YELLOW BUCKEYEYellow buckeyeYellow Buckeye
Yellow buckeyeYellow Buckeye
Yellow Buckeye
YELLOW BUCKEYE(Æsculus Octandra)Four species and one variety of buckeye are native in the United States, yellow buckeye, Ohio buckeye, California buckeye, small buckeye, and purple buckeye. They belong in the horse chestnut family. The so-called Texas buckeye is in a different family, and is not a true buckeye, but is close kin to the soapberry. The buckeyes are named for the large white spot on the smooth, brown nut, resembling the eye of a deer. The yellow buckeye is the most important of the group, is the largest and most abundant. It is known by the name of buckeye in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Kentucky. It is called sweet buckeye in West Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, Missouri, and Indiana, probably owing to the fact that it does not exhale the disagreeable odor characteristic of other members of the family. Yellow buckeye is the term applied to it in South Carolina and Alabama; large buckeye in Tennessee; big buckeye in Tennessee and Texas. It flourishes from Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, southward along the Alleghany mountains to northern Georgia and Alabama, westward along the valley of the Ohio river to southern Iowa, through Oklahoma and the valley of the Brazos river in eastern Texas. It thrives best along streams and in dense, rich woods. It reaches its fullest development on the slopes of the Alleghany mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee.The leaves of the buckeye are compound, with from five to seven leaflets; flowers appear in May or June and are dull yellow; the fruit is a large brown nut, one or two of which are enclosed in a rough, uneven husk, about two inches or more in diameter. The tree grows from forty to 100 feet in height, and attains a diameter of from one to three and a half feet.Buckeye grows intermingled with poplar, oak, maple, beech and a variety of other hardwoods. From its comparatively limited growth as compared with the totality of the average hardwood forest, it never has been recognized, and probably never will be, as a distinctive type of American commercial wood. The timber is felled with the other valuable trees surrounding it, and its appearance, when manufactured into lumber is so similar to that of the sap of poplar or whitewood that almost without exception it is assorted with poplar saps, and goes on the market masquerading as that wood. There is probably not one lumberman in a thousand, handling poplar, that is able to distinguish buckeye from sap poplar in his shipments of that wood.Sawmills make no distinction between the different species. All that comes is buckeye, but nearly all of it is the yellow species, though doubtless a little of all the others is cut into lumber and veneer, or goes to the slack cooperage shop, or to the pulp mill. The woods of all are quite similar, and they are used for the same purposes. If one is employed in larger quantities than another, it is because it is more convenient, or of better form or larger size.Early uses of buckeye were as important as those of the present day, though amounts were smaller. Many an Ohio statesman of former times boasted that, as a baby, he was rocked in a buckeye sugar trough for a cradle. They claimed with pride that the prevalance of the custom caused Ohio to be known as the buckeye state, a name which clings to it still. Next to yellow poplar, buckeye was considered the best wood from which to hew the small troughs which collected the sugar water from the tapped maples in early spring; but the range of buckeye did not extend northward into the real maple area, and the troughs like those which rocked the inchoate Ohio statesmen were unknown in the North, but were familiar along the mountain ranges southward. Dough trays, bread boards, chopping bowls, and troughs in which to salt bacon and pork, were hewed from buckeye by farmers and village woodworkers.It weighs 27.24 pounds per cubic foot; is diffuse-porous, and the slight difference between the wood grown in spring and that of late summer renders the annual rings indistinct. It has little figure, no matter how it is sawed; medullary rays are thin and obscure. Softness is one of the principal qualities, and it is also weak, and is wanting in rigidity. These are its faults, but it has virtues. It is tasteless and odorless, and these properties make it valuable in the manufacture of boxes in which food products are shipped. The reported cut of buckeye in the United States is from 11,000,000 to 13,000,000 feet a year. The reports of factories which use the wood in making commodities throw light on the question of actual use. North Carolina works 10,000 feet a year into cabinets and office fixtures; Michigan 100,000 into candy and chocolate boxes, dishes, and bowls; Maryland uses 200,000 feet yearly for practically the same purposes, but with the added commodities of spice drawers and tea chests. Makers of artificial limbs consider buckeye one of their best materials, but it is second to willow. The “cork legs” are usually either buckeye or willow. Pulp mills grind the wood for paper, but it is not separately listed in pulp statistics, and the total cut cannot be stated. It is converted into veneer and finds many places of usefulness, but here, also, no separate figures are to be had.The nuts are large and abundant, but almost wholly useless for man or beast. Bookbinders make paste of them, as a substitute forflour, and with satisfactory results. The paste resists ferments much better than that manufactured from flour; but the demand upon the nut supply for that purpose is very small. Squirrels and other small animals leave buckeyes alone. Some writers, whose acquaintance with this tree was apparently acquired at long range, state that the nuts are food for cattle. No person with knowledge of the buckeye says that. Cattle occasionally eat a few, but are poisoned thereby, and if they recover, they never again have anything to do with buckeyes.This tree is ornamental during a few months of the year. Its flowers are attractive, and its large, vigorous leaves and conspicuous fruit are admired in summer; but early in the fall the leaves come down, the husks burst from the nuts and strew the ground with unsightly fragments. The tree is seldom planted, but the horse chestnut, a foreign species, takes its place.Ohio Buckeye(Æsculus glabra) was once thought to be more abundant in Ohio than elsewhere, hence the name; but its best development is in Tennessee and northern Alabama. The disagreeable odor emitted by the bark gives it the names fetid and stinking buckeye, and it is known also as American horse chestnut. Its range is approximately the same as that of yellow buckeye, but it is a smaller tree, rarely more than thirty feet high, though it is seventy in exceptional cases. In common with other trees of the species, it prefers rich soil along water courses. The wood was formerly in demand for chip hats, but that use has apparently ceased. The sapwood is darker than the heart which is an exception to the general rule. Dark streaks, probably stains due to fungus, occasionally run through the trunk. In weight, strength, and stiffness the wood is approximately the same as yellow buckeye. Its odor is sufficient to distinguish it from that species, and it associates with no other except on rare occasions when it may be found with the small buckeye in western Tennessee and southern Missouri.California Buckeye(Æsculus californica) occurs only in the state whose name it bears. It is a short, much-branched, ill-formed tree; root large and shaped somewhat like an inverted tub, often standing a foot or more above the ground, and the branches rising from it. A tree so formed is without value to the general lumberman, but cabinet makers sometimes grub out the root and saw it transversely into thin lumber or veneer and make small articles which possess considerable figure, due to the involved growth, but little variety of color. Its tone is light yellow. The tree is found in the central part of California, from near sea level up to 4,500 in the Sierra Nevadas. It gets away from the immediate vicinity of water courses and grows on hillsides. It is heavier than any other American buckeye, and has very thin sapwood. Theother properties of the wood, and the botanical characters of the tree are common to other members of the species. The seeds depend for their dispersal on running water, when the tree grows by a stream, or on gravity, if situated on a hillside. The seed will not grow unless buried in moist soil, and it retains its vitality only a few months. Few trees in the United States have larger seeds than buckeyes. The tree is short-lived, reaching maturity in most cases in less than a hundred years. It is sometimes planted for ornament in this country and in Europe.Small Buckeye(Æsculus austrina) is one of the latest recognized members of the buckeye household. It seldom attains a diameter above five or six inches, or a height of twenty-five feet. It is, therefore, too small to be seriously considered as a source of lumber, and even if trunks were large enough, the species is too scarce to furnish many logs. It grows on rich uplands from western Tennessee and southern Missouri to Texas. The bright red flowers open in April, the fruit falls in October.Purple Buckeye(Æsculus octandra hybrida) is a variety characterized by red or purple flowers and by leaves woolly on the under sides, and bark of lighter color than that of yellow buckeye. The range follows the Appalachian mountains from West Virginia southward. It has been reported in Texas also. If the wood is used at all, it goes for the same purposes as yellow buckeye.Yellow buckeye leaf flower and fruit
Four species and one variety of buckeye are native in the United States, yellow buckeye, Ohio buckeye, California buckeye, small buckeye, and purple buckeye. They belong in the horse chestnut family. The so-called Texas buckeye is in a different family, and is not a true buckeye, but is close kin to the soapberry. The buckeyes are named for the large white spot on the smooth, brown nut, resembling the eye of a deer. The yellow buckeye is the most important of the group, is the largest and most abundant. It is known by the name of buckeye in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Kentucky. It is called sweet buckeye in West Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, Missouri, and Indiana, probably owing to the fact that it does not exhale the disagreeable odor characteristic of other members of the family. Yellow buckeye is the term applied to it in South Carolina and Alabama; large buckeye in Tennessee; big buckeye in Tennessee and Texas. It flourishes from Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, southward along the Alleghany mountains to northern Georgia and Alabama, westward along the valley of the Ohio river to southern Iowa, through Oklahoma and the valley of the Brazos river in eastern Texas. It thrives best along streams and in dense, rich woods. It reaches its fullest development on the slopes of the Alleghany mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee.
The leaves of the buckeye are compound, with from five to seven leaflets; flowers appear in May or June and are dull yellow; the fruit is a large brown nut, one or two of which are enclosed in a rough, uneven husk, about two inches or more in diameter. The tree grows from forty to 100 feet in height, and attains a diameter of from one to three and a half feet.
Buckeye grows intermingled with poplar, oak, maple, beech and a variety of other hardwoods. From its comparatively limited growth as compared with the totality of the average hardwood forest, it never has been recognized, and probably never will be, as a distinctive type of American commercial wood. The timber is felled with the other valuable trees surrounding it, and its appearance, when manufactured into lumber is so similar to that of the sap of poplar or whitewood that almost without exception it is assorted with poplar saps, and goes on the market masquerading as that wood. There is probably not one lumberman in a thousand, handling poplar, that is able to distinguish buckeye from sap poplar in his shipments of that wood.
Sawmills make no distinction between the different species. All that comes is buckeye, but nearly all of it is the yellow species, though doubtless a little of all the others is cut into lumber and veneer, or goes to the slack cooperage shop, or to the pulp mill. The woods of all are quite similar, and they are used for the same purposes. If one is employed in larger quantities than another, it is because it is more convenient, or of better form or larger size.
