YELLOW-WOOD
(Cladrastis Lutea)

This wood’s color is evidently responsible for its names yellow ash, yellow locust, and yellow-wood in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Kentucky, but no reason is offered for the name gopherwood by which it is known in some parts of Tennessee. The botanical name is based on the brittleness of the twigs. It is the only species of the genus, and it is not known to grow anywhere, except by planting, outside of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina.

It occurs in an area not much exceeding 60,000 square miles, and it is not abundant in that area. It prefers limestone ridges and slopes, and does best where the soil is fertile. It often overhangs the banks of mountain streams, and is most abundant and of largest size in the vicinity of Nashville, Tennessee, where a few trees have reached a diameter of three or four feet and a height of fifty or sixty. A diameter of eighteen or twenty-four inches is a good average.

The tree’s habit of dividing six or seven feet from the ground into two or more stems is responsible for the scarcity of trunks suitable for saw timber, even in localities where trees of large size are found. However, an occasional trunk develops a shapely form. It goes to sawmills so seldom that it is never mentioned in statistics of lumber cut or wood-utilization.

Most people who are acquainted with this tree, know it as planted stock in parks and yards where it is a favorite on account of its flowers. The bloom may properly be described as rare from two viewpoints. The beauty of its large clusters of white flowers differs from those of all associated trees; and it seldom blooms. One year of plenty is generally followed by several lean years. Those who plant the tree understand this, and feel amply repaid for the long wait, when the flowering year arrives. The planted tree is often known as virgilia, that being the name under which nurseries sell it. Flowers appear about the middle of June, in clusters a foot or more in length. It is claimed, but with what correctness cannot at present be stated, that the odor of flowers of different trees varies greatly, being faint with some, and strong and luxurious with others.

The leaves are compound, but have no resemblance to those of locust and the acacias. They are eight or twelve inches long, with five or seven leaflets. In autumn before falling they change to a clear yellow, but adhere to the branches until rather late in the season. The fruit, which consists of small pods hanging in clusters, is ripe in September.

Yellow-wood is a little below white oak in strength and seven pounds per cubic foot under it in weight; is hard, compact, and susceptible of a beautiful polish. Rings of yearly growth are clearly marked by rows of open ducts, and contain many evenly-distributed smaller ducts. The wood is bright, clear yellow, changing to brown on exposure; sapwood nearly white. Trunks of largest size are generally hollow or otherwise defective.

The uses of yellow-wood have been few. In the days when families in remote regions were under the necessity of manufacturing, growing, or otherwise producing nearly every commodity that entered into daily life, the settlers among the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee discovered that the wood of this tree, particularly the roots, yielded a clear, yellow dye. The process of manufacture was simple. The wood was reduced to chips with an ordinary ax, and the chips were boiled until the yellow coloring matter was extracted. The resulting liquor was the dye, and it gave the yellow stripe to many a piece of home-made cloth in the cabins of mountaineers.

The women usually attended to the dye making and the manufacture of yarn and cloth; but the men found a way to utilize yellow-wood in producing an article once so common in Tennessee and Kentucky that no cabin was without it—the trusty rifle. The gunsmith, assisted by the blacksmith, made the barrel and the other metal parts, but the hunter generally was able to whittle out the wooden stock. Yellow-wood’s lightness, strength, and color suited the gun stock maker’s purpose, and he slowly hewed and whittled the article, fitted it to the barrel, adjusted it to his shoulder, and completed a weapon which never failed the owner in time of need.

Frijolito (Sophora secundiflora) is found in Texas, New Mexico, and southward in Mexico. The name is Spanish and means “little bean.” A common name for it in English is coral bean. Sophora is said to be an Arabic word of uncertain meaning, except that it refers to some kind of a tree that bears pods. It is a species, therefore, which draws its names from four languages, while the name applied to it by Comanche Indians is translated “sleep-bush.” The bright scarlet seeds, as large as beans, but in shape like door-knobs, grow from one to eight in a pod, and contain a narcotic poison, “sophorin.” It is probable that Indians discovered that the beans, if eaten, produced sleep, hence the name. The tree is from twenty-five to thirty-five feet high, and from six to ten inches in diameter. The leaves are compound, and consist of seven or nine leaflets. The small, violet-blue flowers appear in early spring. They are not conspicuous, but their presence cannot escape the notice of a traveler in the dry, semi-barren canyons and on the bluffs where the tree holds its ground. Their odor calls attention to their presence. The perfume is powerful but pleasant, unless the contact is too close. The pods are from one to seven inches long, and hang on the boughs until late winter. It is not believed that birds or mammals distribute the seeds, as their poison renders them unfit for food. Running water appears to be the principal agent of distribution. The tree reaches its largest size in the vicinity of Metagorda bay, Texas. Among the dry western canyons it is usually a shrub. The small size of this tree stands in the way of extensive use of the wood. It burns well and its principal importance is as fuel. The weight is 61.34 pounds per cubic foot; it is hard, compact, susceptible of a beautiful polish; medullary rays are numerous and thin; color is orange, streaked with red, the sapwood brown or yellow. The wood is worked into a few small articles.

Sophora (Sophora affinis) ranges through portions of Arkansas and Texas. It is popularly supposed to be a locust, and is called pink locust or beaded locust, the first name based on the color of the wood, the last on the appearance of the pod which looks like a short string of beads, sometimes three inches in length, but usually shorter. In early times the pioneers manufactured ink from the pods. It was a fairly serviceable article, but was never sold, each family making its own. This tree’s flowers appear in early spring with the leaves. Trunks reach a height of twenty feet and a diameter of eight or ten inches; but the habit of separating into several stems a few feet above the ground lessens the use of the wood, even as posts, for the stems are usually very crooked. The tree’s preferred habitat is on limestone bluffs, or along the borders of streams, or in depressions in the prairie where small groves often occur. The wood weighs fifty-three pounds per cubic foot, and is very hard and strong. The annual rings are clearly marked with bands of large, open pores; medullary rays are thin and inconspicuous; color of the heartwood light red, the sapwood yellow. The wood is not sawed into lumber, but is whittled into canes and tool handles.

Greenbark Acacia (Cercidium floridum) is properly named. Its green bark makes up for its scarcity of leaves, and answers the purpose of foliage. The manufacture of the tree’s food goes on in the bark, because the leaves are too small to do the work. The foliage resembles that of locust and acacia in form, but the compound leaves are about an inch in length, and the leaflets are one-sixteenth of an inch long. Flowers are small, but the tree puts on three or four crops of them in a single summer. The pods are two inches long. The tree is found in the United States only in the south and west of Texas, where it is occasionally called palo verde. It attains a height of twenty feet and a diameter of ten inches when at its best. The wood is pale yellow tinged with green, and, because of small size, is of little importance.

Palo Verde (Cercidium torreyanum) sheds its leaves and its pods so early in the season that its branches are bare most of the year. Trees are from fifteen to thirty feet high, and some are considerably more than a foot in diameter. Its range covers a portion of southern California, the lower part of the Gila valley in Arizona, and extends southward into Mexico. It is a typical tree of the desert, and its extreme poverty of foliage enables it to live in a dry, hot climate. It clings to the sides of desert gulches and canyons, ekes out a dreary life in depressions among desolate dunes and hills of sand and gravel, and spends its allotted period of years in solitude, growing either singly or in small groups where the full foliage at the best time of year is insufficient to offer much obstruction to the full glare of the sun from a cloudless sky. The small flowers have little beauty or sweetness, but what they have is wasted on the desert air. Wayfarers in the barren country use the wood for camp fires.