Chapter XV: Part 15

BERLANDIER ASH (_Fraxinus berlandieriana_) may not be entitled to a
place among native species, of the United States. Some suppose it
was introduced from Mexico by early Spanish settlers in western
Texas. It now grows wild there along Nueces and Blanco rivers where
specimens thirty feet high and a foot in diameter are found.
Southward in Mexico it is a popular street tree, and trunks reach
six or eight feet in diameter. The wood is soft and is used only
locally and in very small quantities.

OREGON ASH

OREGON ASH

(_Fraxinus Oregona_)

This tree is unusual in that it has only one common name, and that is a translation of its botanical name which was given it by Nuttall who visited the Pacific coast several years before the discovery of gold.

The moist bottom lands of southwestern Oregon are best suited to its growth, and here the best individuals and most abundant stands are found. Moist soil and climate are essential to proper development of this tree, and in such environment it is found from Puget Sound southward along the coast to San Francisco. A little further from the coast it grows along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, to the low mountains in San Diego and San Bernardino counties, California, in the southern extension of its range occupying a rather dry region.

The trunk grows to a height of eighty or 100 feet, and is often three feet in diameter. It is covered with a gray-brown bark, exfoliating in flaky scales. The leaves are from five to fourteen inches long, and have five or seven firm, light-green leaflets, finely toothed and bluntly pointed. The flowers appear in April and May and are in compact panicles; the fruit in clusters, broadly winged and round pointed, and from one to two inches long.

The scarcity of good hardwoods on the Pacific coast gives this ash more importance than it otherwise would have, and the importance which it possesses has been frequently overstated. It is not abundant of form and size fitting it for lumber. It has long been cut in small quantities, but never in large. The census returns for 1910 show that less than 400,000 feet per year are reported in its entire range. Three-fourths of this is sawed in Oregon, the remainder in Washington. Though the species has a range of 800 miles north and south through California, no sawmill reported a foot of it. However, it is probable that census returns fail to do this wood full justice; for it is well known that considerable quantities are manufactured into articles without passing through sawmills. Chief among such commodities is slack cooperage. Butter tubs of Oregon ash are common. Much goes to wagon shops, and some of it without aid of sawmills.

Little or none of this wood is shipped outside its range, and its use is local. Boat builders work it into finish for cabins and upper parts, and some serves as ribs. It is often seen as handles for picks, shovels, spades, pitchforks, and rakes. A little finds place, combined with other woods, in office and store fixtures. Its grain resembles that of white ash. It is not as heavy, and it is not believed to be as strong. It is hard, brittle, brown in color, with thick, lighter-colored sapwood. Furniture makers list it as shop material, and such is its largest reported use in Washington. A moderate amount is made into saddletrees and stirrups, and much is used as fuel.

Oregon ash has been planted for shade and ornament in both this country and Europe. It grows rapidly and develops a symmetrical crown. The habit it has of coming into leaf late in the spring and throwing its foliage down early in autumn is held by some as a serious objection to it as an ornamental tree; but it has compensating habits. It is remarkably free from disease, and, though leaves come late and go early, while its foliage is on, it is healthy and vigorous. Reproduction is satisfactory in the tree’s wild state, and there is no danger that the species will disappear. No movement has yet been made to plant this ash for commercial timber growing.

GREEN ASH (_Fraxinus lanceolata_) has been given that name on account of the bright color of its foliage. It has other names, however, which indicate that its greenness is not always preëminently prominent. In Iowa and Arkansas they call it blue ash; in Kansas and Nebraska white ash; in some regions it is known as water ash, and elsewhere swamp ash. Some botanists do not regard it as a separate species but call it a variety of red ash, but the consensus of opinion is that it is a distinct species, though there appear to be connecting forms grading from red ash into green ash. Certain it is that the two are distinct enough in certain parts of the country. The range of green ash is more extensive than that of any other ash in this country. Beginning in Vermont it passes southward to Florida; northwestward to the Saskatchewan river several hundred miles north of the international boundary line; along the base of the Rocky Mountains and over the ranges to Arizona, and through Texas. This includes more than half of the area of the United States. Notwithstanding a range so extensive, the total quantity of green ash timber in the country is not large. No pure forests or extensive stands exist. Trees are widely dispersed, and when lumbermen cut them, the wood is sold as some other, usually as white ash. The wood has the general characters of red ash. It weighs about forty-four pounds per cubic foot of dry wood; is moderately strong, fairly stiff and elastic, and, like other species of ash, it is not durable in contact with the soil.

Green ash is more planted than any other in the cold and dry regions of the West and Northwest. It is a prairie tree and is found along highways and in door yards from Kansas northward into British America. It stands drought better than any other ash, and resists cold fully as well, and yet it endures the warm weather and the rains of the South and flourishes there. It is not a large tree, but of sufficient size for use as furniture, finish, and vehicle making. It is seldom listed in statistics of woods which go to sawmills, yet it is known that a good many logs find their way to mills, while wagon makers and slack coopers employ it in producing their commodities. The tree is an abundant seeder, and the seeds continue to fall during most of the winter.

