THE PALMS

Lumbermen in this country could get along very well without the palms, as they are little used for ordinary lumber. Their wood does not grow in concentric rings, like that of the ordinary tree. The stems are usually single, cylindrical, and unbranched. The fruit is berry-like, and is usually one seeded, though sometimes there are two or three. When a seed sprouts, it puts out at first a single leaf, like a grain of corn. About 130 genera of palms are recognized in the world, most of them in the tropics, but several in the United States are of tree size. Botanists divide the palms of the United States into two groups, the palm family and the lily family. The yuccas belong in the lily family. In the very brief treatment that can be given the subject here, it is not necessary to recognize strict family divisions.

Cabbage Palmetto (Sabal palmetto) grows in the coast region from North Carolina to southern Florida, and west to the Apalachicola river. It is sometimes called Bank’s palmetto, cabbage tree, and tree palmetto. The name cabbage is due to the large leaf-bud in the top of the stem which is cooked as a substitute for cabbage. A sharp hatchet and some experience are necessary to a successful operation in extracting the bud from the tough fibers which surround it.

This palm is a familiar sight in the coast region within its range. The tall trunks, with tufts of leaves at the tops, suggest the supposed scenery of the Carboniferous age. Usually the trunks, in thick stands, rise straight like columns from twenty to forty feet high, but occasionally they bend in long, graceful curves, as if the weight of the tops caused them to careen, which is probably what does happen. They vary in diameter from eight inches to two feet.

The leaves are five or six feet long, and seven or eight wide, with stems six or seven feet long. Flowers occur in racemes two feet or more in length. The fruit is spherical and about a third of an inch in diameter. The roots are an important part of this palm, and are adapted to their environment, forming a rounded mass four or five feet in diameter, while small rope-like roots, half an inch in diameter, penetrate the wet marshy soil fifteen or twenty feet. The large, globe-like mass gives support in the soft soil, and the stringy roots supply water and mineral substances essential to growth. The wood is light, soft, pale-brown, with numerous hard, fibro-vascular bundles, the outer rim about two inches thick and much lighter and softer than the interior. The most important use for the wood at present is as wharf piles. It lasts well and is ideal in form. It is of historical interest that Fort Moultrie which defended Charleston, South Carolina, in the Revolutionary war, was built of palmetto logs. When the British made their memorable attack in 1776, their cannon balls buried in the spongy logs without dislodging them, and the fort successfully withstood the bombardment of ten hours, and disabled nine of the ten British ships taking part in the assault.

The wood is employed to a small extent in furniture making, and the bark for scrubbing brushes. Some of the finest forests of palmetto in Florida are much injured by fire that runs up the trunks to feed on stubs of leaves.

Silktop Palmetto (Thrinax parviflora) and silvertop palmetto (Thrinax microcarpa) are species met with on some of the islands off the coast of southern Florida.

Mexican Palmetto (Sabal mexicana) is much like cabbage palmetto in size and general appearance, and is put to similar uses, except that the leaf-bud does not appear to be used as food. The tree occurs in Texas along the lower Rio Grande, and southward into Mexico where the leaves are employed as house thatch by improvident Mexicans and Indians who do not care to exert themselves to procure better roofing material. In the vicinity of Brownsville, Texas, trunks of this palm are employed as porch posts and present a rustic appearance. They are said to last many years. The average size of trunks in Texas is fifteen or twenty feet high and a foot or less in diameter, but some much larger are found in Mexico. Some of the wharfs along the Texas coast are built on palmetto piles. It is said the trunks are not as strong as those of the cabbage palmetto in Florida.

Sargent Palm (Pseudophoenix sargentii) is interesting but not commercially important, but may become so as an ornamental plant. It is occasionally planted on lawns in south Florida. Leaves are five or six feet long with stems still longer. The clusters of flowers are sometimes three feet in length. A single species is known, occurring on certain keys in southern Florida, and is so limited in its range that it would be possible to count every tree in existence. A grove of 200 or 300 trees occurs on Key Largo.

