alders and to blue beech. Four species of hornbeam are known in the
world, and two of them are in the United States. One is well known to
most persons who are familiar with eastern hardwood forests, but the
other is seldom seen because of the limited extent of its range.
The well-known hornbeam is found in the valley of the St. Lawrence
river, throughout Nova Scotia and Ottawa, along the northern shore of
Lake Huron to northern Minnesota, south through the northern states and
along the Alleghany mountains to the Chattahoochee region of western
Florida; through eastern Iowa, southeastern Missouri and Arkansas,
eastern Kansas, Oklahoma and the Trinity river region of Texas. It is
known as ironwood, hop-hornbeam, leverwood, and hardhack.
The Indians were small users of wood except for fuel, but they had
places where they put wood to special uses. They chose hornbeam, when
they could get it, for one of these places. It was a favorite material
for the handles of their stone warclubs. The stone heads were chipped to
various forms, but were usually egg-shaped with a groove round the
middle for fixing the handle. This was made fast with thongs of rawhide,
and was generally nearly or quite two feet long, and slender as a golf
stick. Great strength and a high degree of elasticity were required to
stand the strain when a warrior swung his club in battle. Hornbeam meets
these requirements exactly, and doubtless the Indian found this out by
experience. It is about thirty per cent stronger than white oak, and
forty-six per cent more elastic. The demand for warclub handles made no
great inroads on the hornbeam supply, but it affords proof that the
Indians sometimes used good judgment.
The different names of this tree describe some characteristic of the
wood or foliage. The fruit resembles hops, hence one of the names.
Hardness gives it the other names by which it is known. It is the custom
nearly everywhere to call any wood ironwood if it is extra hard. No
fewer than eleven species of the United States are known as ironwood in
some parts of their ranges.
The leaves of hornbeam are simple and alternate; they taper to a sharp
point at the end, while the base is rounded. They are doubly and sharply
serrate. In color they are dark green above, and lighter below, tufted
in places, resembling birch leaves in some respects, although they are
quite different in texture, the leaves of birch being glossy, while
those of ironwood are rough. They are joined to the twig with a short
petiole, hardly a fourth of an inch in length.
The flowers grow in long catkins, staminate ones sometimes more than two
inches long, covered with fringed scales. The pistillate catkins are
usually shorter. Hornbeam blooms in April and May and its fruit ripens
in August and September. The seed is a small nut equipped with
balloon-like wings, intended for wind distribution. The seeds are often
carried, rolled, and tumbled considerable distances. They keep on going
until their wings are torn off or wear out, or until they become
inextricably entangled among twigs or other obstacles. Comparatively few
of the seeds ever find lodgment in situations suitable for germination.
Consequently, hornbeam is scarce.
It is not easy to state the average size of the hornbeam, though it is
usually small and never very large. Sometimes it reaches a height of
fifty or sixty feet and a diameter of two or more, but such sizes are
unusual. Trees a foot in diameter and forty feet high are more common.
The foliage is thin, and the tree is satisfied to grow in shade,
provided the shadows are not too dense. The leaves must have a little
sunshine, and the flecks that fall through the open spaces in the forest
canopy high above, suffice. The hornbeam makes no effort to overtop its
fellow trees; but when it grows in the open, as on a rocky bank or
ridge, where it catches the full light, the crown puts on more leaves,
and multiplies its branches, and it is no longer the lean tree which
some of the Indians called it. Forest grown specimens produce clear
trunks, but those in the open are limby almost to the ground.
Hornbeam has neither smell nor taste. It burns well, the embers glowing
brightly in still air. The weight of a cubic foot of seasoned wood is
fifty-one pounds. It is strong, hard, heavy, tough, and exceedingly
durable when exposed to variable weather, or when in contact with the
soil. It takes a beautiful polish. Trees more than a foot in diameter
are often found to be hollow.
