other basswoods in this country weigh. The rings of annual growth are
not very clearly marked. They may be distinguished, in most cases, by a
narrow, light-colored line. This is the springwood. In some trees it is
much more distinct than in others. The wood is very porous, but the
pores are small, cannot readily be seen with the naked eye, and are
scattered pretty evenly through the yearly ring. The medullary rays are
small but numerous. They give quarter-sawed lumber a pleasing luster,
but are too minute to develop much figure. The general tone of the wood
is white. It is soft, works easily, holds its shape well, and is tough,
but is in no sense a competitor of oak and hickory in toughness, though
it shows the quality best in thin panels which resist splitting and
breaking.
In the days when it was customary to ceil houses with boards, both
overhead and the walls of rooms, carpenters were partial to basswood
because of its softness. Dressing lumber was then nearly always done by
hand, and the carpenter who pushed the jack plane ten or twelve hours a
day, looked pretty carefully to the softness of the wood he handled. In
tongued and grooved work, as in ceiling and wainscoting, it was not
necessary to dress the fitting edges as carefully when basswood was used
as in using some others, because it is so soft that fittings can be
forced, and cracks may be closed by driving the boards together.
Slack coopers have long employed basswood for barrel headings, and also
in the manufacture of various kinds of small stave ware, such as pails,
tubs, and kegs. In this use, as in ceiling, the softness of the wood is
a prime consideration, because the pressure of the hoops will close any
small openings. Its whiteness and its freedom from stains and unpleasant
odors are likewise important when vessels are to contain food products.
Box makers like the wood on that account, and large quantities are
manufactured into containers for articles of food.
Much basswood is cut into veneer, some of which serves in single sheets
as in making small baskets and cups for berries and small fruits, but a
large part of the output is devoted to ply work. Usually three sheets
are glued together, but sometimes there are five. By crossing the
sheets, to make the grain of one lie at right angles to the next, plies
of great strength and toughness are produced. Trunk makers are large
users of such, and many panels of that kind are employed by
manufacturers of furniture and musical instruments.
Woodenware factories find basswood one of their most serviceable
materials, and it is made into ironing boards, wash boards, bread
boards, and cutting boards for cobblers, saddlers, and glass cutters.
Its lightness and toughness make it serviceable as valves and other
parts of bellows for blacksmiths, organs, and piano players. Makers of
gilt picture frames prefer it for molding which is to be overlaid with
the gilt or gold. It is serviceable for advertising signs because its
whiteness contrasts well with printing. Makers of thermometers use it
frequently for the wooden body of the instrument, and yard sticks are
made of it. Apiarists find no wood more suitable for the small, light
frames in which bees build the comb.
The uses of this wood are so many and so various that lists would prove
monotonous. The annual cut in this country, exclusive of veneer, is
nearly 350,000,000 feet, and the demand for veneer takes many millions
more.
Basswood is named for the bark, and the spelling was formerly bastwood.
The manufacture of articles from the bark was once a considerable
industry, not so much in this country as in Europe. However, some use
has been made of the bark here. Louisiana negroes make horse collars of
it by braiding many strands together, and chair bottoms are woven of it
in lieu of cane and rattan, and it is likewise woven into baskets of
coarse kinds. Bark is prepared for this use by soaking it in water, by
which the annual layers of the bark are separated, long, thin sheets are
produced, and these are reduced to strips of the desired width.
The annual cut of basswood lumber is declining with no probability that
it will ever again come up to past figures; but basswood is in no
immediate danger of disappearing from American forests. It is not
impossible that it may be planted for commercial purposes. In central
Europe, forests of basswood, there called linden, are maintained for the
honey which bees gather from the bloom. In this country it is often
called beetree because of the richness of its flowers in nectar.
Possibly bee owners may grow forests for the honey, and when trees are
mature, dispose of them for lumber.
