Chapter XIX: Part 19

This tree has never suffered for want of names, but most of them refer either to the sweetness of the pod or to the fierceness of the thorns. The belief has long prevailed that it was the pods of this tree on which John the Baptist fed while a recluse in the Syrian desert. The tradition should not be taken seriously. It was certainly not this tree, if any, which furnished food to the prophet in the wilderness, for it does not grow in Syria. Some related species may grow there, for species of _Gleditsia_ occur in western Asia as well as in China, Japan, and west Africa. The generic name is in honor of Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch, a German botanist who died in 1786.

The name honey locust refers to the pod, not the flowers. The latter are greenish, inconspicuous, and though eagerly sought by bees, they offer no particular attractions to people. Few persons ever notice them.

In some of the southwestern states the tree is called black locust, though for what reason it is not apparent. Sweet locust, by which name it is known in several states, has reference to the pods, as do the names honey, and honey-shucks locust, applied in different localities. Many persons in naming the tree have thorns in mind. It is known as three-thorned acacia, thorn locust, thorn tree, thorny locust, and thorny acacia. The botanist who named it considered thorns a characteristic, for _Triacanthos_ means “three-thorned.”

No one who has ever had dealings with the thorns, will fail to duly consider them. They are about the most ferocious product of American forests. The tree’s trunk and largest branches bristle with them, standing out like porcupine quills, and sharper than any needle devised by human ingenuity. Microscopists use them for picking up and handling minute objects, their points being smooth and delicate though their shafts may be strong and rough. Thorns are arrested branches, coming from deep down in the wood. No more can one of them be pulled out than a limb can be extracted by the roots. They come from the center of the tree or limb. Some put out leaves and become true branches, but others sharpen their points, assume an attitude of hostility, and remain thorns to the end of their lives. Some of them are a foot long, and are so strong that birds flying against them are impaled and meet cruel death. A well-armed trunk is proof against the agility and skill of the squirrel. He cannot negotiate the thorns, and probably he tries only once. The hot pursuit of a dog will not compel him to attempt it. All trees, however, are not formidably thorned; some have few, and certain varieties have none.

The honey locust is sometimes called the Confederate pin tree in the South. This is a reference to the Civil war, and the use occasionally made of the thorns by soldiers in mending the rents in their torn uniforms. The thorns were once put to a somewhat similar use among the Alleghany mountains where local factories for carding and spinning country wool employed them to pin up the mouths of wool sacks.

The natural range of honey locust has been greatly extended by man. It was not originally found east of the Alleghany mountains. It grew from western Pennsylvania to northern Alabama and Mississippi, and westward to Nebraska and Texas. It is now naturalized east of the Alleghanies, and southward to the Gulf of Mexico. Planting for ornamental purposes and for hedges has been the cause of its extension into new territory. In spite of thorns, it is ornamental. Its foliage is thin, and its flowers inconspicuous, but the tree possesses a grace which wins it favor. It grows very rapidly, and in a short time a seedling becomes a respectable tree, and continues its rapid growth a long time. In southern Indiana and Illinois, which is the best part of its range, trees have attained a height of 140 feet and a diameter of six. The average size of forest-grown specimens is seventy-five feet in height, and two or more in diameter.

The leaves are seven or eight inches long, doubly compound; the fruit a pod a foot or more in length, which assumes a twist when ripe, or sometimes warps several ways. The green pod contains a sweet substance often eaten by children, but it is believed to be of little value for human food. Cattle devour the pods when in the sugary condition; but they cannot often obtain them, because thorns intervene, when the pods would otherwise be in reach. In rural districts, a domestic beer is brewed from the young fruit. The juice extracted from it is permitted to ferment, but the beverage is probably never sold in the market.

The pods are in no hurry to let go and fall, even after they are fully ripe. They become dry, distort themselves with a number of corkscrew twists, and hang until late fall or early winter, rattling in the wind and occasionally shaking out a seed or two.

Honey locust has never been considered important from the lumberman’s standpoint. Sawlogs go to mills here and there, but never many in one place. The wood is not listed under its own name, but is put in with something else. Occasionally, it is said, it passes as sycamore in the furniture factory, though the difference ought not be difficult to detect. It doubtless depends to a considerable degree on the particular wood, for all honey locust does not look alike when converted into lumber. Some of that in the lower Mississippi valley might pass as sycamore if inspection is not too conscientiously carried out. The medullary rays, being darker than the body of the wood, suggest sycamore in quarter-sawed stock. Some of it goes into furniture, finish, balusters, newel posts, panels, and molding, particularly in eastern Texas. In Louisiana, where wood of similar texture and appearance might be expected, it is not looked on with favor, but is employed only in the cheapest, roughest work.

The principal use of the wood is for posts and railroad ties. It lasts well, and is strong. Claims have been made that it is generally equal and in some ways superior to locust. It is difficult to see on what these claims are based. It is lighter, less elastic, and much weaker. Figures showing the comparative durability of the two woods are not available, but in like situations, locust would doubtless last much longer. As timber trees, the former may have the advantage over locust in being free from attacks of borers, attaining greater size, and thriving in a much larger area. It has been planted for ornament in other lands than this, and is now prospering in all the important countries of the temperate zone. One variety is thornless, and is known to botanists as _Gleditsia triacanthos lævis_; another has short thorns.