The wood is strong, hard, tough, durable in contact with the soil;
heartwood light brown, tinged with red, or often nearly white; thick,
pale sapwood which generally does not change to heart for forty or fifty
years. The annual rings are not uniform in appearance. Some are easily
distinguishable, while others are vague. This variation is due to the
irregular development of the dark summerwood in the outer portion of the
rings. It is at times distinct and again is hardly discernible.
The wood is diffuse-porous, and the pores are too small to be easily
seen by the naked eye. The medullary rays are small and obscure. In
quarter-sawed wood they show as a silvery gloss, but the appearance is
too monotonous to be attractive. Neither is there striking figure when
the wood is sawed tangentially, because of the small contrast in the
different parts of the yearly ring. Hornbeam may, therefore, be listed
among woods which have little or no figure. No one ever thinks of using
it for the sake of its beauty. Because of the small size and limited
quantity hornbeam will never come into commercial prominence. Its uses
are almost entirely local and domestic. The lumberman or the farmer
selects a hornbeam sapling as being the best material obtainable for
making a wagon or sleigh tongue, a skid, or a lever. The farmer often
laboriously works a section of the flint-like wood into minor
agricultural implements.
The statistics of sawmill cut in the United States do not mention
hornbeam even among such minor species as holly, Osage orange, alder,
and apple. However, it is known that an occasional log goes to sawmills
in the Lake States, and doubtless in other regions, and in some
instances the wood is kept separate from others and is sold to fill
special orders. Manufacturers of farm tools consider it the best wood
for rake teeth. That use has come down from the time when farmers made
their own rakes and pitchforks. They learned the wood’s value by
experience, and manufacturers cater to the trade.
It is sometimes called lever wood, and that name dates from long ago
when the man who needed a lever went into the woods and cut one to suit
his needs. The modern lever is usually somewhat different and partakes
more of the nature of a handle. They are seen in sawmills where they
manipulate the carriage machinery; on certain agricultural implements
where their function is to throw clutches in and out of gear; sometimes
they are used as the handle by which the rudder of a small boat is
controlled; and occasionally the lever has a place as an adjunct of a
wagon or log-car brake. In all of these uses strength and stiffness are
required, and durability is duly considered.
Wagon makers and repairers find several uses for hornbeam. It would be
more frequently employed if it were more plentiful. Nearly any
blacksmith who runs a repair shop for vehicles will testify to that. It
fulfills every requisite for axles; is made into felloes for heavy
wagons; and is considered the best obtainable wood for the tongues of
heavy logging wheels and stone wagons.
Among various occasional uses of this wood it is listed by the
manufacturers of reels for garden hose; rungs for long ladders; stakes
for sleds, and also for cross pieces and parts of runners of sleds;
wedges for the makers of machinery; and hammer and hatchet handles. It
is a pretty active competitor of dogwood for some of these uses, and it
has been suggested for shuttles, but no report of its use in that
capacity seems to have been made.
One of its most common uses is as fence posts. Few lines of fence are
built exclusively of hornbeam posts, because not enough can be had in
one place; but posts are cut singly or a few together from Maine to
Arkansas, and the aggregate number is large. The wood is said to outlast
the heartwood of white oak when in contact with the ground, and it is so
strong that posts of small size stand the pull of wires or the weight of
planks or pickets.
Hornbeam is of slow growth and there is little reason to believe that it
will ever be seriously considered by timber growers; but it will
doubtless win its way to favor as an ornamental tree. It has been
planted in city parks in New England and elsewhere, and its form,
foliage, and habits are much liked. The pale green pods or cones--they
are not exactly the one or the other--remain a long time on the branches
and are delicately ornamental until after the autumn frosts change their
green into brown. Then comes the flying time of the balloon seeds, and
that is an interesting period in parks and yards where the tree’s habits
may be closely studied.
