Chapter XXIII: Part 23

The leaves suggest those of laurel, but are broader. The large clusters of white flowers are among the glories of the vegetable kingdom. George B. Sudworth, dendrologist of the United States Forest Service, who usually describes in strictly prosaic terms, breaks away from that habit long enough to compare madrona flowers to lilies of the valley, in his “Forest Trees of the Pacific Slope.” The flowers appear from March to May, depending on latitude and elevation.

The brilliant orange-red fruit ripens in the fall, and is often borne in great abundance. It renders the crowns of the trees very beautiful. The fruit is about half an inch long and contains many small angular seeds. The fruit is said to contain a substance which puts to sleep wild creatures that feed on it. The claim is probably mythical, for birds breakfast extravagantly on it in the morning, and apparently do not do any sleeping until after sunset.

This tree was discovered by and named for Archibald Menzies, a Scotch botanist who traveled in the Northwest more than a hundred years ago. It has several local names, among them being madrove, laurel wood, madrone-tree, laurel, and manzanita. The last is the proper name of another small tree which is associated with madrona and is closely related to it.

The wood weighs 43.95 pounds per cubic foot. It is a little below eastern white oak in fuel value, a little above it in strength, and somewhat under it in stiffness. The color is pale reddish-brown, resembling applewood in tone, but generally not quite so dark. The wood is porous, but the pores are very small. Medullary rays are numerous but thin. On account of the rays being of a little deeper red than the other wood, quarter-sawed stock is handsome and of somewhat peculiar appearance. The figure is much like quarter-sawed beech, but of deeper, more handsome color. The contrast between springwood and summerwood is not strong, though easily seen. Generally, the summerwood constitutes about one-fourth of the annual ring. The tree grows slowly, but with much irregularity. The increase in one season may be four or five times as great as in another. The bark exfoliates, and is quite thin.

Madrona has never been put to much use. Difficulties in seasoning it have stood in the way. The wood warps and checks. Similar difficulties with other woods have been overcome, and such troubles should not be unduly discouraging. The beauty of the wood is unquestioned. It presents a fine appearance when worked into furniture, particularly in small panels and turned work, like spindles, knobs, and small posts. When made into grills it shows a surprising richness of tone. The wood polishes almost to the smoothness of holly. Small quantities are made into flooring; a little goes to the furniture makers; lathes turn some of it for novelties and souvenirs; fuel cutters sell it as cordwood; and tanbark peelers cut the trees for the thin, papery bark. In that case the trunks are left to decay, unless they happen to be convenient to a cordwood market.

One of the most extensive uses for the wood of madrona is for charcoal burning. Blacksmiths buy it because it is cheaper than coal, and some is used in shops where soldering and welding are done; but the most exacting demand comes from gunpowder manufacturers. They find this wood almost equal to alder and willow as a source of charcoal suitable for powder.

MEXICAN MADRONA (_Arbutus xalapensis_) might properly be called Texas madrona as it occurs in that state and probably in no other, but its range extends southward into Mexico. It produces a poorly shaped trunk seldom much more than twenty feet high and one foot in diameter, and usually divided into several branches near the ground. It blooms in March and ripens its fruit in midsummer. The tree is found on dry limestone hills, and in the valley of the Rio Blanco, and among the Eagle mountains. Cabinet makers in Texas put the wood to rather exacting uses after they have carefully seasoned it to overcome its natural tendency to check. It is very hard; its color is a little lighter than applewood which it resembles; annual rings are scarcely visible, so regular and even is the year’s growth. In Texas the wood is made into plane stocks, tool handles, and mathematical instruments.

ARIZONA MADRONA (_Arbutus arizonica_) has a restricted range on the Santa Catalina and Santa Rita mountains of southern Arizona, where it ascends to an altitude of 8,000 feet. The species extends southward into Mexico. The largest trees attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of two. Trunks are usually straight and shapely, and show the thin, red bark common to the genus. The wood resembles that of the species in Texas, and doubtless is suited to the same purposes, but no utilization of it has been reported, except for fuel, and for fences and sheds on mountain ranches. When the region becomes more thickly settled, the value of the wood will be appreciated.

MANZANITA (_Arctostaphylos manzanita_) is not generally welcomed by
botanists into the tree class. They say it is too small; but it is
as large as some of the laurels which go as trees without question,
and is shaped much like them. There are several species of
manzanita. The word is Spanish and means “little apple.” The name is
natural, for one of the most noticeable things about manzanita is
the fruit, the size of well-grown huckleberries. It is shaped like
an apple, and its tart taste suggests that fruit. The Digger Indians
along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California
gather the berries by the sack, dry them, and keep them for
winter--if they can. It is often impossible to keep them because,
like other fruit, they are apt to become wormy. When the Indians
discover them in that condition they display rare thrift and economy
for savages, by soaking the fruit and pressing out the juice, which
is said to pass for a pretty fair quality of cider, but it must be
quickly consumed or it will mother and change to vinegar. Indians
now put the berries to use less frequently than in early times when
they were nearly always hungry.