Early uses of buckeye were as important as those of the present day, though amounts were smaller. Many an Ohio statesman of former times boasted that, as a baby, he was rocked in a buckeye sugar trough for a cradle. They claimed with pride that the prevalance of the custom caused Ohio to be known as the buckeye state, a name which clings to it still. Next to yellow poplar, buckeye was considered the best wood from which to hew the small troughs which collected the sugar water from the tapped maples in early spring; but the range of buckeye did not extend northward into the real maple area, and the troughs like those which rocked the inchoate Ohio statesmen were unknown in the North, but were familiar along the mountain ranges southward. Dough trays, bread boards, chopping bowls, and troughs in which to salt bacon and pork, were hewed from buckeye by farmers and village woodworkers.
It weighs 27.24 pounds per cubic foot; is diffuse-porous, and the slight difference between the wood grown in spring and that of late summer renders the annual rings indistinct. It has little figure, no matter how it is sawed; medullary rays are thin and obscure. Softness is one of the principal qualities, and it is also weak, and is wanting in rigidity. These are its faults, but it has virtues. It is tasteless and odorless, and these properties make it valuable in the manufacture of boxes in which food products are shipped. The reported cut of buckeye in the United States is from 11,000,000 to 13,000,000 feet a year. The reports of factories which use the wood in making commodities throw light on the question of actual use. North Carolina works 10,000 feet a year into cabinets and office fixtures; Michigan 100,000 into candy and chocolate boxes, dishes, and bowls; Maryland uses 200,000 feet yearly for practically the same purposes, but with the added commodities of spice drawers and tea chests. Makers of artificial limbs consider buckeye one of their best materials, but it is second to willow. The “cork legs” are usually either buckeye or willow. Pulp mills grind the wood for paper, but it is not separately listed in pulp statistics, and the total cut cannot be stated. It is converted into veneer and finds many places of usefulness, but here, also, no separate figures are to be had.
The nuts are large and abundant, but almost wholly useless for man or beast. Bookbinders make paste of them, as a substitute forflour, and with satisfactory results. The paste resists ferments much better than that manufactured from flour; but the demand upon the nut supply for that purpose is very small. Squirrels and other small animals leave buckeyes alone. Some writers, whose acquaintance with this tree was apparently acquired at long range, state that the nuts are food for cattle. No person with knowledge of the buckeye says that. Cattle occasionally eat a few, but are poisoned thereby, and if they recover, they never again have anything to do with buckeyes.
This tree is ornamental during a few months of the year. Its flowers are attractive, and its large, vigorous leaves and conspicuous fruit are admired in summer; but early in the fall the leaves come down, the husks burst from the nuts and strew the ground with unsightly fragments. The tree is seldom planted, but the horse chestnut, a foreign species, takes its place.
Ohio Buckeye(Æsculus glabra) was once thought to be more abundant in Ohio than elsewhere, hence the name; but its best development is in Tennessee and northern Alabama. The disagreeable odor emitted by the bark gives it the names fetid and stinking buckeye, and it is known also as American horse chestnut. Its range is approximately the same as that of yellow buckeye, but it is a smaller tree, rarely more than thirty feet high, though it is seventy in exceptional cases. In common with other trees of the species, it prefers rich soil along water courses. The wood was formerly in demand for chip hats, but that use has apparently ceased. The sapwood is darker than the heart which is an exception to the general rule. Dark streaks, probably stains due to fungus, occasionally run through the trunk. In weight, strength, and stiffness the wood is approximately the same as yellow buckeye. Its odor is sufficient to distinguish it from that species, and it associates with no other except on rare occasions when it may be found with the small buckeye in western Tennessee and southern Missouri.
California Buckeye(Æsculus californica) occurs only in the state whose name it bears. It is a short, much-branched, ill-formed tree; root large and shaped somewhat like an inverted tub, often standing a foot or more above the ground, and the branches rising from it. A tree so formed is without value to the general lumberman, but cabinet makers sometimes grub out the root and saw it transversely into thin lumber or veneer and make small articles which possess considerable figure, due to the involved growth, but little variety of color. Its tone is light yellow. The tree is found in the central part of California, from near sea level up to 4,500 in the Sierra Nevadas. It gets away from the immediate vicinity of water courses and grows on hillsides. It is heavier than any other American buckeye, and has very thin sapwood. Theother properties of the wood, and the botanical characters of the tree are common to other members of the species. The seeds depend for their dispersal on running water, when the tree grows by a stream, or on gravity, if situated on a hillside. The seed will not grow unless buried in moist soil, and it retains its vitality only a few months. Few trees in the United States have larger seeds than buckeyes. The tree is short-lived, reaching maturity in most cases in less than a hundred years. It is sometimes planted for ornament in this country and in Europe.
Small Buckeye(Æsculus austrina) is one of the latest recognized members of the buckeye household. It seldom attains a diameter above five or six inches, or a height of twenty-five feet. It is, therefore, too small to be seriously considered as a source of lumber, and even if trunks were large enough, the species is too scarce to furnish many logs. It grows on rich uplands from western Tennessee and southern Missouri to Texas. The bright red flowers open in April, the fruit falls in October.
Purple Buckeye(Æsculus octandra hybrida) is a variety characterized by red or purple flowers and by leaves woolly on the under sides, and bark of lighter color than that of yellow buckeye. The range follows the Appalachian mountains from West Virginia southward. It has been reported in Texas also. If the wood is used at all, it goes for the same purposes as yellow buckeye.
Yellow buckeye leaf flower and fruit
SASSAFRASSassafrasSassafras
SassafrasSassafras
Sassafras
SASSAFRAS(Sassafras Sassafras)The French settlers in Florida were the first white men to give the name sassafras to this tree, but the Indians called it by that name long before. It was a tree which Indians were sure to name, because it had an individuality which appealed to them. It is not known what the real meaning of the word was, when the southern Indians used it. After the French adopted the name in Florida, it passed to other colonies and other languages, and has led to numerous disputes since. Many have erroneously supposed that the name is of Latin origin. When the English colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, the tree was well known by that name, but it was pronounced so variously and spelled in so many ways that it was often almost unrecognizable. It is pronounced variously and spelled differently yet. It is called sassafras in most regions, and in others is saxifrax, sassafas, sassafac, sassafrac, and saxifrax tree.Its range covers the territory from Massachusetts to Iowa and Kansas, and south to Florida and Texas. Some of that range it has occupied for vast periods of time, for sassafras leaves have been found embedded in the Cretaceous formations of Long Island. Near the northern limit of its range it is generally small, often of brush size; but further south it becomes a tree which sometimes exceeds 100 feet in height, and three or four in diameter. The best development of the species is in Arkansas and Missouri.Sassafras belongs to the laurel family. Strangely enough, the two trees which are usually supposed to be typical laurels—namely, mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) and great rhododendron, do not belong to the laurel family, but the heath family. The laurel family to which sassafras belongs includes many species in all parts of the world, some are evergreen, others are not, but all characterized by the strong, pungent odor of their wood or bark, and all having fruit with a single seed like a plum or cherry. The camphor tree from the distillation of whose wood commercial camphor (except synthetic camphor made largely from turpentine) is derived, belongs to this family, as do certain bay trees of the southern states. It was formerly supposed that sassafras existed only in the eastern half of the United States; but a species closely resembling ours, if not identical with it, has recently been found in China. The California laurel (Umbellularia californica) is in the same family with sassafras.This tree has had a peculiar history. It was once supposed topossess miraculous healing powers, and was shipped from Virginia to England in one of the first cargoes to go to that country from the present territory of the United States. Its supposed value did not consist in its use as lumber, but in some medicinal property which it was reputed to possess. People appeared to believe that it would renew the youth of the human race. Some portion of this superstition has clung round sassafras to this day, and it is not entirely confined to ignorant people. Bedsteads made of sassafras were supposed to drive away certain nightly visitors which disturb slumber. In southeastern Arkansas and northwestern Mississippi, bedsteads are still made of this wood, with the belief that sleep will be sounder. The same custom doubtless prevails elsewhere. In northern Louisiana floors of sassafras are occasionally laid in negro cabins because of the same superstition, and in the firm belief that it will keep out animals as large as rats and mice. Some of the mountaineers of Kentucky, where each family makes its own soap, insist that the kettle must be stirred with a sassafras stick or it will produce a poor quality of soap. Among the mountains of West Virginia many a farmer equips his henhouse with sassafras poles for roosts, fully convinced that he has put an effective quietus on all tribes, shoals, and kindred ofmenopon pallidum, and the hens will sleep better.The production of sassafras oil is perhaps the largest industry dependent upon this tree. Roots are grubbed by the ton and are subjected to destructive distillation. Much of this work is carried on in Virginia where sassafras spreads quickly into abandoned fields, springing up from seeds carried by birds. Veritable thickets soon take possession. Here is where the sassafras oil supply comes from. Contractors often clear the old fields and make them ready for tillage, taking the roots for pay.The wood weighs 31.42 pounds per cubic foot; is very durable when exposed to dampness; is slightly aromatic; inclined to check in drying; the layers of annual growth are marked by rings of large pores; summerwood is quite distinct from the earlier growth; medullary rays are many and thin; color dull orange-brown, the thin sapwood light yellow.Sassafras goes to sawmills in all regions where it is large enough for lumber, but the total cut is small. Reports from sawmills in 1909 credited this species with only 25,000 feet in the United States, and it was still less in 1910. It is evident that this is only a small portion of the total output, and probably Tennessee alone produces that much. The wood is sold with other species and loses its name, frequently passing as ash. The wood bears considerable resemblance to ash, in grain and color, but is lighter in weight, and much lower in strength.Sassafras was one of the canoe woods of early times along the lower Mississippi and its tributaries. Its two principal advantages over most woods with which it was associated was its light weight and lasting qualities. Canoes of this timber in Louisiana have given continued service for a third of a century.In all parts of its range, wherever it is of sufficient size, it has been used for posts. It is generally considered good for about twenty years. Large trunks were formerly split for rails, and a few are utilized in that way still, but most timber large enough for rails, now goes to sawmills. In Texas most of the sassafras supplied by sawmills is manufactured into furniture, but is listed as ash. The same thing is done in Arkansas and Missouri, but the use in the latter state is extended to interior house finish and office and bank fixtures. Sometimes it is made the outside wood, and the figure caused by sawing the logs tangentially is accentuated by stains and fillers. The figure of quarter-sawed wood is not attractive because the medullary rays are too small. It lasts well as railroad ties and a few are found in service in many parts of the tree’s range, but those who see it in the track are liable to mistake it for chestnut.A by-product of sassafras deserves mention—tea made from the flowers or from the bark of the roots. It is relished in the early spring, and is popular in most regions where the tree is known. The bark is a commercial commodity. It is tied in small bundles, and the price at retail ranges from a nickel to a dime each. Drug stores and grocers sell it. In the city of Washington in early spring sassafras peddlers canvas the city from center to circumference. They are generally negro men and women who dig the roots on the neighboring hills of Virginia and Maryland, strip the bark, tie it in small bundles, and by diligence and perseverance, succeed in converting the merchandise into money.Sassafras is often cited as an example of a tree with leaves of different forms. Three shapes are common, and all frequently occur on the same tree, and even on the same twig. One has no lobes, another has one lobe like the thumb of a mitten, and another has three.Lancewood(Ocotea catesbyana) is a small evergreen tree, looks much like laurel, and grows in southern Florida, on the islands and on the mainland in the vicinity of Biscayne bay. It is closely related to sassafras, and the bark has an aromatic odor. It belongs to a group of trees with nearly 200 species scattered in hot regions of both hemispheres. This is the only one belonging to the United States, and it appears to be a newcomer on these shores, from the fact that it has succeeded in obtaining so limited a foothold. It keeps well south of the region where itis likely to be frosted and it seldom exceeds a height of thirty feet and a diameter of eighteen inches. The fruit ripens in autumn and is dark blue with flesh thin and dry. The wood is hard, heavy, strong, checks badly in drying, and has a rich brown color, the sapwood being yellow. Rings of annual growth are marked with many small, regularly-distributed open ducts; medullary rays are thin and numerous; wood weighs 47.94 pounds per cubic foot; durable in contact with the soil, beautifully colored, and is highly prized for small cabinet work and novelties. At Miami, Florida, small trunks cut on neighboring hummocks, or brought from the keys, are worked into souvenirs to be sold to visitors. Lancewood fishing rods are among the strongest and most expensive on the market; but little of the material of which they are made grows in Florida. It is also manufactured into billiard cues and small handles.Sassafras branch
The French settlers in Florida were the first white men to give the name sassafras to this tree, but the Indians called it by that name long before. It was a tree which Indians were sure to name, because it had an individuality which appealed to them. It is not known what the real meaning of the word was, when the southern Indians used it. After the French adopted the name in Florida, it passed to other colonies and other languages, and has led to numerous disputes since. Many have erroneously supposed that the name is of Latin origin. When the English colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, the tree was well known by that name, but it was pronounced so variously and spelled in so many ways that it was often almost unrecognizable. It is pronounced variously and spelled differently yet. It is called sassafras in most regions, and in others is saxifrax, sassafas, sassafac, sassafrac, and saxifrax tree.
