Part 49

The range of evergreen magnolia is from North Carolina to Florida and west to Arkansas and Texas. The species reaches largest size in the vicinity of the Mississippi, both east and west of it. Trees eighty feet high and four feet in diameter occur, and trunks are often without limbs one-half or two-thirds their length, when they grow in forests.

The common name for the tree in most parts of its range is simply magnolia, though that name fails to distinguish it from several other species, some of which are associated with it. Occasionally it is called big laurel, great laurel magnolia, laurel-leaved magnolia, laurel, and laurel bay. Bull bay is a common name for it in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. It is called bat tree, but the reason for such a name is not known.

Leaves are from five to eight inches long and two or three wide, and dark green above, but lighter below. They fall in the spring after remaining on the branches two whole years.

The odor of the flowers is unpleasant, but they are attractive to the sight, being six or eight inches across, with purple bases. The flowering habit of this tree is all that could be desired. It is in bloom from April till August.

The fruit resembles that of the other magnolias and is three or four inches long and two or less wide. Its color is rusty-brown. The ripe seeds hang awhile by short threads, according to the habit of the family. The wood is stronger than poplar, fully as stiff, and nearly fifty per cent heavier. The annual rings are rather vaguely marked by narrow bands of summerwood. Pores are diffuse, plentiful, and very small. Medullary rays are larger than those of yellow poplar, and show fairly well in quarter-sawed stock. The wood is compact and easily worked, except when hard streaks are encountered. The surface finishes with a satiny luster; color creamy-white, yellowish-white, or often light brown. Occasionally the wood is nearly diametrically the opposite of this, and is of all darker shades up to purple, black, and blue black. The appearance of the dark wood suggests decay, but those who pass it through machines, or work it by hand, consider it as sound as the lighter colored wood.

The uses of magnolia are much the same in all parts of its range, and those of Louisiana, where the utilization of the wood has been studied more closely than in other regions, indicate the scope of its usefulness. It is there made into parts of boats, bar fixtures, boxes, broom handles, brush backs, crates, door panels, dugout canoes, excelsior, furniture shelving, interior finish, ox yokes, panels, and wagon boxes. In Texas where the annual consumption probably exceeds a million feet, it is employed by furniture makers, and appears in window blinds, packing boxes, sash, and molding. In Mississippi, fine mantels are made of carefully selected wood, quarter-sawed to bring out the small, square “mirrors” produced by radial cutting of the medullary rays.

Evergreen magnolia has long been planted for ornament in this country and Europe. It survives the winters at Philadelphia. Several varieties have been developed by cultivation and are sold by nurseries.

Southern forests have contributed, and still contribute, large quantities of magnolia leaves for decorations in northern cities during winter. The flowers are not successfully shipped because they are easily bruised, and they quickly lose their freshness and beauty.

SWEET MAGNOLIA (Magnolia glauca) ranges from Massachusetts to Texas and south to Florida. It reaches its largest size on the hummock lands of the latter state. Trees are occasionally seventy feet high and three or more in diameter, but in many parts of its range it is small, even shrubby. Among the names by which it is known are white bay, swamp laurel, swamp sassafras, swamp magnolia, white laurel, and beaver-tree. It inhabits swamps in the northern part of its range, hence the frequency of the word “swamp” in coining names for it. Beaver-tree as a name is probably due to its former abundance about beaver dams, where impounded water made the ground swampy. In the North, sweet magnolia’s chief value is in its flowers, which are two or three inches across, creamy-white, and fragrant. They were formerly very abundant near the mouth of the Susquehanna river in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and northward through New Jersey; but the traffic in the flowers has destroyed the growth in many places where once plentiful. It is not important as a timber resource, but it is employed for a number of useful purposes where logs of fair size may be had. The sapwood is creamy-white, but the heart is nearly as dark as mahogany, and in Texas it is used to imitate that wood. The brown and other shades combine with fine effect. One of its common uses is for broom handles. Heartwood is worked into high-grade chairs. It takes a beautiful polish.

FRASER UMBRELLA (Magnolia fraseri) ranges south from the Virginia mountains to Florida and west to Mississippi. It is of largest size in South Carolina where trees are sometimes thirty feet high and a foot or more in diameter. The leaves fall in autumn of the first year; the creamy-white, sweetly-scented flowers are eight or ten inches in diameter, and the fruit resembles that of the other magnolias. The wood is weak, soft, and light. The heart is clear brown, the sapwood nearly white. It has not been reported in use for any commercial purpose. Among its other names it is known as long-leaved cucumber tree, ear-leaved umbrella tree, Indian bitters, water lily tree, and mountain magnolia. In cultivation this species is hardy as far north as Massachusetts, and it is planted for ornament in Europe.

PYRAMID MAGNOLIA (Magnolia pyramidata) seems to have generally escaped the notice of laymen, and it therefore has no English name except the translation of the Latin term by which botanists know it. Its habitat lies in southern Georgia and Alabama, and western Florida, and it is occasionally seen in cultivation in western Europe. It is a slender tree, twenty feet or more in height. Its flowers are three or four inches in diameter, and creamy-white in color. A tree so scarce cannot be expected to be commercially important.

WESTERN BLACK WILLOW (Salix lasiandra) is a rather large tree when at its best, reaching a diameter of two feet or more, and a height of fifty, but in other parts of its range it rarely exceeds ten feet in height. It follows the western mountain ranges southward from British Columbia into California. The wood is soft, light, and brittle, and is used little if at all. Lyall willow (Salix lasiandra lyalli) is a well marked variety of this species and is a tree of respectable size.