Manzanita is of the same family as madrona. Its range extends along
the mountains of the Pacific coast ranges from Oregon to Mexico, and
inland to Utah. The largest trees are about twenty feet high and a
foot or less in diameter; very much divided and branched, with limbs
crooked in more ways, perhaps, than those of any other
representative of the vegetable kingdom. Thousands of canes are cut
from the branches, and if any living man ever saw a straight one he
failed to report it. Manzanita grows in almost impenetrable thickets
on dry slopes and ridges. Its thin foliage casts so pale a shadow
that the tree’s shade is little cooler than the boiling sun upon the
open naked ground and rocks. The bark is a reddish-chocolate color,
and exfoliates in scales of papery thinness. The heart is nearly of
the same color as the bark, but the sap is white and very thin. The
wood is hard, strong, stiff, but exceedingly brittle. If a branch is
sharply bent it will fly into splinters.

The uses of the wood are numerous, but the total quantity demanded
is moderate. Novelty stores sell small articles to tourists in
California, sometimes passing the wood off as mountain mahogany
which does not so much as belong to the same family. The most common
articles manufactured by novelty shops from manzanita are canes,
paper weights, paper knives, rulers, spoons, napkin rings, curtain
rings, cuff buttons, dominos, manicure sticks, jewel boxes, match
safes, pin trays, and photo frames.

COTTONWOOD

COTTONWOOD[9]

(_Populus Deltoides_)

[9] The following species grow in the United States: Cottonwood
(_Populus deltoides_), Aspen (_Populus tremuloides_), Largetooth
aspen (_Populus grandidentata_), Swamp Cottonwood (_Populus
heterophylla_), Balm of Gilead (_Populus balsamifera_), Lanceleaf
Cottonwood (_Populus acuminata_), Narrowleaf Cottonwood (_Populus
angustifolia_), Black Cottonwood (_Populus trichocarpa_), Fremont
Cottonwood (_Populus fremontii_), Mexican Cottonwood (_Populus
mexicana_), Texas Cottonwood (_Populus wislizeni_).

Eleven species of cottonwood are found in the United States, if all trees of the genus _Populus_ are classed as cottonwoods. It is not universally admitted, however, that they should be so classed. The common cottonwood is the most widely known of all of them, but it is recognized under different names in different regions, viz.: Big cottonwood, yellow cottonwood, cotton tree, Carolina poplar, necklace poplar, broadleaf poplar, and whitewood.

Its range covers practically all of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. It is rare or missing in eastern New England and southern Florida, and most abundant in the Mississippi valley, and there the largest trees are found. Some exceed 100 feet in height, and four in diameter. Extreme sizes of 140 feet in height with diameters of from seven to nine have been reported. The cottonwood was a frontier tree on the western plains when settlers began to push into the region. It grew as far west as any hardwood of the eastern forests, and was found beyond meridian 100, which was supposed to be the boundary between the region of rains and the semi-arid country. The cottonwood clung to the river banks and to islands in the rivers, and by that means escaped the Indian’s prairie and forest fires which he kindled every year to improve the range for the buffalo. It is supposed that most of the open country east of meridian 100 was originally timbered, and that the Indians destroyed the forests by their long-continued habit of burning the woods and prairies every year to improve the pasture. Cottonwood was the longest survivor, because it grew in damp places where fires did not burn fiercely. Black willow was its most frequent companion on the western outposts of the forests.

The cottonwood was fitted for holding its ground, and pushing forward. Its light seeds are carried by millions on the wind and by water. The tree bears large quantities of cotton (hence the name), and when the wind whips it from the tree, seeds are caught among the fibers and carried along, to be scattered miles away.

This tree was not much thought of by eastern people who had plenty of other kinds of wood, but pioneers on the plains who had a hard time to get any, found cottonwood useful. It made fences, corncribs, stables, cabins, ox yokes, and fuel. The first canoes made by white men on the upper Missouri river were of cottonwood. Lumber cut from this tree is inclined to warp and check unless carefully handled, and this prejudiced it in the eyes of many; but difficulties of that kind were easily mastered, and instead of being a neglected wood it became popular. Some of the largest early orders came from Germany. Vehicle makers in this country employed it for wagon beds, as a substitute for yellow poplar when that wood’s cost advanced. Manufacturers of agricultural implements were pioneers in its use, it being excellent material for hoppers, chutes, and boxes.

Cottonwood weighs 24.24 pounds per cubic foot, which is approximately the weight of white pine. It has about the stiffness of white oak, but only about eighty per cent of white oak’s strength, and fifty per cent of its fuel value. The wood is very porous, but the pores are small, usually invisible to the naked eye. The medullary rays are small and obscure. The appearance of the wood is not improved by quarter-sawing. The summerwood forms a thin, dark line, so faint that the annual rings are often scarcely distinguishable. The tree is generally a rapid grower; heartwood is brown, sapwood lighter, but as a whole, this tree produces white wood.

The annual cut is declining. It was little more than half in 1910 what it was in 1899. Some regions where large trees were once abundant now have few. The sawmill output in 1910 for the United States--including several species--was 220,000,000 feet. The veneer cut was 33,000,000 feet, log measure; the slack cooperage staves, chiefly for flour barrels, numbered 44,000,000; and pulpwood amounted to about 18,000,000 feet. The lumber cut was largest in the following states in the order named: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Minnesota. The tree was lumbered in forty-one states.

Cottonwood is a standard material in several lines of manufacturing. It is made into nearly every kind of box that goes on the market, from the cigar box to those in which pianos are shipped. Manufacturers of food products are particularly anxious to procure this wood, and it is one of the best for woodenware, such as dough boards, ironing boards, and cloth boards. It is used by manufacturers of agricultural implements, interior finish, bank and office fixtures, musical instruments, furniture, vehicle tops, trunks, excelsior, saddle trees, caskets and coffins, and numerous others.