WATER LOCUST (_Gleditsia aquatica_) looks so much like honey locust
that the two are often supposed to be the same species in Louisiana;
yet there are a number of differences. Water locust has fewer thorns
and they are smaller, and often flat like a knife blade. The pods
are entirely different from those of honey locust, being short and
wide. The two species share the same range to some extent, but that
of water locust is smaller, extending from South Carolina to Texas,
Illinois, and Missouri; but the best of the species is west of the
lower Mississippi where trees may reach a height of sixty feet and a
diameter of two. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, the heartwood
rich bright brown, tinged with red, the sapwood yellow. The wood is
much like that of honey locust, and when used at all is employed in
the same way.

TEXAS LOCUST (_Gleditsia texana_) is of no importance as a timber
tree, and deserves mention only because its extremely restricted
range gives it an interest. It exists, as far as known, in a single
grove on the bottom lands of the Brazos river, near Brazoria, Texas,
where some of the trees exceed 100 feet in height, and a diameter of
two. The bark is smooth and thin, the leaves resemble those of honey
locust, and the pods are about one-third as long.

HUISACHE (_Acacia farnesiana_) is native along the Rio Grande in
Texas, but it is running wild in Florida from planted trees. It is
one of the most widely distributed species in the world, both by
natural dispersal and by planting; and it is one of the handsomest
members of the large group of acacias which includes more than 400
species. It bears delicate double-compound leaves, small and
graceful. A tree in full leaf in its native wilds along the Rio
Grande looks like a trembling fluffy mass of green silk. Nature
formed the tree for ornament, not for timber. It attains a height of
from twenty to forty feet, diameter eighteen inches or less. Trunk
usually divides into several branches near the ground. Perhaps the
only place in this country where the wood is used is in southern
Texas where is it called “cassie,” a shortening of acacia. The wood
so much resembles mesquite that locally they are considered the
same. Huisache warps and checks in seasoning, but it is employed in
a small way for furniture, usually as small table legs, spindles,
knobs, and ornaments. It takes high polish, and resembles the best
grades of black walnut, but is much heavier, harder, and stronger.
It is next to impossible to drive a nail into it without first
boring a hole. When used as crossties, holes must be bored for the
spikes. The heartwood resists decay a long time, but the thin
sapwood is liable to be riddled by small boring insects, which
seldom or never enter the heartwood.

TEXAS CAT’S CLAW (_Acacia wrightii_) is a hardluck tree of western
Texas where it is usually found on dry, gravelly hills and in stony
ravines. Its twice-compound leaves are among the smallest of the
acacias, seldom exceeding two inches in length. The fragrant, light
yellow flowers appear from March to May, and the short pods ripen in
midsummer, but like so many trees of the pea family, they are in no
hurry to fall. The largest trees are thirty feet high and one in
diameter, but most people associate cat’s claw with low, tangled
brush, tough as wire, and armed with curved thorns so strong that
their hold on clothing can hardly be broken. When a cat’s claw bush
strikes out to become a tree--which is infrequent--it grows rapidly.
It has been known to attain a diameter of nine inches in
twenty-three years. The heart is dark in color and exceedingly hard.
The color varies from nearly red to nearly black, and takes a polish
almost like ivory. The thin yellow sapwood is preyed on by boring
insects. Heartwood is made into canes, umbrella sticks, tool
handles, rulers, and turned novelties.

DEVIL’S CLAW (_Acacia greggii_) has such paradoxical names as
paradise flower, ramshorn, and cat’s claw. It deserves them all
where it grows wild on the semi-deserts of the Southwest from Texas
to California. The double-compound leaves are one or two inches
long, its bright, creamy-yellow and exquisitely fragrant flowers are
the glory of desert places, while its masses of thorns readily
suggest the common name by which it is known. The wood is scarce,
but extraordinarily fine. It is dark rich red, but clouded with
streaks and patches of other shades, becoming at times gray, at
others green. No nail can be driven into it, and an ordinary gimlet
will hardly bore it. It is so saturated with oil that it is greasy
to the touch. It is manufactured into small articles, but apparently
is not used outside of the locality where it grows. The wood is
often contorted, due to pits and cavities which slowly close as the
tree advances in age. They add to rather than detract from the
wood’s beauty.

COFFEE TREE

COFFEETREE

(_Gymnocladus Dioicus_)

This tree is scarce though its range covers several hundred thousand square miles, from New York to Minnesota, and from Tennessee to Oklahoma. It never occurs in thick stands, and usually the trees are widely scattered. Many districts of large size within the limits of its range appear to have none.

The names coffeetree and Kentucky coffeetree refer to the custom of the pioneers, who settled the region south of the Ohio river, and who used the grotesque fruit as a substitute for coffee at a time when the genuine article could not be procured. The seed is a very hard bean that can be procured in abundance, where trees abound.

The beans were softened by roasting or parching, and were then pounded into meal with hammers, and boiled for coffee. The beverage was black and bitter, and a little of it would go a long way with a modern coffee drinker. When the Kentuckians were able to procure coffee they let the wild substitute alone.