WHITE BASSWOOD (_Tilia heterophylla_) attains a trunk diameter as
great as that of the common basswood, but is not as tall. Trees
sixty or seventy feet high are among the tallest. This species
ranges from New York to Alabama, and is found as far west as
southern Illinois, and its best development is among the rich
valleys and fertile slopes of the Appalachian mountains from
Pennsylvania southward. It is the prevailing basswood of West
Virginia, and reaches its largest size on the high mountains of
North Carolina and Tennessee. It averages about two pounds lighter
per cubic foot than the common basswood, but ordinarily neither the
lumber nor the standing trees of the two species are distinguished.
Only persons somewhat skilled in botany are able to tell one species
of basswood from another as they occur in the forests of this
country.
DOWNY BASSWOOD (_Tilia pubescens_) is a southern member of the
basswood group, and is scarce. Its range extends from North Carolina
to Arkansas and Texas. Trees are rarely more than forty feet high
and fifteen inches in diameter. The wood is light brown, tinged with
red, and the sap is hardly distinguishable from the heart. As far as
it is used at all, its uses are similar to those of other basswoods.
SOUTHERN BASSWOOD (_Tilia australis_) is confined, as far as is now
known, to a small section of Alabama, where it attains a height of
sixty feet in rich woodlands. No reports on the quality of the wood
have been published, and the species is too scarce to possess much
interest to others than systematic botanists.
FLORIDA BASSWOOD (_Tilia floridana_), as its name suggests, is a
Florida species, and has not been reported elsewhere. It seems to be
the smallest of American basswoods, the largest trees being little
more than thirty feet high. No tests of the wood have been made and
no uses reported.
MICHAUX BASSWOOD (_Tilia michauxii_) has been listed for a long
time, but is still not well known. Its range extends from Canada to
Georgia and westward to Texas. Trees three feet in diameter and
eighty feet high have been reported. Only botanists distinguish it
from other species of basswood with which it is associated.
PAWPAW (_Asimina triloba_) is of more value for its fruit than its
wood. It grows from New York to Texas, but in certain localities
only. It is the most northern species of the custard apple family,
and is usually of little importance above an altitude of 1,500 feet.
In Arkansas and some other southwestern regions it is called banana.
It is usually a shrub, but may reach a height of forty feet and a
diameter of twelve inches. The wood is light, soft, and weak. Pond
apple (_Annona glabra_), called custard apple in some parts of its
range in Florida, is a member of the same family. It attains the
size of pawpaw, and the wood is similar.
[Illustration]
AMERICAN HOLLY
[Illustration: AMERICAN HOLLY]
AMERICAN HOLLY
(_Ilex Opaca_)
Holly is a characteristic member of a large family scattered through
most temperate and tropical regions of the world. It belongs to the
family _Aquifoliaceæ_, a name which conveys little meaning to an English
reader until botanists explain that it means trees with needles on their
leaves, _acus_ meaning needle, and _folium_ leaf. How well holly, with
its spiny leaves, fits in that family is seen at once.
About 175 species of holly are dispersed in various parts of the world,
the largest number occurring in Brazil and Guiana. _Ilex_ is the
classical name of the evergreen oak in southern Europe.
The glossy green foliage and the brilliant red berries of the holly tree
have long been associated in the popular mind with the Christmas season.
Mingled with the white berries and dull green foliage of the mistletoe,
it is the chief Yuletime decoration, and many hundred trees are annually
stripped of their branches to supply this demand. The growth is still
quite abundant, but if the destruction and waste continue, American
holly will soon be exhausted.
Its range extends from Massachusetts to Texas and from Missouri to
Florida. In New England, the trees are few and small, and the same holds
true in many parts of the Appalachian region. The largest trees are
found in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. In the North it grows in
rather dry, gravelly soil, often on the margins of oak woods, but in the
South it takes to swamps, and does best on river bottoms where the soil
is rich. It is often associated with evergreen magnolia, which it
resembles at a distance, though differences are plain enough on close
examination. The light, grayish-green barks of the two trees look much
alike; but the magnolia’s leaves are larger, thicker, and lack the
briers on the margins.
