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American Forest Trees

by Henry H. Gibson · English · Gutenberg #42124 · 1,303,763 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: American Forest Trees

Author: Henry H. Gibson

Editor: Hu Maxwell


        
Release date: February 18, 2013 [eBook #42124]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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[Illustration: HENRY H. GIBSON]


AMERICAN FOREST TREES

by

HENRY H. GIBSON

Edited by Hu Maxwell







Hardwood Record
Chicago
1913

Copyright 1913 by
Hardwood Record
Chicago, Ill.

The Regan Printing House
Chicago.




PREFACE


The material on which this volume is based, appeared in Hardwood Record,
Chicago, in a series of articles beginning in 1905 and ending in 1913,
and descriptive of the forest trees of this country. More than one
hundred leading species were included in the series. They constitute the
principal sources of lumber for the United States. The present volume
includes all the species described in the series of articles, with a
large number of less important trees added. Every region of the country
is represented; no valuable tree is omitted, and the lists and
descriptions are as complete as they can be made in the limited space of
a single volume. The purpose held steadily in view has been to make the
work practical, simple, plain, and to the point. Trees as they grow in
the forest, and wood as it appears at the mill and factory, are
described and discussed. Photographs and drawings of trunk and foliage
are made to tell as much of the story as possible. The pictures used as
illustrations are nearly all from photographs made specially for that
purpose. They are a valuable contribution to tree knowledge, because
they show forest forms and conditions, and are as true to nature as the
camera can make them. Statistics are not given a place in these pages,
for it is no part of the plan to show the product and the output of the
country’s mills and forests, but rather to describe the source of those
products, the trees themselves. However, suggestions for utilization are
offered, and the fitness of the various woods for many uses is
particularly indicated. The prominent physical properties are described
in language as free as possible from technical terms, and yet with
painstaking accuracy and clearness. Descriptions intended to aid in
identification of trees are given; but simplicity and clearness are held
constantly in view, and brevity is carefully studied. The different
names of commercial trees in the various localities where they are
known, either as standing timber or as lumber in the yard and factory,
are included in the descriptions as an assistance in identification. The
natural range of the forest trees, and the regions where they abound in
commercial quantities, are outlined according to the latest and best
authorities. Estimates of present and future supply are offered, where
such exist that seem to be authoritative. The trees are given the common
and the botanical names recognized as official by the United States
Forest Service. This lessens misunderstanding and confusion in the
discussion of species whose common names are not the same in different
regions, and whose botanical names are not agreed upon among scientific
men who mention or describe them. The forests of the United States
contain more than five hundred kinds of trees, ranging in size from the
California sequoias, which attain diameters of twenty feet or more and
heights exceeding two hundred, down to indefinite but very small
dimensions. The separating line between trees and shrubs is not
determined by size alone. In a general way, shrubs may be considered
smaller than trees, but a seedling tree, no matter how small, is not
properly called a shrub. It is customary, not only among botanists, but
also among persons who do not usually recognize exact scientific terms
and distinctions, to apply the name tree to all woody plants which
produce naturally in their native habitat one main, erect stem, bearing
a definite crown, no matter what size they may attain.

The commercial timbers of this country are divided into two classes,
hardwoods and softwoods. The division is for convenience, and is
sanctioned by custom, but it is not based on the actual hardness and
softness of the different woods. The division has, however, a scientific
basis founded on the mechanical structures of the two classes of woods,
and there is little disagreement among either those who use forest
products or manufacture them, or those who investigate the actual
structure of the woods themselves, as to which belong in the hardwood
and which in the softwood class.

_Softwoods_--The needleleaf species, represented by pines, hemlocks,
firs, cedars, cypresses, spruces, larches, sequoias, and yews, are
softwoods. The classification of evergreens as softwoods is erroneous,
because all softwoods are not evergreen, and all evergreens are not
softwoods. Larches and the southern cypress shed their leaves yearly.
Most other softwoods drop only a portion of their foliage each season,
and enough is always on the branches to make them evergreen. Softwoods
are commonly called conebearers, and that description fits most of them,
but the cedars and yews produce fruit resembling berries rather than
cones. Though the needleleaf species are classed as softwoods, there is
much variation in the absolute hardness of the wood produced by
different species. The white pines are soft, the yews hard, and the
other species range between. If there were no other means of separating
trees into classes than tests of actual hardness of wood, the line
dividing hardwoods from softwoods might be quite different from that now
so universally recognized in this country.

_Hardwoods_--The broadleaf trees are hardwoods. Most, but not all, shed
their foliage yearly. It is, therefore, incorrect to classify deciduous
trees as hardwoods, since it is not true in all cases, any more than it
is true that softwoods are evergreen. Live oaks and American holly are
evergreen, and yet are true hardwoods. In a test of hardness they stand
near the top of the list.

There are more species of hardwoods than of softwoods in this country;
but the actual quantity of softwood timber in the forests greatly
exceeds the hardwoods. Nearly two hundred species of the latter are
seldom or never seen in a sawmill, while softwoods are generally cut and
used wherever found in accessible situations.

As in the case of needleleaf trees, there is much variation in actual
hardness of the wood of different broadleaf species. Some which are
classed as hardwoods are softer than some in the softwood list. It is
apparent, therefore, that the terms hardwood and softwood are commercial
rather than scientific.

Palm, cactus, and other trees of that class are not often employed as
lumber, and it is not customary to speak of them as either hardwoods or
softwoods.

_Sapwood and Heartwood_--Practically all mature trees contain two
qualities of wood known as sap and heart. The inner portion is the
heartwood, the outer the sap. They are usually distinguished by
differences of color.

The terms are much used in lumber transactions and are well understood
by the trade. The two kinds of wood need be described only in the most
general way, and for the guidance and information of those who are not
familiar with them. Differences are many and radical in the relative
size and appearance of the two kinds of wood in different species, and
even between different trees of the same species. No general law is
followed, except that the heartwood forms in the interior of the tree,
and the sapwood in a band outside, next to the bark. In the majority of
cases young trees have little heartwood, often none. It is a development
attendant on age, yet age does not always produce it. Some mature trees
have no heartwood, others very little.

The two kinds of wood belong to needleleaf and broadleaf trees alike;
but palms, owing to their manner of growth, have neither. Their size
increases in height rather than in diameter. With palms, the oldest wood
is in the base of the trunk, the newest in the top; but in the ordinary
timber tree the oldest wood is in the center of the trunk, the youngest
in the outside layers next the bark. It is the oldest that becomes
heartwood, and it is, of course, in the center of the tree. The band of
sapwood is of no certain thickness, but averages much thicker in some
species than in others. The sapwood of Osage orange is scarcely half an
inch thick, and in loblolly pine it may be six inches or more.

Heartwood is known by its color. The eye can detect no other difference
between it and the surrounding band of sapwood. There is no fundamental
difference. The heart was once sapwood, and the latter will sometime
become heartwood if the tree lives long enough. As the trunk increases
in size and years, the wood near the heart dies. It no longer has much
to do with the life of the tree, except that it helps support the weight
of the trunk. The heartwood is, therefore, deadwood. The activities of
tree life are no longer present. The color changes, because mineral and
chemical substances are deposited in the wood and fill many of the
cavities. That process begins at the center of the trunk and works
outward year by year, forming a pretty distinct line between the living
sapwood and the dead and inert heartwood.

For some reason, the heartwood of certain species is prone to decay.
Sycamore is the best example. The largest trunks are generally hollow.
The heart has disappeared, leaving only the thin shell of sapwood, and
this is required not only to maintain the tree’s life and activities,
but to support the trunk’s weight. In most instances the substances
deposited in the heartwood, and associated with the coloring matter,
tend to preserve the wood from decay. For that reason heart timber lasts
longer than sap when exposed in damp situations. The dark and variegated
shades of the heartwood of some species give them their chief value as
cabinet and furniture material. The sapwood of black walnut is not
wanted by anybody, for it is light in color and is characterless; but
when the sap has changed to heart, and its tones have been deepened by
the accumulation of pigments, it becomes a choice material for certain
purposes. The same is true of many other timbers, notably sweet and
yellow birch, black cherry, and several of the oaks.

It sometimes happens that when sapwood is transformed into heart, a
physical change, as well as a coloring process, affects it. Persimmon
and dogwood are examples, and hickory in a less degree. The sapwood of
persimmon and dogwood makes shuttles and golf heads, but after the
change to heartwood occurs, it is considered unsuitable. Handle makers
and the manufacturers of buggy spokes prefer hickory sapwood, but use
the red heartwood if it is the same weight as the sap.

_Annual Rings_--The trunks of both hardwoods and softwoods are made up
of concentric rings. In most instances the eye easily detects them. They
are more distinct in a freshly cut trunk than in weathered wood, though
in a few instances weathering accentuates rather than obliterates them.
A count of the rings gives the tree’s age in years, each ring being the
growth of one year. An occasional exception should be noted, as when
accident checks the tree’s growth in the middle of the season, and the
growth is later resumed. In that case, it may develop two rings in one
year. A severe frost late in spring after leaves have started may
produce that result; or defoliation by caterpillars in early summer may
do it. Perhaps not one tree in a thousand has that experience in the
course of its whole life. Trees in the tropics where seasons are nearly
the same the year through, seldom have rings. Imitations of mahogany are
sometimes detected by noting clearly marked annual rings. It is
difficult for the woodfinisher to obliterate the annual rings, but some
of the French woodworkers very nearly accomplish it.

No law of growth governs the width of yearly rings, but circumstances
have much to do with it. When the tree’s increase in size is rapid,
rings are broad. An uncrowded tree in good soil and climate grows much
faster than if circumstances are adverse. Carolina poplar and black
willow sometimes have rings nearly three-fourths of an inch broad, while
in the white bark pine, which grows above the snow line in California,
the rings may be so narrow as to be invisible to the naked eye.

There is no average width of yearly rings and no average age of trees. A
few (very few) of the sequoias, or “big trees” of California, are two
thousand years old. An age of six or seven centuries appears to be about
the limit of the oldest of the other species in this country, though an
authentic statement to that effect cannot be made. There are species
whose life average scarcely exceeds that of men. The aspen generally
falls before it is eighty; and fire cherry scarcely averages half of
that. Of all the trees cut for lumber, perhaps not one in a hundred has
passed the three century mark. That ratio would not hold if applied to
the Pacific coast alone.

_Spring and Summerwood_--These are not usual terms with lumbermen and
woodworkers, but belong more to the engineer who thinks of physical
properties of timber, particularly its strength. Yet, sawmill and
factory men are well acquainted with the two kinds of wood, but they are
likely to apply the term “grain” to the combination of the two.

Spring and summerwood make the annual ring. Springwood grows early in
the season, summerwood later. In fact, it usually is the contrast in
color where the summerwood of one season abuts against the springwood of
the next which makes the ring visible. The inside of the ring--that
portion nearest the heart of the tree--is the springwood, the rest of
the ring is the summerwood. The former is generally lighter in color.
Sometimes, and with certain species, the springwood is much broader than
the other. The summerwood may be a very narrow band, not much wider than
a fine pencil mark, but its deeper color makes it quite distinct in most
instances. In other instances, as with some of the oaks, the summerwood
is the wider part of the annual ring. The figure or “grain” of southern
yellow pine is largely due to the contrast between the dark summerwood
and light springwood of the rings. The same is true of ash, chestnut,
and of many other woods.

_Pores_--Wood is not the solid substance it seems to be when seen in the
mass. If magnified it appears filled with cavities, not unlike a piece
of coral or honeycomb; but to the unaided eye only a few of the largest
openings are visible, and in some woods like maple, none can be seen.
The large openings are known as pores. They are so prominent in some of
the oaks that in a clean cut end or cross section they look like pin
holes. Very little magnifying is required to bring them out distinctly.
A good reading glass is sufficient.

Pores belong to hardwoods only. The resin ducts in some softwoods
present a similar appearance, but are far less numerous. All pores are,
of course, situated in the annual rings, but in different species they
are differently located as to spring and summerwood. In some woods the
largest pores are in the springwood only and therefore run in rings.
Such woods are called “ring porous,” and the oaks are best examples. In
other species the pores are scattered through all parts of the ring in
about the same proportion, and such woods are called “diffuse porous,”
as the birches. Softwoods have no pores proper, and are classed
“non-porous.”

_Medullary Rays_--A smoothly-cut cross section of almost any oak, but
particularly white oak and red oak, exhibits to the unaided eye narrow,
light-colored lines radiating from the center of the tree toward the
bark like spokes of a wheel. They are about the breadth of a fine pencil
mark, and are generally a sixth of an inch or less apart. They are among
the most conspicuous and characteristic features of oak wood, and are
known as medullary or pith rays.

Oak is cited as an example because the rays are large and prominent, but
they are present in all wood, and constitute a large part of its body.
They vary greatly in size. In some woods a few are visible unmagnified;
but even in oak a hundred are invisible to the naked eye to one that can
be seen. Some species show none until a glass is used. Some pines have
fifteen thousand to a square inch of cross section, all of which are so
small as to elude successfully the closest search of the unaided eye.

The medullary rays influence the appearance of most wood. They determine
its character. Oak is quarter-sawed for the purpose of bringing out the
bright, flat surfaces of these rays. The prominent flecks, streaks, and
patches of silvery wood are the flat sides of medullary rays. In cross
section, only the line-like ends are seen, but quarter-sawing exposes
their sides to view.

That explains in part why some species are adapted to quarter-sawing and
others are not. If no broad rays exist in the wood, as with white pine,
red cedar, and cottonwood, quarter-sawing cannot add much to the wood’s
appearance.

_Grain_--The grain of wood is not a definite quality. The word does not
mean the same thing to all who use it. It sometimes refers to rings of
yearly growth, and in that sense a narrow-ringed wood is fine grained,
and one with wide rings is coarse grained. A curly, wavy, smoky, or
birdseye wood does not owe its quality to annual rings, yet with some
persons, all of these figures are called grain. The term sometimes
refers to medullary rays, again to hardness, or to roughness. Some
mahogany is called “woolly grained” because the surface polishes with
difficulty. The pattern maker designates white pine as “even grained”,
because it cuts easily in all directions. The handle maker classes
hickory as “smooth grained”, because it polishes well and the sole idea
of the maker is smoothness to the touch. There are other grains almost
as numerous as the trades which use wood. In numerous instances “figure”
is a better term than “grain.” Feather mahogany, birdseye birch, burl
ash, are figures rather than grains. There is no authority to settle and
decide what the real meaning of grain is in wood technology. It has a
number of meanings, and one man has as much authority as another to
interpret it in accordance with his own ideas, and the usage in his
trade. It is a loose term which covers several things in general and
nothing in particular.

_Weight_--The weight of wood is calculated from different standpoints.
It has a green weight, an air-dry weight, a kiln-dry weight, and an
oven-dry weight. All are different, but the differences are due to the
relative amounts of water weighed. Sawlogs generally go by green weight;
yard lumber by air-dry or partly air-dry weight; while the wood used in
ultimate manufacture, such as furniture, is supposed to be kiln-dry.

The absolute weight of wood, with all air spaces, moisture, and other
foreign material removed, is about 100 pounds per cubic foot, which is
1.6 times heavier than water; but that is not a natural form of wood. It
is known only in the laboratory.

The actual wood substance of one species weighs about the same as
another. Dispense with all air spaces, all water, and all other foreign
substance, and pine and ebony weigh alike. It is apparent that the
different weights of woods, as between cedar and oak for example, are
due chiefly to porosity. The smaller the aggregate space occupied by
pores and other cavities, the heavier the wood. That accounts for the
differences in weights of absolutely dry woods of different kinds,
except that a small amount of other foreign material may remain after
water has been driven off. Florida black ironwood is rated as the
heaviest in the United States, and it weighs 81.14 pounds per cubic
foot, oven-dry. The lightest in this country is the golden fig which is
a native of Florida also. It weighs 16.3 pounds per cubic foot,
oven-dry. When weights of wood are given, the specimen is understood to
be oven-dry, unless it is stated to be otherwise: it is a laboratory
weight, calculated from small cubes of the wood. Such weights are always
a little less than that of the dryest wood of the same kind that can be
obtained in the lumber market.

_Moisture in Wood_--The varying weights of the same wood indicate that
moisture plays an important part. No man ever saw absolutely dry wood.
If heated sufficiently to drive off all the moisture, the wood is
reduced to charcoal and other products of destructive distillation.

The pores and other cavities in green timber are more or less filled
with water or sap. This may amount to one-third, one-half, or even more,
of the dry weight of the wood. The water is in the hollow vessels and
cell walls. A living tree contains about the same quantity of water in
winter as in summer, though the common belief is otherwise. It is
misleading to say that the sap is “down” in one season and “up” in
another, although there is more activity at certain times than in
others. Strictly speaking, there is a difference between the water in a
tree, and the tree’s sap; but in common parlance they are considered
identical. What takes place is this: water rises from the tree’s roots,
through the wood, carrying certain minerals in solution. Some of it
reaches the leaves in summer where it mixes with certain gases from the
air, and is converted into sap proper. Most of the surplus water, after
giving up the mineral substance held in solution, is evaporated through
the leaves into the air; but the sap, starting from the leaves which act
as laboratories for its manufacture, goes down through the newly-formed
(and forming), layer of wood just beneath the bark, and is converted
into wood. This newly-formed wood is colorless at first. It builds up
the annual ring, first the springwood very rapidly, and then the
summerwood more slowly.

The force which causes water to rise through the trunk of a tree is not
fully understood. It is one of nature’s mysteries which is yet to be
solved. Forces known as root pressure, capillary attraction, and
osmosis, are believed to be active in the process, but there seems to be
something additional, and no man has yet been able to explain what it
is.

The seasoning of wood is the process of getting rid of some of the
water. As soon as lumber is exposed to air, the water begins to escape.
Long exposure to dry air takes out a large percentage of the moisture
which green wood holds, and the lumber is known as air-dry. But some of
the original moisture remains, and air at climatic temperature is unable
to expel it. The greater heat of a drykiln drives away some more of it,
but a quantity yet remains. The lumber is then kiln-dry. Greater heat
than the drykiln’s is secured in an oven, and a little more of the
wood’s moisture is expelled; but the only method of driving all the
moisture out is to heat the wood sufficiently to break down its
structure, and reduce it to charcoal.

Wood warps in the process of drying unless it seasons equally on all
sides. It curls or bends toward the side which dries most rapidly. Dry
wood may warp if exposed to dampness, if one side is more exposed and
receives more moisture than another. It curls or bends toward the dryer
side.

Warping is primarily due to the more rapid contraction or expansion of
wood cells on one side of the piece than on the other. Saturated cells
are larger than dry ones.

Moisture in wood affects its strength, the dryer the stronger, at least
within certain limits. Architects and builders carefully study the
seasoning of timber, because it is a most important factor in their
business. The moisture which most affects a wood’s strength is that
absorbed in the cell walls, rather than that contained in the cell
cavities themselves.

Some woods check or split badly in seasoning unless attended with
constant care. Checking is due chiefly to lack of uniformity in
seasoning. One part of the stick dries faster than another, the dryer
fibers contract, and the pull splits the wood. The checks may be small,
even microscopic, or they may develop yawning cracks such as sometimes
appear in the ends of hickory and black walnut logs. Greenwood checks
worse in summer than in winter, because the weather is warmer, the
wood’s surface dries faster, and the strain on the fibers is greater.
Phases of the moon have no influence on the seasoning, checking,
warping, or lasting properties of timber.

_Stiffness, Elasticity, and Strength_--Rules for measuring the stiffness
of timber are involved in mathematical formulas; but the practical
quality of stiffness is not difficult to understand. Wood which does not
bend easily is stiff. If it springs back to its original position after
the removal of the force which bends it, the wood is elastic. The
greatest load it can sustain without breaking, is the measure of its
strength. The load required to produce a certain amount of bending is
the measure of its stiffness. Flexibility, a term much used by certain
classes of workers in wood, is the opposite of stiffness. A brittle wood
is not necessarily weak. It may sustain a heavy load without breaking,
but when it fails, the break is sudden and complete. A tough wood
behaves differently, though it may not be as strong as a brittle one.
When a tough wood breaks, the parts are inclined to adhere after they
have ceased to sustain the load. Hickory is tough, and in breaking, the
wood crushes and splinters. Mesquite is brittle, and a clean snap severs
the stick at once.

