is not even in the same family. It belongs to the rose family, and
is closely related to the crabapple; but since it is commonly known
as mahogany, it is proper to mention it here. Extensive
consideration is unnecessary, for the tree is not important as a
source of wood. Three species are recognized by some botanists, four
by others. All are western, and are noted for their long-tailed
fruit. The generic name refers to that feature. The seed, with its
tail, is carried by the wind, or it catches in the wool of sheep and
the hair of cattle and goats, or the feathers of birds, and is
carried far and near. The mountain mahogany sometimes is thirty feet
high, and two in diameter. It grows from 5,000 to 9,000 feet
elevation, sometimes on steep cliffs. Its range extends from Wyoming
and Montana to Oregon, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. The wood
is bright, clear red, or rich dark brown. It reaches its largest
size on the mountains of central Nevada. Another species is known as
valley mahogany (_Cercocarpus parvifolius_). It ranges from Nebraska
to Oregon, and Texas to California. Its rate of growth is very slow,
and it seldom exceeds a height of thirty feet and a diameter of ten
inches. The wood is reddish-brown. A third species, called Trask
mahogany (_Cercocarpus traskiæ_) is chiefly notable on account of
its restricted range. It occurs as far as known, in a single canyon
of Santa Catalina island, off the southern coast of California. Some
of the specimens are twenty feet high and six inches in diameter. A
fourth species, or a variety, is known as short-flower mahogany
(_Cercocarpus parvifolius breviflorus_). It occurs in western Texas,
southern New Mexico and Arizona, usually at elevations about 5,000
feet above sea level where the largest trees are not more than eight
inches in diameter and twenty-five feet high.
VAUQUELINIA (_Vauquelinia californica_) belongs to the same family
as the so-called western mahoganies, that is, the rose family; but
it is of a different genus. Its range is largely south of the
international boundary, but it extends into southern Arizona where
the best development of the species occurs about 5,000 feet above
the sea on grassy slopes. It is seldom more than a bush, and the
wood is very heavy and hard, and is dark-brown, streaked with red.
[Illustration]
BLACK WILLOW
[Illustration: BLACK WILLOW]
BLACK WILLOW
(_Salix Nigra_)
The willows and the cottonwoods belong to the same family of trees,
_Salicaceæ_, and the family is fairly numerous, and it has some
well-defined traits of character. The quinine-bitter of the bark is ever
present, but more marked in willows than in cottonwoods. Though quite
unpleasant to the taste, it is harmless. The leaves never grow in pairs,
and in most instances they fall early in autumn, and some without
changing color. Male and female flowers are borne on different trees,
and fertilizing is done by insects, often by honey bees and bumblebees.
Fruit ripens in late spring, and the seeds are equipped for flight by
being provided with exceedingly fine silky hairs. The wind carries them
long distances. The trees generally grow in the immediate vicinity of
streams or in situations where the soil is damp, but there are
exceptions.
The willow family consists of two genera, one the cottonwoods or
poplars, the other the willows proper. There are about seventy-five
species of willow in America, twenty of them trees. Some, however, are
quite small and only occasionally attain sizes which place them in the
tree class. The willows are old residents of this continent. They grew
in the central portion of what is now the United States in the
Cretaceous age, as is proved by their leaf prints in the rocks. They
have held their ground ever since, and there is no likelihood that they
are about to give it up. Few species are better fitted for holding what
they have. A few trees are capable of seeding a large region in a few
years, and if soil and situation are suitable, reproduction will be
abundant. The willows’ tenacity of life is often remarkable. It
sometimes seems next to impossible to kill them by cutting off their
tops. There are said to be instances in Europe where willows have been
pollarded successively during hundreds of years, the crops of sprouts
being used for wickerwork and other purposes. No such records exist in
this country, but the willow’s sprouting habit is well known. A shoot
stuck in the ground will grow, and a fence post will sprout. Many
willows develop large stools, or roots, and repeatedly send up numerous
sprouts, and it makes little difference how often they are cut, others
will come up.
Comparatively few willows that start in life ever become trees. They are
suppressed by crowding, or meet misfortunes of one kind or another which
keep them small, but occasionally a tree of good size results. Willow
trees are usually not old. Probably few reach an age exceeding 150
years. Large trunks, in old age, are apt to be hollow or otherwise
defective, though a willow tree will live many years after much of its
trunk has disappeared. A little green bark on the side, and sprouts from
the stump will maintain life long after all usefulness has ceased.