The name was sometimes varied by calling it coffeenut or coffeenut tree, and sometimes it was known as coffeebean and coffeebean tree. It is less easy to explain why it was called mahogany in New York, and virgilia in Tennessee. Some knew it as the nicker tree, but the reason for the name is not known. Stump tree was another of its names. This was meant to be descriptive of the tree’s appearance after it had shed its leaves. It has remarkable foliage, double compound leaves two or three feet long, with four or five dozen leaflets. When leaves fall in autumn it looks as if the tree is shedding its twigs; and when all are down, the stripped and barren appearance of the branches suggests the name stump tree.

The flowers are greenish-purple and are inconspicuous. In this respect they differ from many trees of the pea family which are noted for their attractive bloom. The fruit is among the largest of the tree pods of this country, ranging in length from six to ten inches and from one and a half to two in width. When fully grown they are heavy enough to make their presence felt if they drop on the heads of persons beneath. They are slow to fall, however, and it is not unusual for them to cling to the branches until late winter or early spring.

The coffeetree has been known to attain a diameter of five feet and a height of more than a hundred, but the usual size is about half of that. It prefers rich bottom lands, and the trunks generally separate into several stems a few feet above the ground. Only one species exists in this country, and as far as known, only one other species elsewhere, and that grows in southern China where it is said the natives make soap of the pods. It is not known that any such utilization has been attempted in this country.

The coffeetree’s range has been considerably extended by planting for ornament. In summer it is attractive, but from the first autumn frost until the leaves put out the following spring, it is uninteresting. The spring leaves are late, and the branches are bare more than half the year.

The wood is heavy, strong, and durable in contact with the soil. The heart is rich light brown, tinged with red, the sapwood thin and lighter colored. Annual rings are distinct. The springwood is porous and wide, the summerwood dense. The medullary rays are inconspicuous and of no value in giving figure to the wood. When the annual rings are cut diagonally across they give figure like that of ash. The wood of the coffeetree has never been in much demand. Furniture makers may use it sometimes, but specific instances of such use do not exist in manufacturers’ reports. There are many places in furniture and finish which it might fill in a satisfactory manner.

It is suitable for fence posts, and that is where it commonly gives service. It is occasionally employed as frame work in house and barn building, but is not sought for that purpose, and is used only when it happens to be at hand. Though the tree has the habit of branching, some of the trunks grow tall and shapely, and are good for two or three sawlogs or railcuts. An occasional tree serves as fuel. Medicine is sometimes made of a decoction of the fresh green pulp of unripe pods; and the leaves are reported to produce a fly poison if soaked in water.

REDBUD (_Cercis canadensis_) is also known as Judas tree, red Judas tree, Canadian Judas tree, and salad tree. The last name refers to a custom in some parts of its range of making salad of the flowers. It is the flower rather than the bud that is red and gives the tree its name, the bloom being conspicuous in early spring. The tree ranges from New Jersey to Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, but reaches its fullest development in southern Arkansas, Oklahoma, and eastern Texas where trunks fifty feet high and a foot in diameter are found. It is shrubby in many parts of its range. Leaves are not compound. The fruit is a pink or rose-colored pod two or three inches in length, and by some is considered nearly as ornamental though not as showy as the flowers. No one ever thinks of redbud as a timber tree or considers its wood, yet it might be used for a number of purposes. It is heavy and hard, but weak; and the heartwood is rich dark brown tinged with red. The tree is planted for ornament in this country and Europe.

TEXAS REDBUD (_Cercis reniformis_) differs somewhat from the common redbud, but it takes a botanist to point out the differences. The largest trees are forty feet high and a foot in diameter; the range extends from eastern Texas into Mexico; the wood closely resembles that of the other species, and is not known to be used for any purpose.

CALIFORNIA REDBUD (_Cercis occidentalis_) is often classed as a shrub, but Sudworth gives it a place among the forest trees of the Pacific coast. The pea-shaped flowers are a clear magenta color. The pods turn purple when ripening but afterwards change to russet-brown. The wood is dark yellowish-brown, but because of the smallness of the trunks, it can never be important. The tree is found along the California mountains, six hundred miles north and south; is an abundant seeder, and is valuable as a protection to slopes and ravines, and as an ornament.

HORSEBEAN (_Parkinsonia aculeata_) is generally called retama in the valley of the lower Rio Grande in Texas where the species attains its largest size. Trees are occasionally thirty feet high and a foot or more in diameter. Trunks usually separate in several stems near the ground. The range extends from southern Texas to California, and the species is naturalized in south Florida, the West Indies, and many tropical countries. Leaves vary in form, and are occasionally eighteen inches long. Fruit consists of pods, each containing from two to eight beans. The yellow flowers are small and fragrant; the bark on young twigs is green, but on older trunks is brown. The brown, however, is easily rubbed off, exposing the green beneath, as may be seen in school grounds in some of the southern towns in Texas where this tree has been planted for ornament, and abrasions, due to children climbing about the spreading stems, keep the bark green. The upper branches are armed with thorns which discourage the climbing propensities of children. The wood is heavy, hard, tinged with yellow, and is made into small novelties, but is not of much importance.

SMALL-LEAF HORSEBEAN (_Parkinsonia microphylla_) is well named, for the compound leaves, with four or six pairs of leaflets, are about an inch long, covered with hairs, and fall at the end of a few weeks. Consequently, the tree is bare most of the year, except for the pale yellow flowers which appear in spring before the leaves, and the clusters of striped pods, each containing from one to three beans. The pods are nearly always present, for they have the pea family habit of adhering to the branches a long time. Trees reach a height of fifteen or twenty feet, and a diameter of ten inches or less. The wood is very hard and dense, in color deep yellowish-brown, often mottled and streaked with dull red; the sapwood thick and yellow. The wood is suitable for small articles, but its scarcity renders it of little importance. It is found in the deserts of southern Arizona and the adjacent parts of California, and is usually a small shrub.