Royal Palm (Oreodoxa regia) is one of the largest palms of this country. It is said to reach a height of eighty feet, but such sizes are rare. The trunk rises from an enlarged base, and may be two feet in diameter. Bark is light gray in color, and its appearance suggests a column of cement. Leaves are ten or twelve feet long, and the stems increase the total length to twenty feet or more. Flowers are two feet in length, and in Florida open in January and February. The fruit is smaller than would be expected of a tree so large. It is a drupe about the size of a half-grown grape. The wood is spongy, but the outer portion of the stem is strong and is made into canes and other small articles. Trunks are sometimes used as wharf piles. This palm’s range is confined to south Florida in this country, but it is common in the West Indies. In Miami and other towns of southern Florida it is much planted for ornament.

Fanleaf Palm (Neowashingtonia filamentosa) also called Washington palm, California fan palm, Arizona palm, and wild date, ranges through southern California, and occupies depressions in the desert west of the Colorado river. There are said to be several forms and varieties. It ranges in height from thirty-five to seventy feet and in diameter from twenty to thirty inches. Trunks are of nearly the same diameter from bottom to top, or taper very gradually. They usually lean a little. Dead leaves hang about the trunks and blaze quickly when fire touches them, but the palm is seldom killed by fire. The small black fruit is about a third of an inch in diameter, and of no commercial importance; wood is little used; and the tree is chiefly ornamental, and has been much planted in California.

Mohave Yucca (Yucca mohavensis) is one of a half dozen or more palms of the yucca genus and the lily family. Trees of this group are characterized by their stiff, sharp-pointed leaves, some of which are called daggers and others bayonets. Both names are appropriate. The Mohave yucca takes its name from the Mohave desert in California, where it is occasionally an important feature of the doleful landscape. The ragged, leather-like leaves, forming the tops of the short, weird trees, rattle in the wind, or resound with the patter of pebbles when sandstorms sweep across the dry wastes. It is believed to be one of the most slowly-growing trees of this country. Trunks are seldom more than fifteen feet high and eight or ten inches in diameter. The wood is spongy and interlaced with tough, stringy fibers. Stockmen whose ranges include this tree, make corrals of the stems by setting them in the ground as palisades. When weathered by wind and made bone dry by the sun’s fierce heat, the trunks are reduced to almost cork-lightness. Other yuccas are the Spanish bayonet (Yucca treculeana) of Texas; Joshua-tree (Yucca arborescens), which ranges from Utah to California and is known as tree yucca, yucca cactus, and the Joshua; Schott yucca (Yucca brevifolia) of southern Arizona; broadfruit yucca (Yucca macrocarpa) of southwestern Texas; aloe-leaf yucca (Yucca aloifolia) with a range from North Carolina near the coast to Louisiana; and Spanish dagger (Yucca gloriosa), on the coast and islands of South Carolina.

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MINOR SPECIES

A considerable number of trees grow in this country which, taken singly, are of small importance, but in the aggregate they fill a place which would be difficult to fill without them. Most of them are local, and are seldom heard of outside of the regions where they grow. Some are small, and for that reason are not demanded by the ordinary user of lumber; but small size is not necessarily a bar to the use of a wood. Many places may be filled by pieces too small for the sawmill. Sometimes a diminutive trunk contains material of extraordinary hardness, or it may be polished to a rare smoothness, or the colors may be exquisite. Numerous commodities can be successfully manufactured from blocks or billets which are only a few inches in diameter and a foot or two in length. This is particularly true of some of the rare hardwoods of Florida and southern Texas where tropical species have extended their ranges northward over the borders of the United States. Some of the small trees in that group are known by name in only the immediate locality where they grow, and their qualities are scarcely appreciated even there. In some instances railroad ties are hewed from wood which is fit for the finest furniture.

It is no uncommon thing for Mexicans along the Rio Grande to warm their huts and cook their meals with fuel chopped from trunks of Texas ebony, algarita, cat’s claw, bluewood, huisache, retama, and junco. Those who have traveled among the Indian rancherias of New Mexico and Utah have grown familiar with the peculiar odor filling the air in the vicinity of camp fires. It is the smoke of the rare junipers which the Indians burn for fuel; and yet it is wood of such soft tones and exquisite blending of colors that the shades of a Persian rug suffer by comparison. Among the ten thousand islands which fringe the coasts of south Florida, and also among the hummocks of the mainland, are rare trees whose wood is unsurpassed in hardness, fineness of texture, and beauty. These are not being used at all, or only as fuel to feed some fisherman’s or camper’s fire, or to make a smoke to drive away mosquitoes. The time will come when small and scarce woods will be sought, if they are valuable for any special purpose. In preceding pages of this book many minor species have been listed and briefly described in connection with those more important, and with which they are closely related. There are more than a hundred others which were necessarily omitted from former pages. A few of these deserve at least a brief mention, and are listed in the following paragraphs.

