Part 39
One of the most important uses of Osage orange is found in the manufacture of wagon wheels, though the total quantity so used is smaller than that demanded for fence posts.
About 10,000 or 12,000 wagons with Osage orange felloes or rims are manufactured annually in the United States. That use of the wood is not new. It began in a small way soon after the settlement of the region. At first the work was hand-done by local blacksmiths and wheelwrights. They found the wood objectionable, from the workman’s standpoint, on account of its extreme hardness and the difficulty of cutting it. That objection is still urged against it though machines have taken the place of the hand tools of former times. Saws and bits are quickly dulled, and the cost of grinding, repair, and replacement increases the operator’s expense much above ordinary mill outlay for such purposes. On that account many prefer to work the wood green. It is then softer, and cuts more smoothly. If seasoned before it is passed through the machines it is liable to “pull.” That term is used to indicate a rough-breaking of the fibres by the impact of knives. The readiness with which the wood splits calls for extraordinary care in boring it, and many felloes are spoiled in finishing them to receive the tenoned ends of spokes.
A number of commodities are made of Osage orange but in quantities so small that the total wood used does not constitute a serious drain upon the supply. Police clubs are occasionally made as a by-product of the rim mill. Some years ago at the Texas state fair at Dallas, a piano was exhibited, all visible wood being Osage orange, handsomely polished. The rich color of this wood distinguishes it from all other American species. When oiled it retains the yellow color, but unoiled wood fades on long exposure. Clock cases of Osage have been manufactured locally, and gun stocks made of it are much admired, though the wood’s weight is an argument against it for gun stocks. Canes split from straight-grained blocks, and shaved and polished by hand, are occasionally met with, but none manufactured by machinery have been reported. Sawmills in the Osage orange region use the wood as rollers for carriages and off-bearing tables. Rustic rockers and benches of the wood, with the bark or without it, figure to a small extent in local trade. It has been tried experimentally for parquetry floors, with satisfactory results. Sections of streets have been paved with Osage orange blocks. The wood wears well and is nearly proof against decay, but no considerable demand for such blocks appears ever to have existed. Railroads which were built through the region years ago cut Osage for ties and culvert timber, but no such use is now reported. The demand for the wood for tobacco pipes is increasing, more than 100,000 blocks for such pipes having been sold during a single year.
Osage orange weighs 48.21 pounds per cubic foot. It is twenty-eight per cent stronger than white oak, but is not quite as stiff, is very brittle, and under heavy impact, will crumble. For that reason, Osage wagon felloes will not stand rocky roads. The bark is sometimes used for tanning, and the wood for dyeing.
RED MULBERRY (_Morus rubra_) is frequently spoken of simply as mulberry, and is sometimes called black mulberry. The full grown fruit is red, but turns black or very dark purple when ripe. The berry is composed of a compact and adhering cluster of drupes, each drupe about one thirty-second of an inch long. What seems to be a single berry is really an aggregation of very small fruits, each resembling a tiny cherry. The mulberry is naturally a forest tree, but it is permitted to grow about the margins of fields, and is often planted in door yards for its fruit and its shade. It is looked upon by many as a tame species.
Two mulberries grow naturally in this country. The red species ranges from Massachusetts west to Kansas, and south to Texas and Florida. Its best growth is found in the lower Ohio valley and the southern foot hills of the Appalachian mountains. The largest trees are seventy feet high and three or four in diameter. If this tree were abundant the wood’s place in furniture and finish would be important. The heartwood is dark, of good figure, and fairly strong. It takes a fine polish, and resembles black walnut, though usually of a little lighter shade. Its largest use is as fence posts. It is durable in contact with the soil. The effect when made into furniture, finish, and various kinds of turnery, is pleasing. Farm tools, particularly scythe snaths, are made of it, and it has been reported for slack cooperage and boat building, but such uses are apparently infrequent. The wood is evidently sold under some other name, or without a name, for the total sawmill output in the United States is given in government statistics at only 1,000 feet, which is probably not one per cent of the cut.
MEXICAN MULBERRY (_Morus celtidifolia_) ranges from southern Texas to Arizona. Trees are seldom more than thirty feet high and one in diameter. The berry is about half an inch long, black, and made up of a hundred or more very small drupes. It is edible, but its taste is insipid. The wood is heavy and is of dark orange or dark brown color. It is suitable for small turnery and other articles, but no reports of uses for it have been found. The tree is occasionally planted for its fruit by Mexicans, but Americans care little for it.
