Part 48
Dry chestnut wood weighs 28.07 pounds per cubic foot, which makes it a light wood. Its annual rings are as clearly marked as those of any tree in this country. The springwood is filled with large open pores, the summerwood with small ones. The medullary rays are minute, and of no value in giving figure to the wood. Nevertheless, chestnut has strong figure, but it is due solely to the arrangement of the spring and summerwood of the annual rings. It is commonly classed as a coarse-grained wood. The finisher can greatly alter its appearance by rubbing the pores full of coloring matter. The wood is likewise susceptible to change in tone in the fumes of ammonia, and by similar treatment with other chemicals. The light colors of mission furniture are generally the result of treatment of that kind.
The largest cut of chestnut lumber comes from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Connecticut. The largest use by any single industry is probably by the manufacturers of musical instruments, though the honor may be divided with furniture, interior house finish, and coffins and caskets. It is much employed as core or backing on which to glue veneers. The lumber of old, mature trees is best liked for this purpose, because it is not apt to shrink and swell, and it holds glue. It is no detriment that it is riddled with worm holes the size of pins. That kind of chestnut is known in the trade as “sound wormy.” Some persons claim that such lumber is better as backing for veneer than sound pieces, because it is lighter, is sufficiently strong, and the small holes seem to help the glue to stick. Wormy chestnut is frequently not objected to for outside work because the small holes are not hard to fill and cover up. The uses of chestnut are many. Between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 crossties go into railroad construction yearly. From 16,000 to 20,000 tons of wood are demanded annually for tanning extract. Every part of the tree is available.
In recent years a disease due to fungus has attacked chestnut forests of Pennsylvania and neighboring regions. It has destroyed the timber on large areas, and the loss threatens to increase. A tree usually dies in one or two years after it is attacked. The fungus works beneath the bark and completely girdles the tree. The spores of the fungus are believed to be carried from tree to tree on the feet of birds, on the bodies of insects, and by the wind.
GOLDENLEAF CHINQUAPIN (_Castanopsis chrysophylla_) occurs on the Pacific coast from the Columbia river to southern California. It is of its largest dimensions in the coast valleys of northern California where it occasionally attains a size equal to the chestnut tree of the eastern states, but in many other parts of its range it is shrubby. It is an evergreen, and its name is descriptive of the underside of the leaf. Late in summer, flowers and fruit in several stages of growth may be seen at the same time. The nuts are sweet and edible. In northern California the bark is sometimes mixed with that of tanbark oak and sold to tanneries. The wood is considerably heavier than chestnut, and is sometimes employed in the making of agricultural implements. It has small and obscure medullary rays, and its pores are arranged more like those of live oak than of chestnut; that is they run in wavy, radial lines and not in concentric rings as in chestnut. The heartwood is darker than chestnut.
CHINQUAPIN (_Castanea pumila_) is a little chestnut that grows from Pennsylvania to Texas. It is generally a shrub or a bush ten or fifteen feet high east of the Alleghany mountains, but in some of the southern states it reaches a height of fifty feet and a diameter of two or more, and is of largest size in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. It has no name but chinquapin which is an Indian word supposed to have the same meaning that it now has. The nut is from one-fourth to one-half as large as a chestnut, and is fully as sweet. It is sold in the markets of the South and Southwest, but is not an important article of commerce. Where the trees are large enough, the wood is put to the same uses as chestnut. It is manufactured into furniture in Texas, and is bought by railroads for ties.
BASSWOOD
BASSWOOD
(_Tilia Americana_)
There are about twenty species of basswood in the world, and from three to six of them are in the United States. Authors do not agree on the number of species in this country. There are at least three, and they occupy, in part, the same range, with consequent confusion. They are much alike in general appearance, and not one person in twenty knows one from the other. The same names apply to all, when they occur in the same region. Few trees carry more names, and with less reason. Basswood is generally not difficult to identify in summer, but in winter a person only slightly acquainted with different trees might take it for cucumber, and if of small size, it might possibly be mistaken for ash or mountain maple. When the tree is bearing leaves, flowers, and fruit, there is no excuse for mistaking it for any other. The fruit, a cluster of four or five berry-like globes, hangs under a leaf, fixed by a short stem to the midrib. This feature alone should be sufficient to identify the basswood in this country.
Among the many names by which this tree is known, in addition to basswood, are American linden, linn, lynn, limetree, whitewood, beetree, black limetree, wickup, whistle wood, and yellow basswood.