Its range covers the territory from Massachusetts to Iowa and Kansas, and south to Florida and Texas. Some of that range it has occupied for vast periods of time, for sassafras leaves have been found embedded in the Cretaceous formations of Long Island. Near the northern limit of its range it is generally small, often of brush size; but further south it becomes a tree which sometimes exceeds 100 feet in height, and three or four in diameter. The best development of the species is in Arkansas and Missouri.
Sassafras belongs to the laurel family. Strangely enough, the two trees which are usually supposed to be typical laurels—namely, mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) and great rhododendron, do not belong to the laurel family, but the heath family. The laurel family to which sassafras belongs includes many species in all parts of the world, some are evergreen, others are not, but all characterized by the strong, pungent odor of their wood or bark, and all having fruit with a single seed like a plum or cherry. The camphor tree from the distillation of whose wood commercial camphor (except synthetic camphor made largely from turpentine) is derived, belongs to this family, as do certain bay trees of the southern states. It was formerly supposed that sassafras existed only in the eastern half of the United States; but a species closely resembling ours, if not identical with it, has recently been found in China. The California laurel (Umbellularia californica) is in the same family with sassafras.
This tree has had a peculiar history. It was once supposed topossess miraculous healing powers, and was shipped from Virginia to England in one of the first cargoes to go to that country from the present territory of the United States. Its supposed value did not consist in its use as lumber, but in some medicinal property which it was reputed to possess. People appeared to believe that it would renew the youth of the human race. Some portion of this superstition has clung round sassafras to this day, and it is not entirely confined to ignorant people. Bedsteads made of sassafras were supposed to drive away certain nightly visitors which disturb slumber. In southeastern Arkansas and northwestern Mississippi, bedsteads are still made of this wood, with the belief that sleep will be sounder. The same custom doubtless prevails elsewhere. In northern Louisiana floors of sassafras are occasionally laid in negro cabins because of the same superstition, and in the firm belief that it will keep out animals as large as rats and mice. Some of the mountaineers of Kentucky, where each family makes its own soap, insist that the kettle must be stirred with a sassafras stick or it will produce a poor quality of soap. Among the mountains of West Virginia many a farmer equips his henhouse with sassafras poles for roosts, fully convinced that he has put an effective quietus on all tribes, shoals, and kindred ofmenopon pallidum, and the hens will sleep better.
The production of sassafras oil is perhaps the largest industry dependent upon this tree. Roots are grubbed by the ton and are subjected to destructive distillation. Much of this work is carried on in Virginia where sassafras spreads quickly into abandoned fields, springing up from seeds carried by birds. Veritable thickets soon take possession. Here is where the sassafras oil supply comes from. Contractors often clear the old fields and make them ready for tillage, taking the roots for pay.
The wood weighs 31.42 pounds per cubic foot; is very durable when exposed to dampness; is slightly aromatic; inclined to check in drying; the layers of annual growth are marked by rings of large pores; summerwood is quite distinct from the earlier growth; medullary rays are many and thin; color dull orange-brown, the thin sapwood light yellow.
Sassafras goes to sawmills in all regions where it is large enough for lumber, but the total cut is small. Reports from sawmills in 1909 credited this species with only 25,000 feet in the United States, and it was still less in 1910. It is evident that this is only a small portion of the total output, and probably Tennessee alone produces that much. The wood is sold with other species and loses its name, frequently passing as ash. The wood bears considerable resemblance to ash, in grain and color, but is lighter in weight, and much lower in strength.
Sassafras was one of the canoe woods of early times along the lower Mississippi and its tributaries. Its two principal advantages over most woods with which it was associated was its light weight and lasting qualities. Canoes of this timber in Louisiana have given continued service for a third of a century.
In all parts of its range, wherever it is of sufficient size, it has been used for posts. It is generally considered good for about twenty years. Large trunks were formerly split for rails, and a few are utilized in that way still, but most timber large enough for rails, now goes to sawmills. In Texas most of the sassafras supplied by sawmills is manufactured into furniture, but is listed as ash. The same thing is done in Arkansas and Missouri, but the use in the latter state is extended to interior house finish and office and bank fixtures. Sometimes it is made the outside wood, and the figure caused by sawing the logs tangentially is accentuated by stains and fillers. The figure of quarter-sawed wood is not attractive because the medullary rays are too small. It lasts well as railroad ties and a few are found in service in many parts of the tree’s range, but those who see it in the track are liable to mistake it for chestnut.
A by-product of sassafras deserves mention—tea made from the flowers or from the bark of the roots. It is relished in the early spring, and is popular in most regions where the tree is known. The bark is a commercial commodity. It is tied in small bundles, and the price at retail ranges from a nickel to a dime each. Drug stores and grocers sell it. In the city of Washington in early spring sassafras peddlers canvas the city from center to circumference. They are generally negro men and women who dig the roots on the neighboring hills of Virginia and Maryland, strip the bark, tie it in small bundles, and by diligence and perseverance, succeed in converting the merchandise into money.
Sassafras is often cited as an example of a tree with leaves of different forms. Three shapes are common, and all frequently occur on the same tree, and even on the same twig. One has no lobes, another has one lobe like the thumb of a mitten, and another has three.
Lancewood(Ocotea catesbyana) is a small evergreen tree, looks much like laurel, and grows in southern Florida, on the islands and on the mainland in the vicinity of Biscayne bay. It is closely related to sassafras, and the bark has an aromatic odor. It belongs to a group of trees with nearly 200 species scattered in hot regions of both hemispheres. This is the only one belonging to the United States, and it appears to be a newcomer on these shores, from the fact that it has succeeded in obtaining so limited a foothold. It keeps well south of the region where itis likely to be frosted and it seldom exceeds a height of thirty feet and a diameter of eighteen inches. The fruit ripens in autumn and is dark blue with flesh thin and dry. The wood is hard, heavy, strong, checks badly in drying, and has a rich brown color, the sapwood being yellow. Rings of annual growth are marked with many small, regularly-distributed open ducts; medullary rays are thin and numerous; wood weighs 47.94 pounds per cubic foot; durable in contact with the soil, beautifully colored, and is highly prized for small cabinet work and novelties. At Miami, Florida, small trunks cut on neighboring hummocks, or brought from the keys, are worked into souvenirs to be sold to visitors. Lancewood fishing rods are among the strongest and most expensive on the market; but little of the material of which they are made grows in Florida. It is also manufactured into billiard cues and small handles.