Builders of houses and bridges, and the manufacturers of articles of
wood, study with the greatest care the stiffness, elasticity, strength,
toughness, and brittleness of timber. Its chief value may depend upon
the presence or absence of one or more of these properties. Take away
hickory’s toughness and elasticity and it would cease to be a great
vehicle and handle material. Reduce the stiffness and strength of
longleaf pine and Douglas fir and they would drop at once from the high
esteem in which they are held as structural timbers. Destroy the
brittleness of red cedar and it would lose one of the chief qualities
which make it the leading lead pencil wood of the world.

There are recognized methods of measuring these important physical
properties of woods, but they are expressed in language so technical
that it means little to persons who are not specialists. For ordinary
purposes, it is unnecessary to be more explicit than to state a certain
wood is or is not strong, stiff, tough and elastic. Some species possess
one or more of these properties to double the degree that others possess
them. Different trees of the same species differ greatly, and even
different parts of the same tree. Most tables of figures which show the
various physical properties of woods, give averages only, not absolute
values.

_Hardness_--In some woods hardness is considered an advantage, but not
in others. If sugar maple were as soft as white pine, it would not be
the great floor material it is; and if white pine were as hard as maple,
pattern makers would not want it, door and sash manufacturers would get
along with less, and it would not be the leading packing box material in
so wide a region.

It is generally the summer growth in the annual rings which makes a wood
hard. The summerwood is dense. A given bulk of it contains more actual
wood substance and less air and water than the springwood. For the same
reason, summerwood gives weight, and a relationship between hardness and
weight holds generally. It may be added that strength goes with weight
and hardness, but it is not a rule without apparent exceptions.

Some woods possess twice or three times the hardness of others. Among
some of the hardest in the United States are hickory, sugar maple,
mesquite, the Florida ironwoods, Osage orange, locust, persimmon, and
the best oak and elm. Among the softest species are buckeye, basswood,
cedar, redwood, some of the pines, spruce, hemlock, and chestnut.

The hardness of wood is tested with a machine which records the pressure
required to indent the surface. The condition of the specimen, as to
dryness, has much to do with its hardness. So many other factors
exercise influence that nothing less than an actual test will determine
the hardness of a sample. A table of figures can show it only
approximately and by averages.

_Cleavability_--Wood users generally demand a material which does not
split easily, but the reverse is sometimes required. Rived staves must
come from timbers which split easily. Many handles are from billets
which are split in rough form and are afterwards dressed to the required
size and shape. In these instances, splitting is preferable to sawing,
because a rived billet is free from cross grain.

The cleavability of woods differs greatly. Some can scarcely be split.
Black gum is in that list, and sycamore to a less extent. Young trees of
some species split more readily than old, while with others, the
advantage is with the old. Young sycamore may generally be split with
ease, but old trunks seem to develop interlocked fibers which defy the
wedge. A white oak pole is hard to split, but the old tree yields
readily. Few woods are more easily split than chestnut. With most
timbers cleavage is easiest along the radial lines, that is, from the
heart to the bark. The flat sides of the medullary rays lie in that
plane. Cleavage along tangential lines is easy with some woods. The line
of cleavage follows the soft springwood. Green timber is generally, but
not always, more easily split than dry. As a rule, the more elastic a
wood is, the more readily it may be split.

_Durability_--In Egypt where climatic conditions are highly favorable,
Lebanon cedar, North African acacia, East African persimmon, and
oriental sycamore have remained sound during three or four thousand
years. In the moist forests of the northwestern Pacific coast, an alder
log six or eight inches in diameter will decay through and through in a
single year. No wood is immune to decay if exposed to influences which
induce it, but some resist for long periods. Osage orange and locust
fence posts may stand half a century. Timber from which air is excluded,
as when deeply buried in wet earth or under water, will last
indefinitely; but if it is exposed to alternate dampness and dryness,
decay will destroy it in a few years.

It is apparent that resistance to decay is not a property inherent in
the wood, but depends on circumstances. However, the ability to resist
decay varies greatly with different species, under similar
circumstances. Buckeye and red cedar fence posts, situated alike, will
not last alike. The buckeye may be expected to fall in two or three
years, and the cedar will stand twenty. Timbers light in weight and
light in color are, as a class, quick-decaying when exposed to the
weather.

The rule holds in most cases that sapwood decays more quickly than heart
when both are subject to similar exposure. The matter of decay is not
important when lumber and other products intended for use are in dry
situations. Furniture and interior house finish do not decay under
ordinary circumstances, no matter what the species of wood may be; but
resistance to decay overshadows almost any other consideration in
choosing mine timbers, crossties, fence posts, and tanks and silos.

Decay in timber is not simply a chemical process, but is due primarily
to the activities of a low order of plants known as fungi, sometimes
bacteria. The fungi produce thread-like filaments which penetrate the
body of the wood, ramifying in and passing from cell to cell, absorbing
certain materials therein, and ultimately breaking down and destroying
the structure of the wood. Both air and dampness are essential to the
growth of fungus. That is the reason why timbers deep beneath ground or
water do not decay. Air is absent, though moisture is abundant; while in
the dry Egyptian tombs, air is abundant but moisture is wanting, fungus
cannot exist, and consequently decay of the wood does not occur. Nothing
is needed to render timber immune to decay except to keep fungus out of
the cells. Some of the fungus concerned in wood rotting is microscopic,
while other appears in forms and sizes easily seen and recognized.

Timber may be protected for a time against the agencies of decay by
covering the surface with paint, thereby preventing the entrance of
fungus. By another process, certain oils or other materials which are
poisonous to the insinuating threads of fungus, are forced into the
pores of the wood. Creosote is often used for this purpose. Attacks are
thus warded off, and decay is hindered. The preservative fluid will not
remain permanently in wood exposed to weather conditions, but the period
during which it affords protection and immunity extends over some years;
but different woods vary greatly in their ability to receive and retain
preservative mixtures.

The better seasoned, the less liable is timber to decay, because it
contains less moisture to support fungi. It is generally supposed that
timber cut in the fall of the year is less subject to decay than if
felled in summer. If it is so, the reason for it lies in the fact that
fungus is inactive during winter, and before the coming of warm weather
the timber has partly dried near the surface, and fungi cannot pass
through the dry outside to reach the interior. Timber cut in warm
weather may be attacked at once, and before cold weather stops the
activities of fungus it has reached the interior of the wood and the
process of rotting is under way. When the agents of decay have begun to
grow in the wood, destruction will go on as long as air and moisture
conditions are favorable.

The bluing of wood is an incipient decay and is generally due to fungus.
Some kinds of wood are more susceptible to bluing than others. Though
boards may quickly season sufficiently to put a stop to the bluing
process before it has actually weakened the material, the result is more
or less injurious. The wood’s natural color and luster undergo
deterioration; it does not reflect light as formerly, and seems dead and
flat.

Decay affects sapwood more readily than heart. The reason may be that
sapwood contains more food for fungus, thereby inducing greater
activity. The sapwood is on the outside of timbers and is often more
exposed than the heart. In some instances greater decay may be due to
greater exposure. Another reason for more rapid decay of sapwood than
heart is the fact that the pores of the heartwood are more or less
filled with coloring matter deposited while the growth of the tree was
in progress. The coloring matter, in many cases, acts as a preservative;
it shuts the threads of fungus out. Sometimes the sapwood of a dead tree
or a log is totally destroyed while the heart remains sound. This often
happens with red cedar and sometimes with black walnut, yellow poplar,
and cherry. Occasionally a tree’s bark is more resistant to decay than
its wood. Paper birch and yellow birch logs in damp situations
occasionally show this. What appears to be a solid fallen trunk, proves
to be nothing more than a shell of bark with a soft, pulpy mass of
decayed wood within.




WHITE PINE

[Illustration: WHITE PINE]




WHITE PINE[1]

(_Pinus Strobus_)

    [1] The following 12 species are usually classed soft pines: White
    Pine (_Pinus strobus_); Sugar Pine (_Pinus lambertiana_); Western
    White Pine (_Pinus monticola_); Mexican White Pine (_Pinus
    strobiformis_); Limber Pine (_Pinus flexilis_); Whitebark Pine
    (_Pinus albicaulis_); Foxtail Pine (_Pinus balfouriana_); Parry Pine
    (_Pinus quadrifolia_); Mexican Pinon (_Pinus cembroides_); Pinon
    (_Pinus edulis_); Singleleaf Pinon (_Pinus monophylla_); Bristlecone
    Pine (_Pinus aristata_).


The best known wood of the United States has never been burdened with a
multitude of names, as many minor species have. It is commonly known as
white pine in every region where it grows, and in many where the living
tree is never seen, except when planted for ornament. The light color of
the wood suggests the name. The bark and the foliage are of somber hue,
though not as dark as hemlock and many of the pines. The name Weymouth
pine is occasionally heard, but it is more used in books than by
lumbermen. It is commonly supposed that the name refers to Lord Weymouth
who interested himself in the tree at an early period, but this has been
disputed. In Pennsylvania it is occasionally called soft pine to
distinguish it from the harder and inferior pitch pine and table
mountain pine with which it is sometimes associated. It is the softest
of the pines, and the name is not inappropriate. In some regions of the
South, where it is well known, it is called northern spruce pine in
recognition of the fact that it is a northern species which has followed
the Appalachian mountain ranges some hundreds of miles southward. There
is no good reason for this name when applied to white pine. It should be
remembered, however, that no less than a dozen tree species in the
United States are sometimes called spruce pine. Cork pine is a trade
name applied more frequently to the wood than to the living tree. It is
the wood of old, mature, first class trunks, as nearly perfect as can be
found. Pumpkin pine is another name given to the same class of wood. It
is so named because the grain is homogeneous, like a pumpkin, and may be
readily cut and carved in any direction. It is the ideal wood for the
pattern maker, but it is now hard to get because the venerable white
pines, many hundred years old, are practically gone.

The northern limit of the range of white pine stretches from
Newfoundland to Manitoba, more than 1800 miles east and west across the
Dominion of Canada, and southward to northern Georgia, 1200 miles in a
north and south direction. But white pine does not grow in all parts of
the territory thus delimited. It attained magnificent development in
certain large regions before lumbering began, and in others it was
scarce or totally wanting. Its ability to maintain itself on land too
thin for vigorous hardwood growth gave it a monopoly of enormous
stretches of sandy country, particularly in the Lake States. It occupied
large areas in New England and southern Canada; developed splendid
stands in New York and Pennsylvania; and it covered certain mountains
and uplands southward along the mountain ranges across Maryland, West
Virginia, and the elevated regions two or three hundred miles farther
south.

A dozen or more varieties of white pine have been developed under
cultivation, but they interest the nurseryman, not the lumberman. In all
the wide extension of its range, and during all past time, nature was
never able to develop a single variety of white pine which departed from
the typical species. For that reason it is one of the most interesting
objects of study in the tree kingdom. True, the white pine in the
southern mountains differs slightly from the northern tree, but
botanically it is the same. Its wood is a little heavier, its branches
are more resinous and consequently adhere a longer time to the trunk
after they die, resulting in lumber with more knots. The southern wood
is more tinged with red, the knots are redder and usually sounder than
in the North.

It is unfortunately necessary in speaking of white pine forests to use
the past tense, for most of the primeval stands have disappeared. The
range is as extensive as ever, because wherever a forest once grew, a
few trees remain; but the merchantable timber has been cut in most
regions. The tree bears winged seeds which quickly scatter over vacant
spaces, and new growth would long ago, in most cases, have taken the
place of the old, had not fires persistently destroyed the seedlings. In
parts of New England where fire protection is afforded, dense stands of
white pine are coming on, and in numerous instances profitable lumber
operations are carried on in second growth forests. That condition does
not exist generally in white pine regions. Primeval stands were seldom
absolutely pure, but sometimes, in bodies of thousands of acres, there
was little but white pine. Generally hardwoods or other softwoods grew
with the pine. At its best, it is the largest pine of the United States,
except the sugar pine of California. The largest trees grew in New
England where diameters of six or more feet and heights exceeding 200
feet were found. A diameter of four and five feet and a height of 150
feet are about the size limits in the Lake States and the southern
mountains. Trees two or three feet through and ninety and 120 tall are a
fair average for mature timber.

The wood of white pine is among the lightest of the commercial timbers
of this country, and among the softest. While it is not strong, it
compares favorably, weight for weight, with most others. It is of rather
rapid growth, and the rings of annual increase are clearly defined, and
they contain comparatively few resin ducts. For that reason it may be
classed as a close, compact wood. It polishes well, may be cut with
great ease, and after it is seasoned it holds its form better than most
woods. That property fits it admirably for doors and sash and for
backing of veneer, where a little warping or twisting would do much
harm.

The medullary rays are numerous but are too small to be easily seen
separately, and do not figure much in the appearance of the wood. The
resin passages are few and small, but the wood contains enough resin to
give it a characteristic odor, which is not usually considered injurious
to merchandise shipped in pine boxes. The white color of the wood gives
it much of its value. Though rather weak, white pine is stiff, rather
low in elasticity, is practically wanting in toughness, has little
figure, and when exposed to alternate dryness and dampness it is rated
poor in lasting properties; yet shingles and weather boarding of this
wood have been known to stand half a century. The sapwood is lighter in
color than the heart, and decays more quickly.

As long as white pine was abundant it surpassed all other woods of this
country in the amount used. It was one of the earliest exports from New
England, and it went to the West Indies and to Europe. England attempted
to control the cutting and export of white pine, but was unsuccessful.
At an early period the rivers were utilized for transporting the logs
and the lumber to market, and that method has continued until the
present time. Spectacular log drives were common in early times in New
England, later in New York and Pennsylvania, and still later in Michigan
and the other Lake States. Many billions of feet of faultless logs have
gone down flooded rivers. The scenes in the woods and the life in lumber
camps have been written in novels and romances, and the central figure
of it all was white pine.

There are a few things for which this wood is not suitable; otherwise
its use has been nearly universal in some parts of this country. It went
into masts and matches, which are the largest and smallest commodities,
and into almost every shape and size of product between. Most of the
early houses and barns in the pine region were built of it. Hewed pine
was the foundation, and the shingles were of split and shaved pine. It
formed floors, doors, sash, and shutters. It was the ceiling within and
the weather boarding without. It fenced the fields and bridged the
streams. It went to market as rough lumber, and planing mills turned it
out as dressed stock in various forms. It has probably been more
extensively employed by box makers than any other wood, and though it is
scarcer than formerly, hundreds of millions of feet of it are still used
annually by box makers. Scores of millions of feet yearly are demanded
by the manufacturers of window shade rollers, though individually the
roller is a very small commodity. In this, as for patterns and many
other things, no satisfactory substitute for white pine has been found.

As a timber tree, it will not disappear from this country, though the
days of its greatest importance are past. Enormous tracts where it once
grew will apparently never again produce a white pine sawlog. The
prospect is more encouraging in other regions, and there will always be
a considerable quantity of this lumber in the American market, though
the high percentage of good grades which prevailed in the past will not
continue in the future.

White pine belongs in the five needle group, that is, five leaves grow
in a bundle. They turn yellow and fall in the autumn of the second year.
The cones are slender, are from five to eleven inches in length, and
ripen and disperse their seeds in the autumn of the second year.

[Illustration]




WESTERN WHITE PINE

[Illustration: WESTERN WHITE PINE]




WESTERN WHITE PINE

(_Pinus Monticola_)


The silvery luster of the needles of this tree gives it the name silver
pine, by which many people know it. It appears in literature as mountain
Weymouth pine, the reference being to the eastern white pine (_Pinus
strobus_), which is sometimes called Weymouth pine. Finger-cone pine is
a California name; so are mountain pine and soft pine. In the same state
it is called little sugar pine, to distinguish it from sugar pine
(_Pinus lambertiana_), which it resembles in some particulars but not in
all. It is thus seen that California is generous in bestowing names on
this tree, notwithstanding it is not abundant in any part of that state
and is unknown in most parts.

The botanical name means “mountain pine,” and that describes the
species. It does best among the mountains, and it ranges from an
altitude of from 4,000 feet to 10,000 on the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Sometimes trees of very large size are found near the upper limits of
its range, but the best stands are in valleys and on slopes at lower
altitudes. Its range lies in British Columbia, Montana, Idaho,
Washington, Oregon, and California. In the latter state it follows the
Sierra Nevada mountains southward to the San Joaquin river.

This species has been compared with the white pine of the East oftener
than with any other species. The weights of the two woods are nearly the
same, and both are light. Their fuel values are about the same. The
strength of the eastern tree is a little higher, but the western species
is stiffer. The woods of both are light in color, but that of the
eastern tree is whiter; both are soft, but again the advantage is with
the eastern tree. The western pine generally grows rapidly and the
annual rings are wide; but, like most other species, it varies in its
rate of growth, and trunks are found with narrow rings. The summerwood
is thin, not conspicuous, and slightly resinous. The small resin
passages are numerous. The heartwood is fairly durable in contact with
the soil.

The western white pine has entered many markets in recent years, but it
is difficult to determine what the annual cut is. Statistics often
include this species and the western yellow pine under one name, or at
least confuse one with the other, and there is no way to determine
exactly how much of the sawmill output belongs to each. The bulk of
merchantable western white pine lumber is cut in Idaho and Montana. The
stands are seldom pure, but this species frequently predominates over
its associates. When pure forests are found, the yield is sometimes
very high, as much as 130,000 feet of logs growing on a single acre.
That quantity is not often equalled by any other forest tree, though
redwood and Douglas fir sometimes go considerably above it.

The western white pine’s needles grow in clusters of five and are from
one and a half to four inches long. The cones are from ten to eighteen
inches long. The seeds ripen the second year. Reproduction is vigorous
and the forest stands are holding their own. Trees about one hundred and
seventy-five feet high and eight feet in diameter are met with, but the
average size is one hundred feet high and from two to three feet in
diameter, or about the size of eastern white pine.

The wood is useful and has been giving service since the settlement of
the country began, fifty or more years ago. Choice trunks were split for
shakes or shingles, but the wood is inferior in splitting qualities to
either eastern white pine or California sugar pine, because of more
knots. The western white pine does not prime itself early or well. Dead
limbs adhere to the trunk long after the sugar pine would shed them. In
split products, the western white pine’s principal rival has been the
western red cedar. The pine has been much employed for mine timbers in
the region where it is abundant. Miners generally take the most
convenient wood for props, stulls, and lagging. A little higher use for
pine is found among the mines, where is it made into tanks, flumes,
sluice boxes, water pipes, riffle blocks, rockers, and guides for stamp
mills. However, the total quantity used by miners is comparatively
small. Much more goes to ranches for fences and buildings. It is
serviceable, and is shipped outside the immediate region of production
and is marketed in the plains states east of the Rocky Mountains, where
it is excellent fence material.

A larger market is found in manufacturing centers farther east. Western
white pine is shipped to Chicago where it is manufactured into doors,
sash, and interior finish, in competition with all other woods in that
market. It is said to be of frequent occurrence that the very pine which
is shipped in its rough form out of the Rocky Mountain region goes back
finished as doors and sash. When the mountain regions shall have better
manufacturing facilities, this will not occur. In the manufacture of
window and hothouse sash, glass is more important than wood, although
each is useless without the other. The principal glass factories are in
the East, and it is sometimes desirable to ship the wood to the glass
factory, have the sash made there, and the glazing done; and the
finished sash, ready for use, may go back to the source of the timber.