The range is extensive, its northeastern boundary lying in New Brunswick, its southwestern in Texas. It reaches Lake Winnipeg, and is found in Georgia. This delimited area is little short of a million square miles. It reaches a height of from sixty to 120 feet, and a diameter of from eighteen inches to four feet. It has a decided preference for rich soil, and the best lumber is cut in fertile coves and flats, or in low land near streams. The largest trees formerly grew in the forests of the lower Ohio valley, but few of the giants of former times are to be found in that region now. They went to market a generation or two ago. The largest cut of basswood lumber now is in Wisconsin, Michigan, and West Virginia, but most of that from West Virginia is white basswood (_Tilia heterophylla_).
The wood weighs 28.20 pounds per cubic foot, which is more than the other basswoods in this country weigh. The rings of annual growth are not very clearly marked. They may be distinguished, in most cases, by a narrow, light-colored line. This is the springwood. In some trees it is much more distinct than in others. The wood is very porous, but the pores are small, cannot readily be seen with the naked eye, and are scattered pretty evenly through the yearly ring. The medullary rays are small but numerous. They give quarter-sawed lumber a pleasing luster, but are too minute to develop much figure. The general tone of the wood is white. It is soft, works easily, holds its shape well, and is tough, but is in no sense a competitor of oak and hickory in toughness, though it shows the quality best in thin panels which resist splitting and breaking.
In the days when it was customary to ceil houses with boards, both overhead and the walls of rooms, carpenters were partial to basswood because of its softness. Dressing lumber was then nearly always done by hand, and the carpenter who pushed the jack plane ten or twelve hours a day, looked pretty carefully to the softness of the wood he handled. In tongued and grooved work, as in ceiling and wainscoting, it was not necessary to dress the fitting edges as carefully when basswood was used as in using some others, because it is so soft that fittings can be forced, and cracks may be closed by driving the boards together.
Slack coopers have long employed basswood for barrel headings, and also in the manufacture of various kinds of small stave ware, such as pails, tubs, and kegs. In this use, as in ceiling, the softness of the wood is a prime consideration, because the pressure of the hoops will close any small openings. Its whiteness and its freedom from stains and unpleasant odors are likewise important when vessels are to contain food products. Box makers like the wood on that account, and large quantities are manufactured into containers for articles of food.
Much basswood is cut into veneer, some of which serves in single sheets as in making small baskets and cups for berries and small fruits, but a large part of the output is devoted to ply work. Usually three sheets are glued together, but sometimes there are five. By crossing the sheets, to make the grain of one lie at right angles to the next, plies of great strength and toughness are produced. Trunk makers are large users of such, and many panels of that kind are employed by manufacturers of furniture and musical instruments.
Woodenware factories find basswood one of their most serviceable materials, and it is made into ironing boards, wash boards, bread boards, and cutting boards for cobblers, saddlers, and glass cutters. Its lightness and toughness make it serviceable as valves and other parts of bellows for blacksmiths, organs, and piano players. Makers of gilt picture frames prefer it for molding which is to be overlaid with the gilt or gold. It is serviceable for advertising signs because its whiteness contrasts well with printing. Makers of thermometers use it frequently for the wooden body of the instrument, and yard sticks are made of it. Apiarists find no wood more suitable for the small, light frames in which bees build the comb.
The uses of this wood are so many and so various that lists would prove monotonous. The annual cut in this country, exclusive of veneer, is nearly 350,000,000 feet, and the demand for veneer takes many millions more.
Basswood is named for the bark, and the spelling was formerly bastwood. The manufacture of articles from the bark was once a considerable industry, not so much in this country as in Europe. However, some use has been made of the bark here. Louisiana negroes make horse collars of it by braiding many strands together, and chair bottoms are woven of it in lieu of cane and rattan, and it is likewise woven into baskets of coarse kinds. Bark is prepared for this use by soaking it in water, by which the annual layers of the bark are separated, long, thin sheets are produced, and these are reduced to strips of the desired width.
The annual cut of basswood lumber is declining with no probability that it will ever again come up to past figures; but basswood is in no immediate danger of disappearing from American forests. It is not impossible that it may be planted for commercial purposes. In central Europe, forests of basswood, there called linden, are maintained for the honey which bees gather from the bloom. In this country it is often called beetree because of the richness of its flowers in nectar. Possibly bee owners may grow forests for the honey, and when trees are mature, dispose of them for lumber.
WHITE BASSWOOD (_Tilia heterophylla_) attains a trunk diameter as great as that of the common basswood, but is not as tall. Trees sixty or seventy feet high are among the tallest. This species ranges from New York to Alabama, and is found as far west as southern Illinois, and its best development is among the rich valleys and fertile slopes of the Appalachian mountains from Pennsylvania southward. It is the prevailing basswood of West Virginia, and reaches its largest size on the high mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. It averages about two pounds lighter per cubic foot than the common basswood, but ordinarily neither the lumber nor the standing trees of the two species are distinguished. Only persons somewhat skilled in botany are able to tell one species of basswood from another as they occur in the forests of this country.
