Chapter XXII: Part 22

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

CHESTNUT

CHESTNUT

(_Castanea Dentata_)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BASSWOOD

BASSWOOD

(_Tilia Americana_)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMERICAN HOLLY

AMERICAN HOLLY

(_Ilex Opaca_)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

YELLOW BUCKEYE

YELLOW BUCKEYE

(_Æsculus Octandra_)

Four species and one variety of buckeye are native in the United States, yellow buckeye, Ohio buckeye, California buckeye, small buckeye, and purple buckeye. They belong in the horse chestnut family. The so-called Texas buckeye is in a different family, and is not a true buckeye, but is close kin to the soapberry. The buckeyes are named for the large white spot on the smooth, brown nut, resembling the eye of a deer. The yellow buckeye is the most important of the group, is the largest and most abundant. It is known by the name of buckeye in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Kentucky. It is called sweet buckeye in West Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, Missouri, and Indiana, probably owing to the fact that it does not exhale the disagreeable odor characteristic of other members of the family. Yellow buckeye is the term applied to it in South Carolina and Alabama; large buckeye in Tennessee; big buckeye in Tennessee and Texas. It flourishes from Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, southward along the Alleghany mountains to northern Georgia and Alabama, westward along the valley of the Ohio river to southern Iowa, through Oklahoma and the valley of the Brazos river in eastern Texas. It thrives best along streams and in dense, rich woods. It reaches its fullest development on the slopes of the Alleghany mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee.

The leaves of the buckeye are compound, with from five to seven leaflets; flowers appear in May or June and are dull yellow; the fruit is a large brown nut, one or two of which are enclosed in a rough, uneven husk, about two inches or more in diameter. The tree grows from forty to 100 feet in height, and attains a diameter of from one to three and a half feet.

Buckeye grows intermingled with poplar, oak, maple, beech and a variety of other hardwoods. From its comparatively limited growth as compared with the totality of the average hardwood forest, it never has been recognized, and probably never will be, as a distinctive type of American commercial wood. The timber is felled with the other valuable trees surrounding it, and its appearance, when manufactured into lumber is so similar to that of the sap of poplar or whitewood that almost without exception it is assorted with poplar saps, and goes on the market masquerading as that wood. There is probably not one lumberman in a thousand, handling poplar, that is able to distinguish buckeye from sap poplar in his shipments of that wood.

Sawmills make no distinction between the different species. All that comes is buckeye, but nearly all of it is the yellow species, though doubtless a little of all the others is cut into lumber and veneer, or goes to the slack cooperage shop, or to the pulp mill. The woods of all are quite similar, and they are used for the same purposes. If one is employed in larger quantities than another, it is because it is more convenient, or of better form or larger size.

Early uses of buckeye were as important as those of the present day, though amounts were smaller. Many an Ohio statesman of former times boasted that, as a baby, he was rocked in a buckeye sugar trough for a cradle. They claimed with pride that the prevalance of the custom caused Ohio to be known as the buckeye state, a name which clings to it still. Next to yellow poplar, buckeye was considered the best wood from which to hew the small troughs which collected the sugar water from the tapped maples in early spring; but the range of buckeye did not extend northward into the real maple area, and the troughs like those which rocked the inchoate Ohio statesmen were unknown in the North, but were familiar along the mountain ranges southward. Dough trays, bread boards, chopping bowls, and troughs in which to salt bacon and pork, were hewed from buckeye by farmers and village woodworkers.

It weighs 27.24 pounds per cubic foot; is diffuse-porous, and the slight difference between the wood grown in spring and that of late summer renders the annual rings indistinct. It has little figure, no matter how it is sawed; medullary rays are thin and obscure. Softness is one of the principal qualities, and it is also weak, and is wanting in rigidity. These are its faults, but it has virtues. It is tasteless and odorless, and these properties make it valuable in the manufacture of boxes in which food products are shipped. The reported cut of buckeye in the United States is from 11,000,000 to 13,000,000 feet a year. The reports of factories which use the wood in making commodities throw light on the question of actual use. North Carolina works 10,000 feet a year into cabinets and office fixtures; Michigan 100,000 into candy and chocolate boxes, dishes, and bowls; Maryland uses 200,000 feet yearly for practically the same purposes, but with the added commodities of spice drawers and tea chests. Makers of artificial limbs consider buckeye one of their best materials, but it is second to willow. The “cork legs” are usually either buckeye or willow. Pulp mills grind the wood for paper, but it is not separately listed in pulp statistics, and the total cut cannot be stated. It is converted into veneer and finds many places of usefulness, but here, also, no separate figures are to be had.

