages of growth may be seen at the same time. The nuts are sweet and edible. In northern California the bark is sometimes mixed with that of tanbark oak and sold to tanneries. The wood is considerably heavier than chestnut, and is sometimes employed in the making of agricultural implements. It has small and obscure medullary rays, and its pores are arranged more like thoseof live oak than of chestnut; that is they run in wavy, radial lines and not in concentric rings as in chestnut. The heartwood is darker than chestnut.

Chinquapin(Castanea pumila) is a little chestnut that grows from Pennsylvania to Texas. It is generally a shrub or a bush ten or fifteen feet high east of the Alleghany mountains, but in some of the southern states it reaches a height of fifty feet and a diameter of two or more, and is of largest size in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. It has no name but chinquapin which is an Indian word supposed to have the same meaning that it now has. The nut is from one-fourth to one-half as large as a chestnut, and is fully as sweet. It is sold in the markets of the South and Southwest, but is not an important article of commerce. Where the trees are large enough, the wood is put to the same uses as chestnut. It is manufactured into furniture in Texas, and is bought by railroads for ties.

Chestnut branch

BASSWOODBasswoodBasswood

BasswoodBasswood

Basswood

BASSWOOD(Tilia Americana)There are about twenty species of basswood in the world, and from three to six of them are in the United States. Authors do not agree on the number of species in this country. There are at least three, and they occupy, in part, the same range, with consequent confusion. They are much alike in general appearance, and not one person in twenty knows one from the other. The same names apply to all, when they occur in the same region. Few trees carry more names, and with less reason. Basswood is generally not difficult to identify in summer, but in winter a person only slightly acquainted with different trees might take it for cucumber, and if of small size, it might possibly be mistaken for ash or mountain maple. When the tree is bearing leaves, flowers, and fruit, there is no excuse for mistaking it for any other. The fruit, a cluster of four or five berry-like globes, hangs under a leaf, fixed by a short stem to the midrib. This feature alone should be sufficient to identify the basswood in this country.Among the many names by which this tree is known, in addition to basswood, are American linden, linn, lynn, limetree, whitewood, beetree, black limetree, wickup, whistle wood, and yellow basswood.The range is extensive, its northeastern boundary lying in New Brunswick, its southwestern in Texas. It reaches Lake Winnipeg, and is found in Georgia. This delimited area is little short of a million square miles. It reaches a height of from sixty to 120 feet, and a diameter of from eighteen inches to four feet. It has a decided preference for rich soil, and the best lumber is cut in fertile coves and flats, or in low land near streams. The largest trees formerly grew in the forests of the lower Ohio valley, but few of the giants of former times are to be found in that region now. They went to market a generation or two ago. The largest cut of basswood lumber now is in Wisconsin, Michigan, and West Virginia, but most of that from West Virginia is white basswood (Tilia heterophylla).The wood weighs 28.20 pounds per cubic foot, which is more than the other basswoods in this country weigh. The rings of annual growth are not very clearly marked. They may be distinguished, in most cases, by a narrow, light-colored line. This is the springwood. In some trees it is much more distinct than in others. The wood is very porous, but the pores are small, cannot readily be seen with the naked eye, and are scattered pretty evenly through the yearly ring. The medullary rays are small but numerous. They give quarter-sawed lumber a pleasingluster, but are too minute to develop much figure. The general tone of the wood is white. It is soft, works easily, holds its shape well, and is tough, but is in no sense a competitor of oak and hickory in toughness, though it shows the quality best in thin panels which resist splitting and breaking.In the days when it was customary to ceil houses with boards, both overhead and the walls of rooms, carpenters were partial to basswood because of its softness. Dressing lumber was then nearly always done by hand, and the carpenter who pushed the jack plane ten or twelve hours a day, looked pretty carefully to the softness of the wood he handled. In tongued and grooved work, as in ceiling and wainscoting, it was not necessary to dress the fitting edges as carefully when basswood was used as in using some others, because it is so soft that fittings can be forced, and cracks may be closed by driving the boards together.Slack coopers have long employed basswood for barrel headings, and also in the manufacture of various kinds of small stave ware, such as pails, tubs, and kegs. In this use, as in ceiling, the softness of the wood is a prime consideration, because the pressure of the hoops will close any small openings. Its whiteness and its freedom from stains and unpleasant odors are likewise important when vessels are to contain food products. Box makers like the wood on that account, and large quantities are manufactured into containers for articles of food.Much basswood is cut into veneer, some of which serves in single sheets as in making small baskets and cups for berries and small fruits, but a large part of the output is devoted to ply work. Usually three sheets are glued together, but sometimes there are five. By crossing the sheets, to make the grain of one lie at right angles to the next, plies of great strength and toughness are produced. Trunk makers are large users of such, and many panels of that kind are employed by manufacturers of furniture and musical