was unknown before 1893, though the region had been settled over a
hundred years. It has the largest leaves, largest fruit, and largest
swelled base of all American ashes. Notwithstanding that, it
remained so deeply hidden in swamps that it escaped discovery. The
botanical name refers to the deep swamps in which the tree chooses
its habitation. Its great, swelled base enables it to stand on the
soft mud of lagoon bottoms, and the abnormal swelling is ribbed like
a pumpkin, hence the only English name the tree has ever had. These
are not the only remarkable things connected with this ash. Its
range includes three or four deep swamps, far apart. One is in
southern Missouri, New Madrid country, another near Varney,
Arkansas, and a third, in a vast morass on the Apalachicola river,
Florida. It is believed to have been originally a Florida species,
and by some freak of nature it reached the Missouri and Arkansas
swamps. Certain other Florida plants accompanied it, one of which
was corkwood (_Leitneria floridana_). It is expected that pumpkin
ash will be found elsewhere in deep swamps intermediate between the
extremes of its range. The uses of this wood are few, because it is
scarce, and the trees are difficult of access on account of being
nearly always surrounded by water. Lumbermen who operate in swamps
occasionally bring out a few ash logs with cypress and tupelo. No
tests seem to have been made of the wood. Trees are sometimes 120
feet high and three in diameter above the swelled bases.
WATER ASH (_Fraxinus caroliniana_) is much lighter in weight than
any other American ash, and the wood is also lighter in color. It is
weaker and less elastic than any other, and is lower in fuel value.
It weighs less than white pine. It grows in deep swamps from
southern Virginia to Florida and westward in swamps to Texas. Some
have confused it with pumpkin ash, but the two are quite distinct.
This tree is also called poppy ash. The leaves are from seven to
twelve inches long, with five or seven leaflets which are much
blunter than most other ash leaves. The seeds are nearly in the
center of the broad, long wing, and are better flyers than most ash
seeds. The tree seldom exceeds forty feet in height, or twelve
inches in diameter. It is not known that the wood is ever used. Its
scarcity will keep it from becoming important, though its uncommon
lightness may lead to its employment for certain purposes.
BILTMORE ASH (_Fraxinus biltmoreana_) is named from Biltmore, N. C.,
where the tree attains its best development, a height of forty or
fifty feet and a foot or less in diameter. Its range extends from
northern West Virginia southward along the foothills of the
Appalachian mountains to Georgia, Alabama, and middle Tennessee. The
seed wings are slender, and only slightly narrowed at the end. The
leaf is ten or twelve inches long, with seven or nine leaflets. The
twigs of young trees are hairy. An occasional log doubtless goes to
sawmills, but no report has been made of uses of the wood.
FLORIDA ASH (_Fraxinus floridana_) is a deep swamp tree, thirty or
forty feet high, and a few inches in diameter. It is found in the
valley of St. Mary’s river, southern Georgia, and along the lower
Apalachicola river, Florida. The compound leaves are five or more
inches long with three or five leaflets. The seeds are small but
their wings are wide and long. No report has been made concerning
the quality of the wood, nor has it been used, as far as known. The
supply is very small.
[Illustration]
SUGAR MAPLE
[Illustration: SUGAR MAPLE]
SUGAR MAPLE
(_Acer Saccharum_)
The makers of sugar in the North call this tree sugar maple, but
lumbermen and users of wood nearly always speak of it as hard maple. All
maples--and there are nearly a dozen--are tolerably hard, and sugar may
be obtained from most of them; but this species is hardest of all, and
the most prolific sugar maker, hence the two names are appropriate. It
is often called rock maple, which name refers to its hard wood. In some
regions the name most heard is sugar tree.
Its range extends from Newfoundland through Canada to Lake of the Woods,
southward through Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Arkansas to Texas. It is
found in every state east of the Mississippi, but it is not abundant in
the South. Its best development is found from New England across the
northern states to Michigan. Some very fine sugar maple is found in
fertile valleys and on slopes among the Appalachian ranges from
Pennsylvania southward. The largest lumber cut of maple is in the
following states, ranging in the order given: Michigan, Wisconsin,
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Vermont. Since
the different species of maple are not reported separately in
statistics, there is no way of determining how much each of the maples
supplies. It is well known that sugar maple greatly exceeds all others.
