Part 47
Except in this indirect way, the wild red cherry is of little use to man. The wood is soft, light, and of pleasing color, but trees are nearly always too small to be worked into useful articles. About the only industry of which there is any record, which draws supplies from this source, is the manufacture of pipe stems. The straight, slender, bright-barked branches are cut into requisite lengths and bored endwise, and serve for stems of cheap pipes, and occasionally for those more expensive. The bark, like that of most cherries, is marked by dark bands running part way round the stems. These are known as lenticels, and exist in the bark of most trees, but they are usually less conspicuous in others than in cherry. It is this characteristic marking which gives the cherry pipe stem its value.
Wild red cherry blooms from May to July, depending on latitude and elevation, and the fruit ripens from July to September. The cherries hang in bunches, are bright red, quite sour, and the seed is the largest part. They are occasionally made into jelly, wine, and form the basis of certain cough syrups.
WEST INDIA CHERRY (_Prunus sphærocarpa_) grows near the shores of Biscayne bay, Florida. It there blooms in November and the fruit ripens the next spring. The tree attains a height of from twenty-five to thirty feet, and a diameter of five or six inches. When grown in the open at Miami, Florida, it is larger, and is much liked as an ornament. The thin, smooth bark is brown, tinged with red, and is marked by large conspicuous lenticels. The wood is hard and light, and of light clear red color. It is too scarce to be of much importance, but paper knives, napkin rings, and other novelties made of it are sold in souvenir stores in southern Florida. Its range extends south to Brazil.
WILLOWLEAF CHERRY (_Prunus salicifolia_) is a small tree, also called Mexican cherry, is more common south of the United States than in this country, ranging as far south as Peru. It is found on some of the mountains of southern New Mexico and Arizona.
LAUREL CHERRY (_Prunus caroliniana_) is a southern species which sticks close to the coast in most of its range from South Carolina to Texas. It has many names, among them wild peach, wild orange, mock orange, evergreen cherry, mock olive, and Carolina cherry. Leaves hang two years, and the fruit remains nearly one. The latter is black and about half an inch long. The withered leaves are poisonous if eaten by cattle. The tree is thirty or forty feet high, and eight or ten inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, color light brown to dark, rich brown, sometimes of much beauty, but no record has been found of any use for it. The tree is often planted for ornament.
WILD PLUM (_Prunus americana_) is found from New Jersey to Montana, southward to New Mexico and Texas, and extends to Florida and Mexico. Its range covers about a million square miles. There are seven or more species of wild plums in the United States. The fruit of all of them is edible. They have been planted accidentally or otherwise in many localities where they were not found before the country was settled. The plum was an important fruit in the country’s early history. The pioneers gathered wild fruits before planted orchards came into bearing, and the plum was one of the best which nature supplied. Early travelers among the Indians in the South frequently spoke of Indian peaches. Such references have led some to believe that the peach was native in that region, but it is safe to conclude that what was called the peach was really some species of wild plum. These fruits were among the earliest to become domesticated. In fact, they were abundant about the sites of Indian towns and old fields, where the savages had scattered seeds without any purpose on their part of planting trees; and early settlers imitated the Indians, and plums were soon growing in the vicinity of most of the cabins. As a forest tree, it usually thrived best on the banks of streams, for there it could find more sunshine than in the deep woods, and it bore much more fruit. The ranges of several species of plums overlapped, and different sizes and colors of fruit were found in the same locality even before white men assisted the spread of species. The common plum, known to botanists as _Prunus americana_, is recognized under many names among laymen; among these names are yellow plum, red plum, horse plum, hog plum, August plum, native plum, and goose plum. Usually the plum’s skin is red, and the flesh yellow, which accounts for its names, both red and yellow. The tree ranges in height from twenty to thirty-five feet, and from five to ten inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, and dark rich-brown. It is suitable for turnery and small novelties, but little of it has been used.
CANADA PLUM (_Prunus nigra_) appears to be the most northern member of the plum group. It grows from Newfoundland to Manitoba, and south into the northern tier of states. Its range has been much extended by planting, and a number of varieties have appeared. It is twenty or thirty feet high, and five to eight inches in diameter. Flowers appear in April and May, and the fruit is ripe in September and October. The plums are about an inch long, orange-red in color, with yellow flesh. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong. Those who cultivate this tree often do so for the beauty of the flowers, rather than for the value of the fruit. The wood is not used for commercial purposes.