Sassafras branch
MADRONAMadronaMadrona
MadronaMadrona
Madrona
MADRONA(Arbutus Menziesii)Madrona is an interesting tree which ranges from British Columbia southward to central California, attaining its greatest development in the redwood forests of northern California, where trees are sometimes one hundred feet high and six or seven feet in diameter. It is not only an interesting tree itself, but it has many interesting relatives, some of which are trees, others shrubs, and still others only small plants or vines. It may be called a second cousin to the common huckleberry, the mountain laurel, trailing arbutus, the azaleas, the tiny wintergreen, and the great rhododendron. It has some poor relations, but many that are highly respectable. It belongs to the heath family, of which there are seventy genera, and more than a thousand species; but less than half of them are in America, the others being scattered widely over the world.The madrona, when at its best, is one of the largest members of the family; but it is not always at its best. It sometimes degenerates into a sprawling shrub, where it grows on poor ground and on cold, dry mountain tops. It is manifestly not fair to study any tree at its worst, and it is particularly not fair to the madrona, which varies so greatly in its appearance. At one place it may be scarcely large enough to shade the lair of a jackrabbit, and at another it spreads its branches wide enough to shade an army—a small army, however, say, about two thousand men. A tree of that size may be found within a few hours’ ride of San Francisco. Its branches cover an area of from eight thousand to ten thousand square feet.When madrona grows in the open it throws out wide limbs like a southern live oak, though not so large or long. Its crown is rounded and graceful; but when it grows in forests, where other trees crowd it, the trunk rises straight up to lift the crown into the sunlight and fresh air. The madrona is seen in all its glory in northwestern California, where it catches some of the warmth and the moist air from the Pacific. It follows the ranges of the Siskiyou mountains eastward near the boundary of California and Oregon. It is usually mixed with other forest trees, but sometimes large stands nearly pure are encountered, and there the long trunks, rather gray near the ground, but wine-colored above, rise in imposing beauty and are lost in the evergreen crowns.The leaves suggest those of laurel, but are broader. The large clusters of white flowers are among the glories of the vegetable kingdom.George B. Sudworth, dendrologist of the United States Forest Service, who usually describes in strictly prosaic terms, breaks away from that habit long enough to compare madrona flowers to lilies of the valley, in his “Forest Trees of the Pacific Slope.” The flowers appear from March to May, depending on latitude and elevation.The brilliant orange-red fruit ripens in the fall, and is often borne in great abundance. It renders the crowns of the trees very beautiful. The fruit is about half an inch long and contains many small angular seeds. The fruit is said to contain a substance which puts to sleep wild creatures that feed on it. The claim is probably mythical, for birds breakfast extravagantly on it in the morning, and apparently do not do any sleeping until after sunset.This tree was discovered by and named for Archibald Menzies, a Scotch botanist who traveled in the Northwest more than a hundred years ago. It has several local names, among them being madrove, laurel wood, madrone-tree, laurel, and manzanita. The last is the proper name of another small tree which is associated with madrona and is closely related to it.The wood weighs 43.95 pounds per cubic foot. It is a little below eastern white oak in fuel value, a little above it in strength, and somewhat under it in stiffness. The color is pale reddish-brown, resembling applewood in tone, but generally not quite so dark. The wood is porous, but the pores are very small. Medullary rays are numerous but thin. On account of the rays being of a little deeper red than the other wood, quarter-sawed stock is handsome and of somewhat peculiar appearance. The figure is much like quarter-sawed beech, but of deeper, more handsome color. The contrast between springwood and summerwood is not strong, though easily seen. Generally, the summerwood constitutes about one-fourth of the annual ring. The tree grows slowly, but with much irregularity. The increase in one season may be four or five times as great as in another. The bark exfoliates, and is quite thin.Madrona has never been put to much use. Difficulties in seasoning it have stood in the way. The wood warps and checks. Similar difficulties with other woods have been overcome, and such troubles should not be unduly discouraging. The beauty of the wood is unquestioned. It presents a fine appearance when worked into furniture, particularly in small panels and turned work, like spindles, knobs, and small posts. When made into grills it shows a surprising richness of tone. The wood polishes almost to the smoothness of holly. Small quantities are made into flooring; a little goes to the furniture makers; lathes turn some of it for novelties and souvenirs; fuel cutters sell it ascordwood; and tanbark peelers cut the trees for the thin, papery bark. In that case the trunks are left to decay, unless they happen to be convenient to a cordwood market.One of the most extensive uses for the wood of madrona is for charcoal burning. Blacksmiths buy it because it is cheaper than coal, and some is used in shops where soldering and welding are done; but the most exacting demand comes from gunpowder manufacturers. They find this wood almost equal to alder and willow as a source of charcoal suitable for powder.Mexican Madrona(Arbutus xalapensis) might properly be called Texas madrona as it occurs in that state and probably in no other, but its range extends southward into Mexico. It produces a poorly shaped trunk seldom much more than twenty feet high and one foot in diameter, and usually divided into several branches near the ground. It blooms in March and ripens its fruit in midsummer. The tree is found on dry limestone hills, and in the valley of the Rio Blanco, and among the Eagle mountains. Cabinet makers in Texas put the wood to rather exacting uses after they have carefully seasoned it to overcome its natural tendency to check. It is very hard; its color is a little lighter than applewood which it resembles; annual rings are scarcely visible, so regular and even is the year’s growth. In Texas the wood is made into plane stocks, tool handles, and mathematical instruments.Arizona Madrona(Arbutus arizonica) has a restricted range on the Santa Catalina and Santa Rita mountains of southern Arizona, where it ascends to an altitude of 8,000 feet. The species extends southward into Mexico. The largest trees attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of two. Trunks are usually straight and shapely, and show the thin, red bark common to the genus. The wood resembles that of the species in Texas, and doubtless is suited to the same purposes, but no utilization of it has been reported, except for fuel, and for fences and sheds on mountain ranches. When the region becomes more thickly settled, the value of the wood will be appreciated.Manzanita(Arctostaphylos manzanita) is not generally welcomed by botanists into the tree class. They say it is too small; but it is as large as some of the laurels which go as trees without question, and is shaped much like them. There are several species of manzanita. The word is Spanish and means “little apple.” The name is natural, for one of the most noticeable things about manzanita is the fruit, the size of well-grown huckleberries. It is shaped like an apple, and its tart taste suggests that fruit. The Digger Indians along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California gather the berries by the sack, dry them, and keep them for winter—if they can. It is often impossible to keep them because, like other fruit, they are apt to become wormy. When the Indians discover them in that condition they display rare thrift and economy for savages, by soaking the fruit and pressing out the juice, which is said to pass for a pretty fair quality of cider, but it must be quickly consumedor it will mother and change to vinegar. Indians now put the berries to use less frequently than in early times when they were nearly always hungry.Manzanita is of the same family as madrona. Its range extends along the mountains of the Pacific coast ranges from Oregon to Mexico, and inland to Utah. The largest trees are about twenty feet high and a foot or less in diameter; very much divided and branched, with limbs crooked in more ways, perhaps, than those of any other representative of the vegetable kingdom. Thousands of canes are cut from the branches, and if any living man ever saw a straight one he failed to report it. Manzanita grows in almost impenetrable thickets on dry slopes and ridges. Its thin foliage casts so pale a shadow that the tree’s shade is little cooler than the boiling sun upon the open naked ground and rocks. The bark is a reddish-chocolate color, and exfoliates in scales of papery thinness. The heart is nearly of the same color as the bark, but the sap is white and very thin. The wood is hard, strong, stiff, but exceedingly brittle. If a branch is sharply bent it will fly into splinters.The uses of the wood are numerous, but the total quantity demanded is moderate. Novelty stores sell small articles to tourists in California, sometimes passing the wood off as mountain mahogany which does not so much as belong to the same family. The most common articles manufactured by novelty shops from manzanita are canes, paper weights, paper knives, rulers, spoons, napkin rings, curtain rings, cuff buttons, dominos, manicure sticks, jewel boxes, match safes, pin trays, and photo frames.Madrona branch
Madrona is an interesting tree which ranges from British Columbia southward to central California, attaining its greatest development in the redwood forests of northern California, where trees are sometimes one hundred feet high and six or seven feet in diameter. It is not only an interesting tree itself, but it has many interesting relatives, some of which are trees, others shrubs, and still others only small plants or vines. It may be called a second cousin to the common huckleberry, the mountain laurel, trailing arbutus, the azaleas, the tiny wintergreen, and the great rhododendron. It has some poor relations, but many that are highly respectable. It belongs to the heath family, of which there are seventy genera, and more than a thousand species; but less than half of them are in America, the others being scattered widely over the world.
The madrona, when at its best, is one of the largest members of the family; but it is not always at its best. It sometimes degenerates into a sprawling shrub, where it grows on poor ground and on cold, dry mountain tops. It is manifestly not fair to study any tree at its worst, and it is particularly not fair to the madrona, which varies so greatly in its appearance. At one place it may be scarcely large enough to shade the lair of a jackrabbit, and at another it spreads its branches wide enough to shade an army—a small army, however, say, about two thousand men. A tree of that size may be found within a few hours’ ride of San Francisco. Its branches cover an area of from eight thousand to ten thousand square feet.
When madrona grows in the open it throws out wide limbs like a southern live oak, though not so large or long. Its crown is rounded and graceful; but when it grows in forests, where other trees crowd it, the trunk rises straight up to lift the crown into the sunlight and fresh air. The madrona is seen in all its glory in northwestern California, where it catches some of the warmth and the moist air from the Pacific. It follows the ranges of the Siskiyou mountains eastward near the boundary of California and Oregon. It is usually mixed with other forest trees, but sometimes large stands nearly pure are encountered, and there the long trunks, rather gray near the ground, but wine-colored above, rise in imposing beauty and are lost in the evergreen crowns.
The leaves suggest those of laurel, but are broader. The large clusters of white flowers are among the glories of the vegetable kingdom.George B. Sudworth, dendrologist of the United States Forest Service, who usually describes in strictly prosaic terms, breaks away from that habit long enough to compare madrona flowers to lilies of the valley, in his “Forest Trees of the Pacific Slope.” The flowers appear from March to May, depending on latitude and elevation.
The brilliant orange-red fruit ripens in the fall, and is often borne in great abundance. It renders the crowns of the trees very beautiful. The fruit is about half an inch long and contains many small angular seeds. The fruit is said to contain a substance which puts to sleep wild creatures that feed on it. The claim is probably mythical, for birds breakfast extravagantly on it in the morning, and apparently do not do any sleeping until after sunset.
This tree was discovered by and named for Archibald Menzies, a Scotch botanist who traveled in the Northwest more than a hundred years ago. It has several local names, among them being madrove, laurel wood, madrone-tree, laurel, and manzanita. The last is the proper name of another small tree which is associated with madrona and is closely related to it.
The wood weighs 43.95 pounds per cubic foot. It is a little below eastern white oak in fuel value, a little above it in strength, and somewhat under it in stiffness. The color is pale reddish-brown, resembling applewood in tone, but generally not quite so dark. The wood is porous, but the pores are very small. Medullary rays are numerous but thin. On account of the rays being of a little deeper red than the other wood, quarter-sawed stock is handsome and of somewhat peculiar appearance. The figure is much like quarter-sawed beech, but of deeper, more handsome color. The contrast between springwood and summerwood is not strong, though easily seen. Generally, the summerwood constitutes about one-fourth of the annual ring. The tree grows slowly, but with much irregularity. The increase in one season may be four or five times as great as in another. The bark exfoliates, and is quite thin.
Madrona has never been put to much use. Difficulties in seasoning it have stood in the way. The wood warps and checks. Similar difficulties with other woods have been overcome, and such troubles should not be unduly discouraging. The beauty of the wood is unquestioned. It presents a fine appearance when worked into furniture, particularly in small panels and turned work, like spindles, knobs, and small posts. When made into grills it shows a surprising richness of tone. The wood polishes almost to the smoothness of holly. Small quantities are made into flooring; a little goes to the furniture makers; lathes turn some of it for novelties and souvenirs; fuel cutters sell it ascordwood; and tanbark peelers cut the trees for the thin, papery bark. In that case the trunks are left to decay, unless they happen to be convenient to a cordwood market.