DOWNY BASSWOOD (_Tilia pubescens_) is a southern member of the basswood group, and is scarce. Its range extends from North Carolina to Arkansas and Texas. Trees are rarely more than forty feet high and fifteen inches in diameter. The wood is light brown, tinged with red, and the sap is hardly distinguishable from the heart. As far as it is used at all, its uses are similar to those of other basswoods.
SOUTHERN BASSWOOD (_Tilia australis_) is confined, as far as is now known, to a small section of Alabama, where it attains a height of sixty feet in rich woodlands. No reports on the quality of the wood have been published, and the species is too scarce to possess much interest to others than systematic botanists.
FLORIDA BASSWOOD (_Tilia floridana_), as its name suggests, is a Florida species, and has not been reported elsewhere. It seems to be the smallest of American basswoods, the largest trees being little more than thirty feet high. No tests of the wood have been made and no uses reported.
MICHAUX BASSWOOD (_Tilia michauxii_) has been listed for a long time, but is still not well known. Its range extends from Canada to Georgia and westward to Texas. Trees three feet in diameter and eighty feet high have been reported. Only botanists distinguish it from other species of basswood with which it is associated.
PAWPAW (_Asimina triloba_) is of more value for its fruit than its wood. It grows from New York to Texas, but in certain localities only. It is the most northern species of the custard apple family, and is usually of little importance above an altitude of 1,500 feet. In Arkansas and some other southwestern regions it is called banana. It is usually a shrub, but may reach a height of forty feet and a diameter of twelve inches. The wood is light, soft, and weak. Pond apple (_Annona glabra_), called custard apple in some parts of its range in Florida, is a member of the same family. It attains the size of pawpaw, and the wood is similar.
AMERICAN HOLLY
AMERICAN HOLLY
(_Ilex Opaca_)
Holly is a characteristic member of a large family scattered through most temperate and tropical regions of the world. It belongs to the family _Aquifoliaceæ_, a name which conveys little meaning to an English reader until botanists explain that it means trees with needles on their leaves, _acus_ meaning needle, and _folium_ leaf. How well holly, with its spiny leaves, fits in that family is seen at once.
About 175 species of holly are dispersed in various parts of the world, the largest number occurring in Brazil and Guiana. _Ilex_ is the classical name of the evergreen oak in southern Europe.
The glossy green foliage and the brilliant red berries of the holly tree have long been associated in the popular mind with the Christmas season. Mingled with the white berries and dull green foliage of the mistletoe, it is the chief Yuletime decoration, and many hundred trees are annually stripped of their branches to supply this demand. The growth is still quite abundant, but if the destruction and waste continue, American holly will soon be exhausted.
Its range extends from Massachusetts to Texas and from Missouri to Florida. In New England, the trees are few and small, and the same holds true in many parts of the Appalachian region. The largest trees are found in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. In the North it grows in rather dry, gravelly soil, often on the margins of oak woods, but in the South it takes to swamps, and does best on river bottoms where the soil is rich. It is often associated with evergreen magnolia, which it resembles at a distance, though differences are plain enough on close examination. The light, grayish-green barks of the two trees look much alike; but the magnolia’s leaves are larger, thicker, and lack the briers on the margins.
Holly varies in size from small straggling bushes to well-formed trees fifty or sixty feet high and two or three in diameter. The principal value of holly is not in its wood, but in its leaves and berries. Some persons suppose that holly leaves never fall. That is true of no tree that attains any considerable age. An examination of a holly thicket, or a single tree, in the spring of the year will reveal a fair sprinkling of dead leaves on the ground, though none may be missed from the branches. Those that fall are three years old, and they come down in the spring. There are always two full years of leaves on the trees.
Flowers are the least attractive part of holly. Few people ever notice the small, unobtrusive cymes, scattered along the base of the young shoots in the early spring, with the crop of young leaves. Nothing showy about them attracts attention.
The fruit is the well-known berry, the glory of winter decorations. It is usually red, but sometimes yellow. The latter color is not often seen in decorations because it is a poor contrast with the glossy green of the leaves. The berries ripen late in autumn and hang until nearly spring, provided they are let alone. That is seldom their fortune, for if they escape the wreath hunter at Christmas, they remain subject to incessant attacks by birds. Fortunately, the berries are not very choice food for the feathered bevies that fly in winter; otherwise, the trees would be stripped in a day or two. Birds are attracted by the color, and they keep pecking away, taking one or two berries at a bait, and in the course of a long winter they get most of them.
