Chapter XII: Part 12

A large amount of red gum growing in the South can be economically transported from the forests to the mills only by means of the streams, owing to the expense of putting in railroads solely for handling the timber. Green red gum, however, is so heavy that it scarcely floats and, to overcome this difficulty, various methods of driving out the sap before the logs are thrown into the river have been tried. One method is to girdle the trees and leave them standing a year. That partly seasons them, but does not give time for the sapwood to decay. The logs from such trees float readily, and the swamps and streams are utilized to carry the logs to the mills.

Some years ago that method of seasoning red gum was extensively advertised in England by contractors who sold paving blocks of this wood. It was claimed that the common defects of red gum were thus overcome. Large sales of paving material were made, particularly in London, and red gum was popular for a time, but it finally lost its hold as a paving wood in competition with certain Australian woods. The theory that by girdling a tree and allowing it to die, the amount of heartwood will be increased has been abandoned. In selecting trees for cutting, those with doty tops, rotten stumps, and heavy bark, indications of an old tree which contains a very small proportion of sapwood, are now chosen. These are found mainly in the drier localities. In low, wet places the trees have more sapwood and are smaller. The heartwood forms while the tree is living, not after it dies.

The rapidity with which red gum has come into use in this country and elsewhere is the best evidence of the wood’s real value. Its range of uses extends from the most common articles, such as boxes and crates, to those of highest class, like furniture and interior finish. It is only moderately strong and stiff, and is not a competitor of hickory, ash, maple, and oak in vehicle manufacturing and other lines where strength or elasticity is demanded; but in nearly all other classes of wood uses, red gum has made itself a place. It has pushed to the front in spite of prejudice. As soon as the difficulties of seasoning were mastered, its victory was won. Its annual use in Michigan, the home and center of hardwood supply, exceeds 20,000,000 feet in manufactured articles, exclusive of what is employed in rough form. In Illinois, the most extensive wood-manufacturing state in the Union, red gum stands second in amount among the hardwoods, the only one above it being white oak. In Kentucky, only white oak and hickory are more important among the factory woods, while in Arkansas, where the annual amount of this wood in factories exceeds 100,000,000 feet, it heads the list of hardwoods.

As a veneer material, it is demanded in four times the quantity of any other species. The veneer is nearly all rotary cut, and it goes into cheap and expensive commodities, from berry crates to pianos.

The wood weighs 36.83 pounds per cubic foot. It is straight-grained, the medullary rays are numerous but not prominent, the pores diffuse but small, and the summerwood forms only a narrow band, like a line. The annual rings do not produce much figure, but wood has another kind of figure, the kind that characterizes English and Circassian walnuts, smoky, cloudy, shaded series of rings, independent of the growth rings. They have no definite width or constant color, but the color is usually deeper than the body of the wood. This figure is one of the most prized properties of red gum. It is that which makes the wood the closest known imitator of Circassian walnut.

All red gum is not figured, and that which is figured may be worked in a way to conceal or make little use of the figure. It shows best in rotary cut veneer and tangentially sawed lumber. Various woods are imitated with red gum. It is stained or painted to look like oak, cherry, mahogany, and even maple.

Some trees have thin sapwood, and others are all sapwood. This peculiarity sometimes leads to misunderstandings in lumber transactions. A buyer specifies red gum, expecting to get red heartwood, but the seller delivers lumber cut from the red gum tree, though light colored sapwood may predominate. Properly speaking, the name is applied to the tree as a whole and does not refer to any particular color of wood in the tree. The term “red” is said to have referred originally to the color of autumn leaves, and not to the wood.

The fruit of red gum is a bur, midway in appearance and size between the sycamore ball and the chestnut bur. It hangs on the tree until late in winter. The resin which exudes from wounds in the bark is of much commercial importance and is shipped from New Orleans and Mexican ports. Near the northern limit of the species’ range the trees yield little resin, but it is abundant farther south. In the southern states it is used locally as chewing gum. It is known commercially as copalm balm.

WITCH HAZEL (_Hamamelis virginiana_) is a cousin to red gum, but
there is small resemblance. It is known as winter bloom, snapping
hazel, and spotted alder. Its range extends from Nova Scotia to
Nebraska, Texas, and Florida. It reaches its largest size among the
southern Appalachian mountains where the extreme height is sometimes
forty feet, with a diameter of eighteen inches; but few people have
ever seen a witch hazel that large. It is usually fifteen or twenty
feet high and three or four inches in diameter. The wood is much
like that of red gum, being diffuse-porous with obscure medullary
rays, and a thin line of summerwood. It is of little commercial use;
in fact, no report has been found that a single foot of it has ever
been used for any purpose. Yet it is a most interesting little tree.
It blooms in the fall, sometimes as late as the middle of November.
Its rusty summer foliage turns yellow in autumn, and as the leaves
begin to fall, the tree bursts into delicately-scented golden
flowers, the most visible part of each consisting of four petals
which float out like streamers. At the same time that flowers are
scenting the air, the seeds are discharging. A full year is required
to ripen them; and when dry, cold weather comes, the contraction of
their envelopes shoots them with sufficient force to send them
fifteen or twenty feet. They depend on neither wings, birds, nor
squirrels to scatter them. The origin of the name witch hazel is
disputed; but the person who examines the open-topped button which
holds the black seeds, and notes the fantastic resemblance to a
weasen face, will feel satisfied that he can guess the origin of the
name. The tree’s bark is used for medicine, in extracts and gargles.

