of the plum group. It grows from Newfoundland to Manitoba, and south
into the northern tier of states. Its range has been much extended
by planting, and a number of varieties have appeared. It is twenty
or thirty feet high, and five to eight inches in diameter. Flowers
appear in April and May, and the fruit is ripe in September and
October. The plums are about an inch long, orange-red in color, with
yellow flesh. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong. Those who
cultivate this tree often do so for the beauty of the flowers,
rather than for the value of the fruit. The wood is not used for
commercial purposes.
BLACK SLOE (_Prunus umbellata_), known also as southern bullace
plum, hog plum, and wild plum, ranges from South Carolina, round the
coast through Florida, to Louisiana and up the Mississippi valley
into Arkansas. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet high and from six
to ten inches in diameter. The fruit ripens from July to September,
is black when ripe, and often nearly an inch long. The people where
it grows use it for jelly. It is not reported that the wood is used
for any purpose.
WESTERN PLUM (_Prunus subcordata_) grows west of the Cascade
mountains from southern Oregon to central California. It is often a
low bush, but at its best forms a tree twenty feet high and six
inches in diameter, but its wood is of no economic importance. Its
deep, purple-red plums ripen in autumn and are an excellent wild
fruit, juicy and tart. During the fruit season the plum thickets
were formerly infested by both bears and Indians, and many a fight
for possession took place, with victory sometimes on one side,
sometimes on the other. The white inhabitants now make jam and jelly
of the fruit.
ALLEGHANY SLOE (_Prunus allegheniensis_) is so named because it is
best developed among the Alleghany mountains of Pennsylvania. The
tree is eighteen or twenty feet high and six or eight inches in
diameter. The wood is without value for commercial purposes, but the
tree’s fruit has some local importance. It ripens about the middle
of August, and is somewhat less than an inch in diameter, with dark,
reddish-purple skin, covering yellow flesh.
CHICKASAW PLUM (_Prunus angustifolia_) is a well-known wild plum of
the South from Delaware to Texas, and north to Kansas. Its natural
range is not known, because it has been so widely planted,
accidentally or otherwise, near farm houses and in fence corners.
Its bright, red fruit goes only to local markets. Negroes gather
most of the crop in the South. The wood is not considered to have
any value, but, in common with other plums, it possesses qualities
which fit it for many small articles.
GARDEN WILD PLUM (_Prunus hortulana_) is supposed to have originated
in Kentucky from a cross between the Chickasaw plum and the common
wild plum (Prunus americana). It has spread from Virginia to Texas.
The largest trees are thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The
fruit ripens in September and October, is deep red or yellow, with
hard, austere, thin flesh, quite sour. The fruit is called wild
goose or simply goose plum in Tennessee and Kentucky.
Horticulturists have made many experiments with this plum.
COCOA PLUM (_Chrysobalanus icaco_), also called gopher plum, grows
in southern Florida, and its insipid fruit is seldom eaten except by
negroes and Seminole Indians. There is little sale for it in the
local markets. Trees are sometimes thirty feet high and a foot in
diameter. The light brown wood is heavy, hard, and strong, but it is
seldom used. The tree grows in Africa and South America as well as
in Florida.
[Illustration]
BEECH
[Illustration: BEECH]
BEECH
(_Fagus Atropunicea_)
There is only one beech in the United States, and four or five in Europe
and Asia. The southern portion of South America has several species
which usually pass for beech. One or more of them are evergreen. Old
world species are sometimes planted in parks and cemeteries in this
country, but as forest trees they have no importance in the United
States and probably never will have. It becomes a simple matter,
therefore, to deal with the tree in this country. It is alone, and has
no nearer relatives than the chestnuts, chinquapins, and the oaks, all
of which are members of the same family, and the beech gives the name to
the family--_Fagaceæ_. The blue beech, which is common in most states
east of the Mississippi river and in some west, is not a member of the
same family, though it looks enough like beech to be closely related to
it.
