American Forest Trees Part 29

No other wood equalled hickory for "split brooms," the kind that swept the cabins before broom corn was known or carpet sweepers and vacuum cleaners were invented. The toughness, smoothness, and strength of hickory made it the best oxbow wood, and the same property fitted it for barrel hoops. Thousands of fish casks in New England and tobacco hogsheads in Maryland and Virginia were hooped with hickory before George Washington was born. The wood's value for ax handles was learned early. The Indians used it for the long, slender handles of their stone hammers with which they barked trees in their clearings, and broke the skulls of enemies in war.

Bitternut hickory has about ninety-two per cent of the strength of s.h.a.gbark, and seventy-three per cent of its stiffness. It yields considerably more ash when burned, and is rated a little lower in fuel value.

MOCKER NUT HICKORY (_Hicoria alba_) has many names. It is called mocker nut in Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas; white heart hickory, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, Texas, Illinois, Ontario, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska; black hickory, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri; big bud and red hickory, Florida; hardback hickory, Illinois; white hickory, Pennsylvania, South Carolina; big hickory nut, West Virginia; hognut, Delaware.

The name mocker nut is supposed to refer to the thick sh.e.l.l and disappointingly small kernel within. The range is not as extensive as some of the other hickories. Beginning in southern Ontario, it extends westward and southward to eastern Kansas and the eastern half of Texas. The region of its most abundant growth is in the basin of the lower Ohio and in Arkansas, the best specimens appearing in fertile uplands. This is said to be the only hickory that invades the southern maritime pinebelt, growing on the low country along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in abundance. The leaves are fragrant with a powerful, resinous odor; they have five or seven leaflets with hairy petioles or stems. The bark resembles that of bitternut, and is not scaly like that of s.h.a.gbark. The wood weighs 51.21 pounds per cubic foot. It is hard, strong, tough, flexible. It has about ninety-four per cent of the strength of s.h.a.gbark, and eighty per cent of its stiffness. Certain selected specimens of this species are probably as strong as any hickory; but, as is the case with all woods, there is great difference between specimens, and general averages only are to be relied upon. G. W. Letterman, who collected woods for Sargent's tests, procured a sample of this hickory near Allenton, Missouri, which showed strength sufficient to sustain 20,000 pounds per square inch, and its measure of stiffness was the enormous figure of 2,208,000 pounds per square inch.

The uses of mocker nut hickory do not differ from those of other hickories. The tree is frequently nearly all sapwood, to which the name white hickory is due. Some persons suppose that the heartwood is white, but that misconception is due to the fact that some pretty large trees have no heartwood, but are sap clear through.

The term "black hickory" is sometimes applied to three species with dark-colored bark which bears some resemblance to the bark of ash.

They are bitternut (_Hicoria minima_), pignut (_Hicoria glabra_), and mocker nut (_Hicoria alba_). When the word black is thus used, it refers to the bark and the general outward appearance of the tree, and not to the wood, which is as white as that of any other hickory.

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PIGNUT HICKORY

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PIGNUT HICKORY

(_Hicoria Glabra_)

The name of this tree is unfortunate, although so far as the nuts are concerned, no injustice is done. It is one of the best hickories in the quality of its wood, and also as an ornamental tree. It is likewise abundant in many parts of its range, which extends from Maine to Kansas, Texas, Florida, and throughout most of the territory enclosed by the boundary lines thus delimited.

The name pignut is common in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota; bitternut in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin; black hickory in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Indiana; broom hickory in Missouri; brown hickory in Mississippi, Delaware, Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota; hardsh.e.l.l in West Virginia; red hickory in Delaware; switch bud hickory in Alabama; and white hickory in New Hampshire and Iowa.

The nuts are generally bitter, but some trees bear fruit which is not very offensive to the taste. The avidity with which swine feed upon it gives the common name. This tree is doubtless confused many times with bitternut, though their differences are enough to distinguish them readily if they grow side by side. As far as the woods of the two species are concerned, there is little occasion to keep them separate.

The pignut is a forked tree more frequently than any other species of hickory; and the nuts vary in shape and size more than those of any other. The tree is more remarkable for its variations than for its regularity. In one thing, however, it is pretty constant: the limbs and branches are smooth and clean, hence the botanical name _glabra_. As a name for this tree, smooth hickory would be preferable to pignut. Trunks attain a height of eighty or ninety feet and a diameter of three or four, but the extreme sizes are rare. The largest specimens are found in the lower Ohio valley, and the species is most common in Missouri and Arkansas. It grows farther south and farther west than any other hickory except pecan. Its southern limit is in Florida and its western in Texas.

