becoming very scarce and that the annual output is rapidly declining.
Statistics do not show a declining output. The cut of sycamore in 1909
was approximately twice as great as in 1899. It is true that the supply
is not very large, and it never was large compared with some other
hardwoods; but it appears to be holding its own as well as most forest
trees. The cut in the United States in 1910 was 45,000,000, and it was
credited to twenty-six states. Indiana was the largest contributor, and
it had held that position a long time. States next below it in the order
named were Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois.
Doubtless some of the sycamore lumber now going to market has grown
since old settlers cut the primeval stands when they cleared their
fields. It will continue to grow, and since it usually occupies waste
places, it may be depended upon to contribute pretty regularly year by
year during time to come. It is one of the forest trees which have never
suffered much from fires, because it grows in damp situations.
The wood of sycamore weighs 35.39 pounds per cubic foot, is hard, but
not strong, difficult to split and work; the annual rings are limited by
narrow bands of dark summerwood. The rings are very porous. The
medullary rays are rather small, but can be easily seen without a glass.
They run in regular, radial lines, close together, and the pores are in
rows between. The rays of sycamore vary from the rule with most woods,
in that they are darker than the body of the wood.
One of the earliest uses of sycamore was by farmers who cut hollow
trunks, sawed them in lengths of three or four feet, nailed bottoms in
them, and used them for barrels for grain. They were called gums. Solid
logs two or three feet in diameter were cut in lengths of a foot or
less, bored through the center, and used as wheels for ox carts. The ox
yoke was often made of sycamore. Butchers used sycamore sections about
three feet high for meat blocks. The wood is tough, and continual
hacking fails to split it. The use for meat blocks continues at the
present time. In Illinois 1,600,000 feet were so employed in 1910.
One of the earliest employments of the wood for commercial purposes was
in the manufacture of boxes for plug tobacco; but it has now been
largely replaced by cheaper woods. Its freedom from stain and odor is
its chief recommendation for tobacco boxes. Some of it is in demand for
cigar boxes.
The modern uses of sycamore are many. It is made into ordinary crates
and shipping boxes in most regions where it grows. Rotary cut veneer is
worked into berry crates and baskets, and into barrels. Ice boxes and
refrigerators are among the products. Slack coopers are among the
largest users, but some of the manufactured stave articles belong more
properly to woodenware, such as tubs, washing machines, candy buckets,
and lard pails.
Furniture makers demand the best grades, and most of the quarter-sawed
stock goes to them, though the manufacturers of musical instruments buy
some of the finest. Use is pretty general from pipe organs and pianos
down to mandolins, guitars and phonographs. It enters extensively into
the making of miscellaneous commodities. As small a toy as the
stereoscope consumes much sycamore. Makers of trunks find it suitable
for slats, and it serves as small squares and borders in parquetry. It
is a choice wood for barber poles and saddle trees, and its fine
appearance when worked in broad panels leads to its employment as
interior finish for houses, boats, and passenger cars.
CALIFORNIA SYCAMORE (_Platanus racemosa_) is one of the three
species of sycamore now found growing naturally in the United
States. They are survivors of a very old family and appear to have
been crowded down from the far North by the cold, or to have made
their way south for some other reason. Sycamores flourished in
Greenland in the Cretaceous age, some millions of years ago, as is
shown by fossil remains dug up in that land of ice and eternal
winter. They grew in central Europe, about the same time, but long
ago disappeared from there. Sycamores were growing in the United
States an immense period of time ago, and were doubtless lifting
their giant white branches high above the banks of ancient rivers
while the gorgeous bloom of yellow poplars brightened the forests on
the rich bottom lands farther back. Several species of sycamores
which grew in the United States during the Tertiary age are now
extinct. All seem to have been much like those which have come down
to the present day.
The California sycamore is found in the southern half of that state,
and in Lower California. It grows from sea level up to 5,000 feet,
and has the same habits as the larger sycamore of the East, and
prefers the banks of streams and the wet land in the bottoms of
canyons. It attains a height of from forty to eighty feet, and a
diameter of from two to five. Some trees are larger, one in
particular near Los Angeles having a trunk diameter of nine feet.