RED ASH (_Fraxinus pennsylvanica_) is neither a large tree nor very
abundant, yet it has a wide range and is put to use wherever
lumbermen find it convenient. The lumber generally passes in the
market as white ash, and for most purposes it is as good, but is
rated lower than that wood in elasticity. It is called brown ash in
Maine, black ash in New Jersey, river ash in Rhode Island. The last
name is bestowed because the tree prefers moist land near rivers and
ponds, and largest specimens are found in such situations, where it
is often an associate of black ash and is frequently mistaken for
it, though it should not be difficult to tell the species apart. A
slight reddish tinge sometimes shows on the outer bark; the inner
layer of bark is reddish; the small twigs and the under sides of
leaves are clothed with hairs which sometimes suggest redness; and
the heartwood is reddish-brown. Persons who speak of the tree as red
ash probably have one or more of those characteristics in mind. As a
tree it has no striking peculiarities. Its usual height is forty or
sixty feet; its diameter from fifteen to twenty inches; its compound
leaves ten or twelve inches long, with seven or nine leaflets; its
seeds one or two inches in length, narrow, and sharply pointed, with
slender, graceful wing.

The range of red ash is from New Brunswick to Dakota, and from
Florida to Alabama, with all of the included region of a million
square miles. It attains its best development in the north Atlantic
states, while it is usually inferior west of the Alleghany
mountains. It develops a broad crown in open ground, but even there
its lower limbs die and drop, while in forests the trunk grows tall
and the crown is reduced. It is planted for shade and ornament, but
it seems to have no superiority over white ash for that purpose.
Some of the Michigan manufacturers list red ash separately in their
factories, and apparently this is not done elsewhere in the country.
About three-quarters of a million feet a year are used in that
state, and since uses there are doubtless typical of uses in the
country generally, the list possesses importance: Automobile frames,
boxes, butter tubs, crates, eveners, flooring, furniture, interior
finish, neck yokes, singletrees, wagon poles. Farther east in early
times red ash was occasionally split for fence rails, but that use
is important now only as history.

PUMPKIN ASH (_Fraxinus profunda_) is a tree of peculiar interest. It
was unknown before 1893, though the region had been settled over a
hundred years. It has the largest leaves, largest fruit, and largest
swelled base of all American ashes. Notwithstanding that, it
remained so deeply hidden in swamps that it escaped discovery. The
botanical name refers to the deep swamps in which the tree chooses
its habitation. Its great, swelled base enables it to stand on the
soft mud of lagoon bottoms, and the abnormal swelling is ribbed like
a pumpkin, hence the only English name the tree has ever had. These
are not the only remarkable things connected with this ash. Its
range includes three or four deep swamps, far apart. One is in
southern Missouri, New Madrid country, another near Varney,
Arkansas, and a third, in a vast morass on the Apalachicola river,
Florida. It is believed to have been originally a Florida species,
and by some freak of nature it reached the Missouri and Arkansas
swamps. Certain other Florida plants accompanied it, one of which
was corkwood (_Leitneria floridana_). It is expected that pumpkin
ash will be found elsewhere in deep swamps intermediate between the
extremes of its range. The uses of this wood are few, because it is
scarce, and the trees are difficult of access on account of being
nearly always surrounded by water. Lumbermen who operate in swamps
occasionally bring out a few ash logs with cypress and tupelo. No
tests seem to have been made of the wood. Trees are sometimes 120
feet high and three in diameter above the swelled bases.

WATER ASH (_Fraxinus caroliniana_) is much lighter in weight than
any other American ash, and the wood is also lighter in color. It is
weaker and less elastic than any other, and is lower in fuel value.
It weighs less than white pine. It grows in deep swamps from
southern Virginia to Florida and westward in swamps to Texas. Some
have confused it with pumpkin ash, but the two are quite distinct.
This tree is also called poppy ash. The leaves are from seven to
twelve inches long, with five or seven leaflets which are much
blunter than most other ash leaves. The seeds are nearly in the
center of the broad, long wing, and are better flyers than most ash
seeds. The tree seldom exceeds forty feet in height, or twelve
inches in diameter. It is not known that the wood is ever used. Its
scarcity will keep it from becoming important, though its uncommon
lightness may lead to its employment for certain purposes.

BILTMORE ASH (_Fraxinus biltmoreana_) is named from Biltmore, N. C.,
where the tree attains its best development, a height of forty or
fifty feet and a foot or less in diameter. Its range extends from
northern West Virginia southward along the foothills of the
Appalachian mountains to Georgia, Alabama, and middle Tennessee. The
seed wings are slender, and only slightly narrowed at the end. The
leaf is ten or twelve inches long, with seven or nine leaflets. The
twigs of young trees are hairy. An occasional log doubtless goes to
sawmills, but no report has been made of uses of the wood.

FLORIDA ASH (_Fraxinus floridana_) is a deep swamp tree, thirty or
forty feet high, and a few inches in diameter. It is found in the
valley of St. Mary’s river, southern Georgia, and along the lower
Apalachicola river, Florida. The compound leaves are five or more
inches long with three or five leaflets. The seeds are small but
their wings are wide and long. No report has been made concerning
the quality of the wood, nor has it been used, as far as known. The
supply is very small.