BLACK GUM

BLACK GUM

(_Nyssa Sylvatica_)

Black gum grows from the Kennebec river in Maine to Tampa bay, Florida; westward to southern Ontario and southern Michigan; Southward through Missouri, as far as the Brazos river in Texas. The names by which it is known in different regions are black gum, sour gum, tupelo, pepperidge, wild pear tree, gum, and yellow gum.

The leaves of black gum are simple and alternate; not serrate. They are attached by very short petioles, which are fuzzy when young; they are a rich, brilliant green above and lighter below; rather thick, with prominent midrib. As early as the latter part of August the leaves commence to turn a gorgeous red. The flowers are greenish and inconspicuous, growing in thick clusters, the staminate ones small and plentiful, the pistillate ones larger. They bloom in April, May or June. The fruit of black gum is a drupe about one and a half inches long; inside of it is a rough, oval pit; the pulp is acrid until mellowed by frost.

The bad name given to black gum by early settlers of this country has stayed with it, though the faults found with it then, should hold no longer. The pioneers were nearly all clearers of farms. They went into the woods with ax, maul, mattock, wedges and gluts, and made fields and fenced them. The fencing was as important as the clearing, for the woods were alive with hogs, cattle, and horses, and the crop was safe nowhere except behind an eight-rail staked and ridered fence. The farmer mauled the rails from timber which he cut in the clearing, and there it was that he and black gum got acquainted. The oak, chestnut, walnut, cherry, yellow poplar, and red cedar were split into rails and built into fences; but black gum never made a fence rail. No combination of maul, wedge, glut, determination, and elbow grease ever split a black gum log within the borders of the American continent. An iron wedge, driven to its head in the end of a rail cut, will not open a crack large enough to insert the point of a pocket knife. In fact, it is as easy to split the log crosswise as endwise. Consequently, the early farmers heaped their anathemas and maranathas on black gum and passed it by.

Nevertheless, the tree had its virtues even in the eyes of the rail-splitters; for, though it was unwedgeable, it helped along the fence rail industry in a very substantial way by furnishing the material of which mauls were made. It drove the wedges and gluts which opened other timbers. About the only maul that would beat out more rails than one of black gum was that made of a chestnut oak knot. The oak beetle’s only advantage over gum was that it was harder and wore longer. So involved and interlaced are the fibers of black gum, that they cross one another not only at right angles, but at every conceivable angle. This can be seen in examining very thin pieces with a magnifying glass.

The wood is not hard, but is moderately strong, and stiff. It has been compared with hickory, but it is so inferior in almost every essential that no comparison is justified.

Black gum weighs 39.61 pounds per cubic foot. It is very porous, but the pores are too small to be seen by the naked eye, and are diffused through the wood and form no distinct lines or groups. The summerwood is a thin dark line, not prominent enough to clearly delimit the yearly rings of growth. The medullary rays are numerous, but very thin. In quarter-sawed wood they produce a luster, but the individual rays are practically invisible. The wood is not durable in contact with the soil.

The standing tree is apt to fall a victim to the agencies of decay. Hollow trunks, mere shells, are not uncommon. The entire heartwood is liable to fall away. The pioneers cut these hollow trees, and sawing them in lengths of about two feet, made beehives of them. They called them gums because they were cut from gum trees. Larger sizes, used in place of barrels, were also called gums, but these were usually made from sycamores. The black gum is not usually large. Individuals have been measured that were five feet in diameter and more than a hundred in height, but an average of sixty feet high and two in diameter is probably too much, except in the southern Appalachian mountains where the species attains its largest size.

It is a tree which will always be easily recognized after it has been seen and identified once. Its general outline, particularly when leaves are off, is different from other trees associated with it. It might possibly be mistaken for persimmon unless looked at closely; but there are easily-recognized points of difference. Its branches are very small, slender, and short. Its bark is rougher than that of any other gum, and is much darker in color. It is the bark’s color that gives the tree its name. The leaves have smooth edges. In the fall they change to gorgeous red, and one of their peculiarities is that half a leaf may be red while the other half remains green. Toward the end of the season, the green disappears. The dark blue drupes ripen in October. They do not seem to be food for any living creature.

Sawmills include black gum with tupelo in reporting lumber cut, and generally call both of them gum without distinction. The woods are quite different, and neither the standing tree nor the lumber of one need be mistaken for the other. The range of black gum is much more extensive than that of tupelo. Gum lumber cut north of the Ohio and Potomac rivers may be safely classed as black gum, though a little of both red and tupelo gum is found north of those streams. In the South, the species cannot be separated by regions, for all the gums grow from Texas to Virginia. The total annual output of black gum is not known, but some operators estimate it at about 20,000,000 feet a year, or nearly one-fourth as much as tupelo.