There is no danger that cottonwood will disappear from this country, but it will become scarce. It is being cut much faster than it is growing, and is losing favor as a planted shade and park tree, because of its habit of shedding cotton in the spring and its leaves in the early autumn.

SWAMP COTTONWOOD (_Populus heterophylla_) is known also as river cottonwood, black cottonwood, downy poplar, and swamp poplar. Its range describes a crude horseshoe, running from Rhode Island down the Atlantic coast in a narrow strip, where it is neither abundant nor of large size; touching northern Florida; running westward to eastern Texas and thence up the Mississippi basin and the Ohio river to southwestern Ohio. There is nothing handsome about its appearance with its heavy limbs and sparse, rounded crown. In the eastern range the average height is probably not more than fifty feet but in the fertile Mississippi valley it reaches 100 and has a long merchantable bole three feet in diameter. Its bark is rugged, dirty-brown and broken into loose, conspicuous ridges. It is easily distinguished from the other cottonwoods by the orange-colored pith in the twigs. The buds are rounded and red and have a resinous odor. Sawmills and factories never list this wood separately. It comes and goes as cottonwood. Its uses are the same as those of common cottonwood. The two species grow in mixture throughout the entire range of the swamp cottonwood.

TEXAS COTTONWOOD (_Populus wislizeni_) is a rather large tree and is the common cottonwood in the upper valley of the Rio Grande in New Mexico and western Texas. The yellowish color of the twigs is apt to attract attention. The wood is used about ranches and occasionally a log finds its way to local sawmills; but its importance is limited to the region where it grows.

MEXICAN COTTONWOOD (_Populus mexicana_) extends its range north of the Mexican boundary into southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. It is abundant in Mexico where the largest trees are eighty feet high and three or four in diameter. It is smaller near the northern limits of its range, and there it hugs the banks of mountain streams. Stockmen use the trunks, which are usually small enough to be called poles, to make fences and sheds.

NARROWLEAF COTTONWOOD (_Populus angustifolia_)is a mountain species which manages to live in the semi-arid regions from the Rocky Mountains of Canada to Arizona, but is seldom found below an elevation of 5,000 feet, and it ranges up to 10,000. Trunks are eighteen inches or less in diameter, and fifty or sixty feet high. The seeds are larger than those of most other cottonwoods. It being a semi-desert species, its wood is appreciated where it is accessible, and it has local uses only.

LANCELEAF COTTONWOOD (_Populus acuminata_) is a small tree with limited range, growing in the arid region along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, southward from the Black Hills. It is found also north of the Canadian border. It is usually fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter, and thirty or forty feet high. Trunks seldom go to sawmills, but some local use is made of the wood. Trees are occasionally planted for shade in towns of western Nebraska and Wyoming.

FREMONT COTTONWOOD (_Populus fremontii_), called white cottonwood in New Mexico, but elsewhere simply cottonwood, grows from western Texas to California, and as far north as Utah and Colorado. It sometimes attains a diameter of five or six feet and a height of 100. The Indians in New Mexico formerly made rude, clumsy ox carts of this wood, without a scrap of iron or other metal in the vehicles. One of the carts is preserved in the National Museum, Washington, D. C. The wood is tough and light, but it is dull white, with no attractive figure. Even the annual rings are hardly distinguishable. Logs are occasionally sawed into lumber, and farmers in western Texas make wagon beds of it.

BALM OF GILEAD

BALM OF GILEAD

(_Populus Balsamifera_)

This tree is known in different regions by the following names: Balsam, balm of Gilead, cottonwood, poplar, balsam poplar, and tacamahac. The usual name, balm of Gilead, is applied in recognition of the supposed healing virtue of the wax which covers the buds and young leaves. It has long been used in medicine, but its exact value is still a matter of discussion. The wild Indians of the North discovered a use for the balsam in mending their bark dishes, and plugging knot holes in the wooden trenchers. The wax is slow to dissolve in water, and it resisted for a long time such soups as were known to the redman’s culinary art. Bees know the value of the wax and use it to seal cracks and crevices in their hives and to hold the comb in place. It is popularly believed that the economy of the wax on the buds is to keep them from freezing. That view is erroneous, for it would take more than a coating of wax to keep the buds warm with the thermometer from fifty to seventy degrees below zero, as it is every winter in some parts of this tree’s range.

Balm of Gilead is a native of the North from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but its finest growth is about the headwaters of the Mackenzie river, on Peace and Laird rivers, and the lower valley of the Athabaska. Sixty years ago Sir John Franklin reported that most of the driftwood of the Arctic ocean was this species. Since that time the range has been more definitely determined, and it is now known that the tree grows so far north that it is for some weeks in darkness, and again in summer for some weeks in unbroken sunshine. It grows in Alaska nearly 200 miles north of the Arctic circle. Its natural range southward reaches New England, New York, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, and Oregon.

Trees of all sizes abound, from mere shrubs in the outskirts of its range to trunks 100 feet high and six feet in diameter in favored localities. In the United States the best timber seldom exceeds thirty inches in diameter and sixty or seventy feet in height. The bark on limbs and young trunks is brownish-gray, frequently so tinged with green that it is noticeable at a considerable distance; but usually large trees have reddish-gray bark with deep furrows and wide ridges. Year-old twigs are clear, shiny reddish-brown; end buds are about an inch long, the side buds somewhat shorter.