Koeberlinia (Koeberlinia spinosa) is commonly considered a curiosity; a tree without a relative in the world, and without leaves, flowers, or fruit. The popular notion is wrong, of course, for no tree is without relatives, and none without leaves, flowers, and fruit, or something that takes their place. The flowers, leaves, and fruit of this tree are small and escape notice of the casual observer, but they exist. Its nearest relative in this country is the paradise tree of Florida and the ailanthus introduced from China. It has a small, thorny, crooked trunk; the wood is dark, turning nearly black with exposure; it is rich with oil; and it is very hard. The species grows in certain places along the Rio Grande. The wood is made into canes, rulers, knife handles, turned articles, and a little furniture of the smaller kinds. The trunks are too small for ordinary sizes of lumber.

Gum Elastic (Bumelia lanuginosa) ranges from Georgia to Texas, and in Florida is called black haw. Children in Texas mix its berries with chewing gum, to increase the quantity, and the name which they apply to it is “gum stretch it.” An exuded resin is also used for chewing gum. Trees are sometimes sixty feet high and two in diameter, and a considerable number of logs go to hardwood mills, where they lose their name, and possibly appear as ash lumber, or occasionally as maple. The wood is white, tinged with yellow, and is manufactured into agricultural implements. A scarce and smaller species, known as buckthorn bumelia and ironwood (Bumelia lycioides) covers nearly the same range. From a tree of the same family in southern Asia the gutta percha of commerce is obtained. Other woods of the same family in this country are mastic (Sideroxylon mastichodendron) of south Florida, a tree sometimes sixty feet high and three feet in diameter, useful for boat building; satinleaf (Chrysophyllum monopyrenum), also of Florida, a tree twenty-five feet high and one in diameter, the wood very heavy, hard, and strong; tough bumelia (Bumelia tenax), ranging from South Carolina to Florida, a tree twenty feet high and six inches in diameter, called black haw in some parts of its range; saffron plum or ant’s wood (Bumelia angustifolia), growing in Florida and Texas, the trunk twenty feet high and six inches in diameter; wood orange colored, and the fruit sweet; bustic (Dipholis salicifolia), in south Florida, a tree forty feet high and eighteen inches in diameter, with wood exceedingly hard, strong, and heavy, and dark brown or red in color; wild sapodilla or dilly (Mimusops sieberi), a tree of south Florida with rich, very dark brown wood, height of tree twenty feet, diameter one foot.