The bulk of black gum lumber is used in the rough, for floors, sheathing, frames, and scaffolds; but a considerable portion is further manufactured. The amounts thus used annually have been ascertained for a few states, and furnish a basis for estimates for the whole country: Mississippi, 7,000 feet; Maryland, 85,000; Illinois, 120,000; Louisiana, 120,000; Missouri, 190,000; Texas, 360,000; Massachusetts, 475,000; Alabama, 486,000.

The uses are general, except that the wood is not employed where attractive figure is required, for black gum is as plain as cottonwood. It is not displeasing in its plainness, for the surface finishes nicely with a soft gloss which, except that it lacks figure, suggests the sap of red gum. It is specially useful in situations where noncleavability is required. Black gum mallets for stone masons and woodworkers are in the market. Mine rollers require a much larger amount. The entire 85,000 feet reported in Maryland was made into such rollers. They furnish the bearing for the rope that hauls the car up the incline out of the coal pit. Its toughness qualifies it for wagon hubs, but it is sometimes objected to because its softness causes the mortises to wear larger where the spokes are inserted, and the wheel does not stand as well as when the hubs are of good oak. Early farmers and lumbermen preferred black gum for ox yokes, and some are still seen where oxen are used; but many other woods are as strong and equally as serviceable for yokes. Rollers of this wood for glass factories are common. It is made into hatters’ blocks where a wood is wanted which, when thoroughly seasoned, will hold its shape. It is less popular for this purpose than yellow poplar. One of the best places for black gum is in the manufacture of bored water pipe. The wood’s interlaced fiber prevents splitting under the internal stress due to hydrostatic pressure. The shell of such pipes can be thinner than with most woods. A drawback is found in the non-durable qualities of black gum. However, the internal pressure of water keeps the wood thoroughly saturated, and prolongs its life when used as pipes.

The makers of firearms employ black gum as gunstocks and pistol grips. The wood is stained to make it darker. It is cut by the rotary process into cheap veneer and is made into baskets and berry crates. Less trouble with the veneer, on account of breaking, is experienced than might be expected of a wood so cross-grained. It is sawed into thin lumber for boxes for shipping coffee and other groceries. It is a substitute for cottonwood and yellow poplar in the manufacture of certain lines of woodenware, notably, ironing boards, rolling pins, potato mashers, and chopping bowls. It is made into interior finish for houses; and furniture manufacturers find many places where it is a serviceable material. Musical instrument makers employ it, particularly as trusses for pianos, and in frames of pipe organs. In Louisiana it is converted into excelsior, and in Mississippi into broom handles, and parts of agricultural implements, particularly hoppers and seedboxes.

All gums are hard to season, and this one is no exception. It checks badly, but the checks are usually very small.

TUPELO

TUPELO

(_Nyssa Aquatica_)

Tupelo is said to be an Indian name. White men have applied it to three species of gum, all of the same genus, namely, black gum (_Nyssa sylvatica_), sour tupelo (_Nyssa ogeche_), and tupelo (_Nyssa aquatica_). Probably, the name tupelo applies as well to one as to the other, for it is said to refer to the drupe-like fruit; but custom confines the name to the species now under consideration. It is largest of the three species, most abundant, and most important. Sour gum is heard in Arkansas and Missouri, swamp tupelo in South Carolina and Louisiana, cotton gum in the two Carolinas and Florida, wild olive tree in Louisiana, and olive tree in Mississippi.

The range of tupelo extends from Virginia along the coast to Florida, northward in the Mississippi valley to southern Illinois, and westward to Arkansas and Texas. It prefers swamps and attains largest size in low ground which is subject to frequent overflow. The tree will stand in several feet of water the greater part of the year without injury. It is closely associated with cypress, the planer tree, and other species which grow in deep swamps.

Tupelo has not figured much in tree literature outside the books of botanists. Travelers and local writers have paid it little attention. It has not been remarkable for anything in the past, and has escaped observation to a large extent because it grows in swamps and along bayous, remote from the usual routes of travel. Its flowers attracted no attention, its fruit was worthless, and the early settlers did not put themselves to trouble to procure the wood for any purpose. That was the situation from the early settlement of the country where this species is found up to a very recent period when economic conditions began to bring tupelo into notice.

It first attracted attention in the markets as a substitute for yellow poplar. That was brought about by an attempt to pass it as poplar. The growing scarcity of that wood in the region about Chesapeake bay led to the trial of tupelo. It was sold as bay poplar, and the purchaser was left to infer that it was poplar cut in the region tributary to Chesapeake bay. Probably few buyers were deceived, but they found the wood a fair substitute for the yellow poplar which they had been purchasing in the Baltimore and Norfolk markets. It is known as bay poplar yet in many localities. It goes to England as such. One of its most important uses in that country is as casing for electric wire fittings. It has, however, many other important uses in England and on the continent. It is claimed that it may be stained to imitate Circassian walnut in the manufacture of furniture. This is possible, but most probably tupelo has been confused with red gum which is a well-known substitute for Circassian walnut.

Tupelo trees attain a height from seventy to a hundred feet, and a diameter of two to four feet above the swelled base. The general appearance of the bark suggests both yellow poplar and red gum. Trees have a habit of forking near the tops. The leaves are five or seven inches long, sometimes with smooth margins, and often with a few sharp points. Flowers appear in March and April, and fruit ripens early in Autumn. It is a dark purple, tough-skinned drupe, about an inch long.

