developed in the region east of Manitoba, but it extends southward into
West Virginia and northward to the land of the midnight sun. It
maintains its place almost to the arctic snows, and the willow is about
the only tree that pushes farther north. It is found from Newfoundland
and Labrador far down toward the mouth of the Mackenzie river, north of
the arctic circle. It grows on dry land as well as wet, but is oftenest
found in cold swamps, particularly in the southern part of its range.
Silted-up lakes are favorite situations, and on the made-land above old
beaver dams.
Tamarack forests frequently stand on ground so soft that a pole may be
thrust ten feet deep in the mud. The moist, monotonous sphagnum moss
generally furnishes ground cover in such places. A tamarack swamp in
summer is cool and pleasant--provided there is not too much water on the
ground--but in winter a more desolate picture can scarcely be imagined.
The leafless trees appear to be dead, and covered with lifeless cones;
but the first warm days bring it to life.
The average height of tamarack trees is from forty to sixty feet,
diameter twenty inches or less. Leaves are one-half or one and a half
inches long; cones one-half or three-quarter inches, and bright chestnut
brown at maturity. They fall when two years old. The winged seeds are
very small. The tree is neither a frequent nor abundant seeder. The
foliage is thin, and is not sufficient to shut much sunlight from the
ground.
The wood is heavy, hard, very strong, and is durable in contact with the
soil. The growth is slow, annual rings narrow, summerwood occupies
nearly half the ring, and is dark-colored, resinous, and conspicuous;
resin passages few and obscure; medullary rays numerous and obscure;
color of wood light brown, the sapwood nearly white.
The uses of tamarack go back to prehistoric times. The Indians of Canada
and northeastern United States drew supplies from four forest trees when
they made their bark canoes. The bark for the shell came from paper
birch, threads for sewing the strips of bark together were tamarack
roots, resin for stopping leaks was a product of balsam fir, and the
light framework of wood was northern white cedar.
The roots which best suited the Indian’s purpose came from trees which
grew in soft, deep mud, where lakes and beaver ponds had silted up. Such
roots are long, slender, and very tough and pliant, and may be gathered
in large numbers, particularly where running streams have partly
undermined standing trees.
White men likewise made use of tamarack roots in boat building, but the
roots were different from what the Indians used. “Instep” crooks were
hewed for ship knees. These were large roots, the larger the better.
Trees which produced them did not grow in deep mud, for there the roots
did not develop crooks. The ship knee operator hunted for tamarack
forests growing on a soft surface soil two or three feet deep, underlaid
by stiff clay or rock which roots could not penetrate. In situations
like that the roots go straight down until they reach the hard stratum,
and then turn at right angles and grow in a horizontal direction. The
turning point in the root develops the crook of which the ship knee is
made.
Tamarack is seldom of sufficient size for the largest ship knees. Such
were formerly supplied by southern live oak; and in that case crooks
formed by the union of trunk and large branches were as good as those
produced by the union of trunk and large roots.
Tamarack is still employed in the manufacture of boat knees, but not as
much as formerly. Steel frames have largely taken the place of wood in
the construction of ship skeletons. Boat builders use tamarack now for
floors, keels, stringers, and knees.
Tamarack has come into much use in recent years. Sawmills cut from it
more than 125,000,000 feet of lumber a year. Fourteen states contribute,
but most of the lumber is produced in Minnesota, Michigan, and
Wisconsin. Railroads in the United States buy 5,000,000 or more
tamarack ties a year, which reduced to board measure amount to over
150,000,000 feet. Fence posts and telegraph poles come in large numbers
from tamarack forests.
The wood is stiff and strong, its stiffness being eighty-four per cent
of that of long leaf pine, and its strength about eighty per cent.
Unusual variations in both strength and stiffness are found. One stick
of tamarack may rate twice as high as another.
The wood-using factories of Michigan consume nearly 20,000,000 feet of
this wood yearly. It is made into boxes, excelsior, pails, tanks, tubs,
house finish, refrigerators, windmills, and wooden pipes for waterworks
and for draining mines.