One of the most extensive uses for the wood of madrona is for charcoal burning. Blacksmiths buy it because it is cheaper than coal, and some is used in shops where soldering and welding are done; but the most exacting demand comes from gunpowder manufacturers. They find this wood almost equal to alder and willow as a source of charcoal suitable for powder.
Mexican Madrona(Arbutus xalapensis) might properly be called Texas madrona as it occurs in that state and probably in no other, but its range extends southward into Mexico. It produces a poorly shaped trunk seldom much more than twenty feet high and one foot in diameter, and usually divided into several branches near the ground. It blooms in March and ripens its fruit in midsummer. The tree is found on dry limestone hills, and in the valley of the Rio Blanco, and among the Eagle mountains. Cabinet makers in Texas put the wood to rather exacting uses after they have carefully seasoned it to overcome its natural tendency to check. It is very hard; its color is a little lighter than applewood which it resembles; annual rings are scarcely visible, so regular and even is the year’s growth. In Texas the wood is made into plane stocks, tool handles, and mathematical instruments.
Arizona Madrona(Arbutus arizonica) has a restricted range on the Santa Catalina and Santa Rita mountains of southern Arizona, where it ascends to an altitude of 8,000 feet. The species extends southward into Mexico. The largest trees attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of two. Trunks are usually straight and shapely, and show the thin, red bark common to the genus. The wood resembles that of the species in Texas, and doubtless is suited to the same purposes, but no utilization of it has been reported, except for fuel, and for fences and sheds on mountain ranches. When the region becomes more thickly settled, the value of the wood will be appreciated.
Manzanita(Arctostaphylos manzanita) is not generally welcomed by botanists into the tree class. They say it is too small; but it is as large as some of the laurels which go as trees without question, and is shaped much like them. There are several species of manzanita. The word is Spanish and means “little apple.” The name is natural, for one of the most noticeable things about manzanita is the fruit, the size of well-grown huckleberries. It is shaped like an apple, and its tart taste suggests that fruit. The Digger Indians along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California gather the berries by the sack, dry them, and keep them for winter—if they can. It is often impossible to keep them because, like other fruit, they are apt to become wormy. When the Indians discover them in that condition they display rare thrift and economy for savages, by soaking the fruit and pressing out the juice, which is said to pass for a pretty fair quality of cider, but it must be quickly consumedor it will mother and change to vinegar. Indians now put the berries to use less frequently than in early times when they were nearly always hungry.Manzanita is of the same family as madrona. Its range extends along the mountains of the Pacific coast ranges from Oregon to Mexico, and inland to Utah. The largest trees are about twenty feet high and a foot or less in diameter; very much divided and branched, with limbs crooked in more ways, perhaps, than those of any other representative of the vegetable kingdom. Thousands of canes are cut from the branches, and if any living man ever saw a straight one he failed to report it. Manzanita grows in almost impenetrable thickets on dry slopes and ridges. Its thin foliage casts so pale a shadow that the tree’s shade is little cooler than the boiling sun upon the open naked ground and rocks. The bark is a reddish-chocolate color, and exfoliates in scales of papery thinness. The heart is nearly of the same color as the bark, but the sap is white and very thin. The wood is hard, strong, stiff, but exceedingly brittle. If a branch is sharply bent it will fly into splinters.The uses of the wood are numerous, but the total quantity demanded is moderate. Novelty stores sell small articles to tourists in California, sometimes passing the wood off as mountain mahogany which does not so much as belong to the same family. The most common articles manufactured by novelty shops from manzanita are canes, paper weights, paper knives, rulers, spoons, napkin rings, curtain rings, cuff buttons, dominos, manicure sticks, jewel boxes, match safes, pin trays, and photo frames.
Manzanita(Arctostaphylos manzanita) is not generally welcomed by botanists into the tree class. They say it is too small; but it is as large as some of the laurels which go as trees without question, and is shaped much like them. There are several species of manzanita. The word is Spanish and means “little apple.” The name is natural, for one of the most noticeable things about manzanita is the fruit, the size of well-grown huckleberries. It is shaped like an apple, and its tart taste suggests that fruit. The Digger Indians along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California gather the berries by the sack, dry them, and keep them for winter—if they can. It is often impossible to keep them because, like other fruit, they are apt to become wormy. When the Indians discover them in that condition they display rare thrift and economy for savages, by soaking the fruit and pressing out the juice, which is said to pass for a pretty fair quality of cider, but it must be quickly consumedor it will mother and change to vinegar. Indians now put the berries to use less frequently than in early times when they were nearly always hungry.
Manzanita is of the same family as madrona. Its range extends along the mountains of the Pacific coast ranges from Oregon to Mexico, and inland to Utah. The largest trees are about twenty feet high and a foot or less in diameter; very much divided and branched, with limbs crooked in more ways, perhaps, than those of any other representative of the vegetable kingdom. Thousands of canes are cut from the branches, and if any living man ever saw a straight one he failed to report it. Manzanita grows in almost impenetrable thickets on dry slopes and ridges. Its thin foliage casts so pale a shadow that the tree’s shade is little cooler than the boiling sun upon the open naked ground and rocks. The bark is a reddish-chocolate color, and exfoliates in scales of papery thinness. The heart is nearly of the same color as the bark, but the sap is white and very thin. The wood is hard, strong, stiff, but exceedingly brittle. If a branch is sharply bent it will fly into splinters.
The uses of the wood are numerous, but the total quantity demanded is moderate. Novelty stores sell small articles to tourists in California, sometimes passing the wood off as mountain mahogany which does not so much as belong to the same family. The most common articles manufactured by novelty shops from manzanita are canes, paper weights, paper knives, rulers, spoons, napkin rings, curtain rings, cuff buttons, dominos, manicure sticks, jewel boxes, match safes, pin trays, and photo frames.
Madrona branch
COTTONWOODCottonwoodCottonwood
CottonwoodCottonwood
Cottonwood
COTTONWOOD[9](Populus Deltoides)[9]The following species grow in the United States: Cottonwood (Populus deltoides), Aspen (Populus tremuloides), Largetooth aspen (Populus grandidentata), Swamp Cottonwood (Populus heterophylla), Balm of Gilead (Populus balsamifera), Lanceleaf Cottonwood (Populus acuminata), Narrowleaf Cottonwood (Populus angustifolia), Black Cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa), Fremont Cottonwood (Populus fremontii), Mexican Cottonwood (Populus mexicana), Texas Cottonwood (Populus wislizeni).Eleven species of cottonwood are found in the United States, if all trees of the genusPopulusare classed as cottonwoods. It is not universally admitted, however, that they should be so classed. The common cottonwood is the most widely known of all of them, but it is recognized under different names in different regions, viz.: Big cottonwood, yellow cottonwood, cotton tree, Carolina poplar, necklace poplar, broadleaf poplar, and whitewood.Its range covers practically all of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. It is rare or missing in eastern New England and southern Florida, and most abundant in the Mississippi valley, and there the largest trees are found. Some exceed 100 feet in height, and four in diameter. Extreme sizes of 140 feet in height with diameters of from seven to nine have been reported. The cottonwood was a frontier tree on the western plains when settlers began to push into the region. It grew as far west as any hardwood of the eastern forests, and was found beyond meridian 100, which was supposed to be the boundary between the region of rains and the semi-arid country. The cottonwood clung to the river banks and to islands in the rivers, and by that means escaped the Indian’s prairie and forest fires which he kindled every year to improve the range for the buffalo. It is supposed that most of the open country east of meridian 100 was originally timbered, and that the Indians destroyed the forests by their long-continued habit of burning the woods and prairies every year to improve the pasture. Cottonwood was the longest survivor, because it grew in damp places where fires did not burn fiercely. Black willow was its most frequent companion on the western outposts of the forests.The cottonwood was fitted for holding its ground, and pushing forward. Its light seeds are carried by millions on the wind and by water. The tree bears large quantities of cotton (hence the name), and when the wind whips it from the tree, seeds are caught among the fibers and carried along, to be scattered miles away.This tree was not much thought of by eastern people who had plenty of other kinds of wood, but pioneers on the plains who had a hard time to get any, found cottonwood useful. It made fences, corncribs, stables, cabins, ox yokes, and fuel. The first canoes made by white men on the upper Missouri river were of cottonwood. Lumber cut from this tree is inclined to warp and check unless carefully handled, and this prejudiced it in the eyes of many; but difficulties of that kind were easily mastered, and instead of being a neglected wood it became popular. Some of the largest early orders came from Germany. Vehicle makers in this country employed it for wagon beds, as a substitute for yellow poplar when that wood’s cost advanced. Manufacturers of agricultural implements were pioneers in its use, it being excellent material for hoppers, chutes, and boxes.Cottonwood weighs 24.24 pounds per cubic foot, which is approximately the weight of white pine. It has about the stiffness of white oak, but only about eighty per cent of white oak’s strength, and fifty per cent of its fuel value. The wood is very porous, but the pores are small, usually invisible to the naked eye. The medullary rays are small and obscure. The appearance of the wood is not improved by quarter-sawing. The summerwood forms a thin, dark line, so faint that the annual rings are often scarcely distinguishable. The tree is generally a rapid grower; heartwood is brown, sapwood lighter, but as a whole, this tree produces white wood.The annual cut is declining. It was little more than half in 1910 what it was in 1899. Some regions where large trees were once abundant now have few. The sawmill output in 1910 for the United States—including several species—was 220,000,000 feet. The veneer cut was 33,000,000 feet, log measure; the slack cooperage staves, chiefly for flour barrels, numbered 44,000,000; and pulpwood amounted to about 18,000,000 feet. The lumber cut was largest in the following states in the order named: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Minnesota. The tree was lumbered in forty-one states.Cottonwood is a standard material in several lines of manufacturing. It is made into nearly every kind of box that goes on the market, from the cigar box to those in which pianos are shipped. Manufacturers of food products are particularly anxious to procure this wood, and it is one of the best for woodenware, such as dough boards, ironing boards, and cloth boards. It is used by manufacturers of agricultural implements, interior finish, bank and office fixtures, musical instruments, furniture, vehicle tops, trunks, excelsior, saddle