American Forest Trees Part 43

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 quant.i.ty 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 sa.s.safras superst.i.tion carried west by early California settlers.

RED BAY (_Persea borbonia_) is a southern member of the laurel family, and close akin to sa.s.safras 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 quant.i.ty 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 p.u.b.escens_) 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 a.s.sociated 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.

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LOCUST

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LOCUST

(_Robinia Pseudacacia_)

Locust belongs to the pea family, known in botany as _Leguminosae_.[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 cla.s.sed as trees. Their common names follow: Florida Cat's Claw, Huajillo, Texan Ebony, Wild Tamarind, Huisache, Texas Cat's Claw, Devil's Claw, Leucaena, Chalky Leucaena, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.serted 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 a.s.sumed 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 surpa.s.sed in ornamental qualities by any tree of this country. It is a ma.s.s 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 s.h.a.gbark 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 quant.i.ties. The subst.i.tution 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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.

TEXAN EBONY (_Zygia flexicaulis_) ranges from the Texas coast through Mexico to Lower California. It reaches a height of thirty feet or more, and a diameter of two or less. It is a beautiful tree along the lower Rio Grande where it reaches its largest size. The light yellow or cream-colored, very fragrant flowers bloom from June till August; the fruit ripens in Autumn but adheres several months to the branches. Mexicans roast the seeds as a subst.i.tute for coffee. The color of the heartwood gives this tree its name, but it is not a true ebony. The wood of the roots is blacker than that of the trunk, and small articles made of roots resemble black ebony of Ceylon. The trunk wood is liable to be streaked with black, brown, and medium yellow. The rings of annual growth are frequently of different colors. Considerable demand is made upon this wood in Texas for crossties. It is very durable, but is so hard that holes must be bored for the spikes. It is sold in large amounts as cordwood, and it burns well. Other articles made of this so-called ebony are foundation blocks for buildings and rollers for moving houses. It is used also for small turnery.

HUAJILLO (_Zygia brevifolia_) has no English name, but Americans in the Rio Grande valley where this tree grows call it by its Mexican name. It is a larger tree in Mexico than on this side of the river.

It is not often more than thirty feet high and six inches in diameter, and is generally a shrub. Its beautiful foliage looks like ma.s.ses of ferns, and the flowers range from white to violet-yellow.

The wood is dark, hard, heavy, and is seldom used for anything but fuel.

FLORIDA CAT'S CLAW (_Zygia unguis-cati_), with a Latin name that would make Julius Caesar stare and gasp, reaches its largest size in the United States on Elliott's Key, Florida. Its name refers to its curved thorns. Trunks twenty-five feet high and eight inches in diameter are the largest in this country. It bears pods, but the leaves are not compound, thus differing from most trees of the pea family. The wood is not put to any use, though it is very hard and heavy, rich red, varying to purple, with clear yellow sapwood. It is said to check badly in drying. The bark is used for medicine in some of the islands of the West Indies.

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HONEY LOCUST

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HONEY LOCUST

(_Gleditsia Triacanthos_)

This tree has never suffered for want of names, but most of them refer either to the sweetness of the pod or to the fierceness of the thorns.

The belief has long prevailed that it was the pods of this tree on which John the Baptist fed while a recluse in the Syrian desert. The tradition should not be taken seriously. It was certainly not this tree, if any, which furnished food to the prophet in the wilderness, for it does not grow in Syria. Some related species may grow there, for species of _Gleditsia_ occur in western Asia as well as in China, j.a.pan, and west Africa. The generic name is in honor of Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch, a German botanist who died in 1786.

The name honey locust refers to the pod, not the flowers. The latter are greenish, inconspicuous, and though eagerly sought by bees, they offer no particular attractions to people. Few persons ever notice them.

In some of the southwestern states the tree is called black locust, though for what reason it is not apparent. Sweet locust, by which name it is known in several states, has reference to the pods, as do the names honey, and honey-shucks locust, applied in different localities.

Many persons in naming the tree have thorns in mind. It is known as three-thorned acacia, thorn locust, thorn tree, th.o.r.n.y locust, and th.o.r.n.y acacia. The botanist who named it considered thorns a characteristic, for _Triacanthos_ means "three-thorned."

No one who has ever had dealings with the thorns, will fail to duly consider them. They are about the most ferocious product of American forests. The tree's trunk and largest branches bristle with them, standing out like porcupine quills, and sharper than any needle devised by human ingenuity. Microscopists use them for picking up and handling minute objects, their points being smooth and delicate though their shafts may be strong and rough. Thorns are arrested branches, coming from deep down in the wood. No more can one of them be pulled out than a limb can be extracted by the roots. They come from the center of the tree or limb. Some put out leaves and become true branches, but others sharpen their points, a.s.sume an att.i.tude of hostility, and remain thorns to the end of their lives. Some of them are a foot long, and are so strong that birds flying against them are impaled and meet cruel death.

A well-armed trunk is proof against the agility and skill of the squirrel. He cannot negotiate the thorns, and probably he tries only once. The hot pursuit of a dog will not compel him to attempt it. All trees, however, are not formidably thorned; some have few, and certain varieties have none.

The honey locust is sometimes called the Confederate pin tree in the South. This is a reference to the Civil war, and the use occasionally made of the thorns by soldiers in mending the rents in their torn uniforms. The thorns were once put to a somewhat similar use among the Alleghany mountains where local factories for carding and spinning country wool employed them to pin up the mouths of wool sacks.

The natural range of honey locust has been greatly extended by man. It was not originally found east of the Alleghany mountains. It grew from western Pennsylvania to northern Alabama and Mississippi, and westward to Nebraska and Texas. It is now naturalized east of the Alleghanies, and southward to the Gulf of Mexico. Planting for ornamental purposes and for hedges has been the cause of its extension into new territory.

In spite of thorns, it is ornamental. Its foliage is thin, and its flowers inconspicuous, but the tree possesses a grace which wins it favor. It grows very rapidly, and in a short time a seedling becomes a respectable tree, and continues its rapid growth a long time. In southern Indiana and Illinois, which is the best part of its range, trees have attained a height of 140 feet and a diameter of six. The average size of forest-grown specimens is seventy-five feet in height, and two or more in diameter.