The wood weighs 32.37 pounds per cubic foot. It is soft, and has about three-fourths the strength and little more than half the stiffness of white oak. It is not well suited to places where strength and rigidity are required. The fibers are interwoven, making the wood difficult to split. The heart is brown, often nearly white; the sapwood is very thick; and the annual rings are not clearly defined, because of the similarity between the springwood and summerwood. The pores are small but numerous, and are scattered evenly through the whole annual ring. The wood of roots differs from that of the trunk more than is usual with hardwoods. It is very light, and has been long employed in the South as a substitute for cork as floats for fish nets.

Tupelo is often logged with cypress. The two trees grow in close association in deep swamps. The butt cuts of tupelo are so heavy that they float deep, or even go to the bottom. It was formerly customary, and still is to some extent, to girdle trees whose trunks were to be floated to the mills. In the course of one season the standing trees dry sufficiently for the logs to float. At other times, trees are cut green, the logs are skidded and allowed to dry some months before they are rafted or floated to the mills. The sapwood is liable to decay, even in the brief period while the logs are on the skids. The wood may be protected against decay to some extent by smearing the ends of the logs with tar or some other substance which prevents the spores of decay-producing fungus from entering.

The seasoning of tupelo was formerly a problem exceedingly vexatious to the lumberman. The wood is full of water, and warping was one of the troubles which was constantly encountered. Finally experience gained the mastery, and seasoning troubles are fewer now. Shrinkage of four or five per cent is not unusual in passing lumber from the green to dry state.

Tupelo is like hickory in one respect--factories use more wood than the sawmills cut. The shops and manufacturing plants of ten states use as much tupelo as is cut by all the sawmills in the United States. These states are Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas. The reason for factory use exceeding the sawmill cut is that much reaches factories, in the form of veneer, which does not pass through a sawmill. The lumber output of most of the timber trees of this country is from one-third to one-half greater than the factory use. The difference represents the rough lumber used, and which never goes to a factory.

Tupelo lately entered the general market, but the yearly demand now exceeds 100,000,000 feet. Its uses range from boxes and cheap handles to interior finish and material for musical instruments. It is particularly liked for containers for berries and small fruits, on their way to market. Its whiteness and clean appearance fit it for that use.

Higher grades of shipping boxes are also made. Wholesale grocers order largely of this wood for spice, coffee, and tea boxes. These commodities are exacting in their requirements because their odor, which is often regarded as the criterion of their value, must not be impaired. A wood with an odor of its own is immediately ruled out. Cigar box makers use tupelo, sometimes as thin lumber for the whole box, but usually as backing over which to lay a thin veneer of Spanish cedar. Plug tobacco boxes are also made of tupelo.

In Illinois and Michigan tupelo is listed among woods manufactured into pianos, organs, mandolins, and guitars. In Maryland they make scows and barges of it. In Arkansas and Louisiana it is worked into excelsior and slack cooperage stock. It is a favorite wood in Mississippi for pumplogs and broom handles. Its leading reported use in Texas is for porch columns. In Missouri it is manufactured into laundry appliances, such as washboards, clothes racks, and ironing boards. In nearly all manufacturing centers of the country it is made into furniture and interior finish. It is frequently substituted for yellow poplar in panels, not only in furniture and cabinet work, but in carriage bodies.

The supply of tupelo in southern forests is fairly large, and will meet demand for some years, but it is a tree of slow growth, and when present stands are cut, a new supply will probably never come.

SOUR TUPELO (_Nyssa ogeche_) appears to be the only member of the
gum group whose fruit is of any value to man, and it is not very
important. The large, dull red drupes ripen in July and August, and
sometimes hang on the trees until late fall, allowing ample time for
gathering them. They are very sour, for which reason the tree is
called sour gum. The fruit is put through a pickling process which
renders it palatable and it is not an infrequent article on southern
pantry shelves. The range of the tree is confined to the region near
the coast from the southern border of South Carolina, through the
Ogeechee river valley in Georgia, to northern and western Florida.
The botanical name refers to the river along whose course the trees
are most abundant. Local names are gopher plum, Ogeechee lime, and
wild lime. The tree is sixty or seventy feet high, one or two in
diameter, and is often divided in several stems. Its wood is
lightest of the gums, weighing only 28.75 pounds per cubic foot. It
is diffuse-porous, and the springwood is scarcely distinguishable
from the summerwood. The annual rings of growth are indistinct, and
the medullary rays are thin and inconspicuous. The wood is weak,
soft, tough, and white, and little difference is apparent between
heart and sapwood. The flowers are rich in honey and are valuable to
bee keepers. It appears that no reports exist of the use of this
wood for any purpose. It is not abundant anywhere.

WATER GUM (_Nyssa biflora_) is a member of the gum group, and is of
small importance. Trees above thirty feet high are unusual, and the
trunk is of poor form, owing to its greatly enlarged base. This gum
is found on the margins of small ponds in the pine barrens from
North Carolina to the Gulf coast. The leaves turn purple and red in
the fall, and are then conspicuous objects. The fruit is a blue
drupe about a third of an inch long. The wood is light, tough, and
difficult to split.