Two foreign mulberries have been extensively planted in this country, and in some localities they are running wild and are mistaken for native species. One is the white mulberry (_Morus alba_), a native of China; the other is the paper mulberry (_Broussonetia papyrifera_) a different genus, but of the same family. It is a native of Japan, and has been naturalized in some of the southern states. Nine varieties of the white mulberry have been distinguished in cultivation.
PERSIMMON
PERSIMMON
(_Diospyros Virginiana_)
Persimmon belongs to the ebony family, and the family has contributed to the civilization of the human race since very early times. Some of the oldest furniture in existence, that which was found hidden in the ruins of ancient Egypt, is ebony, and there is evidence among the old records in the land of the Nile that the Egyptians made voyages southward through the Red sea and brought back cargoes of ebony from Punt, a region in eastern Africa. The name ebony is believed to be derived from a Hebrew word, probably brought to Palestine by some of Solomon’s captains who traded along the south coast of Asia or the east coast of Africa about the time of the building of the first temple. The botanical name for the genus (_diospyros_) is made up of two words meaning “Jupiter’s wheat”--supposed to be a reference to the value of persimmons as food. The name, however, is not as old as the Hebrew word, nor is the Hebrew as old as the references to ebony in the records of Egypt. A piece of the old furniture--not less than 4,000 years old--is still in existence. It probably matches in age the cedar of Lebanon coffins in the oldest Egyptian tombs.
The ebony family consists of five genera, one of which is persimmon (_diospyros_). This genus consists of 160 species, only two of them in the United States. Thus the persimmon trees of this country are a very small part of the family to which they belong, but they are a highly respectable part of it. The word persimmon is of Indian origin, and was used by the tribes near the Atlantic coast. The original spelling was “pessimin,” and that was probably about the pronunciation given it by the aborigines.
It has never been called by many names. It is known as date plum in New Jersey and Tennessee, and as possumwood in Florida. The avidity with which opossums feed on the fruit is responsible for the name.
The range of persimmon extends from Connecticut to Florida, and westward to Iowa, Missouri, and Texas. It reaches its largest size in the South. It is of vigorous growth, spreading by means of seeds, and also by roots. The latter is the most common method where the ground is open. Such situations as old, abandoned fields invite the spread of persimmons. Roots ramify under the ground, and sprouts spring up, often producing thickets of an acre or more. Trees do not generally reach large size if they grow in that way, but their crowded condition does not make them fruitless as can be attested to by many a boy who penetrates the persimmon thickets by means of devious paths that wind with many a labyrinthic turn which takes in all that is worth finding.
The variation in the quality of persimmons is greater than that of most wild fruits. Nature usually sets a standard and sticks closely to it, but the rule is not adhered to in the case of persimmons. Some are twice as large as others; some are never fit to eat, no matter how severely or how often they are frosted; others require at least one fierce frost to soften their austerity; but some may be eaten with relish without the ameliorating influence of frost.
The austerity of a green persimmon is due to tannin. It is supposed that cultivation might remove some of this objectionable quality, but no great success has thus far attended efforts in that direction. Japanese persimmons, which are of a different species, are cultivated with success in California.
The sizes of persimmon trees vary according to soil, climate, and situation. They average rather small, but occasionally reach a height of 100 feet and a diameter of nearly two. Mature trunks are usually little over twelve inches in diameter, and many never reach that size.
The dry wood weighs 49.28 pounds per cubic foot, which is about the weight of hickory. It is hard, strong, compact, and is susceptible of a high polish. The yearly rings are marked by one or more bands of open ducts, and scattered ducts occur in the rest of the wood. The medullary rays are thin and inconspicuous; color of heartwood dark brown, often nearly black; the sapwood is light brown, and frequently contains darker spots.
The value of persimmon depends largely upon the proportion of sapwood to heartwood. That was the case formerly more than it is now; for until recent years the heartwood of persimmon was generally thrown away, and the sapwood only was wanted; but demand for the heart has recently increased. There is much difference in the proportion of heartwood to sapwood in different trees. It does not seem to be a matter of size, nor wholly of age. Small trunks sometimes have more heart than large ones. A tree a hundred years old may have heartwood scarcely larger than a lead pencil, and occasionally there is none. In other instances the heart is comparatively large.
Persimmon has never been a wood of many uses, as hickory and oak have been. In early times it was considered valuable almost wholly on account of its fruit, and that had no commercial value, as it was seldom offered for sale in the market. In the language of the southern negroes who fully appreciated the fruit, it was “something good to run at”--meaning that the ripe persimmons were gathered and eaten from the trees while they lasted, but that few were preserved.