The nuts are large and abundant, but almost wholly useless for man or beast. Bookbinders make paste of them, as a substitute for flour, and with satisfactory results. The paste resists ferments much better than that manufactured from flour; but the demand upon the nut supply for that purpose is very small. Squirrels and other small animals leave buckeyes alone. Some writers, whose acquaintance with this tree was apparently acquired at long range, state that the nuts are food for cattle. No person with knowledge of the buckeye says that. Cattle occasionally eat a few, but are poisoned thereby, and if they recover, they never again have anything to do with buckeyes.

This tree is ornamental during a few months of the year. Its flowers are attractive, and its large, vigorous leaves and conspicuous fruit are admired in summer; but early in the fall the leaves come down, the husks burst from the nuts and strew the ground with unsightly fragments. The tree is seldom planted, but the horse chestnut, a foreign species, takes its place.

OHIO BUCKEYE (_Æsculus glabra_) was once thought to be more abundant in Ohio than elsewhere, hence the name; but its best development is in Tennessee and northern Alabama. The disagreeable odor emitted by the bark gives it the names fetid and stinking buckeye, and it is known also as American horse chestnut. Its range is approximately the same as that of yellow buckeye, but it is a smaller tree, rarely more than thirty feet high, though it is seventy in exceptional cases. In common with other trees of the species, it prefers rich soil along water courses. The wood was formerly in demand for chip hats, but that use has apparently ceased. The sapwood is darker than the heart which is an exception to the general rule. Dark streaks, probably stains due to fungus, occasionally run through the trunk. In weight, strength, and stiffness the wood is approximately the same as yellow buckeye. Its odor is sufficient to distinguish it from that species, and it associates with no other except on rare occasions when it may be found with the small buckeye in western Tennessee and southern Missouri.

CALIFORNIA BUCKEYE (_Æsculus californica_) occurs only in the state whose name it bears. It is a short, much-branched, ill-formed tree; root large and shaped somewhat like an inverted tub, often standing a foot or more above the ground, and the branches rising from it. A tree so formed is without value to the general lumberman, but cabinet makers sometimes grub out the root and saw it transversely into thin lumber or veneer and make small articles which possess considerable figure, due to the involved growth, but little variety of color. Its tone is light yellow. The tree is found in the central part of California, from near sea level up to 4,500 in the Sierra Nevadas. It gets away from the immediate vicinity of water courses and grows on hillsides. It is heavier than any other American buckeye, and has very thin sapwood. The other properties of the wood, and the botanical characters of the tree are common to other members of the species. The seeds depend for their dispersal on running water, when the tree grows by a stream, or on gravity, if situated on a hillside. The seed will not grow unless buried in moist soil, and it retains its vitality only a few months. Few trees in the United States have larger seeds than buckeyes. The tree is short-lived, reaching maturity in most cases in less than a hundred years. It is sometimes planted for ornament in this country and in Europe.

SMALL BUCKEYE (_Æsculus austrina_) is one of the latest recognized members of the buckeye household. It seldom attains a diameter above five or six inches, or a height of twenty-five feet. It is, therefore, too small to be seriously considered as a source of lumber, and even if trunks were large enough, the species is too scarce to furnish many logs. It grows on rich uplands from western Tennessee and southern Missouri to Texas. The bright red flowers open in April, the fruit falls in October.

PURPLE BUCKEYE (_Æsculus octandra hybrida_) is a variety characterized by red or purple flowers and by leaves woolly on the under sides, and bark of lighter color than that of yellow buckeye. The range follows the Appalachian mountains from West Virginia southward. It has been reported in Texas also. If the wood is used at all, it goes for the same purposes as yellow buckeye.

SASSAFRAS

SASSAFRAS

(_Sassafras Sassafras_)

The French settlers in Florida were the first white men to give the name sassafras to this tree, but the Indians called it by that name long before. It was a tree which Indians were sure to name, because it had an individuality which appealed to them. It is not known what the real meaning of the word was, when the southern Indians used it. After the French adopted the name in Florida, it passed to other colonies and other languages, and has led to numerous disputes since. Many have erroneously supposed that the name is of Latin origin. When the English colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, the tree was well known by that name, but it was pronounced so variously and spelled in so many ways that it was often almost unrecognizable. It is pronounced variously and spelled differently yet. It is called sassafras in most regions, and in others is saxifrax, sassafas, sassafac, sassafrac, and saxifrax tree.

