Part 60

It is not easy to state the average size of the hornbeam, though it is usually small and never very large. Sometimes it reaches a height of fifty or sixty feet and a diameter of two or more, but such sizes are unusual. Trees a foot in diameter and forty feet high are more common. The foliage is thin, and the tree is satisfied to grow in shade, provided the shadows are not too dense. The leaves must have a little sunshine, and the flecks that fall through the open spaces in the forest canopy high above, suffice. The hornbeam makes no effort to overtop its fellow trees; but when it grows in the open, as on a rocky bank or ridge, where it catches the full light, the crown puts on more leaves, and multiplies its branches, and it is no longer the lean tree which some of the Indians called it. Forest grown specimens produce clear trunks, but those in the open are limby almost to the ground.

Hornbeam has neither smell nor taste. It burns well, the embers glowing brightly in still air. The weight of a cubic foot of seasoned wood is fifty-one pounds. It is strong, hard, heavy, tough, and exceedingly durable when exposed to variable weather, or when in contact with the soil. It takes a beautiful polish. Trees more than a foot in diameter are often found to be hollow.

The wood is strong, hard, tough, durable in contact with the soil; heartwood light brown, tinged with red, or often nearly white; thick, pale sapwood which generally does not change to heart for forty or fifty years. The annual rings are not uniform in appearance. Some are easily distinguishable, while others are vague. This variation is due to the irregular development of the dark summerwood in the outer portion of the rings. It is at times distinct and again is hardly discernible.

The wood is diffuse-porous, and the pores are too small to be easily seen by the naked eye. The medullary rays are small and obscure. In quarter-sawed wood they show as a silvery gloss, but the appearance is too monotonous to be attractive. Neither is there striking figure when the wood is sawed tangentially, because of the small contrast in the different parts of the yearly ring. Hornbeam may, therefore, be listed among woods which have little or no figure. No one ever thinks of using it for the sake of its beauty. Because of the small size and limited quantity hornbeam will never come into commercial prominence. Its uses are almost entirely local and domestic. The lumberman or the farmer selects a hornbeam sapling as being the best material obtainable for making a wagon or sleigh tongue, a skid, or a lever. The farmer often laboriously works a section of the flint-like wood into minor agricultural implements.

The statistics of sawmill cut in the United States do not mention hornbeam even among such minor species as holly, Osage orange, alder, and apple. However, it is known that an occasional log goes to sawmills in the Lake States, and doubtless in other regions, and in some instances the wood is kept separate from others and is sold to fill special orders. Manufacturers of farm tools consider it the best wood for rake teeth. That use has come down from the time when farmers made their own rakes and pitchforks. They learned the wood’s value by experience, and manufacturers cater to the trade.

It is sometimes called lever wood, and that name dates from long ago when the man who needed a lever went into the woods and cut one to suit his needs. The modern lever is usually somewhat different and partakes more of the nature of a handle. They are seen in sawmills where they manipulate the carriage machinery; on certain agricultural implements where their function is to throw clutches in and out of gear; sometimes they are used as the handle by which the rudder of a small boat is controlled; and occasionally the lever has a place as an adjunct of a wagon or log-car brake. In all of these uses strength and stiffness are required, and durability is duly considered.

Wagon makers and repairers find several uses for hornbeam. It would be more frequently employed if it were more plentiful. Nearly any blacksmith who runs a repair shop for vehicles will testify to that. It fulfills every requisite for axles; is made into felloes for heavy wagons; and is considered the best obtainable wood for the tongues of heavy logging wheels and stone wagons.

Among various occasional uses of this wood it is listed by the manufacturers of reels for garden hose; rungs for long ladders; stakes for sleds, and also for cross pieces and parts of runners of sleds; wedges for the makers of machinery; and hammer and hatchet handles. It is a pretty active competitor of dogwood for some of these uses, and it has been suggested for shuttles, but no report of its use in that capacity seems to have been made.

One of its most common uses is as fence posts. Few lines of fence are built exclusively of hornbeam posts, because not enough can be had in one place; but posts are cut singly or a few together from Maine to Arkansas, and the aggregate number is large. The wood is said to outlast the heartwood of white oak when in contact with the ground, and it is so strong that posts of small size stand the pull of wires or the weight of planks or pickets.

Hornbeam is of slow growth and there is little reason to believe that it will ever be seriously considered by timber growers; but it will doubtless win its way to favor as an ornamental tree. It has been planted in city parks in New England and elsewhere, and its form, foliage, and habits are much liked. The pale green pods or cones--they are not exactly the one or the other--remain a long time on the branches and are delicately ornamental until after the autumn frosts change their green into brown. Then comes the flying time of the balloon seeds, and that is an interesting period in parks and yards where the tree’s habits may be closely studied.