SUGAR MAPLE

SUGAR MAPLE

(_Acer Saccharum_)

The makers of sugar in the North call this tree sugar maple, but lumbermen and users of wood nearly always speak of it as hard maple. All maples--and there are nearly a dozen--are tolerably hard, and sugar may be obtained from most of them; but this species is hardest of all, and the most prolific sugar maker, hence the two names are appropriate. It is often called rock maple, which name refers to its hard wood. In some regions the name most heard is sugar tree.

Its range extends from Newfoundland through Canada to Lake of the Woods, southward through Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Arkansas to Texas. It is found in every state east of the Mississippi, but it is not abundant in the South. Its best development is found from New England across the northern states to Michigan. Some very fine sugar maple is found in fertile valleys and on slopes among the Appalachian ranges from Pennsylvania southward. The largest lumber cut of maple is in the following states, ranging in the order given: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Vermont. Since the different species of maple are not reported separately in statistics, there is no way of determining how much each of the maples supplies. It is well known that sugar maple greatly exceeds all others.

At its best this tree may exceed a height of 100 feet and a diameter of three; but the average for mature timber in the best part of its range is sixty or eighty feet in height, and two in diameter. The flowers appear with the leaves in early spring, but the seeds do not ripen until autumn, when they are bright red. They are winged, and usually two grow together, but they sometimes become detached, in which case each is capable of flight with its single wing. It is characteristic of maple seeds to whirl rapidly while falling, and if a moderate wind is blowing, they glide considerable distances. They usually fly farther than the seeds of ash although their wings are no larger. The immense numbers of seeds borne by the sugar maple insure abundant reproduction in the vicinity of parent trees. The seeds sprout readily, but often so closely crowded together that most of them die the first few weeks. Not one in ten thousand can even become a large tree, and yet large trees are exceedingly abundant in extensive regions. They often form nearly pure stands, crowding to death all rivals that try to obtain a foothold. On the other hand, this maple often contents itself with a place among other forest trees.

It is one of the most vigorous and dependable of trees. It does not grow fast, but it keeps steadily at it a long time, and enjoys unusually good health. Its worst enemy is coal smoke, but fortunately, most sugar maple forests are out of reach of that disturber, though shade trees near factory towns and in the vicinity of coke ovens often suffer. Woodlots of sugar maple, occupying corners of farms in the northern states from Minnesota to Maine, present pictures of health, vigor, cleanliness, and beauty which no forest tree surpasses. The intense green and the density of the crowns in summer make the trees conspicuous in any landscape where they occur, while their brilliant colors in autumn are the chief glory of the forest where they abound.

The wood of this tree is hard, strong, and dense. It is three pounds lighter per cubic foot than white oak, and theoretically it rates a little lower in fuel value, but those who use both woods as fuel consider maple worth more. It is thirty per cent stronger than white oak, and fifty-three per cent stiffer. The wood is diffuse-porous, that is, the pores are not arranged in bands or rows, as they usually are in oaks, but are scattered in all parts. They are too small to be seen with the naked eye, but under a magnifying glass they are visible in large numbers. The yearly ring is not very distinct, because of the slight contrast between spring and summerwood. The medullary rays are numerous but small. In wood sawed along radial lines, from heart to sap, small silvery flecks are numerous. These are the medullary rays. They add something to the appearance of quarter-sawed maple, but not enough to induce mills to turn out much of it.

Such figures as maple has are brought out best in tangential sawing--that is, cut like a slab off the side of the log. Three distinct figures are recognized in sugar maple, and to some extent they belong to other maples. These forms of wood are known as birdseye, curly, and blister maple. They are accidental forms and exist in certain trees only. Students of wood structure are not wholly agreed as to the cause of these forms, but one of them, the birdseye effect, is believed to be due to adventitious buds which distort the wood in their vicinity. These buds start near the center of the tree when it is small, but never succeed in forcing their way out. They remain just beneath the bark during most or the whole of the tree’s life. A pin-like core, resembling a fine thread, connects the birdseye with the tree’s pith. This thread is the pith of the embryonic branch formed by the bud which never breaks through the bark. When the wood is sawed tangentially, small, dark-brown points or dots show the center of the buds, or the pith line connecting it with the tree’s center. Curly maple and blister maple are not believed to be formed in the same way as birdseye.

The uses of sugar maple are nearly universal, where a hard, white wood is wanted. Many large trees contain little colored heart, and trees are generally fifty years old before they have any. More maple is worked into flooring than into any other one commodity. Mills in Michigan alone, in 1910, made 185,611,662 feet of maple flooring. It was shipped to practically every civilized country in the world. Many builders consider it the best wooden floor that can be laid. In a test made in a large store in Philadelphia some years ago, a marble floor wore through sooner than maple, when the same wear was on both.

Nearly all kinds and classes of furniture have places for maple, either as outside material or inside frames, drawer bottoms, or partitions. Vehicle manufacturers employ it for heavy axles, running gear, parts of automobiles, sleigh runners and frames, and hand sleds. It is made into handles from gimlet sizes to cant hooks. Gymnasium apparatus owes much to the whiteness, smoothness, and strength of maple. Woodenware from toothpicks to ironing boards; from butcher blocks to butter molds; from door knobs to die blocks, is dependent on maple for some of its best material. It is largely used for boxes, in both solid and veneer form. Only two woods are now employed in larger amounts for veneers in the United States than maple. They are red gum and yellow pine.