The same operation is sometimes repeated for doors; but in recent years
the mountain region where this pine grows has been supplied with
factories and there is now less shipping of raw material out and of
finished products back than formerly. The development of the fruit
industry in the elevated valleys of Idaho, Montana, Washington, and
Oregon has called for shipping boxes in large numbers, and western white
pine has been found an ideal wood for that use. It is light in weight
and in color, strong enough to satisfy all ordinary requirements, and
cheap enough to bring it within reach of orchardists. It meets with
lively competition from a number of other woods which grow abundantly in
the region, but it holds its ground and takes its share of the business.

Estimates of the total stand of western white pine among its native
mountains have not been published, but the quantity is known to be
large. It is a difficult species to estimate because it is scattered
widely, large, pure stands being scarce. Some large mills make a
specialty of sawing this species. The annual output is believed to reach
150,000,000 feet, most of which is in Idaho and Montana.

MEXICAN WHITE PINE (_Pinus strobiformis_) is not sufficiently abundant
to be of much importance in the United States. The best of it is south
of the international boundary in Mexico, but the species extends into
New Mexico and Arizona where it is most abundant at altitudes of from
6,000 to 8,000 feet. The growth is generally scattering, and the trunks
are often deformed through fire injury, and are inclined to be limby and
of poor form. The best trees are from eighty to one hundred feet high,
and two in diameter; but many are scarcely half that size. The lumbermen
of the region, who cut Mexican white pine, are inclined to place low
value on it, not because the wood is of poor quality, but because it is
scarce. It is generally sent to market with western yellow pine.
Excellent grades and quality of this wood are shipped into the United
States from Mexico, but not in large amounts. An occasional carload
reaches door and sash factories in Texas, and woodworkers as far east as
Michigan are acquainted with it, through trials and experiments which
they have made. It is highly recommended by those who have tried it.
Some consider it as soft, as easy to work, and as free from warping and
checking as the eastern white pine. In Arizona and New Mexico the tree
is known as ayacahuite pine, white pine, and Arizona white pine. The
wood is moderately light, fairly strong, rather stiff, of slow growth,
and the bands of summerwood are comparatively broad. The resin passages
are few and large. The wood is light red, the sapwood whiter. The leaves
occur in clusters of five, are three or four inches long, and fall
during the third and fourth years. The seeds are large and have small
wings which cannot carry them far from the parent tree.

PINON (_Pinus edulis_). This is one of the nut pines abounding among the
western mountains, and it is called pinon in Texas, nut pine in Texas
and Colorado, pinon pine and New Mexican pinon in other parts of its
range, extending from Colorado through New Mexico to western Texas. It
has two and three leaves to the cluster. They begin to fall the third
year and continue through six or seven years following. The cones are
quite small, the largest not exceeding one and one-half inches in
length. Trees are from thirty to forty feet high, and large trunks may
be two and one-half feet in diameter. The tree runs up mountain sides to
altitudes of 8,000 or 9,000 feet. It exists in rather large bodies, but
is not an important timber tree, because the trunks are short and are
generally of poor form. It often branches near the ground and assumes
the appearance of a large shrub. Ties of pinon have been used with
various results. Some have proved satisfactory, others have proved weak
by breaking, and the ties occasionally split when spikes are driven. The
wood’s service as posts varies also. Some posts will last only three or
four years, while others remain sound a long time. The difference in
lasting properties is due to the difference in resinous contents of the
wood. Few softwoods rank above it in fuel value, and much is cut in some
localities. Large areas have been totally stripped for fuel. Charcoal
for local smithies is burned from this pine. The wood is widely used for
ranch purposes, but not in large quantities. The edible nuts are sought
by birds, rodents, and Indians. Some stores keep the nuts for sale. The
tree is handicapped in its effort at reproduction by weight, and the
small wing power of the seeds. They fall near the base of the parent
tree, and most of them are speedily devoured.

[Illustration]




SUGAR PINE

[Illustration: SUGAR PINE]




SUGAR PINE

(_Pinus Lambertiana_)


This is the largest pine of the United States, and probably is the
largest true pine in the world. Its rival, the Kauri pine of New
Zealand, is not a pine according to the classification of botanists; and
that leaves the sugar pine supreme, as far as the world has been
explored. David Douglas, the first to describe the species, reported a
tree eighteen feet in diameter and 245 feet high, in southern Oregon. No
tree of similar size has been reported since; but trunks six, ten, and
even twelve feet through, and more than 200 high are not rare.

The range of sugar pine extends from southern Oregon to lower
California. Through California it follows the Sierra Nevada mountains in
a comparatively narrow belt. In Oregon it descends within 1,000 feet of
sea level, but the lower limit of its range gradually rises as it
follows the mountains southward, until in southern California it is
8,000 or 10,000 feet above the sea. Its choice of situation is in the
mountain belt where the annual precipitation is forty inches or more.
The deep winter snows of the Sierras do not hurt it. The young trees
bear abundant limbs covering the trunks nearly or quite to the ground,
and are of perfect conical shape. When they are ten or fifteen feet tall
they may be entirely covered in snow which accumulates to a depth of a
dozen feet or more. The little pines are seldom injured by the load, but
their limbs shed the snow until it covers the highest twig. The
consequence is that a crooked sugar pine trunk is seldom seen, though a
considerable part of the tree’s youth may have been spent under tons of
snow. Later in life the lower limbs die and drop, leaving clean boles
which assure abundance of clear lumber in the years to come.

The tree is nearly always known as sugar pine, though it may be called
big pine or great pine to distinguish it from firs, cedars, and other
softwoods with which it is associated. The name is due to a product
resembling sugar which exudes from the heartwood when the tree has been
injured by fires, and which dries in white, brittle excrescences on the
surface. Its taste is sweet, with a suggestion of pitch which is not
unpleasant. The principle has been named “pinite.”

The needles of sugar pine are in clusters of five and are about four
inches long. They are deciduous the second and third years. The cones
are longer than cones of any other pine of this country but those of the
Coulter pine are a little heavier. Extreme length of 22 inches for the
sugar pine cone has been recorded, but the average is from 12 to 15
inches. Cones open, shed their seeds the second year, and fall the
third. The seeds resemble lentils, and are provided with wings which
carry them several hundred feet, if wind is favorable. This affords
excellent opportunities for reproduction; but there is an offset in the
sweetness of the seeds which are prized for food by birds, beasts and
creeping things from the Piute Indian down to the Douglas squirrel and
the jumping mouse.

Sugar pine occupies a high place as a timber tree. It has been in use
for half a century. The cut in 1900 was 52,000,000 feet, in 1904 it was
120,000,000; in 1907, 115,000,000, and the next year about 100,000,000.
Ninety-three per cent of the cut is in California, the rest in Oregon.
Its stand in California has been estimated at 25,000,000,000 feet.

The wood of sugar pine is a little lighter than eastern white pine, is a
little weaker, and has less stiffness. It is soft, the rings of growth
are wide, the bands of summerwood thin and resinous; the resin passages
are numerous and very large, the medullary rays numerous and obscure.
The heart is light brown, the sapwood nearly white.

Sugar pine and redwood were the two early roofing woods in California,
and both are still much used for that purpose. Sugar pine was made into
sawed shingles and split shakes. The shingle is a mill product; but the
shake was rived with mallet and frow, and in the years when it was the
great roofing material in central and eastern California, the shake
makers camped by twos in the forest, lived principally on bacon and red
beans, and split out from 200,000 to 400,000 shakes as a summer’s work.
The winter snows drove the workers from the mountains, with from eight
to twelve hundred dollars in their pockets for the season’s work.

The increase in stumpage price has practically killed the shake maker’s
business. In the palmy days when most everything went, he procured his
timber for little or nothing. He sometimes failed to find the surveyor’s
lines, particularly if there happened to be a fine sugar pine just
across on a government quarter section. His method of operation was
wasteful. He used only the best of the tree. If the grain happened to
twist the fraction of an inch, he abandoned the fallen trunk, and cut
another. The shakes were split very thin, for sugar pine is among the
most cleavable woods of this country. Four or five good trees provided
the shake maker’s camp with material for a year’s work.

Some of the earliest sawmills in California cut sugar pine for sheds,
shacks, sluiceboxes, flumes among the mines; and almost immediately a
demand came from the agricultural and stock districts for lumber. From
that day until the present time the sugar pine mills have been busy. As
the demand has grown, the facilities for meeting it have increased. The
prevailing size of the timber forbade the use of small mills. A saw
large enough for most eastern and southern timbers would not slab a
sugar pine log. From four to six feet were common sizes, and the
lumberman despised anything small.

In late years sugar pine operators have looked beyond the local markets,
and have been sending their lumber to practically every state in the
Union, except probably the extreme South. It comes in direct competition
with the white pine of New England and the Lake States. The two woods
have many points of resemblance. The white pine would probably have lost
no markets to the California wood if the best grades could still be had
at moderate prices; but most of the white pine region has been stripped
of its best timber, and the resulting scarcity in the high grades has
been, in part, made good by sugar pine. Some manufacturers of doors and
frames claim that sugar pine is more satisfactory than white pine,
because of better behavior under climatic changes. It is said to shrink,
swell, and warp less than the eastern wood.

Sugar pine has displaced white pine to a very small extent only, in
comparison with the field still held by the eastern wood, whose annual
output is about thirty times that of the California species. Their uses
are practically the same except that only the good grades of sugar pine
go east, and the corresponding grades of white pine west, and therefore
there is no competition between the poor grades of the two woods. The
annual demand for sugar and white pine east of the Rocky Mountains is
probably represented as an average in Illinois, where 2,000,000 feet of
the former and 175,000,000 of the latter are used yearly.

While there is a large amount of mature sugar pine ready for lumbermen,
the prospect of future supplies from new growth is not entirely
satisfactory. The western yellow pine is mixed with it throughout most
of its range, and is more than a match for it in taking possession of
vacant ground. It is inferred from this fact that the relative positions
of the two species in future forests will change at the expense of sugar
pine. It endures shade when small, and this enables it to obtain a start
among other species; but as it increases in size it becomes intolerant
of shade, and if it does not receive abundance of light it will not
grow. A forest fire is nearly certain to kill the small sugar pines, but
old trunks are protected by their thick bark. Few species have fewer
natural enemies. Very small trees are occasionally attacked by mistletoe
(_Arceuthobium occidentale_) and succumb or else are stunted in their
growth.

    MEXICAN PINON (_Pinus cembroides_) is known also as nut pine, pinon
    pine and stone-seed Mexican pinon. It is one of the smallest of the
    native pines of this country. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet
    high and a few inches in diameter, but in sheltered canyons in
    Arizona it sometimes attains a height of fifty or sixty feet with a
    corresponding diameter. It reaches its best development in northern
    Mexico and what is found of it in the United States is the species’
    extreme northern extension, in Arizona and New Mexico at altitudes
    usually above 6,000 feet. It supplies fuel in districts where
    firewood is otherwise scarce, and it has a small place as ranch
    timber. The wood is heavy, of slow growth, the summerwood thin and
    dense. The resin passages are few and small; color, light, clear
    yellow, the sapwood nearly white. If the tree stood in regions
    well-forested with commercial species, it would possess little or no
    value; but where wood is scarce, it has considerable value. The
    hardshell nuts resemble those of the gray pine, but are considered
    more valuable for food. They are not of much importance in the
    United States, but in Mexico where the trees are more abundant and
    the population denser, the nuts are bought and sold in large
    quantities. Its leaves are in clusters of three, sometimes two. They
    are one inch or more in length, and fall the third and fourth years.
    Cones are seldom over two inches in length. The species is not
    extending its range, but seems to be holding the ground it already
    has. It bears abundance of seeds, but not one in ten thousand
    germinates and becomes a mature tree.

[Illustration]




WHITEBARK PINE

[Illustration: WHITEBARK PINE]




WHITEBARK PINE

(_Pinus Albicaulis_)


This interesting and peculiar pine has a number of names, most of which
are descriptive. The whiteness of the bark and the stunted and recumbent
position which the tree assumes on bleak mountains are referred to in
the names whitestem pine in California and Montana, scrub pine in
Montana, whitebark in Oregon, white in California, and elsewhere it is
creeping pine, whitebark pine, and alpine whitebark pine. It is a
mountain tree. There are few heights within its range which it cannot
reach. Its tough, prostrate branches, in its loftiest situations, may
whip snow banks nine or ten months of the year, and for the two or three
months of summer every starry night deposits its sprinkle of frost upon
the flowers or cones of this persistent tree. It stands the storms of
centuries, and lives on, though the whole period of its existence is a
battle for life under adverse circumstances. At lower altitudes it fares
better but does not live longer than on the most sterile peak. Its range
covers 500,000 square miles, but only in scattered groups. It touches
the high places only, creeping down to altitudes of 5,000 or 6,000 feet
in the northern Rocky Mountains. It grows from British Columbia to
southern California, and is found in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon,
Nevada, Arizona, and California. Its associates are the mountain
climbers of the tree kingdom, Engelmann spruce, Lyall larch, limber
pine, alpine fir, foxtail pine, Rocky Mountain juniper, knobcone pine,
and western juniper. Its dark green needles, stout and rigid, are from
one and one-half to two and one-half inches long. They hang on the twigs
from five to eight years. In July the scarlet flowers appear, forming a
beautiful contrast with the white bark and the green needles. In August
the seeds are ripe. The cones are from one and one-half to three inches
long. The seeds are nearly half an inch long, sweet to the taste. The
few squirrels and birds which inhabit the inhospitable region where the
whitebark pine grows, get busy the moment the cones open, and few
escape. Nature seems to have played a prank on this pine by giving wings
to the seeds and rendering their use impossible. The wing is stuck fast
with resin to the cone scales, and the seed can escape only by tearing
its wing off. The heavy nut then falls plumb to the ground beneath the
branches of its parent. It might be supposed that a tree situated as the
whitebark pine is would be provided with ample means of seedflight in
order to afford wide distribution, and give opportunity to survive the
hardships which are imposed by surroundings; but such is not the case.
The willow and the cottonwood which grow in fertile valleys have the
means of scattering their seeds miles away; but this bleak mountain tree
must drop its seeds on the rocks beneath. In this instance, nature seems
more interested in depositing the pine nuts where the hungry squirrels
can get them, than in furnishing a planting place for the nuts
themselves--therefore, tears off their wings before they leave the cone.
The battle for existence begins before the seeds germinate, and the
struggle never ceases. The tree, in parts of its range, survives a
temperature sixty degrees below zero. Its seedlings frequently perish,
not from cold and drought, but because the wind thrashes them against
the rocks which wear them to pieces. Trees which survive on the great
heights are apt to assume strange and fantastic forms, with less
resemblance to trees than to great, green spiders sprawling over the
rocks. Trees 500 years old may not be five feet high. Deep snows hold
them flat to the rocks so much of the time that the limbs cannot lift
themselves during the few summer days, but grow like vines. The growth
is so exceedingly slow that the new wood on the tips of twigs at the end
of summer is a mere point of yellow. John Muir, with a magnifying glass,
counted seventy-five annual rings in a twig one-eighth of an inch in
diameter. Trunks three and one-half inches in diameter may be 225 years
old; one of six inches had 426 rings; while a seventeen-inch trunk was
800 years old, and less than six feet high. Such a tree has a spread of
branches thirty or forty feet across. They lie flat on the ground. Wild
sheep, deer, bear, and other wild animals know how to shelter themselves
beneath the prostrate branches by creeping under; and travelers,
overtaken by storms, sometimes do the same; or in good weather the
sheepherder or the hunter may spread his blankets on the mass of limbs,
boughs, and needles, and spend a comfortable night on a springy
couch--actually sleeping in a tree top within two feet of the ground. In
regions lower down, the whitebark pine reaches respectable tree form.
Fence posts are sometimes cut from it in the Mono basin, east of the
Sierra Nevada mountains. In the Nez Perce National Forest trees forty
feet high have merchantable lengths of twenty-four feet. Similar growth
is found in other regions. In its best growth, the wood of whitebark
pine resembles that of white pine. It is light, of about the same
strength as white pine, but more brittle. The annual rings are very
narrow; the small resin passages are numerous. The sapwood is very thin
and is nearly white. Men can never greatly assist or hinder this tree.
It will continue to occupy heights and elevated valleys.

BRISTLECONE PINE (_Pinus aristata_) owes its name to the sharp bristles
on the tips of the cone scales. It is known also as foxtail pine and
hickory pine. The latter name is given, not because of toughness, but
on account of the whiteness of the sapwood. It is strictly a high
mountain tree, running up to the timber line at 12,000 feet, and seldom
occurring below 6,000 or 7,000 feet. It maintains its existence under
adverse circumstances, its home being on dry, stony ridges, cold and
stormy in winter, and subject to excessive drought during the brief
growing season. Trees of large trunks and fine forms are impossible
under such conditions. The bristlecone pine’s bole is short, tapers
rapidly and is excessively knotty. The species reaches its best
development in Colorado. Though it is seldom sawed for lumber, it is of
much importance in many localities where better material is scarce. In
central Nevada many valuable mines were developed and worked by using
the wood for props and fuel. Charcoal made of it was particularly
important in that region, and it was carried long distances to supply
blacksmith shops in mining camps. Railways have made some use of it for
ties. Though rough, it is liked for fence posts. The resin in the wood
assists in resisting decay, and posts last many years in the dry regions
where the tree grows. Ranchmen among the high mountains build corrals,
pens, sheds, and fences of it; but the fibers of the wood are so twisted
and involved that splitting is nearly impossible, and round timbers only
are employed. The bristlecone pine can never be more important in the
country’s lumber supply than it is now. It occupies waste land where no
other tree grows, and it crowds out nothing better than itself. It
clings to stony peaks and wind-swept ridges where the ungainly trunks
are welcome to the traveler, miner, or sheepherder who is in need of a
shed to shelter him, or a fire for his night camp. In situations exposed
to great cold and drying winds, the bristlecone pine is a shrub, with
little suggestion of a tree, further than its green foliage and small
cones. The needles are in clusters of five. They cling to the twigs for
ten or fifteen years. The seeds are scattered about the first of
October, and the wind carries them hundreds of feet. They take root in
soil so sterile that no humus is visible. Young trees and the small
twigs of old ones present a peculiar appearance. The bark is chalky
white, but when the trees are old the bark becomes red or brown.

    FOXTAIL PINE (_Pinus balfouriana_) owes its name to the clustering
    of its needles round the ends of the branches, bristling like a
    fox’s tail. The needles are seldom more than one and one-half inches
    in length, and are in clusters of fives. They cling to the branches
    ten or fifteen years before falling. The cones are about three
    inches long, and are armed with slender spines. The tree is strictly
    a mountain species and grows at a higher altitude than any other
    tree in the United States, although whitebark pine is not much
    behind it. It reaches its best development near Mt. Whitney,
    California, where it is said to grow at an altitude of 15,000 feet
    above sea level. It has been officially reported at Farewell Gap, in
    the Sierra Nevada mountains, at an altitude of 13,000. At high
    altitudes it is scrubby and distorted, but in more favorable
    situations it may be sixty feet high and two in diameter. On high
    mountains it is generally not more than thirty feet high and ten
    inches in diameter. It is of remarkably slow growth, and
    comparatively small trees may be 200 or 300 years old. The wood is
    moderately light, is soft, weak, brittle. Resin passages are few and
    very small. The wood is satiny and susceptible of a good polish, and
    would be valuable if abundant. The seeds are winged and the wind
    scatters them widely, but most of them are lost on barren rocks or
    drifts of eternal snow. The untoward circumstances under which the
    tree must live prevent generous reproduction. It holds its own but
    can gain no new foothold on the bleak and barren heights which form
    its environment. The dark green of its foliage makes the belts of
    foxtail pines conspicuous where they grow above the timber line of
    nearly all other trees. Its range is confined to a few of the
    highest mountains of California, particularly about (but not on) Mt.
    Shasta and among the clusters of peaks about the sources of Kings
    and Kern rivers. Those who travel and camp among the highest
    mountains of California are often indebted to foxtail pine for their
    fuel. Near the upper limit of its range it frequently dies at the
    top, and stands stripped of bark for many years. The dead wood,
    which frequently is not higher above the ground than a man’s head,
    is broken away by campers for fuel, and it is often the only
    resource.