The name has come down from remote antiquity. It is one of the oldest
names in use. It is said to have descended through thousands of years
from old Aryan tribes of Asia which were among the earliest to use a
written language. For the want of better material, they cut the letters
on beech bark, and a piece of such writing was called “boc.” It was but
a step from that word to book--a collection of writings. Both beech and
book came from the same word “boc” and the connection between them is
very evident. The pronunciation has been little changed by the Germanic
races during thousands of years, but the Romans translated it into Latin
and called it “liber,” from which we have the word library. Doubtless in
very ancient times, say 5,000 years before the building of Solomon’s
temple, the libraries beyond the Euphrates river consisted of several
cords of trimmed and lettered beech bark. Such material being
perishable, it has wholly disappeared. The matter is not now directly
connected with the lumber interests, but it increases one’s respect for
beech to know how important a part it must have played in the ancient
world, whereby it stamped its name so indelibly upon the language of the
most intelligent portion of the human race.
The word buckwheat has the same origin. It means beech wheat, so named
because the grains are triangular like beech nuts. The tree is always
known as beech in this country, though it may have a qualifying word
such as red, white, ridge.
It usually grows in mixed forests of hardwoods, but it is often found in
the immediate presence of hemlock and spruce, grows from Maine to
Florida, and west to Arkansas. Considerable areas are often occupied by
little else. This is attested by the frequency with which such names as
“beech flat,” “beech ridge,” “beech woods,” and “beech bottom” are
encountered in local geography. Perhaps the finest examples of beech
growth in the United States occur in the higher altitudes of the lower
Appalachian range in eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina,
where trees are frequently encountered, showing a bole of perfectly
symmetrical form, of from three to more than four feet in diameter, and
of a sheer height of seventy feet before a limb is encountered. The wood
which grows in this section is nearly as hard as that of the North, but
that growing on lower levels in the South is of a much softer texture
and lighter color, the heart being pinkish rather than reddish-brown.
Beech is one of the truly beautiful trees of the forest. In the eyes of
many, the beech is as much to be admired as the American elm or sugar
maple. Certainly in spring when it is covered with its staminate
blossoms, it is a splendid sight, and its perfect leaves are seldom
spotted or eaten by insects. In winter, it is particularly interesting.
Its beautiful bark then appears very bright. After its fine leaves have
fallen, though many of them, pale and dry, cling to the branches
throughout the winter, the structure of its massive head is seen to
advantage. In the Canadian markets and those of many of the middle and
western states, its nuts are gathered and sold in considerable
quantities. These nuts are favorite food of both the red and gray
squirrel and these rodents collect them in considerable quantities
during the late fall, and store them in tree hollows for their winter’s
supply of food. It often happens, in felling beech trees in the winter,
that shelled beech nuts to the quantity of a quart or more will be found
secreted in some hollow by these provident little animals.
Formerly beech was little used for lumber, but was long ago given an
important place as firewood and material for charcoal. Its excellent
qualities as lumber have now made it popular in most markets. The
sapwood is comparatively thin and the heart is very much esteemed for
many purposes. Many millions of feet of it are converted into flooring
and the “pure red” product is very highly esteemed for ornamental
floors. It has not as good working qualities as maple, but still it
stays in place even better than does that famous flooring material.
Nearly all the large flooring factories of the North, whose principal
output is maple, have a side line of beech flooring, and in the South,
notably in Nashville, a considerable quantity of the wood is made into
flooring. In full growth this beautiful tree is round topped, with wide
spreading and horizontal branches, and shows a normal altitude of about
sixty feet. In this form of growth branches appear on the body very
close to the ground, and their ends often trail upon it. In its forest
form, where trees of any sort are of commercial importance, it often
attains a height of ninety or 100 feet, with smooth rounded bole as
symmetrical as the pillar of a cathedral, with a diameter of from two to
four feet. Its time to bloom is April or May, and its nuts ripen in
October. The bark is a light bluish-gray, and remarkably smooth; the
leaves are simple, alternate, with very short petioles, oblong with
pointed apex and rounded or narrowed base. The ribs are straight,
unbranching, and terminate in remote teeth. The fruit is a pair of
three-sided nuts with a sweet and edible kernel which grows in a
four-celled prickly burr, splitting when ripe.
Beech is an excellent fuel and it has long been used for that purpose.
