American Forest Trees Part 50

BLACK CHERRY

(_Prunus Serotina_)

This widely distributed tree supplies the cherry wood of commerce. Its natural range extends from Nova Scotia westward through the Canadian provinces to the Kaministiquia river; south to Tampa bay in Florida and west to North Dakota, eastern Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and eastern Texas. The tree is known as wild black cherry, wild cherry, black cherry, rum cherry, whiskey cherry, and choke cherry.

Cherry belongs to a remarkably large family and the ordinary observer would never suspect the relationship that exists between it and other growths to which it bears little resemblance. It is in the rose family (_Rosaceae_). It has mult.i.tudes of small and large cousins, most of them small, however. Among them are the crabapple, the serviceberry, the haws, thorns, plums, and the peach, besides plants which do not rise to the dignity of trees.

The crown of black cherry is narrow and the branches are horizontal. In height the tree ranges from fifty to one hundred or more feet. The bark is a dark reddish-brown, rough and broken into plates, becoming smoother toward the top. The branchlets are a rich reddish-brown, and are marked with tiny orange-colored dots. The leaves are small, alternate, oblong or oval lanceolate, taper-pointed at the apex and pointed or rounded at the base, finely serrate; at maturity glabrous, firm, glossy, the light colored midrib being very distinct. The flowers are white and grow on pedicels in long slender racemes, which terminate leafy shoots. The fruit is almost black, showing deep red coloring beneath and is a small round drupe; vinous, although not disagreeable to the taste. In most instances a liking for it must be acquired, but comparatively few people ever take the trouble to acquire it. The old settlers among the Alleghany mountains had a way of pressing the juice from the drupes and by some simple process converting it into "cherry bounce," a beverage somewhat bitter but it never went begging when the old-time mountaineers were around. This was doubtless what persons had in mind who called it rum cherry. Few fruits, either wild or tame, contain more juice in proportion to bulk. Ripe fruit is employed as a flavor for alcoholic liquors. The bark contains hydrocyanic acid and is used in medicine. The peculiar odor of cherry bark is due to this acid.

In early years the ripening of the cherry crop among the ranges of the Appalachian mountains was a signal for bears to congregate where cherry trees were thickest. The cubs were then large enough to follow their mothers--in August--and it was considered a dangerous season in the cherry woods, because the old bears would grow fierce if molested while feeding. The mountaineers knew enough to stay away from the danger points at that time, unless they went there purposely to engage in a bear fight. It was a common saying among those people that "cherry bears" should be let alone.

The cherry's chief importance in this country has been due to its lumber. Unfortunately, that value lies chiefly in the past, for the supply is running low. It never was very great, for, though the species has a large range, it is sparingly dispersed through the forests. In many parts of its range a person might travel all day in the woods and see few cherry trees, and perhaps none. The best stands hardly ever cover more than a few acres. Generally the trees grow singly or in clumps. It appears to be nearly wholly a matter of soil and light, for the seeds, which are carried by birds, are scattered in immense numbers, and only those grow which chance to find conditions just right. The tree wants rich ground and plenty of room, which is a combination not often found in primeval forest regions; but, since the country has been largely cleared, cherry trees spring up along fence rows and in nooks and corners. If let alone they grow rapidly, but trunks so produced are of little value for lumber, because too short and limby. In the forest the tree lifts its light crown high on a slender trunk to reach the sunshine, and such trunks supply the cherry lumber of commerce. Near the northern limit of its range it seems to abandon its demand for good soil and is content if it is supplied with light only. It betakes itself to the face of cliffs, sometimes overhanging the sea, and so near it that the branches are drenched in spray thrown up by breakers. It is needless to say that no good lumber is produced under such circ.u.mstances.

The first loss of cherry occurred when the farms were cleared. It stood on the best ground, and the land-hungry Anglo-Saxon wanted that for himself. He cut the tall shapely cherry trees, built fences and barns of some of the logs, and burned the balance in the clearing. Then came the pioneer lumberman who did not take much, because his old up-and-down saw, which was run by water, would cut only about a thousand feet a day, and there was plenty of other kinds of timber. But when the steam mill put in its appearance, cherry went fast. Its price was high enough to pay for a long haul. From that day till this, cherry has gone to market as rapidly as millmen could get to it.

Next to walnut, it is the highest priced lumber produced in the United States. The average cut per mill, according to returns of those who sawed it in 1909, was only 11,200 feet, and the total output that year was only 24,594,000 feet, contributed by twenty-nine states. The five leading producers were, in the order named, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and Indiana. The next year the total output fell to 18,237,000 feet, and cherry went down to a place among the "minor species," such as dogwood, alder, locust, and buckeye. The day of its importance in the lumber industry is past. It has become too scarce to attract much attention, but there will always be some cherry in the market, though veteran trunks, three and four feet through and good for four sixteen-foot logs, will be seldom seen in the years to come.

While good taste ordinarily dictates that cherry be finished in a tone approximating its natural color, it is quite frequent that it masquerades as mahogany. A well-known and perfect method of making cherry look like mahogany is to have the wood rubbed with diluted nitric acid, which prepares it for the materials to be subsequently applied; afterwards, to a filtered mixture of an ounce and a half of dragon's blood dissolved in a pint of spirits of wine, is added one-third that quant.i.ty of carbonate of soda, the whole const.i.tuting a very thin liquid which is applied to the wood with a soft brush. This process is repeated at short intervals until the wood a.s.sumes the external appearance of mahogany. While cherry is employed as an imitation of mahogany, it is in its turn imitated also. Sweet birch is finished to look like cherry, and for that reason is sometimes known as cherry birch.

