latitude. In that particular it is not much surpassed, if surpassed at
all, by any maple of this country. Its northern limit lies in Alaska,
its southern close to the Mexican boundary, in San Diego county,
California. Its range east and west is restricted. It has a width of
about one hundred and fifty miles in California, where it grows from the
coast to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. An altitude of
5,600 feet appears to be the limit of its range upward. It attains
altitudes above 5,000 feet at several points in the Sierra Nevada range.
It descends nearly to sea level. Its geographical range is similar to
the ranges of several other Pacific coast species which occupy long
ribbons of territory stretching north and south parallel with the coast
of the Pacific ocean.
This maple’s leaves change to a clear reddish-yellow before falling.
Flowers appear after the leaves are grown, and the seeds ripen late in
autumn. Some of them hang until late in winter, but the habit varies in
different parts of the range, as is natural in view of its great
extension north and south. The trees which stand in open ground are very
abundant seeders, but those in dense stands produce sparingly, in that
particular following the habit of most trees. This maple often grows in
dense, nearly pure stands in Oregon and Washington where soil and other
conditions are favorable.
The sizes and forms of Oregon maple vary greatly. John Muir spoke of
forests whose trees were eighty or one hundred feet high, so dense with
leaves and so abundantly supplied with branches that moss and ferns
formed a canopy with foliage and limbs high over head, like an aerial
garden; while George B. Sudworth described it in certain situations as a
short-stemmed, crooked tree from twenty-five to thirty feet high and
under a foot in diameter.
This maple has been called the most valuable hardwood of the Pacific
coast, but that claim is made also for other trees. Some persons rate it
with the hard maple of the East, in properties which commend it for use.
It is doubtful if the claim can be substantiated. According to Sargent’s
figures for strength, stiffness, weight, and fuel value, it lacks much
of equalling the eastern tree. It is twelve pounds per cubic foot
lighter; has not three-fourths the fuel value; and is little more than
half as strong or as stiff. The comparison is more in favor of the
western tree when color of wood and appearance of grain are considered.
The wood is light brown with pale tint of red. The rings of annual
growth are tolerably distinct, with a thin, dark line separating the
summerwood of one year from the springwood of the next. The pores are
scattered with fair evenness in all parts of the ring. They are small
and numerous. The medullary rays are thin and abundant. In quarter-sawed
wood they show much the same as in hard maple, but are rather darker in
color. The mirrors are decidedly tinged with brown. The wood is reported
poor in resisting decay when in contact with the soil.
The largest use of Oregon maple appears to be for furniture, second, for
interior finish, and following these are numerous miscellaneous uses.
Statistics of the cut of this wood, as shown by sawmill reports, are
unsatisfactory. Census returns include it with all other maples of the
country, without figures for species. The cut of maple for all the
western states seems too small to give this wood justice. The amount
reported used in Washington, Oregon, and California exceeds the total
reported sawmill cut in the West.
Oregon maple is an important handlewood. The smooth grain appeals to
broom makers. The wood is made into ax handles, but for that use it is
much below hickory, or even hard maple or white oak. It is converted
into pulleys in Washington, also into saddle trees, and tent toggles.
Boat makers employ it for finish material, in which capacity it fills
the same place, and must meet the same requirements as in interior
finish for houses. Curly or wavy wood is occasionally found and this is
worked into finish and also into furniture. The figure is as handsome as
in eastern maple, but birdseye is less frequent. Counter tops for stores
and bar tops for saloons are sometimes made of figured maple. It is seen
also in grill work and show cases, but in order to show the figured wood
to the best advantage it should be worked in flat surfaces.
Oregon maple is converted into flooring of the ordinary tongued and
grooved kind, and also into parquet flooring. Rotary veneers are made
into boxes and baskets. Solid logs are turned for rollers of various
sizes and kinds. Mill yards use them for offbearing lumber, and house
movers find them about the best local material to be had. This maple has
been successfully stained in imitation of mahogany, and is said to pass
satisfactory tests where the color is the principal consideration.