At its best this tree may exceed a height of 100 feet and a diameter of
three; but the average for mature timber in the best part of its range
is sixty or eighty feet in height, and two in diameter. The flowers
appear with the leaves in early spring, but the seeds do not ripen until
autumn, when they are bright red. They are winged, and usually two grow
together, but they sometimes become detached, in which case each is
capable of flight with its single wing. It is characteristic of maple
seeds to whirl rapidly while falling, and if a moderate wind is blowing,
they glide considerable distances. They usually fly farther than the
seeds of ash although their wings are no larger. The immense numbers of
seeds borne by the sugar maple insure abundant reproduction in the
vicinity of parent trees. The seeds sprout readily, but often so closely
crowded together that most of them die the first few weeks. Not one in
ten thousand can even become a large tree, and yet large trees are
exceedingly abundant in extensive regions. They often form nearly pure
stands, crowding to death all rivals that try to obtain a foothold. On
the other hand, this maple often contents itself with a place among
other forest trees.
It is one of the most vigorous and dependable of trees. It does not grow
fast, but it keeps steadily at it a long time, and enjoys unusually good
health. Its worst enemy is coal smoke, but fortunately, most sugar maple
forests are out of reach of that disturber, though shade trees near
factory towns and in the vicinity of coke ovens often suffer. Woodlots
of sugar maple, occupying corners of farms in the northern states from
Minnesota to Maine, present pictures of health, vigor, cleanliness, and
beauty which no forest tree surpasses. The intense green and the density
of the crowns in summer make the trees conspicuous in any landscape
where they occur, while their brilliant colors in autumn are the chief
glory of the forest where they abound.
The wood of this tree is hard, strong, and dense. It is three pounds
lighter per cubic foot than white oak, and theoretically it rates a
little lower in fuel value, but those who use both woods as fuel
consider maple worth more. It is thirty per cent stronger than white
oak, and fifty-three per cent stiffer. The wood is diffuse-porous, that
is, the pores are not arranged in bands or rows, as they usually are in
oaks, but are scattered in all parts. They are too small to be seen with
the naked eye, but under a magnifying glass they are visible in large
numbers. The yearly ring is not very distinct, because of the slight
contrast between spring and summerwood. The medullary rays are numerous
but small. In wood sawed along radial lines, from heart to sap, small
silvery flecks are numerous. These are the medullary rays. They add
something to the appearance of quarter-sawed maple, but not enough to
induce mills to turn out much of it.
Such figures as maple has are brought out best in tangential
sawing--that is, cut like a slab off the side of the log. Three distinct
figures are recognized in sugar maple, and to some extent they belong to
other maples. These forms of wood are known as birdseye, curly, and
blister maple. They are accidental forms and exist in certain trees
only. Students of wood structure are not wholly agreed as to the cause
of these forms, but one of them, the birdseye effect, is believed to be
due to adventitious buds which distort the wood in their vicinity. These
buds start near the center of the tree when it is small, but never
succeed in forcing their way out. They remain just beneath the bark
during most or the whole of the tree’s life. A pin-like core, resembling
a fine thread, connects the birdseye with the tree’s pith. This thread
is the pith of the embryonic branch formed by the bud which never breaks
through the bark. When the wood is sawed tangentially, small, dark-brown
points or dots show the center of the buds, or the pith line connecting
it with the tree’s center. Curly maple and blister maple are not
believed to be formed in the same way as birdseye.
The uses of sugar maple are nearly universal, where a hard, white wood
is wanted. Many large trees contain little colored heart, and trees are
generally fifty years old before they have any. More maple is worked
into flooring than into any other one commodity. Mills in Michigan
alone, in 1910, made 185,611,662 feet of maple flooring. It was shipped
to practically every civilized country in the world. Many builders
consider it the best wooden floor that can be laid. In a test made in a
large store in Philadelphia some years ago, a marble floor wore through
sooner than maple, when the same wear was on both.
Nearly all kinds and classes of furniture have places for maple, either
as outside material or inside frames, drawer bottoms, or partitions.