JAMAICA DOGWOOD (_Ichthyomethia piscipula_) is the lone representative of the genus, and is found in this country only in southern Florida. It is not in the same family with the dogwoods, and its name is misleading. The Carib Indians formerly used the leaves to stupify fish and render them easier to catch; hence the botanical name. The leaves are compound, but bear little resemblance to the foliage of most members of the pea family to which this tree belongs. The flowers are the tree’s chief source of beauty, and are delicately clustered, hanging in bunches a foot long. The fruit is a pod three or four inches long, with four wings running the full length. The wings are useless for flying. Trees are forty or fifty feet high and two or three feet in diameter; are common in southern Florida and on the islands. The wood is of considerable importance in the region where it grows but figures little in general markets. It weighs 54.43 pounds per cubic foot, and is moderately strong and stiff. In color it is a clear yellow-brown, with thick, lighter colored sapwood. It is very durable in contact with the ground, and in Florida it is used for posts, and occasionally for railway ties. It has been commonly reported as a wood for boatbuilding in Florida, but its importance for that purpose has probably been overstated, since an investigation of the boatbuilding industry in Florida failed to find one foot of this wood in use, although some may be employed but not listed in reports.

YELLOW-WOOD

YELLOW-WOOD

(_Cladrastis Lutea_)

This wood’s color is evidently responsible for its names yellow ash, yellow locust, and yellow-wood in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Kentucky, but no reason is offered for the name gopherwood by which it is known in some parts of Tennessee. The botanical name is based on the brittleness of the twigs. It is the only species of the genus, and it is not known to grow anywhere, except by planting, outside of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina.

It occurs in an area not much exceeding 60,000 square miles, and it is not abundant in that area. It prefers limestone ridges and slopes, and does best where the soil is fertile. It often overhangs the banks of mountain streams, and is most abundant and of largest size in the vicinity of Nashville, Tennessee, where a few trees have reached a diameter of three or four feet and a height of fifty or sixty. A diameter of eighteen or twenty-four inches is a good average.

The tree’s habit of dividing six or seven feet from the ground into two or more stems is responsible for the scarcity of trunks suitable for saw timber, even in localities where trees of large size are found. However, an occasional trunk develops a shapely form. It goes to sawmills so seldom that it is never mentioned in statistics of lumber cut or wood-utilization.

Most people who are acquainted with this tree, know it as planted stock in parks and yards where it is a favorite on account of its flowers. The bloom may properly be described as rare from two viewpoints. The beauty of its large clusters of white flowers differs from those of all associated trees; and it seldom blooms. One year of plenty is generally followed by several lean years. Those who plant the tree understand this, and feel amply repaid for the long wait, when the flowering year arrives. The planted tree is often known as virgilia, that being the name under which nurseries sell it. Flowers appear about the middle of June, in clusters a foot or more in length. It is claimed, but with what correctness cannot at present be stated, that the odor of flowers of different trees varies greatly, being faint with some, and strong and luxurious with others.

The leaves are compound, but have no resemblance to those of locust and the acacias. They are eight or twelve inches long, with five or seven leaflets. In autumn before falling they change to a clear yellow, but adhere to the branches until rather late in the season. The fruit, which consists of small pods hanging in clusters, is ripe in September.

Yellow-wood is a little below white oak in strength and seven pounds per cubic foot under it in weight; is hard, compact, and susceptible of a beautiful polish. Rings of yearly growth are clearly marked by rows of open ducts, and contain many evenly-distributed smaller ducts. The wood is bright, clear yellow, changing to brown on exposure; sapwood nearly white. Trunks of largest size are generally hollow or otherwise defective.

The uses of yellow-wood have been few. In the days when families in remote regions were under the necessity of manufacturing, growing, or otherwise producing nearly every commodity that entered into daily life, the settlers among the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee discovered that the wood of this tree, particularly the roots, yielded a clear, yellow dye. The process of manufacture was simple. The wood was reduced to chips with an ordinary ax, and the chips were boiled until the yellow coloring matter was extracted. The resulting liquor was the dye, and it gave the yellow stripe to many a piece of home-made cloth in the cabins of mountaineers.

The women usually attended to the dye making and the manufacture of yarn and cloth; but the men found a way to utilize yellow-wood in producing an article once so common in Tennessee and Kentucky that no cabin was without it--the trusty rifle. The gunsmith, assisted by the blacksmith, made the barrel and the other metal parts, but the hunter generally was able to whittle out the wooden stock. Yellow-wood’s lightness, strength, and color suited the gun stock maker’s purpose, and he slowly hewed and whittled the article, fitted it to the barrel, adjusted it to his shoulder, and completed a weapon which never failed the owner in time of need.