The wood is not distinguishable in appearance from that of the other poplars or cottonwoods, but it is lighter than most of them, weighing 22.65 pounds per cubic foot, has a breaking strength which places it among the weakest woods, but in stiffness making a much better showing. The pores are small, numerous, and are distributed equally through all parts of the wood.

Balm of Gilead bears seeds abundantly and scatters them widely. It must do its planting quickly in the short summers of the cold North. It sticks close to alluvial flats, banks of rivers, borders of lakes and swamps, and gravelly soils. It grows to a diameter of fifteen inches in about forty-five years.

Though balm of Gilead is not one of the most important timber trees of this country, its place is by no means obscure. No separate tally is kept of it among woods cut for pulp, but it goes with aspen and other similar species as “poplar.” A little better account is kept of the amount passing through wood-using factories. The annual quantity so reported in Illinois is 2,775,000 feet, and it is made into boxes and crates. The lumber is shipped from the North, since it does not grow as far south as Illinois. The situation is different in Michigan, for balm of Gilead grows there. The amount going yearly into factories in that state is reported at 4,912,000 feet. It is made into many commodities, but boxes and crates take most of it. The wood is reduced to veneer and converted into berry buckets, grape baskets, fruit and egg crates, and other small shipping containers. It is made into excelsior and woodwool which are used as packing material. Druggist’s barrels are manufactured from this wood. These are small, two-piece vessels, bored hollow, with a closely fitting lid, and varying in size from a couple of inches high, to nearly a foot. They contain powders, perfumes, pills, and other commodities in small bulk. The wood is worked into pails, tubs, and kegs. Furniture makers put balm of Gilead to use in several ways. It is cut thin for shelving; it is made into panels, and is employed as cores over which to lay veneers of more expensive materials. Woodenware factories generally keep it in stock in the northern states.

The supply is ample at present to meet all demands. Cutters of pulpwood probably take more than sawmills, and are satisfied with smaller timber. Trees are often planted for ornament, but few if any have yet been propagated for forestry purposes.

HAIRY BALM OF GILEAD (_Populus balsamifera candicans_) is not a species but a variety, and it is so different from balm of Gilead that it is entitled to a place of its own. Ordinarily it passes under the common names applied to balm of Gilead. It is a cultivated tree in eastern Canada and northeastern United States, where it has escaped from cultivation and is running wild. Both Sargent and Sudworth say that nothing is definitely known of the tree’s native range; while it has been claimed by others that it once grew wild in Michigan but was destroyed by lumbermen. Probably most planted balm of Gileads are of this variety, as they are very ornamental. It is a large tree with branches less upright and crowns more open than in the wild species. The leaves are wide, heart-shaped, and are usually silvery white beneath with minute hairs on the margins, on the veins, and leaf stems. It is not improbable that this variety could be more profitably planted for forestry purposes than the species which grows wild; but there is no present indication that foresters favorably consider either of them.

LARGETOOTH ASPEN (_Populus grandidentata_) is named on account of the shape of the leaves. It is sometimes called aspen, popple, white poplar, and large poplar. The wood weighs 28.87 pounds per cubic foot, and is the heaviest of the poplar group except Fremont cottonwood of the arid southwestern regions. The wood is white, attractive, but not strong. It was formerly manufactured into chip hats and shoe heels in New England, and is now used for baskets, crates, boxes, buckets, refrigerators, excelsior, and pulp. Northern factories usually give it the general name “poplar,” and for that reason its importance in the lumber trade is underestimated. Trees may reach a height of seventy feet with a diameter of two; but a height of forty or fifty is more usual. The species’ range extends from Nova Scotia to Minnesota, southward to Delaware and Illinois, and along the Appalachian mountains to North Carolina and Tennessee.

GUMBO LIMBO (_Bursera simaruba_) is a south Florida species and is known also as West Indian birch. It is in a family by itself with no near relative. It is not a birch. The wood is spongy and very light, weighing less than nineteen pounds per cubic foot. It decays with remarkable rapidity. Branches thrust in the ground take root and grow. An aromatic resin, exuding from wounds in the bark, is manufactured into varnish. The leaves are substituted for tea, and gout remedies are made from the resin. Large trees are fifty feet high and two feet or more in diameter. Another Florida tree, not in the same family as this, is also called gumbo limbo (_Simarouba glauca_), paradise tree, and bitter wood. Ailanthus (_Ailanthus glandulosa_) is in the same family as paradise tree, but is not native in this country, though extensively planted here.

ANGELICA TREE (_Aralia spinosa_). This is a small tree, which usually develops little or no heartwood. The springwood, or the inner and porous part of the ring, is broad and yellow, the summerwood, or exterior part of the ring, is narrow and dark. The wood’s figure, due to the marked contrast between the outer and inner portions of the rings, is strong. When finished it shows a rich yellow, but somewhat lighter than dwarf sumach which it resembles. It is made into small shop articles, like button boxes, photograph frames, pen racks, stools, and arms for rocking chairs. Its range extends from Pennsylvania to Texas. It is sometimes known as Hercules’ club.

