American Forest Trees Part 51

BEECH

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BEECH

(_f.a.gus Atropunicea_)

There is only one beech in the United States, and four or five in Europe and Asia. The southern portion of South America has several species which usually pa.s.s for beech. One or more of them are evergreen. Old world species are sometimes planted in parks and cemeteries in this country, but as forest trees they have no importance in the United States and probably never will have. It becomes a simple matter, therefore, to deal with the tree in this country. It is alone, and has no nearer relatives than the chestnuts, chinquapins, and the oaks, all of which are members of the same family, and the beech gives the name to the family--_f.a.gaceae_. The blue beech, which is common in most states east of the Mississippi river and in some west, is not a member of the same family, though it looks enough like beech to be closely related to it.

The name has come down from remote antiquity. It is one of the oldest names in use. It is said to have descended through thousands of years from old Aryan tribes of Asia which were among the earliest to use a written language. For the want of better material, they cut the letters on beech bark, and a piece of such writing was called "boc." It was but a step from that word to book--a collection of writings. Both beech and book came from the same word "boc" and the connection between them is very evident. The p.r.o.nunciation has been little changed by the Germanic races during thousands of years, but the Romans translated it into Latin and called it "liber," from which we have the word library. Doubtless in very ancient times, say 5,000 years before the building of Solomon's temple, the libraries beyond the Euphrates river consisted of several cords of trimmed and lettered beech bark. Such material being perishable, it has wholly disappeared. The matter is not now directly connected with the lumber interests, but it increases one's respect for beech to know how important a part it must have played in the ancient world, whereby it stamped its name so indelibly upon the language of the most intelligent portion of the human race.

The word buckwheat has the same origin. It means beech wheat, so named because the grains are triangular like beech nuts. The tree is always known as beech in this country, though it may have a qualifying word such as red, white, ridge.

It usually grows in mixed forests of hardwoods, but it is often found in the immediate presence of hemlock and spruce, grows from Maine to Florida, and west to Arkansas. Considerable areas are often occupied by little else. This is attested by the frequency with which such names as "beech flat," "beech ridge," "beech woods," and "beech bottom" are encountered in local geography. Perhaps the finest examples of beech growth in the United States occur in the higher alt.i.tudes of the lower Appalachian range in eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina, where trees are frequently encountered, showing a bole of perfectly symmetrical form, of from three to more than four feet in diameter, and of a sheer height of seventy feet before a limb is encountered. The wood which grows in this section is nearly as hard as that of the North, but that growing on lower levels in the South is of a much softer texture and lighter color, the heart being pinkish rather than reddish-brown.

Beech is one of the truly beautiful trees of the forest. In the eyes of many, the beech is as much to be admired as the American elm or sugar maple. Certainly in spring when it is covered with its staminate blossoms, it is a splendid sight, and its perfect leaves are seldom spotted or eaten by insects. In winter, it is particularly interesting.

Its beautiful bark then appears very bright. After its fine leaves have fallen, though many of them, pale and dry, cling to the branches throughout the winter, the structure of its ma.s.sive head is seen to advantage. In the Canadian markets and those of many of the middle and western states, its nuts are gathered and sold in considerable quant.i.ties. These nuts are favorite food of both the red and gray squirrel and these rodents collect them in considerable quant.i.ties during the late fall, and store them in tree hollows for their winter's supply of food. It often happens, in felling beech trees in the winter, that sh.e.l.led beech nuts to the quant.i.ty of a quart or more will be found secreted in some hollow by these provident little animals.

Formerly beech was little used for lumber, but was long ago given an important place as firewood and material for charcoal. Its excellent qualities as lumber have now made it popular in most markets. The sapwood is comparatively thin and the heart is very much esteemed for many purposes. Many millions of feet of it are converted into flooring and the "pure red" product is very highly esteemed for ornamental floors. It has not as good working qualities as maple, but still it stays in place even better than does that famous flooring material.

