Part 40
WESTERN DOGWOOD (_Cornus nuttallii_) is a larger, taller tree than the eastern flowering dogwood. A height of 100 feet is claimed for it in the low country along the coast of British Columbia, but there are no authentic reports of trees so large anywhere south of the boundary between Canada and the United States. Its height ranges from twenty to fifty feet, and its diameter from six to twenty inches. The appearance is much the same as its eastern relative. Its berries are red, and grow in clusters of forty or less; the bark on old trunks is rough, but is smooth on those of medium size; the flowers are generally described as very large and showy, but the true flower is quite an inconspicuous affair, being a small, greenish-yellow, button-like cluster, surrounded by four or six snowy-white or sometimes pinkish scales which are popularly but erroneously supposed to form a portion of the real flower. The western dogwood in its native forest often puts out flowers in autumn; is well supplied with foliage which assumes red and orange colors in the fall when the showy berries are at their best. However, the tree has not yet won its way into the good graces of landscape gardeners, and has not been much planted in parks. It wants some of the good points possessed by the flowering dogwood. The western tree shows to best advantage in its native forest where it thrives on gentle mountain slopes and in low bottoms, valleys, and gulches, provided the soil is well drained and rich. It runs southward fifteen hundred miles from Vancouver island to southern California. It cares little for sunshine, and often is found growing nicely in dense shade. Seedlings do better where shade is deep. The wood is lighter but somewhat stronger than that of the flowering dogwood; is pale reddish-brown, with thick sapwood; is hard, and checks badly in seasoning. Mature trees are from 100 to 150 years.
BLUE DOGWOOD (_Cornus alternifolia_) is given that name because of the blue fruit it bears. It has a number of other names, among them being purple dogwood, green osier, umbrella tree, pigeonberry, and alternate-leaved dogwood, the last being simply a translation of its botanical name. It grows in more northern latitudes than the flowering dogwood, and does not range as far south. It is found from Nova Scotia to Alabama, and westward to Minnesota, but its southern habitat lies along the Appalachian mountain ranges. It attains size and assumes form similar to the flowering dogwood. The wood is heavy, hard, brown, tinged with red, the sapwood white. It is a deep forest tree, but has been domesticated in a few instances where it has been planted as ornament. The wood seems to possess the good qualities of flowering dogwood, but no reports of uses for it have been made.
Two varieties of flowering dogwood have been produced by cultivation, weeping dogwood (_Cornus florida pendula_), and red-bract dogwood (_Cornus florida rubra_). English cornel or dogwood (_Cornus mas_) has been planted in many parts of this country. The so-called Jamaica dogwood is not in the dogwood family.
ANDROMEDA (_Andromeda ferruginea_) is a small southern tree of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and in the latter state is sometimes known as titi, though other trees also bear that name. The largest are thirty feet high, if by chance one can be found standing erect, for most of them prefer to sprawl at full length on the ground. The fruit is a small berry of no value. The wood is weak, but hard and sufficiently compact to receive fine polish. The heartwood is light brown, tinged with red.
CALIFORNIA LAUREL
CALIFORNIA LAUREL
(_Umbellularia Californica_)
This tree’s range lies in southern Oregon and in California. It is a member of the laurel family and is closely related to the eastern sassafras and the red and the swamp bays of the southern states; but it is not near kin to the eastern laurels which, strange as it may appear, do not belong to the laurel family, notwithstanding the names they bear.
The people of California and Oregon have several names for this interesting tree. It is known as mountain laurel, California bay tree, myrtle tree, cajeput, California olive, spice tree, laurel, bay tree, oreodaphne, and California sassafras.
Those who call it laurel name it on account of its large, lustrous, thick leaves which adhere to the branches from two to six years. All new leaves do not come at once, as with most trees, but appear a few at a time during the whole summer.
The names which connect this tree with sassafras, spice and cajeput are based on odor and taste. All members of the laurel family in this country are characterized by pungent, aromatic odor and taste, and the one under consideration shares these properties in a remarkable degree. When the leaves and the green bark are crushed, they give off a light, volatile oil in follicles which float in the air, like those of an onion, and when inhaled it produces severe pain over the eyes, and may induce dizziness and violent sneezing. Though the symptoms are alarming to one who is undergoing the experience for the first time, no serious inconvenience follows. Dried leaves are capable of producing a similar effect but with less violence. The California laurel’s close relationship to the camphor tree is readily believed by persons who inhale some of the oily spray from the crushed leaves.
Attempts have been made to produce the commercial oil of cajeput, or a substitute for it, by distilling the leaves and bark of this laurel. A passable substitute has been manufactured, but it cannot be marketed as the genuine article. By distilling the fruit a product known as umbellulic acid has been obtained.