trees, caskets and coffins, and numerous others.There is no danger that cottonwood will disappear from this country, but it will become scarce. It is being cut much faster than it is growing, and is losing favor as a planted shade and park tree, because of its habit of shedding cotton in the spring and its leaves in the early autumn.Swamp Cottonwood(Populus heterophylla) is known also as river cottonwood, black cottonwood, downy poplar, and swamp poplar. Its range describes a crude horseshoe, running from Rhode Island down the Atlantic coast in a narrow strip, where it is neither abundant nor of large size; touching northern Florida; running westward to eastern Texas and thence up the Mississippi basin and the Ohio river to southwestern Ohio. There is nothing handsome about its appearance with its heavy limbs and sparse, rounded crown. In the eastern range the average height is probably not more than fifty feet but in the fertile Mississippi valley it reaches 100 and has a long merchantable bole three feet in diameter. Its bark is rugged, dirty-brown and broken into loose, conspicuous ridges. It is easily distinguished from the other cottonwoods by the orange-colored pith in the twigs. The buds are rounded and red and have a resinous odor. Sawmills and factories never list this wood separately. It comes and goes as cottonwood. Its uses are the same as those of common cottonwood. The two species grow in mixture throughout the entire range of the swamp cottonwood.Texas Cottonwood(Populus wislizeni) is a rather large tree and is the common cottonwood in the upper valley of the Rio Grande in New Mexico and western Texas. The yellowish color of the twigs is apt to attract attention. The wood is used about ranches and occasionally a log finds its way to local sawmills; but its importance is limited to the region where it grows.Mexican Cottonwood(Populus mexicana) extends its range north of the Mexican boundary into southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. It is abundant in Mexico where the largest trees are eighty feet high and three or four in diameter. It is smaller near the northern limits of its range, and there it hugs the banks of mountain streams. Stockmen use the trunks, which are usually small enough to be called poles, to make fences and sheds.Narrowleaf Cottonwood(Populus angustifolia)is a mountain species which manages to live in the semi-arid regions from the Rocky Mountains of Canada to Arizona, but is seldom found below an elevation of 5,000 feet, and it ranges up to 10,000. Trunks are eighteen inches or less in diameter, and fifty or sixty feet high. The seeds are larger than those of most other cottonwoods. It being a semi-desert species, its wood is appreciated where it is accessible, and it has local uses only.Lanceleaf Cottonwood(Populus acuminata) is a small tree with limited range, growing in the arid region along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, southward from the Black Hills. It is found also north of the Canadian border. It is usually fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter, and thirty or forty feet high. Trunks seldom go to sawmills, but some local use is made of the wood. Trees are occasionally planted for shade in towns of western Nebraska and Wyoming.Fremont Cottonwood(Populus fremontii), called white cottonwood in New Mexico, but elsewhere simply cottonwood, grows from western Texas to California, and as far north as Utah and Colorado. It sometimes attains a diameter of five or six feet and a height of 100. The Indians in New Mexico formerly made rude, clumsy ox carts of this wood, without a scrap of iron or other metal in the vehicles. One of the carts is preserved in the National Museum, Washington, D. C. The wood is tough and light, but it is dull white, with no attractive figure. Even the annual rings are hardly distinguishable. Logs are occasionally sawed into lumber, and farmers in western Texas make wagon beds of it.Cottonwood branch
[9]The following species grow in the United States: Cottonwood (Populus deltoides), Aspen (Populus tremuloides), Largetooth aspen (Populus grandidentata), Swamp Cottonwood (Populus heterophylla), Balm of Gilead (Populus balsamifera), Lanceleaf Cottonwood (Populus acuminata), Narrowleaf Cottonwood (Populus angustifolia), Black Cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa), Fremont Cottonwood (Populus fremontii), Mexican Cottonwood (Populus mexicana), Texas Cottonwood (Populus wislizeni).
[9]The following species grow in the United States: Cottonwood (Populus deltoides), Aspen (Populus tremuloides), Largetooth aspen (Populus grandidentata), Swamp Cottonwood (Populus heterophylla), Balm of Gilead (Populus balsamifera), Lanceleaf Cottonwood (Populus acuminata), Narrowleaf Cottonwood (Populus angustifolia), Black Cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa), Fremont Cottonwood (Populus fremontii), Mexican Cottonwood (Populus mexicana), Texas Cottonwood (Populus wislizeni).
Eleven species of cottonwood are found in the United States, if all trees of the genusPopulusare classed as cottonwoods. It is not universally admitted, however, that they should be so classed. The common cottonwood is the most widely known of all of them, but it is recognized under different names in different regions, viz.: Big cottonwood, yellow cottonwood, cotton tree, Carolina poplar, necklace poplar, broadleaf poplar, and whitewood.
Its range covers practically all of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. It is rare or missing in eastern New England and southern Florida, and most abundant in the Mississippi valley, and there the largest trees are found. Some exceed 100 feet in height, and four in diameter. Extreme sizes of 140 feet in height with diameters of from seven to nine have been reported. The cottonwood was a frontier tree on the western plains when settlers began to push into the region. It grew as far west as any hardwood of the eastern forests, and was found beyond meridian 100, which was supposed to be the boundary between the region of rains and the semi-arid country. The cottonwood clung to the river banks and to islands in the rivers, and by that means escaped the Indian’s prairie and forest fires which he kindled every year to improve the range for the buffalo. It is supposed that most of the open country east of meridian 100 was originally timbered, and that the Indians destroyed the forests by their long-continued habit of burning the woods and prairies every year to improve the pasture. Cottonwood was the longest survivor, because it grew in damp places where fires did not burn fiercely. Black willow was its most frequent companion on the western outposts of the forests.
The cottonwood was fitted for holding its ground, and pushing forward. Its light seeds are carried by millions on the wind and by water. The tree bears large quantities of cotton (hence the name), and when the wind whips it from the tree, seeds are caught among the fibers and carried along, to be scattered miles away.
This tree was not much thought of by eastern people who had plenty of other kinds of wood, but pioneers on the plains who had a hard time to get any, found cottonwood useful. It made fences, corncribs, stables, cabins, ox yokes, and fuel. The first canoes made by white men on the upper Missouri river were of cottonwood. Lumber cut from this tree is inclined to warp and check unless carefully handled, and this prejudiced it in the eyes of many; but difficulties of that kind were easily mastered, and instead of being a neglected wood it became popular. Some of the largest early orders came from Germany. Vehicle makers in this country employed it for wagon beds, as a substitute for yellow poplar when that wood’s cost advanced. Manufacturers of agricultural implements were pioneers in its use, it being excellent material for hoppers, chutes, and boxes.
Cottonwood weighs 24.24 pounds per cubic foot, which is approximately the weight of white pine. It has about the stiffness of white oak, but only about eighty per cent of white oak’s strength, and fifty per cent of its fuel value. The wood is very porous, but the pores are small, usually invisible to the naked eye. The medullary rays are small and obscure. The appearance of the wood is not improved by quarter-sawing. The summerwood forms a thin, dark line, so faint that the annual rings are often scarcely distinguishable. The tree is generally a rapid grower; heartwood is brown, sapwood lighter, but as a whole, this tree produces white wood.
The annual cut is declining. It was little more than half in 1910 what it was in 1899. Some regions where large trees were once abundant now have few. The sawmill output in 1910 for the United States—including several species—was 220,000,000 feet. The veneer cut was 33,000,000 feet, log measure; the slack cooperage staves, chiefly for flour barrels, numbered 44,000,000; and pulpwood amounted to about 18,000,000 feet. The lumber cut was largest in the following states in the order named: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Minnesota. The tree was lumbered in forty-one states.
Cottonwood is a standard material in several lines of manufacturing. It is made into nearly every kind of box that goes on the market, from the cigar box to those in which pianos are shipped. Manufacturers of food products are particularly anxious to procure this wood, and it is one of the best for woodenware, such as dough boards, ironing boards, and cloth boards. It is used by manufacturers of agricultural implements, interior finish, bank and office fixtures, musical instruments, furniture, vehicle tops, trunks, excelsior, saddle trees, caskets and coffins, and numerous others.
There is no danger that cottonwood will disappear from this country, but it will become scarce. It is being cut much faster than it is growing, and is losing favor as a planted shade and park tree, because of its habit of shedding cotton in the spring and its leaves in the early autumn.
Swamp Cottonwood(Populus heterophylla) is known also as river cottonwood, black cottonwood, downy poplar, and swamp poplar. Its range describes a crude horseshoe, running from Rhode Island down the Atlantic coast in a narrow strip, where it is neither abundant nor of large size; touching northern Florida; running westward to eastern Texas and thence up the Mississippi basin and the Ohio river to southwestern Ohio. There is nothing handsome about its appearance with its heavy limbs and sparse, rounded crown. In the eastern range the average height is probably not more than fifty feet but in the fertile Mississippi valley it reaches 100 and has a long merchantable bole three feet in diameter. Its bark is rugged, dirty-brown and broken into loose, conspicuous ridges. It is easily distinguished from the other cottonwoods by the orange-colored pith in the twigs. The buds are rounded and red and have a resinous odor. Sawmills and factories never list this wood separately. It comes and goes as cottonwood. Its uses are the same as those of common cottonwood. The two species grow in mixture throughout the entire range of the swamp cottonwood.
Texas Cottonwood(Populus wislizeni) is a rather large tree and is the common cottonwood in the upper valley of the Rio Grande in New Mexico and western Texas. The yellowish color of the twigs is apt to attract attention. The wood is used about ranches and occasionally a log finds its way to local sawmills; but its importance is limited to the region where it grows.
Mexican Cottonwood(Populus mexicana) extends its range north of the Mexican boundary into southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. It is abundant in Mexico where the largest trees are eighty feet high and three or four in diameter. It is smaller near the northern limits of its range, and there it hugs the banks of mountain streams. Stockmen use the trunks, which are usually small enough to be called poles, to make fences and sheds.
Narrowleaf Cottonwood(Populus angustifolia)is a mountain species which manages to live in the semi-arid regions from the Rocky Mountains of Canada to Arizona, but is seldom found below an elevation of 5,000 feet, and it ranges up to 10,000. Trunks are eighteen inches or less in diameter, and fifty or sixty feet high. The seeds are larger than those of most other cottonwoods. It being a semi-desert species, its wood is appreciated where it is accessible, and it has local uses only.