Dwarf Sumach (Rhus copallina) is known by many names. It is distinguished from staghorn sumach by its smooth branches, those of staghorn being hairy. Sumach’s chief importance is due to its value as tanning material. Leaves and small branches are used. The family has some well-known members in other parts of the world, among them the mangoes. The name dwarf sumach is not well selected, for the species is nearly as large as any other sumach. Trees are sometimes thirty feet high and ten inches in diameter. The tree’s range extends from New England to Florida and Texas. It reaches its largest size west of the Mississippi river. In the East and North it is usually a shrub. Trees of largest size are not believed to exceed fifty years in age. The wood is richly striped with yellow and black. Balls turned of it, seven inches in diameter, are used for newel-post ornaments, and smaller balls are made for use in darning stockings. Cups are turned on the lathe, and the bright stripes in the wood give the wares a striking appearance. It was formerly much employed for spiles in tapping maple trees for sugar making. Staghorn sumach (Rhus hirta) is of a different species but of the same genus. Its range extends from New Brunswick nearly to the Mississippi river. Its name refers to the down on the young branches resembling the velvet on the horns of a deer at certain seasons. The tree is known as Virginia sumach and hairy sumach. Its compound leaves are sometimes two feet long—two or three times the size of dwarf sumach’s. Trunks have been reported forty feet high and more than a foot through. The uses of this wood are the same as of dwarf sumach, including tanning. It is more abundant east than west of the Alleghanies. Poisonwood (Rhus metopium) belongs to the same family. It is known in Florida as doctor gum, hog plum, coral sumach, bumwood, and mountain manchineel. The juice is exceedingly poisonous, and gum produced by wounding the bark is reported to have medicinal value. Trees are sometimes forty feet high and two feet in diameter. The American smoke tree (Cotinus cotinoides) is another member of the sumach family. It is found in the southern states from eastern Tennessee to Texas. It is nowhere common, and its only reported use is as fence posts. Trees may be a foot in diameter and thirty feet high. The wood is a bright clear orange color, and a yellow dye has been manufactured from it. Poison sumach (Rhus vernix) is not the same as poisonwood, though sometimes the two are confounded. It is usually a shrub, and rarely twenty feet high. It is overloaded with names, as might be expected of a plant considered as dangerous as this. Among its names are poison elder, poison dogwood, swamp sumach, poison oak, poisonwood, poisontree, and thunderwood. It grows from New England to Georgia, and west to Minnesota and Louisiana. It is apt to occur in wet swamps, and Sargent pronounces it “one of the most dangerous plants of the North American flora.” A black, lustrous varnish can be made of the acrid poisonous juice, and this may sometime give the species a commercial value. When the skin is poisoned by contact with this tree, an effective remedy may be found in a saturated alcoholic solution of acetate of lead, if applied as a wash within an hour or two after the poisoning occurs. A wash with pure alcohol is also effective if applied within an hour. Following either treatment the skin should be thoroughly washed with soap and water. Western sumach (Rhus integrifolia), a closely related California species, is a small evergreen, seldom more than twenty feet high and a foot in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and red, is used as fuel, and occasionally in small turnery. The fruit is a berry half an inch long.

Cascara Buckthorn (Rhamnus purshiana) is of the buckthorn family, and is known by many names on the Pacific coast where the species is best developed. It grows as far east as Colorado and Texas. Cascara sagrada, its Mexican name, is often used for this tree. It is known also as bearberry, bearwood, yellow-wood, pigeonberry, coffeeberry, bayberry, and California coffee. The tree’s usual size is from ten to thirty feet high and twelve to twenty inches in diameter. It is often shrubby, and is more valuable for its bark than its wood. Large quantities are peeled for medicinal uses, and many trees are thus destroyed. A little of the wood is burned as fuel, and some is made into handles. Yellow buckthorn (Rhamnus caroliniana), with a range from New York to Texas, and evergreen buckthorn (Rhamnus crocea), a California species, are closely related to cascara buckthorn, but are of comparatively little importance. Blue myrtle (Ceanothus thyrsiflorus) is a California species, sometimes called wild lilac or blue blossoms. It ranges in height from thirty-five feet, among the redwoods on the Santa Cruz mountains, to only one foot high on some of the wind-swept coasts. The wood is pale yellowish-brown, and is somewhat used for novelties. Tree myrtle (Ceanothus arboreus), often known as lilac, is also a California tree, closely related to blue myrtle, but is of smaller size and of very restricted range. Its prospective value lies more in its bloom than in its wood. Naked-wood (Colubrina reclinata), a Florida species, is of a kindred genus. Trees are sometimes fifty feet high and three in diameter. The wood is hard, very strong, and is dark brown tinged with yellow.

Lignum-vitÆ (Guajacum sanctum) grows in Florida, and a species which is probably the same is found in south Texas along the Rio Grande. In Texas the tree is known as guayacon, which name has come down from the times when the Carib Indians ruled the West Indies. That was their name for the tree. The annual rings are usually too vague and too involved to be counted, but the tree is known to be of slow growth. The wood is pitted and it contains cavities and creases; but the clear wood is very hard and of fine and various colors. It is dark green, brown, black, yellow and of mixed colors, and clouded effects, all in the same block. Small pieces of furniture, like bureau cabinets, present attractive combinations of colors. The wood is of such exceeding hardness that it turns, breaks, or batters the carpenter’s tools. Candlesticks, egg cups, goblets, vases, checker pieces, dominos, boxes, trays, canes, paper knives, and souvenirs are manufactured in a small way. Trees attain a height of thirty feet and a diameter of two or more. The compound leaves adhere to the branches until those of the following season appear. The fruit is an orange-colored pod three-fourths of an inch long.