instruments.Woodenware factories find basswood one of their most serviceable materials, and it is made into ironing boards, wash boards, bread boards, and cutting boards for cobblers, saddlers, and glass cutters. Its lightness and toughness make it serviceable as valves and other parts of bellows for blacksmiths, organs, and piano players. Makers of gilt picture frames prefer it for molding which is to be overlaid with the gilt or gold. It is serviceable for advertising signs because its whiteness contrasts well with printing. Makers of thermometers use it frequently for the wooden body of the instrument, and yard sticks are made of it. Apiarists find no wood more suitable for the small, light frames in which bees build the comb.The uses of this wood are so many and so various that lists wouldprove monotonous. The annual cut in this country, exclusive of veneer, is nearly 350,000,000 feet, and the demand for veneer takes many millions more.Basswood is named for the bark, and the spelling was formerly bastwood. The manufacture of articles from the bark was once a considerable industry, not so much in this country as in Europe. However, some use has been made of the bark here. Louisiana negroes make horse collars of it by braiding many strands together, and chair bottoms are woven of it in lieu of cane and rattan, and it is likewise woven into baskets of coarse kinds. Bark is prepared for this use by soaking it in water, by which the annual layers of the bark are separated, long, thin sheets are produced, and these are reduced to strips of the desired width.The annual cut of basswood lumber is declining with no probability that it will ever again come up to past figures; but basswood is in no immediate danger of disappearing from American forests. It is not impossible that it may be planted for commercial purposes. In central Europe, forests of basswood, there called linden, are maintained for the honey which bees gather from the bloom. In this country it is often called beetree because of the richness of its flowers in nectar. Possibly bee owners may grow forests for the honey, and when trees are mature, dispose of them for lumber.White Basswood(Tilia heterophylla) attains a trunk diameter as great as that of the common basswood, but is not as tall. Trees sixty or seventy feet high are among the tallest. This species ranges from New York to Alabama, and is found as far west as southern Illinois, and its best development is among the rich valleys and fertile slopes of the Appalachian mountains from Pennsylvania southward. It is the prevailing basswood of West Virginia, and reaches its largest size on the high mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. It averages about two pounds lighter per cubic foot than the common basswood, but ordinarily neither the lumber nor the standing trees of the two species are distinguished. Only persons somewhat skilled in botany are able to tell one species of basswood from another as they occur in the forests of this country.Downy Basswood(Tilia pubescens) is a southern member of the basswood group, and is scarce. Its range extends from North Carolina to Arkansas and Texas. Trees are rarely more than forty feet high and fifteen inches in diameter. The wood is light brown, tinged with red, and the sap is hardly distinguishable from the heart. As far as it is used at all, its uses are similar to those of other basswoods.Southern Basswood(Tilia australis) is confined, as far as is now known, to a small section of Alabama, where it attains a height of sixty feet in rich woodlands. No reports on the quality of the wood have been published, and the species is too scarce to possess much interest to others than systematic botanists.Florida Basswood(Tilia floridana), as its name suggests, is a Florida species, and has not been reported elsewhere. It seems to be the smallest of American basswoods, the largest trees being little more than thirty feet high. No tests of the wood have been made and no uses reported.Michaux Basswood(Tilia michauxii) has been listed for a long time, but isstill not well known. Its range extends from Canada to Georgia and westward to Texas. Trees three feet in diameter and eighty feet high have been reported. Only botanists distinguish it from other species of basswood with which it is associated.Pawpaw(Asimina triloba) is of more value for its fruit than its wood. It grows from New York to Texas, but in certain localities only. It is the most northern species of the custard apple family, and is usually of little importance above an altitude of 1,500 feet. In Arkansas and some other southwestern regions it is called banana. It is usually a shrub, but may reach a height of forty feet and a diameter of twelve inches. The wood is light, soft, and weak. Pond apple (Annona glabra), called custard apple in some parts of its range in Florida, is a member of the same family. It attains the size of pawpaw, and the wood is similar.Basswood branch

There are about twenty species of basswood in the world, and from three to six of them are in the United States. Authors do not agree on the number of species in this country. There are at least three, and they occupy, in part, the same range, with consequent confusion. They are much alike in general appearance, and not one person in twenty knows one from the other. The same names apply to all, when they occur in the same region. Few trees carry more names, and with less reason. Basswood is generally not difficult to identify in summer, but in winter a person only slightly acquainted with different trees might take it for cucumber, and if of small size, it might possibly be mistaken for ash or mountain maple. When the tree is bearing leaves, flowers, and fruit, there is no excuse for mistaking it for any other. The fruit, a cluster of four or five berry-like globes, hangs under a leaf, fixed by a short stem to the midrib. This feature alone should be sufficient to identify the basswood in this country.