Vehicle manufacturers employ it for heavy axles, running gear, parts of
automobiles, sleigh runners and frames, and hand sleds. It is made into
handles from gimlet sizes to cant hooks. Gymnasium apparatus owes much
to the whiteness, smoothness, and strength of maple. Woodenware from
toothpicks to ironing boards; from butcher blocks to butter molds; from
door knobs to die blocks, is dependent on maple for some of its best
material. It is largely used for boxes, in both solid and veneer form.
Only two woods are now employed in larger amounts for veneers in the
United States than maple. They are red gum and yellow pine.
Maple is one of the three woods most largely employed in hardwood
distillation in this country; beech and birch are the others. Maple
sugar is a product of this tree almost exclusively, and the business is
large. In some parts of New England it is claimed that a grove is worth
more for sugar than the land is worth for agriculture.
SILVER MAPLE (_Acer saccharinum_) is generally called soft maple by
lumbermen. It is known also as white maple, river maple,
silver-leaved maple, swamp maple, and water maple. The sinuses of
the leaves are very deep. The lighter color of its bark and the pale
green of the leaves distinguish soft maple at a glance from sugar
maple when both are in full leaf. The greenish-yellow flowers open
in early spring, and the seeds are ripe in April or May, depending
on the season and region. The seeds have large wings and fly well.
They germinate in a few days after they find suitable soil, and
before the end of the summer the seedlings have grown several
leaves. The vigor thus displayed continues until the tree is large.
It is a fast grower, and for that reason has been extensively
planted as a street and park tree. The wisdom of doing so is
doubtful, for this maple throws out long limbs which are often
broken by wind. The trunk is subject to disease, and a row of old
soft maples nearly always presents a ragged, unkempt, neglected
appearance. As to beauty of form and crown, there is little
comparison between it and the planted sugar maple. Soft maples in
forests range from seventy-five to 120 feet in height, and two to
four in diameter; that is, they attain about the same size as sugar
maples. The species covers a million square miles, practically the
whole country east of the Mississippi, some west of that river, and
most of eastern Canada.
It is a useful wood for many purposes. The custom of mixing this
with sugar maple makes it impossible to clearly separate the two
woods afterwards. It is the opinion of some well-informed
manufacturers that about five per cent of the total maple cut in the
United States is soft maple. The ratio is less in the North and more
in the South. The wood is hard, strong, rather brittle, easily
worked, pale brown with thick, white sapwood. Some rather large
trunks have no sapwood. It is in general use, but not for as many
purposes as sugar maple. The largest places found for it are as
flooring and woodenware, though furniture and boxes, particularly
veneer boxes, consume much. Its weight is three-fourths that of
sugar maple. The largest trees and the best wood grow in the lower
Ohio valley.
[Illustration]
RED MAPLE
[Illustration: RED MAPLE]
RED MAPLE
(_Acer Rubrum_)
This tree’s names describe it. Some refer to color of leaves, flowers,
and fruit, others to situation where it grows best. It is known as red
maple and swamp maple; also as water maple, white maple, scarlet maple,
and shoepeg maple. New York Indians called it ah-we-hot-kwah, which
meant red flower. Most trees looked alike to Indians, and when they gave
a name, it was descriptive.
The redness of this maple is so marked that it cannot escape notice. The
flowers, fruit, twigs, and leaves all possess the property at one time
or another during the season. The flower comes before the leaf, during
the first warm days of spring. That is pretty early in the South, and
later in the North. The flowers are bright scarlet, and very
conspicuous, growing in umbel-like, drooping clusters. The staminate and
pistillate ones frequently grow on different trees, and always in
separate clusters.
The fruit ripens quickly, and is sometimes almost mature before the
leaves appear. The date of ripening depends upon latitude. The tree’s
range north and south exceeds a thousand miles and that makes much
difference in climate. In the South the fruit outstrips the leaves and
has about reached maturity before the unfolding leaves are large enough
to hide it; but in New England and New York the leaves are large before
the fruit is mature. The seed is the characteristic maple key, with a
wing to carry it. The fruit--and by that term the seed with its attached
wing is meant--is bright red, and a tree loaded with the vivid clusters
is a beautiful spectacle. Two seeds are generally fast together, and
they make surprising flights in that condition, passing with whirling
motion through the air. Gravity spins them, but wind carries them
forward, and the random of their flight depends on the strength of the
wind, which happens to be blowing when they sever their connection with
the tree.
