Part 5
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.