ASPEN (_Populus tremuloides_) is widely known but not everywhere by
the same name. It is called quaking asp, mountain asp, aspen leaf,
white poplar, popple, poplar, and trembling poplar. The peculiarity
of the tree which is apt to attract attention, and which gives it
most of the names it carries, is the leaf’s habit of being nearly
always in motion. The day is remarkably still if aspen foliage is
not stirring. This is due to the long, flat leaf stem, which is so
limber that it offers little resistance to air currents. The
difference in color between the upper and lower sides of the leaves
affords sufficient contrast to attract notice, and for that reason a
person will observe the motion of aspen leaves when he might fail to
see a similar movement among the leaves of other species where the
contrast of colors is not so marked. Aspen is credited with being
the most widely distributed tree of North America. It grows from
Tennessee to the Arctic ocean, from Mexico to northern Alaska, from
Labrador to Bering strait. It is found at sea level, and at 10,000
feet elevation among the mountains of California. Its very small
seeds grow in enormous numbers. Winds carry them miles, and scatter
them by millions. They spring up quickly when they fall on mineral
soil. This places it in the class with “fire trees”--those which
take possession of burned tracts. Paper birch is in this class.
Aspen has replaced pines over large burned areas of the Rocky
Mountains. It grows quickly but is weak if it has to contend with
other trees. If crowded it speedily gives up the fight and dies. The
wood is not strong, but is useful for several purposes. Next to
spruce and hemlock, it is the most important pulpwood in this
country, and it is coming into considerable use as lumber. The
whiteness of the wood--it looks much like holly--makes it a favorite
for small boxes and vessels for shipping and containing foods. It is
made into jelly buckets, lard pails, fish kits, spice kegs, sugar
buckets and a long line of similar articles. It turns well, and is
made into wooden dishes. Michigan alone uses two and a half million
feet of it a year; and it is in demand along the whole northern tier
of states from Maine to Washington, but because it is not separately
listed in lumber output, it is difficult to say how much is used.
Trees are usually small, though trunks three feet in diameter are
not unknown. It grows rapidly, and may be expected to fill an
important place in this country’s future timber supply. There will
be no occasion to plant it by artificial means, for nature will
attend to the planting.

BLACK COTTONWOOD

BLACK COTTONWOOD

(_Populus Trichocarpa_)

This member of the cottonwood group is a strong tree that holds its ground in various latitudes and at many elevations, ranging from sea level up to eight or nine thousand feet, and in latitude from Alaska to southern California, a distance of nearly three thousand miles. Its east and west extension is more restricted and seldom exceeds four hundred miles. Its habitat covers an area of half a million square miles, and in that space it finds conditions which vary so greatly that the tree which can meet them must possess remarkable powers of adaptation.

Beginning in Alaska and the interior of Yukon territory, it has an arctic climate. It there not only grows on the coast, but it strikes the interior. It appears on the headwaters of several streams which flow into the Mackenzie or Hudson bay. It passes south through British Columbia and enters the United States west of the Rocky Mountains. It has been reported as far east as Idaho and Montana, but further information is needed before its limits in that direction can be definitely fixed.

When it enters California it prefers the elevated valleys and canyons of the Sierra Nevadas, though it occurs sparingly among the coast ranges. It is generally found in the Sierras at elevations of from 3,000 to 6,000 feet, though it occurs between 8,000 and 9,000. Among the San Jacinto mountains of southern California it grows at an altitude of 6,000 feet.

When it occurs at low levels it is usually found on river bottoms and sand bars, in sandy and humous soils, and there the largest trees are found. At higher elevations it is more apt to occur in canyon bottoms and gulches, in moist, sandy or gravelly soil, and in such situations the black cottonwood is smaller. The best growth occurs where the climate is humid and the precipitation is great. Beyond the reach of sea fogs, where the tree depends on soil moisture chiefly, it is smaller.

It is an intolerant tree. It must have light. When it is crowded a tall, slender trunk is developed and the small crown is lifted clear above its competitors into the full light. If it cannot succeed in gaining that position its growth is stunted or the tree meets an early death.

The black cottonwood is the greatest of the cottonwoods. This country produces no other to match it, and, as far as known, the whole world has none. The Pacific coast is remarkable for the giant trees it produces, but most of them are softwoods--the redwoods, the bigtree, the sugar pine, Douglas fir, western larch, noble fir, Sitka spruce and western red cedar. This cottonwood is the largest of the Pacific coast hardwoods. In trunk diameter it is excelled by the weeping oak in the interior valleys of California, but when both height and diameter are considered, the black cottonwood is in the West what yellow poplar is in the East, the largest of the hardwoods.

Sargent says this tree reaches a height of two hundred feet and a diameter of eight, but Sudworth is more conservative and places the trunk limit at six feet. The average size is much below the figures given, but abundance of logs exceeding three feet in diameter reach the sawmills of Washington and Oregon.

Old trees range from 150 to 200 years in age, but trees under 100 years old are large enough for saw timber. Records of the ages of the largest trunks have not been reported.

Black cottonwood is a prolific seeder, but the seeds do not long retain their vitality. If they find lodgment in damp situations, where other conditions are favorable, the rate of germination is high. Seedlings are often very numerous on wet bars.

The excellent quality of the wood and its suitability for many purposes bring it much demand on the Pacific coast. In the state of Washington more than 30,000,000 feet were used by wood-using industries in 1910. Smaller quantities were reported in Oregon and California.

In strength the wood is approximately the same as common cottonwood, but in stiffness it much exceeds the eastern species. Its elasticity rates high, and compares favorably with some of the valuable eastern hardwoods. In weight it is slightly under common cottonwood. Trees are of fine form, nearly always straight, and are generally free from limbs to a considerable height.