Nearly all the large flooring factories of the North, whose princ.i.p.al output is maple, have a side line of beech flooring, and in the South, notably in Nashville, a considerable quant.i.ty of the wood is made into flooring. In full growth this beautiful tree is round topped, with wide spreading and horizontal branches, and shows a normal alt.i.tude of about sixty feet. In this form of growth branches appear on the body very close to the ground, and their ends often trail upon it. In its forest form, where trees of any sort are of commercial importance, it often attains a height of ninety or 100 feet, with smooth rounded bole as symmetrical as the pillar of a cathedral, with a diameter of from two to four feet. Its time to bloom is April or May, and its nuts ripen in October. The bark is a light bluish-gray, and remarkably smooth; the leaves are simple, alternate, with very short petioles, oblong with pointed apex and rounded or narrowed base. The ribs are straight, unbranching, and terminate in remote teeth. The fruit is a pair of three-sided nuts with a sweet and edible kernel which grows in a four-celled p.r.i.c.kly burr, splitting when ripe.

Beech is an excellent fuel and it has long been used for that purpose.

It is so regularly dispersed over the country that most neighborhoods were able to get it in the years when families cut their own firewood.

Later, when charcoal was burned to supply primitive iron furnaces, before c.o.ke could be had, beech was always sought for. Still later, when large commercial plants were built to carry on destructive distillation of wood, beech was still a favorite. Its modern uses are many. There is scarcely a plant east of the Rocky Mountains, engaged in the manufacture of hardwood commodities, which does not use beech. In Michigan alone nearly 30,000,000 feet a year are demanded by box makers, and more than that much more by manufacturers of other commodities. It is widely employed for furniture, filing cabinets, vehicles, interior finish, agricultural implements, woodenware, and musical instruments. It is one of the heaviest and strongest of the common hardwoods, and gives long service when kept dry, but does not last well in damp situations.

Beech is strictly a forest tree. This does not mean that it will not grow in the open, but when it does grow there it makes poor lumber, short and limby. The seedlings must have shade if they are to do any good, but after they attain a certain size they can endure the light.

The roots lie close to the surface of the ground, and the trampling of cattle often kills large trees.

BLUE BEECH (_Carpinus caroliniana_) is not in the beech family, but the name by which it is commonly known, and its resemblance to beech, justify its consideration with beech. The bluish color of the bark is responsible for its common name, but it is known by several others, among them being water beech, because it often grows on or near the banks of streams, and it seldom seems more at home than when it is hanging over the bank of a creek where shade is deep and moisture plentiful. It is often called hornbeam and ironwood, and it is closely related to hop hornbeam (_Ostrya virginiana_). It grows from Quebec, to Florida and from Dakota to Texas, reaching its largest size in eastern Texas where it is sometimes sixty feet high and two in diameter, though this size is unusual. Few trees develop a bole less acceptable to lumbermen. In addition to being short, crooked, twisted, and covered with limbs, it is nearly always ribbed and fluted, so that a log, even if but a few feet long, is apt to be almost any shape except round. The thick sapwood is pale white, heart pale brown. The annual rings are usually easily seen, but they are vague, because of so little difference between the springwood and summerwood; diffuse-porous; medullary rays thin and usually seen only in the aggregate as a white l.u.s.ter where wood is sawed radially. The uses of this wood are many, but the amounts very small. It is made into singletrees and ax and hammer handles in Michigan, wagon felloes in Texas and other parts of the Southwest; levers and other parts of agricultural implements in various localities.

It seldom goes to sawmills, is generally marketed in the form of bolts, and is hard, stiff, and strong.

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CHESTNUT

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CHESTNUT

(_Castanea Dentata_)

Five species of chestnut are known, three of them in the United States.