BLACK WALNUT

BLACK WALNUT

(_Juglans Nigra_)

This tree has few names. It is called walnut, black walnut, and walnut-tree. The color of the wood and bark is responsible for the word black in the name, though some people use the adjective to distinguish the tree from butternut which is often known as white walnut. The natural range of black walnut covers 600,000 or 700,000 square miles, and it has been extended by planting. Its northern limit stretches from New York to Minnesota, its southern from Florida to Texas. It is difficult to say where the species found its highest development in the primeval forests, for very large trees were reported in New York, among the southern Appalachian mountains, in the Ohio valley, and beyond the Mississippi in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas. The wood cut in Ohio and Indiana has been of greater commercial importance than that from any other portion of its range, but that has been due, in part, to the fact that it came into market before the best of the forest growth had been destroyed in those states, and instead of burning it or mauling it into rails, as eastern farmers did in early times, the farmers of the Ohio valley sold their walnut. Early in the history of black walnut lumbering, Indiana and Ohio came to the front as the most important sources of supply, and they still hold that position, notwithstanding the original forests of those states were supposed to be nearly exhausted long ago. The states cutting most black walnut in 1910, in the order named, were Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Iowa.

During the period from 1860 to 1880 black walnut was in much demand for furniture, and the largest yearly cut was 125,000,000 feet. It was during that period of twenty years that operators pushed into all of the out-of-the-way places in search of the timber. Logs were hauled on wagons long distances to bring them out of remote valleys and slopes where no timber buyer had ever gone before. The walnut buyers made such a thorough canvas of the country that it was generally supposed no merchantable tree from Kansas to Virginia would escape. Many a dooryard giant whose wide branches had shaded the family roof for generations, fell before the ax of the contractor who was willing to pay fifty dollars for a single trunk, though it might be twenty miles from the nearest railroad or navigable stream. In spite of the thoroughness of the search, many a walnut tree was spared. Logs have been going to market ever since, and still they go. They will continue to go for years, generations, and centuries; for walnut trees grow with rapidity.

The trunk’s value increases with age. The dark colored heartwood only is merchantable, and young trees have little heartwood. The thick, white sap constitutes most of the trunk until long after the tree has reached small sawlog size. Then the transformation to the dark, valuable heartwood goes on with fair rapidity, and the outer shell of sapwood becomes thinner as the heart increases, and in time a trunk is produced which is fit for good logs. Value comes only with age. The quarter or half a century which has passed since the country was so diligently ransacked for merchantable walnut, has been sufficient to develop many a tree which was then rejected by the purchasers. Many a tree now a foot in diameter had scarcely sprouted then. In a region of 700,000 square miles, walnut trees do not need to grow very close together to produce a yearly cut of 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 feet.

Black walnut is valuable for its color, figure, and the fine polish it takes. It is stronger than white oak, weight for weight, but it is eight pounds lighter per cubic foot. The figure of the wood is due wholly to the annual rings, as its medullary rays are invisible to the naked eye. The wood is very porous, and the pores are diffused in all parts of the annual rings, except in the thin, pencil-like mark representing the outward boundary of the summerwood. When sapwood changes to heartwood, some of the pores disappear, but those which remain are abundantly sufficient to absorb any stains or fillers which the wood finisher may wish to apply.

The annual sawmill cut of black walnut in the United States is from 35,000,000 to 40,000,000 feet, but much goes to foreign countries in the log, and a considerable quantity goes to veneer mills--about 2,500,000 feet a year--and a quantity finds its way to various factories where it is worked up without any statistical record being made of it.

Black walnut is never used as rough lumber. It all goes to factories of some kind to be converted into finished commodities. It is not possible to say where it all goes, for statistics of manufacture are fragmentary in this country. It may be of interest to know that demand for walnut by factories in the following states was 11,641,137 feet in 1910: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas. The wood served so many purposes that a list of them would be monotonous. In Illinois the largest users are the sewing machine and the musical instrument industries; in Michigan the makers of automobiles and of musical instruments; in Kentucky the manufacturers of coffins, furniture, and musical instruments; in Massachusetts, the makers of furniture and of firearms. These uses probably afford a fairly accurate index for the whole country. During the Civil war the largest demand for walnut came from gunstock makers. Doubtless the largest use from 1865 to 1885 was for furniture.

Much of the best black walnut is exported. The logs are flattened on the four sides to make them fit better in ships and cars, and also to be rid of most of the sapwood which is valueless. The ends are painted with red lead or some other substance to lessen liability to check. Sometimes export walnut is sawed in thick planks.

Large quantities of old-time walnut furniture have been resurrected in recent years from granary and garret where it was stored long ago to have it out of the way. Some of the old beds, lounges, cupboards, and chairs were of heavy, solid walnut, the kind not made now. Some of it has been furbished, re-upholstered, and set among the heirlooms; other pieces have been sold to furniture makers who saw the solid wood in veneers, and use it again.