FRIJOLITO (_Sophora secundiflora_) is found in Texas, New Mexico, and southward in Mexico. The name is Spanish and means “little bean.” A common name for it in English is coral bean. Sophora is said to be an Arabic word of uncertain meaning, except that it refers to some kind of a tree that bears pods. It is a species, therefore, which draws its names from four languages, while the name applied to it by Comanche Indians is translated “sleep-bush.” The bright scarlet seeds, as large as beans, but in shape like door-knobs, grow from one to eight in a pod, and contain a narcotic poison, “sophorin.” It is probable that Indians discovered that the beans, if eaten, produced sleep, hence the name. The tree is from twenty-five to thirty-five feet high, and from six to ten inches in diameter. The leaves are compound, and consist of seven or nine leaflets. The small, violet-blue flowers appear in early spring. They are not conspicuous, but their presence cannot escape the notice of a traveler in the dry, semi-barren canyons and on the bluffs where the tree holds its ground. Their odor calls attention to their presence. The perfume is powerful but pleasant, unless the contact is too close. The pods are from one to seven inches long, and hang on the boughs until late winter. It is not believed that birds or mammals distribute the seeds, as their poison renders them unfit for food. Running water appears to be the principal agent of distribution. The tree reaches its largest size in the vicinity of Metagorda bay, Texas. Among the dry western canyons it is usually a shrub. The small size of this tree stands in the way of extensive use of the wood. It burns well and its principal importance is as fuel. The weight is 61.34 pounds per cubic foot; it is hard, compact, susceptible of a beautiful polish; medullary rays are numerous and thin; color is orange, streaked with red, the sapwood brown or yellow. The wood is worked into a few small articles.

SOPHORA (_Sophora affinis_) ranges through portions of Arkansas and Texas. It is popularly supposed to be a locust, and is called pink locust or beaded locust, the first name based on the color of the wood, the last on the appearance of the pod which looks like a short string of beads, sometimes three inches in length, but usually shorter. In early times the pioneers manufactured ink from the pods. It was a fairly serviceable article, but was never sold, each family making its own. This tree’s flowers appear in early spring with the leaves. Trunks reach a height of twenty feet and a diameter of eight or ten inches; but the habit of separating into several stems a few feet above the ground lessens the use of the wood, even as posts, for the stems are usually very crooked. The tree’s preferred habitat is on limestone bluffs, or along the borders of streams, or in depressions in the prairie where small groves often occur. The wood weighs fifty-three pounds per cubic foot, and is very hard and strong. The annual rings are clearly marked with bands of large, open pores; medullary rays are thin and inconspicuous; color of the heartwood light red, the sapwood yellow. The wood is not sawed into lumber, but is whittled into canes and tool handles.

GREENBARK ACACIA (_Cercidium floridum_) is properly named. Its green bark makes up for its scarcity of leaves, and answers the purpose of foliage. The manufacture of the tree’s food goes on in the bark, because the leaves are too small to do the work. The foliage resembles that of locust and acacia in form, but the compound leaves are about an inch in length, and the leaflets are one-sixteenth of an inch long. Flowers are small, but the tree puts on three or four crops of them in a single summer. The pods are two inches long. The tree is found in the United States only in the south and west of Texas, where it is occasionally called palo verde. It attains a height of twenty feet and a diameter of ten inches when at its best. The wood is pale yellow tinged with green, and, because of small size, is of little importance.

PALO VERDE (_Cercidium torreyanum_) sheds its leaves and its pods so early in the season that its branches are bare most of the year. Trees are from fifteen to thirty feet high, and some are considerably more than a foot in diameter. Its range covers a portion of southern California, the lower part of the Gila valley in Arizona, and extends southward into Mexico. It is a typical tree of the desert, and its extreme poverty of foliage enables it to live in a dry, hot climate. It clings to the sides of desert gulches and canyons, ekes out a dreary life in depressions among desolate dunes and hills of sand and gravel, and spends its allotted period of years in solitude, growing either singly or in small groups where the full foliage at the best time of year is insufficient to offer much obstruction to the full glare of the sun from a cloudless sky. The small flowers have little beauty or sweetness, but what they have is wasted on the desert air. Wayfarers in the barren country use the wood for camp fires.

INDIGO THORN (_Dalea spinosa_) receives its name from the color of
its flowers which appear in June. The tree has few leaves and they
fall in a short time. This appears to be a provision of nature to
enable the tree to endure the heat and dryness of its desert home.
Its range covers the lower Gila valley in Arizona, and extends into
the Colorado desert in southern California. It is not abundant, and
if it were, it is of a size so small that it is practically
valueless for commercial purposes. Some trees are a foot in diameter
and twenty feet high. The wood is light, soft, and of a rich
chocolate-brown color. It is known also as indigo bush and dalea.

EYSENHARDTIA (_Eysenhardtia orthocarpa_) is so little known that it
has no English name. It grows from western Texas to southern
Arizona, but reaches tree size only near the summit of Santa
Catalina mountains in Arizona where it is twenty feet or less in
height and seldom more than eight inches in diameter. It inhabits an
arid region, and bears fruit sparingly, with usually a single seed
in a pod. The wood is heavy and hard, light reddish-brown in color,
with thin yellow sap. It is not of commercial importance and
probably never will be.

MESQUITE

MESQUITE

(_Prosopis Juliflora_)

There are known to be sixteen species at least of mesquite in the world, in Asia, Africa, and North and South America. The one here considered has a geographical range of at least seven thousand miles north and south, from Kansas to Patagonia, and an east and west range of four thousand miles, if the naturalized growth in Hawaii may be considered the western outpost of the species.[7]

[7] Botanists have had much controversy among themselves concerning
mesquite, particularly as to what is its correct name. In giving in
these pages some of the important facts concerning this interesting
tree, or group of species and varieties, it is not necessary to
touch the points in dispute.