Prickly Ash (Xanthoxylum clava-herculis). Some know this species as toothache tree, tear-blanket, sting-tongue, and Hercules’ club. The wood shows little difference in color between heartwood and sap, and bears some resemblance to buckeye. It takes good polish and some of it looks like birdseye maple, but the figure does not seem to be due to adventitious buds. It has been made into picture frames and looks well. It is a rapid grower, and since its color fits it for the stencil, it might be worthy of consideration for box material. Trees reach a height of twenty-five or thirty feet, and a diameter of a foot or more. Its range extends from Virginia to Texas. Satinwood (Xanthoxylum cribrosum) is of the same genus, but it does not grow north of Florida where it is sometimes called yellow-wood. Mature trees are a foot or more in diameter and twenty-five or thirty-five feet high; wood heavy, exceedingly hard and brittle, but not strong; color light orange. It has some use as furniture material, and for certain classes of handles which need not be strong. Wild lime (Xanthoxylum fagara) is a similar tree, growing in both Florida and Texas, but it is of small size. Hoptree (Ptelea trifoliata) is another member of the family. Its fruit is sometimes substituted for hops for brewing beer. It is known also as wafer ash, wahoo, and quinine tree; the last name being due to its bitter bark. It grows from Canada to Florida, and west to New Mexico, and seldom exceeds twenty feet in height. Baretta (Helietta parvifolia) which occurs as a small tree in southern Texas, is a near relative. Torchwood (Amyris maritima), so named because of its fine properties as fuel, grows in southern Florida, sometimes reaching a height of forty feet and a diameter of one. Canotia (Canotia holacantha) is a small, scarce tree of Arizona and California and has fine-grained, rich brown wood.

Nannyberry (Viburnum prunifolium), known as black haw, sloe, sheepberry, and stagbush, grows from Connecticut to Oklahoma and is usually a shrub which springs up along highways and hedges, but it sometimes reaches a height of twenty feet and a diameter of eight inches. It is valuable in some localities in the manufacture of canes and umbrella sticks. Rusty nannyberry (Viburnum rufotomentosum) is a similar species, but attains a larger size, and grows from Virginia to Texas. The wood may be known by its disagreeable odor. Sheepberry (Vibernum lentago) has a more northern range, from Quebec to Saskatchewan, and south along the mountains to Georgia.

Blue Elder (Sambucus glauca) is one of three tree elders in the United States, the others being Mexican elder (Sambucus mexicana) and red-berried elder (Sambucus callicarpa). They are ornamental rather than useful. The three species occur on the Pacific coast. The largest recorded size of an elder was forty feet high and twenty-eight inches in diameter. Its age was about fifty years.

Fringe Tree (Chionanthus virginica) is known also as white fringe, American fringe, white ash, old man’s beard, flowering ash, and sunflower tree. Its natural range extends from Pennsylvania to Florida and west to Texas, but it has been widely planted in this country and Europe. It is seldom more than twenty feet high and eight inches in diameter. The bark possesses medicinal value. Devilwood (Osmanthus americanus) belongs to the same family, but to a different genus. It grows from North Carolina to Florida and west to Louisiana. The largest trunks are a foot in diameter and forty feet high. The wood is strong, heavy, hard, dark brown, and difficult to work.

Black Ironwood (Rhamnidium ferreum) of Florida is among the heaviest, probably is the heaviest, wood of the United States. It weighs 81.14 pounds per cubic foot, and when a hundred pounds of the wood is burned, it leaves eight pounds of ashes—the highest in ash of all woods of the United States. Its fuel value is very high. Trees are small, seldom more than thirty feet high and six inches in diameter. Bluewood (Condalia obovata) is a related Texas species, called also logwood and purple haw. It produces heavy, hard, close-grained wood, light red in color. Trees six inches in diameter and twenty-five feet high are fully up to the average. Along the lower Rio Grande it forms dense, tangled thickets. Red ironwood (Reynosia latifolia) of southern Florida belongs to a related species, and is sometimes called darling plum, because its purple fruit is edible. The tree is small, the wood heavy, hard, strong, and of rich brown color. White ironwood (Hypelate trifoliata) belongs to a different family. It occurs in Florida where trees are sometimes thirty-five feet high and eighteen inches in diameter. The heavy, hard, rich brown wood is durable in contact with the ground, and is used for fence posts, handles, and boats. Inkwood (Exothea paniculata) is of the same family as white ironwood but of a different genus. It is also a Florida species and is known in some localities as ironwood. The tree is occasionally a foot in diameter and forty feet high, wood very hard, heavy, and strong, and bright red in color. It is used by boat builders, for wharfs, and as handle wood.