The California laurel carries a very dense crown of leaves. This is due partly to the old crops which hang so long, and to the tree’s habit of lengthening its leading shoots during the growing season, and the constant appearance of young leaves on the lengthening shoots. It can stand an almost unlimited amount of shade itself, and is by no means backward in giving abundance of shade to small growth which is trying to struggle up to light from below. It delights in dense thickets, but it prefers thickets of its own species.
Its fruiting habits and its disposition to occupy the damp, rich soil along the banks of small water courses, are responsible for the thick stands. The fruit itself is an interesting thing. It is yellowish-green in color, as large as a good-sized olive, and looks much like it. The fruit ripens in October, and falls in time to get the benefit of the autumn rains which visit the Pacific coast. Since the trees generally grow along gulches, the fruit falls and rolls to the bottom. The first dashing rain sends a flood down the gulches, the laurel drupes are carried along and are buried in mud wherever they can find a resting place. Germination takes place soon after. The fruit remains under the mud, attached to the roots of the young plants, until the following summer.
The result is that if a laurel gets a foothold in a gulch through which water occasionally flows, lines of young laurels will eventually cover the banks of the gulch as far down stream as conditions are favorable.
The wood of California laurel weighs 40.60 pounds per cubic foot when kiln-dried. That is nine pounds heavier than sassafras. It is very heavy when green and sinks when placed in water. It is hard and very firm, rich yellowish brown in color, often beautifully mottled; but this applies to the heartwood only, and not to the thick sapwood.
Lumbermen have discovered that the wood’s color can be materially changed by immersing the logs when green, and leaving them submerged a long time. The beautiful “black myrtle,” which has been so much admired, is nothing more than California laurel which has undergone the cold water treatment.
The annual rings of growth are clearly marked by dark bands of summerwood. The rings are often wide, but not always, for sometimes the growth is very slow. The wood is diffuse-porous, and the pores are small and not numerous. The wood’s figure is brought out best by tangential sawing, as is the case with so many woods which have clearly-marked rings but small and obscure medullary rays. Figure is not uniform; that is, one trunk may produce a pattern quite different from another. The figure of some logs is particularly beautiful; these logs are selected for special purposes. Sudworth says that none of our hardwoods excels it in beautiful grain when finished, and Sargent is still more emphatic when he declares that it is “the most valuable wood produced in the forests of Pacific North America for interior finish of houses and for furniture.”
The wood of this tree has more than ninety per cent of the strength of white oak, is considerably stiffer, and contains a smaller amount of ash, weight for weight of wood. The species reaches its best development in the rich valleys of southwestern Oregon, where, with the broadleaf maple, it forms a considerable part of the forest growth. The largest trees are from sixty to eighty feet high, and two to four in diameter. In crowded stands the trunks are shapely, and often measure thirty or forty feet to the first limbs; but more commonly the trunk is short.
The boat yards in southwestern Oregon were the first to use California laurel for commercial purposes, but early settlers made a point of procuring it for fuel when they could. The oil in the wood causes it to burn with a cheerful blaze, and campers in the mountains consider themselves fortunate when they find a supply for the evening bonfire.
Shipbuilders have drawn upon this wood for fifty years for material. It is made into pilot wheels, interior finish, cleats, crossties, and sometimes deck planking. Furniture makers long ago made a specialty of the wood for their San Francisco trade. For thirty years travelers admired the superb furniture of the Palace hotel in that city, and wondered of what wood it was made. It was the California laurel. The hotel’s furniture was hand-made, or largely so, at a time when woodworking factories were few on the Pacific coast. The furniture was finally destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake. Furniture is still one of the products made of the wood, but the quantity is small. Other products are interior finish; fixtures for banks, stores and offices; musical instruments, including organs; mathematical instruments, and carpenters’ tools, including rulers, straight-edges, spirit levels, bench screws and clamps, and handles of many kinds.
Makers of novelties and small turnery find it serviceable for paper knives, pin trays, match safes, brush backs, and many articles of like kind. One of the largest uses for it is as walking beams for pumping oilwells in central and southern California. The beauty of grain has nothing to do with this use.
Country blacksmiths repair wagons and agricultural implements with this wood. Farmers have long employed it about their premises for posts, gates, floors, and building material. Cooks flavor soup with the leaves, and poultrymen make henroosts of poles, believing that the wood’s odor will keep insects away. This is probably the old sassafras superstition carried west by early California settlers.