Young willows are usually pliant and tough, old are stiff and brash.
They range from sea level up to 10,000 feet or more; grow profusely in
the wet lands about the gulf of Mexico, and likewise on the bleak coasts
of the Arctic ocean. Commander Peary found willows blooming in
considerable profusion on the extreme northern shore of Greenland, where
they produce enough growth during the few weeks of summer sunshine to
afford the muskox the means of eking out a living during his sojourn in
those inhospitable regions.
The identification of willows is one of the most difficult tasks that
fall to the botanists. Black willow is unquestionably the most important
willow in this country from the lumberman’s standpoint. It is the common
tree willow that attains size suitable for sawlogs. If a forest grown
willow of large size is encountered east of the Rocky Mountains in the
United States, it is pretty safe to class it as black willow. There are
some others which grow large, but not many. Planted willows, both large
and small, may be foreign species, and white willows, which are not
native in this country, but have been widely planted, and are running
wild, may be occasionally found of ample size for saw timber.
Black willow’s range extends from New Brunswick to Florida, west to the
Dakotas, and south to Texas, thence passing into Mexico, New Mexico,
Arizona, and California. It attains its best size in the Ohio and
Mississippi valleys, though large trees are found in other parts of its
range. It is difficult to say what its average size is, for some black
willows are only a few feet high and an inch or two in diameter. The
largest trees exceed 100 feet in height and three in diameter. An
extreme size of seven feet in diameter has been reported. It is not
unusual to see willow logs three feet in diameter in mill yards in
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, and logs four feet in diameter are
not so unusual as to excite much comment. The average sizes, however, of
willow sawlogs in that region are from eighteen inches to two feet.
The wood of black willow is pale reddish-brown. When freshly cut it is
sometimes purple, almost black. When sawed in lumber and exposed to the
air the dark color fades. The wood is soft but firm. It has about fifty
per cent of the strength of white oak, and forty per cent of its
stiffness. It weighs 27.77 pounds per cubic foot; and considering its
weight, it is tolerably strong and stiff.
Probably no other wood in the United States is as systematically cheated
out of its just credit as this one. Many of the oaks are seldom given
their proper names, but they are listed as oak in sawmill output, and
thus the genus, if not the species is given credit. But willow is almost
totally ignored. The United States census in 1910 credited to all the
willow lumber in this country an amount less than a million and a half
feet; yet a single mill in Louisiana, and not a large mill at that, cut
and sold four times that much during that year. The wood was cut by
hundreds of other mills, some a few logs only, others considerable
quantities.
It is sold for various purposes, and much of it goes as cottonwood. In
some instances it is called brown cottonwood. Probably ninety per cent
is made into boxes, but it has many other uses. It is cut into
excelsior, made into rotary cut veneer, and finds place in the
manufacture of furniture; it is a common woodenware material; slack
coopers make barrels of it; and it is turned for baseball bats.
The supply of black willow in this country is not small. It is usually
found in wet situations along streams. Sometimes islands and low flats
are taken possession of and pure stands result. The growth is sometimes
phenomenal. Trunks may add nearly or quite an inch to their diameter per
year when conditions are exceptionally favorable. Instances, apparently
well authenticated, are reported of abandoned fields along the
Mississippi, which in sixty years grew 100,000 feet of willow per acre.
LONGSTALK WILLOW (_Salix longipes_) sometimes grows to a height of
thirty feet with a diameter of six or eight inches. Its range
extends from Maryland to Texas, and is at its best in the Ozark
region of southwestern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas.
ALMONDLEAF WILLOW (_Salix amygdaloides_) grows across northern
United States and southern Canada from New York to Oregon, and
occurs as far south as Missouri and Ohio, and is abundant in the
lower Ohio valley. At its best it is seventy feet high and two feet
in diameter. The wood is light, soft, and the heartwood is brown.
SMOOTHLEAF WILLOW (_Salix lævigata_) attains a diameter of one foot
and a height of forty or fifty. It is a Pacific coast tree,
occurring in California on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevadas
up to an altitude of 3,000 feet. It is known as black willow. The
wood is pale reddish-brown.