BLACK SLOE (_Prunus umbellata_), known also as southern bullace plum, hog plum, and wild plum, ranges from South Carolina, round the coast through Florida, to Louisiana and up the Mississippi valley into Arkansas. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet high and from six to ten inches in diameter. The fruit ripens from July to September, is black when ripe, and often nearly an inch long. The people where it grows use it for jelly. It is not reported that the wood is used for any purpose.
WESTERN PLUM (_Prunus subcordata_) grows west of the Cascade mountains from southern Oregon to central California. It is often a low bush, but at its best forms a tree twenty feet high and six inches in diameter, but its wood is of no economic importance. Its deep, purple-red plums ripen in autumn and are an excellent wild fruit, juicy and tart. During the fruit season the plum thickets were formerly infested by both bears and Indians, and many a fight for possession took place, with victory sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. The white inhabitants now make jam and jelly of the fruit.
ALLEGHANY SLOE (_Prunus allegheniensis_) is so named because it is best developed among the Alleghany mountains of Pennsylvania. The tree is eighteen or twenty feet high and six or eight inches in diameter. The wood is without value for commercial purposes, but the tree’s fruit has some local importance. It ripens about the middle of August, and is somewhat less than an inch in diameter, with dark, reddish-purple skin, covering yellow flesh.
CHICKASAW PLUM (_Prunus angustifolia_) is a well-known wild plum of the South from Delaware to Texas, and north to Kansas. Its natural range is not known, because it has been so widely planted, accidentally or otherwise, near farm houses and in fence corners. Its bright, red fruit goes only to local markets. Negroes gather most of the crop in the South. The wood is not considered to have any value, but, in common with other plums, it possesses qualities which fit it for many small articles.
GARDEN WILD PLUM (_Prunus hortulana_) is supposed to have originated in Kentucky from a cross between the Chickasaw plum and the common wild plum (Prunus americana). It has spread from Virginia to Texas. The largest trees are thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The fruit ripens in September and October, is deep red or yellow, with hard, austere, thin flesh, quite sour. The fruit is called wild goose or simply goose plum in Tennessee and Kentucky. Horticulturists have made many experiments with this plum.
COCOA PLUM (_Chrysobalanus icaco_), also called gopher plum, grows in southern Florida, and its insipid fruit is seldom eaten except by negroes and Seminole Indians. There is little sale for it in the local markets. Trees are sometimes thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The light brown wood is heavy, hard, and strong, but it is seldom used. The tree grows in Africa and South America as well as in Florida.
BEECH
BEECH
(_Fagus Atropunicea_)
There is only one beech in the United States, and four or five in Europe and Asia. The southern portion of South America has several species which usually pass for beech. One or more of them are evergreen. Old world species are sometimes planted in parks and cemeteries in this country, but as forest trees they have no importance in the United States and probably never will have. It becomes a simple matter, therefore, to deal with the tree in this country. It is alone, and has no nearer relatives than the chestnuts, chinquapins, and the oaks, all of which are members of the same family, and the beech gives the name to the family--_Fagaceæ_. The blue beech, which is common in most states east of the Mississippi river and in some west, is not a member of the same family, though it looks enough like beech to be closely related to it.
The name has come down from remote antiquity. It is one of the oldest names in use. It is said to have descended through thousands of years from old Aryan tribes of Asia which were among the earliest to use a written language. For the want of better material, they cut the letters on beech bark, and a piece of such writing was called “boc.” It was but a step from that word to book--a collection of writings. Both beech and book came from the same word “boc” and the connection between them is very evident. The pronunciation has been little changed by the Germanic races during thousands of years, but the Romans translated it into Latin and called it “liber,” from which we have the word library. Doubtless in very ancient times, say 5,000 years before the building of Solomon’s temple, the libraries beyond the Euphrates river consisted of several cords of trimmed and lettered beech bark. Such material being perishable, it has wholly disappeared. The matter is not now directly connected with the lumber interests, but it increases one’s respect for beech to know how important a part it must have played in the ancient world, whereby it stamped its name so indelibly upon the language of the most intelligent portion of the human race.
The word buckwheat has the same origin. It means beech wheat, so named because the grains are triangular like beech nuts. The tree is always known as beech in this country, though it may have a qualifying word such as red, white, ridge.
It usually grows in mixed forests of hardwoods, but it is often found in the immediate presence of hemlock and spruce, grows from Maine to Florida, and west to Arkansas. Considerable areas are often occupied by little else. This is attested by the frequency with which such names as “beech flat,” “beech ridge,” “beech woods,” and “beech bottom” are encountered in local geography. Perhaps the finest examples of beech growth in the United States occur in the higher altitudes of the lower Appalachian range in eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina, where trees are frequently encountered, showing a bole of perfectly symmetrical form, of from three to more than four feet in diameter, and of a sheer height of seventy feet before a limb is encountered. The wood which grows in this section is nearly as hard as that of the North, but that growing on lower levels in the South is of a much softer texture and lighter color, the heart being pinkish rather than reddish-brown.