It is so regularly dispersed over the country that most neighborhoods
were able to get it in the years when families cut their own firewood.
Later, when charcoal was burned to supply primitive iron furnaces,
before coke could be had, beech was always sought for. Still later, when
large commercial plants were built to carry on destructive distillation
of wood, beech was still a favorite. Its modern uses are many. There is
scarcely a plant east of the Rocky Mountains, engaged in the manufacture
of hardwood commodities, which does not use beech. In Michigan alone
nearly 30,000,000 feet a year are demanded by box makers, and more than
that much more by manufacturers of other commodities. It is widely
employed for furniture, filing cabinets, vehicles, interior finish,
agricultural implements, woodenware, and musical instruments. It is one
of the heaviest and strongest of the common hardwoods, and gives long
service when kept dry, but does not last well in damp situations.
Beech is strictly a forest tree. This does not mean that it will not
grow in the open, but when it does grow there it makes poor lumber,
short and limby. The seedlings must have shade if they are to do any
good, but after they attain a certain size they can endure the light.
The roots lie close to the surface of the ground, and the trampling of
cattle often kills large trees.
BLUE BEECH (_Carpinus caroliniana_) is not in the beech family, but the
name by which it is commonly known, and its resemblance to beech,
justify its consideration with beech. The bluish color of the bark is
responsible for its common name, but it is known by several others,
among them being water beech, because it often grows on or near the
banks of streams, and it seldom seems more at home than when it is
hanging over the bank of a creek where shade is deep and moisture
plentiful. It is often called hornbeam and ironwood, and it is closely
related to hop hornbeam (_Ostrya virginiana_). It grows from Quebec, to
Florida and from Dakota to Texas, reaching its largest size in eastern
Texas where it is sometimes sixty feet high and two in diameter, though
this size is unusual. Few trees develop a bole less acceptable to
lumbermen. In addition to being short, crooked, twisted, and covered
with limbs, it is nearly always ribbed and fluted, so that a log, even
if but a few feet long, is apt to be almost any shape except round. The
thick sapwood is pale white, heart pale brown. The annual rings are
usually easily seen, but they are vague, because of so little difference
between the springwood and summerwood; diffuse-porous; medullary rays
thin and usually seen only in the aggregate as a white luster where wood
is sawed radially. The uses of this wood are many, but the amounts very
small. It is made into singletrees and ax and hammer handles in
Michigan, wagon felloes in Texas and other parts of the Southwest;
levers and other parts of agricultural implements in various localities.
It seldom goes to sawmills, is generally marketed in the form of bolts,
and is hard, stiff, and strong.
[Illustration]
CHESTNUT
[Illustration: CHESTNUT]
CHESTNUT
(_Castanea Dentata_)
Five species of chestnut are known, three of them in the United States.
One of these, _Castanea alnifolia_, is a shrub and has no place in a
list of trees. Chestnut and chinquapin are the two others. They are in
the beech family to which oaks belong also. The ancient Greeks
designated these as food trees (_Fagaceæ_), not an inappropriate name
for chestnut which probably furnishes more human food than any other
wild tree. Its range extends from Maine to Michigan and southward to
North Carolina and Tennessee. It attains its greatest size in western
North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. It is one of the few well-known
woods of the United States that does not bear a half dozen or more local
names in the various localities of its growth, but the wood is
invariably known as chestnut.
Trees vary in size from sixty to 100 feet in height, and from two to
four in diameter. Trunks six feet through occur where trees have grown
in the open, but such are not tall, and are not valuable for lumber.
Chestnut trees are sometimes heard of in this country with trunks ten
and twelve feet through, but such must be very scarce, because no one
seems to know just where they are located. It is not improbable that in
rare cases such sizes have existed. In France and Italy trees much
larger are well authenticated, but that chestnut is of a species
different from ours.
Chestnut is a very long-lived tree where it is fortunate enough to
escape the attacks of worms and disease; but as age comes on, it is
almost certain to be attacked. Insects bore the wood, and fungus induces
decay. Frequently the heartwood of large trunks is all gone, and the
trees stand mere shells with scarcely enough sound wood left to support
the diseased tops.
