cedar, and many years ago planted large areas to provide for the time of
scarcity. The planted timber is now large enough for use, but the wood
has been a disappointment. It does not possess the softness and
brittleness which give so high value to the forest cedar of this
country. As far as can be seen, when present pencil cedar has been
exhausted, there will be little more produced of like grade. It grows so
slowly that owners will not wait for trees to become old, but sell them
while young for posts and poles.
One of the earliest demands for red cedar was for woodenware made of
staves, such as buckets, kegs, keelers, small tubs, and firkins.
Material for the manufacture of such wares was among the exports to the
West Indies before the Revolutionary war. The ware was no less popular
in this country, and the home-made articles were in all neighborhoods in
the red cedar’s range. Scarcity of suitable wood limits the manufacture
of such wares now, but they are still in use.
Cedar was long one of the best woods for skiffs and other light boats,
and it was occasionally employed in shipbuilding for the upper parts of
vessels. A little of it is still used as trim and finish, particularly
for canoes, motor boats, and yachts.
The early clothes chest makers selected clear lumber, because it could
be had and was considered to be better; but modern chest manufacturers
who cannot procure clear stock, make a merit of necessity, and use
boards filled with knots. The wood is finished with oils, but the
natural colors remain, and the knots give the chest a rustic and
pleasing appearance.
SOUTHERN RED JUNIPER (_Juniperus barbadensis_) so closely resembles
the red cedar with which it is associated that the two were formerly
considered the same species, and most people familiar with both
notice no difference. However, botanists clearly distinguish the
two. The southern red cedar’s range is much smaller than the
other’s. It grows from Georgia to the Indian river, Florida, in
swamps. It is found in the vicinity of the Apalachicola river,
forming dense thickets. Its average size is much under that of the
red cedar, but its wood is not dissimilar. It has been used for the
same purposes as far as it has been used at all. One of the largest
demands upon it has been for lead pencils. Those who bought and sold
it, generally supposed they were dealing in the common red cedar.
[Illustration]
NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR
[Illustration: NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR]
NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR
(_Thuja Occidentalis_)
This tree is designated as northern white cedar because there is also a
southern white cedar, (_Chamæcyparis thyoides_) and the boundaries of
their ranges approach pretty closely. The name _occidentalis_, meaning
western, applied to the northern white cedar is employed by botanists to
distinguish it from a similar cedar in Asia, which is called
_orientalis_, or eastern.
The American species has several names, as is usual with trees which
grow in different regions. It is called arborvitæ in Maine, Vermont,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois,
Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Ontario. White cedar is a name
often used in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island,
Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina,
Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ontario. In Maine, Vermont, and New
York it is called cedar. In New York, and where cultivated in England,
American arborvitæ is the name applied to it. The Indians in New York
knew it as feather-leaf. In Delaware the name is abridged to vitæ.
The tree has been widely planted, and under the influence of cultivation
it runs quickly into varieties, of which forty-five are listed by
nurserymen. It is a northern species which follows the Appalachian
mountains southward to North Carolina and Tennessee. It grows from New
Brunswick to Manitoba, and is abundant in the Lake States.
The bark of arborvitæ is light brown, tinged with red on the branchlets;
it is thin, and cracks into ridges with stringy, rough edges; the
branchlets are very smooth.
In general appearance the tree is conical and compact, with short
branches; it attains a height of from twenty-five to seventy feet, and a
diameter of from one to three feet. It thrives best in low, swampy land,
along the borders of streams.
The wood of arborvitæ is soft, brittle, light and weak; it is very
inflammable. The fact that it is durable, even in contact with the soil,
permits its use for railway ties, telegraph poles, posts, fencing,
shingles and boats. However, the trunk is so shaped that it is seldom
used for lumber, but oftener for poles and posts, the lower section
being flattened into ties. A cubic foot of the seasoned wood weighs
approximately nineteen pounds. The heartwood is light brown, becoming
darker with exposure; the sapwood is thin and nearly white, with fine
grain.