Cinnamon Bark (Canella winterana), also called whitewood and wild cinnamon, is a south Florida species seldom more than twenty-five feet high and ten inches in diameter. The wood is exceedingly heavy, hard, and strong, and of dark reddish-brown color. The wild cinnamon bark of commerce comes from this tree.

Joewood (Jaquinia armillaris) grows in the Florida everglades. The dark and beautiful medullary rays of this wood may sometime make it valuable for turnery and small novelties. Trunks seldom exceed six or seven inches in diameter. Marlberry (Icacorea paniculata) belongs in the same family with joewood. Trunks are small, but the hard, rich brown wood is beautifully marked with dark medullary rays.

Crabwood (Gymnanthes lucida) is known chiefly by the fine canes made of it. The tree occurs in southern Florida where it is sometimes known as poisonwood. It is dark brown, streaked with yellow. Trunks more than eight inches in diameter are unusual. Manchineel (Hippomane mancinella) is of the same family, and occurs in Florida. The wood is light and soft.

Singleleaf Pinon (Pinus monophylla). This is the only pine in this country with single needles. They are one and one-half inches long, and are curved like the old fashioned sewing awl used by shoemakers. The needles fall during the fourth and fifth years. The cones are one and one-half or two and one-half inches long. The trees are small, averaging fifteen or twenty feet high and eight or twelve inches in diameter. Its range covers portions of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California, but it occupies dry, sterile regions as nearly under desert conditions as can be found in this country. The tree maintains a foothold on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains at an altitude of 9,000 feet and it descends into the Colorado desert in California at an elevation of 2,000 feet. It endures winter cold below zero on the mountains, and summer temperature of 122 in the Mojave desert. It is fitted to live in a dry, sterile region. The leaves are small and the branches bear few of them. The thin foliage uses little water, which is a fortunate circumstance, for there is little to use. Slow growth is the result. The trunk often adds less than an inch to its diameter in twenty years. The trees form very open forest, resembling old orchards, and the greenness usually associated with pine landscapes is generally wanting. The singleleaf pine has filled an important place in the development of the region, and furnishes an example of the great service which a small, crooked tree can give when it is the only one to be had. Mines worth many millions of dollars have been worked with little of any other wood. This has been the fuel for the kitchen, the engine house, the blacksmith shop. It has supplied the props, posts, stulls, and lagging for the underground operations. Fences for stock corrals, sheds, stables, cabins, and bridges have been constructed of the small, crooked trunks and the distorted limbs, when no other wood could be had in fifty or a hundred miles. Extensive tracts have been cut clean in the vicinity of mines. The product of the singleleaf pine forest cannot be measured in board or log feet, because of the smallness of the trunks and branches, but by the cord. The wood is medium heavy, rather high in fuel value, very weak, brittle, and soft. The resin passages are few and small, color yellow or light brown, the sapwood nearly white. In contact with the soil the wood is not durable, but its principal use has been in a very dry climate, and it lasts well there. It is the most important of the nut pines.

It produces enormous crops which are larger some years than others. John Muir believed that the singleleaf pinon’s annual nut yield surpassed California’s yield of wheat. Only a small part of the nut crop is ever put to use by man. Scattered over mountains, mesas, and deserts, 100,000 square miles in extent, most of the nuts fall and decay, though the animals of the rocks and sands, and the birds of the air live on them while they last. The Indians of the region long looked upon the nut crop, as the Egyptians upon the overflow of the Nile—a guarantee against famine. The Indians are not so dependent on the nuts now as formerly because scattered settlements throughout the region supply other sources of food. Many nuts are still gathered, and are sold in stores from San Francisco to Denver. They look like peanuts, but are richer in oil, and if eaten raw they speedily cloy the appetite. The Indians usually roast them, and frequently crush them into meal. When the harvest is ripe the Indians gather from all sides and camp during a month or more, thrash the cones from the trees with poles, extract the nuts, and keep up the operation until all present needs are supplied, and every available basket is filled for future use. The packhorses and burros of the mining country in Nevada where this pine grows, acquire a liking for the nuts. They are as nourishing as oats, and the pack animals like them better. Indians do considerable business collecting the nuts and selling them by the gunny sack to pack trains, for horse feed. A single Indian will sometimes gather thirty or forty bushels, for which he can get a dollar a bushel when he has carried them to market.