Few species sprout with more vigor than chestnut. In the mountains of
eastern Tennessee, W. W. Ashe found that ninety-nine per cent of stumps
sprout. This applies as well to veterans of three hundred years as to
young growth. Sprouts which rise from the top of a high stump are liable
to meet misfortune, because, under their disadvantage they cannot
develop adequate root systems; but sprouts which spring from the root
collar, or near it, may grow to large trees. It is claimed by some that
a chestnut which grows from a sprout has straighter grain than one
springing from seed. The latter’s trunk is liable to develop a spiral
twist, not only of the wood, but also of the bark; but the sprout-grown
tree lacks the twist.
Chestnut blooms in midsummer, and the profusion of pale golden catkins
makes the isolated tree a conspicuous object at that time. Bloom is
nearly always abundant, but the nut crop fails frequently. Several
accidents may happen, but the most frequent cause of scarcity in the
chestnut crop is a spell of rainy weather while the trees are in bloom.
The rain hinders proper pollenization.
Many thousands of bushels of chestnuts are sent to market yearly in the
United States. The nuts are smaller but sweeter than those of European
chestnut. The largest part of the crop is collected from trees in open
ground. Those in dense forests bear only a few nuts at the top.
Open-grown trees develop enormous and shapely crowns; and it is not
unusual for farmers who value their nut bearing trees to pollard them.
This puts the tree out of consideration as a source of lumber. Its
branches multiply, but the trunk remains short. It is claimed that a
chestnut orchard of good form and in a region where large crops are
frequent, is more profitable than an apple orchard. The tree does not
demand rich land, but must have well-drained soil. It grows on rocky
slopes and ridges, and will prosper where most other valuable trees will
barely exist.
It grows rapidly in its early life, but does not maintain the rate many
decades. Large trees are old. In the southern Appalachians the ages of
telegraph poles forty feet long and six inches in diameter at the top
range from forty-five to sixty-five years. Trees of round fence-post
size may grow in fifteen years. Few trees will produce posts more
quickly or in larger numbers per acre. In some instances nearly a
thousand saplings large enough for posts stand on a single acre.
Sprout-growth chestnut often forms nearly pure stands of considerable
extent.
The value of this tree is in its wood as well as its nuts. More than
500,000,000 feet of lumber are cut from it yearly. Long before it was
much thought of as a sawmill proposition, it was manufactured in large
amounts into rails and posts by farmers, particularly in New England and
in the Appalachian region. Axes, crosscut saws, mauls, and wedges were
the means of manufacture. Untold millions of fence rails were split
before wire fences were thought of. It is a durable wood, made so by the
tannic acid it contains. As fence rails, it was more durable than the
best oak, and where both were equally convenient, farmers nearly always
chose chestnut. On high and dry ridges a chestnut rail fence would last
from twenty-five to fifty years, and in extreme cases very much longer,
even a full century it is claimed.
Dry chestnut wood weighs 28.07 pounds per cubic foot, which makes it a
light wood. Its annual rings are as clearly marked as those of any tree
in this country. The springwood is filled with large open pores, the
summerwood with small ones. The medullary rays are minute, and of no
value in giving figure to the wood. Nevertheless, chestnut has strong
figure, but it is due solely to the arrangement of the spring and
summerwood of the annual rings. It is commonly classed as a
coarse-grained wood. The finisher can greatly alter its appearance by
rubbing the pores full of coloring matter. The wood is likewise
susceptible to change in tone in the fumes of ammonia, and by similar
treatment with other chemicals. The light colors of mission furniture
are generally the result of treatment of that kind.
The largest cut of chestnut lumber comes from West Virginia,
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Connecticut. The largest use by any single
industry is probably by the manufacturers of musical instruments, though
the honor may be divided with furniture, interior house finish, and
coffins and caskets. It is much employed as core or backing on which to
glue veneers. The lumber of old, mature trees is best liked for this
purpose, because it is not apt to shrink and swell, and it holds glue.
It is no detriment that it is riddled with worm holes the size of pins.