Maple is one of the three woods most largely employed in hardwood distillation in this country; beech and birch are the others. Maple sugar is a product of this tree almost exclusively, and the business is large. In some parts of New England it is claimed that a grove is worth more for sugar than the land is worth for agriculture.

SILVER MAPLE (_Acer saccharinum_) is generally called soft maple by
lumbermen. It is known also as white maple, river maple,
silver-leaved maple, swamp maple, and water maple. The sinuses of
the leaves are very deep. The lighter color of its bark and the pale
green of the leaves distinguish soft maple at a glance from sugar
maple when both are in full leaf. The greenish-yellow flowers open
in early spring, and the seeds are ripe in April or May, depending
on the season and region. The seeds have large wings and fly well.
They germinate in a few days after they find suitable soil, and
before the end of the summer the seedlings have grown several
leaves. The vigor thus displayed continues until the tree is large.
It is a fast grower, and for that reason has been extensively
planted as a street and park tree. The wisdom of doing so is
doubtful, for this maple throws out long limbs which are often
broken by wind. The trunk is subject to disease, and a row of old
soft maples nearly always presents a ragged, unkempt, neglected
appearance. As to beauty of form and crown, there is little
comparison between it and the planted sugar maple. Soft maples in
forests range from seventy-five to 120 feet in height, and two to
four in diameter; that is, they attain about the same size as sugar
maples. The species covers a million square miles, practically the
whole country east of the Mississippi, some west of that river, and
most of eastern Canada.

It is a useful wood for many purposes. The custom of mixing this
with sugar maple makes it impossible to clearly separate the two
woods afterwards. It is the opinion of some well-informed
manufacturers that about five per cent of the total maple cut in the
United States is soft maple. The ratio is less in the North and more
in the South. The wood is hard, strong, rather brittle, easily
worked, pale brown with thick, white sapwood. Some rather large
trunks have no sapwood. It is in general use, but not for as many
purposes as sugar maple. The largest places found for it are as
flooring and woodenware, though furniture and boxes, particularly
veneer boxes, consume much. Its weight is three-fourths that of
sugar maple. The largest trees and the best wood grow in the lower
Ohio valley.

RED MAPLE

RED MAPLE

(_Acer Rubrum_)

This tree’s names describe it. Some refer to color of leaves, flowers, and fruit, others to situation where it grows best. It is known as red maple and swamp maple; also as water maple, white maple, scarlet maple, and shoepeg maple. New York Indians called it ah-we-hot-kwah, which meant red flower. Most trees looked alike to Indians, and when they gave a name, it was descriptive.

The redness of this maple is so marked that it cannot escape notice. The flowers, fruit, twigs, and leaves all possess the property at one time or another during the season. The flower comes before the leaf, during the first warm days of spring. That is pretty early in the South, and later in the North. The flowers are bright scarlet, and very conspicuous, growing in umbel-like, drooping clusters. The staminate and pistillate ones frequently grow on different trees, and always in separate clusters.

The fruit ripens quickly, and is sometimes almost mature before the leaves appear. The date of ripening depends upon latitude. The tree’s range north and south exceeds a thousand miles and that makes much difference in climate. In the South the fruit outstrips the leaves and has about reached maturity before the unfolding leaves are large enough to hide it; but in New England and New York the leaves are large before the fruit is mature. The seed is the characteristic maple key, with a wing to carry it. The fruit--and by that term the seed with its attached wing is meant--is bright red, and a tree loaded with the vivid clusters is a beautiful spectacle. Two seeds are generally fast together, and they make surprising flights in that condition, passing with whirling motion through the air. Gravity spins them, but wind carries them forward, and the random of their flight depends on the strength of the wind, which happens to be blowing when they sever their connection with the tree.

The seeds germinate quickly when they light on damp soil. If they do not find such situations, they soon perish; because they do not retain their vitality long. By the middle of summer the young trees have several leaves, and from that time on the struggle is mainly among themselves for space and moisture, because they stand so thick that it is a survival of the fittest.

The young twigs are generally red in spring, but they do not present as conspicuous a mass as the flowers and fruit do. The leaves are simple, with long reddish petioles. They have three or five lobes, the lower pair often entirely missing, and small if present. Each lobe has a pointed apex, and is irregularly serrate. The base of the leaf is rounded; also the sinuses, which extend far into the body of the leaf. The upper surface of the leaf is bright green, the lower a silvery-white. In the fall this tree is entitled to the name scarlet; for then the brilliant hues of the leaves are remarkably fine.

The range of red maple covers more than a million square miles, and touches every state east of the Mississippi river, and west of that stream it extends from South Dakota to Texas. It prefers rather swampy ground, but wants fertile soil. It is frequently found on the banks of creeks and rivers, and rarely on hillsides. It is most abundant in the South, particularly in the lower Mississippi valley, while trees of larger size are found in the valley of the lower Ohio. In the North it takes more to low wet swamps where it sometimes grows in such thickets as almost to exclude other species.

