Part 37

VAUQUELINIA (_Vauquelinia californica_) belongs to the same family as the so-called western mahoganies, that is, the rose family; but it is of a different genus. Its range is largely south of the international boundary, but it extends into southern Arizona where the best development of the species occurs about 5,000 feet above the sea on grassy slopes. It is seldom more than a bush, and the wood is very heavy and hard, and is dark-brown, streaked with red.

[Illustration]

BLACK WILLOW

[Illustration: BLACK WILLOW]

BLACK WILLOW

(_Salix Nigra_)

The willows and the cottonwoods belong to the same family of trees, _Salicaceæ_, and the family is fairly numerous, and it has some well-defined traits of character. The quinine-bitter of the bark is ever present, but more marked in willows than in cottonwoods. Though quite unpleasant to the taste, it is harmless. The leaves never grow in pairs, and in most instances they fall early in autumn, and some without changing color. Male and female flowers are borne on different trees, and fertilizing is done by insects, often by honey bees and bumblebees. Fruit ripens in late spring, and the seeds are equipped for flight by being provided with exceedingly fine silky hairs. The wind carries them long distances. The trees generally grow in the immediate vicinity of streams or in situations where the soil is damp, but there are exceptions.

The willow family consists of two genera, one the cottonwoods or poplars, the other the willows proper. There are about seventy-five species of willow in America, twenty of them trees. Some, however, are quite small and only occasionally attain sizes which place them in the tree class. The willows are old residents of this continent. They grew in the central portion of what is now the United States in the Cretaceous age, as is proved by their leaf prints in the rocks. They have held their ground ever since, and there is no likelihood that they are about to give it up. Few species are better fitted for holding what they have. A few trees are capable of seeding a large region in a few years, and if soil and situation are suitable, reproduction will be abundant. The willows’ tenacity of life is often remarkable. It sometimes seems next to impossible to kill them by cutting off their tops. There are said to be instances in Europe where willows have been pollarded successively during hundreds of years, the crops of sprouts being used for wickerwork and other purposes. No such records exist in this country, but the willow’s sprouting habit is well known. A shoot stuck in the ground will grow, and a fence post will sprout. Many willows develop large stools, or roots, and repeatedly send up numerous sprouts, and it makes little difference how often they are cut, others will come up.

Comparatively few willows that start in life ever become trees. They are suppressed by crowding, or meet misfortunes of one kind or another which keep them small, but occasionally a tree of good size results. Willow trees are usually not old. Probably few reach an age exceeding 150 years. Large trunks, in old age, are apt to be hollow or otherwise defective, though a willow tree will live many years after much of its trunk has disappeared. A little green bark on the side, and sprouts from the stump will maintain life long after all usefulness has ceased.

Young willows are usually pliant and tough, old are stiff and brash. They range from sea level up to 10,000 feet or more; grow profusely in the wet lands about the gulf of Mexico, and likewise on the bleak coasts of the Arctic ocean. Commander Peary found willows blooming in considerable profusion on the extreme northern shore of Greenland, where they produce enough growth during the few weeks of summer sunshine to afford the muskox the means of eking out a living during his sojourn in those inhospitable regions.

The identification of willows is one of the most difficult tasks that fall to the botanists. Black willow is unquestionably the most important willow in this country from the lumberman’s standpoint. It is the common tree willow that attains size suitable for sawlogs. If a forest grown willow of large size is encountered east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States, it is pretty safe to class it as black willow. There are some others which grow large, but not many. Planted willows, both large and small, may be foreign species, and white willows, which are not native in this country, but have been widely planted, and are running wild, may be occasionally found of ample size for saw timber.

Black willow’s range extends from New Brunswick to Florida, west to the Dakotas, and south to Texas, thence passing into Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. It attains its best size in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, though large trees are found in other parts of its range. It is difficult to say what its average size is, for some black willows are only a few feet high and an inch or two in diameter. The largest trees exceed 100 feet in height and three in diameter. An extreme size of seven feet in diameter has been reported. It is not unusual to see willow logs three feet in diameter in mill yards in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, and logs four feet in diameter are not so unusual as to excite much comment. The average sizes, however, of willow sawlogs in that region are from eighteen inches to two feet.

The wood of black willow is pale reddish-brown. When freshly cut it is sometimes purple, almost black. When sawed in lumber and exposed to the air the dark color fades. The wood is soft but firm. It has about fifty per cent of the strength of white oak, and forty per cent of its stiffness. It weighs 27.77 pounds per cubic foot; and considering its weight, it is tolerably strong and stiff.

