It is popularly called “divil’s tongue cactus,” but there are other
species with the same name. Trunks are occasionally ten or twelve
feet high, and the wood is made into canes and small articles of
furniture, but as lumber it is not important. The fruit is not
eaten. A closely-related species is known as tassajo (_Opuntia
sponsior_). It is found on the dry mesas of southern Arizona where
trunks may be ten feet high and a few inches in diameter. It has the
same uses as cholla. A third species is _Opuntia versicolor_ of
southern Arizona. It is similar to the other opuntias. Attempts have
been made to grow spineless varieties of this group of cactuses. It
is believed that cattle, sheep, and goats would thrive on the pulpy
growth, if the thorns could be gotten rid of. The semi-desert
regions of the Southwest produce enormous quantities of cactus of
many kinds, and if those worthless species could be made way with
and thornless varieties substituted, it is probable that much land
now worthless would become valuable.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: YELLOW CEDAR]
MINOR SPECIES
A considerable number of trees grow in this country which, taken singly,
are of small importance, but in the aggregate they fill a place which
would be difficult to fill without them. Most of them are local, and are
seldom heard of outside of the regions where they grow. Some are small,
and for that reason are not demanded by the ordinary user of lumber; but
small size is not necessarily a bar to the use of a wood. Many places
may be filled by pieces too small for the sawmill. Sometimes a
diminutive trunk contains material of extraordinary hardness, or it may
be polished to a rare smoothness, or the colors may be exquisite.
Numerous commodities can be successfully manufactured from blocks or
billets which are only a few inches in diameter and a foot or two in
length. This is particularly true of some of the rare hardwoods of
Florida and southern Texas where tropical species have extended their
ranges northward over the borders of the United States. Some of the
small trees in that group are known by name in only the immediate
locality where they grow, and their qualities are scarcely appreciated
even there. In some instances railroad ties are hewed from wood which is
fit for the finest furniture.
It is no uncommon thing for Mexicans along the Rio Grande to warm their
huts and cook their meals with fuel chopped from trunks of Texas ebony,
algarita, cat’s claw, bluewood, huisache, retama, and junco. Those who
have traveled among the Indian rancherias of New Mexico and Utah have
grown familiar with the peculiar odor filling the air in the vicinity of
camp fires. It is the smoke of the rare junipers which the Indians burn
for fuel; and yet it is wood of such soft tones and exquisite blending
of colors that the shades of a Persian rug suffer by comparison. Among
the ten thousand islands which fringe the coasts of south Florida, and
also among the hummocks of the mainland, are rare trees whose wood is
unsurpassed in hardness, fineness of texture, and beauty. These are not
being used at all, or only as fuel to feed some fisherman’s or camper’s
fire, or to make a smoke to drive away mosquitoes. The time will come
when small and scarce woods will be sought, if they are valuable for any
special purpose. In preceding pages of this book many minor species have
been listed and briefly described in connection with those more
important, and with which they are closely related. There are more than
a hundred others which were necessarily omitted from former pages. A few
of these deserve at least a brief mention, and are listed in the
following paragraphs.
KŒBERLINIA (_Kœberlinia spinosa_) is commonly considered a curiosity; a
tree without a relative in the world, and without leaves, flowers, or
fruit. The popular notion is wrong, of course, for no tree is without
relatives, and none without leaves, flowers, and fruit, or something
that takes their place. The flowers, leaves, and fruit of this tree are
small and escape notice of the casual observer, but they exist. Its
nearest relative in this country is the paradise tree of Florida and the
ailanthus introduced from China. It has a small, thorny, crooked trunk;
the wood is dark, turning nearly black with exposure; it is rich with
oil; and it is very hard. The species grows in certain places along the
Rio Grande. The wood is made into canes, rulers, knife handles, turned
articles, and a little furniture of the smaller kinds. The trunks are
too small for ordinary sizes of lumber.
GUM ELASTIC (_Bumelia lanuginosa_) ranges from Georgia to Texas, and in
Florida is called black haw. Children in Texas mix its berries with
chewing gum, to increase the quantity, and the name which they apply to
it is “gum stretch it.” An exuded resin is also used for chewing gum.