Its range covers the territory from Massachusetts to Iowa and Kansas, and south to Florida and Texas. Some of that range it has occupied for vast periods of time, for sassafras leaves have been found embedded in the Cretaceous formations of Long Island. Near the northern limit of its range it is generally small, often of brush size; but further south it becomes a tree which sometimes exceeds 100 feet in height, and three or four in diameter. The best development of the species is in Arkansas and Missouri.

Sassafras belongs to the laurel family. Strangely enough, the two trees which are usually supposed to be typical laurels--namely, mountain laurel (_Kalmia latifolia_) and great rhododendron, do not belong to the laurel family, but the heath family. The laurel family to which sassafras belongs includes many species in all parts of the world, some are evergreen, others are not, but all characterized by the strong, pungent odor of their wood or bark, and all having fruit with a single seed like a plum or cherry. The camphor tree from the distillation of whose wood commercial camphor (except synthetic camphor made largely from turpentine) is derived, belongs to this family, as do certain bay trees of the southern states. It was formerly supposed that sassafras existed only in the eastern half of the United States; but a species closely resembling ours, if not identical with it, has recently been found in China. The California laurel (_Umbellularia californica_) is in the same family with sassafras.

This tree has had a peculiar history. It was once supposed to possess miraculous healing powers, and was shipped from Virginia to England in one of the first cargoes to go to that country from the present territory of the United States. Its supposed value did not consist in its use as lumber, but in some medicinal property which it was reputed to possess. People appeared to believe that it would renew the youth of the human race. Some portion of this superstition has clung round sassafras to this day, and it is not entirely confined to ignorant people. Bedsteads made of sassafras were supposed to drive away certain nightly visitors which disturb slumber. In southeastern Arkansas and northwestern Mississippi, bedsteads are still made of this wood, with the belief that sleep will be sounder. The same custom doubtless prevails elsewhere. In northern Louisiana floors of sassafras are occasionally laid in negro cabins because of the same superstition, and in the firm belief that it will keep out animals as large as rats and mice. Some of the mountaineers of Kentucky, where each family makes its own soap, insist that the kettle must be stirred with a sassafras stick or it will produce a poor quality of soap. Among the mountains of West Virginia many a farmer equips his henhouse with sassafras poles for roosts, fully convinced that he has put an effective quietus on all tribes, shoals, and kindred of _menopon pallidum_, and the hens will sleep better.

The production of sassafras oil is perhaps the largest industry dependent upon this tree. Roots are grubbed by the ton and are subjected to destructive distillation. Much of this work is carried on in Virginia where sassafras spreads quickly into abandoned fields, springing up from seeds carried by birds. Veritable thickets soon take possession. Here is where the sassafras oil supply comes from. Contractors often clear the old fields and make them ready for tillage, taking the roots for pay.

The wood weighs 31.42 pounds per cubic foot; is very durable when exposed to dampness; is slightly aromatic; inclined to check in drying; the layers of annual growth are marked by rings of large pores; summerwood is quite distinct from the earlier growth; medullary rays are many and thin; color dull orange-brown, the thin sapwood light yellow.

Sassafras goes to sawmills in all regions where it is large enough for lumber, but the total cut is small. Reports from sawmills in 1909 credited this species with only 25,000 feet in the United States, and it was still less in 1910. It is evident that this is only a small portion of the total output, and probably Tennessee alone produces that much. The wood is sold with other species and loses its name, frequently passing as ash. The wood bears considerable resemblance to ash, in grain and color, but is lighter in weight, and much lower in strength.

Sassafras was one of the canoe woods of early times along the lower Mississippi and its tributaries. Its two principal advantages over most woods with which it was associated was its light weight and lasting qualities. Canoes of this timber in Louisiana have given continued service for a third of a century.