Probably no other wood in the United States is as systematically cheated out of its just credit as this one. Many of the oaks are seldom given their proper names, but they are listed as oak in sawmill output, and thus the genus, if not the species is given credit. But willow is almost totally ignored. The United States census in 1910 credited to all the willow lumber in this country an amount less than a million and a half feet; yet a single mill in Louisiana, and not a large mill at that, cut and sold four times that much during that year. The wood was cut by hundreds of other mills, some a few logs only, others considerable quantities.

It is sold for various purposes, and much of it goes as cottonwood. In some instances it is called brown cottonwood. Probably ninety per cent is made into boxes, but it has many other uses. It is cut into excelsior, made into rotary cut veneer, and finds place in the manufacture of furniture; it is a common woodenware material; slack coopers make barrels of it; and it is turned for baseball bats.

The supply of black willow in this country is not small. It is usually found in wet situations along streams. Sometimes islands and low flats are taken possession of and pure stands result. The growth is sometimes phenomenal. Trunks may add nearly or quite an inch to their diameter per year when conditions are exceptionally favorable. Instances, apparently well authenticated, are reported of abandoned fields along the Mississippi, which in sixty years grew 100,000 feet of willow per acre.

LONGSTALK WILLOW (_Salix longipes_) sometimes grows to a height of thirty feet with a diameter of six or eight inches. Its range extends from Maryland to Texas, and is at its best in the Ozark region of southwestern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas.

ALMONDLEAF WILLOW (_Salix amygdaloides_) grows across northern United States and southern Canada from New York to Oregon, and occurs as far south as Missouri and Ohio, and is abundant in the lower Ohio valley. At its best it is seventy feet high and two feet in diameter. The wood is light, soft, and the heartwood is brown.

SMOOTHLEAF WILLOW (_Salix lævigata_) attains a diameter of one foot and a height of forty or fifty. It is a Pacific coast tree, occurring in California on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevadas up to an altitude of 3,000 feet. It is known as black willow. The wood is pale reddish-brown.

SILVERLEAF WILLOW (_Salix sessilifolia_) looks like longleaf willow, and though usually a shrub it sometimes is twenty-five feet high and ten inches in diameter. It grows from the mouth of the Columbia river to southern California.

YEWLEAF WILLOW (_Salix taxifolia_) ranges from western Texas, through southern Arizona into Mexico and Central America. Trees are occasionally forty feet high and more than one foot in diameter. A little fuel and fence posts are cut from this willow.

BEBB WILLOW (_Salix bebbiana_) is nearly always shrubby, but occasionally reaches a trunk diameter of six or eight inches and a height of twenty feet. Its northern limit lies within the Arctic circle, its southern in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Arizona. West of Hudson bay it forms almost impenetrable thickets, and in Colorado it ascends mountains to elevations of 10,000 feet.

GLAUCOUS WILLOW (_Salix discolor_), commonly known as silver or pussy willow, ranges from Nova Scotia to Manitoba, and southward to Delaware, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. It is one of the best known willows within its range, on account of its flowers which are among the earliest of the season, and very showy. The largest specimens are scarcely twenty-five feet high and twelve inches in diameter.

MACKENZIE WILLOW (_Salix cordata mackenzieana_) is not abundant, and is one of the smallest of the tree willows. It is nearly always a shrub. Its range extends from California nearly to the Arctic circle, where it occurs in gravelly soil on the borders of mountain streams.

MISSOURI WILLOW (_Salix missouriensis_) is so named because it occurs principally in Missouri, but its range extends into Kansas and Iowa. It is occasionally forty feet high and a foot in diameter. It is used for fence posts.

BIGELOW WILLOW (_Salix lasiolepis_) is generally called white willow on account of its gray bark. It occurs in California and Arizona, and at its best it is twenty-five feet high and ten inches in diameter. Some use is made of it as fuel, where other wood is scarce.

NUTTALL WILLOW (_Salix nuttallii_), called also mountain willow in Montana, ranges from British America, east of the Rocky Mountains, to southern California. Its usual height is twenty or twenty-five feet, and its diameter six or eight inches. In southern California it grows 10,000 feet above sea level.

HOOKER WILLOW (_Salix hookeriana_) occurs in the coast region from Vancouver island to southern Oregon, and varies in height from a sprawling shrub to a height of thirty feet and a diameter of one. Little use is made of it.

SILKY WILLOW (_Salix sitchensis_), known also as Sitka willow, ranges from Alaska to southern California. The largest specimens are twenty-five feet high and ten inches in diameter. Trunks are largely sapwood and are of little commercial importance.

BROADLEAF WILLOW (_Salix amplifolia_), known also as feltleaf willow, was discovered in Alaska in 1899. The leaves are woolly. The largest trees rarely exceed a height of thirty feet and a diameter of six inches. Its range extends to the valley of the Mackenzie river.