Holly varies in size from small straggling bushes to well-formed trees
fifty or sixty feet high and two or three in diameter. The principal
value of holly is not in its wood, but in its leaves and berries. Some
persons suppose that holly leaves never fall. That is true of no tree
that attains any considerable age. An examination of a holly thicket, or
a single tree, in the spring of the year will reveal a fair sprinkling
of dead leaves on the ground, though none may be missed from the
branches. Those that fall are three years old, and they come down in the
spring. There are always two full years of leaves on the trees.
Flowers are the least attractive part of holly. Few people ever notice
the small, unobtrusive cymes, scattered along the base of the young
shoots in the early spring, with the crop of young leaves. Nothing showy
about them attracts attention.
The fruit is the well-known berry, the glory of winter decorations. It
is usually red, but sometimes yellow. The latter color is not often seen
in decorations because it is a poor contrast with the glossy green of
the leaves. The berries ripen late in autumn and hang until nearly
spring, provided they are let alone. That is seldom their fortune, for
if they escape the wreath hunter at Christmas, they remain subject to
incessant attacks by birds. Fortunately, the berries are not very choice
food for the feathered bevies that fly in winter; otherwise, the trees
would be stripped in a day or two. Birds are attracted by the color, and
they keep pecking away, taking one or two berries at a bait, and in the
course of a long winter they get most of them.
The gathering of holly leaves and berries is an industry of much
importance, taken as a whole; but it lasts only a short time, and is
carried on without much system. The greatest source of supply is
northern Alabama, and the neighboring parts of surrounding states; but
some holly is gathered in all regions where it is found. Those who
collect it for market make small wages, but the harvest comes at a
season when little else is doing, and the few dimes and dollars picked
up are regarded as clear gain--particularly since most of the holly
harvesters have no land of their own and forage for supplies on other
people’s possessions.
The seeds of holly are a long time in germinating, and those who plant
them without knowing this are apt to despair too soon. The great
differences in the germinating habits of trees are remarkable. Some of
the maples bear seeds which sprout within a few days after they come in
contact with damp soil, certain members of the black oak group of trees
drop their acorns with sprouts already bursting the hulls, and mangroves
are in a still greater hurry, and let fall their seeds with roots
several inches long ready to penetrate the mud at once. But holly is in
no hurry. Its seeds lie buried in soil until the second year before they
send their radicles into the soil. They are so slow that nurserymen
usually prefer to go into the woods and dig up seedlings which are
already of plantable size.
Users of woods find many places for holly but not in large amounts. The
reported output by all the sawmills in the United States in 1909 was
37,000 feet, and Maryland produced more than any other state. The wood
is employed for inlay work, parquetry, marquetry, small musical
instruments, and keys for pianos and organs. Engravers find it suitable
for various classes of work, its whiteness giving the principal value.
It approaches ivory in color nearer than any other American wood. Brush
back manufacturers convert it into their choice wares. It is
occasionally worked into small articles of furniture, but probably never
is used in large pieces.
The wood is rather light, and the vague boundaries between the annual
rings, and the smallness and inconspicuousness of the medullary rays,
are responsible for the almost total absence of figure, no matter in
what way the wood is worked. The so-called California holly
(_Heteromeles arbutifolia_) is of a different family, and is not a
holly.
DAHOON HOLLY (_Ilex cassine_) grows in cold swamps and on their borders
in the coast region from southern Virginia to southern Florida, and
westward to Louisiana. It is often found on the borders of pine barrens,
is most common in western Florida and southern Alabama, and when at its
best, is from twenty-five to thirty feet high and a foot or more in
diameter. The leaves are nearly twice as long as those of common holly,
and are generally spineless or nearly so. The fruit ripens late in
autumn and hangs on the branches until the following spring. The berries
are sometimes bright red, oftener dull red, and those fully up to size
are a quarter of an inch in diameter. Some hang solitary, others in
clusters of three. The wood is light and soft, weighing less than thirty
pounds per cubic foot. The heart is pale brown, and the thick sapwood
nearly white. The tree is known locally as yaupon, dahoon, dahoon holly,
and Henderson wood. This species passes gradually into a form designated
as _Ilex myrtifolia_, which Sargent surmises may be a distinct species.