The singleleaf pine’s future will be about as its past has been, as far as can now be foreseen. Little planting will ever be done, nor is it necessary. Nature plants all that the sterile soil will support. It is of too slow growth to tempt the forester. A century is required to produce a fence post, and 200 years for a crosstie. Forest fires do little injury, for the ground is generally so bare that fire dies out of its own accord in a short distance. The tree can never be planted much for ornament. Even if it would grow outside of its dry habitat, it possesses no more beauty than a half-dead apple tree in a neglected orchard. The trunks resemble mesquite in Texas; but the Texas tree is redeemed by the beauty of its foliage in summer, while the foliage of the singleleaf pine is so pale and thin that it attracts no attention.

Carolina Hemlock (Tsuga caroliniana) is of far less importance than its northern neighbor which goes south along the Appalachian mountains to meet it. The two species mingle on the mountain tops from southwestern Virginia to northern Georgia. The Carolina hemlock is usually confined to altitudes 2,500 or 3,000 feet above sea level, and prefers rocky banks of streams. It does not usually occur in dense stands of even moderate size, as the northern hemlock does. A few trees in clumps or scattered solitary represent its habit of growth. Typical development of the species occurs on the headwaters of the Savannah river in South Carolina. For a long time this hemlock and its northern relative were supposed to be the same. Botanists did not formerly separate them, and the mountaineers do not generally do so now. There are several differences, however, which may be observed upon close examination, and by comparing the two species. The Carolina hemlock’s leaves have more rows of stomata and therefore are a little whiter on the under side. The leaves are also longer, and the cones are larger. The tree does not attain the dimensions of the northern species, its average size being forty or fifty feet in height, and two or less in diameter. It is not abundant, and has never been and never can be much used for commercial purposes. It is an attractive park tree and has been widely planted.

Limber Pine (Pinus flexilis) owes its name to its long, drooping branches. It is often called white pine, Rocky Mountain white pine, western white pine, and limber twig pine. It is not the tree usually called western white pine (Pinus monticola), but is a high mountain species, ranging from the Rocky Mountains of Montana to western Texas; it grows also on the mountains of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California. The upper limit of its range in the Sierra Nevadas is 12,000 feet. It descends to an altitude of only 4,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, and forms open, scattered stands of round-topped trees of little commercial value, and is usually associated with western yellow pine or Rocky Mountain cedar. At altitudes of 8,500 or 10,000 feet it is more stunted, and associates with Lyall larch and other high mountain species. Intermediate between its lower and its higher belts it produces a little merchantable lumber. The wood is light, soft, medium brittle, of slow growth and with narrow bands of summerwood. The resin passages are large and numerous. The wood, when a choice trunk is found, resembles that of eastern white pine; but generally the trunks are inferior in size and form. The heartwood is light, clear yellow, the sapwood nearly white. Trees range in height from thirty to fifty feet, and one to three in diameter. A sawlog ten feet long is about as much as can be had from a trunk, and of course, when compared with commercial trees, it holds a low place; but in some remote mountain regions it is the principal wood available, and to that extent it is of importance. When green, the wood is very heavy, and sometimes will sink. It is used for posts and in the mines. The farmer seasons posts on the stump. He peels the trees six months before cutting them. They immediately exude resin over the whole peeled surface, and the tree quickly dies. At the end of six months the trunk is seasoned, and is cut for posts. The ends are smeared with resin. Such posts have lasted twenty years with little decay. Railroads make ties of fire-killed limber pine. Charcoal burners use it also. The growing trees resist the fumes of copper smelters better than any other species associated with it.