KNOWLTON HORNBEAM (_Ostrya knowltoni_) is interesting chiefly on
account of its extremely limited range, and its far removal from all
its kin. It is an exile in a distant country. It has thus far been
found only on the southern slope of the canyon of the Colorado river
in Arizona, about seventy miles north of Flagstaff. It occurs at an
elevation of 6,000 or 7,000 feet above the sea. Trees are twenty or
thirty feet high and twelve or eighteen inches in diameter, and
trunks usually divide a foot or two above the ground into three or
more branches, which are often crooked and contorted. Such sizes and
forms could not be of much value for anything but fuel, even if
abundant. The heart is light reddish-brown, sapwood thin. The leaves
are round instead of pointed at the apex, as with the other
hornbeam; but the flowers and fruit are much the same. Botanists
speculate in vain as to how this species happens to be so far
removed from other members of its family.
[Illustration]
SILVERBELL
[Illustration: SILVERBELL]
SILVERBELL TREE
(_Mohrodendron Carolinum_)
This tree belongs to the storax family, which is not a very numerous
family as forest families are generally counted, but it is old and
highly respectable. Its members are found in the old world and the new
in both North and South America, in Europe, Asia, and the Malay
Archipelago. Trees of the storax family produce, or they are supposed to
produce, resins and gums, balsams, and aromatic exudations, but some
give little or none. The priests and soothsayers of idolatrous nations
of ancient times laid great stress on storax. They insisted on having
the resin as an adjunct to their superstitious rites. It was the incense
offered in their worship, and they compassed sea and land to obtain it
for that purpose. It is not improbable that the southern peninsulas of
Asia and the far-off Molucca islands were visited in ancient times to
procure the incense which ultimately found its way to the Mediterranean
regions.
It is, therefore, interesting to find that two members of the old storax
family are quietly living in the coast region and among the mountains of
the southeastern part of the United States. No one has ever suspected
that they might be capable of yielding resinous incense suitable for the
altars of heathen gods. They are the silverbell tree, and its little
cousin, the snowdrop tree (_Mohrodendron dipterum_). They have had
common names a long time, but their botanical names are the result of a
recent christening. They are named from Charles Mohr who wrote an
interesting book on the flora of Alabama. The silverbell tree is the
larger of the two and deserves first consideration.
It has a somewhat extensive range, but in some parts it is so scarce
that few persons ever see it. It is found from the mountains of West
Virginia to southern Illinois, south to middle Florida, northern
Alabama, and Mississippi, and through Arkansas and western Louisiana to
eastern Texas. Under cultivation, this tree is known as the snowdrop
tree in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Florida, and Louisiana. In Rhode Island, under cultivation, it is also
sometimes known as the silverbell tree, and bears the same name in
Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi. In parts of Tennessee it is known as
the wild olive tree, and in other parts of the state as the bell tree.
In various localities in Alabama it is referred to as the four-winged
halesia; and in others as opossumwood. It is indiscriminately known in
various sections of Texas as the rattlebox and calicowood, and some of
the furniture manufacturers in North Carolina list it as box elder,
though it is only distantly related to the true box elder. In the Great
Smoky mountains in Tennessee, where the species reaches its greatest
development, it bears a variety of names, among them being tisswood,
peawood, bellwood, and chittamwood.
The tree varies in size from a shrubby form so small that it is scarcely
entitled to the name of tree, up to a height of eighty, ninety, and even
more than 100 feet with diameters up to nearly four feet. The largest
sizes occur only among the ranges of the Great Smoky mountains in
Blount, Sevier, and Monroe counties, Tennessee. No reason is known why
this tree in that region should so greatly exceed its largest dimensions
in other areas; but most species have a locality where the greatest
development is reached, and this has found the favorable conditions in
the mountains of eastern Tennessee. Some of the trees measure sixty feet
or more to the first limbs.
Lumbermen of the country are not generally acquainted with silverbell,
as is natural since its commercial range is so limited. It is not listed
in statistics of sawmill cut or of veneer mills. The wood-using
industries of the country do not report it, except in the one state,
North Carolina, and there in very small amounts. Doubtless, it is
occasionally used elsewhere, but it escapes mention in most instances.