Beech is one of the truly beautiful trees of the forest. In the eyes of many, the beech is as much to be admired as the American elm or sugar maple. Certainly in spring when it is covered with its staminate blossoms, it is a splendid sight, and its perfect leaves are seldom spotted or eaten by insects. In winter, it is particularly interesting. Its beautiful bark then appears very bright. After its fine leaves have fallen, though many of them, pale and dry, cling to the branches throughout the winter, the structure of its massive head is seen to advantage. In the Canadian markets and those of many of the middle and western states, its nuts are gathered and sold in considerable quantities. These nuts are favorite food of both the red and gray squirrel and these rodents collect them in considerable quantities during the late fall, and store them in tree hollows for their winter’s supply of food. It often happens, in felling beech trees in the winter, that shelled beech nuts to the quantity of a quart or more will be found secreted in some hollow by these provident little animals.
Formerly beech was little used for lumber, but was long ago given an important place as firewood and material for charcoal. Its excellent qualities as lumber have now made it popular in most markets. The sapwood is comparatively thin and the heart is very much esteemed for many purposes. Many millions of feet of it are converted into flooring and the “pure red” product is very highly esteemed for ornamental floors. It has not as good working qualities as maple, but still it stays in place even better than does that famous flooring material. Nearly all the large flooring factories of the North, whose principal output is maple, have a side line of beech flooring, and in the South, notably in Nashville, a considerable quantity of the wood is made into flooring. In full growth this beautiful tree is round topped, with wide spreading and horizontal branches, and shows a normal altitude of about sixty feet. In this form of growth branches appear on the body very close to the ground, and their ends often trail upon it. In its forest form, where trees of any sort are of commercial importance, it often attains a height of ninety or 100 feet, with smooth rounded bole as symmetrical as the pillar of a cathedral, with a diameter of from two to four feet. Its time to bloom is April or May, and its nuts ripen in October. The bark is a light bluish-gray, and remarkably smooth; the leaves are simple, alternate, with very short petioles, oblong with pointed apex and rounded or narrowed base. The ribs are straight, unbranching, and terminate in remote teeth. The fruit is a pair of three-sided nuts with a sweet and edible kernel which grows in a four-celled prickly burr, splitting when ripe.
Beech is an excellent fuel and it has long been used for that purpose. It is so regularly dispersed over the country that most neighborhoods were able to get it in the years when families cut their own firewood. Later, when charcoal was burned to supply primitive iron furnaces, before coke could be had, beech was always sought for. Still later, when large commercial plants were built to carry on destructive distillation of wood, beech was still a favorite. Its modern uses are many. There is scarcely a plant east of the Rocky Mountains, engaged in the manufacture of hardwood commodities, which does not use beech. In Michigan alone nearly 30,000,000 feet a year are demanded by box makers, and more than that much more by manufacturers of other commodities. It is widely employed for furniture, filing cabinets, vehicles, interior finish, agricultural implements, woodenware, and musical instruments. It is one of the heaviest and strongest of the common hardwoods, and gives long service when kept dry, but does not last well in damp situations.
Beech is strictly a forest tree. This does not mean that it will not grow in the open, but when it does grow there it makes poor lumber, short and limby. The seedlings must have shade if they are to do any good, but after they attain a certain size they can endure the light. The roots lie close to the surface of the ground, and the trampling of cattle often kills large trees.
BLUE BEECH (_Carpinus caroliniana_) is not in the beech family, but the name by which it is commonly known, and its resemblance to beech, justify its consideration with beech. The bluish color of the bark is responsible for its common name, but it is known by several others, among them being water beech, because it often grows on or near the banks of streams, and it seldom seems more at home than when it is hanging over the bank of a creek where shade is deep and moisture plentiful. It is often called hornbeam and ironwood, and it is closely related to hop hornbeam (_Ostrya virginiana_). It grows from Quebec, to Florida and from Dakota to Texas, reaching its largest size in eastern Texas where it is sometimes sixty feet high and two in diameter, though this size is unusual. Few trees develop a bole less acceptable to lumbermen. In addition to being short, crooked, twisted, and covered with limbs, it is nearly always ribbed and fluted, so that a log, even if but a few feet long, is apt to be almost any shape except round. The thick sapwood is pale white, heart pale brown. The annual rings are usually easily seen, but they are vague, because of so little difference between the springwood and summerwood; diffuse-porous; medullary rays thin and usually seen only in the aggregate as a white luster where wood is sawed radially. The uses of this wood are many, but the amounts very small. It is made into singletrees and ax and hammer handles in Michigan, wagon felloes in Texas and other parts of the Southwest; levers and other parts of agricultural implements in various localities. It seldom goes to sawmills, is generally marketed in the form of bolts, and is hard, stiff, and strong.