Among the many names by which this tree is known, in addition to basswood, are American linden, linn, lynn, limetree, whitewood, beetree, black limetree, wickup, whistle wood, and yellow basswood.

The range is extensive, its northeastern boundary lying in New Brunswick, its southwestern in Texas. It reaches Lake Winnipeg, and is found in Georgia. This delimited area is little short of a million square miles. It reaches a height of from sixty to 120 feet, and a diameter of from eighteen inches to four feet. It has a decided preference for rich soil, and the best lumber is cut in fertile coves and flats, or in low land near streams. The largest trees formerly grew in the forests of the lower Ohio valley, but few of the giants of former times are to be found in that region now. They went to market a generation or two ago. The largest cut of basswood lumber now is in Wisconsin, Michigan, and West Virginia, but most of that from West Virginia is white basswood (Tilia heterophylla).

The wood weighs 28.20 pounds per cubic foot, which is more than the other basswoods in this country weigh. The rings of annual growth are not very clearly marked. They may be distinguished, in most cases, by a narrow, light-colored line. This is the springwood. In some trees it is much more distinct than in others. The wood is very porous, but the pores are small, cannot readily be seen with the naked eye, and are scattered pretty evenly through the yearly ring. The medullary rays are small but numerous. They give quarter-sawed lumber a pleasingluster, but are too minute to develop much figure. The general tone of the wood is white. It is soft, works easily, holds its shape well, and is tough, but is in no sense a competitor of oak and hickory in toughness, though it shows the quality best in thin panels which resist splitting and breaking.

In the days when it was customary to ceil houses with boards, both overhead and the walls of rooms, carpenters were partial to basswood because of its softness. Dressing lumber was then nearly always done by hand, and the carpenter who pushed the jack plane ten or twelve hours a day, looked pretty carefully to the softness of the wood he handled. In tongued and grooved work, as in ceiling and wainscoting, it was not necessary to dress the fitting edges as carefully when basswood was used as in using some others, because it is so soft that fittings can be forced, and cracks may be closed by driving the boards together.

Slack coopers have long employed basswood for barrel headings, and also in the manufacture of various kinds of small stave ware, such as pails, tubs, and kegs. In this use, as in ceiling, the softness of the wood is a prime consideration, because the pressure of the hoops will close any small openings. Its whiteness and its freedom from stains and unpleasant odors are likewise important when vessels are to contain food products. Box makers like the wood on that account, and large quantities are manufactured into containers for articles of food.

Much basswood is cut into veneer, some of which serves in single sheets as in making small baskets and cups for berries and small fruits, but a large part of the output is devoted to ply work. Usually three sheets are glued together, but sometimes there are five. By crossing the sheets, to make the grain of one lie at right angles to the next, plies of great strength and toughness are produced. Trunk makers are large users of such, and many panels of that kind are employed by manufacturers of furniture and musical instruments.

Woodenware factories find basswood one of their most serviceable materials, and it is made into ironing boards, wash boards, bread boards, and cutting boards for cobblers, saddlers, and glass cutters. Its lightness and toughness make it serviceable as valves and other parts of bellows for blacksmiths, organs, and piano players. Makers of gilt picture frames prefer it for molding which is to be overlaid with the gilt or gold. It is serviceable for advertising signs because its whiteness contrasts well with printing. Makers of thermometers use it frequently for the wooden body of the instrument, and yard sticks are made of it. Apiarists find no wood more suitable for the small, light frames in which bees build the comb.

The uses of this wood are so many and so various that lists wouldprove monotonous. The annual cut in this country, exclusive of veneer, is nearly 350,000,000 feet, and the demand for veneer takes many millions more.

Basswood is named for the bark, and the spelling was formerly bastwood. The manufacture of articles from the bark was once a considerable industry, not so much in this country as in Europe. However, some use has been made of the bark here. Louisiana negroes make horse collars of it by braiding many strands together, and chair bottoms are woven of it in lieu of cane and rattan, and it is likewise woven into baskets of coarse kinds. Bark is prepared for this use by soaking it in water, by which the annual layers of the bark are separated, long, thin sheets are produced, and these are reduced to strips of the desired width.