The tree is usually extremely distorted and misshaped, leaning,
twisted, and forking and reforking until a practical lumberman would
pronounce it a hopeless proposition. This applies, however, to
trunks which grow in the open, and that is where most of them grow.
When they are found crowded in thick stands in the bottoms of
canyons, their trunks are shapely enough for short sawlogs. The wood
is very similar to that of eastern sycamore, and it is used for
similar purposes, when used at all. The balls are strung five on one
tough stem, which is from six to ten inches long. The eastern
sycamore usually has a stem for each ball. The seeding habits of
both trees are the same.
ARIZONA SYCAMORE (_Platanus wrightii_) has its range in southern New
Mexico, southern Arizona, and neighboring regions in Mexico, where
it grows in the bottoms of canyons up to 6,000 feet above sea. The
tree attains a height of from thirty to eighty feet, and a diameter
of two to five. The trunk is seldom shapely, but often divides in
large branches, some of which are fifty or sixty feet long. There
are usually three balls on a stem, and the leaf is shaped much like
the leaf of red gum, but there is considerable variation in form.
The wood resembles eastern sycamore in color and most other
features, but when quarter-sawed the flecks produced by the
medullary rays are generally smaller, and give a mottled effect. The
wood has not been much used, but apparently it is not inferior to
eastern sycamore.
[Illustration]
BLACK CHERRY
[Illustration: BLACK CHERRY]
BLACK CHERRY
(_Prunus Serotina_)
This widely distributed tree supplies the cherry wood of commerce. Its
natural range extends from Nova Scotia westward through the Canadian
provinces to the Kaministiquia river; south to Tampa bay in Florida and
west to North Dakota, eastern Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and eastern
Texas. The tree is known as wild black cherry, wild cherry, black
cherry, rum cherry, whiskey cherry, and choke cherry.
Cherry belongs to a remarkably large family and the ordinary observer
would never suspect the relationship that exists between it and other
growths to which it bears little resemblance. It is in the rose family
(_Rosaceæ_). It has multitudes of small and large cousins, most of them
small, however. Among them are the crabapple, the serviceberry, the
haws, thorns, plums, and the peach, besides plants which do not rise to
the dignity of trees.
The crown of black cherry is narrow and the branches are horizontal. In
height the tree ranges from fifty to one hundred or more feet. The bark
is a dark reddish-brown, rough and broken into plates, becoming smoother
toward the top. The branchlets are a rich reddish-brown, and are marked
with tiny orange-colored dots. The leaves are small, alternate, oblong
or oval lanceolate, taper-pointed at the apex and pointed or rounded at
the base, finely serrate; at maturity glabrous, firm, glossy, the light
colored midrib being very distinct. The flowers are white and grow on
pedicels in long slender racemes, which terminate leafy shoots. The
fruit is almost black, showing deep red coloring beneath and is a small
round drupe; vinous, although not disagreeable to the taste. In most
instances a liking for it must be acquired, but comparatively few people
ever take the trouble to acquire it. The old settlers among the
Alleghany mountains had a way of pressing the juice from the drupes and
by some simple process converting it into “cherry bounce,” a beverage
somewhat bitter but it never went begging when the old-time mountaineers
were around. This was doubtless what persons had in mind who called it
rum cherry. Few fruits, either wild or tame, contain more juice in
proportion to bulk. Ripe fruit is employed as a flavor for alcoholic
liquors. The bark contains hydrocyanic acid and is used in medicine. The
peculiar odor of cherry bark is due to this acid.
In early years the ripening of the cherry crop among the ranges of the
Appalachian mountains was a signal for bears to congregate where cherry
trees were thickest. The cubs were then large enough to follow their
mothers--in August--and it was considered a dangerous season in the
cherry woods, because the old bears would grow fierce if molested while
feeding. The mountaineers knew enough to stay away from the danger
points at that time, unless they went there purposely to engage in a
bear fight. It was a common saying among those people that “cherry
bears” should be let alone.