The amount of this species available in the Northwest is not definitely
known, but it is a relatively scarce wood. No attention has ever been
given to planting it as a commercial proposition. It is not of very
rapid growth, and unless it is in dense stands, it develops a short
trunk and large crown. It is better suited for shade and ornament, and
is to be seen as a street tree in some western towns. It does not
flourish in the eastern states, but has found the climate of western
Europe more congenial and is occasionally found as an ornamental tree
there.
The relative importance of this maple in the state of Washington is
indicated by the amount used annually compared with certain other
hardwoods. In 1911 the consumption of willow was 2,000 feet, vine maple
10,000, Oregon ash 58,000, Oregon oak 197,000, western birch 315,000,
Oregon maple 932,500, red alder 1,881,500, and black cottonwood
32,572,200.
VINE MAPLE (_Acer circinatum_) is sometimes called mountain maple,
though the name is misleading. It may grow among mountains, but always
near streams. It is found at various altitudes from near sea level to
5,000 feet above. It ranges from the coast region of British Columbia
southward through Washington and Oregon to Mendocino county, California.
This tree is more useful than might be inferred from its name, or even
from a study of it in its usual form. Only an occasional tree is good
for the wood user. A height of twenty feet and a diameter of six inches
are above the average. It is called vine maple because of its habit of
sprawling on the ground like a vine. The trunk lacks sufficient
stiffness to hold it erect. It grows upward to a certain point, then
leans over and the branches lie on the ground. Some of them take root
and in course of time what was first a single stem becomes a thicket of
branches and stems. The winter snow often has much to do with bending
the trunk, which appears to have no power to get back to the
perpendicular when once bowed down. The damp situation where this tree
thrives best, induces a luxuriant growth of moss and mold which help to
bury the branches that lie on the ground.
The tree prospers in deep shade. The young leaves are rose red, and in
the fall become yellow or scarlet. The fruit is the characteristic maple
key. The wing becomes rose-red before falling in autumn. Though this
tree is more a curiosity than a lumberman’s asset, it is not without
value. Handle makers use 10,000 feet of it a year in the state of
Washington. It is shaved and turned for ax and shovel handles. It has
two-thirds the strength and less than half the stiffness of eastern hard
maple. The tree grows slowly and the annual rings are very narrow and
indistinct. Seventy or eighty years are required to produce a trunk five
inches in diameter. The wood is hard, and checks badly in seasoning. The
bark is very pale brown--suggesting the color of a potato sprout that
has grown in a dark cellar. The Indians liked the wood for fish net
bows, though there appears to have been no very good reason why they
preferred it to other woods of the region. Its most extensive use at
present is as fuel, but it is not particularly sought after. The tree’s
future is not promising. Under domestication it does not take on its
fantastic, moldy, moss-grown form, and its forest growth will never be
encouraged by lumbermen.
DWARF MAPLE (_Acer glabrum_) is one of the smallest of the maples, but
in a north and south direction its range is equal to that of any other.
Its southern limit is among the canyons of Arizona, and its northern on
the coast of Alaska within six or seven degrees of the Arctic circle. It
extends to Nebraska, and is found east of the continental divide far
north in British America. It reaches its largest size on Vancouver
island and on the Blue mountains in Oregon. It here is large enough to
make small sawlogs, but it is usually shrubby in other parts of its
range. It grows from sea level in Alaska to 9,000 feet altitude among
the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Two forms of leaf occur. One
is three-lobed; the other is a compound leaf, the lobes having formed
separate leaves. The bright upper surface of the leaf gives the species
its botanical name. The seeds have large, wide wings. It cannot be
ascertained that the wood of this maple has ever been used for anything.
[Illustration]
BOX ELDER
[Illustration: BOX ELDER]
BOX ELDER
(_Acer Negundo_)
Attempts to ascertain the meaning of the word _negundo_ which botanists
apply to this species have not been crowned with entire success. It is
known to be a word in the Malayalam language of the Malabar coast of
India, and is there applied to a tree, apparently referring to a
peculiar form of leaf. The name was transferred to the box elder by
Moench, and has been generally adopted by botanists, although at least
seven other scientific names have been given the tree. It bears ten or
more English names in different regions. Among these names are
ash-leaved maple, known from Massachusetts to Montana and Texas;
cut-leaved maple in Colorado; three-leaved maple in Pennsylvania; black
ash in Tennessee; stinking ash in South Carolina; sugar ash in Florida;
water ash in the Dakotas; and box elder wherever it grows.