The gathering of holly leaves and berries is an industry of much importance, taken as a whole; but it lasts only a short time, and is carried on without much system. The greatest source of supply is northern Alabama, and the neighboring parts of surrounding states; but some holly is gathered in all regions where it is found. Those who collect it for market make small wages, but the harvest comes at a season when little else is doing, and the few dimes and dollars picked up are regarded as clear gain--particularly since most of the holly harvesters have no land of their own and forage for supplies on other people’s possessions.
The seeds of holly are a long time in germinating, and those who plant them without knowing this are apt to despair too soon. The great differences in the germinating habits of trees are remarkable. Some of the maples bear seeds which sprout within a few days after they come in contact with damp soil, certain members of the black oak group of trees drop their acorns with sprouts already bursting the hulls, and mangroves are in a still greater hurry, and let fall their seeds with roots several inches long ready to penetrate the mud at once. But holly is in no hurry. Its seeds lie buried in soil until the second year before they send their radicles into the soil. They are so slow that nurserymen usually prefer to go into the woods and dig up seedlings which are already of plantable size.
Users of woods find many places for holly but not in large amounts. The reported output by all the sawmills in the United States in 1909 was 37,000 feet, and Maryland produced more than any other state. The wood is employed for inlay work, parquetry, marquetry, small musical instruments, and keys for pianos and organs. Engravers find it suitable for various classes of work, its whiteness giving the principal value. It approaches ivory in color nearer than any other American wood. Brush back manufacturers convert it into their choice wares. It is occasionally worked into small articles of furniture, but probably never is used in large pieces.
The wood is rather light, and the vague boundaries between the annual rings, and the smallness and inconspicuousness of the medullary rays, are responsible for the almost total absence of figure, no matter in what way the wood is worked. The so-called California holly (_Heteromeles arbutifolia_) is of a different family, and is not a holly.
DAHOON HOLLY (_Ilex cassine_) grows in cold swamps and on their borders in the coast region from southern Virginia to southern Florida, and westward to Louisiana. It is often found on the borders of pine barrens, is most common in western Florida and southern Alabama, and when at its best, is from twenty-five to thirty feet high and a foot or more in diameter. The leaves are nearly twice as long as those of common holly, and are generally spineless or nearly so. The fruit ripens late in autumn and hangs on the branches until the following spring. The berries are sometimes bright red, oftener dull red, and those fully up to size are a quarter of an inch in diameter. Some hang solitary, others in clusters of three. The wood is light and soft, weighing less than thirty pounds per cubic foot. The heart is pale brown, and the thick sapwood nearly white. The tree is known locally as yaupon, dahoon, dahoon holly, and Henderson wood. This species passes gradually into a form designated as _Ilex myrtifolia_, which Sargent surmises may be a distinct species. Another form, narrowleaf dahoon (_Ilex cassine angustifolia_), is listed by Sudworth.
YAUPON HOLLY (_Ilex vomitoria_) is a small, much-branched tree, often shrubby, and at its best is seldom more than twenty-five feet high and six inches in diameter. Its range follows the coast from southern Virginia to St. John’s river, Florida, and westward to eastern Texas. It sticks closely to tidewater in most parts of its habitat, but when it reaches the Mississippi valley it runs north into Arkansas. It attains its largest size in Texas, and is little more than a shrub elsewhere. Berries are produced in great abundance, are red when ripe, but they usually fall in a short time and are not much in demand for decorations. The wood weighs over forty-five pounds per cubic foot, is hard, and nearly white, but turns yellow with exposure. The leaves of this holly were once gathered by Indians in the southeastern states for medicine. The savages journeyed once a year to the coast where the holly was abundant, boiled the leaves in water, and produced what they called the “black drink.” It was nauseating in the extreme, but they drank copious draughts of it during several days, then departed for their homes, confident that good health was assured for another year.
MOUNTAIN HOLLY (_Ilex monticola_) is so named because it grows among the Appalachian ranges from New York to Alabama. It is best developed in the elevated district where Tennessee and North and South Carolina meet near one common boundary. It is elsewhere shrubby. The leaves are deciduous, and the bright scarlet berries are nearly as large as cherries. They fall too early to make them acceptable as Christmas decorations. The wood is hard, heavy, and creamy-white, and if it could be had in adequate quantities, would be valuable. The trees are sometimes a foot in diameter and forty feet high, but they are not abundant. Their leaves bear small resemblance to the typical holly leaf, but look more like those of cherry or plum.