American Forest Trees Part 33

(_Fraxinus Nigra_)

When George Washington was a surveyor locating land on the upper waters of the Potomac river, and westward on the Kanawha and Ohio rivers, he always spoke of this ash as "hoop tree" when he marked it with two or with three "hacks," depending upon whether it designated a "corner" or a "line," or a "pointer" in the system of surveying then in use. Trees were used then as landmarks, and were duly recorded in the surveyor's field notes, and were described in the deeds when the t.i.tle to the land pa.s.sed from one party to another. It was not unusual, if subsequent litigation came up, to cut blocks from marked trees to prove that such a corner was at such a place. The "hacks" or ax marks, were sometimes healed over and invisible at the bark, but were found deep in the wood.

The rings of growth covering the ax marks afforded an admissible record of the years that had pa.s.sed since the survey was made. The selection of the black ash as a landmark was one of the few instances in which Washington showed poor judgment; because it is a tree of short life, and might be expected to die before a great many years.

The name hoop ash is applied to this tree yet. It has always been good material for barrel hoops, because it splits into thin pieces, and is sufficiently tough. It is known as basket ash for the same reason. The New England Indians were making fish baskets of it when the first white people landed on those sh.o.r.es, and settlers speedily learned the art from the children of the wilderness. Those untutored savages knew little of wood technology, but they were able to take advantage of a peculiarity in the structure of black ash wood, which the white man's microscope has revealed to him. The Indians doubtless discovered it accidentally. The springwood in the annual ring of black ash is made up of large pores, crowded so closely together that there is really very little actual wood substance there. In other words, the springwood is chiefly air s.p.a.ces. The result is, that billets of black ash are easily separated into thin strips, the cleavage following the weak lines of springwood. A little beating and bending causes the annual rings to fall apart. In some way the Indians found that out, and utilized their knowledge in manufacturing baskets in which to carry fish, acorns, hickory nuts, and other forest and water commodities.

The white people extended the scope of application to include chairs and other furniture in which splits are manipulated. It is worthy of note that Indians made a similar discovery with northern white cedar or arborvitae, which separates into thin pieces by beating and bending.

Barrel makers took advantage of the splitting properties of black ash to make hoops of it, hence the name hoop ash, or hoop tree as Washington called it. The name basket ash has a similar origin.

The names swamp ash and water ash refer to situations in which the tree grows best. It is one of the thirstiest inhabitants of the forest. Its aggressive roots ramify through the soil and drink up the moisture so voraciously that if water is not abundant, neighboring trees and plants may find their roots robbed, and the functions of healthy growth will be interfered with. This has led to a general belief that black ash poisons trees that it touches. It simply robs their roots. Carolina and Lombardy poplars will sometimes do the same thing.

The name black ash by which this tree is now known in most regions where it grows refers to the color of the large, prominent, shiny, blue-black buds in late winter and early spring; to the very dark green leaves in summer--which at a distance resemble the foliage of post oak--and, to some extent, to the dark brown color of the heartwood, though the wood is not always a safe means of identification if judged from superficial appearance only. The form of the tree a.s.sists in identifying it; for it is the slimmest of the ashes, in proportion to its height. Trunks three feet through are heard of, but few persons have ever seen one much over twenty inches, and many are about done growing when they are one foot in diameter. Yet the trunks of such are very tall, perhaps seventy or eighty feet. Their appearance has been likened to tall, slender columns of dark gray granite. They often stand so straight that a plummet line will not reveal a deviation from the perpendicular.

The tree has been called elder-leaved ash. The form of the foliage has something to do with that name, but the odor more. Crush the leaves, and they smell like elder. The compound leaves are from twelve to sixteen inches long; the leaflets range from seven to eleven in number, and the side leaflets have no stalks. The leaves appear late in spring, and they fall early in autumn. They drop with the b.u.t.ternut leaves, and like them, all at once. The seed is winged, and the wing forms a margin entirely round the seed.

The wood of black ash is rather soft, moderately heavy, tough, but only moderately strong, not durable in contact with the soil, dark brown in color with sapwood whiter. The species ranges farther north than any other ash, and grows in cold swamps and on the low banks of streams and lakes from Newfoundland to Winnipeg, and southward to Virginia, southern Illinois, southern Missouri, and Arkansas.