Another form, narrowleaf dahoon (_Ilex cassine angustifolia_), is listed
by Sudworth.
YAUPON HOLLY (_Ilex vomitoria_) is a small, much-branched tree, often
shrubby, and at its best is seldom more than twenty-five feet high and
six inches in diameter. Its range follows the coast from southern
Virginia to St. John’s river, Florida, and westward to eastern Texas. It
sticks closely to tidewater in most parts of its habitat, but when it
reaches the Mississippi valley it runs north into Arkansas. It attains
its largest size in Texas, and is little more than a shrub elsewhere.
Berries are produced in great abundance, are red when ripe, but they
usually fall in a short time and are not much in demand for decorations.
The wood weighs over forty-five pounds per cubic foot, is hard, and
nearly white, but turns yellow with exposure. The leaves of this holly
were once gathered by Indians in the southeastern states for medicine.
The savages journeyed once a year to the coast where the holly was
abundant, boiled the leaves in water, and produced what they called the
“black drink.” It was nauseating in the extreme, but they drank copious
draughts of it during several days, then departed for their homes,
confident that good health was assured for another year.
MOUNTAIN HOLLY (_Ilex monticola_) is so named because it grows among
the Appalachian ranges from New York to Alabama. It is best
developed in the elevated district where Tennessee and North and
South Carolina meet near one common boundary. It is elsewhere
shrubby. The leaves are deciduous, and the bright scarlet berries
are nearly as large as cherries. They fall too early to make them
acceptable as Christmas decorations. The wood is hard, heavy, and
creamy-white, and if it could be had in adequate quantities, would
be valuable. The trees are sometimes a foot in diameter and forty
feet high, but they are not abundant. Their leaves bear small
resemblance to the typical holly leaf, but look more like those of
cherry or plum.
DECIDUOUS HOLLY (_Ilex decidua_) is called bearberry in Mississippi
and possum haw in Florida, while in other regions it is known as
swamp holly because of its habit of clinging to the banks of streams
and betaking itself to swamps. It keeps away from mountains, though
it is found in a shrubby form between the Blue Ridge and the sea in
the Atlantic states, from Virginia southward. It runs west through
the Gulf region to Texas, and ascends the Mississippi valley to
Illinois and Missouri, attaining tree size only west of the
Mississippi. The wood is as heavy as white oak, hard, and
creamy-white, both heart and sap. Doubtless small quantities are
employed in different industries, but the only direct report of its
use comes from Texas where it is turned for drawer and door knobs in
furniture factories. Most but not all of the leaves fall in early
winter. The berries obey the same rule, some fall and others hang
till spring. They are orange or orange-scarlet.
[Illustration]
YELLOW BUCKEYE
[Illustration: YELLOW BUCKEYE]
YELLOW BUCKEYE
(_Æsculus Octandra_)
Four species and one variety of buckeye are native in the United States,
yellow buckeye, Ohio buckeye, California buckeye, small buckeye, and
purple buckeye. They belong in the horse chestnut family. The so-called
Texas buckeye is in a different family, and is not a true buckeye, but
is close kin to the soapberry. The buckeyes are named for the large
white spot on the smooth, brown nut, resembling the eye of a deer. The
yellow buckeye is the most important of the group, is the largest and
most abundant. It is known by the name of buckeye in North Carolina,
South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Kentucky. It
is called sweet buckeye in West Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, Missouri,
and Indiana, probably owing to the fact that it does not exhale the
disagreeable odor characteristic of other members of the family. Yellow
buckeye is the term applied to it in South Carolina and Alabama; large
buckeye in Tennessee; big buckeye in Tennessee and Texas. It flourishes
from Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, southward along the Alleghany
mountains to northern Georgia and Alabama, westward along the valley of
the Ohio river to southern Iowa, through Oklahoma and the valley of the
Brazos river in eastern Texas. It thrives best along streams and in
dense, rich woods. It reaches its fullest development on the slopes of
the Alleghany mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee.