SILVERLEAF WILLOW (_Salix sessilifolia_) looks like longleaf willow,
and though usually a shrub it sometimes is twenty-five feet high and
ten inches in diameter. It grows from the mouth of the Columbia
river to southern California.
YEWLEAF WILLOW (_Salix taxifolia_) ranges from western Texas,
through southern Arizona into Mexico and Central America. Trees are
occasionally forty feet high and more than one foot in diameter. A
little fuel and fence posts are cut from this willow.
BEBB WILLOW (_Salix bebbiana_) is nearly always shrubby, but
occasionally reaches a trunk diameter of six or eight inches and a
height of twenty feet. Its northern limit lies within the Arctic
circle, its southern in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Arizona. West of
Hudson bay it forms almost impenetrable thickets, and in Colorado it
ascends mountains to elevations of 10,000 feet.
GLAUCOUS WILLOW (_Salix discolor_), commonly known as silver or
pussy willow, ranges from Nova Scotia to Manitoba, and southward to
Delaware, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. It is one
of the best known willows within its range, on account of its
flowers which are among the earliest of the season, and very showy.
The largest specimens are scarcely twenty-five feet high and twelve
inches in diameter.
MACKENZIE WILLOW (_Salix cordata mackenzieana_) is not abundant, and
is one of the smallest of the tree willows. It is nearly always a
shrub. Its range extends from California nearly to the Arctic
circle, where it occurs in gravelly soil on the borders of mountain
streams.
MISSOURI WILLOW (_Salix missouriensis_) is so named because it
occurs principally in Missouri, but its range extends into Kansas
and Iowa. It is occasionally forty feet high and a foot in diameter.
It is used for fence posts.
BIGELOW WILLOW (_Salix lasiolepis_) is generally called white willow
on account of its gray bark. It occurs in California and Arizona,
and at its best it is twenty-five feet high and ten inches in
diameter. Some use is made of it as fuel, where other wood is
scarce.
NUTTALL WILLOW (_Salix nuttallii_), called also mountain willow in
Montana, ranges from British America, east of the Rocky Mountains,
to southern California. Its usual height is twenty or twenty-five
feet, and its diameter six or eight inches. In southern California
it grows 10,000 feet above sea level.
HOOKER WILLOW (_Salix hookeriana_) occurs in the coast region from
Vancouver island to southern Oregon, and varies in height from a
sprawling shrub to a height of thirty feet and a diameter of one.
Little use is made of it.
SILKY WILLOW (_Salix sitchensis_), known also as Sitka willow,
ranges from Alaska to southern California. The largest specimens are
twenty-five feet high and ten inches in diameter. Trunks are largely
sapwood and are of little commercial importance.
BROADLEAF WILLOW (_Salix amplifolia_), known also as feltleaf
willow, was discovered in Alaska in 1899. The leaves are woolly. The
largest trees rarely exceed a height of thirty feet and a diameter
of six inches. Its range extends to the valley of the Mackenzie
river.
A number of foreign willows have become naturalized in the United
States. Among them is white willow (_Salix alba_), which grows to
large size, probably as large as black willow; crack willow (_Salix
fragilis_), so named on account of the brittleness of its twigs; and
weeping willow (_Salix babylonica_). The botanical name is based on
the supposition that it was this willow, growing by the rivers near
Babylon, on which the captive Hebrews hung their harps. Basket
willow is planted for its osiers in several eastern states. It is
not a single species, but a group of varieties developed by
cultivation.
[Illustration]
HARDY CATALPA
[Illustration: HARDY CATALPA]
HARDY CATALPA
(_Catalpa Speciosa_)
This tree belongs to the family _Bignoniaceæ_ which has its name from
Abbé Bignon, librarian of Louis XV. About one hundred genera belong to
this family, only three of which reach the size of trees in the United
States. These include the catalpas, the desert willow, and the black
calabash tree.
Seven species of catalpa are known, two of them occurring in the United
States. Others are found in China and the West Indies. The name is an
Indian word and was first heard among the tribes of the Carolinas. It
seems probable that the name catalpa as applied to a tree and catawba,
applied to a grape, have the same origin, and in some way refer to the
Catawba Indians, a small tribe--said to be Sioux--that lived two hundred
years ago in the western part of the Carolinas and neighboring regions
where one of the catalpa species was first heard of by Europeans. The
tree in that region is still often called catawba.