Trees are sometimes sixty feet high and two in diameter, and a
considerable number of logs go to hardwood mills, where they lose their
name, and possibly appear as ash lumber, or occasionally as maple. The
wood is white, tinged with yellow, and is manufactured into agricultural
implements. A scarce and smaller species, known as buckthorn bumelia and
ironwood (_Bumelia lycioides_) covers nearly the same range. From a tree
of the same family in southern Asia the gutta percha of commerce is
obtained. Other woods of the same family in this country are mastic
(_Sideroxylon mastichodendron_) of south Florida, a tree sometimes sixty
feet high and three feet in diameter, useful for boat building;
satinleaf (_Chrysophyllum monopyrenum_), also of Florida, a tree
twenty-five feet high and one in diameter, the wood very heavy, hard,
and strong; tough bumelia (_Bumelia tenax_), ranging from South Carolina
to Florida, a tree twenty feet high and six inches in diameter, called
black haw in some parts of its range; saffron plum or ant’s wood
(_Bumelia angustifolia_), growing in Florida and Texas, the trunk twenty
feet high and six inches in diameter; wood orange colored, and the fruit
sweet; bustic (_Dipholis salicifolia_), in south Florida, a tree forty
feet high and eighteen inches in diameter, with wood exceedingly hard,
strong, and heavy, and dark brown or red in color; wild sapodilla or
dilly (_Mimusops sieberi_), a tree of south Florida with rich, very dark
brown wood, height of tree twenty feet, diameter one foot.
DWARF SUMACH (_Rhus copallina_) is known by many names. It is
distinguished from staghorn sumach by its smooth branches, those of
staghorn being hairy. Sumach’s chief importance is due to its value as
tanning material. Leaves and small branches are used. The family has
some well-known members in other parts of the world, among them the
mangoes. The name dwarf sumach is not well selected, for the species is
nearly as large as any other sumach. Trees are sometimes thirty feet
high and ten inches in diameter. The tree’s range extends from New
England to Florida and Texas. It reaches its largest size west of the
Mississippi river. In the East and North it is usually a shrub. Trees of
largest size are not believed to exceed fifty years in age. The wood is
richly striped with yellow and black. Balls turned of it, seven inches
in diameter, are used for newel-post ornaments, and smaller balls are
made for use in darning stockings. Cups are turned on the lathe, and the
bright stripes in the wood give the wares a striking appearance. It was
formerly much employed for spiles in tapping maple trees for sugar
making. Staghorn sumach (_Rhus hirta_) is of a different species but of
the same genus. Its range extends from New Brunswick nearly to the
Mississippi river. Its name refers to the down on the young branches
resembling the velvet on the horns of a deer at certain seasons. The
tree is known as Virginia sumach and hairy sumach. Its compound leaves
are sometimes two feet long--two or three times the size of dwarf
sumach’s. Trunks have been reported forty feet high and more than a foot
through. The uses of this wood are the same as of dwarf sumach,
including tanning. It is more abundant east than west of the
Alleghanies. Poisonwood (_Rhus metopium_) belongs to the same family. It
is known in Florida as doctor gum, hog plum, coral sumach, bumwood, and
mountain manchineel. The juice is exceedingly poisonous, and gum
produced by wounding the bark is reported to have medicinal value. Trees
are sometimes forty feet high and two feet in diameter. The American
smoke tree (_Cotinus cotinoides_) is another member of the sumach
family. It is found in the southern states from eastern Tennessee to
Texas. It is nowhere common, and its only reported use is as fence
posts. Trees may be a foot in diameter and thirty feet high. The wood is
a bright clear orange color, and a yellow dye has been manufactured from
it. Poison sumach (_Rhus vernix_) is not the same as poisonwood, though
sometimes the two are confounded. It is usually a shrub, and rarely
twenty feet high. It is overloaded with names, as might be expected of a
plant considered as dangerous as this. Among its names are poison elder,
poison dogwood, swamp sumach, poison oak, poisonwood, poisontree, and
thunderwood. It grows from New England to Georgia, and west to Minnesota
and Louisiana. It is apt to occur in wet swamps, and Sargent pronounces
it “one of the most dangerous plants of the North American flora.” A
black, lustrous varnish can be made of the acrid poisonous juice, and
this may sometime give the species a commercial value. When the skin is
poisoned by contact with this tree, an effective remedy may be found in
a saturated alcoholic solution of acetate of lead, if applied as a wash
within an hour or two after the poisoning occurs. A wash with pure
alcohol is also effective if applied within an hour. Following either
treatment the skin should be thoroughly washed with soap and water.