Black ash fills many important places in the country's wood-using industries, but the total quant.i.ty is not large. In 1910 Michigan manufacturers reported the annual quant.i.ty in that state at 9,110,432 feet, and in Illinois the total was 9,936,000 feet. The uses for the wood in Michigan may be regarded as typical of the whole country. The reported uses were, auto seats, baskets, boat finish, b.u.t.ter tubs, candy pails, carriage seats, crating, church pews, fish nets, office fixtures, flooring, furniture, ice chests, interior finish, jelly buckets, kitchen cabinets, lard tubs, piano frames, putty kegs, racked hoops, spice kegs, tin plate boxes, veneer, washboards, and woven splint boxes.

Black ash burls are characteristic excrescences on the trunk. They begin as small lumps or k.n.o.bs under the bark, and never cease growing while the tree lives. They may reach the dimensions of wash tubs, but most do not exceed the size of a gallon measure. The grain of the wood is exceedingly distorted and involved. The burls are sliced or sawed in veneers which are much prized by cabinet makers. Early New Englanders made bowls of them, which seldom checked or split during generations of service. The burls are believed to be due to advent.i.tious buds; that is, buds which originate deep in the wood, but are never able to force their way through the bark. The internal structure of the ash burl indicates that the buried bud grows, branches, and sends shoots in various directions, but all of them are hopelessly enmeshed in the wood substance, and never are able to free themselves and burst through the bark. A constantly enlarging excrescence is the result.

BLUE ASH (_Fraxinus quadrangulata_) is named from a blue dye procured from the inner bark. The botanical name relates to the square shape of the young twigs, particularly the twigs of young trees, and was given by A. F. Michaux who found the species growing in the South. It reaches its best development on the lower Wabash river in Indiana and Illinois and on the Big Smoky mountains in Tennessee. Its northern limit reaches southern Michigan, its western is in Missouri. It is not abundant, if found at all, east of the Appalachian mountains. Trees may reach a height of 100 feet and a diameter of three, but about seventy is the average height, with a diameter of two feet or less. The leaves resemble those of black ash in form, but the foliage when seen in ma.s.s is yellow-green instead of dark green like that of black ash. The seeds look like those of black ash. The tree bears perfect flowers, and in that respect differs from most other species of ash.

The wood is heavier than that of any other member of the ash group, except Texas ash. It weighs about the same as white oak, which is six pounds per cubic foot more than white ash weighs. In general appearance the wood resembles white ash, but it is usually considered stronger and more springy. The trunks of young trees are largely or entirely sapwood.

Sometimes no heartwood is formed until an age of seventy or eighty years is reached. Many manufacturers of ash tool handles prefer this species to any other ash, because of its thick, white sapwood. It is often made into handles for hoes, rakes, shovels, pitchforks, spades, and snaths for scythes. Makers of vehicles draw liberally upon this wood within its range, as do furniture makers and the manufacturers of flooring. It is regarded as harder than white ash, and consequently better flooring material.

LEATHERLEAF ASH (_Fraxinus velutina_) changes its velvety leaves to a leathery condition, hence the conflict in the meanings of its two names. _Velutina_ means velvet-like. The compound leaves are seldom six inches long, often not three, and they are made up of from three to nine leaflets. The small seeds are equipped with wings. The tree is small and would be without any commercial importance except that it grows in an arid region where any wood is welcome. It is made into ax, hammer, and pick handles, and wagon makers are often glad to get it. It is found among the mountains and canyons of western Texas, in New Mexico, Arizona, southern Nevada, and southeastern California, near the sh.o.r.es of Owen's lake. The largest trees are scarcely forty feet high and eight inches in diameter. The wood is not hard or strong, and is of slow growth. The largest trunks are apt to be hollow. Sapwood is comparatively thick.

BERLANDIER ASH (_Fraxinus berlandieriana_) may not be ent.i.tled to a place among native species, of the United States. Some suppose it was introduced from Mexico by early Spanish settlers in western Texas. It now grows wild there along Nueces and Blanco rivers where specimens thirty feet high and a foot in diameter are found.

Southward in Mexico it is a popular street tree, and trunks reach six or eight feet in diameter. The wood is soft and is used only locally and in very small quant.i.ties.

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OREGON ASH

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OREGON ASH

(_Fraxinus Oregona_)

This tree is unusual in that it has only one common name, and that is a translation of its botanical name which was given it by Nuttall who visited the Pacific coast several years before the discovery of gold.

The moist bottom lands of southwestern Oregon are best suited to its growth, and here the best individuals and most abundant stands are found. Moist soil and climate are essential to proper development of this tree, and in such environment it is found from Puget Sound southward along the coast to San Francisco. A little further from the coast it grows along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, to the low mountains in San Diego and San Bernardino counties, California, in the southern extension of its range occupying a rather dry region.