The annual cut of basswood lumber is declining with no probability that it will ever again come up to past figures; but basswood is in no immediate danger of disappearing from American forests. It is not impossible that it may be planted for commercial purposes. In central Europe, forests of basswood, there called linden, are maintained for the honey which bees gather from the bloom. In this country it is often called beetree because of the richness of its flowers in nectar. Possibly bee owners may grow forests for the honey, and when trees are mature, dispose of them for lumber.

White Basswood(Tilia heterophylla) attains a trunk diameter as great as that of the common basswood, but is not as tall. Trees sixty or seventy feet high are among the tallest. This species ranges from New York to Alabama, and is found as far west as southern Illinois, and its best development is among the rich valleys and fertile slopes of the Appalachian mountains from Pennsylvania southward. It is the prevailing basswood of West Virginia, and reaches its largest size on the high mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. It averages about two pounds lighter per cubic foot than the common basswood, but ordinarily neither the lumber nor the standing trees of the two species are distinguished. Only persons somewhat skilled in botany are able to tell one species of basswood from another as they occur in the forests of this country.Downy Basswood(Tilia pubescens) is a southern member of the basswood group, and is scarce. Its range extends from North Carolina to Arkansas and Texas. Trees are rarely more than forty feet high and fifteen inches in diameter. The wood is light brown, tinged with red, and the sap is hardly distinguishable from the heart. As far as it is used at all, its uses are similar to those of other basswoods.Southern Basswood(Tilia australis) is confined, as far as is now known, to a small section of Alabama, where it attains a height of sixty feet in rich woodlands. No reports on the quality of the wood have been published, and the species is too scarce to possess much interest to others than systematic botanists.Florida Basswood(Tilia floridana), as its name suggests, is a Florida species, and has not been reported elsewhere. It seems to be the smallest of American basswoods, the largest trees being little more than thirty feet high. No tests of the wood have been made and no uses reported.Michaux Basswood(Tilia michauxii) has been listed for a long time, but isstill not well known. Its range extends from Canada to Georgia and westward to Texas. Trees three feet in diameter and eighty feet high have been reported. Only botanists distinguish it from other species of basswood with which it is associated.Pawpaw(Asimina triloba) is of more value for its fruit than its wood. It grows from New York to Texas, but in certain localities only. It is the most northern species of the custard apple family, and is usually of little importance above an altitude of 1,500 feet. In Arkansas and some other southwestern regions it is called banana. It is usually a shrub, but may reach a height of forty feet and a diameter of twelve inches. The wood is light, soft, and weak. Pond apple (Annona glabra), called custard apple in some parts of its range in Florida, is a member of the same family. It attains the size of pawpaw, and the wood is similar.

White Basswood(Tilia heterophylla) attains a trunk diameter as great as that of the common basswood, but is not as tall. Trees sixty or seventy feet high are among the tallest. This species ranges from New York to Alabama, and is found as far west as southern Illinois, and its best development is among the rich valleys and fertile slopes of the Appalachian mountains from Pennsylvania southward. It is the prevailing basswood of West Virginia, and reaches its largest size on the high mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. It averages about two pounds lighter per cubic foot than the common basswood, but ordinarily neither the lumber nor the standing trees of the two species are distinguished. Only persons somewhat skilled in botany are able to tell one species of basswood from another as they occur in the forests of this country.

Downy Basswood(Tilia pubescens) is a southern member of the basswood group, and is scarce. Its range extends from North Carolina to Arkansas and Texas. Trees are rarely more than forty feet high and fifteen inches in diameter. The wood is light brown, tinged with red, and the sap is hardly distinguishable from the heart. As far as it is used at all, its uses are similar to those of other basswoods.

Southern Basswood(Tilia australis) is confined, as far as is now known, to a small section of Alabama, where it attains a height of sixty feet in rich woodlands. No reports on the quality of the wood have been published, and the species is too scarce to possess much interest to others than systematic botanists.

Florida Basswood(Tilia floridana), as its name suggests, is a Florida species, and has not been reported elsewhere. It seems to be the smallest of American basswoods, the largest trees being little more than thirty feet high. No tests of the wood have been made and no uses reported.

Michaux Basswood(Tilia michauxii) has been listed for a long time, but isstill not well known. Its range extends from Canada to Georgia and westward to Texas. Trees three feet in diameter and eighty feet high have been reported. Only botanists distinguish it from other species of basswood with which it is associated.