The tree’s geographical range does not fall much short of 3,000,000
square miles, and is equalled by few species of this country. It extends
from New England across Canada to Alberta, thence to Arizona, and
includes practically all the United States east and south of those
lines. It thrives in hot and cold climates, and high and low elevations;
in regions of much rain, and in those with little. That fact has been
turned to account by tree planters, particularly in the years when the
western plains were being settled by homesteaders. The box elder was the
chief tree on many a timber claim where the letter of the law rather
than the spirit was carried out. It afforded the earliest protection
against scorching summer sun and the keen winds of winter about many a
frontiersman’s cabin on the plains. It was the earliest street tree in
many western towns. The people planted it because they knew it would
grow, and they were not so sure of a good many other trees. Green ash
was often its companion in pioneer plantings on the plains. Many towns
which set box elders along the streets when they did not know of
anything better, still have the trees, though they would willingly
exchange them for something else. They are not ideal street and park
trees; do not produce shapely trunks and crowns; and drop leaves all
summer and seeds all winter. The tree is reputed to be short lived, yet
some of those planted a generation or two ago show no symptoms of
decline.
There is no good reason why this tree should be called an elder, or an
ash, except that its leaves are compound. If that is a reason, it might
be called a hickory or a walnut, since they bear compound leaves. It is
clearly a maple. Its fruit shows it to be so, and Indians of the far
Northwest who had no other maple, formerly manufactured sugar from this
tree, collecting the sap in wood or bark troughs and boiling it with hot
stones.
The compound leaf does not necessarily take it out of the maple group.
It requires no great exercise of imagination to understand how a lobed
leaf, by deepening the sinuses between the lobes, might become a
compound leaf in the process of evolution. There may be no visible
evidence that the box elder’s leaf reached its present form by that
process, but there is another maple which is at the present time
developing a compound leaf in that way, or seems to be doing so. It is
the dwarf maple (_Acer glabrum_) of the Northwest coast. Lobed leaves
and compound leaves may occur on the same tree.
The seeds of box elder resemble those of other maples. They ripen in the
fall, and are blown off by wind, few at a time, during several months.
The trees are from fifty to seventy feet high, and from one and a half
to three feet in diameter. The trunk is apt to divide near the ground in
several large branches, and is not of good form for sawlogs, being often
crooked as well as short. The small branches, particularly those less
than a year old, are usually nearly as green as the leaves. This fact
may assist in identifying the tree when the leaves are off. The bark
bears more resemblance to ash and basswood than to maple.
The wood is lightest of the maples. It weighs less than twenty-seven
pounds to the cubic foot; has less than half the strength and about
forty per cent of the stiffness of sugar maple; and is much inferior to
it in most mechanical properties. It is equal, if not superior to most
maples in whiteness. The pores are small, numerous, and scattered
through all parts of the growth ring, as is characteristic of maple
wood. The tree grows rapidly. The summerwood is a thin, dark line,
separating one annual ring from another. The medullary rays are many and
obscure, but when wood is sawed or split along a radial line, they are
easily seen, and show the true maple luster.
The uses of box elder are similar to those of soft maple. The wood is
seldom reported under its own name. In fact, an examination of
wood-using reports of various states, shows that in only two states,
Michigan and Texas, has box elder been listed separately. Its uses in
the former state were for boxes, crates, flooring, handles, woodenware,
and interior finish, while in Texas it was made into furniture. The tree
is of commercial size in at least thirty states, and is cut and marketed
in all of them. Tests of the wood for pulp are said to be satisfactory,
and it finds its way in rather large amounts to cooper shops where it is
made into slack barrels. It is cut as acid wood along with other maples,
beech, and birch, and is converted into charcoal and other products of
distillation.