The uses of hickory fall into general cla.s.ses. More is manufactured into vehicles than into any other single cla.s.s of commodities, but not more than into all other articles combined. The second largest users of hickory are the manufacturers of handles. The third largest demand comes from makers of agricultural implements and farm tools. Large amounts are required for athletic goods, meat smoking, and various miscellaneous purposes. The total amount used yearly in this country, and exported to foreign countries, is not accurately known, but it probably exceeds 500,000,000 feet, board measure. About half of this pa.s.ses through sawmills in the usual manner, and the other half goes directly from the forest to the factory or to the consumer.

The superiority of American buggies, sulkies, and other light vehicles is due to the hickory in their construction. No other wood equals this in combination of desirable physical properties. Though heavy, it is so strong, tough, and resilient that small amounts suffice, and the weight of the vehicle can be reduced to a lower point, without sacrificing efficiency, than when any other wood is employed. It is preeminently a wood for light vehicles. Oak, ash, maple, and elm answer well enough for heavy wagons where strength is more essential than toughness and elasticity. Hickory is suitable for practically all wooden parts of light vehicles except the body. The slender spokes look like frail dowels, and seem unable to maintain the load, but appearances are deceptive. The bent rims are likewise very slender, but they last better than steel. The shafts and poles with which carriages and carts are equipped will stand severe strains and twists without starting a splinter. The manufacturing of the stock is little less than a fine art.

In scarcely any other wood-using industry--probably excepting the making of handles--is the grain so closely watched. Hickory users generally speak of the annual growth rings as the grain. The grain must run straight in spokes, rims, shafts, and poles. If the grain crosses the stick, a break may occur by the simple process of splitting, and the hickory in that case is no more dependable than many other woods.

Handle makers observe the same rule, and must have straight grain. The more slender the handle, the more strictly the rule must be followed. A cross grained golf club handle would fail at the first stroke. An ax handle, if it has cross grain, will last a little longer, but it will speedily split. Many of the best slender handles are of split hickory.

The line of cleavage follows the grain, but a saw does not always do so.

Heavy handles, like those for picks and sledges, are not so strictly straight grained, because they are made strong enough to stand much more strain than is ever likely to be put on them. Red heartwood is frequently used in handles of that kind. Peavey and canthook handles are generally split from billets, because the grain must be straight. Though they are among the largest and heaviest of handles, breakage must be guarded against with extra care, for the snap of a peavey handle at a critical moment might cost the operator his life by precipitating a skidway of logs upon him.

The hickory which goes into agricultural implements fills many places, among the most important being connecting rods. It is often made into springs to take up or check oscillation. It is used for that purpose as picker sticks in textile mills.

Furniture makers could get along without hickory, and they do not need much. It is oftenest seen in dowels, slender spindles, and the rungs of chairs. The makers of sporting and athletic goods bend it for rackets, hoops, and rims, or make vaulting poles, bats, or trapezes.

Sh.e.l.lBARK HICKORY (_Hicoria laciniosa_) is often mistaken for s.h.a.gbark.

The ranges of the two species coincide in part only. s.h.a.gbark grows farther east, north and south than sh.e.l.lbark. The latter occupies an island, as it were, inside the s.h.a.gbark's range. Sh.e.l.lbark is found from central New York and eastern Pennsylvania, westward to Kansas, and southward to North Carolina and middle Tennessee. The species is at its best in the lower Ohio valley and in Missouri. The largest trees are 120 feet high and three in diameter, and are often free from branches half or two-thirds of the length. The species prefers rich, deep bottom lands, and does not suffer from occasional inundation from overflowing rivers. The average tree is not quite as large as s.h.a.gbark. The leaves are larger than those of any other hickory, ranging in length from fifteen to twenty-two inches. There are from five to nine leaflets, usually seven. The upper ones are largest, and may be eight or nine inches long and four or five wide. In the autumn the leaflets drop from the petioles which adhere to the branches and furnish means of identifying the tree in winter. The nuts including the hulls are as large as small apples. When ripe, the hulls open and the nuts fall out; but the hulls fall also. The nuts are as large as s.h.a.gbark nuts, but the two are seldom distinguished in market, though the s.h.a.gbark's are a little richer in flavor. The bark's roughness gives the tree its name.