The northern white cedar varies greatly in size and shape, depending on
the soil, climate, and situation. Though it is usually associated with
swamps in the North, it adapts itself to quite different situations. It
grows in narrow, rocky ravines, on stony ridges, and it clings to the
faces of cliffs, or hangs on their summits as tenaciously as the western
juniper of the Sierra Nevada mountains. However, little good timber is
produced by this species on rocky soils. Trees in such situations are
short, crooked, and limby.
The wood of the northern white cedar possesses a peculiar toughness
which is seen in its wearing qualities. A thin shaving, such as a
carpenter’s plane makes, may be folded, laid on an anvil, and struck
repeatedly with a hammer, without breaking. It is claimed for it that it
will stand a severer test of that kind than any other American wood.
Toughness and wearing qualities combined make it an admirable wood for
planking and decking for small boats. Its exceptionally light weight is
an additional factor as a boat building material. The Indians knew how
to work it into frames for bark canoes. Its lightness appealed to them;
but the ease with which they could work it with their primitive tools
was more important. It is a characteristic of the wood to part readily
along the rings of annual growth. The Indian was able to split canoe
ribs with a stone maul, by pounding a cedar billet until it parted along
the growth rings and was reduced to very thin slats.
The property of this cedar which appealed to the Indians is disliked by
the sawmill man. It is hard to make thin lumber that will hang together.
The tendency to part along the growth rings develops wind-shake while
the tree is standing. About nine trees in ten are so defective from
shake that little good lumber can be made from them. It is a common
saying, which probably applies in certain localities only, that a
thousand feet of white cedar must be sawed to get one hundred feet of
good lumber.
It is good material for small cooperage such as buckets, pails, and
tubs, and has been long used for that purpose in the northern states.
It was once laid in large quantities for paving blocks. Hundreds of
miles of streets of northern cities were paved with round blocks sawed
from trunks of trees from five to ten inches in diameter. They were not
usually treated with chemicals to prevent decay, but they gave service
ranging from six to twelve years. They are less used now than formerly.
Southern yellow pine has largely taken the cedar’s place as paving
material. Much northern cedar has been used in the manufacture of bored
pipe for municipal waterworks, shops, salt works, paper mills, and other
factories.
The early settlers of New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania made a
rheumatism ointment by bruising the leaves and molding them with lard.
This is probably not made now, but pharmacists distill an oil from twigs
and wood, and make a tincture of the leaves which they use in the
manufacture of pulmonary and other medicines.
There is little likelihood that northern white cedar will ever cease to
be a commercial wood in this country. It will become scarcer, but its
manner of growth is the best guarantee that it will hold its place. It
lives in swamps, and the land is not in demand for any other purpose.
ONE-SEED JUNIPER (_Juniperus monosperma_) is also called naked-seed
juniper. Its range lies in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and
Arizona. It attains its greatest development in the bottoms of
canyons in northern Arizona. It is a scrawny desert tree which lives
in adversity but holds its ground for centuries, if fire does not
cut its career short. Its growth is too scattered to attract
lumbermen, and the form of its trunk is uninviting. It may reach a
height of forty or fifty feet, and a diameter of three, but that is
above the average in the best of its range. The desert Indians make
the most of one-seed juniper. They weave its stringy bark into
sleeping mats, rough blankets, and saddle girts. They make cords and
ropes of it for use where great strength is not required, such as
leashes for leading dogs, strands with which to tie bundles on the
backs of their squaws, and cords for fastening their wigwam poles
together. They likewise weave the bark into pokes and pouches for
storing and carrying their dried meat and mesquite beans. The
juniper berries are an article of diet and commerce with the
Indians, who mix them with divers ingredients, pulp them in stone
mortars, and bake them in cakes which become the greatest delicacy
on their bill of fare. White men, when driven to it by starvation,
have sustained life by making food of the berries. A small quantity
of one-seed juniper reaches woodworkers in Texas. The lumber is
short and rough. The numerous knots are generally much darker than
the body of the wood. That is not necessarily a defect, for in
making clothes chests, the striking contrast in color between the
knots, and the other wood gives the article a peculiar and
attractive appearance. The trunks are sharply buttressed and deeply
creased. Sometimes the folds of bark within the creases almost reach
the center of the tree. The sapwood is thin, the heartwood irregular
in color. Some is darker than the heartwood of southern red cedar,
other is clouded and mottled, pale yellow, cream-colored, the shade
of slate, or streaked with various tints. The wood can be
economically worked only as small pieces. It takes a soft and
pleasing finish. It is a lathe wood and shows to best advantage as
balusters, ornaments, grill spindles and small posts, Indian clubs,
dumb-bells, balls, and lodge gavels. It has been made into small
game boards with fine effect, and it is an excellent material for
small picture frames. Furniture makers put it to use in several
ways, and it has been recommended for small musical instruments
where the variegated colors can be displayed to excellent advantage.