There is little likelihood that the supply of tamarack will run short in
the near future. While it is not in the first rank of the important
trees in this country, it is useful, and it is fortunate that it
promises to hold its ground against fires which do grave injury to
northern forests. In the swamps where the most of it is found the ground
litter is too damp to burn. The tree does not grow rapidly, but it
usually occupies lands which cannot be profitably devoted to
agriculture, and it will, therefore, be let alone until it reaches
maturity.
Tamarack is a familiar tree in parks, and it grows farther south than
its natural range extends. It is not as desirable a park tree as
hemlock, spruce, fir, the cedars, and some of the pines, because its
foliage is thin in summer and wanting in winter. It is in a class with
cypress. In the early spring, however, while its soft green needles are
beginning to show themselves in clusters along the twigs, its delicate
and unusual appearance attracts more attention than its companion trees
which are always in full leaf and for that reason are somewhat
monotonous.
[Illustration]
WESTERN LARCH
[Illustration: WESTERN LARCH]
WESTERN LARCH
(_Larix Occidentalis_)
This is a magnificent tree of the Northwest, and its range lies
principally on the upper tributaries of the Columbia river, in Idaho,
Montana, and British Columbia, but it occurs also among the Blue
Mountains of Washington and Oregon. It is the largest member of the
larch genus, either in the old world or the new. The finest trees are
250 feet high with diameters of six or eight feet, but sizes half of
that are nearer the average. The trunk is of splendid form. In early
life it is limby, but later it prunes itself, and a long, tapering bole
is developed with a very small crown of thin foliage. No other tree of
its size, with the possible exception of old sequoias, has so little
foliage in proportion to the trunk.
The result is apparent in the rate of growth after the larch has passed
its youth. Sometimes such a tree does not increase its trunk diameter as
much in seventy-five years as a vigorous loblolly pine or willow oak
will in one year. The trunk of a tree, as is well known, grows by means
of food manufactured by the leaves and sent down to be transformed into
wood. With so few leaves and a trunk so large, the slowness of growth is
a natural consequence. Though the annual rings are usually quite narrow,
the bands of summerwood are relatively broad. That accounts for the
density of larchwood and its great weight. It is six per cent heavier
than longleaf pine, and is not much inferior in strength and elasticity.
The leaves are from one to one and three-quarter inches long, the cones
from one to one and a half inches, and the seeds nearly one-quarter inch
in length. They are equipped with wings of sufficient power to carry
them a short distance from the parent tree.
The bark on young larches is thin, but on large trunks, and near the
ground, it may be five or six inches thick. When a notch is cut in the
trunk it collects a resin of sweetish taste which the Indians use as an
article of food.
The western larch reaches its best development in northern Idaho and
Montana on streams which flow into Flathead lake. The tree prefers moist
bottom lands, but grows well in other situations, at altitudes of from
2,000 to 7,000 feet. The figures given above on the wood’s weight,
strength, and stiffness show its value for manufacturing purposes. Its
remoteness from markets has stood in the way of large use, but it has
been tried for many purposes and with highly satisfactory results. In
1910 sawmills in the four western states where it grows cut 255,186,000
feet. Most of this is used as rough lumber, but some is made into
furniture, finish, boxes, and boats. The wood has several names, though
larch is the most common. It is otherwise known as tamarack and
hackmatack, which names are oftener applied to the eastern tree; red
American larch, western tamarack, and great western larch.
Some of the annual cut of lumber credited to western larch does not
belong to it. Lumbermen have confused names and mixed figures by
applying this tree’s name to noble fir, which is a different tree. If
the fir lumber listed as larch were given its proper name, it would
result in lowering the output of larch as shown in statistical figures.
In spite of this, however, larch lumber fills an important place in the
trade of the northern Rocky Mountain region.