The seeds germinate quickly when they light on damp soil. If they do not
find such situations, they soon perish; because they do not retain their
vitality long. By the middle of summer the young trees have several
leaves, and from that time on the struggle is mainly among themselves
for space and moisture, because they stand so thick that it is a
survival of the fittest.
The young twigs are generally red in spring, but they do not present as
conspicuous a mass as the flowers and fruit do. The leaves are simple,
with long reddish petioles. They have three or five lobes, the lower
pair often entirely missing, and small if present. Each lobe has a
pointed apex, and is irregularly serrate. The base of the leaf is
rounded; also the sinuses, which extend far into the body of the leaf.
The upper surface of the leaf is bright green, the lower a
silvery-white. In the fall this tree is entitled to the name scarlet;
for then the brilliant hues of the leaves are remarkably fine.
The range of red maple covers more than a million square miles, and
touches every state east of the Mississippi river, and west of that
stream it extends from South Dakota to Texas. It prefers rather swampy
ground, but wants fertile soil. It is frequently found on the banks of
creeks and rivers, and rarely on hillsides. It is most abundant in the
South, particularly in the lower Mississippi valley, while trees of
larger size are found in the valley of the lower Ohio. In the North it
takes more to low wet swamps where it sometimes grows in such thickets
as almost to exclude other species.
The best red maple trees attain a height of 100 feet or more, and a
diameter of four feet or less. The average size is seventy feet high and
two in diameter. The form of the tree, like that of all other maples,
depends much upon the situation in which it grows. Good saw timber is
not often cut from this species near the outer borders of its range.
The wood is about three-fourths as strong as hard maple, and is five
pounds lighter per cubic foot, but is about six pounds heavier than soft
or silver maple. It may, therefore, be considered that in some important
points red maple is midway between hard and soft maple. In color it is
light brown, slightly tinged with red. The sapwood is thick and lighter
in color than the heart. The tree is usually not of rapid growth. The
contrast between the springwood and summerwood is not strong. The wood
is very porous, but the pores are so small that the unaided eye cannot
discern them. The medullary rays are numerous, but thin, and are seldom
considered in working the lumber.
Mills which saw this maple do not separate the lumber from other maples.
The woodsman knows the difference, but the lumberman does not consider
it worth while to pile the sawed stock separately. It sometimes goes to
market as hard maple, sometimes as soft, but never under its own name.
Consequently, it has no uses which are not also common to other maples.
Lumbermen cut it when they find it mixed with other hardwoods where they
are carrying on logging operations.
Red maple is made into flooring, interior finish, and veneer box
material. Veneers are also made for furniture. These are the most
important uses for the wood, but the manufacturers of woodenware employ
it for numerous commodities, such as trays, bowls, ironing boards, grain
scoops, snow shovels, clothes racks, garment hangers, and clothes pins.
This species shows birdseye effect similar to that of sugar maple, but
less of the stock goes to market. Logs with birdseye wood are generally
reduced to veneer by the rotary process. Curly and wavy grains also
occur in this maple. The wavy grain was much sought after by the early
hunters who equipped their long rifles with stocks. Having found a piece
of timber with the desired wavy grain, the hunter proceeded to shave and
whittle until the stock was fitted to the barrel, and the gun was
complete. Some of the stocks made with no tools but an ax, drawing
knife, and a pocket knife, were works of art which are worthy of
preservation in museums.
Occasionally some unknown rural Stradivari made a violin and selected
the curly wood of red maple for the neck and sides. A few of these
instruments are floating about the country, but an age of fifty or a
hundred years has not yet imparted classic value to them, but the wood
is unsurpassed in delicacy of grain and figure.