The cherry’s chief importance in this country has been due to its
lumber. Unfortunately, that value lies chiefly in the past, for the
supply is running low. It never was very great, for, though the species
has a large range, it is sparingly dispersed through the forests. In
many parts of its range a person might travel all day in the woods and
see few cherry trees, and perhaps none. The best stands hardly ever
cover more than a few acres. Generally the trees grow singly or in
clumps. It appears to be nearly wholly a matter of soil and light, for
the seeds, which are carried by birds, are scattered in immense numbers,
and only those grow which chance to find conditions just right. The tree
wants rich ground and plenty of room, which is a combination not often
found in primeval forest regions; but, since the country has been
largely cleared, cherry trees spring up along fence rows and in nooks
and corners. If let alone they grow rapidly, but trunks so produced are
of little value for lumber, because too short and limby. In the forest
the tree lifts its light crown high on a slender trunk to reach the
sunshine, and such trunks supply the cherry lumber of commerce. Near the
northern limit of its range it seems to abandon its demand for good soil
and is content if it is supplied with light only. It betakes itself to
the face of cliffs, sometimes overhanging the sea, and so near it that
the branches are drenched in spray thrown up by breakers. It is needless
to say that no good lumber is produced under such circumstances.
The first loss of cherry occurred when the farms were cleared. It stood
on the best ground, and the land-hungry Anglo-Saxon wanted that for
himself. He cut the tall shapely cherry trees, built fences and barns of
some of the logs, and burned the balance in the clearing. Then came the
pioneer lumberman who did not take much, because his old up-and-down
saw, which was run by water, would cut only about a thousand feet a day,
and there was plenty of other kinds of timber. But when the steam mill
put in its appearance, cherry went fast. Its price was high enough to
pay for a long haul. From that day till this, cherry has gone to market
as rapidly as millmen could get to it.
Next to walnut, it is the highest priced lumber produced in the United
States. The average cut per mill, according to returns of those who
sawed it in 1909, was only 11,200 feet, and the total output that year
was only 24,594,000 feet, contributed by twenty-nine states. The five
leading producers were, in the order named, West Virginia,
Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and Indiana. The next year the total
output fell to 18,237,000 feet, and cherry went down to a place among
the “minor species,” such as dogwood, alder, locust, and buckeye. The
day of its importance in the lumber industry is past. It has become too
scarce to attract much attention, but there will always be some cherry
in the market, though veteran trunks, three and four feet through and
good for four sixteen-foot logs, will be seldom seen in the years to
come.
While good taste ordinarily dictates that cherry be finished in a tone
approximating its natural color, it is quite frequent that it
masquerades as mahogany. A well-known and perfect method of making
cherry look like mahogany is to have the wood rubbed with diluted nitric
acid, which prepares it for the materials to be subsequently applied;
afterwards, to a filtered mixture of an ounce and a half of dragon’s
blood dissolved in a pint of spirits of wine, is added one-third that
quantity of carbonate of soda, the whole constituting a very thin liquid
which is applied to the wood with a soft brush. This process is repeated
at short intervals until the wood assumes the external appearance of
mahogany. While cherry is employed as an imitation of mahogany, it is in
its turn imitated also. Sweet birch is finished to look like cherry, and
for that reason is sometimes known as cherry birch.
Cherry weighs 36.28 pounds per cubic foot; it is very porous, but the
pores are small and are diffused through all parts of the annual ring.
The wood has no figure. Its value is due to color and luster. The
medullary rays are numerous but small, and in quarter-sawing they do not
show as mirrors, like oak, but as a soft luster covering the whole
surface.
The principal uses of cherry have always been in furniture and finish,
but it has many minor uses, such as tool handles, boxes for garden
seeds, spirit levels and other tools, and implements, patterns,
penholders, actions for organs and piano players, baseblocks for
electrotypes and other printing plates, and cores for high-class panels.
Aside from its color, its chief value is due to its comparative freedom
from checking and warping. This cherry is one of the few trees that
cross the equator. It extends from Canada far down the west coast of
South America.
CHOKE CHERRY (_Prunus virginiana_) is widely distributed in North
America from Canada to Mexico. It is said to attain its largest size
in the Southwest where trees are sometimes forty feet high and a
foot in diameter. The name is due to the astringency of the half
ripe fruit which can scarcely be eaten. When fully ripe it is a
little more tolerable, and is then black, but is red before it is
ripe. The color of immature cherries deceives the unsophisticated
into believing they are ripe. In Canada the fruit is made into pies
and jelly, and it is said the tree is occasionally planted for its
fruit. The Indians of former times made food of it. The tree is
small, and bruised branches emit a disagreeable odor; leaves contain
prussic acid, and when partly withered, they are poisonous to
cattle. The trunks are nearly always too small for commercial
purposes, and are apt to be affected with a fungous disease known as
black knot.