It may be expected that box elder will exist in the United States as
long as any other forest tree remains. It is willing to be crowded off
good land into low places, which are almost swamps, and there it grows
free from disturbance; but if given the opportunity it will appropriate
the most fertile soil within reach of it; and by scattering seeds during
four or five months of the year, it manages to do much effective
planting.
CALIFORNIA BOX ELDER (_Acer negundo californicum_) is a variety of
box elder, and not a separate species. As the name implies, it is a
California tree, and it occurs in the valleys and among the Coast
Range mountains from the lower Sacramento valley to the western
slopes of the San Bernardino mountains. The tree is from twenty to
fifty feet high and from ten to thirty inches in diameter. The
leaves and young twigs are hairy, in that respect differing from the
eastern box elder. The seeds are scattered during winter. The wood
is very pale lemon-yellow or creamy-white, the heart and sapwood
hardly distinguishable. The wood is soft and brittle, but is suited
to the same purposes as the eastern box elder. No reports of its
uses appear to have been made. It is found on the borders of streams
and in the bottoms of moist canyons. It is believed to be a
short-lived tree.
STRIPED MAPLE (_Acer pennsylvanicum_) is usually thirty or forty
feet high, and eight or ten inches in diameter. Its range extends
from Quebec to northern Georgia, westward to Minnesota, and is of
largest size on the slopes of Big Smoky mountains of Tennessee, and
the Blue Ridge in North and South Carolina. It grows best in shade,
but maintains itself in open ground; is generally shrubby in the
northern part of its range. The name refers to the bark. The stripes
are longitudinal and are caused by the parting of the outer bark and
the exposure to view of the lighter colored inner layers. The bark
of small trees is greenish, but later in life the color is darker,
and the stripes largely disappear. Among its names are moosewood, so
called because it is good browse for moose and other deer; goosefoot
maple, a reference to the form of the leaf; whistlewood, an allusion
to the ease with which the bark slips from young branches in spring
when boys with jack-knives are on the search for whistle material.
The names mountain alder and striped dogwood are based on
misunderstanding of the tree’s family relations.
The young leaves are rose colored when they unfold, and when full
grown are six inches wide. The wood is light and soft, and light
brown in color, the thick sapwood lighter. The wood is liable to
contain small brown pith flecks, which in longitudinal sections
appear as brown streaks an inch or less in length and as thick as a
pin, and in cross section they are brown dots. They are not natural
to the wood but are caused by the larvæ of certain moths which
burrow into the cambium layer, or soft inner bark, and excavate
narrow galleries up and down the trunk. The galleries afterwards
fill with dark material. The insects sometimes attack other maples,
the birches, service, and other trees. The wood of striped maple is
little used, because of the small size of the trees. The species is
planted for ornament in this country and Europe.
BLACK MAPLE (_Acer nigrum_) has been by some considered a variety of
sugar or hard maple, and by others a separate species. It is as
large as the sugar maple and its range is much the same, but it is
more abundant in the western part of its range than in the East. The
name refers to the color of the bark of old trunks. If the name had
considered the bark of young twigs it would have been yellow or
orange maple, because the twigs are of that color. In summer the
peculiar drooping posture of the leaves calls attention to this
tree. However, the bark, twigs, and leaves combined are not
sufficient to set it apart, in the eyes of most people, for it
generally passes without question as sugar maple, even when it
stands side by side with that tree. It yields sugar abundantly. The
wood is a little heavier than that of sugar maple, but the
difference cannot be noticed except when the two woods are weighed.
Their uses are the same. No maker of furniture, flooring, or finish
ever protests against black maple. The tree generally prefers lower
and damper ground than sugar maple, and is often found along
streams.
[Illustration]
SERVICEBERRY
[Illustration: SERVICEBERRY]
SERVICEBERRY
(_Amelanchier Canadensis_)
This tree will never be other than a minor species in the United States,
but it is not a worthless member of the forest. It belongs to the rose
family, and therefore is near akin to the haws, thorns, and crabapples.
The genus is found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as in the United
States. Two tree species occur in this country, or, according to some
botanists, three, one west of the Rocky Mountains, two east.