That kind of chestnut is known in the trade as “sound wormy.” Some
persons claim that such lumber is better as backing for veneer than
sound pieces, because it is lighter, is sufficiently strong, and the
small holes seem to help the glue to stick. Wormy chestnut is frequently
not objected to for outside work because the small holes are not hard to
fill and cover up. The uses of chestnut are many. Between 6,000,000 and
7,000,000 crossties go into railroad construction yearly. From 16,000 to
20,000 tons of wood are demanded annually for tanning extract. Every
part of the tree is available.
In recent years a disease due to fungus has attacked chestnut forests of
Pennsylvania and neighboring regions. It has destroyed the timber on
large areas, and the loss threatens to increase. A tree usually dies in
one or two years after it is attacked. The fungus works beneath the bark
and completely girdles the tree. The spores of the fungus are believed
to be carried from tree to tree on the feet of birds, on the bodies of
insects, and by the wind.
GOLDENLEAF CHINQUAPIN (_Castanopsis chrysophylla_) occurs on the
Pacific coast from the Columbia river to southern California. It is
of its largest dimensions in the coast valleys of northern
California where it occasionally attains a size equal to the
chestnut tree of the eastern states, but in many other parts of its
range it is shrubby. It is an evergreen, and its name is descriptive
of the underside of the leaf. Late in summer, flowers and fruit in
several stages of growth may be seen at the same time. The nuts are
sweet and edible. In northern California the bark is sometimes mixed
with that of tanbark oak and sold to tanneries. The wood is
considerably heavier than chestnut, and is sometimes employed in the
making of agricultural implements. It has small and obscure
medullary rays, and its pores are arranged more like those of live
oak than of chestnut; that is they run in wavy, radial lines and not
in concentric rings as in chestnut. The heartwood is darker than
chestnut.
CHINQUAPIN (_Castanea pumila_) is a little chestnut that grows from
Pennsylvania to Texas. It is generally a shrub or a bush ten or
fifteen feet high east of the Alleghany mountains, but in some of
the southern states it reaches a height of fifty feet and a diameter
of two or more, and is of largest size in southern Arkansas and
eastern Texas. It has no name but chinquapin which is an Indian word
supposed to have the same meaning that it now has. The nut is from
one-fourth to one-half as large as a chestnut, and is fully as
sweet. It is sold in the markets of the South and Southwest, but is
not an important article of commerce. Where the trees are large
enough, the wood is put to the same uses as chestnut. It is
manufactured into furniture in Texas, and is bought by railroads for
ties.
[Illustration]
BASSWOOD
[Illustration: BASSWOOD]
BASSWOOD
(_Tilia Americana_)
There are about twenty species of basswood in the world, and from three
to six of them are in the United States. Authors do not agree on the
number of species in this country. There are at least three, and they
occupy, in part, the same range, with consequent confusion. They are
much alike in general appearance, and not one person in twenty knows one
from the other. The same names apply to all, when they occur in the same
region. Few trees carry more names, and with less reason. Basswood is
generally not difficult to identify in summer, but in winter a person
only slightly acquainted with different trees might take it for
cucumber, and if of small size, it might possibly be mistaken for ash or
mountain maple. When the tree is bearing leaves, flowers, and fruit,
there is no excuse for mistaking it for any other. The fruit, a cluster
of four or five berry-like globes, hangs under a leaf, fixed by a short
stem to the midrib. This feature alone should be sufficient to identify
the basswood in this country.
Among the many names by which this tree is known, in addition to
basswood, are American linden, linn, lynn, limetree, whitewood, beetree,
black limetree, wickup, whistle wood, and yellow basswood.
The range is extensive, its northeastern boundary lying in New
Brunswick, its southwestern in Texas. It reaches Lake Winnipeg, and is
found in Georgia. This delimited area is little short of a million
square miles. It reaches a height of from sixty to 120 feet, and a
diameter of from eighteen inches to four feet. It has a decided
preference for rich soil, and the best lumber is cut in fertile coves
and flats, or in low land near streams. The largest trees formerly grew
in the forests of the lower Ohio valley, but few of the giants of former
times are to be found in that region now. They went to market a
generation or two ago. The largest cut of basswood lumber now is in
Wisconsin, Michigan, and West Virginia, but most of that from West
Virginia is white basswood (_Tilia heterophylla_).