Western sumach (_Rhus integrifolia_), a closely related California
species, is a small evergreen, seldom more than twenty feet high and a
foot in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and red, is used as fuel, and
occasionally in small turnery. The fruit is a berry half an inch long.
CASCARA BUCKTHORN (_Rhamnus purshiana_) is of the buckthorn family, and
is known by many names on the Pacific coast where the species is best
developed. It grows as far east as Colorado and Texas. Cascara sagrada,
its Mexican name, is often used for this tree. It is known also as
bearberry, bearwood, yellow-wood, pigeonberry, coffeeberry, bayberry,
and California coffee. The tree’s usual size is from ten to thirty feet
high and twelve to twenty inches in diameter. It is often shrubby, and
is more valuable for its bark than its wood. Large quantities are peeled
for medicinal uses, and many trees are thus destroyed. A little of the
wood is burned as fuel, and some is made into handles. Yellow buckthorn
(_Rhamnus caroliniana_), with a range from New York to Texas, and
evergreen buckthorn (_Rhamnus crocea_), a California species, are
closely related to cascara buckthorn, but are of comparatively little
importance. Blue myrtle (_Ceanothus thyrsiflorus_) is a California
species, sometimes called wild lilac or blue blossoms. It ranges in
height from thirty-five feet, among the redwoods on the Santa Cruz
mountains, to only one foot high on some of the wind-swept coasts. The
wood is pale yellowish-brown, and is somewhat used for novelties. Tree
myrtle (_Ceanothus arboreus_), often known as lilac, is also a
California tree, closely related to blue myrtle, but is of smaller size
and of very restricted range. Its prospective value lies more in its
bloom than in its wood. Naked-wood (_Colubrina reclinata_), a Florida
species, is of a kindred genus. Trees are sometimes fifty feet high and
three in diameter. The wood is hard, very strong, and is dark brown
tinged with yellow.
LIGNUM-VITÆ (_Guajacum sanctum_) grows in Florida, and a species which
is probably the same is found in south Texas along the Rio Grande. In
Texas the tree is known as guayacon, which name has come down from the
times when the Carib Indians ruled the West Indies. That was their name
for the tree. The annual rings are usually too vague and too involved to
be counted, but the tree is known to be of slow growth. The wood is
pitted and it contains cavities and creases; but the clear wood is very
hard and of fine and various colors. It is dark green, brown, black,
yellow and of mixed colors, and clouded effects, all in the same block.
Small pieces of furniture, like bureau cabinets, present attractive
combinations of colors. The wood is of such exceeding hardness that it
turns, breaks, or batters the carpenter’s tools. Candlesticks, egg cups,
goblets, vases, checker pieces, dominos, boxes, trays, canes, paper
knives, and souvenirs are manufactured in a small way. Trees attain a
height of thirty feet and a diameter of two or more. The compound leaves
adhere to the branches until those of the following season appear. The
fruit is an orange-colored pod three-fourths of an inch long.
PRICKLY ASH (_Xanthoxylum clava-herculis_). Some know this species as
toothache tree, tear-blanket, sting-tongue, and Hercules’ club. The wood
shows little difference in color between heartwood and sap, and bears
some resemblance to buckeye. It takes good polish and some of it looks
like birdseye maple, but the figure does not seem to be due to
adventitious buds. It has been made into picture frames and looks well.
It is a rapid grower, and since its color fits it for the stencil, it
might be worthy of consideration for box material. Trees reach a height
of twenty-five or thirty feet, and a diameter of a foot or more. Its
range extends from Virginia to Texas. Satinwood (_Xanthoxylum
cribrosum_) is of the same genus, but it does not grow north of Florida
where it is sometimes called yellow-wood. Mature trees are a foot or
more in diameter and twenty-five or thirty-five feet high; wood heavy,
exceedingly hard and brittle, but not strong; color light orange. It has
some use as furniture material, and for certain classes of handles which
need not be strong. Wild lime (_Xanthoxylum fagara_) is a similar tree,
growing in both Florida and Texas, but it is of small size. Hoptree
(_Ptelea trifoliata_) is another member of the family. Its fruit is
sometimes substituted for hops for brewing beer. It is known also as
wafer ash, wahoo, and quinine tree; the last name being due to its
bitter bark. It grows from Canada to Florida, and west to New Mexico,
and seldom exceeds twenty feet in height. Baretta (_Helietta
parvifolia_) which occurs as a small tree in southern Texas, is a near
relative. Torchwood (_Amyris maritima_), so named because of its fine
properties as fuel, grows in southern Florida, sometimes reaching a
height of forty feet and a diameter of one. Canotia (_Canotia
holacantha_) is a small, scarce tree of Arizona and California and has
fine-grained, rich brown wood.