[Illustration]




LONGLEAF PINE

[Illustration: LONGLEAF PINE]




LONGLEAF PINE

(_Pinus Palustris_)


Longleaf is generally considered to be the most important member of the
group of hard or pitch pines in this country[2]. It is known by many
names in different parts of its range, and outside of its range where
the wood is well known.

    [2] There is no precise agreement as to what should be included in
    the group of hard pines in the United States, but the following
    twenty-two are usually placed in that class: Longleaf Pine (_Pinus
    palustris_), Shortleaf Pine (_Pinus echinata_), Loblolly Pine
    (_Pinus tæda_), Cuban Pine (_Pinus heterophylla_), Norway Pine
    (_Pinus resinosa_), Western Yellow Pine (_Pinus ponderosa_),
    Chihuahua Pine (_Pinus chihuahuana_), Arizona Pine (_Pinus
    arizonica_), Pitch Pine (_Pinus rigida_), Pond Pine (_Pinus
    serotina_), Spruce Pine (_Pinus glabra_), Monterey Pine (_Pinus
    radiata_), Knobcone Pine (_Pinus attenuata_), Gray Pine (_Pinus
    sabiniana_), Coulter Pine (_Pinus coulteri_), Lodgepole Pine (_Pinus
    contorta_), Jack Pine (_Pinus divaricata_), Scrub Pine (_Pinus
    virginiana_), Sand Pine (_Pinus clausa_), Table Mountain Pine
    (_Pinus pungens_), California Swamp Pine (_Pinus muricata_), Torry
    Pine (_Pinus torreyana_).

The names southern pine, Georgia pine, and Florida pine are not well
chosen, because there are other important pines in the regions named.
Turpentine pine is a common term, but other species produce turpentine
also, particularly the Cuban pine. Hard pine is much employed in
reference to this tree, and it applies well, but it describes other
species also. Heart pine is a lumberman’s term to distinguish this
species from loblolly, shortleaf, and Cuban pines. The sapwood of the
three last named is thick, the heartwood small, while in longleaf pine
the sap is thin, the heart large, hence the name applied by lumbermen.
In Tennessee where it is not a commercial forest tree, it is called
brown pine, and in nearly all parts of the United States it is spoken of
as yellow pine, usually with some adjective as “southern,” “Georgia,” or
“longleaf.” The persistency with which Georgia is used as a portion of
the name of this tree is due to the fact that extensive lumbering of the
longleaf forests began in that state. The center of operations has since
shifted to the West, and is now in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
The tree has many other names, among them being pitch pine and fat pine.
These have reference to its value in the naval stores industry. The name
longleaf pine is now well established in commercial transactions. It has
longer leaves than any other pine in this country. They range in length
from eight to eighteen inches. The needles of Cuban pine are from eight
to twelve inches; loblolly’s are from six to nine; and those of
shortleaf from three to five.

Longleaf pine’s geographic range is more restricted than that of
loblolly and shortleaf, but larger than the range of Cuban pine.
Longleaf occupies a belt from Virginia to Texas, following the tertiary
sandy formation pretty closely. The belt seldom extends from the coast
inland more than 125 miles. The tree runs south in Florida to Tampa bay.
It disappears as it approaches the Mississippi, but reappears west of
that river in Louisiana and Texas. Its western limit is near Trinity
river, and its northern in that region is near the boundary between
Louisiana and Arkansas.

Longleaf attains a height of from sixty to ninety feet, but a few trees
reach 130. The diameters of mature trunks range from one foot to three,
usually less than two. The leaves grow three in a bundle, and fall at
the end of the second year. They are arranged in thick, broom-like
bunches on the ends of the twigs. It is a tree of slow growth compared
with other pines of the region. Its characteristic narrow annual rings
are usually sufficient to distinguish its logs and lumber from those of
other southern yellow pines. Its thin sapwood likewise assists in
identification. The proportionately high percentage of heartwood in
longleaf pine makes it possible to saw lumber which shows little or no
sapwood. It is difficult to do that with other southern pines.

The wood is heavy, exceedingly hard for pine, very strong, tough,
compact, durable, resinous, resin passages few, not conspicuous;
medullary rays numerous, not conspicuous; color, light red or orange,
the thin sapwood nearly white. The annual rings contain a large
proportion of dark colored summerwood, which accounts for the great
strength of longleaf pine timber. The contrast in color between the
springwood and the summerwood is the basis of the figure of this pine
which gives it much of its value as an interior finish material,
including doors. The hardness of the summerwood provides the wearing
qualities of flooring and paving blocks. The coloring matter in the body
of the wood protects it against decay for a longer period than most
other pines. This, in connection with its hardness and strength, gives
it high standing for railroad ties, bridges, trestles, and other
structures exposed to weather.

Longleaf pine is as widely used as any softwood in this country. It
serves with hardwoods for a number of purposes. It has been a timber of
commerce since an early period, and was exported from the south Atlantic
coast long before the Revolutionary war; but it was later than that when
it came into keen competition with the Riga pine of northern Europe. It
has since held its own in the European markets, and its trade has
extended to many other foreign countries, particularly to the republics
of South and Central America, Mexico, and the West Indies.

It did not attain an important position in the commerce of this country
until after the Civil war, but it had a place in shipbuilding before
that time, and it has held that place. The builders of cars employ large
quantities for frames and other parts of gondolas, box cars, and
coaches. Over 175,000,000 feet were so used in 1909 in Illinois. It is
the leading car building timber in this country. Its great strength,
hardness, and stiffness give it that place.

It is scarcely less important as an interior wood for house finish. It
is not so much its strength as its beauty that recommends it for that
purpose. Its beauty is due to a combination of figure and color.
Splendid variety is possible by carefully selecting the material.
Manufacturers of furniture, fixtures, and vehicles are large users of
longleaf pine. In these lines its chief value is due to strength.

In the naval stores industry in this country, it is more important than
all other species combined. For a century and a half it has supplied
this country and much of the rest of the world. The principal
commodities made from the resin of this tree are spirits of turpentine
and rosin. These two articles are produced by distilling the resin which
exudes from wounds in the tree. The distillate is spirits of turpentine,
the residue is rosin. The manufacture of naval stores has destroyed tens
of thousands of trees in the past; but better methods are now in use and
loss is less. Georgia and South Carolina were once the center of naval
stores production; but it has now moved to Louisiana and Florida.

The supply of longleaf pine has rapidly decreased during the past twenty
years, and though the end is not yet at hand, it is approaching. Young
trees are not coming on to take the place of those cut for lumber. They
grow slowly at best, and a new forest could not be produced in less than
a hundred years. Both protection and care have been lacking. Fire
usually kills seedlings in their first or second year. The result is
that many extensive tracts where longleaf pine once grew in abundance
have few young and scarcely any old trees now. As far as can be
foreseen, this valuable timber will reach its end when existing stands
have been cut.

CUBAN PINE (_Pinus heterophylla_). The Cuban pine has several local
names; slash pine in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi; swamp
pine in Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi; meadow pine in Florida and
Mississippi; pitch pine in Florida; and spruce pine in Alabama. Its
range is confined to the coast region from South Carolina to Louisiana,
from sixty to one hundred miles inland. It is the only pine in the
extreme south of Florida. The wood is heavy, hard, very strong, tough,
compact, durable, resinous, the resin passages few but conspicuous, rich
dark orange color, the sapwood often nearly white. The annual ring is
usually more than half dark colored summerwood. The Cuban pine grows
rapidly, quickly appropriates vacant ground, and the species is
spreading. Its needles, from eight to twelve inches long, fall the
second year. The wood possesses nearly the strength, hardness, and
stiffness of longleaf pine, and the trunks are as large. The two woods
which are so similar in other respects differ in figure, owing to the
wider annual rings of the Cuban pine. The sapwood of the latter species
greatly exceeds in thickness that of longleaf pine. For that reason it
is often mistaken for loblolly pine. Cuban pine never goes to market
under its own name, but is mixed with and passes for one of the other
southern yellow pines.

SAND PINE (_Pinus clausa_). This tree is generally twenty or thirty feet
high, and eight or twelve inches in diameter. Under favorable conditions
it attains a height of sixty or eighty feet and a diameter of two. The
leaves are two or three inches long, and fall the third and fourth
years. Its range is almost wholly in Florida but extends a little over
the northern border. It grows as far south as Tampa on the west coast,
and nearly to Miami on the east. It is not much cut for lumber because
of its small size and generally short, limby trunk. In a few localities
shapely boles are developed, and serviceable lumber is made. It is a
poor-land tree, as its name implies. The cones adhere to the branches
many years, and may be partly enclosed in the growing wood.

[Illustration]




SHORTLEAF PINE

[Illustration: SHORTLEAF PINE]




SHORTLEAF PINE

(_Pinus Echinata_)


In the markets the lumber of this species is known as yellow pine,
southern yellow pine, and sap pine, and in some localities the term
shortleaf is used. The latter is descriptive, and can be easily
understood when reference is made to the living tree, because its short
needles distinguish it from its associates in the pine forest; but in
speaking of lumber only, the reference to the leaves has less meaning,
particularly to one who is not acquainted with the tree’s appearance.
Its wood so closely resembles that of Cuban and loblolly pine that they
are not easily distinguished by sight alone. In the East the name
Carolina pine or North Carolina pine is much used, but it is not often
heard west of the Allegheny mountains. Referring to the manner and
locality of its growth it is called slash pine in North Carolina and
Virginia, old-field pine in Alabama and Mississippi, and poor-field pine
in Florida. Its tendency to take possession of abandoned ground has
given it these names. It is occasionally called pitch pine in Missouri.
That name would not distinguish it in most parts of the South where
several species of pitch pine grow. In some regions it is known as
spruce pine, but the name is not based on any characteristic of the
living tree or of its wood. In North Carolina and Alabama, and in
literature, it is sometimes known as rosemary pine, but that name
applies rather to fine timber cut from any southern yellow pine, than to
this species in particular. In Delaware it is known as shortshat and in
Virginia as bull pine. To those who are familiar with the tree’s
appearance, the name shortleaf pine is most accurate in definition.

The commercial range of shortleaf pine has contracted to a considerable
extent since the settlement of the country. It once grew as far north as
Albany, New York, and from fifty to a hundred years ago it was lumbered
in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia in regions where it has now
ceased to exist, or is found only as scattered trees. Its geographical
range is now usually given from New York to Florida, west to Missouri
and Oklahoma and northeastern Texas. It is important in lumber
operations in North Carolina and southward, and westward to the limits
of its range. The tree reaches its largest size and attains its finest
stands west of the Mississippi river. In average size it exceeds
longleaf pine. It may reach a height above 100 feet and a trunk diameter
of three or four. Squared timbers of large size were formerly exported
from Virginia and North Carolina. Similar sizes cannot now be procured
there.

Shortleaf pine varies greatly in the quality and amount of sapwood. It
is normally a thick sap tree, but midway between loblolly and longleaf.
The young tree increases rapidly in size until it is from six to ten
inches in diameter, and the yearly rings are wide. The rate of growth
then decreases and during the rest of its life the rings are narrow.
This feature is often of assistance in identifying southern yellow pine
logs or large timbers which contain the heart and also the sap. Wide
rings near the heart, followed by narrow ones, and a thick sapwood are
pretty good evidence that the timber--if a southern yellow pine--is
shortleaf pine. The rule is not absolute; for a high authority on timber
has said that no infallible rule can be laid down for distinguishing by
sight alone the woods of the four southern yellow pines--longleaf,
shortleaf, Cuban, and loblolly.

The wood of shortleaf pine is strong, heavy, hard, and compact; very
resinous, resin passages large and numerous; medullary rays numerous,
conspicuous; color, orange, the sapwood nearly white. The thoroughly
seasoned wood weighs thirty-eight pounds per cubic foot. It is about
five pounds heavier than loblolly pine, five pounds lighter than
longleaf, and nearly nine pounds lighter than Cuban pine. There is so
great a variation in weight of shortleaf pine that only general averages
have value.

Shortleaf pine is not as strong as longleaf, and is not so extensively
employed in heavy structural work, but in certain other lines it has the
advantage of longleaf. It is softer, and door and sash makers like it
better. It is easier to work, and when manufactured into doors and
interior finish many consider it superior to longleaf. The wide rings of
annual growth in the heartwood show fine contrast in color, and when
these are developed by stains and fillers, the grain or figure of the
wood is very pleasing. Where hardness is not an essential, it is much
used for floors. It is in great demand by builders of freight cars, but
less for frames and heavy beams than for siding and decking. Car
builders in Illinois bought 77,000,000 feet of it in 1909. That was
nearly half of the entire quantity of this wood used in the state. The
second largest users in Illinois were manufacturers of sash, doors,
blinds, and general millwork. If the whole country is considered, this
is probably the largest use of the wood. Makers of boxes and crates in
the South employ large quantities.

The depletion of shortleaf forests has progressed rapidly, but in the
absence of reliable statistics it is impossible to give figures by
decades or years. In 1880 an estimate placed the amount west of the
Mississippi at 95,000,000,000 feet. That was probably less than half of
the country’s supply at that time. In 1911 the Commissioner of
Corporations estimated that the combined remaining stand of loblolly
and shortleaf pine in the South was 152,000,000,000 feet. It is doubtful
if half of it was shortleaf. In that case, there was less shortleaf pine
in the entire South in 1911 than there was west of the Mississippi river
thirty years before.

Rapid decrease in total stand of a species does not necessarily imply
exhaustion. The cut will fall off as scarcity pinches. In the case of
shortleaf pine, an influence is active which will bring good results in
the future. This pine reproduces with vigor. Its small triangular seeds
are equipped with wings which carry them into vacant areas where they
quickly germinate if they fall on mineral soil. The seedling trees
suffer much from fire, but their power of resistance is fairly good, and
dense new growth is coming on in many localities. A good many years are
required to bring a seedling to maturity, but it will reach sawlog size
sometime, and there is no question but that the market will welcome it.

The shortleaf pine is peculiar among eastern softwoods in one respect.
Stumps will sprout. That occurs oftener west of the Mississippi than
east. However, the tree’s ability to send up sprouts from the stump is
of little practical value, since the sprouts seldom or never develop
into merchantable trees. In that respect it differs from the other
well-known sprouting softwood of this country, the California redwood,
whose numerous sprouts grow into large trunks.

SPRUCE PINE (_Pinus glabra_). This is one of the softest and the whitest
of the hard pines of this country. Nothing but its scarcity stands in
the way of its becoming an important timber tree. The best of it is a
satisfactory substitute for white pine in the manufacture of doors. It
grows rapidly, and the wide rings contain a high percentage of light
colored springwood, though there is enough summerwood of darker color to
give the dressed lumber a character. It weighs about the same as
northern white pine, but is weaker. In South Carolina and Florida it is
called white pine, but the name spruce is more general. It is known also
as kingstree, poor pine, Walter’s pine, and lowland spruce pine. Its
range is restricted to southern South Carolina, northern Florida and
southern Alabama and Mississippi, and northeastern Louisiana. Its leaves
are from one and a half to three inches in length, grow two in a bundle,
and fall the second and third years. Large and well-formed trunks attain
a height of from eighty to 100 feet and a diameter from two to nearly
three. It reaches its best development in northwestern Florida, and its
light, symmetrical trunks have long been in use there as masts for small
vessels. It is too scarce to attract much attention from lumbermen, but
they are well acquainted with its good qualities, and some of them take
pains to keep the lumber separate from associated pines, and sell it to
manufacturers of doors and interior finish. The bark bears considerable
resemblance to spruce, which probably accounts for the name of the tree.

    TABLE MOUNTAIN PINE (_Pinus pungens_). The French botanist, Michaux
    the younger, has been criticized for the statement which he made
    more than a hundred years ago that this species was confined to a
    certain flat-topped mountain in the southern Appalachian ranges, and
    he called it table mountain pine. It lacked much of being confined
    within the narrow limits where it was discovered. It grows in New
    Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West
    Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. Its
    other names are prickly pine, hickory pine, and southern mountain
    pine. It supplies timber in all parts of its range, but, except in
    very restricted localities, it is not abundant. The lumber in the
    market is seldom distinguished from other pines, but some of the
    Tennessee mills sell it separately to local customers. The wood is
    medium light, rather strong (about like _Pinus rigida_, or pitch
    pine, which it resembles in other respects), is less stiff than
    white pine, and is resinous. The thick sapwood is nearly white, the
    heartwood brown. It is not a durable timber in contact with the
    ground. Its fuel value is low. Its needles grow in clusters of two,
    and are generally less than two inches long. The cones which are in
    clusters of from three to eight, and from two to three and a half
    inches long, are armed with stout, curved hooks. The cones shed
    their seeds irregularly during two or three years, and sometimes
    hang on the trees for twenty years. In open ground this pine
    occasionally produces fertile seeds when only a few feet high. Its
    forest form and open-ground form are quite different. In thick woods
    the tree is tall, with good bole, but in open ground it is only
    twenty or thirty feet high, and is covered with limbs almost to the
    ground.

[Illustration]




LOBLOLLY PINE

[Illustration: LOBLOLLY PINE]




LOBLOLLY PINE

(_Pinus Tæda_)


Few trees have more names than this. The names, however, may be
separated into groups, one group referring to the foliage, another to
the situations in which the tree grows, and a third to certain
characters or uses of the wood. Names descriptive of the leaves are
longschat pine, longshucks pine, shortleaf pine, foxtail pine, and
longstraw pine. The names which refer to locality or situation are
loblolly pine, old-field pine, slash pine, black slash pine, Virginia
pine, meadow pine and swamp pine. Names which refer to the character of
the wood or of the standing tree are torch pine, rosemary pine,
frankincense pine, cornstalk pine, spruce pine, and yellow pine. Not one
of these names is applied to the tree in its entire range, and it has
several names other than those listed. Sap pine is widely applied to the
lumber, because the tree’s sapwood is very thick, sometimes amounting to
eighty per cent of a trunk. It has borne the name old-field pine for a
hundred and fifty years in Virginia, and the name suggests a good deal
of history. Some of the improvident early Virginia tobacco growers
neglected to fertilize their fields, and the land wore out under
constant cropping, and was abandoned. The pine quickly took possession,
for the fields which were too far exhausted to produce tobacco or corn
were amply able to grow dense stands of loblolly pine, and the farmers
noticing this, called it old-field pine. It has been taking possession
of abandoned fields in Virginia and North Carolina ever since, and the
name still applies. The tree grows from New Jersey to Florida, west to
Texas, north to Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia, but it does not
cover the whole territory thus outlined. It is very scarce near its
northern limit. There is evidence that the range of loblolly has
extended in historic times, not into new or distant regions, but outside
the borders which once marked its range. Since white men in Texas
stopped the Indians’ grass fires, the pine has encroached upon the
prairie. Early writers in Virginia and North Carolina spoke of pine as
scarce or totally wanting, except on the immediate coast. It is now
found from one hundred to two hundred miles inland, and many sawmills
now cut logs which have grown in fields abandoned since the
Revolutionary war. This has occurred on the Atlantic coast rather than
west of the Appalachian ranges of mountains. Virginia has more sawmills
than any other state, and many of them are working on loblolly pine
which has grown in the last hundred years.

The tree bears seeds abundantly and scatters them widely. It is
vigorous, grows with great rapidity, and is able to fight its way if it
finds conditions in any way favorable. Turpentine operators have not
found the working of loblolly pine profitable, and this has relieved it
of a drain which has done much to deplete the southern forests of
longleaf pine.

Loblolly’s leaves are from six to nine inches long, and fall the third
year. This species, in common with other southern yellow pines, is
disposed to grow tall, clear trunks, with a meager supply of limbs and
foliage at the top. The lumber sawed from trunks of that kind is clear
of knots. No other important forest tree of the United States comes as
nearly being a cultivated tree as the loblolly pine. This is
particularly true in the northeastern part of its range, in North
Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. Though nature has done the actual
planting, men provided the seed beds by giving up old fields to that
use; and many of the stands are as thick and even as if they had been
planted and cared for by regular forestry methods. Trees are from eighty
to one hundred feet tall, and from two to four in diameter, some very
old ones being a little larger.