Strips three or four feet long and five or six inches wide curl up at the lower ends--sometimes at both ends--and adhere to the trunk several years. The species has other names. It is known as big sh.e.l.lbark in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas; bottom sh.e.l.lbark in Illinois; western sh.e.l.lbark or simply sh.e.l.lbark in Rhode Island and Kentucky; thick sh.e.l.lbark in South Carolina, Indiana, and Tennessee; kingnut in Tennessee.

The wood weighs 50.53 pounds per cubic foot, and is very hard, strong, tough, and flexible. The heartwood is dark brown, the sapwood nearly white. This hickory usually has less sapwood in proportion to heart than other members of the species; but the wood is not kept separate from the others when it goes to market, and its uses are as extensive as the other hickories'. It is believed by some foresters that sh.e.l.lbark hickory is worth cultivating for its nuts, as it is a vigorous bearer; but little planting has been done. East of the Alleghanies, particularly in Virginia, some planting has been carried out on old plantations for ornamental purposes. On account of its long taproot, the tree is difficult to transplant, and the nuts should be planted where the trees are expected to remain.

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PECAN

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PECAN

(_Hicoria Pecan_)

The name is pecan in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Kansas; pecan nut and pecan tree in Louisiana. The name is of Indian origin, and means walnut. The tree's natural range is smaller than the present area in which the tree is found, for it has been extensively planted in recent years. It is found as far north as Iowa, south to Texas, and east to Alabama and Kentucky. The highest development of the wild tree is in the lower Ohio valley. Forest trees were once found there which were said to be six feet in diameter and 170 high. Specimens that large would be hard to find now.

The pecan is a hickory. As to wood, it is the poorest of the hickories, and as to nuts it is the best. Its compound leaves are from twelve to twenty inches long with from nine to seventeen leaflets. The latter are from four to eight inches in length, and from one to three wide. The first pairs on the petiole are smallest. The fruit grows in cl.u.s.ters of from three to eleven, the number exceeding any other hickory. The nuts are four-angled, and long for their width.

The wood of pecan has disappointed those who have attempted to use it like other hickories. It does not differ much from them in appearance, but it falls low in mechanical tests. In strength, toughness, and stiffness it is inferior to the poorest of the other hickories. It has less than half the strength and half the stiffness of s.h.a.gbark hickory.

It is a fairly good fuel, but is high in ash.

The inferior quality of the wood has saved many a pecan tree from the sawmill and the wagon shop. Fine trunks stand near public highways, along river banks, and in fields, while all merchantable hickories of other species have been sent to market. The uses of the wood are few. If some of it goes to wagon shops or to factories where agricultural vehicles are made, it is employed for parts which are not required to endure strain or sustain sudden jars.

Fortunately it is a tree with a value of another kind. It is the most important nut tree of the United States at this time, and it promises to remain so. The forest-grown pecans were an article of food for Indians who once lived in the region, and though white settlers who succeeded the Indians as occupants of the land, depended less upon forest fruits than the red men had done, yet the pecan was often of supreme importance in the early years of settlement. The nuts have const.i.tuted an article of commerce ever since the region had markets.

Nurserymen were not slow to recognize the value of the pecan tree for planting purposes, and nursery grown stock has been on the market many years. Extensive orchards have been planted in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and other southern states, and some of the earliest of these orchards are now in bearing. However, by far the largest part of pecans on the market is wild fruit from the forests. Many are shipped in from Mexico, but most grow in the rich woods of southern states. They are gathered like chestnuts in northern woods. The people who pick them sell to local stores at low prices, often taking pay in merchandise. Buyers collect the stock from country and village merchants, and put it on the general market, often at three or four times the price paid to the gatherers of the nuts.

One of the most important matters connected with pecan is the large number of horticultural varieties which have been produced by cultivation and selection. More than seventy have been listed in nursery catalogues and special reports. Some of the nuts are twice the size of those of the forest, and sh.e.l.ls have been reduced in thinness until some of them are really thinner than they should be to stand the rough usage which comes to them in reaching markets.