NANNYBERRY (_Viburnum prunifolium_), known as black haw, sloe,
sheepberry, and stagbush, grows from Connecticut to Oklahoma and is
usually a shrub which springs up along highways and hedges, but it
sometimes reaches a height of twenty feet and a diameter of eight
inches. It is valuable in some localities in the manufacture of canes
and umbrella sticks. Rusty nannyberry (_Viburnum rufotomentosum_) is a
similar species, but attains a larger size, and grows from Virginia to
Texas. The wood may be known by its disagreeable odor. Sheepberry
(_Vibernum lentago_) has a more northern range, from Quebec to
Saskatchewan, and south along the mountains to Georgia.
BLUE ELDER (_Sambucus glauca_) is one of three tree elders in the United
States, the others being Mexican elder (_Sambucus mexicana_) and
red-berried elder (_Sambucus callicarpa_). They are ornamental rather
than useful. The three species occur on the Pacific coast. The largest
recorded size of an elder was forty feet high and twenty-eight inches in
diameter. Its age was about fifty years.
FRINGE TREE (_Chionanthus virginica_) is known also as white fringe,
American fringe, white ash, old man’s beard, flowering ash, and
sunflower tree. Its natural range extends from Pennsylvania to Florida
and west to Texas, but it has been widely planted in this country and
Europe. It is seldom more than twenty feet high and eight inches in
diameter. The bark possesses medicinal value. Devilwood (_Osmanthus
americanus_) belongs to the same family, but to a different genus. It
grows from North Carolina to Florida and west to Louisiana. The largest
trunks are a foot in diameter and forty feet high. The wood is strong,
heavy, hard, dark brown, and difficult to work.
BLACK IRONWOOD (_Rhamnidium ferreum_) of Florida is among the heaviest,
probably is the heaviest, wood of the United States. It weighs 81.14
pounds per cubic foot, and when a hundred pounds of the wood is burned,
it leaves eight pounds of ashes--the highest in ash of all woods of the
United States. Its fuel value is very high. Trees are small, seldom more
than thirty feet high and six inches in diameter. Bluewood (_Condalia
obovata_) is a related Texas species, called also logwood and purple
haw. It produces heavy, hard, close-grained wood, light red in color.
Trees six inches in diameter and twenty-five feet high are fully up to
the average. Along the lower Rio Grande it forms dense, tangled
thickets. Red ironwood (_Reynosia latifolia_) of southern Florida
belongs to a related species, and is sometimes called darling plum,
because its purple fruit is edible. The tree is small, the wood heavy,
hard, strong, and of rich brown color. White ironwood (_Hypelate
trifoliata_) belongs to a different family. It occurs in Florida where
trees are sometimes thirty-five feet high and eighteen inches in
diameter. The heavy, hard, rich brown wood is durable in contact with
the ground, and is used for fence posts, handles, and boats. Inkwood
(_Exothea paniculata_) is of the same family as white ironwood but of a
different genus. It is also a Florida species and is known in some
localities as ironwood. The tree is occasionally a foot in diameter and
forty feet high, wood very hard, heavy, and strong, and bright red in
color. It is used by boat builders, for wharfs, and as handle wood.
CINNAMON BARK (_Canella winterana_), also called whitewood and wild
cinnamon, is a south Florida species seldom more than twenty-five feet
high and ten inches in diameter. The wood is exceedingly heavy, hard,
and strong, and of dark reddish-brown color. The wild cinnamon bark of
commerce comes from this tree.
JOEWOOD (_Jaquinia armillaris_) grows in the Florida everglades. The
dark and beautiful medullary rays of this wood may sometime make it
valuable for turnery and small novelties. Trunks seldom exceed six or
seven inches in diameter. Marlberry (_Icacorea paniculata_) belongs in
the same family with joewood. Trunks are small, but the hard, rich brown
wood is beautifully marked with dark medullary rays.
CRABWOOD (_Gymnanthes lucida_) is known chiefly by the fine canes made
of it. The tree occurs in southern Florida where it is sometimes known
as poisonwood. It is dark brown, streaked with yellow. Trunks more than
eight inches in diameter are unusual. Manchineel (_Hippomane
mancinella_) is of the same family, and occurs in Florida. The wood is
light and soft.