Pawpaw(Asimina triloba) is of more value for its fruit than its wood. It grows from New York to Texas, but in certain localities only. It is the most northern species of the custard apple family, and is usually of little importance above an altitude of 1,500 feet. In Arkansas and some other southwestern regions it is called banana. It is usually a shrub, but may reach a height of forty feet and a diameter of twelve inches. The wood is light, soft, and weak. Pond apple (Annona glabra), called custard apple in some parts of its range in Florida, is a member of the same family. It attains the size of pawpaw, and the wood is similar.

Basswood branch

AMERICAN HOLLYAmerican hollyAmerican Holly

American hollyAmerican Holly

American Holly

AMERICAN HOLLY(Ilex Opaca)Holly is a characteristic member of a large family scattered through most temperate and tropical regions of the world. It belongs to the familyAquifoliaceæ, a name which conveys little meaning to an English reader until botanists explain that it means trees with needles on their leaves,acusmeaning needle, andfoliumleaf. How well holly, with its spiny leaves, fits in that family is seen at once.About 175 species of holly are dispersed in various parts of the world, the largest number occurring in Brazil and Guiana.Ilexis the classical name of the evergreen oak in southern Europe.The glossy green foliage and the brilliant red berries of the holly tree have long been associated in the popular mind with the Christmas season. Mingled with the white berries and dull green foliage of the mistletoe, it is the chief Yuletime decoration, and many hundred trees are annually stripped of their branches to supply this demand. The growth is still quite abundant, but if the destruction and waste continue, American holly will soon be exhausted.Its range extends from Massachusetts to Texas and from Missouri to Florida. In New England, the trees are few and small, and the same holds true in many parts of the Appalachian region. The largest trees are found in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. In the North it grows in rather dry, gravelly soil, often on the margins of oak woods, but in the South it takes to swamps, and does best on river bottoms where the soil is rich. It is often associated with evergreen magnolia, which it resembles at a distance, though differences are plain enough on close examination. The light, grayish-green barks of the two trees look much alike; but the magnolia’s leaves are larger, thicker, and lack the briers on the margins.Holly varies in size from small straggling bushes to well-formed trees fifty or sixty feet high and two or three in diameter. The principal value of holly is not in its wood, but in its leaves and berries. Some persons suppose that holly leaves never fall. That is true of no tree that attains any considerable age. An examination of a holly thicket, or a single tree, in the spring of the year will reveal a fair sprinkling of dead leaves on the ground, though none may be missed from the branches. Those that fall are three years old, and they come down in the spring. There are always two full years of leaves on the trees.Flowers are the least attractive part of holly. Few people ever notice the small, unobtrusive cymes, scattered along the base of theyoung shoots in the early spring, with the crop of young leaves. Nothing showy about them attracts attention.The fruit is the well-known berry, the glory of winter decorations. It is usually red, but sometimes yellow. The latter color is not often seen in decorations because it is a poor contrast with the glossy green of the leaves. The berries ripen late in autumn and hang until nearly spring, provided they are let alone. That is seldom their fortune, for if they escape the wreath hunter at Christmas, they remain subject to incessant attacks by birds. Fortunately, the berries are not very choice food for the feathered bevies that fly in winter; otherwise, the trees would be stripped in a day or two. Birds are attracted by the color, and they keep pecking away, taking one or two berries at a bait, and in the course of a long winter they get most of them.The gathering of holly leaves and berries is an industry of much importance, taken as a whole; but it lasts only a short time, and is carried on without much system. The greatest source of supply is northern Alabama, and the neighboring parts of surrounding states; but some holly is gathered in all regions where it is found. Those who collect it for market make small wages, but the harvest comes at a season when little else is doing, and the few dimes and dollars picked up are regarded as clear gain—particularly since most of the holly harvesters have no land of their own and forage for supplies on other people’s possessions.The seeds of holly are a long time in germinating, and those who plant them without knowing this are apt to despair too soon. The great differences in the germinating habits of trees are remarkable. Some of the maples bear seeds which sprout within a few days after they come in contact with damp soil, certain members of the black oak group of trees drop their acorns with sprouts already bursting the hulls, and mangroves are in a still greater hurry, and let fall their seeds with roots several inches long ready to penetrate the mud at once. But holly is in no hurry. Its seeds lie buried in soil until the second year before they send their radicles into the soil. They are so slow that nurserymen