At the best it can never be more than a minor species, because it is
difficult of access in the remote deserts, and it is not abundant.
MOUNTAIN JUNIPER (_Juniperus sabinoides_) is a Texas tree, occupying
a range southward and westward of the Colorado river. It has several
local names, rock cedar being a favorite. This name is due to the
tree’s habit of growing on rocky ridges and among ledges where soil
is scarce. It is called juniper cedar, and juniper. Under the most
favorable circumstances the tree may attain a height of 100 feet and
a diameter of two, but it nearly always grows where conditions are
adverse, and its size and form change to conform to circumstances.
It is often small and ragged. Its lead-colored bark is apt to
attract attention on account of its woeful appearance, hanging in
strings and tatters which persistently cling to the trunk in spite
of whipping winds. When the tree is cut for fuel, or for any other
purpose, the ragged bark is occasionally pulled off and is tied in
bales or bundles to be sold for kindling. When the mountain juniper
is taken from its native wilds and planted where environments are
different, it sometimes assumes fantastic forms. It has been planted
for ornament on the low, flat coast in the vicinity of the Gulf of
Mexico, and though it lives and grows, it often takes on a peculiar
appearance. The trunks resemble twisted and interwoven bundles of
lead-colored vines, buttressed, fluted, and gnarled. The branches
lose their upright position, and hang in careless abandon, with
drooping festoons. In winter the wind whips most of the foliage from
them. The leaves become brittle and may be easily brushed from the
twigs by a stroke of the hand. Some of the planted trees have trunks
so deeply creased as to be divided in two separate stems. This very
nearly happens with some of the wild trees among the western
mountains. The sapwood of mountain juniper is very thin. The average
tree cannot be profitably cut into lumber of the usual dimensions
because of the odd-shaped and irregular trunk. It lends itself more
economically to the manufacture of articles made up of small pieces.
Some of the wood is extremely beautiful, having the color and figure
of French walnut; but there is great difference in the figure and
color, and the wood of one tree is not a sure guide to what another
may be. Boards a foot wide, or even less, may show several figures
and colors. Some pieces suggest variegated marble; others are like
plain red cedar; some are light red in color, others have a tinge of
blue. It varies greatly in hardness, even in the same tree. Part of
it may be soft and brittle enough for lead pencils; another part may
be hard and tough. Clothes chests have been made of it, of most
peculiar appearance--resembling crazy quilts of subdued colors.
Sometimes the heartwood and the sapwood are inextricably mixed, both
being found in all parts of the trunk from the heart out. On the
whole, the tree can never have much importance as a source of
lumber, but it is a most interesting member of the cedar group.