There is little doubt that it will fill a much more important place in
the future, for a beginning has scarcely been made in marketing this
timber. The available supply is large, but exact figures are not
available. Some stands are dense and extensive, and the trees are of
large size and fine form. It is not supposed, however, that there will
be much after the present stand has been cut, because a second crop from
trees of so slow growth will be far in the future. Sudworth says that
larch trees eighteen or twenty inches in diameter are from 250 to 300
years old, and that the ordinary age of these trees in the forests of
the Northwest is from 300 to 500 years; while larger trees are 600 or
700. Much remains to be learned concerning the ages of these trees in
different situations and in different parts of its range. It is
apparent, however, that when a period covering two or three centuries is
required to produce a sawlog of only moderate size, timber owners will
not look forward with much eagerness to a second growth forest of
western larch.
The value of the wood of western larch has been the subject of much
controversy. In the tables compiled for the federal census of 1880,
under direction of Charles S. Sargent, its strength and elasticity were
shown to be remarkably high. The figures indicate that it is about
thirty-nine per cent stronger than white oak and fifty-one per cent
stiffer. This places it a little above longleaf pine in strength and
nearly equal to it in stiffness or elasticity. Engineers have expressed
doubts as to the correctness of Sargent’s figures. They believe them too
high. The samples tested by Sargent were six in number, four of them
collected in Washington and two in Montana.
The wood of western larch is heavier than longleaf pine, and
approximately of the same weight as white oak. It is among the heaviest,
if not actually the heaviest, of softwoods of the United States. Sargent
thus described the physical properties of the wood: “Heavy, exceedingly
hard and strong, rather coarse grained, compact, satiny, susceptible of
a fine polish, very durable in contact with the soil; bands of small
summer cells broad, occupying fully half the width of the annual growth,
very resinous, dark-colored, conspicuous resin passages few, obscure;
medullary rays few, thin; color, light bright red, the thin sapwood
nearly white.” The wood is described by Sudworth: “Clear, reddish brown,
heavy, and fine grained; commercially valuable; very durable in an
unprotected state, differing greatly in this respect from the wood of
the eastern larch.”
The seasoning of western larch has given lumbermen much trouble. It
checks badly and splinters rise from the surface of boards. It is
generally admitted that this is the most serious obstacle in the way of
securing wide utilization for the wood. The structure of the annual ring
is reason for believing that there is slight adhesion between the
springwood and that of the late season. Checks are very numerous
parallel with the growth rings, and splinters part from the board along
the same lines. Standing timber is frequently windshaken, and the cracks
follow the rings.
All of this is presumptive evidence that the principle defect of larch
is a lack of adhesion between the early and the late wood. If that is
correct, it is a fundamental defect in the growing tree, and is inherent
in the wood. No artificial treatment can wholly remove it. It should not
be considered impossible, however, to devise methods of seasoning which
would not accentuate the weaknesses natural to the wood.
The form of the larch’s trunk is perfect, from the lumberman’s
viewpoint, and its size is all that could be desired. It is amply able
to perpetuate its species, though it consumes a great deal of time in
the process. Abundant crops of seeds are borne, but only once in several
years. It rarely bears seeds as early as its twenty-fifth year, and
generally not until it passes forty; but its fruitful period is long,
extending over several centuries. The seeds retain their vitality
moderately well, which is an important consideration in view of the
tree’s habit of opening and closing its cones alternately as the weather
happens to be damp or dry. The dispersion of seeds extends over a
considerable part of the season, and the changing winds scatter them in
all directions. Many seeds fall on the snow in winter to be let down on
the damp ground ready to germinate during the early spring. The best
germination occurs on mineral soil, and this is often found in areas
recently bared by fire. Lodgepole pine contends also for this ground;
but the race between the two species is not swift after the process of
scattering seeds has been completed; for both are of growth so
exceedingly slow that a hundred years will scarcely tell which is
gaining. In the long run, however, the larch outstrips the pine and
becomes a larger tree. If both start at the same time, and there is not
room for both, the pine will kill the larch by shading it. The latter’s
thin foliage renders it incapable of casting a shadow dense enough to
hurt the pine. The best areas for larch are those so thoroughly burned
as to preclude the immediate heavy reproduction of lodgepole pine.