The best red maple trees attain a height of 100 feet or more, and a diameter of four feet or less. The average size is seventy feet high and two in diameter. The form of the tree, like that of all other maples, depends much upon the situation in which it grows. Good saw timber is not often cut from this species near the outer borders of its range.

The wood is about three-fourths as strong as hard maple, and is five pounds lighter per cubic foot, but is about six pounds heavier than soft or silver maple. It may, therefore, be considered that in some important points red maple is midway between hard and soft maple. In color it is light brown, slightly tinged with red. The sapwood is thick and lighter in color than the heart. The tree is usually not of rapid growth. The contrast between the springwood and summerwood is not strong. The wood is very porous, but the pores are so small that the unaided eye cannot discern them. The medullary rays are numerous, but thin, and are seldom considered in working the lumber.

Mills which saw this maple do not separate the lumber from other maples. The woodsman knows the difference, but the lumberman does not consider it worth while to pile the sawed stock separately. It sometimes goes to market as hard maple, sometimes as soft, but never under its own name. Consequently, it has no uses which are not also common to other maples. Lumbermen cut it when they find it mixed with other hardwoods where they are carrying on logging operations.

Red maple is made into flooring, interior finish, and veneer box material. Veneers are also made for furniture. These are the most important uses for the wood, but the manufacturers of woodenware employ it for numerous commodities, such as trays, bowls, ironing boards, grain scoops, snow shovels, clothes racks, garment hangers, and clothes pins. This species shows birdseye effect similar to that of sugar maple, but less of the stock goes to market. Logs with birdseye wood are generally reduced to veneer by the rotary process. Curly and wavy grains also occur in this maple. The wavy grain was much sought after by the early hunters who equipped their long rifles with stocks. Having found a piece of timber with the desired wavy grain, the hunter proceeded to shave and whittle until the stock was fitted to the barrel, and the gun was complete. Some of the stocks made with no tools but an ax, drawing knife, and a pocket knife, were works of art which are worthy of preservation in museums.

Occasionally some unknown rural Stradivari made a violin and selected the curly wood of red maple for the neck and sides. A few of these instruments are floating about the country, but an age of fifty or a hundred years has not yet imparted classic value to them, but the wood is unsurpassed in delicacy of grain and figure.

Sugar may be manufactured from red maple, but in smaller quantity than from sugar maple. In the days when every frontier settlement did its own manufacturing, inks and dyes were made from the bark of this tree. The tannin boiled from the bark was treated with sulphate of iron, and it became ink; when alum was added it became black dye; when the sulphate of iron was omitted, and alum alone was put in, a cinnamon-colored dye resulted.

Red maple is one of the most desirable trees for planting in parks and by roadsides. Nurserymen complain that seedlings are more difficult to manage than silver maples; nor do they grow as rapidly, but the trees are worth much more when once established. They have shorter and stronger branches than silver maple; are less liable to be attacked by disease; are more handsome in every way; but they demand damper soil, and succeed poorly in any other. That drawback tends to restrict the artificial planting of this tree.

MOUNTAIN MAPLE (_Acer spicatum_) is known also as moose maple, low
maple, and water maple. It is a small tree at its best, seldom more
than twenty-five feet high and eight inches in diameter, while in
most parts of its range it is only a shrub. Its best growth is on
mountain slopes of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. It
likes moist, rich hillsides, and does not object to shade. The
flowers come late, but within a month or six weeks after the bloom
appears, the fruit is full grown, but it remains on the tree till
autumn. The tree’s bark is smooth and very thin. The absence of
stripes distinguishes this tree from striped maple, which has nearly
the same range. Mountain maple grows from Maine to Minnesota,
southward to Michigan, and along the mountains to Georgia. The wood
is light, soft, brown tinged with red. The small size of the trunk
forbids its conversion into ordinary lumber. The only commercial use
reported for it is in Pennsylvania where it is cut along with other
hardwoods for destructive distillation.

FLORIDA MAPLE (_Acer floridanum_) is a species according to some,
and according to others is a variety of the hard maple. Its range is
limited, and the available quantity of the wood is small. It is
found in the swamps of southern Georgia and western Florida, and
westward to Texas, Louisiana, and southern Arkansas. Near the
southwestern limits of its range in Texas and Mexico, it is often a
shrub; but in the best part of its range it becomes a tree fifty or
sixty feet high and two or three in diameter. The wood passes for
hard maple when sawed into lumber, but it is not often sent to
sawmills. The makers of bent wood rustic furniture in some of the
southern towns, particularly in Louisiana, have found the slender
branches of Florida maple well suited to that purpose.

DRUMMOND MAPLE (_Acer rubrum drummondii_) is a variety of red maple,
not a separate species. Its range lies in the coastal plain of
Alabama and Georgia, western Louisiana, eastern Texas, southwestern
Tennessee, and southern Arkansas. It grows in deep swamps, and has
three-lobed leaves, and large-winged fruit, ripening in April and
May. The wood is too scarce to be important in the lumber trade, but
where it can be had it is used. Violin makers have procured some
finely curled wood of this maple in Union Parish, Louisiana. Some of
the wood from that district has been made into gunstocks also.