Cherry weighs 36.28 pounds per cubic foot; it is very porous, but the pores are small and are diffused through all parts of the annual ring.

The wood has no figure. Its value is due to color and l.u.s.ter. The medullary rays are numerous but small, and in quarter-sawing they do not show as mirrors, like oak, but as a soft l.u.s.ter covering the whole surface.

The princ.i.p.al uses of cherry have always been in furniture and finish, but it has many minor uses, such as tool handles, boxes for garden seeds, spirit levels and other tools, and implements, patterns, penholders, actions for organs and piano players, baseblocks for electrotypes and other printing plates, and cores for high-cla.s.s panels.

Aside from its color, its chief value is due to its comparative freedom from checking and warping. This cherry is one of the few trees that cross the equator. It extends from Canada far down the west coast of South America.

CHOKE CHERRY (_Prunus virginiana_) is widely distributed in North America from Canada to Mexico. It is said to attain its largest size in the Southwest where trees are sometimes forty feet high and a foot in diameter. The name is due to the astringency of the half ripe fruit which can scarcely be eaten. When fully ripe it is a little more tolerable, and is then black, but is red before it is ripe. The color of immature cherries deceives the unsophisticated into believing they are ripe. In Canada the fruit is made into pies and jelly, and it is said the tree is occasionally planted for its fruit. The Indians of former times made food of it. The tree is small, and bruised branches emit a disagreeable odor; leaves contain prussic acid, and when partly withered, they are poisonous to cattle. The trunks are nearly always too small for commercial purposes, and are apt to be affected with a fungous disease known as black knot.

WESTERN CHOKE CHERRY (_Prunus demissa_) grows from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific in the United States. It is often regarded as the western form of choke cherry, but it has more palatable fruit, and trees are a little larger, while trunks are so crooked that no user of wood cares to have anything to do with them. The wood is weak, but is hard and heavy.

BITTER CHERRY (_Prunus emarginata_) belongs to the far West, and is found from British Columbia to southern California. In size it ranges from a low shrub to a tree a foot in diameter and forty feet high. The largest sizes are found in western Washington and Oregon.

The wood is soft and brittle, brown streaked with green. It is not known that any attempt has been made to put the wood of this tree to any useful purpose. The bark and the leaves are exceedingly bitter.

Fruit ripens from June to August, depending on region and elevation, and it is from one-fourth to one-half inch in diameter, black, and intensely bitter.

HOLLYLEAF CHERRY (_Prunus ilicifolia_) is a California species growing in the bottoms of canyons from San Francis...o...b..y to the Mexican line. It is rarely more than thirty feet high, but has a large trunk, sometimes two feet in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, and it ought to be valuable in the manufacture of small articles, but fuel is the only use reported for it. The fruit is insipid, and ripens late in autumn. The foliage is much admired and has led to the planting of the species for ornamental purposes.

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WILD RED CHERRY

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WILD RED CHERRY

(_Prunus Pennsylvanica_)

In addition to the name wild red cherry by which this tree is known in most parts of its range, it is called bird cherry in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa; red cherry in Maine and Rhode Island; fire cherry in New York and many other localities; pin cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Michigan, Iowa, and North Dakota; pigeon cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Ontario, and North Dakota; and wild cherry in Tennessee and New York.

Its range extends from Newfoundland to Hudson bay, west to British Columbia, south through the Rocky Mountains to Colorado, and in the East along the Appalachian ranges to North Carolina and Tennessee. It reaches its largest size among the Big Smoky mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina.

It is ordinarily a tree thirty or forty feet high, and from eight to ten inches in diameter, though trunks are sometimes twenty inches through.

It grows fast, but is very short-lived. Many stands disappear in thirty years or less, but individuals survive two or three times that long, if they stand in open ground. One of its names is fire cherry, and that fitly describes it. Like paper birch and lodgepole pine, it follows forest fires where the ground is laid bare by the burning. Nature seems to have made peculiar provisions whereby this tree clothes barren tracts which have been recently burned. In the first place, it is a prolific seeder. Its small, red cherries are borne by bushels on very young trees. Birds feed on them almost exclusively while they last, and the seeds are scattered over the surrounding country. They have such thick sh.e.l.ls that few germinate unless they pa.s.s through a moderate fire, which cracks the sh.e.l.ls, or at least they do not sprout until they come in direct contact with mineral soil. When a fire burns a forest, thousands of the cherry seedlings spring up. Many persons have wondered where they come from so quickly. They were already scattered among the forest leaves before the fire pa.s.sed. The heat crazed their sh.e.l.ls, and the burning of the leaflitter let them down on the mineral soil where they germinated and soon came up by thousands. The case is a little different with paper birch and with aspen, which are also fire trees.

Their seeds cannot pa.s.s through fire without perishing, and when birches and aspens follow a fire it means that the seeds were scattered by the wind after the pa.s.sing of the fire. Doubtless cherry seeds are often scattered after the fire has pa.s.sed; but it is believed that most of those which spring up so quickly have pa.s.sed through the fire without being destroyed.

This small cherry is one of the means by which damage by forest fires is repaired. The tree is of little value for lumber or even for fuel; but it acts as a nurse tree--that is, it shelters and protects the seedlings of other species until they obtain a start. By the time the cherry trees die, the seedlings which they have nursed are able to take care of themselves, and a young forest of valuable species is established.

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 lat.i.tude 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 sphaerocarpa_) grows near the sh.o.r.es 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 a.s.sisted 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 (_Chrysobala.n.u.s 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.

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