WESTERN CHOKE CHERRY (_Prunus demissa_) grows from the Rocky
Mountains to the Pacific in the United States. It is often regarded
as the western form of choke cherry, but it has more palatable
fruit, and trees are a little larger, while trunks are so crooked
that no user of wood cares to have anything to do with them. The
wood is weak, but is hard and heavy.
BITTER CHERRY (_Prunus emarginata_) belongs to the far West, and is
found from British Columbia to southern California. In size it
ranges from a low shrub to a tree a foot in diameter and forty feet
high. The largest sizes are found in western Washington and Oregon.
The wood is soft and brittle, brown streaked with green. It is not
known that any attempt has been made to put the wood of this tree to
any useful purpose. The bark and the leaves are exceedingly bitter.
Fruit ripens from June to August, depending on region and elevation,
and it is from one-fourth to one-half inch in diameter, black, and
intensely bitter.
HOLLYLEAF CHERRY (_Prunus ilicifolia_) is a California species
growing in the bottoms of canyons from San Francisco bay to the
Mexican line. It is rarely more than thirty feet high, but has a
large trunk, sometimes two feet in diameter. The wood is heavy,
hard, and strong, and it ought to be valuable in the manufacture of
small articles, but fuel is the only use reported for it. The fruit
is insipid, and ripens late in autumn. The foliage is much admired
and has led to the planting of the species for ornamental purposes.
[Illustration]
WILD RED CHERRY
[Illustration: WILD RED CHERRY]
WILD RED CHERRY
(_Prunus Pennsylvanica_)
In addition to the name wild red cherry by which this tree is known in
most parts of its range, it is called bird cherry in Maine, New
Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa; red cherry in Maine
and Rhode Island; fire cherry in New York and many other localities; pin
cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Michigan, Iowa, and North
Dakota; pigeon cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York,
Ontario, and North Dakota; and wild cherry in Tennessee and New York.
Its range extends from Newfoundland to Hudson bay, west to British
Columbia, south through the Rocky Mountains to Colorado, and in the East
along the Appalachian ranges to North Carolina and Tennessee. It reaches
its largest size among the Big Smoky mountains in Tennessee and North
Carolina.
It is ordinarily a tree thirty or forty feet high, and from eight to ten
inches in diameter, though trunks are sometimes twenty inches through.
It grows fast, but is very short-lived. Many stands disappear in thirty
years or less, but individuals survive two or three times that long, if
they stand in open ground. One of its names is fire cherry, and that
fitly describes it. Like paper birch and lodgepole pine, it follows
forest fires where the ground is laid bare by the burning. Nature seems
to have made peculiar provisions whereby this tree clothes barren tracts
which have been recently burned. In the first place, it is a prolific
seeder. Its small, red cherries are borne by bushels on very young
trees. Birds feed on them almost exclusively while they last, and the
seeds are scattered over the surrounding country. They have such thick
shells that few germinate unless they pass through a moderate fire,
which cracks the shells, or at least they do not sprout until they come
in direct contact with mineral soil. When a fire burns a forest,
thousands of the cherry seedlings spring up. Many persons have wondered
where they come from so quickly. They were already scattered among the
forest leaves before the fire passed. The heat crazed their shells, and
the burning of the leaflitter let them down on the mineral soil where
they germinated and soon came up by thousands. The case is a little
different with paper birch and with aspen, which are also fire trees.
Their seeds cannot pass through fire without perishing, and when birches
and aspens follow a fire it means that the seeds were scattered by the
wind after the passing of the fire. Doubtless cherry seeds are often
scattered after the fire has passed; but it is believed that most of
those which spring up so quickly have passed through the fire without
being destroyed.
This small cherry is one of the means by which damage by forest fires is
repaired. The tree is of little value for lumber or even for fuel; but
it acts as a nurse tree--that is, it shelters and protects the seedlings
of other species until they obtain a start. By the time the cherry trees
die, the seedlings which they have nursed are able to take care of
themselves, and a young forest of valuable species is established.