RED BAY (_Persea borbonia_) is a southern member of the laurel family, and close akin to sassafras and the California laurel. The bark is red, hence the name; but it is known also as bay galls, laurel tree, Florida mahogany, false mahogany, and sweet bay. It grows from Virginia to Texas, but is most abundant near the coast, yet it ascends the Mississippi valley to Arkansas. The leaves remain on the tree a full year, but turn yellow toward the last, in consequence of which the species is not evergreen. In shape and color the leaves resemble laurel. The fruit is a small, dark blue drupe, with thin flesh. The wood is heavy, hard, very strong, rather brittle, bright red, with thin, lighter-colored sapwood. It was once very popular in the South for furniture. Rare pieces, some 150 years old, are still found in southern homes. The wood was exported prior to 1741 from the Carolinas, and the quantity seems to have been considerable. It was then regarded as a finer wood than mahogany. It was exported to the West Indies, where mahogany was abundant, and was made into furniture and finish for the homes of wealthy planters and merchants. An old report describes the wood as resembling “watered satin.” It was in early demand by shipbuilders, but it has now ceased to go to boat yards. Except in rare instances, it is not reported by any wood-using industries. In Texas a little is made into pin trays, small picture frames, canes, and shelves. It deserves a more important place, for when polished and finished, it is one of the handsomest woods of this country. Trees attain a height of sixty or seventy feet, and a diameter of two or three.
SWAMP BAY (_Persea pubescens_) attains a height of thirty or forty feet, but is seldom more than a foot in diameter, and is too small for saw timber. The wood is strong, heavy, rather soft, orange colored, streaked with brown, and not as handsome as its larger relative, red bay, which is associated with it from North Carolina to Mississippi. It is an evergreen in some cases, but in others the leaves turn yellow the second spring. The black fruit is a drupe nearly an inch long. The wood is without attractive figure, since its medullary rays are obscure, and the annual rings are indistinct and produce little contrast when the trunks are sawed tangentially. Color is the chief attraction that can be claimed for the wood. A little is occasionally worked into interior finish.
LOCUST
LOCUST
(_Robinia Pseudacacia_)
Locust belongs to the pea family, known in botany as _Leguminosæ_.[6] In most parts of its range it is known simply as locust, but in some localities it is called black locust, an allusion to the color of the bark; yellow locust, descriptive of the heartwood; white locust, referring to the bloom; red locust, probably a reference to the wood, and green locust for the same reason; acacia and false acacia; honey locust, a name which belongs to another species; post locust, because it has always been a favorite tree for fence posts; and pea-flower locust, a reference to the bloom.
[6] This is a very large family, containing trees, shrubs, and vines, such as locusts, acacias, beans, and clovers. There are 430 genera in the world, and many times that many species. The United States has seventeen genera and thirty species of the pea family that are large enough to be classed as trees. Their common names follow: Florida Cat’s Claw, Huajillo, Texan Ebony, Wild Tamarind, Huisache, Texas Cat’s Claw, Devil’s Claw, Leucæna, Chalky Leucæna, Screwbean, Mesquite, Redbud, Texas Redbud, Honey Locust, Water Locust, Coffeetree, Horsebean, Small-leaf Horsebean, Greenbark Acacia, Palo Verde, Frijolito, Sophora, Yellow-wood, Eysenhardtia, Indigo Thorn, Locust, New Mexican Locust, Clammy Locust, Sonora Ironwood, Jamaica Dogwood. These species are treated separately in the following pages, and are given space according to their relative commercial importance in the particular regions where they grow.
Several of the names refer to the color of the wood, and seem contradictory, for yellow, green, and red are not the same; yet the names describe with fair accuracy. Color of the heartwood varies with different trees, yellow with some, tinged with red with others, and sometimes it might be appropriately called blue locust, for the heartwood is nearer that color than any other.
The natural range of locust seems to have been confined to the Appalachian mountain ranges from Pennsylvania to Georgia. It probably existed as a low shrub in parts of Arkansas and Oklahoma. Its range has been extended by planting until it now reaches practically all the states, but is running wild in only about half of them. It has received a great deal of attention from foresters and tree planters. It attracted notice very early, because of its hardness, strength, and lasting properties. At one time the planting of locust came nearly being a fad. In England it was supposed that it would rise to great importance in shipbuilding, and in France it was looked upon as no less important. Books were written on the subject in both English and French. All the details of planting and utilization were discussed. Its generic name, _Robinia_, is in honor of a Frenchman, Robin. Extravagant claims were once made for the wood. When American ships were gaining victory after victory over English vessels in the war of 1812, it was asserted in England that the cause of American success was the locust timber in their ships. The claim may have been partly true, but other factors contributed to the phenomenal series of successes.