usually prefer to go into the woods and dig up seedlings which are already of plantable size.Users of woods find many places for holly but not in large amounts. The reported output by all the sawmills in the United States in 1909 was 37,000 feet, and Maryland produced more than any other state. The wood is employed for inlay work, parquetry, marquetry, small musical instruments, and keys for pianos and organs. Engravers find it suitable for various classes of work, its whiteness giving the principal value. It approaches ivory in color nearer than any other American wood. Brush back manufacturers convert it into their choice wares. It isoccasionally worked into small articles of furniture, but probably never is used in large pieces.The wood is rather light, and the vague boundaries between the annual rings, and the smallness and inconspicuousness of the medullary rays, are responsible for the almost total absence of figure, no matter in what way the wood is worked. The so-called California holly (Heteromeles arbutifolia) is of a different family, and is not a holly.Dahoon Holly(Ilex cassine) grows in cold swamps and on their borders in the coast region from southern Virginia to southern Florida, and westward to Louisiana. It is often found on the borders of pine barrens, is most common in western Florida and southern Alabama, and when at its best, is from twenty-five to thirty feet high and a foot or more in diameter. The leaves are nearly twice as long as those of common holly, and are generally spineless or nearly so. The fruit ripens late in autumn and hangs on the branches until the following spring. The berries are sometimes bright red, oftener dull red, and those fully up to size are a quarter of an inch in diameter. Some hang solitary, others in clusters of three. The wood is light and soft, weighing less than thirty pounds per cubic foot. The heart is pale brown, and the thick sapwood nearly white. The tree is known locally as yaupon, dahoon, dahoon holly, and Henderson wood. This species passes gradually into a form designated asIlex myrtifolia, which Sargent surmises may be a distinct species. Another form, narrowleaf dahoon (Ilex cassine angustifolia), is listed by Sudworth.Yaupon Holly(Ilex vomitoria) is a small, much-branched tree, often shrubby, and at its best is seldom more than twenty-five feet high and six inches in diameter. Its range follows the coast from southern Virginia to St. John’s river, Florida, and westward to eastern Texas. It sticks closely to tidewater in most parts of its habitat, but when it reaches the Mississippi valley it runs north into Arkansas. It attains its largest size in Texas, and is little more than a shrub elsewhere. Berries are produced in great abundance, are red when ripe, but they usually fall in a short time and are not much in demand for decorations. The wood weighs over forty-five pounds per cubic foot, is hard, and nearly white, but turns yellow with exposure. The leaves of this holly were once gathered by Indians in the southeastern states for medicine. The savages journeyed once a year to the coast where the holly was abundant, boiled the leaves in water, and produced what they called the “black drink.” It was nauseating in the extreme, but they drank copious draughts of it during several days, then departed for their homes, confident that good health was assured for another year.Mountain Holly(Ilex monticola) is so named because it grows among the Appalachian ranges from New York to Alabama. It is best developed in the elevated district where Tennessee and North and South Carolina meet near one common boundary. It is elsewhere shrubby. The leaves are deciduous, and the bright scarlet berries are nearly as large as cherries. They fall too early to make them acceptable as Christmas decorations. The wood is hard, heavy, and creamy-white, and if it could be had in adequate quantities, would be valuable. The trees are sometimes a foot in diameter and forty feet high, but they are not abundant. Their leaves bear small resemblance to the typical holly leaf, but look more like those of cherry or plum.Deciduous Holly(Ilex decidua) is called bearberry in Mississippi and possum haw in Florida, while in other regions it is known as swamp holly because of its habit of clinging to the banks of streams and betaking itself to swamps. It keeps away from mountains, though it is found in a shrubby form between the Blue Ridge and the sea in the Atlantic states, from Virginia southward. It runs west through the Gulf region to Texas, and ascends the Mississippi valley to Illinois and Missouri, attaining tree size only west of the Mississippi. The wood is as heavy as white oak, hard, and creamy-white, both heart and sap. Doubtless small quantities are employed in different industries, but the only direct report of its use comes from Texas where it is turned for drawer and door knobs in furniture factories. Most but not all of the leaves fall in early winter. The berries obey the same rule, some fall and others hang till spring. They are orange or orange-scarlet.American holly branch

Holly is a characteristic member of a large family scattered through most temperate and tropical regions of the world. It belongs to the familyAquifoliaceæ, a name which conveys little meaning to an English reader until botanists explain that it means trees with needles on their leaves,acusmeaning needle, andfoliumleaf. How well holly, with its spiny leaves, fits in that family is seen at once.