Much of the natural ranges of larch and lodgepole pine lie in the
national forests owned by the government, and careful studies have been
made in recent years to determine the requirements, and the actual and
comparative values of the two species. It has been shown that larch is
one of the most intolerant of the western forest trees. It cannot endure
shade. Its own thin foliage, where it occurs in pure stands, is
sufficient to shade off the lower limbs of boles, and produce tall,
clean trunks; but if a larch happens to stand in the open, where light
is abundant, it retains its branches almost to the ground. It is more
intolerant, even, than western yellow pine, which so often grows in
open, parklike stands.
ALPINE LARCH (_Larix lyallii_) never grows naturally below an altitude
of 4,000 feet, and near the southern border of its range it climbs to
8,000, where it stands on the brink of precipices, faces of cliffs, and
on windswept summits. It is too much exposed to storms, and has its
roots in soil too sterile to develop symmetrical forms. It is found in
Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. The finest trees are sometimes
seventy-five feet high and three or four in diameter, but the average
height ranges from forty to fifty, with diameters of twenty inches or
less. Its leaves are one and a half inches or less in length; cones one
and a half inches long, and bristling with hair; seeds one-eighth of an
inch long with wings one-fourth inch; wood heavy, hard, and of a light,
reddish brown color. It is seldom used except about mountain camps where
it is sometimes burned for fuel or is employed in constructing corrals
for sheep and cattle. It is impossible for lumbermen ever to make much
use of it, because it is scarce and hard to get at.
[Illustration]
RED CEDAR
[Illustration: RED CEDAR]
RED CEDAR
(_Juniperus Virginiana_)
This widely distributed tree is called red cedar in New Hampshire,
Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri,
Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and
Ontario; cedar in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, South Carolina,
Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, and Ohio; savin in Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, New York, Pennsylvania and Minnesota; juniper in New York and
Pennsylvania; juniper bush in Minnesota; cedre in Louisiana.
The names as given above indicate the tree’s commercial range. It
appears as scattered growth and in doubtful forms outside of that range,
particularly in the West where several cedars closely resemble the red
cedar, yet differ sufficiently from it to give them places as separate
species in the lists of some botanists. They are so listed by the United
States Forest Service; and the following names are given: Western
Juniper, Rocky Mountain Juniper, One Seed Juniper, Mountain Juniper,
California Juniper, Utah Juniper, Drooping Juniper, Dwarf Juniper, and
Alligator Juniper. These species are not of much importance from the
lumberman’s viewpoint, yet they are highly interesting trees, and in
this book will be treated individually.
The red cedar grows slowly, and thrives in almost any soil and situation
except deep swamps. It is often classed as a poor-land species, yet it
does not naturally seek poor land. That it is often found in such
situations is because it has been crowded from better places by stronger
trees, and has retreated to rocky ridges, dry slopes, and thin soils
where competitors are unable to follow. The trees often stand wide apart
or solitary, yet they can grow in thickets almost impenetrable, as they
do in Texas and other southern states. It is an old-field tree in much
of its range. Birds plant the seeds, particularly along fence rows. That
is why long lines of cedars may often be seen extending across old
fields or deserted plantations.
The extreme size attained by this cedar is four feet in diameter, and
one hundred in height, but that size was never common, and at present
the half of it is above the average. That which reaches market is more
often under than over eighteen inches in diameter. The reddish-brown and
fibrous bark may be peeled in long strips. Stringiness of bark is
characteristic of all the cedars, and typical of red cedar.