The wood is grayish-white, soft, tough, odorless, tasteless, long-fibered, nails well, is easily glued, and cuts into excellent rotary veneer with comparatively small expenditure of power. It does not split easily after it has undergone seasoning, and this property commends it to box makers. It is little disposed to shrink and swell in atmospheric changes. The absence of odor and taste gives it much of its value for box making, because foods are not contaminated by contact with it.

It is manufactured into veneer berry baskets and is one of the most suitable woods on the Pacific coast for that purpose. Candy barrel makers use it in preference to most others, and a long line of woodenware articles draw much of their material from this source. Many thousands of cords are cut yearly for the pulp mills, where material for paper is produced. Black cottonwood and white fir are the principal woods used for pulp on the Pacific coast.

Not only is it used for rotary-cut veneer, but it is made into cores or backing on which veneers of costly woods are glued in the manufacture of furniture, interior finish and fixtures for banks, stores and offices. It serves in the same way in casket making, and is demanded in millions of feet.

It is employed in amounts larger than any other wood by excelsior mills in the northern Pacific coast region. It is the only wood demanded by that industry in Washington and 6,400,000 feet were cut into that product in 1910.

Slack coopers find it as valuable in their business in the far West as the common cottonwood is in the East, and hundreds of thousands of staves are made yearly. It is in demand for the manufacture of flour barrels and those intended for other food products.

Trunk makers use it in three-ply veneers for the bodies, trays, boxes and compartments of trunks and for suit cases. Though soft and light, it is very tough, and sheets of veneer with the grains placed transversely resist strains much better than solid wood of the same thickness.

Vehicle makers employ black cottonwood for the tops and shelves of business wagons. Another of its uses is as bottoms of drawers for bureaus, wardrobes, and chiffoniers, and as partitions in desk compartments. A full line of kitchen and pantry furniture is made wholly or in part of this wood in the regions where it is cheap and abundant.

The cottonwoods belong to a very ancient race of broadleaf trees, and like several others, they seem to have had their origin, or at least a very early home, in the far North, where intense cold now excludes almost every form of vegetable growth except the lowest orders. The Cretaceous age saw cottonwoods growing in Greenland. The cotton which then, as now, carried the seeds and planted them fell on more hospitable shores then than can now be found in the far frozen North. The genus was not confined to the arctic and subarctic regions, however, for there were cottonwoods at that time, or later, in more southern latitudes. There were many species in the central portion of this country, and also in Europe, long before the ice age destroyed all the forests north of the Ohio and the Missouri rivers. Some of the old species long ago ceased to exist, but others appear to have come down to the present time without great change.

The cottonwood shows wonderful vitality, which is doubtless a survival of the characteristic which enabled it to come down from former geologic epochs to the present time. A damaged and mutilated tree will recover. A broken limb, thrust in the ground, will grow.

BLACK POPLAR (_Populus nigra_) is quite distinct from black
cottonwood, though both belong to the same family. The latter is a
Pacific coast species, while the former belongs in Europe, although
it may have been introduced into that country from Persia or some
other eastern region. It is common in the United States, on account
of having escaped from cultivation. The best known variety of this
tree is the Lombardy poplar (_Populus nigra italica_). It is easily
recognized by the characteristic attitude of the branches which grow
upward close against the trunk. The crowns of the trees are very
long and slender, sometimes not ten feet across though fifty feet
high. Their slimness gives the trees the appearance of being much
taller than they really are. They were formerly popular for planting
along lanes and in door yards. Their slender and pointed spires cut
the horizon with a peculiar effect. Planting is less common now than
formerly, because people have come to know the trees better. They
are probably the most limby of all the members of the cottonwood
group. The long trunks are masses of knots when the limbs have been
trimmed away, and any desire to make lumber of the trees is apt to
be discouraged, though not infrequently logs go to local sawmills,
and farmers haul the boards home to put them to some use about the
place. In Michigan and Ohio, box makers use the lumber for the
rougher and cheaper articles which they turn out.

The most discouraging thing about Lombardy poplar is the tendency of
the trees to send up sprouts. The living trees do it, and the stumps
are worse. The sprouts are not confined to the ground immediately
round the base of the tree, but spring up many feet or many yards
distant, until they produce a veritable jungle. Years are often
required to complete their extermination by grubbing and cutting.

WHITE POPLAR (_Populus alba_) is a European species but has become
naturalized in the United States. It is widely planted as a shade
tree, and has escaped from cultivation. It may be known by the white
undersides of its small leaves, and by its yellowish-green bark
which remains smooth, except on large trunks. It is not yet
important as a source of lumber, but the vigor of its growth
indicates that it may sometime become so. The wood is soft, white,
and light. Some persons consider the tree objectionable as an
ornament because of its habit of sending up sprouts from the roots,
and because its woolly leaves collect dust and smoke until they are
almost black by the end of summer.

MANGROVE

MANGROVE

(_Rhizophora Mangle_)

The mangrove family is large and widely scattered, but only one member has gained a foothold in the United States, and it occupies only limited areas in south Florida, at the delta of the Mississippi, and on the coast of Texas. The family’s fifteen genera are confined to the tropics, with a little overlapping on the temperate zones. The botanical name _Rhizophora_ refers to the tree’s peculiar roots, and _mangle_ is the Spanish for mangrove. This is one of the few trees in this country which are known by a single name. It is always called mangrove, and attains its best development in Florida.