About 175 species of holly are dispersed in various parts of the world, the largest number occurring in Brazil and Guiana.Ilexis the classical name of the evergreen oak in southern Europe.

The glossy green foliage and the brilliant red berries of the holly tree have long been associated in the popular mind with the Christmas season. Mingled with the white berries and dull green foliage of the mistletoe, it is the chief Yuletime decoration, and many hundred trees are annually stripped of their branches to supply this demand. The growth is still quite abundant, but if the destruction and waste continue, American holly will soon be exhausted.

Its range extends from Massachusetts to Texas and from Missouri to Florida. In New England, the trees are few and small, and the same holds true in many parts of the Appalachian region. The largest trees are found in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. In the North it grows in rather dry, gravelly soil, often on the margins of oak woods, but in the South it takes to swamps, and does best on river bottoms where the soil is rich. It is often associated with evergreen magnolia, which it resembles at a distance, though differences are plain enough on close examination. The light, grayish-green barks of the two trees look much alike; but the magnolia’s leaves are larger, thicker, and lack the briers on the margins.

Holly varies in size from small straggling bushes to well-formed trees fifty or sixty feet high and two or three in diameter. The principal value of holly is not in its wood, but in its leaves and berries. Some persons suppose that holly leaves never fall. That is true of no tree that attains any considerable age. An examination of a holly thicket, or a single tree, in the spring of the year will reveal a fair sprinkling of dead leaves on the ground, though none may be missed from the branches. Those that fall are three years old, and they come down in the spring. There are always two full years of leaves on the trees.

Flowers are the least attractive part of holly. Few people ever notice the small, unobtrusive cymes, scattered along the base of theyoung shoots in the early spring, with the crop of young leaves. Nothing showy about them attracts attention.

The fruit is the well-known berry, the glory of winter decorations. It is usually red, but sometimes yellow. The latter color is not often seen in decorations because it is a poor contrast with the glossy green of the leaves. The berries ripen late in autumn and hang until nearly spring, provided they are let alone. That is seldom their fortune, for if they escape the wreath hunter at Christmas, they remain subject to incessant attacks by birds. Fortunately, the berries are not very choice food for the feathered bevies that fly in winter; otherwise, the trees would be stripped in a day or two. Birds are attracted by the color, and they keep pecking away, taking one or two berries at a bait, and in the course of a long winter they get most of them.

The gathering of holly leaves and berries is an industry of much importance, taken as a whole; but it lasts only a short time, and is carried on without much system. The greatest source of supply is northern Alabama, and the neighboring parts of surrounding states; but some holly is gathered in all regions where it is found. Those who collect it for market make small wages, but the harvest comes at a season when little else is doing, and the few dimes and dollars picked up are regarded as clear gain—particularly since most of the holly harvesters have no land of their own and forage for supplies on other people’s possessions.

The seeds of holly are a long time in germinating, and those who plant them without knowing this are apt to despair too soon. The great differences in the germinating habits of trees are remarkable. Some of the maples bear seeds which sprout within a few days after they come in contact with damp soil, certain members of the black oak group of trees drop their acorns with sprouts already bursting the hulls, and mangroves are in a still greater hurry, and let fall their seeds with roots several inches long ready to penetrate the mud at once. But holly is in no hurry. Its seeds lie buried in soil until the second year before they send their radicles into the soil. They are so slow that nurserymen usually prefer to go into the woods and dig up seedlings which are already of plantable size.

Users of woods find many places for holly but not in large amounts. The reported output by all the sawmills in the United States in 1909 was 37,000 feet, and Maryland produced more than any other state. The wood is employed for inlay work, parquetry, marquetry, small musical instruments, and keys for pianos and organs. Engravers find it suitable for various classes of work, its whiteness giving the principal value. It approaches ivory in color nearer than any other American wood. Brush back manufacturers convert it into their choice wares. It isoccasionally worked into small articles of furniture, but probably never is used in large pieces.

The wood is rather light, and the vague boundaries between the annual rings, and the smallness and inconspicuousness of the medullary rays, are responsible for the almost total absence of figure, no matter in what way the wood is worked. The so-called California holly (Heteromeles arbutifolia) is of a different family, and is not a holly.