Sugar may be manufactured from red maple, but in smaller quantity than
from sugar maple. In the days when every frontier settlement did its own
manufacturing, inks and dyes were made from the bark of this tree. The
tannin boiled from the bark was treated with sulphate of iron, and it
became ink; when alum was added it became black dye; when the sulphate
of iron was omitted, and alum alone was put in, a cinnamon-colored dye
resulted.
Red maple is one of the most desirable trees for planting in parks and
by roadsides. Nurserymen complain that seedlings are more difficult to
manage than silver maples; nor do they grow as rapidly, but the trees
are worth much more when once established. They have shorter and
stronger branches than silver maple; are less liable to be attacked by
disease; are more handsome in every way; but they demand damper soil,
and succeed poorly in any other. That drawback tends to restrict the
artificial planting of this tree.
MOUNTAIN MAPLE (_Acer spicatum_) is known also as moose maple, low
maple, and water maple. It is a small tree at its best, seldom more
than twenty-five feet high and eight inches in diameter, while in
most parts of its range it is only a shrub. Its best growth is on
mountain slopes of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. It
likes moist, rich hillsides, and does not object to shade. The
flowers come late, but within a month or six weeks after the bloom
appears, the fruit is full grown, but it remains on the tree till
autumn. The tree’s bark is smooth and very thin. The absence of
stripes distinguishes this tree from striped maple, which has nearly
the same range. Mountain maple grows from Maine to Minnesota,
southward to Michigan, and along the mountains to Georgia. The wood
is light, soft, brown tinged with red. The small size of the trunk
forbids its conversion into ordinary lumber. The only commercial use
reported for it is in Pennsylvania where it is cut along with other
hardwoods for destructive distillation.
FLORIDA MAPLE (_Acer floridanum_) is a species according to some,
and according to others is a variety of the hard maple. Its range is
limited, and the available quantity of the wood is small. It is
found in the swamps of southern Georgia and western Florida, and
westward to Texas, Louisiana, and southern Arkansas. Near the
southwestern limits of its range in Texas and Mexico, it is often a
shrub; but in the best part of its range it becomes a tree fifty or
sixty feet high and two or three in diameter. The wood passes for
hard maple when sawed into lumber, but it is not often sent to
sawmills. The makers of bent wood rustic furniture in some of the
southern towns, particularly in Louisiana, have found the slender
branches of Florida maple well suited to that purpose.
DRUMMOND MAPLE (_Acer rubrum drummondii_) is a variety of red maple,
not a separate species. Its range lies in the coastal plain of
Alabama and Georgia, western Louisiana, eastern Texas, southwestern
Tennessee, and southern Arkansas. It grows in deep swamps, and has
three-lobed leaves, and large-winged fruit, ripening in April and
May. The wood is too scarce to be important in the lumber trade, but
where it can be had it is used. Violin makers have procured some
finely curled wood of this maple in Union Parish, Louisiana. Some of
the wood from that district has been made into gunstocks also.
WHITEBARK MAPLE (_Acer leucoderme_) has been classed as a variety of
sugar maple, and also as a separate species. It is named from the
light gray color of the bark of young stems; but the color turns
dark with age. The tree is usually twenty or thirty feet high with a
diameter of a foot or more. The wood is of good quality, but no
uses, except fuel, have been reported. Trees are not abundant, but
the range covers parts of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia,
Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas. It is occasionally planted as a
shade tree along the streets of towns of Georgia and Alabama.
[Illustration]
OREGON MAPLE
[Illustration: OREGON MAPLE]
OREGON MAPLE
(_Acer Macrophyllum_)
Botanists prefer to call this tree broadleaf maple. The name is not
inappropriate, as its extraordinarily broad leaves constitute the most
striking feature of the tree where it stands in the woods. The leaf is
usually wider than it is long. Some exceed a foot in both measurements.
Bigleaf maple is not an uncommon name for the tree in Oregon, where it
attains its highest development in damp valleys where the soil is good.
The name white maple is not particularly descriptive of any feature of
the tree, though the name is applied in both Oregon and Washington. In
California it is known simply as maple. There is small likelihood in
that region that it will be confused with any other member of the maple
household; nor is there much danger of such a thing in any part of the
Pacific coast, for, though four species of maple occur there, no one of
them bears close enough resemblance to this one to be mistaken for it.