The two catalpas of this country are known to botanists as _Catalpa
speciosa_ and _Catalpa catalpa_. Much confusion has resulted from
attempts to distinguish one from the other. Botanists are able to clear
the matter up among themselves, but the general public has not been so
successful. John P. Brown, of Connersville, Indiana, specialized on
catalpas during many years, and published numerous tracts, pamphlets,
and books for the purpose of educating the public to the point where the
differences between common catalpa and hardy catalpa could be
distinguished. His labor was likewise directed toward inducing land
owners to plant catalpa for commercial purposes. Due to his efforts, and
otherwise, catalpa was for a time the most advertised plantation tree in
this country. Some supposed that hardy catalpa was the wood which was to
save the country from a threatened timber famine. Claims made for it
were wide and far reaching.
The judgment of history has been--if it may be classed as a matter of
history--that the tree fell short of expectation. This does not imply an
inferiority of the wood itself, or a slower rate of growth than was
claimed for it; but exceptional cases were interpreted as averages, and
for that reason the whole situation was overestimated. When all
conditions are perfect, hardy catalpa grows rapidly and grows large, but
it demands nearly perfect conditions or it will disappoint. It wants
ground rich enough and damp enough to grow good crops of corn, and
farmers are not generally willing to put that class of land to growing
fence posts and railroad ties.
The range of hardy catalpa before the species was spread by artificial
planting, was through southern Illinois and Indiana, southeastern
Missouri and northeastern Arkansas, western Louisiana and eastern Texas,
and western Kentucky and Tennessee. Its position on the fertile banks of
streams, and on flood plains subject to frequent inundation, indicates
that the spread of the species was effected by running water. In that
case, the dispersal of seeds would be down stream, implying that the
starting place of the species was along the lower reaches of the Wabash
river.
The catalpa may reach a height of 100 or 120 feet and a diameter of four
feet; but few trees attain that size. The leaves are ten or twelve
inches long and seven or eight wide, and are considerably larger than
those of common catalpa. The flowers appear late in May or early in
June, and are showy. The prevailing colors are white and purple, and the
blossoms are about two inches long and two and a half wide.
The fruit is a pod from eight to twenty inches long, and the enclosed
seeds are nearly an inch long, shaped like beans. The trees are prolific
bearers.
The tree is known by several names in different parts of its range,
including the territory where it is known only from plantings. It is
called western catalpa to distinguish it from the other species found
farther east and south. In Missouri and Iowa it is known as cigar tree.
The name Indian bean is an allusion to the large seeds. Shawneewood is
another name referring to the supposed interest of Indians in the tree.
Shawnee was the name of a tribe of Indians in the Ohio valley in early
times.
The wood weighs less than twenty-six pounds per cubic foot, and is soft
and weak. It is rated very durable in contact with the soil, and this is
one of the chief advantages claimed for it. The annual rings are clearly
marked by several bands or rows of large open ducts, and the denser
summerwood forms a narrow band. The medullary rays are numerous and
obscure. The heartwood is brown, the sapwood lighter. In appearance, the
heartwood suggests butternut, but it is coarser, and lacks the gloss
shown by polished butternut. Quarter-sawing produces no figure, but when
sawed at right angles to the radial lines, the annual rings are cut in a
way to give figure resembling that of ash or chestnut.
The wood of this catalpa has been thoroughly tried out for a number of
purposes. Furniture and finish have been made of it with varying
success, and molding and picture frames are listed among its uses. It is
not a sawlog tree. Statistics of lumber cut seldom mention it, though
now and then a log finds its way to a mill. Efforts have been made to
pass the wood as mahogany, but with poor success. The counterfeit is
easily detected, since the artificial color which may be imparted to
catalpa is about the only resemblance to mahogany.
In the lower Mississippi valley some success, but on a very small scale,
has resulted from attempts to induce catalpa to grow in crooks suitable
for small boat knees. The young trunk, after being hacked on one side,
is bent and induced to grow the crook or knee. Natural crooks have been
utilized in the manufacture of knees for small boats in Louisiana.
Probably ninety per cent of all the catalpa ever cut has gone into fence
posts. It is habitually crooked. A straight bole is the exception;
though in plantations trees are crowded and pruned until they grow
fairly straight, and sometimes trunks of forest grown trees of large
size are nearly faultless in their symmetry.