The generic name _prosopis_ is a Greek word meaning “burdock;” the rest of the botanical name is Latin, meaning “July flower.” Mesquite is an Aztec word (mezquitl), coming down through the Spanish. Other names for the tree are algaroba, honey locust, honey pod, and ironwood.

The largest size of mesquite is found along the Rio Grande in southern Texas where trees three feet in diameter and fifty feet high are found, but individuals of that size are rare. The species is supposed not to extend west of New Mexico, but varieties grow farther west.

The leaves are compound, with twenty or more leaflets. The foliage is thin and casts a penumbrous shadow; trees generally occur wide apart, and there is enough sunshine reaching the ground to satisfy grass and other plants growing there. The pods are from four to nine inches long, and each contains from ten to twenty seeds. The principal growth of this tree in the United States is in Texas. It has been planted in Hawaii and has run wild in some of the islands of the group. It is of slow growth, but of remarkable vitality, holds its own, and gains ground in the face of obstacles.

Persons well acquainted with conditions in Texas, both past and present, say that the mesquite area is at least double now what it was when the state came into the Union. Old stands were scattered here and there, but hundreds of square miles which were in grass only, and little of that, half a century ago, now support forests of mesquite. It is perhaps a misnomer to designate some of these stands as forests, for they present a rather ragged and sorry appearance, but they are forests in the process of forming. The old growth, which is found principally in the counties bordering on the lower Rio Grande, is made up of trunks of large size, but the stands that have come on within the past fifty or sixty years are of smaller trees. A large mesquite trunk is from one to three feet in diameter; a small one from one foot down to an inch or two. A person would need to hunt from center to circumference of Texas to find many mesquite trunks that would make a straight sawlog twelve feet long. The tree is generally one of the most crooked, deformed and unpromising in the whole country; and its habit of dividing into forks near the ground, like a peach tree, makes it still more difficult to make use of. In fact, in winter when mesquite trees are bare of leaves the appearance of a forest reminds the observer of an old, neglected, diseased, moss-grown peach orchard in the eastern states; but in summer the leaves conceal much of the trunk scaliness and deformity, and there is something positively restful and attractive in the prospect of a wide range of these trees, covering hills and prairies. The leaves are compound like the acacias, and are delicate and graceful.

The spread of mesquite in the last fifty or seventy-five years has been attributed to the checking of grass fires which Indians once set yearly to keep the prairies open. The dispersion of the trees is facilitated by the scattering of seeds by cattle which feed on the pods. It is a tree hard to kill. Roots send up sprouts year after year during long periods. Sometimes, but not often in Texas, when adverse circumstances become so severe that the mesquite tree can no longer survive above the surface, it grows beneath the ground, sending only a few sprouts up for air. “Dig for wood” is a term applied to trees of that kind, when fuel is dragged out with mattocks, grab hooks, and oxen.

The roots of the mesquite penetrate farther beneath the surface for water than any other known tree in this country. Depths of fifty or sixty feet are occasionally reached. Well diggers on the frontiers learned to go to the mesquite for water. Large trunks never develop unless their roots are abundantly supplied with moisture. Railroad engineers on the “Staked Plains” of northwestern Texas turned that knowledge to account in boring wells.

Though mesquite is seldom or never mentioned in the lumber business, it is and has been one of the most important trees of the region. Its fuel value is very great. It has cooked more food, warmed more buildings, burned more bricks, than any other wood in Texas. The tannic acid in it injures boilers and it is not much used for steam purposes. It is very high in ash. A cord of mesquite wood when burned leaves from ninety to one hundred pounds of ashes. This exceeds five fold the ashes left when white oak is burned.

Mesquite is a high-grade furniture material, though it is difficult to work because of its exceeding hardness. Ordinary wood-working tools and machinery will not stand it. Suites of nine pieces are sold in some southwestern cities at $200 or $300. The merchants find difficulty in getting mesquite furniture made. Factories do not want to handle it, though the articles sell higher than mahogany. Large, heavy tables, deeply carved, are sold in some of the cities, but all seem to be made to order and largely by hand. The appearance of the polished and finished wood is a little lighter in color than mahogany. It is not uniform in color, but shades from tone to tone in the same piece. A little of the lighter colored sapwood is worked in with pleasing effect. Some of the tones resemble black walnut, and some suggest the luster of polished cherry.

Mesquite is brittle. Pieces of large size may be broken by a few blows with an ax. It has about half the strength of white oak, and is very low in elasticity. The wood has been used for two hundred years--possibly for thousands of years--as beams and sills for adobe houses; but it is not required to carry much weight. Spaniards employed it in building their churches and forts within its range. A timber taken from the Alamo, at San Antonio, Texas, in 1912, was said to have served more than 190 years with no sign of decay. Fence posts survive the men who set them. Paving blocks outlast sandstone subjected to the same use. Railroads in southern Texas employ this wood for crossties, but it is so hard that holes must be bored for the spikes.