It is recorded that the “small wheel” of the pioneer cabins was occasionally made of persimmon wood. The wheel so designated was the machine on which wool and flax were spun by the people in their homes. Spinning wheels were of two kinds, one large, with the operator walking to and fro, the other small, with the operator sitting. It was the small wheel which was sometimes made of persimmon. There is no apparent reason why it should have been made of that wood in preference to any one of a dozen others.
The demand for persimmon in a serious way began with its use as shuttles in textile factories. Weavers had made shuttles of it for home use on hand looms for many years before the demand came from power looms where the shuttles were thrown to and fro by machinery. Up to some thirty years ago, shuttles for factories were generally made of Turkish boxwood, but the supply fell short and the advance in price caused a search for substitutes. Two satisfactory shuttlewoods were found in this country, persimmon and dogwood. The demand came not only from textile mills in America but from those of Europe. The manufacture of shuttle blocks became an industry of considerable importance.
Persimmon wood is suitable for shuttles because it wears smooth, is hard, strong, tough, and of proper weight. Most woods that have been tried for this article fail on account of splintering, splitting, quickly wearing out, or wearing rough. The shuttle is not regarded as satisfactory unless it stands 1,000 hours of actual work. Some woods which are satisfactory for many other purposes will not last an hour as a shuttle.
The manufacture of shuttles, after the square has been roughed out, requires twenty-two operations. Probably more shuttlewood comes from Arkansas than from any other section, though a dozen or more states contribute persimmon. The total sawmill cut of this wood in the United States is about 2,500,000 feet, but this does not include that which never passes through a sawmill.
The wood has other uses. It has lately met demand from manufacturers of golf heads. Skewers are made of it in North Carolina, and billiard cues and mallets in Massachusetts.
The heartwood is dark and shuttle makers and golfhead manufacturers will not have it. Until recently it was customary to throw it away, because no sale for it could be found. It is now known to be suitable for parquet flooring and for brush backs, and the demand for the heartwood is as reliable as for the sapwood. A little of the dark wood is cut in veneer and is employed in panel work, and other is used in turnery.
The seeds of persimmon furnished one of the early substitutes for coffee in backwoods settlements when the genuine article could not be obtained. They were parched and pounded until sufficiently pulverized. During the Civil war many a confederate camp in the South was fragrant with the aroma of persimmon seed coffee, after the soldiers had added the fruit to their rations of cornbread.
MEXICAN PERSIMMON (_Diospyros texana_) grows in Texas and Mexico. It is most abundant in southern and western Texas, where it suits itself to different soils, is found on rich moist ground near the borders of prairies, and also in rocky canyons and dry mesas. The largest trees are fifty feet high and twenty inches in diameter, but trunks that large are not abundant. The tree differs from the eastern persimmon in that the sapwood is thinner, and the heartwood makes up a much greater proportion of the trunk; the uses are consequently different, since it is taken for its dark wood, the eastern tree for its light-colored sap. The fruit of the Mexican persimmon is little esteemed. It is small, black, and the thin layer of pulp between the skin and the seed is insipid. Until fully ripe it is exceedingly austere. The Mexicans in the Rio Grande valley make a dye of the persimmons and use it to color sheep skins. The fruit’s supply of tannin probably contributes to the tanning as well as the dyeing of the sheep pelts. The wood is heavier than eastern persimmon, and has more than three fold more ashes in a cord of wood, amounting to about 160 pounds. The bark is thin and the trunk gnarled. The dark color of the wood gives it the name black persimmon in Texas. Mexicans call it chapote. Sargent pronounces it the best American substitute for boxwood for engraving purposes, but it does not appear to be used outside of Texas. The wood is irregular in color, even in the same piece, being variegated with lighter and darker streaks, and cloudy effects. It ought to be fine brush-back material. It is worked into tool handles, lodge furniture, canes, rules, pen holders, picture frames, curtain rings, door knobs, parasol handles, and maul sticks for artists.
FLOWERING DOGWOOD
FLOWERING DOGWOOD
(_Cornus Florida_)
The dogwood or cornel family is old but not numerous. It originated several hundred thousand years ago and spread over much of the world, but preferred the temperate latitudes. One species at least crossed the equator and established itself in the highlands of Peru. There are forty or fifty species in all, about one-third of them in the United States, but most are shrubs. Black gum and tupelo are members of the family, and are giants compared with the dogwoods. In Europe the tree is usually called cornel, and that has been made the family name. It is a very old word, coined by the Romans before the days of Caesar. They so named it because it was hard like horn (_cornus_ meaning horn in the Latin language). They used it as shafts of spears, and so common was that use that when a speaker referred to a spear he simply called it by the name of the wood of the handle or shaft, as when Virgil described a combat which was supposed to have occurred 800 years before the Christian era, and used the words: “Clogged in the wound the Italian _cornel_ stood.”