One of these, _Castanea alnifolia_, is a shrub and has no place in a list of trees. Chestnut and chinquapin are the two others. They are in the beech family to which oaks belong also. The ancient Greeks designated these as food trees (_f.a.gaceae_), not an inappropriate name for chestnut which probably furnishes more human food than any other wild tree. Its range extends from Maine to Michigan and southward to North Carolina and Tennessee. It attains its greatest size in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. It is one of the few well-known woods of the United States that does not bear a half dozen or more local names in the various localities of its growth, but the wood is invariably known as chestnut.

Trees vary in size from sixty to 100 feet in height, and from two to four in diameter. Trunks six feet through occur where trees have grown in the open, but such are not tall, and are not valuable for lumber.

Chestnut trees are sometimes heard of in this country with trunks ten and twelve feet through, but such must be very scarce, because no one seems to know just where they are located. It is not improbable that in rare cases such sizes have existed. In France and Italy trees much larger are well authenticated, but that chestnut is of a species different from ours.

Chestnut is a very long-lived tree where it is fortunate enough to escape the attacks of worms and disease; but as age comes on, it is almost certain to be attacked. Insects bore the wood, and fungus induces decay. Frequently the heartwood of large trunks is all gone, and the trees stand mere sh.e.l.ls with scarcely enough sound wood left to support the diseased tops.

Few species sprout with more vigor than chestnut. In the mountains of eastern Tennessee, W. W. Ashe found that ninety-nine per cent of stumps sprout. This applies as well to veterans of three hundred years as to young growth. Sprouts which rise from the top of a high stump are liable to meet misfortune, because, under their disadvantage they cannot develop adequate root systems; but sprouts which spring from the root collar, or near it, may grow to large trees. It is claimed by some that a chestnut which grows from a sprout has straighter grain than one springing from seed. The latter's trunk is liable to develop a spiral twist, not only of the wood, but also of the bark; but the sprout-grown tree lacks the twist.

Chestnut blooms in midsummer, and the profusion of pale golden catkins makes the isolated tree a conspicuous object at that time. Bloom is nearly always abundant, but the nut crop fails frequently. Several accidents may happen, but the most frequent cause of scarcity in the chestnut crop is a spell of rainy weather while the trees are in bloom.

The rain hinders proper pollenization.

Many thousands of bushels of chestnuts are sent to market yearly in the United States. The nuts are smaller but sweeter than those of European chestnut. The largest part of the crop is collected from trees in open ground. Those in dense forests bear only a few nuts at the top.

Open-grown trees develop enormous and shapely crowns; and it is not unusual for farmers who value their nut bearing trees to pollard them.

This puts the tree out of consideration as a source of lumber. Its branches multiply, but the trunk remains short. It is claimed that a chestnut orchard of good form and in a region where large crops are frequent, is more profitable than an apple orchard. The tree does not demand rich land, but must have well-drained soil. It grows on rocky slopes and ridges, and will prosper where most other valuable trees will barely exist.

It grows rapidly in its early life, but does not maintain the rate many decades. Large trees are old. In the southern Appalachians the ages of telegraph poles forty feet long and six inches in diameter at the top range from forty-five to sixty-five years. Trees of round fence-post size may grow in fifteen years. Few trees will produce posts more quickly or in larger numbers per acre. In some instances nearly a thousand saplings large enough for posts stand on a single acre.

Sprout-growth chestnut often forms nearly pure stands of considerable extent.

The value of this tree is in its wood as well as its nuts. More than 500,000,000 feet of lumber are cut from it yearly. Long before it was much thought of as a sawmill proposition, it was manufactured in large amounts into rails and posts by farmers, particularly in New England and in the Appalachian region. Axes, crosscut saws, mauls, and wedges were the means of manufacture. Untold millions of fence rails were split before wire fences were thought of. It is a durable wood, made so by the tannic acid it contains. As fence rails, it was more durable than the best oak, and where both were equally convenient, farmers nearly always chose chestnut. On high and dry ridges a chestnut rail fence would last from twenty-five to fifty years, and in extreme cases very much longer, even a full century it is claimed.

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 cla.s.sed as a coa.r.s.e-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.

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Ba.s.sWOOD

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Ba.s.sWOOD