The trunk grows to a height of eighty or 100 feet, and is often three feet in diameter. It is covered with a gray-brown bark, exfoliating in flaky scales. The leaves are from five to fourteen inches long, and have five or seven firm, light-green leaflets, finely toothed and bluntly pointed. The flowers appear in April and May and are in compact panicles; the fruit in cl.u.s.ters, broadly winged and round pointed, and from one to two inches long.

The scarcity of good hardwoods on the Pacific coast gives this ash more importance than it otherwise would have, and the importance which it possesses has been frequently overstated. It is not abundant of form and size fitting it for lumber. It has long been cut in small quant.i.ties, but never in large. The census returns for 1910 show that less than 400,000 feet per year are reported in its entire range. Three-fourths of this is sawed in Oregon, the remainder in Washington. Though the species has a range of 800 miles north and south through California, no sawmill reported a foot of it. However, it is probable that census returns fail to do this wood full justice; for it is well known that considerable quant.i.ties are manufactured into articles without pa.s.sing through sawmills. Chief among such commodities is slack cooperage. b.u.t.ter tubs of Oregon ash are common. Much goes to wagon shops, and some of it without aid of sawmills.

Little or none of this wood is shipped outside its range, and its use is local. Boat builders work it into finish for cabins and upper parts, and some serves as ribs. It is often seen as handles for picks, shovels, spades, pitchforks, and rakes. A little finds place, combined with other woods, in office and store fixtures. Its grain resembles that of white ash. It is not as heavy, and it is not believed to be as strong. It is hard, brittle, brown in color, with thick, lighter-colored sapwood.

Furniture makers list it as shop material, and such is its largest reported use in Washington. A moderate amount is made into saddletrees and stirrups, and much is used as fuel.

Oregon ash has been planted for shade and ornament in both this country and Europe. It grows rapidly and develops a symmetrical crown. The habit it has of coming into leaf late in the spring and throwing its foliage down early in autumn is held by some as a serious objection to it as an ornamental tree; but it has compensating habits. It is remarkably free from disease, and, though leaves come late and go early, while its foliage is on, it is healthy and vigorous. Reproduction is satisfactory in the tree's wild state, and there is no danger that the species will disappear. No movement has yet been made to plant this ash for commercial timber growing.

GREEN ASH (_Fraxinus lanceolata_) has been given that name on account of the bright color of its foliage. It has other names, however, which indicate that its greenness is not always preeminently prominent. In Iowa and Arkansas they call it blue ash; in Kansas and Nebraska white ash; in some regions it is known as water ash, and elsewhere swamp ash.

Some botanists do not regard it as a separate species but call it a variety of red ash, but the consensus of opinion is that it is a distinct species, though there appear to be connecting forms grading from red ash into green ash. Certain it is that the two are distinct enough in certain parts of the country. The range of green ash is more extensive than that of any other ash in this country. Beginning in Vermont it pa.s.ses southward to Florida; northwestward to the Saskatchewan river several hundred miles north of the international boundary line; along the base of the Rocky Mountains and over the ranges to Arizona, and through Texas. This includes more than half of the area of the United States. Notwithstanding a range so extensive, the total quant.i.ty of green ash timber in the country is not large. No pure forests or extensive stands exist. Trees are widely dispersed, and when lumbermen cut them, the wood is sold as some other, usually as white ash. The wood has the general characters of red ash. It weighs about forty-four pounds per cubic foot of dry wood; is moderately strong, fairly stiff and elastic, and, like other species of ash, it is not durable in contact with the soil.

Green ash is more planted than any other in the cold and dry regions of the West and Northwest. It is a prairie tree and is found along highways and in door yards from Kansas northward into British America. It stands drought better than any other ash, and resists cold fully as well, and yet it endures the warm weather and the rains of the South and flourishes there. It is not a large tree, but of sufficient size for use as furniture, finish, and vehicle making. It is seldom listed in statistics of woods which go to sawmills, yet it is known that a good many logs find their way to mills, while wagon makers and slack coopers employ it in producing their commodities. The tree is an abundant seeder, and the seeds continue to fall during most of the winter.

RED ASH (_Fraxinus pennsylvanica_) is neither a large tree nor very abundant, yet it has a wide range and is put to use wherever lumbermen find it convenient. The lumber generally pa.s.ses in the market as white ash, and for most purposes it is as good, but is rated lower than that wood in elasticity. It is called brown ash in Maine, black ash in New Jersey, river ash in Rhode Island. The last name is bestowed because the tree prefers moist land near rivers and ponds, and largest specimens are found in such situations, where it is often an a.s.sociate of black ash and is frequently mistaken for it, though it should not be difficult to tell the species apart. A slight reddish tinge sometimes shows on the outer bark; the inner layer of bark is reddish; the small twigs and the under sides of leaves are clothed with hairs which sometimes suggest redness; and the heartwood is reddish-brown. Persons who speak of the tree as red ash probably have one or more of those characteristics in mind. As a tree it has no striking peculiarities. Its usual height is forty or sixty feet; its diameter from fifteen to twenty inches; its compound leaves ten or twelve inches long, with seven or nine leaflets; its seeds one or two inches in length, narrow, and sharply pointed, with slender, graceful wing.