The search for old walnut did not stop with dragging antique furniture from cubbyholes and attics, but two-inch lumber has been pulled from floors of old barns, and mills. Many old fence rails were made into gun stocks during the Civil war. Later, walnut stumps were pulled from field and wayside, and went to veneer mills. Some finely figured wood comes from stumps where roots and trunk join.

An occasional walnut tree develops a large burl which is valued for its figured wood. Sometimes the burl is the form of a door knob, with the tree trunk growing through the center. The burl sometimes has a diameter three or four times as great as the trunk. The origin of such burls is supposed to be a mass of buds which fail to break through the bark.

Black walnut has a compound leaf from one to two feet long, with from fifteen to twenty-three leaflets, each about three inches long and an inch or two wide. The nuts ripen in the fall, and are valuable. They are borne chiefly by trees growing in open ground; forest trees do not bear until old, and then only a few nuts. The walnuts which germinate are usually those buried by squirrels, and forgotten.

Within the past twenty or thirty years plantations have been made in states of the Middle West. Many young planted trees have been cut for fence posts, with disappointing results. It was known that old walnut is durable, and it was supposed young trunks would be, when used for posts; but young trees are nearly all sapwood which rots quickly.

Forest grown walnut trees vary in size from a diameter of two feet and a height of fifty, to a diameter of six or more and a height of 100 or 120. Trunks which grow in the shade are tall, clear, and symmetrical; those in the open are shorter, with more taper.

PALE-LEAF HICKORY (_Hicoria villosa_) is a small tree but large
enough to be useful wherever it exists in sufficient quantity. The
largest specimens attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of
eighteen inches. The tree bears nuts when very small, and the kernel
is sweet. The bark of this hickory is rough but not shaggy. The
range extends from New Jersey to Florida and west to Missouri and
Texas. It is most abundant in the lower Appalachian ranges. The wood
possesses the common characteristics of the hickories, and it is cut
with them wherever it is found, but is seldom or never reported
separately in lumber operations.

SMALL PIGNUT HICKORY (_Hicoria odorata_) is considered a species by
some botanists while others regard it as a variety. It is called
small pignut in Maryland, and occasionally little shagbark. This
last name refers to the roughness of the bark which resembles the
bark of elm. The range of the tree extends from Massachusetts to
Missouri and south to the Ohio and the Potomac rivers. The wood
differs little from that of pignut hickory, and the uses are the
same. No distinction is made between them at the shop and factory.
This tree is by some botanists believed to be a hybrid between
shagbark and pignut. It is sometimes called false shagbark. The nut
is edible.

BUTTERNUT

BUTTERNUT

(_Juglans Cinerea_)

This tree is known as butternut or as white walnut in all parts of its range. Butternut is in reference to the oily kernel of the nuts, and white walnut is the name given by those who would distinguish the tree from black walnut. Persons acquainted with one of the species in its native woods are usually sure to be acquainted with the other, for their ranges are practically co-extensive, except that black walnut extends farther southwest, butternut farther northeast. Butternut grows from New Brunswick to South Dakota, from Delaware to Arkansas, and along the Appalachian highlands to northern Georgia and Alabama.

Butternut resembles black walnut in a good many ways and differs from it in several. They are very closely related botanically--as closely as are brothers in the same household. Black walnut is larger, stronger, better known, and has always dominated and eclipsed the other in usefulness and public esteem; yet butternut is a tree both useful and interesting. No person acquainted with both would ever mistake one for the other, winter or summer. Botanists tell how to distinguish butternut from black walnut by noting minor differences. The person who is not a botanist needs no such help. He knows them at sight, and there is no possibility of mistaking them.

Butternut in the forest may attain a height of eighty or 100 feet, and a diameter of three, but few persons ever see a specimen of that size, and never in open ground. In shade, the butternut does its best to get its crown up to light and sunshine, but it is weak. It often gives up the struggle and remains in the shade of trees which overtop it. In that situation its crown is small, thin, and appears to rest lightly in the form of a small bunch of yellowish-green leaves on the top of a tall, spindling bole, which is seldom straight, but is made up of slight, undulating curves. The pale, yellowish tinge of the bark suggests a plant deprived of sunshine.

When butternut grows in open ground where light falls upon its crown and on all sides, it assumes a different form and presents another figure. The trunk is nearly as short as that of an apple tree. It divides in large branches and limbs, and these spread wide; leaves are healthy, yet the crown of a butternut always looks thin compared with that of the black walnut. Tests show that butternut wood, when thoroughly dry, is somewhat stiffer than black walnut; but it is light and weak. It is about two-thirds as heavy and two-thirds as strong as black walnut. The growing tree betrays the wood’s weakness. Large limbs snap in storms. Trees become lopsided, and a symmetrical, well-proportioned butternut crown is an exception. The broken branches leave openings for the entrance of decay, and butternuts nearly always die of disease rather than of old age.