WHITEBARK MAPLE (_Acer leucoderme_) has been classed as a variety of
sugar maple, and also as a separate species. It is named from the
light gray color of the bark of young stems; but the color turns
dark with age. The tree is usually twenty or thirty feet high with a
diameter of a foot or more. The wood is of good quality, but no
uses, except fuel, have been reported. Trees are not abundant, but
the range covers parts of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia,
Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas. It is occasionally planted as a
shade tree along the streets of towns of Georgia and Alabama.

OREGON MAPLE

OREGON MAPLE

(_Acer Macrophyllum_)

Botanists prefer to call this tree broadleaf maple. The name is not inappropriate, as its extraordinarily broad leaves constitute the most striking feature of the tree where it stands in the woods. The leaf is usually wider than it is long. Some exceed a foot in both measurements. Bigleaf maple is not an uncommon name for the tree in Oregon, where it attains its highest development in damp valleys where the soil is good. The name white maple is not particularly descriptive of any feature of the tree, though the name is applied in both Oregon and Washington. In California it is known simply as maple. There is small likelihood in that region that it will be confused with any other member of the maple household; nor is there much danger of such a thing in any part of the Pacific coast, for, though four species of maple occur there, no one of them bears close enough resemblance to this one to be mistaken for it.

The Oregon maple’s range north and south covers twenty degrees of latitude. In that particular it is not much surpassed, if surpassed at all, by any maple of this country. Its northern limit lies in Alaska, its southern close to the Mexican boundary, in San Diego county, California. Its range east and west is restricted. It has a width of about one hundred and fifty miles in California, where it grows from the coast to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. An altitude of 5,600 feet appears to be the limit of its range upward. It attains altitudes above 5,000 feet at several points in the Sierra Nevada range. It descends nearly to sea level. Its geographical range is similar to the ranges of several other Pacific coast species which occupy long ribbons of territory stretching north and south parallel with the coast of the Pacific ocean.

This maple’s leaves change to a clear reddish-yellow before falling. Flowers appear after the leaves are grown, and the seeds ripen late in autumn. Some of them hang until late in winter, but the habit varies in different parts of the range, as is natural in view of its great extension north and south. The trees which stand in open ground are very abundant seeders, but those in dense stands produce sparingly, in that particular following the habit of most trees. This maple often grows in dense, nearly pure stands in Oregon and Washington where soil and other conditions are favorable.

The sizes and forms of Oregon maple vary greatly. John Muir spoke of forests whose trees were eighty or one hundred feet high, so dense with leaves and so abundantly supplied with branches that moss and ferns formed a canopy with foliage and limbs high over head, like an aerial garden; while George B. Sudworth described it in certain situations as a short-stemmed, crooked tree from twenty-five to thirty feet high and under a foot in diameter.

This maple has been called the most valuable hardwood of the Pacific coast, but that claim is made also for other trees. Some persons rate it with the hard maple of the East, in properties which commend it for use. It is doubtful if the claim can be substantiated. According to Sargent’s figures for strength, stiffness, weight, and fuel value, it lacks much of equalling the eastern tree. It is twelve pounds per cubic foot lighter; has not three-fourths the fuel value; and is little more than half as strong or as stiff. The comparison is more in favor of the western tree when color of wood and appearance of grain are considered. The wood is light brown with pale tint of red. The rings of annual growth are tolerably distinct, with a thin, dark line separating the summerwood of one year from the springwood of the next. The pores are scattered with fair evenness in all parts of the ring. They are small and numerous. The medullary rays are thin and abundant. In quarter-sawed wood they show much the same as in hard maple, but are rather darker in color. The mirrors are decidedly tinged with brown. The wood is reported poor in resisting decay when in contact with the soil.

The largest use of Oregon maple appears to be for furniture, second, for interior finish, and following these are numerous miscellaneous uses. Statistics of the cut of this wood, as shown by sawmill reports, are unsatisfactory. Census returns include it with all other maples of the country, without figures for species. The cut of maple for all the western states seems too small to give this wood justice. The amount reported used in Washington, Oregon, and California exceeds the total reported sawmill cut in the West.

Oregon maple is an important handlewood. The smooth grain appeals to broom makers. The wood is made into ax handles, but for that use it is much below hickory, or even hard maple or white oak. It is converted into pulleys in Washington, also into saddle trees, and tent toggles. Boat makers employ it for finish material, in which capacity it fills the same place, and must meet the same requirements as in interior finish for houses. Curly or wavy wood is occasionally found and this is worked into finish and also into furniture. The figure is as handsome as in eastern maple, but birdseye is less frequent. Counter tops for stores and bar tops for saloons are sometimes made of figured maple. It is seen also in grill work and show cases, but in order to show the figured wood to the best advantage it should be worked in flat surfaces.

Oregon maple is converted into flooring of the ordinary tongued and grooved kind, and also into parquet flooring. Rotary veneers are made into boxes and baskets. Solid logs are turned for rollers of various sizes and kinds. Mill yards use them for offbearing lumber, and house movers find them about the best local material to be had. This maple has been successfully stained in imitation of mahogany, and is said to pass satisfactory tests where the color is the principal consideration.