A number of foreign willows have become naturalized in the United States. Among them is white willow (_Salix alba_), which grows to large size, probably as large as black willow; crack willow (_Salix fragilis_), so named on account of the brittleness of its twigs; and weeping willow (_Salix babylonica_). The botanical name is based on the supposition that it was this willow, growing by the rivers near Babylon, on which the captive Hebrews hung their harps. Basket willow is planted for its osiers in several eastern states. It is not a single species, but a group of varieties developed by cultivation.

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HARDY CATALPA

[Illustration: HARDY CATALPA]

HARDY CATALPA

(_Catalpa Speciosa_)

This tree belongs to the family _Bignoniaceæ_ which has its name from Abbé Bignon, librarian of Louis XV. About one hundred genera belong to this family, only three of which reach the size of trees in the United States. These include the catalpas, the desert willow, and the black calabash tree.

Seven species of catalpa are known, two of them occurring in the United States. Others are found in China and the West Indies. The name is an Indian word and was first heard among the tribes of the Carolinas. It seems probable that the name catalpa as applied to a tree and catawba, applied to a grape, have the same origin, and in some way refer to the Catawba Indians, a small tribe--said to be Sioux--that lived two hundred years ago in the western part of the Carolinas and neighboring regions where one of the catalpa species was first heard of by Europeans. The tree in that region is still often called catawba.

The two catalpas of this country are known to botanists as _Catalpa speciosa_ and _Catalpa catalpa_. Much confusion has resulted from attempts to distinguish one from the other. Botanists are able to clear the matter up among themselves, but the general public has not been so successful. John P. Brown, of Connersville, Indiana, specialized on catalpas during many years, and published numerous tracts, pamphlets, and books for the purpose of educating the public to the point where the differences between common catalpa and hardy catalpa could be distinguished. His labor was likewise directed toward inducing land owners to plant catalpa for commercial purposes. Due to his efforts, and otherwise, catalpa was for a time the most advertised plantation tree in this country. Some supposed that hardy catalpa was the wood which was to save the country from a threatened timber famine. Claims made for it were wide and far reaching.

The judgment of history has been--if it may be classed as a matter of history--that the tree fell short of expectation. This does not imply an inferiority of the wood itself, or a slower rate of growth than was claimed for it; but exceptional cases were interpreted as averages, and for that reason the whole situation was overestimated. When all conditions are perfect, hardy catalpa grows rapidly and grows large, but it demands nearly perfect conditions or it will disappoint. It wants ground rich enough and damp enough to grow good crops of corn, and farmers are not generally willing to put that class of land to growing fence posts and railroad ties.

The range of hardy catalpa before the species was spread by artificial planting, was through southern Illinois and Indiana, southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas, western Louisiana and eastern Texas, and western Kentucky and Tennessee. Its position on the fertile banks of streams, and on flood plains subject to frequent inundation, indicates that the spread of the species was effected by running water. In that case, the dispersal of seeds would be down stream, implying that the starting place of the species was along the lower reaches of the Wabash river.

The catalpa may reach a height of 100 or 120 feet and a diameter of four feet; but few trees attain that size. The leaves are ten or twelve inches long and seven or eight wide, and are considerably larger than those of common catalpa. The flowers appear late in May or early in June, and are showy. The prevailing colors are white and purple, and the blossoms are about two inches long and two and a half wide.

The fruit is a pod from eight to twenty inches long, and the enclosed seeds are nearly an inch long, shaped like beans. The trees are prolific bearers.

The tree is known by several names in different parts of its range, including the territory where it is known only from plantings. It is called western catalpa to distinguish it from the other species found farther east and south. In Missouri and Iowa it is known as cigar tree. The name Indian bean is an allusion to the large seeds. Shawneewood is another name referring to the supposed interest of Indians in the tree. Shawnee was the name of a tribe of Indians in the Ohio valley in early times.

The wood weighs less than twenty-six pounds per cubic foot, and is soft and weak. It is rated very durable in contact with the soil, and this is one of the chief advantages claimed for it. The annual rings are clearly marked by several bands or rows of large open ducts, and the denser summerwood forms a narrow band. The medullary rays are numerous and obscure. The heartwood is brown, the sapwood lighter. In appearance, the heartwood suggests butternut, but it is coarser, and lacks the gloss shown by polished butternut. Quarter-sawing produces no figure, but when sawed at right angles to the radial lines, the annual rings are cut in a way to give figure resembling that of ash or chestnut.

The wood of this catalpa has been thoroughly tried out for a number of purposes. Furniture and finish have been made of it with varying success, and molding and picture frames are listed among its uses. It is not a sawlog tree. Statistics of lumber cut seldom mention it, though now and then a log finds its way to a mill. Efforts have been made to pass the wood as mahogany, but with poor success. The counterfeit is easily detected, since the artificial color which may be imparted to catalpa is about the only resemblance to mahogany.