Leaves are compound, and from fifteen to thirty inches in length. Few trees of this country have larger leaves. There are from eleven to seventeen leaflets. They are hairy and sticky. Hands that handle them are covered with mucilage-like substance. The nuts, which grow in clusters of three or five, are of the same color as the leaves and covered with the same sticky fuzz. The nuts are two inches or more in length, and are borne abundantly when trees stand in open ground. Size rather than age appears to determine the period when trees commence to bear. Those of extra vigor produce when ten or twelve years old. The nuts are salable in the market. They fall with the leaves, immediately after the first sharp frost, and all come down together. A single day frequently suffices to strip the last leaf from a tree, though some of the nuts may hang a little longer. The kernels are very rich, when the nuts are dry, and are apt to cloy the appetite; but they are improved by freezing where they lie on the ground among the leaves; but they must be used quickly after they thaw, or they will spoil. Nuts nearly full-grown but not yet hard are made into pickles, but the fuzz must first be washed off with hot water.

Butternut bark has played a rather important role in the country’s affairs. Doctors in the Revolutionary war made much of their medicine of the roots and bark of this tree. Drugs were unattainable, and physicians were forced to betake themselves to the woods for substitutes, and their pharmacopoeias were enriched by the butternut tree. Housewives dyed cloth a brown color with this bark long before aniline dyes found their way into this country. Whole companies of Confederate soldiers from the mountain regions in the Civil war wore clothes dyed in decoctions of butternut bark, and popularly known as “butternut jeans.”

The annual output of butternut lumber is placed at a little more than 1,000,000 feet a year. It is widely used, but in small amounts. In Maryland it is made into ceiling and flooring; in North Carolina into cabinet work, fixtures for stores and offices, and into furniture; in Michigan its reported uses are boat finish, interior finish for houses, molding, and screen frames. In Illinois it is used for all the purposes listed above and also for church altars and car finish. These uses are doubtless typical, and hold good in all parts of the country where any use is made of butternut.

The wood has figure similar to that of black walnut, but the color is lighter. It is nearer brown than black. The pores are diffused through the annual ring, but are more numerous and of larger size in the inner than in the outer part. The springwood blends gradually with the wood of the latter part of the season, without sharp distinction, but the ring terminates in a black line which is the chief element of contrast in the wood’s figure.

The future value of butternut will be less in the lumber than in the nuts. The tendency in that direction is now apparent. When land is cleared, the trees which would formerly have gone to the sawmill, are now left to bear nuts. The averaged price paid by factories in North Carolina for butternut is $40 a thousand feet. It is cheaper in the Lake States.

MEXICAN WALNUT (_Juglans rupestris_) will never amount to much as a
timber tree, though it is by no means useless. It is known by
several names, among them being western walnut, dwarf walnut, little
walnut, and California walnut. The last name is applied in Arizona
through a misunderstanding of the tree’s identity. It is there
confused with the California walnut which is a different species.
The Mexican walnut’s range extends from central Texas, through New
Mexico to Arizona, and southward into Mexico. It prefers the
limestone banks of streams in Texas where it is usually shrubby,
seldom attaining a height above thirty feet. It reaches its largest
size in canyons among the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona where
it reaches a height of sixty feet. Trunks are sometimes five feet in
diameter. The wood weighs 40.85 pounds per cubic foot, is dark in
color, but the tone is not as regular as that of black walnut;
neither is it as strong and stiff. It polishes well, and is said to
be durable in contact with the soil. It finds its way in small
amounts to local mills, shops, and factories where it is made into
various commodities. It is particularly liked for the lathe, and is
suited better for turnery than for any other purpose. It is made
into gavels, cups, spindles, parts of grills; and it is also worked
into picture frames, handles, and small pieces of furniture. It does
not appear that lumber sawed from this walnut ever gets into the
general market, but the whole output, which is small, is consumed
locally. Trees do not occur in pure stands and the whole supply
consists of isolated trees or small groups, with few trunks large
enough for sawlogs. The nuts are dwarfs. All are not the same size,
but none are as large as a hickory nut. Many that grow on the
diminutive trees along the water courses in western Texas are not as
large, husks and all, as a nutmeg, and the nut itself is about half
the size of a nutmeg, and not dissimilar in appearance. The kernels
of such a nut are too small to have any commercial value, but they
are rare morsels for the native Mexicans and Indians who pick them
by pocketfuls. Trees in the stony canyon of Devil’s river, in Texas,
are in full bearing when so small that a man can stand on the ground
and pick walnuts from their highest branches. The Mexican walnut is
occasionally cultivated in the eastern part of the United States and
in Europe. It is hardy as far north as Massachusetts.

CALIFORNIA WALNUT (_Juglans californica_) is a small tree confined
to California, and pretty close to the coast, though it grows in
Eldorado county. It is most abundant within twenty or thirty miles
of tidewater. In the southern part of the state it ascends to an
elevation of 4,000 feet. It prefers the banks of streams and the
bottoms of canyons where the soil is moist, but it will grow in dry
situations. Trees occur singly or in small groups. Their average
size is fifteen or twenty feet high, and eight or ten inches in
diameter; but trees occasionally are sixty feet high and eighteen
inches through. The leaves are small, measuring from six to nine
inches in length, with from nine to seventeen leaflets. Nuts are
about half the size of eastern black walnuts. The kernel is edible.
The wood is heavier than black walnut, and somewhat lighter in
color. Otherwise the two woods are much alike, except in strength
and stiffness. In these the California wood is inferior. It has not
been reported for any use, but it is suitable for a number of
purposes, provided logs of sufficient size could be had. The trunk,
in addition to being small, is usually short. The tree is intolerant
of shade, and is not often found in forests. It grows rapidly and
will attain a diameter of fifteen inches in twenty years or less;
but it apparently does not live long. Its principal usefulness in
California is as a shade tree, and as a stock in nurseries on which
to graft English walnut.