Dahoon Holly(Ilex cassine) grows in cold swamps and on their borders in the coast region from southern Virginia to southern Florida, and westward to Louisiana. It is often found on the borders of pine barrens, is most common in western Florida and southern Alabama, and when at its best, is from twenty-five to thirty feet high and a foot or more in diameter. The leaves are nearly twice as long as those of common holly, and are generally spineless or nearly so. The fruit ripens late in autumn and hangs on the branches until the following spring. The berries are sometimes bright red, oftener dull red, and those fully up to size are a quarter of an inch in diameter. Some hang solitary, others in clusters of three. The wood is light and soft, weighing less than thirty pounds per cubic foot. The heart is pale brown, and the thick sapwood nearly white. The tree is known locally as yaupon, dahoon, dahoon holly, and Henderson wood. This species passes gradually into a form designated asIlex myrtifolia, which Sargent surmises may be a distinct species. Another form, narrowleaf dahoon (Ilex cassine angustifolia), is listed by Sudworth.

Yaupon Holly(Ilex vomitoria) is a small, much-branched tree, often shrubby, and at its best is seldom more than twenty-five feet high and six inches in diameter. Its range follows the coast from southern Virginia to St. John’s river, Florida, and westward to eastern Texas. It sticks closely to tidewater in most parts of its habitat, but when it reaches the Mississippi valley it runs north into Arkansas. It attains its largest size in Texas, and is little more than a shrub elsewhere. Berries are produced in great abundance, are red when ripe, but they usually fall in a short time and are not much in demand for decorations. The wood weighs over forty-five pounds per cubic foot, is hard, and nearly white, but turns yellow with exposure. The leaves of this holly were once gathered by Indians in the southeastern states for medicine. The savages journeyed once a year to the coast where the holly was abundant, boiled the leaves in water, and produced what they called the “black drink.” It was nauseating in the extreme, but they drank copious draughts of it during several days, then departed for their homes, confident that good health was assured for another year.

Mountain Holly(Ilex monticola) is so named because it grows among the Appalachian ranges from New York to Alabama. It is best developed in the elevated district where Tennessee and North and South Carolina meet near one common boundary. It is elsewhere shrubby. The leaves are deciduous, and the bright scarlet berries are nearly as large as cherries. They fall too early to make them acceptable as Christmas decorations. The wood is hard, heavy, and creamy-white, and if it could be had in adequate quantities, would be valuable. The trees are sometimes a foot in diameter and forty feet high, but they are not abundant. Their leaves bear small resemblance to the typical holly leaf, but look more like those of cherry or plum.Deciduous Holly(Ilex decidua) is called bearberry in Mississippi and possum haw in Florida, while in other regions it is known as swamp holly because of its habit of clinging to the banks of streams and betaking itself to swamps. It keeps away from mountains, though it is found in a shrubby form between the Blue Ridge and the sea in the Atlantic states, from Virginia southward. It runs west through the Gulf region to Texas, and ascends the Mississippi valley to Illinois and Missouri, attaining tree size only west of the Mississippi. The wood is as heavy as white oak, hard, and creamy-white, both heart and sap. Doubtless small quantities are employed in different industries, but the only direct report of its use comes from Texas where it is turned for drawer and door knobs in furniture factories. Most but not all of the leaves fall in early winter. The berries obey the same rule, some fall and others hang till spring. They are orange or orange-scarlet.

Mountain Holly(Ilex monticola) is so named because it grows among the Appalachian ranges from New York to Alabama. It is best developed in the elevated district where Tennessee and North and South Carolina meet near one common boundary. It is elsewhere shrubby. The leaves are deciduous, and the bright scarlet berries are nearly as large as cherries. They fall too early to make them acceptable as Christmas decorations. The wood is hard, heavy, and creamy-white, and if it could be had in adequate quantities, would be valuable. The trees are sometimes a foot in diameter and forty feet high, but they are not abundant. Their leaves bear small resemblance to the typical holly leaf, but look more like those of cherry or plum.

Deciduous Holly(Ilex decidua) is called bearberry in Mississippi and possum haw in Florida, while in other regions it is known as swamp holly because of its habit of clinging to the banks of streams and betaking itself to swamps. It keeps away from mountains, though it is found in a shrubby form between the Blue Ridge and the sea in the Atlantic states, from Virginia southward. It runs west through the Gulf region to Texas, and ascends the Mississippi valley to Illinois and Missouri, attaining tree size only west of the Mississippi. The wood is as heavy as white oak, hard, and creamy-white, both heart and sap. Doubtless small quantities are employed in different industries, but the only direct report of its use comes from Texas where it is turned for drawer and door knobs in furniture factories. Most but not all of the leaves fall in early winter. The berries obey the same rule, some fall and others hang till spring. They are orange or orange-scarlet.

American holly branch

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