The amount of this species available in the Northwest is not definitely known, but it is a relatively scarce wood. No attention has ever been given to planting it as a commercial proposition. It is not of very rapid growth, and unless it is in dense stands, it develops a short trunk and large crown. It is better suited for shade and ornament, and is to be seen as a street tree in some western towns. It does not flourish in the eastern states, but has found the climate of western Europe more congenial and is occasionally found as an ornamental tree there.

The relative importance of this maple in the state of Washington is indicated by the amount used annually compared with certain other hardwoods. In 1911 the consumption of willow was 2,000 feet, vine maple 10,000, Oregon ash 58,000, Oregon oak 197,000, western birch 315,000, Oregon maple 932,500, red alder 1,881,500, and black cottonwood 32,572,200.

VINE MAPLE (_Acer circinatum_) is sometimes called mountain maple, though the name is misleading. It may grow among mountains, but always near streams. It is found at various altitudes from near sea level to 5,000 feet above. It ranges from the coast region of British Columbia southward through Washington and Oregon to Mendocino county, California. This tree is more useful than might be inferred from its name, or even from a study of it in its usual form. Only an occasional tree is good for the wood user. A height of twenty feet and a diameter of six inches are above the average. It is called vine maple because of its habit of sprawling on the ground like a vine. The trunk lacks sufficient stiffness to hold it erect. It grows upward to a certain point, then leans over and the branches lie on the ground. Some of them take root and in course of time what was first a single stem becomes a thicket of branches and stems. The winter snow often has much to do with bending the trunk, which appears to have no power to get back to the perpendicular when once bowed down. The damp situation where this tree thrives best, induces a luxuriant growth of moss and mold which help to bury the branches that lie on the ground.

The tree prospers in deep shade. The young leaves are rose red, and in the fall become yellow or scarlet. The fruit is the characteristic maple key. The wing becomes rose-red before falling in autumn. Though this tree is more a curiosity than a lumberman’s asset, it is not without value. Handle makers use 10,000 feet of it a year in the state of Washington. It is shaved and turned for ax and shovel handles. It has two-thirds the strength and less than half the stiffness of eastern hard maple. The tree grows slowly and the annual rings are very narrow and indistinct. Seventy or eighty years are required to produce a trunk five inches in diameter. The wood is hard, and checks badly in seasoning. The bark is very pale brown--suggesting the color of a potato sprout that has grown in a dark cellar. The Indians liked the wood for fish net bows, though there appears to have been no very good reason why they preferred it to other woods of the region. Its most extensive use at present is as fuel, but it is not particularly sought after. The tree’s future is not promising. Under domestication it does not take on its fantastic, moldy, moss-grown form, and its forest growth will never be encouraged by lumbermen.

DWARF MAPLE (_Acer glabrum_) is one of the smallest of the maples, but in a north and south direction its range is equal to that of any other. Its southern limit is among the canyons of Arizona, and its northern on the coast of Alaska within six or seven degrees of the Arctic circle. It extends to Nebraska, and is found east of the continental divide far north in British America. It reaches its largest size on Vancouver island and on the Blue mountains in Oregon. It here is large enough to make small sawlogs, but it is usually shrubby in other parts of its range. It grows from sea level in Alaska to 9,000 feet altitude among the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Two forms of leaf occur. One is three-lobed; the other is a compound leaf, the lobes having formed separate leaves. The bright upper surface of the leaf gives the species its botanical name. The seeds have large, wide wings. It cannot be ascertained that the wood of this maple has ever been used for anything.

BOX ELDER

BOX ELDER

(_Acer Negundo_)

Attempts to ascertain the meaning of the word _negundo_ which botanists apply to this species have not been crowned with entire success. It is known to be a word in the Malayalam language of the Malabar coast of India, and is there applied to a tree, apparently referring to a peculiar form of leaf. The name was transferred to the box elder by Moench, and has been generally adopted by botanists, although at least seven other scientific names have been given the tree. It bears ten or more English names in different regions. Among these names are ash-leaved maple, known from Massachusetts to Montana and Texas; cut-leaved maple in Colorado; three-leaved maple in Pennsylvania; black ash in Tennessee; stinking ash in South Carolina; sugar ash in Florida; water ash in the Dakotas; and box elder wherever it grows.

The tree’s geographical range does not fall much short of 3,000,000 square miles, and is equalled by few species of this country. It extends from New England across Canada to Alberta, thence to Arizona, and includes practically all the United States east and south of those lines. It thrives in hot and cold climates, and high and low elevations; in regions of much rain, and in those with little. That fact has been turned to account by tree planters, particularly in the years when the western plains were being settled by homesteaders. The box elder was the chief tree on many a timber claim where the letter of the law rather than the spirit was carried out. It afforded the earliest protection against scorching summer sun and the keen winds of winter about many a frontiersman’s cabin on the plains. It was the earliest street tree in many western towns. The people planted it because they knew it would grow, and they were not so sure of a good many other trees. Green ash was often its companion in pioneer plantings on the plains. Many towns which set box elders along the streets when they did not know of anything better, still have the trees, though they would willingly exchange them for something else. They are not ideal street and park trees; do not produce shapely trunks and crowns; and drop leaves all summer and seeds all winter. The tree is reputed to be short lived, yet some of those planted a generation or two ago show no symptoms of decline.