SHAGBARK HICKORY

SHAGBARK HICKORY

(_Hicoria Ovata_)

Twelve species of hickory grow in the United States, all east of the Rocky Mountains. None grow anywhere else in the world, as far as known. They were widely dispersed over the northern hemisphere in prehistoric times. The records of geology, written by leaf prints in the rocks, tell of forests of hickory in Europe, and even in Greenland, probably a hundred thousand or more years ago, and certainly not in times that can be called recent. No records there later than the ice age have been found. This leads to the presumption that the sheet of ice which pushed down from the North and covered the larger portions of Europe and North America, overwhelmed the hickory forests, and all others, as far as the southern limit of the ice’s advance.

In Europe the hickory was utterly destroyed, and it never returned after the close of the reign of ice; but America was more fortunate. The ice sheet pushed little farther in its southward course than the Ohio and Missouri rivers, and forests south of there held their ground, and they slowly worked their way back north as the ice withdrew. Hickory recovered part but not all of its lost ground in America, for it is now found no farther north than southern Canada, which is more than a thousand miles from its old range in Greenland.

The early settlers in New England and in the South at once came into contact with hickory. It was one of the first woods named in this country, and the name is of Indian origin, and is spelled in no fewer than seventeen ways in early literature relating to the settlements. It is probable that John Smith, a prominent man in early Virginia and New England, was the first man who ever wrote the name. He spelled it as the Indians pronounced it, “powcohiscora,” and it has been trimmed down to our word hickory. The Indian word was the name of a salad or soup made of pounded hickory nuts and water, and was only indirectly applied to the tree itself.

The first settlers along the Atlantic coast nearly always called this tree a walnut, and the name white walnut was common. They were unacquainted with any similar nut-bearing tree in Europe, except the walnut, and most people preferred applying a name with which they were already familiar. Hickories and walnuts belong to the same family, and have many points in common.

Although there are twelve hickories in the United States, and in many respects they are similar, all are not of equal value. Some are very scarce, and the wood of others is not up to standard. From a commercial standpoint, four surpass the others. These are shagbark (_Hicoria ovata_), shellbark (_Hicoria laciniosa_), pignut (_Hicoria glabra_), and mockernut (_Hicoria alba_). The wood of some of the others is as good, but is scarce; and still others, particularly the pecans, are abundant enough, but the wood is inferior. It is impossible in business to separate the hickories. Lumbermen do not do it; manufacturers cannot do it. In some regions one is more abundant than the others, and consequently is used in larger quantities, but in some other region a different species may predominate in the forest and in the factory. It cannot be truthfully asserted that one hickory is always as good as another, or even that a certain species in one region is as good as the same species in another region. All parts of the same tree do not produce wood of equal value.

Along certain general lines, hickories have many properties in common. The wood is ring-porous, that is, the inner edge of the yearly growth ring has a row of large pores. Others are scattered toward the outer part of the ring, generally decreasing in number and size outward. There is no distinct division between spring and summerwood. The medullary rays are thin and obscure. The unaided eye seldom notices them. The sapwood is white in all species of hickory, and is usually very thick. The heartwood is reddish. Common opinion has long held that sapwood is tougher and more elastic than heartwood, and therefore to be preferred for most purposes. Tests made a few years ago by the United States Forest Service ran counter to the long-established opinion of users, by showing that in most respects the redwood of the heart was as good as the white sapwood. However, where resiliency is the chief requisite, as in slender handles, many manufacturers still prefer sapwood.

Hickory is very strong, probably the strongest wood in common use in this country. The statement that one wood is stronger than all others is hardly justified because averages of strength should be taken, and not isolated instances. Satisfactory averages have not yet been worked out for a large number of our woods; but, as far as existing figures may be accepted, hickory is at the head of the list for strength, toughness, and resiliency. Choice samples of certain woods may exceed the average of hickory in some of these particulars. Sugar maple, hornbeam, and locust occasionally show greater strength than hickory, but they lack in toughness and resiliency--the very properties which give hickory its chief value for many purposes.

Considerable misunderstanding exists as to second growth hickory. Some suppose it consists of trees of commercial size developed from sprouts where old trees have been cut. That is not generally correct. When small hickory trees are cut, the stumps often sprout, but hoop poles are about the only commodity made from that kind of hickory. If sprouts are left to grow large, the trees produced are generally defective. Good hickory grows from the nut. The term “second growth” means little, unless it is explained in each instance just what conditions are included. In one sense, all young, vigorous trees are second growth, and that is often the idea in the mind of the speaker. Some would restrict it to trees which have come up in old fields or partial clearings, where they have plenty of light, and have grown rapidly. Their trunks are short, the wood is tough, and there is little red heartwood. The larger a pine, oak, or poplar, provided it is sound, the better the wood; but not so with hickory. Great age and large size add no desirable qualities to this wood.