The leaves hang two years, are from three to five inches long and one or two wide. Flowers are not showy, but they are nearly always present, blooming the year round, the yellow blossom about an inch in diameter. The fruit proper is about an inch long, but its habit of sprouting while still on the tree and sending down a long stem-like root, gives the impression that the fruit is several inches long, sometimes a foot.

It is not an easy matter to state the average size of mangrove trees. Peculiar habits of growth make measurements difficult. Neither is it easy to tell where a tree begins and where it ends. Mangrove thickets along some of the rivers of south Florida, within the influence of tide water, are strange forms of vegetation. If the foliage alone is considered from a little distance, it reminds one of a row of fig trees in Louisiana or California. The color and general appearance suggests fig trees. A nearer approach reveals beneath the crowns a mass of roots, stems, and limbs, joined with the ground beneath and the crowns above. In addition to these, there are many others that dangle from above, like rope ends, some nearly touching the ground, others several feet above. These are roots or limbs, by whichever name one cares to call them. They grow from overhead branches, and strike for the ground. When they touch the soil, they quickly anchor themselves, and become stems. They then look like slender poles set as props under the branches of an overladen fruit tree.

This strange habit of growth gives the tree its character. Most mangroves stand in water. They fringe the banks of rivers and bayous, extending the fringe as far as the water is shallow. Growth of that kind is generally from ten to twenty feet high, and the largest stems from an inch in diameter up to three or four; but these dimensions cannot be taken as limits to size. Sometimes the trees are sixty or seventy feet high, but those which stand in water seldom reach that size. Trees which have their beginning in the water sometimes end their days high and dry on the land.

The mangrove is a land builder. The sycamore and willow are land builders on a small scale, along northern water-courses, but mangrove excels them a hundred or a thousand fold where it grows on the low shores of Florida. The seed is prepared for land-building work before it drops from the tree. It sprouts a long, peculiar root--it looks like a very slender, big-ended cucumber--the large, heavy end down. This attains a length of several inches or a foot. When it drops from the branch, the end sticks in the mud and takes root, grows, and produces a tree. But generally it falls in water, and not on a mud bank. In that case it floats away, the heavy end down, the light end barely appearing on the surface. Winds and currents drive it about until the lower tip finally touches bottom in some shallow place. There it takes root, and unless circumstances are extremely adverse, it holds fast, finally becomes a tree, sends branches down from above to take root at the bottom of the water, and a clump is produced. The tangled mass of stems and roots catches driftwood and mud, resulting finally in a little island, and later the island is joined to the mainland. Thus the land is built. Many large flats in Florida owe their origin to this tree. When land is permanently above water, the mangrove loses, to some extent, its ability to send roots down from the limbs. Nature seldom does something for nothing, and since the mangrove’s aerial roots no longer serve a useful purpose in nature’s economy, they are dispensed with. Trunks then reach much larger size, and become timber instead of thickets. The accompanying picture shows a mangrove that no longer stands in water, and its habit of growth is changing.

Thickets of mangrove are useful, not only in building new land, but in protecting that already built. Frequently the force of waves is broken, which otherwise would destroy low shores. Tremendous seas, in time of storms, will roll over thickets of mangrove without uprooting them or breaking the stems. Again nature’s fine engineering is apparent. When men build lighthouses which must endure the shocks of waves, they have learned to construct them of open beams and lattice work. The wave passes through without delivering the full impact of the blow to the structure. No solid masonry will stand what a comparatively light open frame will endure without injury, because it allows the waves to pass on. A large wave may strike with a force of 6,000 pounds to the square foot. The mangrove thickets are like the open-framed lighthouse--they let the waves pass through and spend their force gradually beyond, but they hold the shore against washing.

Admirable and wonderful as is nature’s provision for protecting the land by a fringe of lattice work of branches and stems, the marvelous efficiency of the provision has been greatly increased in another way. Suppose, for illustration, that cottonwood instead of mangrove formed the protective thickets along stormy shores. The first hour of heavy seas would reduce the trees to fragments. The weak, brittle trunks and limbs would quickly break to pieces. But mangrove passes through storm after storm unharmed. It is scarcely believable that accident accounts for the fact that the best wood for the place is in the place; but it is probable, rather, that ages of development and natural selection gave to mangrove the qualities which make possible the accomplishment of its work. It is one of the strongest, and as far as available data may be depended upon, it is absolutely the most elastic wood in the United States. Shellbark hickory is rated high in both strength and elasticity; but mangrove rates higher. Sargent gives hickory’s measure of elasticity at 1,925,000 pounds per square inch; but mangrove’s is 2,333,000 pounds.

It is thus fitted in the highest manner to perform the work needed. It plants itself in the right place; develops stems which will endure most and suffer least; possesses enormous strength for resisting force, yet is so extremely elastic that the force of waves is exhausted upon the trunks and branches without flattening them upon the ground or crushing them. Few things of the vegetable world show more perfect adaptation to environment. The wood’s very heaviness seems to add one more quality fitting it for its place. When a trunk falls in the water, it does not float away as most trees would, but sinks like iron, lies on the bottom, helps to hold the forming island or bar in place, and in its death as in its life it is a land-builder. Its efficiency in that particular is increased by the fact that it is little affected by marine borers which, in the warm, brackish waters, usually destroy wood in a short time.