It was once believed in some quarters that catalpa would solve the
railroad tie problem by growing good ties quickly. It must be admitted,
however, that in spite of extensive plantings, the railroad tie problem
has not yet been solved by catalpa.
COMMON CATALPA (_Catalpa catalpa_) originated many hundred miles outside
the range of hardy catalpa, to judge by the localities in which it was
first found by white men. It is supposed to have been indigenous in
southwestern Georgia, central Alabama, and Mississippi, and northwestern
Florida. Its range has been greatly extended by planting, and it grows
in most parts of the country east of the Rocky Mountains, as far north
as New England. It has been planted in many parts of Europe. Its leaves,
flowers, fruit, and the tree itself are smaller than hardy catalpa. The
pods hang unopened all winter. The trunks sometimes are three feet in
diameter and sixty high, but are generally small, crooked, rather
angular, and poor in appearance, but the leaves and flowers are
ornamental. The wood is durable in contact with the ground, and its
largest use has been for posts, crossties, and poles.
DESERT WILLOW (_Chilopsis linearis_) does not even belong to the willow
family, notwithstanding its names, all of which are based on the
presumption that it is a willow. The shape and size of its leaves are
responsible for that misapprehension. The very narrow leaves may be a
foot long. It is called flowering willow and Texas flowering willow. Its
flowers are always emphasized when it is compared with willow, for they
are totally different from the willow’s characteristic catkins. The
flowers appear in early summer in racemes three or four inches long, and
continue open during several months in succession. The fruit is a pod
seven or nine inches long, and as slender as a lead pencil. It is this
pod which gives the plainest hint of its relationship to the catalpas,
for it is in good standing in the family with them. The seeds resemble
very small beans with wings at each end. They are light, and the wind
disperses them. The tree is a prolific seeder.
The range of this small tree extends across western Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, Utah, Nevada, into San Diego county, California. The tree
occurs in dry, gravelly, porous soil near the banks of streams and in
depressions in the desert. The wood is weak and soft, the heart brown,
streaked with yellow. No use has been found for it. The tree is
cultivated for ornament in Mexico and sometimes in the southern states.
The flowers look well when they are encountered in the desert. They are
white, faintly tinged with purple, with bright yellow spots inside. They
are funnel shaped and have the odor of violets.
[Illustration]
CUCUMBER
[Illustration: CUCUMBER]
CUCUMBER
(_Magnolia Acuminata_)
This tree is a member of the magnolia family which has ten genera in
North America, two of them, magnolia and liriodendron, being trees. The
family has its name from Pierre Magnol, a French botanist who died in
1715. The genus magnolia has seven species in the United States, all of
which are of tree size. They are evergreen magnolia (_Magnolia fœtida_),
sweet magnolia (_Magnolia glauca_), cucumber (_Magnolia acuminata_),
largeleaf umbrella (_Magnolia macrophylla_), umbrella tree (_Magnolia
tripetala_), Fraser umbrella (_Magnolia fraseri_), and pyramidal
magnolia (_Magnolia pyramidata_). The remaining member of the magnolia
family is the yellow poplar (_Liriodendron tulipifera_). Though of the
same family it is of a different genus from the seven other magnolias.
The cucumber is the hardiest member of the magnolia family. It is found
in natural growth farther north than any other, yet it has the
appearance of a southern tree. All magnolias look like trees belonging
in the South. Their large leaves indicate as much, and some of them do
not venture far outside of the warm latitudes. It is one of the oldest
of all the families of broadleaf trees, and it has been a family that
during an immense period of the earth’s history has clung near the old
homestead where it came into existence countless ages ago. There were
magnolias growing in the middle Appalachian region, and eastward to the
present Atlantic coast, so far in the past that the time can be measured
only by hundreds of thousands of years. Leaf prints in rocks, which were
once mud flats, tell the story--though but a page here and there--of the
magnolia’s ancient history, doubtless antedating by long periods the
earliest appearance of man on earth.
Next to the yellow poplar, the cucumber tree is the most important
species of the magnolia family, at least as a source of lumber. As an
ornamental tree it may not equal some of the others, particularly
certain of the southern species which are evergreen and produce large,
showy flowers.