The annual rings of loblolly pine are broad, with good contrast between
the spring and summer growth. The wood is light, not strong, brittle,
not durable, very resinous, the resin passages are few and not
conspicuous; medullary rays are numerous and obscure; color, light
brown, the thick sapwood orange or nearly white. When this tree is of
slow growth it is lighter, less resinous, and has thinner sapwood. It is
sometimes known as rosemary pine.

The use of loblolly pine lumber was greatly stimulated when the custom
of drying it in kilns became general. It is largely sapwood and dries
slowly in air. Its market is found in all eastern and central parts of
the United States, and it is exported to Europe and Central and South
America. It is a substantial material for many common purposes and its
use is very large on the Atlantic coast. In quantity it exceeds any
other species in the wood-using industries of Maryland, and all others
combined in North Carolina. It is not as often employed in heavy
structural timbers as longleaf pine, but in the market of which
Baltimore is the center, much use is made of it for that purpose. It is
ten pounds a cubic foot lighter than longleaf, has about three-fourths
of the strength, and nearly four-fifths of longleaf’s elasticity. It is
thus seen to be considerably inferior to it as a structural timber where
heavy loads must be sustained; but builders use it for many purposes in
preference to or on an equality with longleaf. It is fine for interior
finish and doors. Railroads employ large quantities in building freight
cars, much for crossties, and bridge builders find many places for it.
It is not a long lasting wood when exposed to weather, unless it has
been treated with creosote to preserve it from decay. It is one of the
most easily treated woods.

In North Carolina and Virginia loblolly tobacco hogsheads are common;
and box factories within easy reach of it use much. A list of its uses,
compiled from reports of factory operations in Maryland, will give an
idea of the range it covers: Basket bottoms, beer bottle boxes, boats,
cart bodies, crates, flooring, frames for doors and windows, fruit
boxes, interior finish, nail kegs, oyster boxes, seats for boats, siding
for houses, staves for slack cooperage, store fixtures, wagon beds,
balusters, brackets, chiffoniers, mantels, molding, picture frames,
stair railing, sash, scrollwork, sideboards, tables.

The amount of loblolly pine timber in this country is not known. No
other important species comes so near growing as much as is cut from
year to year. It covers 200,000 square miles with stands ranging from
little or nothing in some parts to 20,000 feet per acre in others, or
more in exceptional cases. The area of fully stocked loblolly pine is
believed to be as large now as it ever was. Before the Civil war it was
predicted that its period of greatest production was over; but large
tracts are now being logged on which the pine seeds had not been sown in
1860.

POND PINE (_Pinus serotina_). Sargent’s table of weights of woods shows
this to be the heaviest pine of the United States; but, as his
calculations were made from a single sample which grew in Duval county,
Florida, further data should be secured before his figures, 49.5 pounds
per cubic foot, are accepted as an average weight for the species. It is
rated in strength about equal to longleaf and Cuban pine. Its structure
shows a large percentage of dense summerwood in the yearly ring. The
leaves are in clusters of three, rarely four, and are six or eight
inches long, and fall in their third and fourth years. The name suggests
that the cones are tightly closed, and that they adhere tenaciously to
the twigs on which they grow. This is found true. The principal
impression made on a person who sees the pond pine for the first time is
that it is overloaded with cones, and that it must be a prolific seeder.
Better acquaintance modifies the latter part of that impression. It is
overloaded with cones, but most of them are many years old, and have
long been seedless, although most of the trees have the seed crops of
two years on the branches at one time. Enough seed is shed to perpetuate
the species, but too little to insure an aggressive spread into
surrounding vacant ground. The pond pine may reach a diameter of three
feet and a height of eighty, but that is twice the average size. The
wood is very resinous, and is brittle.

    SCRUB PINE (_Pinus virginiana_). This tree is often called Jersey
    pine because it is a prominent feature of the landscapes in the
    southern part of that state where it has spread extensively since
    the settlement of the country. Its short needles have been
    responsible for several of its names, among them being shortshuck
    pine in Maryland and Virginia, shortshat pine in Delaware,
    shortleaved pine in North Carolina, and spruce pine and cedar pine
    in some parts of the South. In Tennessee it is known as nigger pine,
    and in some parts of North Carolina as river pine. The range is
    fairly well outlined by the above discussion of its names. It grows
    from New York to South Carolina, and west of the mountains it is
    found in northern Alabama and middle Tennessee, in Kentucky and West
    Virginia. It reaches its largest size in southern Indiana where it
    is sometimes 100 feet high and three in diameter. It is there a
    valuable tree for many purposes, but is not abundant. Its average
    size is small in the eastern states, usually not over fifty feet
    high, and often little more than half of that. Few trunks east of
    the Allegheny mountains are more than eighteen inches in diameter.
    The name scrub pine is an index to the opinions held by most people
    regarding this tree. It is often considered an encumbrance rather
    than an asset; yet statistics of wood-using industries hardly
    justify that view. Millions of feet of it are employed annually in
    each of the states of New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and North
    Carolina, for boxes, slack cooperage, and common lumber. The wood is
    moderately strong, but is not stiff. It is medium light, soft,
    brittle, with summerwood narrow and very resinous. Its color is
    light orange or yellow, the thick sapwood ivory white. The needles
    are from one and a half to three inches long, and fall in the third
    and fourth years. Cones are two or three inches long, and scatter
    their seeds in autumn. The wings are too small to carry the seeds
    far, yet the tree succeeds in quickly spreading into surrounding
    vacant spaces. Cones adhere to the branches three or four years. Tar
    makers and charcoal burners utilized scrub pine in New Jersey,
    northeastern Maryland and southeastern Pennsylvania a century and a
    half ago. The tree seems to be as abundant now as it ever was.
    Unless it occupies very poor land--which it generally does--the
    growth is liable to be suppressed and crowded to death by broadleaf
    trees before the stands become very old. As a species, it is weak in
    self-defense, and it owes its survival to its habit of retreating to
    poor soils where enemies cannot follow. It may be said of it as the
    Roman historian Tacitus said of certain men: “The cowards fly the
    farthest, and are the longest survivors.”

[Illustration]




NORWAY PINE

[Illustration: NORWAY PINE]




NORWAY PINE

(_Pinus Resinosa_)


Early explorers who were not botanists mistook this tree for Norway
spruce, and gave it the name which has since remained in nearly all
parts of its range. It is called red pine also, and this name is
strictly descriptive. The brown or red color of the bark is instantly
noticed by one who sees the tree for the first time. In the Lake States
it has been called hard pine for the purpose of distinguishing it from
the softer white pine with which it is associated. In England they call
it Canadian red pine, because the principal supply in England is
imported from the Canadian provinces.

Its chief range lies in the drainage basin of the St. Lawrence river,
which includes the Great Lakes and the rivers which flow into them.
Newfoundland forms the eastern and Manitoba the western outposts of this
species. It is found as far south as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,
northern Ohio, central Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. It conforms
pretty generally to the range of white pine but does not accompany that
species southward along the Appalachian mountain ranges across West
Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Where it was left to
compete in nature’s way with white pine, the contest was friendly, but
white pine got the best of it. The two species grew in intermixture, but
in most instances white pine had from five to twenty trees to Norway’s
one. As a survivor under adversity, however, the Norway pine appears to
surpass its great friendly rival, at least in the Lake States where the
great pineries once flourished and have largely passed away. Solitary or
small clumps of Norway pines are occasionally found where not a white
pine, large or small, is in sight.

The forest appearance of Norway pine resembles the southern yellow
pines. The stand is open, the trunks are clean and tall, the branches
are at the top. The Norway’s leaves are in clusters of two, and are five
or six inches long. They fall during the fourth or fifth year. Cones are
two inches long, and when mature, closely resemble the color of the
tree’s bark, that is, light chestnut brown. Exceptionally tall Norway
pines may reach a height of 150 feet, but the average is seventy or
eighty, with diameters of from two to four. Young trees are limby, but
early in life the lower branches die and fall, leaving few protruding
stubs or knots. It appears to be a characteristic that trunks are seldom
quite straight. They do not have the plumb appearance of forest grown
white pine and spruce.

The wood of Norway pine is medium light, its strength and stiffness
about twenty-five per cent greater than white pine, and it is moderately
soft. The annual rings are rather wide, indicating rapid growth. The
bands of summerwood are narrow compared with the springwood, which gives
a generally light color to the wood, though not as light as the wood of
white pine. The resin passages are small and fairly numerous. The
sapwood is thick, and the wood is not durable in contact with the soil.

Norway pine has always had a place of its own in the lumber trade, but
large quantities have been marketed as white pine. If such had not been
the case, Norway pine would have been much oftener heard of during the
years when the Lake State pineries were sending their billions of feet
of lumber to the markets of the world.

Because of the deposit of resinous materials in the wood, Norway pine
stumps resist decay much better than white pine. In some of the early
cuttings in Michigan, where only stumps remain to show how large the
trees were and how thick they stood, the Norway stumps are much better
preserved than the white pine. Using that fact as a basis of estimate,
it may be shown that in many places the Norway pine constituted
one-fifth or one-fourth of the original stand. The lumbermen cut clean,
and statistics of that period do not show that the two pines were
generally marketed separately. In recent years many of the Norway stumps
have been pulled, and have been sold to wood-distillation plants where
the rosin and turpentine are extracted.

At an early date Norway pine from Canada and northern New York was
popular ship timber in this country and England. Slender, straight
trunks were selected as masts, or were sawed for decking planks thirty
or forty feet long. Shipbuilders insisted that planks be all heartwood,
because when sapwood was exposed to rain and sun, it changed to a green
color, due to the presence of fungus. The wood wears well as ship
decking. The British navy was still using some Norway pine masts as late
as 1875.

The scarcity of this timber has retired it from some of the places which
it once filled, and the southern yellow pines have been substituted. It
is still employed for many important purposes, the chief of which is car
building, if statistics for the state of Illinois are a criterion for
the whole country. In 1909 in that state 24,794,000 feet of it were used
for all purposes, and 14,783,000 feet in car construction.

For many years Chicago has been the center of the Norway pine trade. It
is landed there by lake steamers and by rail, and is distributed to
ultimate consumers. The uses for the wood, as reported by Illinois
manufacturers, follow: Baskets, boxes, boats, brackets, casing and
frames for doors and windows, crating, derricks for well-boring
machines, doors, elevators, fixtures for stores and offices, foot or
running boards for tank cars, foundry flasks, freight cars, hand rails,
insulation for refrigerator cars, ladders, picture moldings, roofing,
sash, siding for cattle cars, sign boards and advertising signs, tanks,
and windmill towers.

As with white pine, Norway pine has passed the period of greatest
production, though much still goes to market every year and will long
continue to do so. The land which lumbermen denuded in the Lake States,
particularly Michigan and Wisconsin, years ago, did not reclothe itself
with Norway seedlings. That would have taken place in most instances but
for fires which ran periodically through the slashings until all
seedlings were destroyed. In many places there are now few seedlings and
few large trees to bear seeds, and consequently the pine forest in such
places is a thing of the past. The outlook is better in other
localities.

The Norway pine is much planted for ornament, and is rated one of the
handsomest of northern park trees.

    PITCH PINE (_Pinus rigida_). The name pitch pine is locally applied
    to almost every species of hard, resinous pine in this country. The
    _Pinus rigida_ has other names than pitch pine. In Delaware it is
    called longleaved pine, since its needles are longer than the scrub
    pine’s with which it is associated. For the same reason it is known
    in some localities as longschat pine. In Massachusetts it is called
    hard pine, in Pennsylvania yellow pine, in North Carolina and
    eastern Tennessee black pine, and black Norway pine in New York. The
    botanical name is translated “rigid pine,” but the rigid refers to
    the leaves, not the wood. Its range covers New England, New York,
    Pennsylvania, southern Canada, eastern Ohio, and southward along the
    mountains to northern Georgia. It has three leaves in a cluster,
    from three to five inches long, and they fall the second year. Cones
    range in length from one to three inches, and they hang on the
    branches ten or twelve years. The wood is medium light, moderately
    strong, but low in stiffness. It is soft and brittle. The annual
    rings are wide, the summerwood broad, distinct, and very resinous.
    Medullary rays are few but prominent; color, light brown or red, the
    thick sapwood yellow or often nearly white. The difference in the
    hardness between springwood and summerwood renders it difficult to
    work, and causes uneven wear when used as flooring. It is fairly
    durable in contact with the soil.

    The tree attains a height of from forty to eighty feet and a
    diameter of three. This pine is not found in extensive forests, but
    in scattered patches, nearly always on poor soil where other trees
    will not crowd it. Light and air are necessary to its existence. If
    it receives these, it will fight successfully against adversities
    which would be fatal to many other species. In resistance to forest
    fires, it is a salamander among trees. That is primarily due to its
    thick bark, but it is favored also by the situations in which it is
    generally found--open woods, and on soil so poor that ground litter
    is thin. It is a useful wood for many purposes, and wherever it is
    found in sufficient quantity, it goes to market, but under its own
    name only in restricted localities. Its resinous knots were once
    used in place of candles in frontier homes. Tar made locally from
    its rich wood was the pioneer wagoner’s axle grease, and the
    ever-present tar bucket and tar paddle swung from the rear axle.
    Torches made by tying splinters in bundles answered for lanterns in
    night travel. It was the best pine for floors in some localities.
    It is probably used more for boxes than for anything else at
    present. In 1909 Massachusetts box makers bought 600,000 feet, and a
    little more went to Maryland box factories. Its poor holding power
    on spikes limits its employment as railroad ties and in
    shipbuilding. Carpenters and furniture makers object to the numerous
    knots. Country blacksmiths who repair and make wagons as a side
    line, find it suitable for wagon beds. It is much used as fuel where
    it is convenient.

    TORREY PINE (_Pinus torreyana_), called del mar pine and Soledad
    pine, is an interesting tree from the fact that its range is so
    restricted that the actual number of trees could be easily known to
    one who would take the trouble to count them. A rather large
    quantity formerly occupied a small area in San Diego county,
    California, but woodchoppers who did not appreciate the fact that
    they were exterminating a species of pine from the face of the
    earth, cut nearly all of the trees for fuel. Its range covered only
    a few square miles, and fortunately part of that was included in the
    city limits of San Diego. An ordinance was passed prohibiting the
    cutting of a Torrey pine under heavy penalty, and the tree was thus
    saved. A hundred and fifty miles off the San Diego coast a few
    Torrey pines grow on the islands of Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa, and
    owing to their isolated situation they bid fair to escape the
    cordwood cutter for years to come. Those who have seen this tree on
    its native hills have admired the gameness of its battle for
    existence against the elements. Standing in the full sweep of the
    ocean winds, its strong, short branches scarcely move, and all the
    agitation is in the thick tufts of needles which cling to the ends
    of the branches. Trees exposed to the seawinds are stunted, and are
    generally less than a foot in diameter and thirty feet high; but
    those which are so fortunate as to occupy sheltered valleys are
    three or four times that size. The needles are five in a cluster.
    The cones persist on the branches three or four years. The wood is
    light, soft, moderately strong, very brittle; the rings of yearly
    growth are broad, and the yellow bands of summerwood occupy nearly
    half. The sapwood is very thick and is nearly white.

[Illustration]




WESTERN YELLOW PINE

[Illustration: WESTERN YELLOW PINE]




WESTERN YELLOW PINE

(_Pinus Ponderosa_)


The range of western yellow pine covers a million square miles. Its
eastern boundary is a line drawn from South Dakota to western Texas. The
species covers much of the country between that line and the Pacific
ocean. It is natural that it should have more names than one in a region
so extensive. It is best known as western yellow pine, but lumbermen
often call it California white pine. The standing timber is frequently
designated bull pine, but that name is not often given to the lumber.
Where there is no likelihood of confusing it with southern pines, it is
called simply yellow pine. The name heavy-wooded pine, sometimes applied
to the lumber in England, is misleading. When well seasoned it weighs
about thirty pounds per cubic foot, and ordinarily it would not be
classed heavy. In California it is called heavy pine, but that is to
distinguish it from sugar pine which is considerably lighter. The color
of its bark has given it the name Sierra brownbark pine. The same tree
in Montana is called black pine.

The tree has developed two forms. Some botanists have held there are two
species, but that is not the general opinion. In the warm, damp climate
of the Pacific slope the tree is larger, and somewhat different in
appearance from the form in the Rocky Mountain region. The same
observation holds true of Douglas fir.

The wood of western yellow pine is medium light, not strong, is low in
elasticity, medullary rays prominent but not numerous; resinous, color
light to reddish, the thick sapwood almost white. The annual rings are
variable in width, and the proportionate amounts of springwood and
summerwood also vary. It is not durable in contact with the ground.

The wood is easy to work and some of the best of it resembles white
pine, but as a whole it is inferior to that wood, though it is
extensively employed as a substitute for it in the manufacture of doors,
sash, and frames. It is darker than white pine, harder, heavier,
stronger, almost exactly equal in stiffness, but the annual rings of the
two woods do not bear close resemblance.

The tree reaches a height of from 100 to 200 feet, a diameter from three
to seven. It is occasionally much larger. Its size depends much on its
habitat. The best development occurs on the Sierra Nevada mountains in
California and the best wood comes from that region, though certain
other localities produce high-grade lumber.

Western yellow pine holds and will long hold an important place in the
country’s timber resources. The total stand has been estimated at
275,000,000,000 feet, and is second only to that of Douglas fir, though
the combined stand of the four southern yellow pines is about
100,000,000,000 feet larger. It is a vigorous species, able to hold its
ground under ordinary circumstances. Next to incense cedar and the giant
sequoias which are associated with it in the Sierra Nevada mountains, it
is the most prolific seed bearer of the western conifers, and its seeds
are sufficiently light to insure wide distribution. It is gaining ground
within its range by taking possession of vacant areas which have been
bared by lumbering or fire. In some cases it crowds to death the more
stately sugar pine by cutting off its light and moisture. It resists
fire better than most of the forest trees with which it is associated.
On the other hand, it suffers from enemies more than its associates do.
A beetle (_Dendroctonus ponderosæ_), destroys large stands. In the Black
Hills in 1903 its ravages killed 600,000,000 feet.

This splendid pine has run the gamut of uses from the corral pole of the
first settler to the paneled door turned out by the modern factory. It
has almost an unlimited capacity for usefulness. It grows in dry regions
of the Rocky Mountains where it is practically the only source of wood
supply; and it is equally secure in its position where forests are
abundant and fine. It has supplied props, stulls, and lagging for mines
in nearly every state touched by its range. Without its ties and other
timbers some of the early railroads through the western mountains could
scarcely have been built. It has been one of the leading flume timbers
in western lumber and irrigation development. It fenced many ranches in
early times and is still doing so. It is used in general construction,
and in finish; from the shingle to the foundation sill of houses. It
finds its way to eastern lumber markets. Almost 20,000,000 feet a year
are used in Illinois alone. Competition with eastern white pine is met
in the Lake States because, grade for grade, the western wood is
cheaper, until lower grades are reached. The western yellow pine, in the
eastern market, is confused with the western white pine of Idaho and
Montana (_Pinus monticola_) and separate statistics of use are
impossible.

The makers of fruit boxes in California often employ the yellow pine in
lieu of sugar pine which once supplied the whole trade. It is also used
by coopers for various containers, but not for alcoholic liquors.

The leaves are in clusters of twos and threes, and are from five to
eleven inches long. Most of them fall during the third year. The cones
are from three to six inches long, and generally fall soon after they
reach maturity.