Mesquite baskets are made by hand of splits the size of knitting needles, some of white sapwood, others of dark heartwood. Such baskets, large enough to contain five quarts, sell in the curio shops at San Antonio for $1.25 each. Some wagon makers insist that mesquite is in the same class with Osage orange for wagon felloes in hot, dry regions; but it does not appear that much of it is so used. The brittleness of the wood is against it, in use as felloes, except for vehicles of the heaviest sort where large pieces are demanded.

Among the uses of mesquite, by-products are an important consideration. The pods are food for farm stock. Before the first railroad reached San Antonio mesquite pods were a regular market commodity. The Mexicans know how to make bread and brew beer from the fruit; tan leather with the resin; dye leather, cloth, and crockery with the tree’s sap; make ropes and baskets of the bark. Parched pods are a substitute for coffee; bees store honey from the bloom which remains two months on the trees; riled water is purified with a decoction of mesquite chips; vinegar is made from the fermented juice of the legumes; tomales of mesquite bean meal, pepper, chicken, and cornshucks; mucilage from the gum; and candy and gum drops from the dried sap.

One of the most promising uses for this wood is in turnery. Short lengths can be utilized to advantage. The artistic color fits it for the manufacture of lodge gavels, curtain rings, goblets, plaques, trays, and numerous kinds of novelties. Spindles for grills and stairways do not suffer in comparison with black walnut, mahogany, cherry, and teak. The wood is porous, annual rings narrow and indistinct, and the medullary rays thin and inconspicuous.

A variety (_Prosopis juliflora glandulosa_) is found from Kansas to eastern Texas, and also in Arizona and California. It is the common mesquite of eastern Texas. Another variety (_Prosopis juliflora velutina_) occurs in some of the hot valleys of southern Arizona and southward in Mexico.

SCREWBEAN (_Prosopis odorata_) is known also as screwpod mesquite,
and tornillo. The name is due to the pod’s habit of growing in
spiral form, there being a dozen or more tight twists. The flowers
appear in early spring and new crops follow until summer. The pods
ripen early in autumn or late in summer, and many become infested
with grubs. The tree is from twenty-five to thirty feet high, and a
foot or less in diameter. Its range extends from western Texas and
Utah and Nevada through New Mexico and Arizona to southern
California. The wood is stronger and stiffer than common mesquite,
but a little lighter. Its uses are much the same, and it has the
same habits of growth, including its disposition to develop enormous
roots. The name might lead to the conclusion that the flower is rich
in perfume, but such is not the case. The tree grows slowly and
lives to old age, if it escapes fire and other accidents.

CHALKY LEUCÆNA (_Leucæna pulverulenta_), commonly called mimosa,
occurs in the United States only in southern Texas, but is somewhat
abundant in Mexico, where trees sixty feet high and nearly two feet
in diameter are sometimes manufactured into lumber. Along the Rio
Grande it is called “tepeguaja” by Mexicans. This name is said to be
equivalent to “hardwood,” which is an appropriate name. It is very
smooth and handsome when finished, and is used for tool handles,
small spindles, grills, and other small articles, particularly
products of the lathe. In color it resembles the lighter shades of
mahogany; weighs about forty-two pounds per cubic foot; foliage
extremely delicate and the tree is highly valuable for ornamental
purposes. It has been planted outside of its natural range. The pods
sometimes exceed a foot in length.

LEUCÆNA (_Leucæna glauca_) is small and probably will never be of
much importance. Trunks are seldom more than five inches in diameter
and twenty feet high. The tree grows in canyons and ravines in
western Texas. The compound leaves are six or seven inches long,
with thirty or less pairs of leaflets; fruit is a pod six or eight
inches long. The rich brown wood is streaked with red.

SWEET BIRCH

SWEET BIRCH

(_Betula Lenta_)

Ten species of birch occur in the United States, including Alaska. Six are eastern and four western.[8] Sweet birch is known by that name in many localities, but in others as black birch, cherry birch, river birch, mahogany birch, and mountain mahogany. Its range extends from Newfoundland to northwestern Ontario, south to southern Indiana, Kentucky, and along the Appalachian mountains to Tennessee and North Carolina. Probably the best development of the species is found in the Adirondack region of northern New York, in the northern peninsula of Michigan, through southern Ontario, and along the mountain ranges southward through Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

[8] The eastern species, which do not extend west of the continental
divide, are, Sweet Birch (_Betula lenta_), Yellow Birch (_Betula
lutea_), River Birch (_Betula nigra_), Paper Birch (_Betula
papyrifera_), White Birch (_Betula populifolia_) and Blue Birch
(_Betula cærulea_). The western birches, none of which are known to
extend much east of the continental divide, are: Western Birch
(_Betula occidentalis_), Mountain Birch (_Betula fontinalis_), White
Alaska Birch (_Betula alaskana_), and Kenai Birch (_Betula
kenaica_). The last two occur in Alaska, but not in United States
proper.

It attains a height of seventy or eighty feet, and a diameter of two or three. It prefers deep, moist, rich soil, but will grow in comparatively dry, rocky ground. Its seeds are produced in large numbers and are scattered by the wind a hundred feet or more from the parent tree. They lack the wing power and the buoyancy of the seeds of some of the other birches, but they manage to get themselves sown in sufficient numbers, and their powers of germination are good.