It has been made into mantels at Knoxville, Tennessee, and passes as
birch.
The wood is light, soft, usually narrow-ringed, color light brown, the
thick sapwood lighter. It weighs thirty-five pounds per cubic foot, and
when burned it yields a low percentage of ash. The wood’s chief value is
due to its color and figure. Best results are not obtained by sawing the
logs into lumber, because the handsomest part of the figure is apt to be
lost. It is preëminently suited to the cutting of rotary veneer. By that
method of conversion the birdseye and the pitted and mottled effects are
brought out in the best possible manner. Veneers so cut from logs
selected for the figure, possess a rare beauty which no other American
wood equals. There is a pleasing blend of tones, which are due to the
direction in which the distorted grain is cut. This distinguishes the
wood from all others and gives it an individuality. Much of the figure
appears to be due to the presence of adventitious buds, similar to those
supposed to be responsible for the birdseye effect in maple.
The leaves of silverbell are bright green at maturity and are from four
to six inches long and two or three wide. They turn yellow before
falling in autumn. The flowers give the tree its name, for they resemble
delicate bells, about one inch in length. They appear in early spring
when the leaves are one-third grown, on slender, drooping stems from one
to two inches long. The trees are loaded throughout the whole crown,
and present an appearance that is seldom surpassed for beauty in the
forests of this country.
The fruit is peculiar and is not particularly graceful. It has too much
the appearance of the load carried by a well-fruited vine of hops. It
ripens late in autumn and persists during most of the winter. There is
nothing in its color, shape, or taste to tempt birds or other creatures
to make food of it, though, under stress of circumstances, they may
sometimes do so. The fruit is two inches or less in length and an inch
wide, and has four wings, which seem to be practically useless for
flight. The seed is about half an inch long.
The bark of the trunk is bright red-brown and about half an inch thick,
with broad ridges which separate on the surface into thin papery scales.
The young branches wear an early coat of thick, pale wool or hairs,
light, reddish-brown during the first summer, but later changing to an
orange color.
The botanical range of the species is extensive, though the tree-form is
confined to a few counties among the southern Appalachian mountains. The
northern limit of its range is in West Virginia where it is so scarce
that many a woodsman never recognizes it. Unless it is caught while in
the full glory of its bloom, it attracts no attention. It is not there a
tree, but a shrub, hidden away among other growth, along mountain
streams or on slopes where the soil is fertile. The blooming shrub
might, at a distance, be mistaken for a dogwood in full blossom, but a
closer inspection corrects the mistake.
It is true of this species as of many others that the range has been
greatly extended by planting. The bell-like white flowers early drew
attention of nurserymen who were on the lookout for trees for ornamental
planting. It was carried to Europe long ago, and graces many a yard and
park in the central and northern countries of that continent. It now
grows and thrives in the United States six hundred miles northeast of
its natural range, where it endures the winters of eastern
Massachusetts, blooms as bounteously as in its native haunts among the
shaded streams of the Alleghany mountains.
SNOWDROP TREE (_Mohrodendron dipterum_) is a near relative of the
silverbell tree, and looks much like it, except that it is smaller, has
larger leaves, and the flowers are creamy-white. The two occupy the same
territory in part of their ranges, but they differ in one respect. The
silverbell tree grows with great luxuriance among the mountains while
the snowdrop tree keeps to the low country and is seldom or never found
growing naturally at any considerable elevation. It prefers swamps or
damp situations near the coast. While the silverbell tree’s range
includes West Virginia, that of the snowdrop extends no farther north
than South Carolina. It follows the coast to Texas, and runs north
through Louisiana to central Arkansas. Its range has been greatly
enlarged by planting, and the northern winters do not kill it on the
southern shores of Lake Erie. The largest trees are about thirty feet
high and six inches in diameter, but the growth in most places is
shrubby. Leaves are four or five inches long and three or four wide.