Lanceleaf Cottonwood(Populus acuminata) is a small tree with limited range, growing in the arid region along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, southward from the Black Hills. It is found also north of the Canadian border. It is usually fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter, and thirty or forty feet high. Trunks seldom go to sawmills, but some local use is made of the wood. Trees are occasionally planted for shade in towns of western Nebraska and Wyoming.
Fremont Cottonwood(Populus fremontii), called white cottonwood in New Mexico, but elsewhere simply cottonwood, grows from western Texas to California, and as far north as Utah and Colorado. It sometimes attains a diameter of five or six feet and a height of 100. The Indians in New Mexico formerly made rude, clumsy ox carts of this wood, without a scrap of iron or other metal in the vehicles. One of the carts is preserved in the National Museum, Washington, D. C. The wood is tough and light, but it is dull white, with no attractive figure. Even the annual rings are hardly distinguishable. Logs are occasionally sawed into lumber, and farmers in western Texas make wagon beds of it.
Cottonwood branch
BALM OF GILEADBalm of GileadBalm of Gilead
Balm of GileadBalm of Gilead
Balm of Gilead
BALM OF GILEAD(Populus Balsamifera)This tree is known in different regions by the following names: Balsam, balm of Gilead, cottonwood, poplar, balsam poplar, and tacamahac. The usual name, balm of Gilead, is applied in recognition of the supposed healing virtue of the wax which covers the buds and young leaves. It has long been used in medicine, but its exact value is still a matter of discussion. The wild Indians of the North discovered a use for the balsam in mending their bark dishes, and plugging knot holes in the wooden trenchers. The wax is slow to dissolve in water, and it resisted for a long time such soups as were known to the redman’s culinary art. Bees know the value of the wax and use it to seal cracks and crevices in their hives and to hold the comb in place. It is popularly believed that the economy of the wax on the buds is to keep them from freezing. That view is erroneous, for it would take more than a coating of wax to keep the buds warm with the thermometer from fifty to seventy degrees below zero, as it is every winter in some parts of this tree’s range.Balm of Gilead is a native of the North from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but its finest growth is about the headwaters of the Mackenzie river, on Peace and Laird rivers, and the lower valley of the Athabaska. Sixty years ago Sir John Franklin reported that most of the driftwood of the Arctic ocean was this species. Since that time the range has been more definitely determined, and it is now known that the tree grows so far north that it is for some weeks in darkness, and again in summer for some weeks in unbroken sunshine. It grows in Alaska nearly 200 miles north of the Arctic circle. Its natural range southward reaches New England, New York, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, and Oregon.Trees of all sizes abound, from mere shrubs in the outskirts of its range to trunks 100 feet high and six feet in diameter in favored localities. In the United States the best timber seldom exceeds thirty inches in diameter and sixty or seventy feet in height. The bark on limbs and young trunks is brownish-gray, frequently so tinged with green that it is noticeable at a considerable distance; but usually large trees have reddish-gray bark with deep furrows and wide ridges. Year-old twigs are clear, shiny reddish-brown; end buds are about an inch long, the side buds somewhat shorter.The wood is not distinguishable in appearance from that of the other poplars or cottonwoods, but it is lighter than most of them, weighing 22.65 pounds per cubic foot, has a breaking strength which places it among the weakest woods, but in stiffness making a muchbetter showing. The pores are small, numerous, and are distributed equally through all parts of the wood.Balm of Gilead bears seeds abundantly and scatters them widely. It must do its planting quickly in the short summers of the cold North. It sticks close to alluvial flats, banks of rivers, borders of lakes and swamps, and gravelly soils. It grows to a diameter of fifteen inches in about forty-five years.Though balm of Gilead is not one of the most important timber trees of this country, its place is by no means obscure. No separate tally is kept of it among woods cut for pulp, but it goes with aspen and other similar species as “poplar.” A little better account is kept of the amount passing through wood-using factories. The annual quantity so reported in Illinois is 2,775,000 feet, and it is made into boxes and crates. The lumber is shipped from the North, since it does not grow as far south as Illinois. The situation is different in Michigan, for balm of Gilead grows there. The amount going yearly into factories in that state is reported at 4,912,000 feet. It is made into many commodities, but boxes and crates take most of it. The wood is reduced to veneer and converted into berry buckets, grape baskets, fruit and egg crates, and other small shipping containers. It is made into excelsior and woodwool which are used as packing material. Druggist’s barrels are manufactured from this wood. These are small, two-piece vessels, bored hollow, with a closely fitting lid, and varying in size from a couple of inches high, to nearly a foot. They contain powders, perfumes, pills, and other commodities in small bulk. The wood is worked into pails, tubs, and kegs. Furniture makers put balm of Gilead to use in several ways. It is cut thin for shelving; it is made into panels, and is employed as cores over which to lay veneers of more expensive materials. Woodenware factories generally keep it in stock in the northern states.The supply is ample at present to meet all demands. Cutters of pulpwood probably take more than sawmills, and are satisfied with smaller timber. Trees are often planted for ornament, but few if any have yet been propagated for forestry purposes.Hairy Balm of Gilead(Populus balsamifera candicans) is not a species but a variety, and it is so different from balm of Gilead that it is entitled to a place of its own. Ordinarily it passes under the common names applied to balm of Gilead. It is a cultivated tree in eastern Canada and northeastern United States, where it has escaped from cultivation and is running wild. Both Sargent and Sudworth say that nothing is definitely known of the tree’s native range; while it has been claimed by others that it once grew wild in Michigan but was destroyed by lumbermen. Probably most planted balm of Gileads are of thisvariety, as they are very ornamental. It is a large tree with branches less upright and crowns more open than in the wild species. The leaves are wide, heart-shaped, and are usually silvery white beneath with minute hairs on the margins, on the veins, and leaf stems. It is not improbable that this variety could be more profitably planted for forestry purposes than the species which grows wild; but there is no present indication that foresters favorably consider either of them.Largetooth Aspen(Populus grandidentata) is named on account of the shape of the leaves. It is sometimes called aspen, popple, white poplar, and large poplar. The wood weighs 28.87 pounds per cubic foot, and is the heaviest of the poplar group except Fremont cottonwood of the arid southwestern regions. The wood is white, attractive, but not strong. It was formerly manufactured into chip hats and shoe heels in New England, and is now used for baskets, crates, boxes, buckets, refrigerators, excelsior, and pulp. Northern factories usually give it the general name “poplar,” and for that reason its importance in the lumber trade is underestimated. Trees may reach a height of seventy feet with a diameter of two; but a height of forty or fifty is more usual. The species’ range extends from Nova Scotia to Minnesota, southward to Delaware and Illinois, and along the Appalachian mountains to North Carolina and Tennessee.Gumbo Limbo(Bursera simaruba) is a south Florida species and is known also as West Indian birch. It is in a family by itself with no near relative. It is not a birch. The wood is spongy and very light, weighing less than nineteen pounds per cubic foot. It decays with remarkable rapidity. Branches thrust in the ground take root and grow. An aromatic resin, exuding from wounds in the bark, is manufactured into varnish. The leaves are substituted for tea, and gout remedies are made from the resin. Large trees are fifty feet high and two feet or more in diameter. Another Florida tree, not in the same family as this, is also called gumbo limbo (Simarouba glauca), paradise tree, and bitter wood. Ailanthus (Ailanthus glandulosa) is in the same family as paradise tree, but is not native in this country, though extensively planted here.Angelica Tree(Aralia spinosa). This is a small tree, which usually develops little or no heartwood. The springwood, or the inner and porous part of the ring, is broad and yellow, the summerwood, or exterior part of the ring, is narrow and dark. The wood’s figure, due to the marked contrast between the outer and inner portions of the rings, is strong. When finished it shows a rich yellow, but somewhat lighter than dwarf sumach which it resembles. It is made into small shop articles, like button boxes, photograph frames, pen racks, stools, and arms forrocking chairs. Its range extends from Pennsylvania to Texas. It is sometimes known as Hercules’ club.Aspen(Populus tremuloides) is widely known but not everywhere by the same name. It is called quaking asp, mountain asp, aspen leaf, white poplar, popple, poplar, and trembling poplar. The peculiarity of the tree which is apt to attract attention, and which gives it most of the names it carries, is the leaf’s habit of being nearly always in motion. The day is remarkably still if aspen foliage is not stirring. This is due to the long, flat leaf stem, which is so limber that it offers little resistance to air currents. The difference in color between the upper and lower sides of the leaves affords sufficient contrast to attract notice, and for that reason a person will observe the motion of aspen leaves when he might fail to see a similar movement among the leaves of other species where the contrast of colors is not so marked. Aspen is credited with being the most widely distributed tree of North America. It grows from Tennessee to the Arctic ocean, from Mexico to northern Alaska, from Labrador to Bering strait. It is found at sea level, and at 10,000 feet elevation among the mountains of California. Its very small seeds grow in enormous numbers. Winds carry them miles, and scatter them by millions. They spring up quickly when they fall on mineral soil. This places it in the class with “fire trees”—those which take possession of burned tracts. Paper birch is in this class. Aspen has replaced pines over large burned areas of the Rocky Mountains. It grows quickly but is weak if it has to contend with other trees. If crowded it speedily gives up the fight and dies. The wood is not strong, but is useful for several purposes. Next to spruce and hemlock, it is the most important pulpwood in this country, and it is coming into considerable use as lumber. The whiteness of the wood—it looks much like holly—makes it a favorite for small boxes and vessels for shipping and containing foods. It is made into jelly buckets, lard pails, fish kits, spice kegs, sugar buckets and a long line of similar articles. It turns well, and is made into wooden dishes. Michigan alone uses two and a half million feet of it a year; and it is in demand along the whole northern tier of states from Maine to Washington, but because it is not separately listed in lumber output, it is difficult to say how much is used. Trees are usually small, though trunks three feet in diameter are not unknown. It grows rapidly, and may be expected to fill an important place in this country’s future timber supply. There will be no occasion to plant it by artificial means, for nature will attend to the planting.Balm of Gilead branch
This tree is known in different regions by the following names: Balsam, balm of Gilead, cottonwood, poplar, balsam poplar, and tacamahac. The usual name, balm of Gilead, is applied in recognition of the supposed healing virtue of the wax which covers the buds and young leaves. It has long been used in medicine, but its exact value is still a matter of discussion. The wild Indians of the North discovered a use for the balsam in mending their bark dishes, and plugging knot holes in the wooden trenchers. The wax is slow to dissolve in water, and it resisted for a long time such soups as were known to the redman’s culinary art. Bees know the value of the wax and use it to seal cracks and crevices in their hives and to hold the comb in place. It is popularly believed that the economy of the wax on the buds is to keep them from freezing. That view is erroneous, for it would take more than a coating of wax to keep the buds warm with the thermometer from fifty to seventy degrees below zero, as it is every winter in some parts of this tree’s range.