[Illustration]
SOUTHERN WHITE CEDAR
[Illustration: SOUTHERN WHITE CEDAR]
SOUTHERN WHITE CEDAR
(_Chamæcyparis Thyoides_)
This tree is called southern white cedar to distinguish it from northern
white cedar or arborvitæ. When there is little likelihood of confusion,
the name white cedar is applied locally in different parts of its range
from Massachusetts to Florida. It is a persistent swamp tree and on that
account has been called swamp cedar; but that name alone would not
distinguish it from the northern white cedar, for both grow in swamps;
but it does separate it from red cedar which keeps away from swamps. The
ranges of the two are side by side from New England to Florida. Post
cedar is a common name for it in Delaware and New Jersey, because of the
important place it has long filled as fence material; but again, the
name does not set it apart from red cedar or northern white cedar, for
both are used for posts. The only name thus far applied, which clearly
distinguishes it from associated cedars, is southern white cedar. Its
range extends northward to Maine, but the tree’s chief commercial
importance has been in New Jersey and southward to North Carolina, very
near the coast. Somehow, it seems to skip Georgia where no one has
reported it for many years, though there is historical evidence that it
once grew in that state. It grows as far west as Mississippi, but is
scarce.
The small leaves remain green two years and then turn brown but adhere
to the branches several years longer. The fruit is about one-fourth inch
in diameter, and the small seeds are equipped with wings.
The wood is among the lightest in this country. It is only moderately
strong and stiff. The tree usually grows slowly. Fifty years may be
required to produce a fence post, but under favorable conditions results
somewhat better than that may be expected. The summerwood of the yearly
ring is narrow, dark in color, and conspicuous, making the counting of
the rings an easy matter. The medullary rays are numerous but thin. When
the sap is cut tangentially in very thin layers it is white and
semi-transparent, presenting somewhat the appearance of oiled paper. The
heartwood is light brown, tinged with red, growing darker with exposure.
The wood is easily worked, and is very durable in contact with the soil.
Fence posts of this wood have been reported to stand fifty years, and
shingles are said to last longer. Trees reach a height of eighty feet
and diameter of four; but such are of the largest size. Great numbers
are cut for poles and posts which are little more than a foot in
diameter. Few forest trees grow in denser stands than this. It often
takes possession of swamps, crowds out all other trees, and develops
thickets so dense as to be almost impenetrable. Southern white cedar is
cut in ten or twelve states, but the annual supply is not known, because
mills generally report all cedars as one, and the regions which produce
this, produce one or more other species of cedar also. It has held its
place nearly three hundred years, and much interesting history is
connected with it. A considerable part of the Revolutionary war was
fought with powder made from white cedar charcoal burned in New Jersey
and Delaware. However, that was by no means the earliest place filled by
this wood.
Two hundred years ago in North Carolina John Lawson wrote of its use for
“yards, topmasts, booms, bowsprits for boats, shingles, and poles.” It
was cut for practically the same purposes in New Jersey at an earlier
period, and 160 years ago Gottlieb Mittelberger, when he visited
Philadelphia, declared that white cedar was being cut at a rate which
would soon exhaust the supply. But that prophecy, like similar
predictions that oak and red cedar were about gone, proved not well
founded. Seventy years after the imminent exhaustion of this wood was
foretold, William Cobbett, an English traveler, declared with evident
exaggeration that “all good houses in the United States” were roofed
with white cedar shingles.
After boat building, the first general use of the southern white cedar
was for fences and farm buildings, and doubtless twenty times as much
went to the farms as to the boat yards. In all regions where the wood
was convenient, little other was employed as fencing material, and many
of the earliest houses in New Jersey and some in Pennsylvania were
constructed almost wholly of this wood. Small trees which would split
two, three, and four rails to the cut, were mauled by thousands to
enclose the farms. The bark soon dropped off, or was removed, and the
light rails quickly air-dried, and decay made little impression on them
for many years. The larger trunks were rived for shingles or were sawed
into lumber. About 1750 the use of round cedar logs for houses and barns
began to give way to sawed lumber. It was an ideal milling timber, for
the logs were symmetrical, clear, and easily handled. North Carolina
sawmills were at work on this timber many years before the Revolution.
It was acceptable material for doors, window frames, rafters, and
floors, but especially for shingles which were split with frow and
mallet, and were from twenty-four to twenty-seven inches long. They were
known in market as juniper shingles and sold at four and five dollars a
thousand. About 1750 builders in Philadelphia were criticized because
they constructed houses with no provision for other than white cedar
roofs; the walls being too weak for heavier material which would have to
be substituted when cedar could be no longer procured. Philadelphia was
not alone in its preference for cedar roofs. Large shipments of shingles
were going from New Jersey to New York, and even to the West Indies
earlier than 1750.