The leaves of the buckeye are compound, with from five to seven
leaflets; flowers appear in May or June and are dull yellow; the fruit
is a large brown nut, one or two of which are enclosed in a rough,
uneven husk, about two inches or more in diameter. The tree grows from
forty to 100 feet in height, and attains a diameter of from one to three
and a half feet.
Buckeye grows intermingled with poplar, oak, maple, beech and a variety
of other hardwoods. From its comparatively limited growth as compared
with the totality of the average hardwood forest, it never has been
recognized, and probably never will be, as a distinctive type of
American commercial wood. The timber is felled with the other valuable
trees surrounding it, and its appearance, when manufactured into lumber
is so similar to that of the sap of poplar or whitewood that almost
without exception it is assorted with poplar saps, and goes on the
market masquerading as that wood. There is probably not one lumberman in
a thousand, handling poplar, that is able to distinguish buckeye from
sap poplar in his shipments of that wood.
Sawmills make no distinction between the different species. All that
comes is buckeye, but nearly all of it is the yellow species, though
doubtless a little of all the others is cut into lumber and veneer, or
goes to the slack cooperage shop, or to the pulp mill. The woods of all
are quite similar, and they are used for the same purposes. If one is
employed in larger quantities than another, it is because it is more
convenient, or of better form or larger size.
Early uses of buckeye were as important as those of the present day,
though amounts were smaller. Many an Ohio statesman of former times
boasted that, as a baby, he was rocked in a buckeye sugar trough for a
cradle. They claimed with pride that the prevalance of the custom caused
Ohio to be known as the buckeye state, a name which clings to it still.
Next to yellow poplar, buckeye was considered the best wood from which
to hew the small troughs which collected the sugar water from the tapped
maples in early spring; but the range of buckeye did not extend
northward into the real maple area, and the troughs like those which
rocked the inchoate Ohio statesmen were unknown in the North, but were
familiar along the mountain ranges southward. Dough trays, bread boards,
chopping bowls, and troughs in which to salt bacon and pork, were hewed
from buckeye by farmers and village woodworkers.
It weighs 27.24 pounds per cubic foot; is diffuse-porous, and the slight
difference between the wood grown in spring and that of late summer
renders the annual rings indistinct. It has little figure, no matter how
it is sawed; medullary rays are thin and obscure. Softness is one of the
principal qualities, and it is also weak, and is wanting in rigidity.
These are its faults, but it has virtues. It is tasteless and odorless,
and these properties make it valuable in the manufacture of boxes in
which food products are shipped. The reported cut of buckeye in the
United States is from 11,000,000 to 13,000,000 feet a year. The reports
of factories which use the wood in making commodities throw light on the
question of actual use. North Carolina works 10,000 feet a year into
cabinets and office fixtures; Michigan 100,000 into candy and chocolate
boxes, dishes, and bowls; Maryland uses 200,000 feet yearly for
practically the same purposes, but with the added commodities of spice
drawers and tea chests. Makers of artificial limbs consider buckeye one
of their best materials, but it is second to willow. The “cork legs” are
usually either buckeye or willow. Pulp mills grind the wood for paper,
but it is not separately listed in pulp statistics, and the total cut
cannot be stated. It is converted into veneer and finds many places of
usefulness, but here, also, no separate figures are to be had.
The nuts are large and abundant, but almost wholly useless for man or
beast. Bookbinders make paste of them, as a substitute for flour, and
with satisfactory results. The paste resists ferments much better than
that manufactured from flour; but the demand upon the nut supply for
that purpose is very small. Squirrels and other small animals leave
buckeyes alone. Some writers, whose acquaintance with this tree was
apparently acquired at long range, state that the nuts are food for
cattle. No person with knowledge of the buckeye says that. Cattle
occasionally eat a few, but are poisoned thereby, and if they recover,
they never again have anything to do with buckeyes.
This tree is ornamental during a few months of the year. Its flowers are
attractive, and its large, vigorous leaves and conspicuous fruit are
admired in summer; but early in the fall the leaves come down, the husks
burst from the nuts and strew the ground with unsightly fragments. The
tree is seldom planted, but the horse chestnut, a foreign species, takes
its place.