In all parts of its range, wherever it is of sufficient size, it has been used for posts. It is generally considered good for about twenty years. Large trunks were formerly split for rails, and a few are utilized in that way still, but most timber large enough for rails, now goes to sawmills. In Texas most of the sassafras supplied by sawmills is manufactured into furniture, but is listed as ash. The same thing is done in Arkansas and Missouri, but the use in the latter state is extended to interior house finish and office and bank fixtures. Sometimes it is made the outside wood, and the figure caused by sawing the logs tangentially is accentuated by stains and fillers. The figure of quarter-sawed wood is not attractive because the medullary rays are too small. It lasts well as railroad ties and a few are found in service in many parts of the tree’s range, but those who see it in the track are liable to mistake it for chestnut.

A by-product of sassafras deserves mention--tea made from the flowers or from the bark of the roots. It is relished in the early spring, and is popular in most regions where the tree is known. The bark is a commercial commodity. It is tied in small bundles, and the price at retail ranges from a nickel to a dime each. Drug stores and grocers sell it. In the city of Washington in early spring sassafras peddlers canvas the city from center to circumference. They are generally negro men and women who dig the roots on the neighboring hills of Virginia and Maryland, strip the bark, tie it in small bundles, and by diligence and perseverance, succeed in converting the merchandise into money.

Sassafras is often cited as an example of a tree with leaves of different forms. Three shapes are common, and all frequently occur on the same tree, and even on the same twig. One has no lobes, another has one lobe like the thumb of a mitten, and another has three.

LANCEWOOD (_Ocotea catesbyana_) is a small evergreen tree, looks much like laurel, and grows in southern Florida, on the islands and on the mainland in the vicinity of Biscayne bay. It is closely related to sassafras, and the bark has an aromatic odor. It belongs to a group of trees with nearly 200 species scattered in hot regions of both hemispheres. This is the only one belonging to the United States, and it appears to be a newcomer on these shores, from the fact that it has succeeded in obtaining so limited a foothold. It keeps well south of the region where it is likely to be frosted and it seldom exceeds a height of thirty feet and a diameter of eighteen inches. The fruit ripens in autumn and is dark blue with flesh thin and dry. The wood is hard, heavy, strong, checks badly in drying, and has a rich brown color, the sapwood being yellow. Rings of annual growth are marked with many small, regularly-distributed open ducts; medullary rays are thin and numerous; wood weighs 47.94 pounds per cubic foot; durable in contact with the soil, beautifully colored, and is highly prized for small cabinet work and novelties. At Miami, Florida, small trunks cut on neighboring hummocks, or brought from the keys, are worked into souvenirs to be sold to visitors. Lancewood fishing rods are among the strongest and most expensive on the market; but little of the material of which they are made grows in Florida. It is also manufactured into billiard cues and small handles.

MADRONA

MADRONA

(_Arbutus Menziesii_)

Madrona is an interesting tree which ranges from British Columbia southward to central California, attaining its greatest development in the redwood forests of northern California, where trees are sometimes one hundred feet high and six or seven feet in diameter. It is not only an interesting tree itself, but it has many interesting relatives, some of which are trees, others shrubs, and still others only small plants or vines. It may be called a second cousin to the common huckleberry, the mountain laurel, trailing arbutus, the azaleas, the tiny wintergreen, and the great rhododendron. It has some poor relations, but many that are highly respectable. It belongs to the heath family, of which there are seventy genera, and more than a thousand species; but less than half of them are in America, the others being scattered widely over the world.

The madrona, when at its best, is one of the largest members of the family; but it is not always at its best. It sometimes degenerates into a sprawling shrub, where it grows on poor ground and on cold, dry mountain tops. It is manifestly not fair to study any tree at its worst, and it is particularly not fair to the madrona, which varies so greatly in its appearance. At one place it may be scarcely large enough to shade the lair of a jackrabbit, and at another it spreads its branches wide enough to shade an army--a small army, however, say, about two thousand men. A tree of that size may be found within a few hours’ ride of San Francisco. Its branches cover an area of from eight thousand to ten thousand square feet.

When madrona grows in the open it throws out wide limbs like a southern live oak, though not so large or long. Its crown is rounded and graceful; but when it grows in forests, where other trees crowd it, the trunk rises straight up to lift the crown into the sunlight and fresh air. The madrona is seen in all its glory in northwestern California, where it catches some of the warmth and the moist air from the Pacific. It follows the ranges of the Siskiyou mountains eastward near the boundary of California and Oregon. It is usually mixed with other forest trees, but sometimes large stands nearly pure are encountered, and there the long trunks, rather gray near the ground, but wine-colored above, rise in imposing beauty and are lost in the evergreen crowns.