Balm of Gilead is a native of the North from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but its finest growth is about the headwaters of the Mackenzie river, on Peace and Laird rivers, and the lower valley of the Athabaska. Sixty years ago Sir John Franklin reported that most of the driftwood of the Arctic ocean was this species. Since that time the range has been more definitely determined, and it is now known that the tree grows so far north that it is for some weeks in darkness, and again in summer for some weeks in unbroken sunshine. It grows in Alaska nearly 200 miles north of the Arctic circle. Its natural range southward reaches New England, New York, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, and Oregon.
Trees of all sizes abound, from mere shrubs in the outskirts of its range to trunks 100 feet high and six feet in diameter in favored localities. In the United States the best timber seldom exceeds thirty inches in diameter and sixty or seventy feet in height. The bark on limbs and young trunks is brownish-gray, frequently so tinged with green that it is noticeable at a considerable distance; but usually large trees have reddish-gray bark with deep furrows and wide ridges. Year-old twigs are clear, shiny reddish-brown; end buds are about an inch long, the side buds somewhat shorter.
The wood is not distinguishable in appearance from that of the other poplars or cottonwoods, but it is lighter than most of them, weighing 22.65 pounds per cubic foot, has a breaking strength which places it among the weakest woods, but in stiffness making a muchbetter showing. The pores are small, numerous, and are distributed equally through all parts of the wood.
Balm of Gilead bears seeds abundantly and scatters them widely. It must do its planting quickly in the short summers of the cold North. It sticks close to alluvial flats, banks of rivers, borders of lakes and swamps, and gravelly soils. It grows to a diameter of fifteen inches in about forty-five years.
Though balm of Gilead is not one of the most important timber trees of this country, its place is by no means obscure. No separate tally is kept of it among woods cut for pulp, but it goes with aspen and other similar species as “poplar.” A little better account is kept of the amount passing through wood-using factories. The annual quantity so reported in Illinois is 2,775,000 feet, and it is made into boxes and crates. The lumber is shipped from the North, since it does not grow as far south as Illinois. The situation is different in Michigan, for balm of Gilead grows there. The amount going yearly into factories in that state is reported at 4,912,000 feet. It is made into many commodities, but boxes and crates take most of it. The wood is reduced to veneer and converted into berry buckets, grape baskets, fruit and egg crates, and other small shipping containers. It is made into excelsior and woodwool which are used as packing material. Druggist’s barrels are manufactured from this wood. These are small, two-piece vessels, bored hollow, with a closely fitting lid, and varying in size from a couple of inches high, to nearly a foot. They contain powders, perfumes, pills, and other commodities in small bulk. The wood is worked into pails, tubs, and kegs. Furniture makers put balm of Gilead to use in several ways. It is cut thin for shelving; it is made into panels, and is employed as cores over which to lay veneers of more expensive materials. Woodenware factories generally keep it in stock in the northern states.
The supply is ample at present to meet all demands. Cutters of pulpwood probably take more than sawmills, and are satisfied with smaller timber. Trees are often planted for ornament, but few if any have yet been propagated for forestry purposes.
Hairy Balm of Gilead(Populus balsamifera candicans) is not a species but a variety, and it is so different from balm of Gilead that it is entitled to a place of its own. Ordinarily it passes under the common names applied to balm of Gilead. It is a cultivated tree in eastern Canada and northeastern United States, where it has escaped from cultivation and is running wild. Both Sargent and Sudworth say that nothing is definitely known of the tree’s native range; while it has been claimed by others that it once grew wild in Michigan but was destroyed by lumbermen. Probably most planted balm of Gileads are of thisvariety, as they are very ornamental. It is a large tree with branches less upright and crowns more open than in the wild species. The leaves are wide, heart-shaped, and are usually silvery white beneath with minute hairs on the margins, on the veins, and leaf stems. It is not improbable that this variety could be more profitably planted for forestry purposes than the species which grows wild; but there is no present indication that foresters favorably consider either of them.
Largetooth Aspen(Populus grandidentata) is named on account of the shape of the leaves. It is sometimes called aspen, popple, white poplar, and large poplar. The wood weighs 28.87 pounds per cubic foot, and is the heaviest of the poplar group except Fremont cottonwood of the arid southwestern regions. The wood is white, attractive, but not strong. It was formerly manufactured into chip hats and shoe heels in New England, and is now used for baskets, crates, boxes, buckets, refrigerators, excelsior, and pulp. Northern factories usually give it the general name “poplar,” and for that reason its importance in the lumber trade is underestimated. Trees may reach a height of seventy feet with a diameter of two; but a height of forty or fifty is more usual. The species’ range extends from Nova Scotia to Minnesota, southward to Delaware and Illinois, and along the Appalachian mountains to North Carolina and Tennessee.
Gumbo Limbo(Bursera simaruba) is a south Florida species and is known also as West Indian birch. It is in a family by itself with no near relative. It is not a birch. The wood is spongy and very light, weighing less than nineteen pounds per cubic foot. It decays with remarkable rapidity. Branches thrust in the ground take root and grow. An aromatic resin, exuding from wounds in the bark, is manufactured into varnish. The leaves are substituted for tea, and gout remedies are made from the resin. Large trees are fifty feet high and two feet or more in diameter. Another Florida tree, not in the same family as this, is also called gumbo limbo (Simarouba glauca), paradise tree, and bitter wood. Ailanthus (Ailanthus glandulosa) is in the same family as paradise tree, but is not native in this country, though extensively planted here.
Angelica Tree(Aralia spinosa). This is a small tree, which usually develops little or no heartwood. The springwood, or the inner and porous part of the ring, is broad and yellow, the summerwood, or exterior part of the ring, is narrow and dark. The wood’s figure, due to the marked contrast between the outer and inner portions of the rings, is strong. When finished it shows a rich yellow, but somewhat lighter than dwarf sumach which it resembles. It is made into small shop articles, like button boxes, photograph frames, pen racks, stools, and arms forrocking chairs. Its range extends from Pennsylvania to Texas. It is sometimes known as Hercules’ club.
Aspen(Populus tremuloides) is widely known but not everywhere by the same name. It is called quaking asp, mountain asp, aspen leaf, white poplar, popple, poplar, and trembling poplar. The peculiarity of the tree which is apt to attract attention, and which gives it most of the names it carries, is the leaf’s habit of being nearly always in motion. The day is remarkably still if aspen foliage is not stirring. This is due to the long, flat leaf stem, which is so limber that it offers little resistance to air currents. The difference in color between the upper and lower sides of the leaves affords sufficient contrast to attract notice, and for that reason a person will observe the motion of aspen leaves when he might fail to see a similar movement among the leaves of other species where the contrast of colors is not so marked. Aspen is credited with being the most widely distributed tree of North America. It grows from Tennessee to the Arctic ocean, from Mexico to northern Alaska, from Labrador to Bering strait. It is found at sea level, and at 10,000 feet elevation among the mountains of California. Its very small seeds grow in enormous numbers. Winds carry them miles, and scatter them by millions. They spring up quickly when they fall on mineral soil. This places it in the class with “fire trees”—those which take possession of burned tracts. Paper birch is in this class. Aspen has replaced pines over large burned areas of the Rocky Mountains. It grows quickly but is weak if it has to contend with other trees. If crowded it speedily gives up the fight and dies. The wood is not strong, but is useful for several purposes. Next to spruce and hemlock, it is the most important pulpwood in this country, and it is coming into considerable use as lumber. The whiteness of the wood—it looks much like holly—makes it a favorite for small boxes and vessels for shipping and containing foods. It is made into jelly buckets, lard pails, fish kits, spice kegs, sugar buckets and a long line of similar articles. It turns well, and is made into wooden dishes. Michigan alone uses two and a half million feet of it a year; and it is in demand along the whole northern tier of states from Maine to Washington, but because it is not separately listed in lumber output, it is difficult to say how much is used. Trees are usually small, though trunks three feet in diameter are not unknown. It grows rapidly, and may be expected to fill an important place in this country’s future timber supply. There will be no occasion to plant it by artificial means, for nature will attend to the planting.
Aspen(Populus tremuloides) is widely known but not everywhere by the same name. It is called quaking asp, mountain asp, aspen leaf, white poplar, popple, poplar, and trembling poplar. The peculiarity of the tree which is apt to attract attention, and which gives it most of the names it carries, is the leaf’s habit of being nearly always in motion. The day is remarkably still if aspen foliage is not stirring. This is due to the long, flat leaf stem, which is so limber that it offers little resistance to air currents. The difference in color between the upper and lower sides of the leaves affords sufficient contrast to attract notice, and for that reason a person will observe the motion of aspen leaves when he might fail to see a similar movement among the leaves of other species where the contrast of colors is not so marked. Aspen is credited with being the most widely distributed tree of North America. It grows from Tennessee to the Arctic ocean, from Mexico to northern Alaska, from Labrador to Bering strait. It is found at sea level, and at 10,000 feet elevation among the mountains of California. Its very small seeds grow in enormous numbers. Winds carry them miles, and scatter them by millions. They spring up quickly when they fall on mineral soil. This places it in the class with “fire trees”—those which take possession of burned tracts. Paper birch is in this class. Aspen has replaced pines over large burned areas of the Rocky Mountains. It grows quickly but is weak if it has to contend with other trees. If crowded it speedily gives up the fight and dies. The wood is not strong, but is useful for several purposes. Next to spruce and hemlock, it is the most important pulpwood in this country, and it is coming into considerable use as lumber. The whiteness of the wood—it looks much like holly—makes it a favorite for small boxes and vessels for shipping and containing foods. It is made into jelly buckets, lard pails, fish kits, spice kegs, sugar buckets and a long line of similar articles. It turns well, and is made into wooden dishes. Michigan alone uses two and a half million feet of it a year; and it is in demand along the whole northern tier of states from Maine to Washington, but because it is not separately listed in lumber output, it is difficult to say how much is used. Trees are usually small, though trunks three feet in diameter are not unknown. It grows rapidly, and may be expected to fill an important place in this country’s future timber supply. There will be no occasion to plant it by artificial means, for nature will attend to the planting.
Balm of Gilead branch