SINGLELEAF PINON (_Pinus monophylla_). This is the only pine in this
country with single needles. They are one and one-half inches long, and
are curved like the old fashioned sewing awl used by shoemakers. The
needles fall during the fourth and fifth years. The cones are one and
one-half or two and one-half inches long. The trees are small, averaging
fifteen or twenty feet high and eight or twelve inches in diameter. Its
range covers portions of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California, but it
occupies dry, sterile regions as nearly under desert conditions as can
be found in this country. The tree maintains a foothold on the eastern
slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains at an altitude of 9,000 feet and it
descends into the Colorado desert in California at an elevation of 2,000
feet. It endures winter cold below zero on the mountains, and summer
temperature of 122 in the Mojave desert. It is fitted to live in a dry,
sterile region. The leaves are small and the branches bear few of them.
The thin foliage uses little water, which is a fortunate circumstance,
for there is little to use. Slow growth is the result. The trunk often
adds less than an inch to its diameter in twenty years. The trees form
very open forest, resembling old orchards, and the greenness usually
associated with pine landscapes is generally wanting. The singleleaf
pine has filled an important place in the development of the region, and
furnishes an example of the great service which a small, crooked tree
can give when it is the only one to be had. Mines worth many millions of
dollars have been worked with little of any other wood. This has been
the fuel for the kitchen, the engine house, the blacksmith shop. It has
supplied the props, posts, stulls, and lagging for the underground
operations. Fences for stock corrals, sheds, stables, cabins, and
bridges have been constructed of the small, crooked trunks and the
distorted limbs, when no other wood could be had in fifty or a hundred
miles. Extensive tracts have been cut clean in the vicinity of mines.
The product of the singleleaf pine forest cannot be measured in board or
log feet, because of the smallness of the trunks and branches, but by
the cord. The wood is medium heavy, rather high in fuel value, very
weak, brittle, and soft. The resin passages are few and small, color
yellow or light brown, the sapwood nearly white. In contact with the
soil the wood is not durable, but its principal use has been in a very
dry climate, and it lasts well there. It is the most important of the
nut pines.
It produces enormous crops which are larger some years than others. John
Muir believed that the singleleaf pinon’s annual nut yield surpassed
California’s yield of wheat. Only a small part of the nut crop is ever
put to use by man. Scattered over mountains, mesas, and deserts, 100,000
square miles in extent, most of the nuts fall and decay, though the
animals of the rocks and sands, and the birds of the air live on them
while they last. The Indians of the region long looked upon the nut
crop, as the Egyptians upon the overflow of the Nile--a guarantee
against famine. The Indians are not so dependent on the nuts now as
formerly because scattered settlements throughout the region supply
other sources of food. Many nuts are still gathered, and are sold in
stores from San Francisco to Denver. They look like peanuts, but are
richer in oil, and if eaten raw they speedily cloy the appetite. The
Indians usually roast them, and frequently crush them into meal. When
the harvest is ripe the Indians gather from all sides and camp during a
month or more, thrash the cones from the trees with poles, extract the
nuts, and keep up the operation until all present needs are supplied,
and every available basket is filled for future use. The packhorses and
burros of the mining country in Nevada where this pine grows, acquire a
liking for the nuts. They are as nourishing as oats, and the pack
animals like them better. Indians do considerable business collecting
the nuts and selling them by the gunny sack to pack trains, for horse
feed. A single Indian will sometimes gather thirty or forty bushels, for
which he can get a dollar a bushel when he has carried them to market.
The singleleaf pine’s future will be about as its past has been, as far
as can now be foreseen. Little planting will ever be done, nor is it
necessary. Nature plants all that the sterile soil will support. It is
of too slow growth to tempt the forester. A century is required to
produce a fence post, and 200 years for a crosstie. Forest fires do
little injury, for the ground is generally so bare that fire dies out of
its own accord in a short distance. The tree can never be planted much
for ornament. Even if it would grow outside of its dry habitat, it
possesses no more beauty than a half-dead apple tree in a neglected
orchard. The trunks resemble mesquite in Texas; but the Texas tree is
redeemed by the beauty of its foliage in summer, while the foliage of
the singleleaf pine is so pale and thin that it attracts no attention.