    COULTER PINE (_Pinus coulteri_) is also known as nut pine, big cone
    pine, and long cone pine. It is a California species, scarce, but of
    much interest because of its cones. They are larger than those of
    any other American pine and are armed with formidable curved spines
    from half an inch to an inch and a half in length. The cones are
    from ten to fourteen inches long. The tree is found on the Coast
    Range mountains from the latitude of San Francisco to the boundary
    between California and Mexico. It thrives at altitudes of from 3,000
    to 6,000 feet. It never occurs in pure stands and the total amount
    is small. It looks like the western yellow pine, but is much
    inferior in size. Trunks seldom attain a length of fifteen feet or a
    diameter of two. There is no evidence that Coulter pine is
    increasing its stand on the ground which it already occupies, or
    spreading to new ground. The wood is light, soft, moderately strong,
    and very tough. The annual rings are narrow and consist largely of
    summerwood. The heartwood is light red, the thick sapwood nearly
    white. It is a poor tree for lumber, and it has been little used in
    that way, but has been burned for charcoal for blacksmith shops, and
    much is sold as cordwood. The leaves of Coulter pine are in clusters
    of three, and they fall during the third and fourth years.

    CALIFORNIA SWAMP PINE (_Pinus muricata_) clearly belongs among minor
    species listed as timber trees. It meets a small demand for skids,
    corduroy log roads, bridge floors, and scaffolds in the redwood
    logging operations in California. It is scattered along the Pacific
    coast 500 miles, beginning in Lower California and ending a hundred
    miles north of San Francisco. It is known as dwarf marine pine,
    pricklecone pine, bishop pine, and obispo pine. The last name is the
    Spanish translation of the English word bishop. The largest trees
    seldom exceed two feet in diameter, and a height of ninety feet. The
    average size is little more than half as much. The wood is very
    strong, hard, and compact, and the annual growth ring is largely
    dense summerwood. Resin passages are few, but the wood is resinous,
    light brown in color, and the thick sapwood is nearly white. The
    needles are in clusters of two, and are from four to six inches
    long. They begin to fall the second year. Some of the trees retain
    their cones until death, but the seeds are scattered from year to
    year. Under the stimulus of artificial conditions in the redwood
    districts this pine seems to be spreading. Its seeds blow into
    vacant ground from which redwood has been removed, and growth is
    prompt. The seedlings are not at all choice as to soil, but take
    root in cold clay, in peat bogs, on barren sand and gravel, and on
    wind-swept ridges exposed to ocean fogs. Its ability to grow where
    few other trees can maintain themselves holds out some hope that its
    usefulness will increase.

    MONTEREY PINE (_Pinus radiata_). This scarce and local species is
    restricted to the California coast south of San Francisco, and to
    adjacent islands. Under favorable circumstances it grows rapidly and
    promises to be of more importance as a lumber source in the future
    than it has been in the past. It is, however, somewhat particular as
    to soil. It must have ground not too wet or too dry. If these
    requirements are observed, it is a good tree for planting. Its
    average height is seventy or ninety feet, diameter from eighteen to
    thirty inches. Trunks six feet in diameter are occasionally heard
    of. The wood is light, soft, moderately strong, tough, annual rings
    very wide and largely of springwood; color, light brown, the very
    thick sapwood nearly white. The leaves are from four to six inches
    long, in clusters of two and three, and fall the third year. Cones
    are from three to five inches long. The lumber is too scarce at
    present to have much importance, but its quality is good. In
    appearance it resembles wide-ringed loblolly pine, and appears to be
    suitable for doors and sash, and frames for windows and doors. Its
    present uses are confined chiefly to ranch timbers and fuel. If it
    ever amounts to much as a lumber resource, it will be as a planted
    pine, and not in its natural state.

    JACK PINE (_Pinus divaricata_) is a far northern species which
    extends its range southward in the United States, from Maine to
    Minnesota, and reaches northern Indiana and Illinois. It grows
    almost far enough north in the valley of Mackenzie river to catch
    the rays of the midnight sun. It must necessarily adapt itself to
    circumstances. When these are favorable, it develops a trunk up to
    two feet in diameter and seventy feet tall; but in adversity, it
    degenerates into a many-branched shrub a few feet high. The average
    tree in the United States is thirty or forty feet tall, and a foot
    or more in diameter. Its name is intended as a term of contempt,
    which it does not deserve. Others call it scrub pine which is little
    better. Its other names are more respectful, Prince’s pine in
    Ontario, black pine in Wisconsin and Minnesota, cypress in Quebec
    and the Hudson Bay country, Sir Joseph Banks’ pine in England, and
    juniper in some parts of Canada. “Chek pine” is frequently given in
    its list of names, but the name is said to have originated in an
    attempt of a German botanist to pronounce “Jack pine” in dictating
    to a stenographer. The tree straggles over landscapes which
    otherwise would be treeless. It is often a ragged and uncouth
    specimen of the vegetable kingdom, but that is when it is at its
    worst. At its best, as it may be seen where cared for in some of the
    Michigan cemeteries, it is as handsome a tree as anyone could
    desire. The characteristic thinness and delicacy of its foliage
    distinguish it at once from its associates. The peculiar green of
    its soft, short needles wins admiration. The wood is light, soft,
    not strong; annual rings are moderately wide, and are largely
    composed of springwood. The thin bands of summerwood are resinous,
    and the small resin ducts are few. The thick sapwood is nearly
    white, the heartwood brown or orange. It is not durable.

    Jack pine can never be an important timber tree, because too small;
    but a considerable amount is used for bed slats, nail kegs,
    plastering lath, barrel headings, boxes, mine props, pulpwood, and
    fuel. Aside from its use as lumber and small manufactured products,
    it has a value for other purposes. It can maintain its existence in
    waste sands; and its usefulness is apparent in fixing drifting dunes
    along some of the exposed shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.
    It lives on dry sand and sends its roots several feet to water; or,
    under circumstances entirely different, it thrives in swamps where
    the watertable is little below the surface of the ground. It fights
    a brave battle against adversities while it lasts, but it does not
    live long. Sixty years is old age for this tree. It grows fast while
    young, but later it devotes all its energies to the mere process of
    living, and its increase in size is slow, until at a period when
    most trees are still in early youth, it dies of old age, and the
    northern winds quickly whip away its limbs, leaving the barkless
    trunk to stand a few years longer.

[Illustration]




LODGEPOLE PINE

[Illustration: LODGEPOLE PINE]




LODGEPOLE PINE

(_Pinus Contorta_)


The common name of this tree was given it because its tall, slender,
very light poles were used by Indians of the region in the construction
of their lodges. They selected poles fifteen feet long and two inches in
diameter, set them in a circle, bent the tops together, tied them, and
covered the frame with skins or bark. The poles were peeled in early
summer, when the Indians set out upon their summer hunt, and were left
to season until fall, when they were carried to the winter’s camping
place, probably fifty miles distant. Tamarack is a common name for this
pine in much of its range; it is likewise known as black pine, spruce
pine, and prickly pine. Its leaves are from one to two inches long, in
clusters of two. The small cones adhere to the branches many
years--sometimes as long as twenty--without releasing the seeds, which
are sealed within the cone by accumulated resin. The vitality of the
seeds is remarkable. They don’t lose their power of germination during
their long imprisonment.

The lodgepole pine has been called a fire tree, and the name is not
inappropriate. It profits by severe burning, as some other trees of the
United States do, such as paper birch and bird cherry. The sealed cones
are opened by fire, which softens the resin, and the seeds are liberated
after the fire has passed, and wing their flight wherever the wind
carries them. The passing fire may be severe enough to kill the parent
tree without destroying or bringing down the cones. The seeds soon fall
on the bared mineral soil, where they germinate by thousands. More than
one hundred thousand small seedling trees may occupy a single acre. Most
of them are ultimately crowded to death, but a thick stand results. Most
lodgepole pine forests occupy old burns. The tree is one of the slowest
of growers. It never reaches large size--possibly three feet is the
limit. It is very tall and slender. A hundred years will scarcely
produce a sawlog of the smallest size.

The range of this tree covers a million square miles from Alaska to New
Mexico, and to the Pacific coast. Its characters vary in different parts
of its range. A scrub form was once thought to be a different species,
and was called shore pine.

The wood is of about the same weight as eastern white pine. It is light
in color, rather weak, and brittle, annual rings very narrow, summerwood
small in amount, resin passages few and small; medullary rays numerous,
broad, and prominent. The wood is characterized by numerous small knots.
It is not durable in contact with the ground, but it readily receives
preservative treatment. In height it ranges from fifty to one hundred
feet.

The government’s estimate of the stand of lodgepole pine in the United
States in 1909 placed it at 90,000,000,000 feet. That makes it seventh
in quantity among the timber trees of this country, those above it being
Douglas fir, the southern yellow pines (considered as one), western
yellow pine, redwood, western hemlock, and the red cedar of Washington,
Oregon, and Idaho.

Lodgepole pine has been long and widely used as a ranch timber in the
Far West, serving for poles and rails in fences, for sheds, barns,
corrals, pens, and small bridges. Where it could be had at all, it was
generally plentiful. Stock ranges high among the mountains frequently
depend almost solely upon lodgepole pine for necessary timber.

Mine operators find it a valuable resource. As props it is cheap,
substantial, and convenient in many parts of Colorado, New Mexico,
Wyoming, and Montana. A large proportion of this timber which is cut for
mining purposes has been standing dead from fire injury many years, and
is thoroughly seasoned and very light. It is in excellent condition for
receiving preservative treatment.

Sawmills do not list lodgepole pine separately in reports of lumber cut,
and it is impossible to determine what the annual supply from the
species is. It is well known that the quantity made into lumber in
Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho is large. Its chief market is
among the newly established agricultural communities in those states.
They use it for fruit and vegetable shipping boxes, fencing plank,
pickets, and plastering lath.

Railroads buy half a million lodgepole pine crossties yearly. When
creosoted, they resist decay many years. Lodgepole pine has been a tie
material since the first railroads entered the region, and while by no
means the best, it promises to fill a much more important place in the
future than in the past. It is an ideal fence post material as far as
size and form are concerned, and with preservative treatment it is bound
to attain a high place. It is claimed that treated posts will last
twenty years, and that puts them on a par with the cedars.

In Colorado and Wyoming much lodgepole was formerly burned for charcoal
to supply the furnaces which smelted ore and the blacksmith shops of the
region. This is done now less than formerly, since railroad building has
made coal and coke accessible.

In one respect, lodgepole pine is to the western mountains what loblolly
pine is to the flat country of the south Atlantic and other southern
states. It is aggressive, and takes possession of vacant ground.
Although the wood is not as valuable as loblolly, it is useful, and has
an important place to fill in the western country’s development. Its
greatest drawback is its exceedingly slow growth. A hundred years is a
long time to wait for trees of pole size. Two crops of loblolly sawlogs
can be harvested in that time. However, the land on which the lodgepole
grows is fit only for timber, and the acreage is so vast that there is
enough to grow supplies, even with the wait of a century or two for
harvest. The stand has increased enormously within historic time, the
same as loblolly, and for a similar reason. Men cleared land in the
East, and loblolly took possession; fires destroyed western forests of
other species and lodgepole seized and held the burned tracts.

If fires cease among the western mountains, as will probably be the case
under more efficient methods of patrol, and with stricter enforcement of
laws against starting fires, the spread of lodgepole pine will come to a
standstill, and existing forests will grow old without much extension of
their borders.

JEFFREY PINE (_Pinus jeffreyi_) is often classed as western yellow pine,
both in the forest and at the mill. Its range extends from southern
Oregon to Lower California, a distance of 1,000 miles, and its width
east and west varies from twenty to one hundred and fifty miles. It is a
mountain tree and generally occupies elevations above the western yellow
pine. In the North its range reaches 3,600 feet above sea level; in the
extreme South it is 10,000 feet. The darker and more deeply-furrowed
bark of the Jeffrey pine is the usual character by which lumbermen
distinguish it from the western yellow pine. It is known under several
names, most of them relating to the tree’s appearance, such as black
pine, redbark pine, blackbark pine, sapwood pine, and bull pine. It
reaches the same size as the western yellow pine, though the average is
a little smaller. The leaves are from four to nine inches long, and fall
in eight or nine years. The cones are large, and armed with slender,
curved spines. The seeds are too heavy to fly far, their wing area being
small. It is a vigorous tree, and in some regions it forms good forests.
Some botanists have considered the Jeffrey pine a variety of the western
yellow pine.

    GRAY PINE (_Pinus sabiniana_), called also Digger pine because the
    Digger Indians formerly collected the seeds, which are as large as
    peanuts, to help eke out a living, is confined to California, and
    grows in a belt on the foothills surrounding the San Joaquin and
    Sacramento valleys. Its cones are large and armed with hooked
    spines. When green, the largest cones weigh three or four pounds.
    Leaves are from eight to twelve inches long, in clusters of two and
    three, and fall the third and fourth years. The wood is remarkable
    for the quickness of its decay in damp situations. It lasts one or
    two years as fence posts. A mature gray pine is from fifty to
    seventy feet high, and eighteen to thirty inches in diameter. Some
    trees are much larger. It is of considerable importance, but is not
    in the same class as western yellow and sugar pine. The wood is
    light, soft, rather strong, brittle. The annual rings are generally
    wide, indicating rapid growth. Very old gray pines are not known. An
    age of 185 years seems to be the highest on record. The wood is
    resinous, and it has helped in a small way to supply the Pacific
    coast markets with high-grade turpentine, distilled from roots. It
    yields resin when boxed like the southern longleaf pine. There are
    two flowing seasons. One is very early, and closes when the weather
    becomes hot; the other is in full current by the middle of August.
    It maintains life among the California foothills during the long
    rainless seasons, on ground so dry that semi-desert chaparral
    sometimes succumbs; but it is able to make the most of favorable
    conditions, and it grows rapidly under the slightest encouragement.
    The seedlings are more numerous now than formerly, which is
    attributed to decrease of forest fires. The tree has enemies which
    generally attack it in youth. Two fungi, _Peridermium harknessi_,
    and _Dædalia vorax_, destroy the young tree’s leader or topmost
    shoot, causing the development of a short trunk. The latter fungus
    is the same or is closely related to that which tunnels the trunk of
    incense cedar and produces pecky cypress.

    Gray pine has been cut to some extent for lumber, but its principal
    uses have been as fuel and mine timbers. Many quartz mines have been
    located in the region where the tree grows; and the engines which
    pumped the shafts and raised and crushed the ore were often heated
    with this pine. Thousands of acres of hillsides in the vicinity of
    mines were stripped of it, and it went to the engine house ricks in
    wagons, on sleds, and on the backs of burros. In two respects it is
    an economical fuel for remote mines: it is light in weight, and
    gives more heat than an equal quantity of the oak that is associated
    with it.

    CHIHUAHUA PINE (_Pinus chihuahuana_) is not abundant, but it exists
    in small commercial quantities in southwestern New Mexico and
    southern Arizona. Trees are from fifty to eighty feet high, and from
    fifteen to twenty inches in diameter. The wood is medium light,
    soft, rather strong, brittle, narrow ringed and compact. The resin
    passages are few, large, and conspicuous; color, clear light orange,
    the thick sapwood lighter. The tree reaches best development at
    altitudes of from 5,000 to 7,000 feet. When the wood is used, it
    serves the same purposes as western yellow pine; but the small size
    of the tree makes lumber of large size impossible. The leaves are in
    clusters of three, and fall the fourth year. The cones have long
    stalks and are from one and a half to two inches long.

[Illustration]




TAMARACK

[Illustration: TAMARACK]




TAMARACK

(_Larix Laricina_)


There are three species of tamarack or larch in the United States, and
probably a fourth is confined to Alaska. One has its range in the
northeastern states, extending south to West Virginia and northwestward
to Alaska. Two are found in the northwestern states. Other species are
native of the eastern hemisphere, and some of them have been planted to
some extent in this country. A species of Europe is of much importance
in that country. The tamaracks lose their leaves in the fall and the
branches are bare during the winter. The name tamarack or larch should
be applied only to trees of the genus _larix_. This rule is not observed
in some parts of the West where the noble fir (_Abies nobilis_) is
occasionally called larch by lumbermen. It is not entitled to that name,
and confusion results from such use.

The larches are easily identified. They have needle leaves like those of
pines and firs, but they are differently arranged. They are produced in
little brush-like bundles, from twelve to forty leaves in each, on all
the shoots, except the leaders. On these the leaves occur singly. The
little brushes are so conspicuous, and so characteristic of this genus,
including all its species, that there should be little difficulty in
identifying the larches when the leaves are on. In winter, when the
branches are bare, there are other easy marks of identification.

The little brushes are interesting objects of study. Botanists tell us
that the excrescence or bud-like knob from which the leaves grow is
really a suppressed or aborted branch, with all its leaves crowded
together at the end. If it were developed, it would bear its leaves
singly, scattered along its full length, as they occur on the leading
shoots. The warty appearance of the branches in winter is a very
convenient means of identification when the leaves are down.

The cones of larches mature in a single season, and often hang on the
trees several years. They are conspicuous in winter when the branches
are bare of foliage. The adhering cones are generally seedless after the
first season, since they quickly let their winged seeds go. The male and
female flowers are produced singly on branches of the previous year.

The eastern and northern larch (_Larix laricina_) has a number of names.
It is commonly known as tamarack in the New England states and in New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan,
Minnesota, Ohio, and in Canada. The name larch is applied in practically
all the regions where it grows, but it is not used as frequently as
tamarack. Hackmatack, which was the Indian name for the tree in part of
its eastern range, is still in use in Maine, New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, and Ontario.
Nurserymen call it American larch to distinguish it from other larches
on the market, particularly the European larch. Michaux, an early French
botanist who explored American forests, called it American larch (_Larix
americana_), and the name which he gave has been retained by many
scientists to this day. In the Canadian provinces north of the Great
Lakes, and also in Maine and New Brunswick, it is frequently called
juniper, but without good reason, for it has little of the appearance
and few of the qualities of the junipers. In some localities it is
called black larch, and in others red larch. The first name refers to
the color of its bark, the last to the leaves when about to fall, for
they then change to a brown or reddish color. They fall in the autumn,
and the branches are bare until the next spring. Some of the New York
Indians observed that peculiarity of the tree which they thought should
be an evergreen like the balsam and pines with which it was often
associated, and they named it kenehtens, meaning “the leaves fall”.
Indians did not, as a rule, give separate names to tree species, and
when they did so, it was because of food value, or from some peculiarity
which could not fail to attract the notice of a savage.

The tamarack’s geographical range is remarkable. It is said to be best
developed in the region east of Manitoba, but it extends southward into
West Virginia and northward to the land of the midnight sun. It
maintains its place almost to the arctic snows, and the willow is about
the only tree that pushes farther north. It is found from Newfoundland
and Labrador far down toward the mouth of the Mackenzie river, north of
the arctic circle. It grows on dry land as well as wet, but is oftenest
found in cold swamps, particularly in the southern part of its range.
Silted-up lakes are favorite situations, and on the made-land above old
beaver dams.

Tamarack forests frequently stand on ground so soft that a pole may be
thrust ten feet deep in the mud. The moist, monotonous sphagnum moss
generally furnishes ground cover in such places. A tamarack swamp in
summer is cool and pleasant--provided there is not too much water on the
ground--but in winter a more desolate picture can scarcely be imagined.
The leafless trees appear to be dead, and covered with lifeless cones;
but the first warm days bring it to life.

The average height of tamarack trees is from forty to sixty feet,
diameter twenty inches or less. Leaves are one-half or one and a half
inches long; cones one-half or three-quarter inches, and bright chestnut
brown at maturity. They fall when two years old. The winged seeds are
very small. The tree is neither a frequent nor abundant seeder. The
foliage is thin, and is not sufficient to shut much sunlight from the
ground.

The wood is heavy, hard, very strong, and is durable in contact with the
soil. The growth is slow, annual rings narrow, summerwood occupies
nearly half the ring, and is dark-colored, resinous, and conspicuous;
resin passages few and obscure; medullary rays numerous and obscure;
color of wood light brown, the sapwood nearly white.