The qualities of this wood which led to important uses among the Romans, have always made dogwood a valuable material. Civilized nations do not need it for spear shafts, but they have other demands which call for large amounts.
The flowering dogwood has other names in this country. It is generally known simply as dogwood, but it is called boxwood in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Mississippi, Michigan, Kentucky, and Indiana; false box-dogwood in Kentucky; New England boxwood in Tennessee; flowering cornel in Rhode Island; and cornel in Texas.
Its range extends from Massachusetts through Ontario and Michigan to Missouri, south to Florida, and west to Texas. The area where it grows includes about 800,000 square miles. It is most common and of largest size in the South, comparatively rare in the North, generally occurs in the shade of taller trees, and prefers well-drained soil, but is not particular whether it is fertile or thin.
The dogwood is valuable as ornament and for its wood. It was formerly a source of medicine, from roots, bark, and flowers; but it seems to have been largely displaced by other drugs; was once considered a good substitute for quinine, that use having been learned from Indian doctors. The Indians dug roots for a scarlet dye with which the vain warrior stained escutcheons on buckskin, and colored porcupine quills and bald eagle feathers for decorating his moccasins and his hair.
The dogwood varies in size from a shrub with many branches to a tree forty feet high, eighteen inches in diameter, and with a flat but shapely crown. The trunk rises as a shaft with little taper, until the first branches are reached. All the branches start at the same place, and the trunk ends abruptly--divides into branches. Flowers are an important part of the tree, as might be inferred from the prominence given them in the tree’s names. In the South the flowers appear in March, in the North in May, and in both regions before the opening of the leaves. The flowers on vigorous trees are three or four inches across, white, and very showy. A dogwood tree in full bloom against a hillside in spring is a most conspicuous object, and is justly admired by all who have appreciation of beauty. The flowers fall as leaves appear, and for some months the tree occupies its little space in the forest unobserved; but in the autumn it bursts again into glory, and while not quite as conspicuous an object as when in bloom, it is no less worthy of admiration. The fall of the leaves reveals the brilliant scarlet fruit which ladens the branches. The berries are just large enough for a good mouthful for a bird, but birds spare them until fully ripe to the harvest, and they then harvest them very rapidly. The tree is thus permitted to display its fruit a considerable time before yielding it to the feathered inhabitants of the air whose mission in forest economy is to scatter the seeds of trees, when nature provides the seeds themselves with no wings for flying.
The two periods in the year when dogwood is highly ornamental, the flowers in spring before leaves appear, and fruit in autumn after leaves fall, are responsible for this tree’s importance in ornamental planting. It is a common park tree, but it is small, generally not more than fifteen feet high, and it occupies subordinate places in the plans of the landscape garden. It is a filler between oaks, pines, and spruces, and it passes unnoticed, except when in bloom and in fruit.
Dogwood is about four pounds per cubic foot heavier than white oak, has the same breaking strength, and is lower in elasticity. It is quite commonly believed that this tree has no heartwood, but the belief is erroneous. It seldom has much, and small trunks often none; but when dogwood reaches maturity it develops heart. Sometimes the heartwood is no larger than a lead pencil in trunks forty or fifty years old. The heart is brown, sapwood is white, and is the part wanted by the users of dogwood. Annual rings are obscure and it is a tree of slow growth. The wood is as nearly without figure as any in this country. It seldom or never goes to sawmills. The logs are too small. Most of the supply is bought by manufacturers of shuttles and golf stick heads, in this country and Europe. They purchase it by the cord or piece. It does not figure much in any part of the lumber business, but is cut and marketed in ways peculiar to itself. Log cutters in hardwood forests pay little attention to it. The dogwood harvest comes principally from southern states. Village merchants are the chief collectors, and they sell to contractors who ship to buyers in the manufacturing centers. The village merchants buy from farmers, who cut a stick here and there as they find it in woodlots, forests, or by the wayside, on their own land or somebody else’s. When the cutter next drives to town he throws his few dogwoods in the wagon, and trades them to the store keeper for groceries or other merchandise. It is small business, but in the aggregate it brings together enough dogwood to supply the trade.
Dogwood has many uses, but none other approaches shuttle making and golfhead manufacture in importance. The wood is made into brush blocks, wedges, engraver’s blocks, tool handles, machinery bearings as a substitute for lignum-vitæ, small hubs, and many kinds of turnery and other small articles.