The serviceberry has a number of names: June berry, service-tree, May
cherry, Indian cherry, wild Indian pear, currant tree, shadberry,
savice, and sarvice. The northern limit of its range is in Newfoundland,
the southern in Florida. It grows westward to Minnesota and Arkansas;
but it is not plentiful except in certain restricted localities. It is
most abundant among the ranges of the Appalachian mountains, and of its
largest size toward the south. It is dispersed through forests
generally, a tree or bush here and there; but it prefers the borders of
forests, the brinks of cliffs, banks of streams, or some other open
space where light is abundant. It prospers most in rich soil but does
fairly well in ground thin and dry.
The bloom, where it occurs, is a conspicuous feature of the landscape,
though generally a tree on ten or twenty acres represents the density of
its stand. The white, showy bloom comes early in spring, when most trees
are yet bare of leaves. Occasionally, however, the serviceberry is more
abundant, and the rows and clumps of blooming trees along creek banks or
about the margins of glades or other openings in the forests, look like
distant snowdrifts.
The fruit is a berry a half inch or less in diameter, bright red when
fully grown in early summer, and changing to purple when ripe. The seeds
are brown and very small, and each berry contains from five to ten. When
circumstances are favorable, the tree is a prolific bearer, the slender
branches bending beneath the weight. The tree need not reach any
particular size before beginning to bear. On some of the severely burned
summits of the Alleghany mountains in West Virginia, 4,000 feet or more
above sea level, this tree, when only two or three feet high, bears
abundantly. Such trees are probably sprouts from roots of older trunks
destroyed by fire. At its best, it reaches a height of forty or fifty
feet and a diameter of one or possibly two feet. Trunks of largest size
occur among the southern Appalachian ranges.
The wood is heavy and very hard and strong. It is liable to check and
warp in seasoning, is satiny, and is susceptible of a good polish.
Medullary rays are very numerous, but obscure; color, dark brown, often
tinged with red. The wood is stronger, stiffer and heavier than white
oak. It possesses most of the properties to make it a wood of great
value, but its scarcity, and the usual small size of the trees, relegate
it to the class of minor woods. Some use is made of it in turnery and
for other small articles. It is frequently planted in gardens for its
bloom and berries. In such situations it lacks some of the charm which
it holds as part and parcel of the wildwoods where its early spring
bloom is thrown against a background of leafless branches.
WESTERN SERVICEBERRY (_Amelanchier alnifolia_) is also called
pigeonberry and sarvice. Its botanical name refers to the resemblance of
its leaves to those of alder. Its range covers a million square miles,
and the species reaches its best development on islands and rich bottom
lands of the lower Columbia river. It is found as far south as
California, north to Yukon territory, east to Lake Superior and northern
Michigan. It is nowhere a tree of attractive size, and is usually a
shrub about ten feet tall and one inch thick. Trees are sometimes thirty
feet high and six or eight inches in diameter. The fruit is blue-black
and sweet, and pleasant to the taste if not overripe. Indians in the
northern and western range of this tree gather the berries industriously
while they last, and many of the white settlers do likewise. The birds
flock to the thickets for their share, and though the berries are small,
the bears in the region consider them worthy of prompt and continued
attention. The berries are generally a little more than half an inch in
diameter, and ripen in July or August, depending on latitude. Cattle,
sheep, goats, and deer find this small tree or bush a source of food.
They do not object to eating the berries when obtainable, but their
principal attack is on the leaves and tender shoots which afford
excellent browse. Fortunately, the serviceberry is so tenacious of life
that it is next to impossible to browse it to death. If eaten down to
the ground, with little left but bare and barked trunks sticking up like
bean poles, the roots will throw up sprouts year after year, making the
service thicket a permanent browse-pasture. Fire is not able to destroy
such a thicket, for, when the tops are burned off, the sprouts will
quickly spring up with vigor unimpaired. As a source of food for
insects, birds, beasts, and men, few trees, in proportion to size and
quantity, are the equal of western serviceberry. Flowers, fruit, leaves
and sprouts are all food for something.