In the lower Mississippi valley some success, but on a very small scale, has resulted from attempts to induce catalpa to grow in crooks suitable for small boat knees. The young trunk, after being hacked on one side, is bent and induced to grow the crook or knee. Natural crooks have been utilized in the manufacture of knees for small boats in Louisiana.

Probably ninety per cent of all the catalpa ever cut has gone into fence posts. It is habitually crooked. A straight bole is the exception; though in plantations trees are crowded and pruned until they grow fairly straight, and sometimes trunks of forest grown trees of large size are nearly faultless in their symmetry.

It was once believed in some quarters that catalpa would solve the railroad tie problem by growing good ties quickly. It must be admitted, however, that in spite of extensive plantings, the railroad tie problem has not yet been solved by catalpa.

COMMON CATALPA (_Catalpa catalpa_) originated many hundred miles outside the range of hardy catalpa, to judge by the localities in which it was first found by white men. It is supposed to have been indigenous in southwestern Georgia, central Alabama, and Mississippi, and northwestern Florida. Its range has been greatly extended by planting, and it grows in most parts of the country east of the Rocky Mountains, as far north as New England. It has been planted in many parts of Europe. Its leaves, flowers, fruit, and the tree itself are smaller than hardy catalpa. The pods hang unopened all winter. The trunks sometimes are three feet in diameter and sixty high, but are generally small, crooked, rather angular, and poor in appearance, but the leaves and flowers are ornamental. The wood is durable in contact with the ground, and its largest use has been for posts, crossties, and poles.

DESERT WILLOW (_Chilopsis linearis_) does not even belong to the willow family, notwithstanding its names, all of which are based on the presumption that it is a willow. The shape and size of its leaves are responsible for that misapprehension. The very narrow leaves may be a foot long. It is called flowering willow and Texas flowering willow. Its flowers are always emphasized when it is compared with willow, for they are totally different from the willow’s characteristic catkins. The flowers appear in early summer in racemes three or four inches long, and continue open during several months in succession. The fruit is a pod seven or nine inches long, and as slender as a lead pencil. It is this pod which gives the plainest hint of its relationship to the catalpas, for it is in good standing in the family with them. The seeds resemble very small beans with wings at each end. They are light, and the wind disperses them. The tree is a prolific seeder.

The range of this small tree extends across western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, into San Diego county, California. The tree occurs in dry, gravelly, porous soil near the banks of streams and in depressions in the desert. The wood is weak and soft, the heart brown, streaked with yellow. No use has been found for it. The tree is cultivated for ornament in Mexico and sometimes in the southern states. The flowers look well when they are encountered in the desert. They are white, faintly tinged with purple, with bright yellow spots inside. They are funnel shaped and have the odor of violets.

[Illustration]

CUCUMBER

[Illustration: CUCUMBER]

CUCUMBER

(_Magnolia Acuminata_)

This tree is a member of the magnolia family which has ten genera in North America, two of them, magnolia and liriodendron, being trees. The family has its name from Pierre Magnol, a French botanist who died in 1715. The genus magnolia has seven species in the United States, all of which are of tree size. They are evergreen magnolia (_Magnolia fœtida_), sweet magnolia (_Magnolia glauca_), cucumber (_Magnolia acuminata_), largeleaf umbrella (_Magnolia macrophylla_), umbrella tree (_Magnolia tripetala_), Fraser umbrella (_Magnolia fraseri_), and pyramidal magnolia (_Magnolia pyramidata_). The remaining member of the magnolia family is the yellow poplar (_Liriodendron tulipifera_). Though of the same family it is of a different genus from the seven other magnolias.

The cucumber is the hardiest member of the magnolia family. It is found in natural growth farther north than any other, yet it has the appearance of a southern tree. All magnolias look like trees belonging in the South. Their large leaves indicate as much, and some of them do not venture far outside of the warm latitudes. It is one of the oldest of all the families of broadleaf trees, and it has been a family that during an immense period of the earth’s history has clung near the old homestead where it came into existence countless ages ago. There were magnolias growing in the middle Appalachian region, and eastward to the present Atlantic coast, so far in the past that the time can be measured only by hundreds of thousands of years. Leaf prints in rocks, which were once mud flats, tell the story--though but a page here and there--of the magnolia’s ancient history, doubtless antedating by long periods the earliest appearance of man on earth.

Next to the yellow poplar, the cucumber tree is the most important species of the magnolia family, at least as a source of lumber. As an ornamental tree it may not equal some of the others, particularly certain of the southern species which are evergreen and produce large, showy flowers.