Flowers are one inch long and are borne in profusion. They constitute
the tree’s chief value as an ornament, though the foliage is attractive.
The bloom lasts a month or six weeks, from the middle of March till the
last of April. The fruit has two wings instead of four, as with
silverbell, but occasionally two rudimentary wings are present. The wood
is light, soft, strong, color light brown, with thicker, lighter
sapwood. The smallness of the trunks makes their use for lumber
impossible. The species is valuable for ornamental purposes only, and
has been planted both in this country and Europe. It has a number of
names by which it is known in different localities, among them being
cowlicks in Louisiana, and silverbell tree in the North where it has
been planted outside of its natural range.
[Illustration]
SYCAMORE
[Illustration: SYCAMORE]
SYCAMORE
(_Platanus Occidentalis_)
Probably no person with a practical knowledge of trees ever mistakes
sycamore for anything else. The tree stands clear-cut and distinct.
Until the trunk becomes old, it sheds its outer layer of bark yearly, or
at least frequently, and the exfoliation exposes the white, new bark
below. The upper part of the trunk and the large branches are white and
conspicuous in the spring, and are recognizable at a long distance. No
other tree in the American forest is as white. The nearest approach to
it is the paper birch of the North, or the white birch of New England.
Notwithstanding the tree’s individuality, it has a good many names. It
is generally known as sycamore throughout the states of the Union, but
it is frequently called buttonwood in Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode
Island, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Ontario;
buttonball tree in several of the eastern states and occasionally in
Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, and Nebraska; the plane tree in Rhode
Island, Delaware, South Carolina, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa; the water
beech in Delaware; the platane, cottonier, and bois puant in Louisiana.
Probably the finest growth of the sycamore ever encountered was in Ohio
and Indiana, and these states still contain isolated patches of
magnificent specimens of the wood. The Black Swamp of Ohio was
originally a famous sycamore country, of which Defiance was the center
of lumber manufacture. Many parts of Indiana produced a good sycamore
growth, and a considerable amount of timber of excellent quality still
exists, but is now largely owned by farmers who are generally holding it
out of the market.
The range of sycamore extends from Maine to Nebraska, and south to Texas
and Florida. It is one of the largest of American hardwoods, and in
diameter of trunk it is exceeded by none. Trees are on record that were
from ten to fourteen feet in diameter, and it was not unusual in the
primeval forests for them to tower nearly or quite 125. In height a
number of hardwoods exceed it, the yellow poplar in particular; but none
of them has a larger trunk than the largest sycamores. However, the
mammoths are generally hollow. The heart decays as rings of new growth
are added to the outside of the shell. So large were the cavities in
some of the sycamores in the original forests that more than one case is
on record of their being used by early settlers as places of abode.
The tree thrives best in the immediate vicinity of rivers and creeks. It
needs abundance of water for its roots, but is not insistent in its
demand for deep, fertile soil, for it grows on gravel bars along water
courses, provided some soil and sand are mixed with the gravel. Great
age is doubtless attained, but records are necessarily lacking in cases
where the annual rings of growth must be depended upon; because the
hollow trunks have lost most of their rings by decay.
Sycamore bears abundance of light seed which is scattered short
distances by wind and much farther by running water. Its ideal place for
germinating is on muddy shores and wet flats. Here the seeds are
deposited by wind and water, and in a short time multitudes of seedlings
spring up. Though most of them are doomed to perish before they attain a
height of a few feet, survivors are sufficient to assure thick stands on
small areas. The trunks grow tall rapidly, and until they reach
considerable size, they remain solid and make good sawlogs; but at an
age of seventy-five or 100 years, deterioration is apt to set in; some
die, others become hollow, and the result is a good stand of large
sycamores is unusual. The veterans are generally scattered through
forests of other species.