Except in this indirect way, the wild red cherry is of little use to
man. The wood is soft, light, and of pleasing color, but trees are
nearly always too small to be worked into useful articles. About the
only industry of which there is any record, which draws supplies from
this source, is the manufacture of pipe stems. The straight, slender,
bright-barked branches are cut into requisite lengths and bored endwise,
and serve for stems of cheap pipes, and occasionally for those more
expensive. The bark, like that of most cherries, is marked by dark bands
running part way round the stems. These are known as lenticels, and
exist in the bark of most trees, but they are usually less conspicuous
in others than in cherry. It is this characteristic marking which gives
the cherry pipe stem its value.
Wild red cherry blooms from May to July, depending on latitude and
elevation, and the fruit ripens from July to September. The cherries
hang in bunches, are bright red, quite sour, and the seed is the largest
part. They are occasionally made into jelly, wine, and form the basis of
certain cough syrups.
WEST INDIA CHERRY (_Prunus sphærocarpa_) grows near the shores of
Biscayne bay, Florida. It there blooms in November and the fruit ripens
the next spring. The tree attains a height of from twenty-five to thirty
feet, and a diameter of five or six inches. When grown in the open at
Miami, Florida, it is larger, and is much liked as an ornament. The
thin, smooth bark is brown, tinged with red, and is marked by large
conspicuous lenticels. The wood is hard and light, and of light clear
red color. It is too scarce to be of much importance, but paper knives,
napkin rings, and other novelties made of it are sold in souvenir stores
in southern Florida. Its range extends south to Brazil.
WILLOWLEAF CHERRY (_Prunus salicifolia_) is a small tree, also called
Mexican cherry, is more common south of the United States than in this
country, ranging as far south as Peru. It is found on some of the
mountains of southern New Mexico and Arizona.
LAUREL CHERRY (_Prunus caroliniana_) is a southern species which sticks
close to the coast in most of its range from South Carolina to Texas. It
has many names, among them wild peach, wild orange, mock orange,
evergreen cherry, mock olive, and Carolina cherry. Leaves hang two
years, and the fruit remains nearly one. The latter is black and about
half an inch long. The withered leaves are poisonous if eaten by cattle.
The tree is thirty or forty feet high, and eight or ten inches in
diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, color light brown to
dark, rich brown, sometimes of much beauty, but no record has been found
of any use for it. The tree is often planted for ornament.
WILD PLUM (_Prunus americana_) is found from New Jersey to Montana,
southward to New Mexico and Texas, and extends to Florida and
Mexico. Its range covers about a million square miles. There are
seven or more species of wild plums in the United States. The fruit
of all of them is edible. They have been planted accidentally or
otherwise in many localities where they were not found before the
country was settled. The plum was an important fruit in the
country’s early history. The pioneers gathered wild fruits before
planted orchards came into bearing, and the plum was one of the best
which nature supplied. Early travelers among the Indians in the
South frequently spoke of Indian peaches. Such references have led
some to believe that the peach was native in that region, but it is
safe to conclude that what was called the peach was really some
species of wild plum. These fruits were among the earliest to become
domesticated. In fact, they were abundant about the sites of Indian
towns and old fields, where the savages had scattered seeds without
any purpose on their part of planting trees; and early settlers
imitated the Indians, and plums were soon growing in the vicinity of
most of the cabins. As a forest tree, it usually thrived best on the
banks of streams, for there it could find more sunshine than in the
deep woods, and it bore much more fruit. The ranges of several
species of plums overlapped, and different sizes and colors of fruit
were found in the same locality even before white men assisted the
spread of species. The common plum, known to botanists as _Prunus
americana_, is recognized under many names among laymen; among these
names are yellow plum, red plum, horse plum, hog plum, August plum,
native plum, and goose plum. Usually the plum’s skin is red, and the
flesh yellow, which accounts for its names, both red and yellow. The
tree ranges in height from twenty to thirty-five feet, and from five
to ten inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, and
dark rich-brown. It is suitable for turnery and small novelties, but
little of it has been used.