The range of red ash is from New Brunswick to Dakota, and from Florida to Alabama, with all of the included region of a million square miles. It attains its best development in the north Atlantic states, while it is usually inferior west of the Alleghany mountains. It develops a broad crown in open ground, but even there its lower limbs die and drop, while in forests the trunk grows tall and the crown is reduced. It is planted for shade and ornament, but it seems to have no superiority over white ash for that purpose.

Some of the Michigan manufacturers list red ash separately in their factories, and apparently this is not done elsewhere in the country.

About three-quarters of a million feet a year are used in that state, and since uses there are doubtless typical of uses in the country generally, the list possesses importance: Automobile frames, boxes, b.u.t.ter tubs, crates, eveners, flooring, furniture, interior finish, neck yokes, singletrees, wagon poles. Farther east in early times red ash was occasionally split for fence rails, but that use is important now only as history.

PUMPKIN ASH (_Fraxinus profunda_) is a tree of peculiar interest. It was unknown before 1893, though the region had been settled over a hundred years. It has the largest leaves, largest fruit, and largest swelled base of all American ashes. Notwithstanding that, it remained so deeply hidden in swamps that it escaped discovery. The botanical name refers to the deep swamps in which the tree chooses its habitation. Its great, swelled base enables it to stand on the soft mud of lagoon bottoms, and the abnormal swelling is ribbed like a pumpkin, hence the only English name the tree has ever had. These are not the only remarkable things connected with this ash. Its range includes three or four deep swamps, far apart. One is in southern Missouri, New Madrid country, another near Varney, Arkansas, and a third, in a vast mora.s.s on the Apalachicola river, Florida. It is believed to have been originally a Florida species, and by some freak of nature it reached the Missouri and Arkansas swamps. Certain other Florida plants accompanied it, one of which was corkwood (_Leitneria floridana_). It is expected that pumpkin ash will be found elsewhere in deep swamps intermediate between the extremes of its range. The uses of this wood are few, because it is scarce, and the trees are difficult of access on account of being nearly always surrounded by water. Lumbermen who operate in swamps occasionally bring out a few ash logs with cypress and tupelo. No tests seem to have been made of the wood. Trees are sometimes 120 feet high and three in diameter above the swelled bases.

WATER ASH (_Fraxinus caroliniana_) is much lighter in weight than any other American ash, and the wood is also lighter in color. It is weaker and less elastic than any other, and is lower in fuel value.

It weighs less than white pine. It grows in deep swamps from southern Virginia to Florida and westward in swamps to Texas. Some have confused it with pumpkin ash, but the two are quite distinct.

This tree is also called poppy ash. The leaves are from seven to twelve inches long, with five or seven leaflets which are much blunter than most other ash leaves. The seeds are nearly in the center of the broad, long wing, and are better flyers than most ash seeds. The tree seldom exceeds forty feet in height, or twelve inches in diameter. It is not known that the wood is ever used. Its scarcity will keep it from becoming important, though its uncommon lightness may lead to its employment for certain purposes.

BILTMORE ASH (_Fraxinus biltmoreana_) is named from Biltmore, N. C., where the tree attains its best development, a height of forty or fifty feet and a foot or less in diameter. Its range extends from northern West Virginia southward along the foothills of the Appalachian mountains to Georgia, Alabama, and middle Tennessee. The seed wings are slender, and only slightly narrowed at the end. The leaf is ten or twelve inches long, with seven or nine leaflets. The twigs of young trees are hairy. An occasional log doubtless goes to sawmills, but no report has been made of uses of the wood.

FLORIDA ASH (_Fraxinus floridana_) is a deep swamp tree, thirty or forty feet high, and a few inches in diameter. It is found in the valley of St. Mary's river, southern Georgia, and along the lower Apalachicola river, Florida. The compound leaves are five or more inches long with three or five leaflets. The seeds are small but their wings are wide and long. No report has been made concerning the quality of the wood, nor has it been used, as far as known. The supply is very small.

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SUGAR MAPLE

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SUGAR MAPLE

(_Acer Saccharum_)