The wood is medium light and is strong, considering that it is very
brittle. Tests show it to be eighty per cent as strong as white oak. The
grain is very fine, even, and homogeneous, except as interfered with
by knots. The annual rings are narrow, the summerwood narrow and
indistinct; medullary rays numerous but very obscure. The color
is red, the thin sapwood nearly white. The heart and sap are
sometimes intermingled, and this characteristic is prominent in the
closely-related western species of red cedar. The wood is easily worked,
gives little trouble because of warping and shrinking, and the heart is
considered as durable as any other American wood. It has a delicate,
agreeable fragrance, which is especially marked. This odor is
disagreeable to insects, and for that reason chests and closets of cedar
are highly appreciated as storage places for garments subject to the
ravages of the moth and buffalo bug. An extract from the fruit and
leaves is used in medicine, while oil of red cedar, distilled from the
wood, is used in making perfume. Cedar has a sweet taste. It burns
badly, scarcely being able to support a flame; it is exceedingly
aromatic and noisy when burning and the embers glow long in still air.
Some of the bungalow owners in Florida buy cedar fuel in preference to
all others for burning in open fireplaces.
Its representative uses are for posts, railway ties, pails, sills, cigar
boxes, interior finish and cabinet making, but its most general use is
in the manufacture of lead pencils, for which its fine, straight grain
and soft texture are peculiarly adapted. The farther south cedar is
found, the softer and clearer it is. In the North, in ornamental trees,
it is very hard, slow-growing, and knotty. It shows but a small
percentage of clear lumber. In eastern Tennessee there were considerable
quantities of red cedar brake that were for years considered of little
value. About the only way the wood was employed a few years ago was in
fence rails and posts, fuel, and charcoal. Of late people in localities
where cedar grows in any abundance have awakened to its value, and cedar
fences are rapidly disappearing, owing to the high prices now paid for
the wood, and the excellent demand. On no other southern wood has such
depredation been practiced. Because of its lightness and the ease with
which it can be worked, it has been used for purposes for which other
and less valuable woods were well adapted. On account of its slow
growth, its complete exhaustion has often been predicted, but a second
growth has appeared which, though much inferior to the virgin timber,
can be used in many ways to excellent advantage. Instead of the huge
piles of cedar flooring, chest boards, and smooth railings of the old
days, one now sees at points of distribution great piles of knotty,
rough poles, ten to forty feet long, which years ago would have been
discarded. Today they represent bridge piling, the better and smoother
among them being used for telephone and telegraph poles.
Middle Tennessee has produced more red cedar than any other part of the
United States, but the bulk of production has been confined to a few
counties, which produce a higher class and more aromatic variety of wood
than that found elsewhere. A century ago these counties abounded in
splendid forests of cedar. The early settlers built their cabins of
cedar logs, sills, studding, and rafters; their smoke houses were built
of them; their barns; even the roofs were shingled with cedar and the
rooms and porches floored with the sweet-scented wood. Not many years
ago trees three feet or more in diameter were often found, but the days
are past when timber like that can be had anywhere.
Although the most general use at the present time is for lead pencils,
few people who sharpen one and smell the fragrant wood, stop to wonder
where it came from. One would smile were it suggested to him that
perhaps his pencil was formerly part of some Tennessee farmer’s worm
fence. The best timber obtained now is hewn into export logs and shipped
to Europe, particularly Germany, where a great quantity is converted
into pencils. The red wood is made into the higher grades and the sap or
streaked wood is used for the cheaper varieties and for pen holders. The
smaller and inferior logs are cut into slats, while odds and ends,
cutoffs, etc., are collected and sold by the hundred pounds to pencil
factories. There are many such factories in the United States now, as
well as in Europe, and pencil men are scouring the cedar sections to buy
all they can. The farmer who has a red cedar picket or worm fence can
sell it to these companies at a round price. Pencil men are even going
back over tracts from which the timber was cut twenty-five years ago,
buying up the stumps. When the wood was plentiful lumbermen were not
frugal, and usually cut down a tree about two feet above the ground,
allowing the best part of it to be wasted.