The locust craze died a natural death. Too much was claimed for the wood. Possibilities in the way of growth were over estimated. It was assumed that the tree, if planted, would grow everywhere as vigorously as on its native mountains in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, where trees two or three feet in diameter and eighty feet high were found. Experience proved later that nature had planted the locust in the best place for it, and when transplanted elsewhere it was apt to fall short of expectations. Outside of its natural range it grows vigorously for a time, and occasionally reaches large size; but in recent years the locust borer has defeated the efforts of man to extend the range of this species and make it profitable in regions distant from its native home. The tree is often devoured piecemeal, branches and twigs breaking and falling, and trunks gradually disappearing beneath the attacks of the hungry borers. No effective method of combating the pest is known. The planting of locust trees, once so common, has now nearly ceased.
Within its native range, and beyond that range when it has a chance, locust is a valuable and beautiful tree. It is valuable at all times on account of the superior wood which it furnishes, and beautiful when in bloom and in leaf. A locust in full flower is not surpassed in ornamental qualities by any tree of this country. It is a mass of white, exceedingly rich in perfume. It blooms in May or June. During the summer its foliage shows tropical luxuriance with exquisite grace. Its compound leaves are from eight to fourteen inches long, with seven to nine leaflets. They come late in spring and go early in autumn. The tree’s thorns, resembling cat claws, are affixed to the bark only, and usually fall with the leaves. The fruit is a pod three or four inches long, and contains four or eight wingless seeds. They depend on animals to carry them to planting places. The pods dry on the branches, and rattle in the wind most of the autumn. The tree spreads by underground roots which send up sprouts. A locust in winter is not a thing of beauty. It appears to be dead; not a bud visible. Its black, angular branches lack every line of grace.
Locust wood is remarkable for strength, hardness, and durability. It is about one pound per cubic foot lighter than white oak, but is thirty-four per cent stiffer and forty-five per cent stronger. Its strength exceeds that of shagbark hickory, and it is doubtful whether a stronger wood exists in the United States. Its hardness is equally remarkable, and is said to be due to crystals formed in the wood cells, and known as “rhaphides.” Its durability is probably equal to that of Osage orange, mesquite, and catalpa, but it is not easy to fix a standard of durability by which to compare different woods. Locust is the best fence post wood in this country, because it is usually much straighter than other very durable woods. The posts are expected to last at least thirty years, and have been known to stand twice that long.
For more than 150 years locust was almost indispensable in shipbuilding, furnishing the tree nails or large pins which held the timbers together. It supplied material for other parts of ships also, but in smaller quantities. The substitution of steel ships for wooden lessened demand for locust pins, and in many instances large iron nails are used to fasten timbers together. In spite of this, the demand for locust tree nails is nearly always ahead of supply.
The wood’s figure is fairly strong, due to the contrast between the springwood and that grown later, but not to the medullary rays, which are small and inconspicuous. The wood is not in much demand for ornamental purposes. Small amounts are made into policemen’s clubs, rake teeth, hubs for buggy wheels, ladder rungs, and tool handles.
The tree grows rapidly where conditions are favorable, and very slowly when they are not. Usually trees of fence post size are twenty years old at least, but trunks thirty five years old have been known to produce a post for each two years of age, though that was exceptional. Railroads, especially in Pennsylvania, planted locust largely a few years ago for ties. It has been reported that in some instances expectations of growth have not been fully realized.
CLAMMY LOCUST (_Robinia viscosa_) was originally confined to the mountains of North Carolina and South Carolina where its attractive flowers brought it to the notice of nurserymen who have enlarged its natural range a hundred if not a thousand fold. It is now grown in parks and gardens not only in the United States east of the Mississippi river and as far north as Massachusetts, but in most foreign countries that have temperate climates. It is usually a shrub, but on some of the North Carolina mountains it attains a height of forty feet and a diameter of twelve inches. The wood is seldom or never used for any commercial purpose. The leaves are from seven to twelve inches long, and contain thirteen to twenty-one leaflets. The flowers appear in June, possess little odor, and are admired solely for their beauty. They are mingled red and rose color. The pods are from two to three and a half inches long, and contain small, mottled seeds. The wood is hard and heavy, the heart brown and the sap yellow. In its wild haunts it is usually a shrub five or six feet high.
NEW MEXICAN LOCUST (_Robinia neo-mexicana_) is a small southwestern tree, seldom exceeding a height of twenty-five feet or a diameter of eight inches. It ranges from Colorado to Arizona, and takes its name from its presence in New Mexico. It reaches its largest size near Trinidad, Colorado. It is found at elevations of 7,000 feet. Leaves are from six to twelve inches long, and the leaflets number from fifteen to twenty-one. The flowers appear in May and are less showy than those of the eastern locust. The wood is heavy, exceedingly hard, the heartwood yellow, streaked with brown, the thin sapwood light yellow. This locust is occasionally used locally for small posts or stakes, but is generally too small. It is sometimes met with in cultivation in Europe and the eastern states.