CHESTNUT
CHESTNUT
(_Castanea Dentata_)
Five species of chestnut are known, three of them in the United States. One of these, _Castanea alnifolia_, is a shrub and has no place in a list of trees. Chestnut and chinquapin are the two others. They are in the beech family to which oaks belong also. The ancient Greeks designated these as food trees (_Fagaceæ_), not an inappropriate name for chestnut which probably furnishes more human food than any other wild tree. Its range extends from Maine to Michigan and southward to North Carolina and Tennessee. It attains its greatest size in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. It is one of the few well-known woods of the United States that does not bear a half dozen or more local names in the various localities of its growth, but the wood is invariably known as chestnut.
Trees vary in size from sixty to 100 feet in height, and from two to four in diameter. Trunks six feet through occur where trees have grown in the open, but such are not tall, and are not valuable for lumber. Chestnut trees are sometimes heard of in this country with trunks ten and twelve feet through, but such must be very scarce, because no one seems to know just where they are located. It is not improbable that in rare cases such sizes have existed. In France and Italy trees much larger are well authenticated, but that chestnut is of a species different from ours.
Chestnut is a very long-lived tree where it is fortunate enough to escape the attacks of worms and disease; but as age comes on, it is almost certain to be attacked. Insects bore the wood, and fungus induces decay. Frequently the heartwood of large trunks is all gone, and the trees stand mere shells with scarcely enough sound wood left to support the diseased tops.
Few species sprout with more vigor than chestnut. In the mountains of eastern Tennessee, W. W. Ashe found that ninety-nine per cent of stumps sprout. This applies as well to veterans of three hundred years as to young growth. Sprouts which rise from the top of a high stump are liable to meet misfortune, because, under their disadvantage they cannot develop adequate root systems; but sprouts which spring from the root collar, or near it, may grow to large trees. It is claimed by some that a chestnut which grows from a sprout has straighter grain than one springing from seed. The latter’s trunk is liable to develop a spiral twist, not only of the wood, but also of the bark; but the sprout-grown tree lacks the twist.
Chestnut blooms in midsummer, and the profusion of pale golden catkins makes the isolated tree a conspicuous object at that time. Bloom is nearly always abundant, but the nut crop fails frequently. Several accidents may happen, but the most frequent cause of scarcity in the chestnut crop is a spell of rainy weather while the trees are in bloom. The rain hinders proper pollenization.
Many thousands of bushels of chestnuts are sent to market yearly in the United States. The nuts are smaller but sweeter than those of European chestnut. The largest part of the crop is collected from trees in open ground. Those in dense forests bear only a few nuts at the top. Open-grown trees develop enormous and shapely crowns; and it is not unusual for farmers who value their nut bearing trees to pollard them. This puts the tree out of consideration as a source of lumber. Its branches multiply, but the trunk remains short. It is claimed that a chestnut orchard of good form and in a region where large crops are frequent, is more profitable than an apple orchard. The tree does not demand rich land, but must have well-drained soil. It grows on rocky slopes and ridges, and will prosper where most other valuable trees will barely exist.
It grows rapidly in its early life, but does not maintain the rate many decades. Large trees are old. In the southern Appalachians the ages of telegraph poles forty feet long and six inches in diameter at the top range from forty-five to sixty-five years. Trees of round fence-post size may grow in fifteen years. Few trees will produce posts more quickly or in larger numbers per acre. In some instances nearly a thousand saplings large enough for posts stand on a single acre. Sprout-growth chestnut often forms nearly pure stands of considerable extent.
The value of this tree is in its wood as well as its nuts. More than 500,000,000 feet of lumber are cut from it yearly. Long before it was much thought of as a sawmill proposition, it was manufactured in large amounts into rails and posts by farmers, particularly in New England and in the Appalachian region. Axes, crosscut saws, mauls, and wedges were the means of manufacture. Untold millions of fence rails were split before wire fences were thought of. It is a durable wood, made so by the tannic acid it contains. As fence rails, it was more durable than the best oak, and where both were equally convenient, farmers nearly always chose chestnut. On high and dry ridges a chestnut rail fence would last from twenty-five to fifty years, and in extreme cases very much longer, even a full century it is claimed.