GLOSSYLEAF WILLOW (Salix lucida) is a far northern species which has its southern limit in Pennsylvania and Nebraska. It grows nearly to the Arctic circle. Trees twenty-five feet high and six or eight inches in diameter are the best this species affords.

LONGLEAF WILLOW (Salix fluviatilis) is known also as sandbar willow, narrowleaf willow, shrub, white, red, and osier willow, and by still other names. It ranges from the Arctic circle to Mexico, reaching Maryland on the Atlantic coast, and California on the Pacific. In rare cases it is sixty feet high, and two in diameter, but it is usually less than twenty feet high.

WAHOO

WAHOO

(Evonymus Atropurpureus)

No one seems to know what the original meaning of the word wahoo was. It is applied to no fewer than six different trees in this country, four of them elms, one a basswood, and one the tree now under consideration. The generic name, Evonymus, appears to be an effort to put somebody’s seal of approval on the name, for it means in the Greek language “of good name.”

It belongs to the family Celastraceæ, which means the staff family. Some designate members of this group as “Spindle trees,” because formerly in Europe the wood was employed for knitting needles, hooks for embroidering, spindles for spinning wheels, and the like. Unless the members of the family in Europe have wood quite different from that of the wahoo tree in this country, no adequate reason can be found for the use of the wood for spindles or staffs, because it is poor material for that purpose. It may be compared with basswood.

This beautiful little tree, scarcely more than a shrub in most regions of its growth, is a widely distributed species, its range extending through western New York to Nebraska, southeastern South Dakota and eastern Kansas, and in the valley of the upper Missouri river, Montana, southward to northern Florida, southern Arkansas and Oklahoma. In these localities it is generally a shrub, rarely reaching a height of more than nine or ten feet. It attains the proportions of a tree only in the bottom lands of southern Arkansas, Oklahoma, and in the lower Appalachian regions. The most favorable habitat of the tree is moist soil along the banks of streams. In the southern and western parts of its range, under favorable conditions of soil and climate, and when isolated from other species, the wahoo tree grows to rather large size and develops a wide flat top of slender spreading branches.

The largest and most beautiful specimens of wahoo grow in the mountainous regions of West Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina. In these sections it is no unusual thing for a tree of this species to attain a height of sixty or seventy feet and a diameter of twenty or twenty-four inches. It is never found in pure stands but is isolated along the edge of the forest, and thrives best near water courses.

The tree is known by a variety of names in the different parts of the country. The Indians are said to have called it wahoo. Burning bush, a very popular name, is especially appropriate, as no brighter dash of color is displayed by any tree than the scarlet fruit of this growth, which remains on the branches long after the leaves have fallen, often until the winter storms beat it to the ground. The growth is also called occasionally by the name bleeding-heart tree, in reference to the blood-red contents revealed by the bursting fruit.

The wahoo in the fall of the year may be identified by the flaming color of its fruit, or rather the seeds of the fruit. The hull bursts and exposes the bright red seeds within. These, contrary to the usual run of red fruits, are not of a glossy surface, and in this the tree is unique. During the summer season, however, identification is not such a simple matter, for the foliage is quite ordinary, and the flat, unassuming flowers have little that is distinctive about them; but as the autumn approaches and the leaves turn a pale yellow color, the tree becomes a conspicuous and beautiful object with its scarlet berries.

The bark of the wahoo is ashen gray, thin, furrowed, and divided into minute scales. On the branchlets it is a dark purplish-brown, later becoming brownish-gray.

The heartwood of wahoo is white, with a slight tinge of orange. The sapwood, scarcely distinguishable from the heartwood, is more nearly white in tone. The wood is heavy and close-grained but not very hard. It weighs when seasoned a little less than forty pounds to the cubic foot. Such of this wood as is sawed into lumber, which is but a small quantity, sells commercially with poplar saps, thus masquerading like its forest fellow, the cucumber tree. The character of the wood is such that it will not stand exposure to the weather any length of time. It is far from durable, but is remarkably clear from defects and answers admirably many purposes for which sap poplar is desirable.

The leaves of the tree are waxy in appearance, opposite, entire, elliptical or ovate in shape, from two to four inches long, one to two broad. They are finely serrate and pointed at both apex and base, and the stems are short and stout.

The flowers, which appear in May and June, are definitely four-parted, presenting a Maltese cross in shape. They are half an inch across, and their rounded petals are deep purple in color. The fruit which succeeds these flowers and which ripens in October is also four-parted. It is about half an inch across, a pale purple when full size, and hangs on long slender stems. When ripe the purple husk bursts and reveals the seed enveloped in a scarlet outer coat that fits it loosely. The leaves, bark, and fruit of the wahoo are acrid and are reputed to be poisonous.

The wood is one-third heavier than that of yellow poplar, and it is evident that it would not pass as poplar with any one disposed to reject it. It is also much harder than poplar, and is more difficult to season, as it checks badly. The medullary rays are so thin as to be scarcely discernible. The wood contains many very small pores. The bark is said to possess some value for medicinal purposes. No special uses for the wood have been reported, and it is too scarce to be of much value. The tree’s principal importance is as an ornament, and it shows well in winter borders where the bright colors of the seeds are exposed. It is planted both in this country and in Europe. The plantings seldom or never reach tree size.