The uses of tamarack go back to prehistoric times. The Indians of Canada
and northeastern United States drew supplies from four forest trees when
they made their bark canoes. The bark for the shell came from paper
birch, threads for sewing the strips of bark together were tamarack
roots, resin for stopping leaks was a product of balsam fir, and the
light framework of wood was northern white cedar.

The roots which best suited the Indian’s purpose came from trees which
grew in soft, deep mud, where lakes and beaver ponds had silted up. Such
roots are long, slender, and very tough and pliant, and may be gathered
in large numbers, particularly where running streams have partly
undermined standing trees.

White men likewise made use of tamarack roots in boat building, but the
roots were different from what the Indians used. “Instep” crooks were
hewed for ship knees. These were large roots, the larger the better.
Trees which produced them did not grow in deep mud, for there the roots
did not develop crooks. The ship knee operator hunted for tamarack
forests growing on a soft surface soil two or three feet deep, underlaid
by stiff clay or rock which roots could not penetrate. In situations
like that the roots go straight down until they reach the hard stratum,
and then turn at right angles and grow in a horizontal direction. The
turning point in the root develops the crook of which the ship knee is
made.

Tamarack is seldom of sufficient size for the largest ship knees. Such
were formerly supplied by southern live oak; and in that case crooks
formed by the union of trunk and large branches were as good as those
produced by the union of trunk and large roots.

Tamarack is still employed in the manufacture of boat knees, but not as
much as formerly. Steel frames have largely taken the place of wood in
the construction of ship skeletons. Boat builders use tamarack now for
floors, keels, stringers, and knees.

Tamarack has come into much use in recent years. Sawmills cut from it
more than 125,000,000 feet of lumber a year. Fourteen states contribute,
but most of the lumber is produced in Minnesota, Michigan, and
Wisconsin. Railroads in the United States buy 5,000,000 or more
tamarack ties a year, which reduced to board measure amount to over
150,000,000 feet. Fence posts and telegraph poles come in large numbers
from tamarack forests.

The wood is stiff and strong, its stiffness being eighty-four per cent
of that of long leaf pine, and its strength about eighty per cent.
Unusual variations in both strength and stiffness are found. One stick
of tamarack may rate twice as high as another.

The wood-using factories of Michigan consume nearly 20,000,000 feet of
this wood yearly. It is made into boxes, excelsior, pails, tanks, tubs,
house finish, refrigerators, windmills, and wooden pipes for waterworks
and for draining mines.

There is little likelihood that the supply of tamarack will run short in
the near future. While it is not in the first rank of the important
trees in this country, it is useful, and it is fortunate that it
promises to hold its ground against fires which do grave injury to
northern forests. In the swamps where the most of it is found the ground
litter is too damp to burn. The tree does not grow rapidly, but it
usually occupies lands which cannot be profitably devoted to
agriculture, and it will, therefore, be let alone until it reaches
maturity.

Tamarack is a familiar tree in parks, and it grows farther south than
its natural range extends. It is not as desirable a park tree as
hemlock, spruce, fir, the cedars, and some of the pines, because its
foliage is thin in summer and wanting in winter. It is in a class with
cypress. In the early spring, however, while its soft green needles are
beginning to show themselves in clusters along the twigs, its delicate
and unusual appearance attracts more attention than its companion trees
which are always in full leaf and for that reason are somewhat
monotonous.

[Illustration]




WESTERN LARCH

[Illustration: WESTERN LARCH]




WESTERN LARCH

(_Larix Occidentalis_)


This is a magnificent tree of the Northwest, and its range lies
principally on the upper tributaries of the Columbia river, in Idaho,
Montana, and British Columbia, but it occurs also among the Blue
Mountains of Washington and Oregon. It is the largest member of the
larch genus, either in the old world or the new. The finest trees are
250 feet high with diameters of six or eight feet, but sizes half of
that are nearer the average. The trunk is of splendid form. In early
life it is limby, but later it prunes itself, and a long, tapering bole
is developed with a very small crown of thin foliage. No other tree of
its size, with the possible exception of old sequoias, has so little
foliage in proportion to the trunk.

The result is apparent in the rate of growth after the larch has passed
its youth. Sometimes such a tree does not increase its trunk diameter as
much in seventy-five years as a vigorous loblolly pine or willow oak
will in one year. The trunk of a tree, as is well known, grows by means
of food manufactured by the leaves and sent down to be transformed into
wood. With so few leaves and a trunk so large, the slowness of growth is
a natural consequence. Though the annual rings are usually quite narrow,
the bands of summerwood are relatively broad. That accounts for the
density of larchwood and its great weight. It is six per cent heavier
than longleaf pine, and is not much inferior in strength and elasticity.
The leaves are from one to one and three-quarter inches long, the cones
from one to one and a half inches, and the seeds nearly one-quarter inch
in length. They are equipped with wings of sufficient power to carry
them a short distance from the parent tree.

The bark on young larches is thin, but on large trunks, and near the
ground, it may be five or six inches thick. When a notch is cut in the
trunk it collects a resin of sweetish taste which the Indians use as an
article of food.

The western larch reaches its best development in northern Idaho and
Montana on streams which flow into Flathead lake. The tree prefers moist
bottom lands, but grows well in other situations, at altitudes of from
2,000 to 7,000 feet. The figures given above on the wood’s weight,
strength, and stiffness show its value for manufacturing purposes. Its
remoteness from markets has stood in the way of large use, but it has
been tried for many purposes and with highly satisfactory results. In
1910 sawmills in the four western states where it grows cut 255,186,000
feet. Most of this is used as rough lumber, but some is made into
furniture, finish, boxes, and boats. The wood has several names, though
larch is the most common. It is otherwise known as tamarack and
hackmatack, which names are oftener applied to the eastern tree; red
American larch, western tamarack, and great western larch.

Some of the annual cut of lumber credited to western larch does not
belong to it. Lumbermen have confused names and mixed figures by
applying this tree’s name to noble fir, which is a different tree. If
the fir lumber listed as larch were given its proper name, it would
result in lowering the output of larch as shown in statistical figures.
In spite of this, however, larch lumber fills an important place in the
trade of the northern Rocky Mountain region.

There is little doubt that it will fill a much more important place in
the future, for a beginning has scarcely been made in marketing this
timber. The available supply is large, but exact figures are not
available. Some stands are dense and extensive, and the trees are of
large size and fine form. It is not supposed, however, that there will
be much after the present stand has been cut, because a second crop from
trees of so slow growth will be far in the future. Sudworth says that
larch trees eighteen or twenty inches in diameter are from 250 to 300
years old, and that the ordinary age of these trees in the forests of
the Northwest is from 300 to 500 years; while larger trees are 600 or
700. Much remains to be learned concerning the ages of these trees in
different situations and in different parts of its range. It is
apparent, however, that when a period covering two or three centuries is
required to produce a sawlog of only moderate size, timber owners will
not look forward with much eagerness to a second growth forest of
western larch.

The value of the wood of western larch has been the subject of much
controversy. In the tables compiled for the federal census of 1880,
under direction of Charles S. Sargent, its strength and elasticity were
shown to be remarkably high. The figures indicate that it is about
thirty-nine per cent stronger than white oak and fifty-one per cent
stiffer. This places it a little above longleaf pine in strength and
nearly equal to it in stiffness or elasticity. Engineers have expressed
doubts as to the correctness of Sargent’s figures. They believe them too
high. The samples tested by Sargent were six in number, four of them
collected in Washington and two in Montana.

The wood of western larch is heavier than longleaf pine, and
approximately of the same weight as white oak. It is among the heaviest,
if not actually the heaviest, of softwoods of the United States. Sargent
thus described the physical properties of the wood: “Heavy, exceedingly
hard and strong, rather coarse grained, compact, satiny, susceptible of
a fine polish, very durable in contact with the soil; bands of small
summer cells broad, occupying fully half the width of the annual growth,
very resinous, dark-colored, conspicuous resin passages few, obscure;
medullary rays few, thin; color, light bright red, the thin sapwood
nearly white.” The wood is described by Sudworth: “Clear, reddish brown,
heavy, and fine grained; commercially valuable; very durable in an
unprotected state, differing greatly in this respect from the wood of
the eastern larch.”

The seasoning of western larch has given lumbermen much trouble. It
checks badly and splinters rise from the surface of boards. It is
generally admitted that this is the most serious obstacle in the way of
securing wide utilization for the wood. The structure of the annual ring
is reason for believing that there is slight adhesion between the
springwood and that of the late season. Checks are very numerous
parallel with the growth rings, and splinters part from the board along
the same lines. Standing timber is frequently windshaken, and the cracks
follow the rings.

All of this is presumptive evidence that the principle defect of larch
is a lack of adhesion between the early and the late wood. If that is
correct, it is a fundamental defect in the growing tree, and is inherent
in the wood. No artificial treatment can wholly remove it. It should not
be considered impossible, however, to devise methods of seasoning which
would not accentuate the weaknesses natural to the wood.

The form of the larch’s trunk is perfect, from the lumberman’s
viewpoint, and its size is all that could be desired. It is amply able
to perpetuate its species, though it consumes a great deal of time in
the process. Abundant crops of seeds are borne, but only once in several
years. It rarely bears seeds as early as its twenty-fifth year, and
generally not until it passes forty; but its fruitful period is long,
extending over several centuries. The seeds retain their vitality
moderately well, which is an important consideration in view of the
tree’s habit of opening and closing its cones alternately as the weather
happens to be damp or dry. The dispersion of seeds extends over a
considerable part of the season, and the changing winds scatter them in
all directions. Many seeds fall on the snow in winter to be let down on
the damp ground ready to germinate during the early spring. The best
germination occurs on mineral soil, and this is often found in areas
recently bared by fire. Lodgepole pine contends also for this ground;
but the race between the two species is not swift after the process of
scattering seeds has been completed; for both are of growth so
exceedingly slow that a hundred years will scarcely tell which is
gaining. In the long run, however, the larch outstrips the pine and
becomes a larger tree. If both start at the same time, and there is not
room for both, the pine will kill the larch by shading it. The latter’s
thin foliage renders it incapable of casting a shadow dense enough to
hurt the pine. The best areas for larch are those so thoroughly burned
as to preclude the immediate heavy reproduction of lodgepole pine.

Much of the natural ranges of larch and lodgepole pine lie in the
national forests owned by the government, and careful studies have been
made in recent years to determine the requirements, and the actual and
comparative values of the two species. It has been shown that larch is
one of the most intolerant of the western forest trees. It cannot endure
shade. Its own thin foliage, where it occurs in pure stands, is
sufficient to shade off the lower limbs of boles, and produce tall,
clean trunks; but if a larch happens to stand in the open, where light
is abundant, it retains its branches almost to the ground. It is more
intolerant, even, than western yellow pine, which so often grows in
open, parklike stands.

ALPINE LARCH (_Larix lyallii_) never grows naturally below an altitude
of 4,000 feet, and near the southern border of its range it climbs to
8,000, where it stands on the brink of precipices, faces of cliffs, and
on windswept summits. It is too much exposed to storms, and has its
roots in soil too sterile to develop symmetrical forms. It is found in
Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. The finest trees are sometimes
seventy-five feet high and three or four in diameter, but the average
height ranges from forty to fifty, with diameters of twenty inches or
less. Its leaves are one and a half inches or less in length; cones one
and a half inches long, and bristling with hair; seeds one-eighth of an
inch long with wings one-fourth inch; wood heavy, hard, and of a light,
reddish brown color. It is seldom used except about mountain camps where
it is sometimes burned for fuel or is employed in constructing corrals
for sheep and cattle. It is impossible for lumbermen ever to make much
use of it, because it is scarce and hard to get at.

[Illustration]




RED CEDAR

[Illustration: RED CEDAR]




RED CEDAR

(_Juniperus Virginiana_)


This widely distributed tree is called red cedar in New Hampshire,
Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri,
Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and
Ontario; cedar in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, South Carolina,
Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, and Ohio; savin in Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, New York, Pennsylvania and Minnesota; juniper in New York and
Pennsylvania; juniper bush in Minnesota; cedre in Louisiana.

The names as given above indicate the tree’s commercial range. It
appears as scattered growth and in doubtful forms outside of that range,
particularly in the West where several cedars closely resemble the red
cedar, yet differ sufficiently from it to give them places as separate
species in the lists of some botanists. They are so listed by the United
States Forest Service; and the following names are given: Western
Juniper, Rocky Mountain Juniper, One Seed Juniper, Mountain Juniper,
California Juniper, Utah Juniper, Drooping Juniper, Dwarf Juniper, and
Alligator Juniper. These species are not of much importance from the
lumberman’s viewpoint, yet they are highly interesting trees, and in
this book will be treated individually.

The red cedar grows slowly, and thrives in almost any soil and situation
except deep swamps. It is often classed as a poor-land species, yet it
does not naturally seek poor land. That it is often found in such
situations is because it has been crowded from better places by stronger
trees, and has retreated to rocky ridges, dry slopes, and thin soils
where competitors are unable to follow. The trees often stand wide apart
or solitary, yet they can grow in thickets almost impenetrable, as they
do in Texas and other southern states. It is an old-field tree in much
of its range. Birds plant the seeds, particularly along fence rows. That
is why long lines of cedars may often be seen extending across old
fields or deserted plantations.

The extreme size attained by this cedar is four feet in diameter, and
one hundred in height, but that size was never common, and at present
the half of it is above the average. That which reaches market is more
often under than over eighteen inches in diameter. The reddish-brown and
fibrous bark may be peeled in long strips. Stringiness of bark is
characteristic of all the cedars, and typical of red cedar.

The wood is medium light and is strong, considering that it is very
brittle. Tests show it to be eighty per cent as strong as white oak. The
grain is very fine, even, and homogeneous, except as interfered with
by knots. The annual rings are narrow, the summerwood narrow and
indistinct; medullary rays numerous but very obscure. The color
is red, the thin sapwood nearly white. The heart and sap are
sometimes intermingled, and this characteristic is prominent in the
closely-related western species of red cedar. The wood is easily worked,
gives little trouble because of warping and shrinking, and the heart is
considered as durable as any other American wood. It has a delicate,
agreeable fragrance, which is especially marked. This odor is
disagreeable to insects, and for that reason chests and closets of cedar
are highly appreciated as storage places for garments subject to the
ravages of the moth and buffalo bug. An extract from the fruit and
leaves is used in medicine, while oil of red cedar, distilled from the
wood, is used in making perfume. Cedar has a sweet taste. It burns
badly, scarcely being able to support a flame; it is exceedingly
aromatic and noisy when burning and the embers glow long in still air.
Some of the bungalow owners in Florida buy cedar fuel in preference to
all others for burning in open fireplaces.

Its representative uses are for posts, railway ties, pails, sills, cigar
boxes, interior finish and cabinet making, but its most general use is
in the manufacture of lead pencils, for which its fine, straight grain
and soft texture are peculiarly adapted. The farther south cedar is
found, the softer and clearer it is. In the North, in ornamental trees,
it is very hard, slow-growing, and knotty. It shows but a small
percentage of clear lumber. In eastern Tennessee there were considerable
quantities of red cedar brake that were for years considered of little
value. About the only way the wood was employed a few years ago was in
fence rails and posts, fuel, and charcoal. Of late people in localities
where cedar grows in any abundance have awakened to its value, and cedar
fences are rapidly disappearing, owing to the high prices now paid for
the wood, and the excellent demand. On no other southern wood has such
depredation been practiced. Because of its lightness and the ease with
which it can be worked, it has been used for purposes for which other
and less valuable woods were well adapted. On account of its slow
growth, its complete exhaustion has often been predicted, but a second
growth has appeared which, though much inferior to the virgin timber,
can be used in many ways to excellent advantage. Instead of the huge
piles of cedar flooring, chest boards, and smooth railings of the old
days, one now sees at points of distribution great piles of knotty,
rough poles, ten to forty feet long, which years ago would have been
discarded. Today they represent bridge piling, the better and smoother
among them being used for telephone and telegraph poles.

Middle Tennessee has produced more red cedar than any other part of the
United States, but the bulk of production has been confined to a few
counties, which produce a higher class and more aromatic variety of wood
than that found elsewhere. A century ago these counties abounded in
splendid forests of cedar. The early settlers built their cabins of
cedar logs, sills, studding, and rafters; their smoke houses were built
of them; their barns; even the roofs were shingled with cedar and the
rooms and porches floored with the sweet-scented wood. Not many years
ago trees three feet or more in diameter were often found, but the days
are past when timber like that can be had anywhere.

Although the most general use at the present time is for lead pencils,
few people who sharpen one and smell the fragrant wood, stop to wonder
where it came from. One would smile were it suggested to him that
perhaps his pencil was formerly part of some Tennessee farmer’s worm
fence. The best timber obtained now is hewn into export logs and shipped
to Europe, particularly Germany, where a great quantity is converted
into pencils. The red wood is made into the higher grades and the sap or
streaked wood is used for the cheaper varieties and for pen holders. The
smaller and inferior logs are cut into slats, while odds and ends,
cutoffs, etc., are collected and sold by the hundred pounds to pencil
factories. There are many such factories in the United States now, as
well as in Europe, and pencil men are scouring the cedar sections to buy
all they can. The farmer who has a red cedar picket or worm fence can
sell it to these companies at a round price. Pencil men are even going
back over tracts from which the timber was cut twenty-five years ago,
buying up the stumps. When the wood was plentiful lumbermen were not
frugal, and usually cut down a tree about two feet above the ground,
allowing the best part of it to be wasted.

The German and Austrian pencil makers foresaw a shortage in American red
cedar, and many years ago planted large areas to provide for the time of
scarcity. The planted timber is now large enough for use, but the wood
has been a disappointment. It does not possess the softness and
brittleness which give so high value to the forest cedar of this
country. As far as can be seen, when present pencil cedar has been
exhausted, there will be little more produced of like grade. It grows so
slowly that owners will not wait for trees to become old, but sell them
while young for posts and poles.

One of the earliest demands for red cedar was for woodenware made of
staves, such as buckets, kegs, keelers, small tubs, and firkins.
Material for the manufacture of such wares was among the exports to the
West Indies before the Revolutionary war. The ware was no less popular
in this country, and the home-made articles were in all neighborhoods in
the red cedar’s range. Scarcity of suitable wood limits the manufacture
of such wares now, but they are still in use.

Cedar was long one of the best woods for skiffs and other light boats,
and it was occasionally employed in shipbuilding for the upper parts of
vessels. A little of it is still used as trim and finish, particularly
for canoes, motor boats, and yachts.

The early clothes chest makers selected clear lumber, because it could
be had and was considered to be better; but modern chest manufacturers
who cannot procure clear stock, make a merit of necessity, and use
boards filled with knots. The wood is finished with oils, but the
natural colors remain, and the knots give the chest a rustic and
pleasing appearance.

    SOUTHERN RED JUNIPER (_Juniperus barbadensis_) so closely resembles
    the red cedar with which it is associated that the two were formerly
    considered the same species, and most people familiar with both
    notice no difference. However, botanists clearly distinguish the
    two. The southern red cedar’s range is much smaller than the
    other’s. It grows from Georgia to the Indian river, Florida, in
    swamps. It is found in the vicinity of the Apalachicola river,
    forming dense thickets. Its average size is much under that of the
    red cedar, but its wood is not dissimilar. It has been used for the
    same purposes as far as it has been used at all. One of the largest
    demands upon it has been for lead pencils. Those who bought and sold
    it, generally supposed they were dealing in the common red cedar.

[Illustration]




NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR

[Illustration: NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR]




NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR

(_Thuja Occidentalis_)


This tree is designated as northern white cedar because there is also a
southern white cedar, (_Chamæcyparis thyoides_) and the boundaries of
their ranges approach pretty closely. The name _occidentalis_, meaning
western, applied to the northern white cedar is employed by botanists to
distinguish it from a similar cedar in Asia, which is called
_orientalis_, or eastern.