Mangrove is not important commercially, though it is used for a number of purposes. The wood weighs 72.4 pounds per cubic foot, takes good polish, though it is inclined to check in drying; it contains many small pores; medullary rays numerous and thin; color reddish-brown streaked with lighter brown. The principal use of the bark is for tanning and the trunks for piles. It is well fitted for fence posts, but not many have been used in the region where it grows. It rates high as fuel, but its great weight increases transportation charges if the haul is long.

Tanbark peelers in Florida have cut much of the large mangrove forest. They took the bark, and abandoned the trunks. There is no likelihood that the species will be exterminated. Much of the growth is practically inaccessible, and the trunks are too small to tempt bark peelers, and cordwood cutters find plenty of material more convenient.

OTHER SPECIES.--Two other trees of this country are called mangrove
though they are not even in the same family. One is the black
mangrove (_Avicennia nitida_), called also blackwood and black tree.
It is a Florida species of the family Verbenaceæ, and has some of
the mangrove’s habits. It takes root and grows on muddy shores and
is a land builder. The largest trees are sixty or seventy feet high
and two in diameter, but are usually less than thirty feet high. The
bark is used in tanning, and no use for the wood is reported, except
for fuel. White mangrove (_Laguncularia racemosa_), known also as
white buttonwood, is a Florida species. It attains a height of
thirty or forty feet and a diameter of a foot or more. It reaches
its largest size on the shores of Shark river, Florida. The wood is
dark yellow-brown, and the bark is rich in tannin, and the tree may
become valuable as a source of tanbark.

Near akin to white mangrove is Florida buttonwood (_Conocarpus
erecta_) which is highly esteemed as fuel. It burns slowly like
charcoal. Trees are from twenty to fifty feet high. Its range lies
in southern Florida. Black olive tree (_Terminalia buceras_) belongs
in the south Florida group, and the wood is exceedingly hard and
heavy. The trunk is often two or three feet in diameter, but lies on
the ground like a log, with upright stems growing from it. Tanners
make use of the bark.

CABBAGE PALMETTO

THE PALMS

Lumbermen in this country could get along very well without the palms, as they are little used for ordinary lumber. Their wood does not grow in concentric rings, like that of the ordinary tree. The stems are usually single, cylindrical, and unbranched. The fruit is berry-like, and is usually one seeded, though sometimes there are two or three. When a seed sprouts, it puts out at first a single leaf, like a grain of corn. About 130 genera of palms are recognized in the world, most of them in the tropics, but several in the United States are of tree size. Botanists divide the palms of the United States into two groups, the palm family and the lily family. The yuccas belong in the lily family. In the very brief treatment that can be given the subject here, it is not necessary to recognize strict family divisions.

CABBAGE PALMETTO (_Sabal palmetto_) grows in the coast region from North Carolina to southern Florida, and west to the Apalachicola river. It is sometimes called Bank’s palmetto, cabbage tree, and tree palmetto. The name cabbage is due to the large leaf-bud in the top of the stem which is cooked as a substitute for cabbage. A sharp hatchet and some experience are necessary to a successful operation in extracting the bud from the tough fibers which surround it.

This palm is a familiar sight in the coast region within its range. The tall trunks, with tufts of leaves at the tops, suggest the supposed scenery of the Carboniferous age. Usually the trunks, in thick stands, rise straight like columns from twenty to forty feet high, but occasionally they bend in long, graceful curves, as if the weight of the tops caused them to careen, which is probably what does happen. They vary in diameter from eight inches to two feet.

The leaves are five or six feet long, and seven or eight wide, with stems six or seven feet long. Flowers occur in racemes two feet or more in length. The fruit is spherical and about a third of an inch in diameter. The roots are an important part of this palm, and are adapted to their environment, forming a rounded mass four or five feet in diameter, while small rope-like roots, half an inch in diameter, penetrate the wet marshy soil fifteen or twenty feet. The large, globe-like mass gives support in the soft soil, and the stringy roots supply water and mineral substances essential to growth. The wood is light, soft, pale-brown, with numerous hard, fibro-vascular bundles, the outer rim about two inches thick and much lighter and softer than the interior. The most important use for the wood at present is as wharf piles. It lasts well and is ideal in form. It is of historical interest that Fort Moultrie which defended Charleston, South Carolina, in the Revolutionary war, was built of palmetto logs. When the British made their memorable attack in 1776, their cannon balls buried in the spongy logs without dislodging them, and the fort successfully withstood the bombardment of ten hours, and disabled nine of the ten British ships taking part in the assault.

The wood is employed to a small extent in furniture making, and the bark for scrubbing brushes. Some of the finest forests of palmetto in Florida are much injured by fire that runs up the trunks to feed on stubs of leaves.

SILKTOP PALMETTO (_Thrinax parviflora_) and silvertop palmetto (_Thrinax microcarpa_) are species met with on some of the islands off the coast of southern Florida.

MEXICAN PALMETTO (_Sabal mexicana_) is much like cabbage palmetto in size and general appearance, and is put to similar uses, except that the leaf-bud does not appear to be used as food. The tree occurs in Texas along the lower Rio Grande, and southward into Mexico where the leaves are employed as house thatch by improvident Mexicans and Indians who do not care to exert themselves to procure better roofing material. In the vicinity of Brownsville, Texas, trunks of this palm are employed as porch posts and present a rustic appearance. They are said to last many years. The average size of trunks in Texas is fifteen or twenty feet high and a foot or less in diameter, but some much larger are found in Mexico. Some of the wharfs along the Texas coast are built on palmetto piles. It is said the trunks are not as strong as those of the cabbage palmetto in Florida.