The young seedling comes into existence with smooth bark, but it does not keep it through life. As age increases, the bark becomes rough and black. It is not shed in papery rolls and flakes as is the bark of river birch, yellow birch, and paper birch, with which it is associated in some parts of its range. It is generally an easy tree to identify and the black, rough bark is generally a sufficient guide.

The sweet birch is tapped like sugar maple, but not for the same purpose or to the same extent--only an occasional tree. Immense quantities of sap will flow from it during the two or three weeks when the buds are swelling in the spring. It is said that as much as two tons has been known to flow from a medium sized birch in a single season. The sap is made into a beer which has some commercial value, but is chiefly used locally. One of the ways of making it, employed by farmers and woodsmen, is to jug the sap, put in a handful of shelled corn, and let fermentation do the rest.

A substance known in commerce as oil of wintergreen is procured almost exclusively from this birch, though occasionally it is made from the small wintergreen plant (_Gaultheria procumbens_). The product is manufactured in very crude stills made by mountaineers in Pennsylvania and southward along the mountains where sweet birch is abundant. Frequently the woodsman’s whole family go into the business, chopping down birch bushes and hacking them with hatchets into chips of the desired sizes. The oil is extracted from the hogged mass by a steaming and roasting process. It is sold by the quart to country storekeepers who ship it to wholesale druggists where it is refined and used to flavor candy, medicine, and drugs. The woodsman who manufactures the oil prefers young birches from half an inch to two or three inches in diameter, and he usually procures them in old logging grounds where seedlings have sprung up. It is said that on an average one hundred small birch trees are destroyed for each quart of oil that goes to market. It is a process wasteful in the extreme.

In the open ground, sweet birch develops a full crown, short trunk, abundance of limbs, with numerous slender, graceful twigs and small branches. Its leaves form a dense mass, and they are so free from attacks by insects and worms that diseased foliage is unusual. That cannot be said, however, of the trunk. It is not particularly liable to disease, but many old trees show the results of decay. It is of slow growth, and a small tree may be much older than its size indicates. The sapwood is generally thick, heartwood forms slowly, and the contrast in color between sap and heart is strong.

The wood of sweet birch had few uses in early times, except fuel. The pioneer sawmill had little to do with it. Lumber was hard to saw and was seasoned with difficulty. Its tendency to warp was too great a tax on the lumberman’s patience and ingenuity. The only way he could hold it straight was to cob a few layers in the bottom of a pile, and stack thousands of feet of other lumber on top, and leave it a year or two. That was generally too much trouble, particularly when the wood had slow sale, and the price was low. Birch reached market in large quantities only when modern mills and improved drykilns came into existence.

The wood is heavy, strong, hard, in color dark brown tinged with red. The light brown or yellow sapwood generally makes up seventy or eighty annual rings. The difference between springwood and that of the later season is not clearly marked, and consequently the rings are often indistinct. The wood is very porous, and the pores are diffused through all parts of the ring. They are too small to be seen with the naked eye, except under the most favorable conditions. The medullary rays are numerous but so small that they appear on the quartered wood merely as a gloss, which, however, gives the surface a rich appearance.

Forms known as curly and wavy birch are highly esteemed. They are accidents of growth, well developed in birch, and occurring in several other woods. Difficulties are encountered in assigning sweet birch its individual place in the industrial world. As a tree it is well known, but that is not the case when its lumber goes to market. The sweet birch log goes into the sawmill, but when the lumber goes out at the other end of the mill, it is often simply birch having lost the adjective “sweet” somewhere in the operation. The reason is that sweet birch and yellow birch, quite distinct in the forest, are often mixed and become one, to all intents and purposes, when they reach the market. That is not always the case, but it frequently is. Something depends on the region. The yellow birch’s range is more extensive, and in areas where it is abundant, and sweet birch is not, it prevails in the lumber markets. But south and southeast of the great lakes, as well as in the northeastern part of the country, the two species mingle, and they are apt to go to market simply as birch. The woods may be distinguished by a microscopic examination, but the ordinary observer would make many mistakes if he attempted to tell one from the other in the lumber yard.

The two woods are different in several physical properties. Both are heavy, but sweet birch weighs 47.47 pounds per cubic foot, while yellow birch weighs only 40.84 pounds, according to tests averaged by Sargent. Yellow birch rates a little above the other in breaking strength. Both are very stiff, but yellow birch rates superior. In most respects the two woods are put to similar uses--flooring, interior finish, furniture--but for some purposes sweet birch is preferred. It is substituted oftener for cherry and mahogany, and for that reason is known as cherry birch or mahogany birch. Its color makes the substitution easy, and the appearance of the grain, with a little doctoring with stains and fillers, helps in the deception. The buyer may be deceived as to the exact kind of wood he is getting, but he is not cheated in the quality. Birch is substituted where strength is required, as in the rails of beds, the frames of sofas, davenports, large chairs, and certain parts of large musical instruments. It is much stronger, and fully as hard as cherry or mahogany, and as its appearance is so much like them, the article is actually better on account of the substitution. Sweet birch is largely employed for various parts of vehicle manufacture, particularly for wagon hubs and frames of automobiles. It is also much used in the manufacture of sleds, boats, and handles.

The demand is heavy and the supply is diminishing. The tree is of such slow growth that few timber owners will be inclined to wait for a second crop, after the old trees have been cut, since 150 years are necessary under forest conditions to produce a merchantable tree.