Dealers occasionally polish pecans to impart the rich, brown color which is supposed to give them the appearance of being fresh and of high grade. The polishing is produced by friction, when the nuts in bulk are shaken violently. Last year's stock takes on as bright a polish as fresh stock, and the color and smoothness alone are not sufficient to prove that pecans are fresh from the trees.

The planted pecan tree grows rapidly and is as easily raised as fruit trees. The wild tree is long-lived, and the cultivated varieties will probably be like it.

NUTMEG HICKORY (_Hicoria myristicaeformis_) is so named because the nut has the size and the wrinkled surface of a nutmeg, though the shape is different. The husk enclosing the nut is almost as thin as paper. The only other name by which it is known is bitter waternut, in Louisiana. The name scarcely applies, for the kernel is said not to be bitter. The range of nutmeg hickory extends from the coast of South Carolina to Arkansas. It is rather abundant in Arkansas, but scarce in most other parts of its range. The tree has several interesting features. It was partly discovered a long time before the discovery was complete. In 1802 Andre F. Michaux saw the nut and to that extent the species was discovered, but many years pa.s.sed before a full description was given to the world by a competent botanist. The wood rates among the strongest and stiffest of all the hickories, according to present information; but the calculations were based on too few tests to be considered final. Two samples of wood procured near Bonneau's depot, South Carolina, by W. H.

Revenel, showed the remarkable breaking strength of 19,822 pounds per square inch, and the measure of stiffness exceeded 2,000,000 pounds to the square inch. That strength is sixteen per cent above s.h.a.gbark. The weight of nutmeg hickory is 46.96 pounds to the cubic foot. The wood is hard, tough, and compact. The structure, including pores, medullary rays, annual rings, springwood and summerwood, is similar to the wood of other hickories. Trees grow best in sandy soil but near swamps and rivers where there is plenty of water. The largest trunks are eighty or one hundred feet in height and two in diameter. When use is made of this hickory it serves the same purposes as the wood of other trees of the group. It is never reported separately in statistics of wood utilization. It is too scarce to be important as a timber tree. It apparently has a future as an ornament, though it has not yet been widely planted. It has proved a success in the Carolinas and it thrives in the climate of Washington, D. C. The l.u.s.ter of its foliage makes it the most beautiful of the hickories. In common with other members of the genus, its long taproot renders the transplanting of nursery stock difficult.

WATER HICKORY (_Hicoria aquatica_) is known as swamp hickory in South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana; bitter pecan in Mississippi and Louisiana, and water bitternut in Tennessee and South Carolina. The northern limit of this species is in Virginia near Mobjack bay, the southern limit in the Caloosa valley, Florida, west to the Brazos river, Texas, and north to southern Illinois. The wood is hard, heavy, strong, but rather brittle; the sapwood is thick and often is nearly white, while the heartwood is dark brown.

It is the most porous of the hickories, and the pores are distributed generally through the annual rings of growth. In other hickories they are largely restricted to the inner part of each ring, though a few are dispersed through all parts. In swamp hickory there is little difference in appearance between the wood grown early in the season and that produced later. The tree is a rapid grower. It is an inhabitant of deep swamps, and if the land is inundated a considerable part of the year, the tree seems to grow all the better. At its best it may attain a height of 100 feet, and a diameter of two, but that size is unusual. The nut is small and wrinkled, and when broken open, pockets of red bitter powder are frequently found inside the sh.e.l.l. Usually the nuts are too bitter to be eaten, but it is said that near the western limit of the tree's range, nuts are sometimes edible.

The only reported uses for the wood are fuel and fencing. It is poor fence material, because, like other hickories, it decays in a short time when exposed to weather. The wood of this genus is rich in foods on which decay-producing fungi feed. Fungus is a low order of plant life which sends its hair-like threads into the wood cells and consumes the material found there; but numerous insects bore into wood to procure food. Few woods suffer from such attacks more than hickory. Even after it is seasoned and manufactured into commodities, it is frequently attacked by various species of powder post beetles, and much injury results. Water hickory while yet standing is often greatly damaged by the larvae of certain moths which find their way into the soft wood just under the bark and tunnel minute galleries which subsequently fill with brown substance. According to R. B. Hough, these brown streaks in water hickory are hard enough to turn the edge of steel tools. They not only damage the structure of the wood but spoil its appearance.