There is no good reason why this tree should be called an elder, or an ash, except that its leaves are compound. If that is a reason, it might be called a hickory or a walnut, since they bear compound leaves. It is clearly a maple. Its fruit shows it to be so, and Indians of the far Northwest who had no other maple, formerly manufactured sugar from this tree, collecting the sap in wood or bark troughs and boiling it with hot stones.

The compound leaf does not necessarily take it out of the maple group. It requires no great exercise of imagination to understand how a lobed leaf, by deepening the sinuses between the lobes, might become a compound leaf in the process of evolution. There may be no visible evidence that the box elder’s leaf reached its present form by that process, but there is another maple which is at the present time developing a compound leaf in that way, or seems to be doing so. It is the dwarf maple (_Acer glabrum_) of the Northwest coast. Lobed leaves and compound leaves may occur on the same tree.

The seeds of box elder resemble those of other maples. They ripen in the fall, and are blown off by wind, few at a time, during several months. The trees are from fifty to seventy feet high, and from one and a half to three feet in diameter. The trunk is apt to divide near the ground in several large branches, and is not of good form for sawlogs, being often crooked as well as short. The small branches, particularly those less than a year old, are usually nearly as green as the leaves. This fact may assist in identifying the tree when the leaves are off. The bark bears more resemblance to ash and basswood than to maple.

The wood is lightest of the maples. It weighs less than twenty-seven pounds to the cubic foot; has less than half the strength and about forty per cent of the stiffness of sugar maple; and is much inferior to it in most mechanical properties. It is equal, if not superior to most maples in whiteness. The pores are small, numerous, and scattered through all parts of the growth ring, as is characteristic of maple wood. The tree grows rapidly. The summerwood is a thin, dark line, separating one annual ring from another. The medullary rays are many and obscure, but when wood is sawed or split along a radial line, they are easily seen, and show the true maple luster.

The uses of box elder are similar to those of soft maple. The wood is seldom reported under its own name. In fact, an examination of wood-using reports of various states, shows that in only two states, Michigan and Texas, has box elder been listed separately. Its uses in the former state were for boxes, crates, flooring, handles, woodenware, and interior finish, while in Texas it was made into furniture. The tree is of commercial size in at least thirty states, and is cut and marketed in all of them. Tests of the wood for pulp are said to be satisfactory, and it finds its way in rather large amounts to cooper shops where it is made into slack barrels. It is cut as acid wood along with other maples, beech, and birch, and is converted into charcoal and other products of distillation.

It may be expected that box elder will exist in the United States as long as any other forest tree remains. It is willing to be crowded off good land into low places, which are almost swamps, and there it grows free from disturbance; but if given the opportunity it will appropriate the most fertile soil within reach of it; and by scattering seeds during four or five months of the year, it manages to do much effective planting.

CALIFORNIA BOX ELDER (_Acer negundo californicum_) is a variety of
box elder, and not a separate species. As the name implies, it is a
California tree, and it occurs in the valleys and among the Coast
Range mountains from the lower Sacramento valley to the western
slopes of the San Bernardino mountains. The tree is from twenty to
fifty feet high and from ten to thirty inches in diameter. The
leaves and young twigs are hairy, in that respect differing from the
eastern box elder. The seeds are scattered during winter. The wood
is very pale lemon-yellow or creamy-white, the heart and sapwood
hardly distinguishable. The wood is soft and brittle, but is suited
to the same purposes as the eastern box elder. No reports of its
uses appear to have been made. It is found on the borders of streams
and in the bottoms of moist canyons. It is believed to be a
short-lived tree.

STRIPED MAPLE (_Acer pennsylvanicum_) is usually thirty or forty
feet high, and eight or ten inches in diameter. Its range extends
from Quebec to northern Georgia, westward to Minnesota, and is of
largest size on the slopes of Big Smoky mountains of Tennessee, and
the Blue Ridge in North and South Carolina. It grows best in shade,
but maintains itself in open ground; is generally shrubby in the
northern part of its range. The name refers to the bark. The stripes
are longitudinal and are caused by the parting of the outer bark and
the exposure to view of the lighter colored inner layers. The bark
of small trees is greenish, but later in life the color is darker,
and the stripes largely disappear. Among its names are moosewood, so
called because it is good browse for moose and other deer; goosefoot
maple, a reference to the form of the leaf; whistlewood, an allusion
to the ease with which the bark slips from young branches in spring
when boys with jack-knives are on the search for whistle material.
The names mountain alder and striped dogwood are based on
misunderstanding of the tree’s family relations.

The young leaves are rose colored when they unfold, and when full
grown are six inches wide. The wood is light and soft, and light
brown in color, the thick sapwood lighter. The wood is liable to
contain small brown pith flecks, which in longitudinal sections
appear as brown streaks an inch or less in length and as thick as a
pin, and in cross section they are brown dots. They are not natural
to the wood but are caused by the larvæ of certain moths which
burrow into the cambium layer, or soft inner bark, and excavate
narrow galleries up and down the trunk. The galleries afterwards
fill with dark material. The insects sometimes attack other maples,
the birches, service, and other trees. The wood of striped maple is
little used, because of the small size of the trees. The species is
planted for ornament in this country and Europe.