Southern white cedar is said to have been the first American wood used
for organ pipes. The resonance of cedar shingles under a pattering rain
suggested this use to Mittelberger when he visited America, and he tried
the wood with such success that he pronounced it the best that he knew
of for organ pipes.
Coopers were among the early users of white cedar. The “cedar coopers of
Philadelphia” were famous in their day. They used this wood and also red
cedar (_Juniperus virginiana_), and their wares occupied an important
place in domestic and some foreign markets. Small vessels prevailed,
such as pails, churns, firkins, tubs, keelers, piggins, noggins, and
kegs. The ware was handsome, strong, durable, and light in weight. Oil
merchants, particularly those who dealt in whale oil which was once an
important commodity, bought tanks of southern white cedar. It is a dense
wood and seepage is small.
A peculiar superstition once prevailed, and has not wholly disappeared
at this day, that white cedar possessed powerful healing properties. It
was thought that water was purified by standing in a cedar bucket, and
even that a liquid was improved by simply running through a spigot of
this wood. Some eastern towns at an early period laid cedar water mains,
partly because the wood was known to be durable, and partly because it
was supposed to exercise some favorable influence upon the water flowing
through the pipes. It was even believed that standing trees purified the
swamps in which they grew. Vessels putting to sea from Chesapeake bay,
sometimes made special effort to fill their water casks with water from
the Dismal swamp, where cedars grew abundantly in the stagnant lagoons.
About 100 years ago it was found that whole forests of cedar had been
submerged in New Jersey during prehistoric times, and that deep in
swamps the trunks of trees were buried out of sight. No one knows how
long the prostrate trees had lain beneath the accumulation of peat and
mud, but the wood was sound. Mining the cedar became an important
industry in some of the large swamps, and it has not ended yet. The wood
is sound enough for shingles and lumber, though it has been buried for
centuries, as is proved by the age of the forests which grew over the
submerged logs. Sometimes a log which has lain under water hundreds of
years, rises to the surface by its own buoyancy when pressure from above
is removed. This is remarkable and shows how long a time this cedar
resists complete waterlogging. The wood of green cedar has a strong
odor, and that characteristic remains with the submerged trunks.
Experienced men who have been long engaged in mining the timber, are
able to tell by the odor of a chip brought to the surface from a deeply
submerged log whether the wood is sufficiently well preserved to be
worth recovering and manufacturing. Trunks six feet in diameter have
been brought to the surface. Few if any living white cedars of that size
exist now.
Many of the early uses of southern white cedar have continued till the
present time, but in much smaller quantities. Fence rails are no longer
made of it; shingles and cooperage have declined. On the other hand, it
now has some uses which were unknown in early times, such as telephone
and telegraph poles, crossties, and piling for railroad bridges and
culverts.
The supply of southern white cedar is not large, and it is being cut
faster than it is growing. The deep swamps where it grows protect white
cedar forests from fire, and for that reason it is more fortunate than
many other species. Not even cypress can successfully compete with it
for possession of water soaked morasses. It does not promise great
things for the future, for it will never be extensively planted. Its
range has been pretty definitely fixed by nature to deep swamps near the
Atlantic coast. Within those limits it will be of some importance for a
long time. Where it finds its most congenial surroundings, little else
that is profitable to man will grow. This will save it from utter
extermination, because much of the land which it occupies will never be
wanted for anything else.
[Illustration]
INCENSE CEDAR
[Illustration: INCENSE CEDAR]
INCENSE CEDAR
(_Libocedrus Decurrens_)
In California and Oregon this tree is known as white cedar, cedar, and
incense cedar; in Nevada and California it is called post cedar and
juniper, and in other localities it is red cedar and California post
cedar. It is a species of such strong characteristics that it is not
likely to be confused with any other. Though different names may be
applied to it, the identity of the tree is always clear.