The American species has several names, as is usual with trees which
grow in different regions. It is called arborvitæ in Maine, Vermont,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois,
Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Ontario. White cedar is a name
often used in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island,
Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina,
Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ontario. In Maine, Vermont, and New
York it is called cedar. In New York, and where cultivated in England,
American arborvitæ is the name applied to it. The Indians in New York
knew it as feather-leaf. In Delaware the name is abridged to vitæ.

The tree has been widely planted, and under the influence of cultivation
it runs quickly into varieties, of which forty-five are listed by
nurserymen. It is a northern species which follows the Appalachian
mountains southward to North Carolina and Tennessee. It grows from New
Brunswick to Manitoba, and is abundant in the Lake States.

The bark of arborvitæ is light brown, tinged with red on the branchlets;
it is thin, and cracks into ridges with stringy, rough edges; the
branchlets are very smooth.

In general appearance the tree is conical and compact, with short
branches; it attains a height of from twenty-five to seventy feet, and a
diameter of from one to three feet. It thrives best in low, swampy land,
along the borders of streams.

The wood of arborvitæ is soft, brittle, light and weak; it is very
inflammable. The fact that it is durable, even in contact with the soil,
permits its use for railway ties, telegraph poles, posts, fencing,
shingles and boats. However, the trunk is so shaped that it is seldom
used for lumber, but oftener for poles and posts, the lower section
being flattened into ties. A cubic foot of the seasoned wood weighs
approximately nineteen pounds. The heartwood is light brown, becoming
darker with exposure; the sapwood is thin and nearly white, with fine
grain.

The northern white cedar varies greatly in size and shape, depending on
the soil, climate, and situation. Though it is usually associated with
swamps in the North, it adapts itself to quite different situations. It
grows in narrow, rocky ravines, on stony ridges, and it clings to the
faces of cliffs, or hangs on their summits as tenaciously as the western
juniper of the Sierra Nevada mountains. However, little good timber is
produced by this species on rocky soils. Trees in such situations are
short, crooked, and limby.

The wood of the northern white cedar possesses a peculiar toughness
which is seen in its wearing qualities. A thin shaving, such as a
carpenter’s plane makes, may be folded, laid on an anvil, and struck
repeatedly with a hammer, without breaking. It is claimed for it that it
will stand a severer test of that kind than any other American wood.
Toughness and wearing qualities combined make it an admirable wood for
planking and decking for small boats. Its exceptionally light weight is
an additional factor as a boat building material. The Indians knew how
to work it into frames for bark canoes. Its lightness appealed to them;
but the ease with which they could work it with their primitive tools
was more important. It is a characteristic of the wood to part readily
along the rings of annual growth. The Indian was able to split canoe
ribs with a stone maul, by pounding a cedar billet until it parted along
the growth rings and was reduced to very thin slats.

The property of this cedar which appealed to the Indians is disliked by
the sawmill man. It is hard to make thin lumber that will hang together.
The tendency to part along the growth rings develops wind-shake while
the tree is standing. About nine trees in ten are so defective from
shake that little good lumber can be made from them. It is a common
saying, which probably applies in certain localities only, that a
thousand feet of white cedar must be sawed to get one hundred feet of
good lumber.

It is good material for small cooperage such as buckets, pails, and
tubs, and has been long used for that purpose in the northern states.

It was once laid in large quantities for paving blocks. Hundreds of
miles of streets of northern cities were paved with round blocks sawed
from trunks of trees from five to ten inches in diameter. They were not
usually treated with chemicals to prevent decay, but they gave service
ranging from six to twelve years. They are less used now than formerly.
Southern yellow pine has largely taken the cedar’s place as paving
material. Much northern cedar has been used in the manufacture of bored
pipe for municipal waterworks, shops, salt works, paper mills, and other
factories.

The early settlers of New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania made a
rheumatism ointment by bruising the leaves and molding them with lard.
This is probably not made now, but pharmacists distill an oil from twigs
and wood, and make a tincture of the leaves which they use in the
manufacture of pulmonary and other medicines.

There is little likelihood that northern white cedar will ever cease to
be a commercial wood in this country. It will become scarcer, but its
manner of growth is the best guarantee that it will hold its place. It
lives in swamps, and the land is not in demand for any other purpose.

    ONE-SEED JUNIPER (_Juniperus monosperma_) is also called naked-seed
    juniper. Its range lies in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and
    Arizona. It attains its greatest development in the bottoms of
    canyons in northern Arizona. It is a scrawny desert tree which lives
    in adversity but holds its ground for centuries, if fire does not
    cut its career short. Its growth is too scattered to attract
    lumbermen, and the form of its trunk is uninviting. It may reach a
    height of forty or fifty feet, and a diameter of three, but that is
    above the average in the best of its range. The desert Indians make
    the most of one-seed juniper. They weave its stringy bark into
    sleeping mats, rough blankets, and saddle girts. They make cords and
    ropes of it for use where great strength is not required, such as
    leashes for leading dogs, strands with which to tie bundles on the
    backs of their squaws, and cords for fastening their wigwam poles
    together. They likewise weave the bark into pokes and pouches for
    storing and carrying their dried meat and mesquite beans. The
    juniper berries are an article of diet and commerce with the
    Indians, who mix them with divers ingredients, pulp them in stone
    mortars, and bake them in cakes which become the greatest delicacy
    on their bill of fare. White men, when driven to it by starvation,
    have sustained life by making food of the berries. A small quantity
    of one-seed juniper reaches woodworkers in Texas. The lumber is
    short and rough. The numerous knots are generally much darker than
    the body of the wood. That is not necessarily a defect, for in
    making clothes chests, the striking contrast in color between the
    knots, and the other wood gives the article a peculiar and
    attractive appearance. The trunks are sharply buttressed and deeply
    creased. Sometimes the folds of bark within the creases almost reach
    the center of the tree. The sapwood is thin, the heartwood irregular
    in color. Some is darker than the heartwood of southern red cedar,
    other is clouded and mottled, pale yellow, cream-colored, the shade
    of slate, or streaked with various tints. The wood can be
    economically worked only as small pieces. It takes a soft and
    pleasing finish. It is a lathe wood and shows to best advantage as
    balusters, ornaments, grill spindles and small posts, Indian clubs,
    dumb-bells, balls, and lodge gavels. It has been made into small
    game boards with fine effect, and it is an excellent material for
    small picture frames. Furniture makers put it to use in several
    ways, and it has been recommended for small musical instruments
    where the variegated colors can be displayed to excellent advantage.
    At the best it can never be more than a minor species, because it is
    difficult of access in the remote deserts, and it is not abundant.

    MOUNTAIN JUNIPER (_Juniperus sabinoides_) is a Texas tree, occupying
    a range southward and westward of the Colorado river. It has several
    local names, rock cedar being a favorite. This name is due to the
    tree’s habit of growing on rocky ridges and among ledges where soil
    is scarce. It is called juniper cedar, and juniper. Under the most
    favorable circumstances the tree may attain a height of 100 feet and
    a diameter of two, but it nearly always grows where conditions are
    adverse, and its size and form change to conform to circumstances.
    It is often small and ragged. Its lead-colored bark is apt to
    attract attention on account of its woeful appearance, hanging in
    strings and tatters which persistently cling to the trunk in spite
    of whipping winds. When the tree is cut for fuel, or for any other
    purpose, the ragged bark is occasionally pulled off and is tied in
    bales or bundles to be sold for kindling. When the mountain juniper
    is taken from its native wilds and planted where environments are
    different, it sometimes assumes fantastic forms. It has been planted
    for ornament on the low, flat coast in the vicinity of the Gulf of
    Mexico, and though it lives and grows, it often takes on a peculiar
    appearance. The trunks resemble twisted and interwoven bundles of
    lead-colored vines, buttressed, fluted, and gnarled. The branches
    lose their upright position, and hang in careless abandon, with
    drooping festoons. In winter the wind whips most of the foliage from
    them. The leaves become brittle and may be easily brushed from the
    twigs by a stroke of the hand. Some of the planted trees have trunks
    so deeply creased as to be divided in two separate stems. This very
    nearly happens with some of the wild trees among the western
    mountains. The sapwood of mountain juniper is very thin. The average
    tree cannot be profitably cut into lumber of the usual dimensions
    because of the odd-shaped and irregular trunk. It lends itself more
    economically to the manufacture of articles made up of small pieces.
    Some of the wood is extremely beautiful, having the color and figure
    of French walnut; but there is great difference in the figure and
    color, and the wood of one tree is not a sure guide to what another
    may be. Boards a foot wide, or even less, may show several figures
    and colors. Some pieces suggest variegated marble; others are like
    plain red cedar; some are light red in color, others have a tinge of
    blue. It varies greatly in hardness, even in the same tree. Part of
    it may be soft and brittle enough for lead pencils; another part may
    be hard and tough. Clothes chests have been made of it, of most
    peculiar appearance--resembling crazy quilts of subdued colors.
    Sometimes the heartwood and the sapwood are inextricably mixed, both
    being found in all parts of the trunk from the heart out. On the
    whole, the tree can never have much importance as a source of
    lumber, but it is a most interesting member of the cedar group.

[Illustration]




SOUTHERN WHITE CEDAR

[Illustration: SOUTHERN WHITE CEDAR]




SOUTHERN WHITE CEDAR

(_Chamæcyparis Thyoides_)


This tree is called southern white cedar to distinguish it from northern
white cedar or arborvitæ. When there is little likelihood of confusion,
the name white cedar is applied locally in different parts of its range
from Massachusetts to Florida. It is a persistent swamp tree and on that
account has been called swamp cedar; but that name alone would not
distinguish it from the northern white cedar, for both grow in swamps;
but it does separate it from red cedar which keeps away from swamps. The
ranges of the two are side by side from New England to Florida. Post
cedar is a common name for it in Delaware and New Jersey, because of the
important place it has long filled as fence material; but again, the
name does not set it apart from red cedar or northern white cedar, for
both are used for posts. The only name thus far applied, which clearly
distinguishes it from associated cedars, is southern white cedar. Its
range extends northward to Maine, but the tree’s chief commercial
importance has been in New Jersey and southward to North Carolina, very
near the coast. Somehow, it seems to skip Georgia where no one has
reported it for many years, though there is historical evidence that it
once grew in that state. It grows as far west as Mississippi, but is
scarce.

The small leaves remain green two years and then turn brown but adhere
to the branches several years longer. The fruit is about one-fourth inch
in diameter, and the small seeds are equipped with wings.

The wood is among the lightest in this country. It is only moderately
strong and stiff. The tree usually grows slowly. Fifty years may be
required to produce a fence post, but under favorable conditions results
somewhat better than that may be expected. The summerwood of the yearly
ring is narrow, dark in color, and conspicuous, making the counting of
the rings an easy matter. The medullary rays are numerous but thin. When
the sap is cut tangentially in very thin layers it is white and
semi-transparent, presenting somewhat the appearance of oiled paper. The
heartwood is light brown, tinged with red, growing darker with exposure.
The wood is easily worked, and is very durable in contact with the soil.
Fence posts of this wood have been reported to stand fifty years, and
shingles are said to last longer. Trees reach a height of eighty feet
and diameter of four; but such are of the largest size. Great numbers
are cut for poles and posts which are little more than a foot in
diameter. Few forest trees grow in denser stands than this. It often
takes possession of swamps, crowds out all other trees, and develops
thickets so dense as to be almost impenetrable. Southern white cedar is
cut in ten or twelve states, but the annual supply is not known, because
mills generally report all cedars as one, and the regions which produce
this, produce one or more other species of cedar also. It has held its
place nearly three hundred years, and much interesting history is
connected with it. A considerable part of the Revolutionary war was
fought with powder made from white cedar charcoal burned in New Jersey
and Delaware. However, that was by no means the earliest place filled by
this wood.

Two hundred years ago in North Carolina John Lawson wrote of its use for
“yards, topmasts, booms, bowsprits for boats, shingles, and poles.” It
was cut for practically the same purposes in New Jersey at an earlier
period, and 160 years ago Gottlieb Mittelberger, when he visited
Philadelphia, declared that white cedar was being cut at a rate which
would soon exhaust the supply. But that prophecy, like similar
predictions that oak and red cedar were about gone, proved not well
founded. Seventy years after the imminent exhaustion of this wood was
foretold, William Cobbett, an English traveler, declared with evident
exaggeration that “all good houses in the United States” were roofed
with white cedar shingles.

After boat building, the first general use of the southern white cedar
was for fences and farm buildings, and doubtless twenty times as much
went to the farms as to the boat yards. In all regions where the wood
was convenient, little other was employed as fencing material, and many
of the earliest houses in New Jersey and some in Pennsylvania were
constructed almost wholly of this wood. Small trees which would split
two, three, and four rails to the cut, were mauled by thousands to
enclose the farms. The bark soon dropped off, or was removed, and the
light rails quickly air-dried, and decay made little impression on them
for many years. The larger trunks were rived for shingles or were sawed
into lumber. About 1750 the use of round cedar logs for houses and barns
began to give way to sawed lumber. It was an ideal milling timber, for
the logs were symmetrical, clear, and easily handled. North Carolina
sawmills were at work on this timber many years before the Revolution.
It was acceptable material for doors, window frames, rafters, and
floors, but especially for shingles which were split with frow and
mallet, and were from twenty-four to twenty-seven inches long. They were
known in market as juniper shingles and sold at four and five dollars a
thousand. About 1750 builders in Philadelphia were criticized because
they constructed houses with no provision for other than white cedar
roofs; the walls being too weak for heavier material which would have to
be substituted when cedar could be no longer procured. Philadelphia was
not alone in its preference for cedar roofs. Large shipments of shingles
were going from New Jersey to New York, and even to the West Indies
earlier than 1750.

Southern white cedar is said to have been the first American wood used
for organ pipes. The resonance of cedar shingles under a pattering rain
suggested this use to Mittelberger when he visited America, and he tried
the wood with such success that he pronounced it the best that he knew
of for organ pipes.

Coopers were among the early users of white cedar. The “cedar coopers of
Philadelphia” were famous in their day. They used this wood and also red
cedar (_Juniperus virginiana_), and their wares occupied an important
place in domestic and some foreign markets. Small vessels prevailed,
such as pails, churns, firkins, tubs, keelers, piggins, noggins, and
kegs. The ware was handsome, strong, durable, and light in weight. Oil
merchants, particularly those who dealt in whale oil which was once an
important commodity, bought tanks of southern white cedar. It is a dense
wood and seepage is small.

A peculiar superstition once prevailed, and has not wholly disappeared
at this day, that white cedar possessed powerful healing properties. It
was thought that water was purified by standing in a cedar bucket, and
even that a liquid was improved by simply running through a spigot of
this wood. Some eastern towns at an early period laid cedar water mains,
partly because the wood was known to be durable, and partly because it
was supposed to exercise some favorable influence upon the water flowing
through the pipes. It was even believed that standing trees purified the
swamps in which they grew. Vessels putting to sea from Chesapeake bay,
sometimes made special effort to fill their water casks with water from
the Dismal swamp, where cedars grew abundantly in the stagnant lagoons.

About 100 years ago it was found that whole forests of cedar had been
submerged in New Jersey during prehistoric times, and that deep in
swamps the trunks of trees were buried out of sight. No one knows how
long the prostrate trees had lain beneath the accumulation of peat and
mud, but the wood was sound. Mining the cedar became an important
industry in some of the large swamps, and it has not ended yet. The wood
is sound enough for shingles and lumber, though it has been buried for
centuries, as is proved by the age of the forests which grew over the
submerged logs. Sometimes a log which has lain under water hundreds of
years, rises to the surface by its own buoyancy when pressure from above
is removed. This is remarkable and shows how long a time this cedar
resists complete waterlogging. The wood of green cedar has a strong
odor, and that characteristic remains with the submerged trunks.
Experienced men who have been long engaged in mining the timber, are
able to tell by the odor of a chip brought to the surface from a deeply
submerged log whether the wood is sufficiently well preserved to be
worth recovering and manufacturing. Trunks six feet in diameter have
been brought to the surface. Few if any living white cedars of that size
exist now.

Many of the early uses of southern white cedar have continued till the
present time, but in much smaller quantities. Fence rails are no longer
made of it; shingles and cooperage have declined. On the other hand, it
now has some uses which were unknown in early times, such as telephone
and telegraph poles, crossties, and piling for railroad bridges and
culverts.

The supply of southern white cedar is not large, and it is being cut
faster than it is growing. The deep swamps where it grows protect white
cedar forests from fire, and for that reason it is more fortunate than
many other species. Not even cypress can successfully compete with it
for possession of water soaked morasses. It does not promise great
things for the future, for it will never be extensively planted. Its
range has been pretty definitely fixed by nature to deep swamps near the
Atlantic coast. Within those limits it will be of some importance for a
long time. Where it finds its most congenial surroundings, little else
that is profitable to man will grow. This will save it from utter
extermination, because much of the land which it occupies will never be
wanted for anything else.

[Illustration]




INCENSE CEDAR

[Illustration: INCENSE CEDAR]




INCENSE CEDAR

(_Libocedrus Decurrens_)


In California and Oregon this tree is known as white cedar, cedar, and
incense cedar; in Nevada and California it is called post cedar and
juniper, and in other localities it is red cedar and California post
cedar. It is a species of such strong characteristics that it is not
likely to be confused with any other. Though different names may be
applied to it, the identity of the tree is always clear.

Its range extends north and south nearly 1,000 miles, from Oregon to
Lower California. It is a mountain species, and it faces the Pacific
ocean in most of its range. In the North it occupies the western slope
of the Cascade mountains in southern Oregon and northern California; and
it grows on the western slope of the Sierras for five hundred miles, at
altitudes of from 4,000 to 8,000 feet, where it is mixed with sugar
pine, western yellow pine, white fir, and sequoias.

It is a fine, shapely tree, except that the butt is much enlarged. It
has the characteristic form of a deep swamp tree, but it has nothing to
do with swamps. Its best development is on the Sierra Nevada mountains,
where swamps are few, and the incense cedar avoids them. It occupies dry
ridges and slopes, but not sterile ones. It must have as good soil as
the sugar pine demands. Its height when mature ranges from seventy-five
to 125 feet, diameter four feet from the ground, from three to six feet,
but some trees are larger. It is not a rapid grower, but it maintains
its vigor a long time. As an average, it increases its diameter an inch
in from seven to ten years.

The wood is dense. It contains no pores large enough to be seen with an
ordinary reading glass. The medullary rays are so small as to be
generally invisible to the naked eye, but when magnified they are shown
to be thin and numerous. The summerwood forms about one-fourth of the
annual ring. The wood is nearly as light as white pine, is moderately
strong, is brittle, straight grained, the heartwood is reddish, the
thick sapwood nearly white. It is an easy wood to work, and in contact
with the soil it is very durable.

The incense cedar is the only representative of its genus in the United
States. It has many relatives in the pine family, but no near ones. Its
kin are natives of Formosa, China, New Zealand, New Guinea, and
Patagonia.

The name incense cedar refers to the odor of the wood rather than of the
leaves. Those who work with freshly cut wood are liable to attacks of
headache, due to the odor; but some men are not affected by it.

The forest grown tree is of beautiful proportions. Unless much crowded
for room, it is a tall, graceful cone, the branches drooping slightly,
and forming thick masses. In the Sierra Nevada mountains, within the
range of this cedar, the winter snows are very heavy. It is not unusual
for two or three feet of very wet snow to fall in a single day. The
incense cedar’s drooping branches shed the snow like a tent roof, and a
limb broken or seriously deformed by weight of snow is seldom seen. Deer
and other wild animals, when surprised by a heavy fall of snow, seek the
shelter of an incense cedar, if one can be found, and there lie in
security until the storm passes.

It is a tree which does fairly well in cultivation, and several
varieties have been developed. It lives through the cold of a New
England winter. Its cones are about three-fourths inch in length, and
ripen in the autumn.

Incense cedar has filled an important place in the development of the
great central valley of California, where it has supplied more fence
posts than any other tree. Posts of redwood have been its chief
competitor, but generally the reg

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