KNOWLTON HORNBEAM (Ostrya knowltoni) is interesting chiefly on account of its extremely limited range, and its far removal from all its kin. It is an exile in a distant country. It has thus far been found only on the southern slope of the canyon of the Colorado river in Arizona, about seventy miles north of Flagstaff. It occurs at an elevation of 6,000 or 7,000 feet above the sea. Trees are twenty or thirty feet high and twelve or eighteen inches in diameter, and trunks usually divide a foot or two above the ground into three or more branches, which are often crooked and contorted. Such sizes and forms could not be of much value for anything but fuel, even if abundant. The heart is light reddish-brown, sapwood thin. The leaves are round instead of pointed at the apex, as with the other hornbeam; but the flowers and fruit are much the same. Botanists speculate in vain as to how this species happens to be so far removed from other members of its family.

SILVERBELL

SILVERBELL TREE

(Mohrodendron Carolinum)

This tree belongs to the storax family, which is not a very numerous family as forest families are generally counted, but it is old and highly respectable. Its members are found in the old world and the new in both North and South America, in Europe, Asia, and the Malay Archipelago. Trees of the storax family produce, or they are supposed to produce, resins and gums, balsams, and aromatic exudations, but some give little or none. The priests and soothsayers of idolatrous nations of ancient times laid great stress on storax. They insisted on having the resin as an adjunct to their superstitious rites. It was the incense offered in their worship, and they compassed sea and land to obtain it for that purpose. It is not improbable that the southern peninsulas of Asia and the far-off Molucca islands were visited in ancient times to procure the incense which ultimately found its way to the Mediterranean regions.

It is, therefore, interesting to find that two members of the old storax family are quietly living in the coast region and among the mountains of the southeastern part of the United States. No one has ever suspected that they might be capable of yielding resinous incense suitable for the altars of heathen gods. They are the silverbell tree, and its little cousin, the snowdrop tree (Mohrodendron dipterum). They have had common names a long time, but their botanical names are the result of a recent christening. They are named from Charles Mohr who wrote an interesting book on the flora of Alabama. The silverbell tree is the larger of the two and deserves first consideration.

It has a somewhat extensive range, but in some parts it is so scarce that few persons ever see it. It is found from the mountains of West Virginia to southern Illinois, south to middle Florida, northern Alabama, and Mississippi, and through Arkansas and western Louisiana to eastern Texas. Under cultivation, this tree is known as the snowdrop tree in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. In Rhode Island, under cultivation, it is also sometimes known as the silverbell tree, and bears the same name in Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi. In parts of Tennessee it is known as the wild olive tree, and in other parts of the state as the bell tree. In various localities in Alabama it is referred to as the four-winged halesia; and in others as opossumwood. It is indiscriminately known in various sections of Texas as the rattlebox and calicowood, and some of the furniture manufacturers in North Carolina list it as box elder, though it is only distantly related to the true box elder. In the Great Smoky mountains in Tennessee, where the species reaches its greatest development, it bears a variety of names, among them being tisswood, peawood, bellwood, and chittamwood.

The tree varies in size from a shrubby form so small that it is scarcely entitled to the name of tree, up to a height of eighty, ninety, and even more than 100 feet with diameters up to nearly four feet. The largest sizes occur only among the ranges of the Great Smoky mountains in Blount, Sevier, and Monroe counties, Tennessee. No reason is known why this tree in that region should so greatly exceed its largest dimensions in other areas; but most species have a locality where the greatest development is reached, and this has found the favorable conditions in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. Some of the trees measure sixty feet or more to the first limbs.

Lumbermen of the country are not generally acquainted with silverbell, as is natural since its commercial range is so limited. It is not listed in statistics of sawmill cut or of veneer mills. The wood-using industries of the country do not report it, except in the one state, North Carolina, and there in very small amounts. Doubtless, it is occasionally used elsewhere, but it escapes mention in most instances. It has been made into mantels at Knoxville, Tennessee, and passes as birch.

The wood is light, soft, usually narrow-ringed, color light brown, the thick sapwood lighter. It weighs thirty-five pounds per cubic foot, and when burned it yields a low percentage of ash. The wood’s chief value is due to its color and figure. Best results are not obtained by sawing the logs into lumber, because the handsomest part of the figure is apt to be lost. It is preëminently suited to the cutting of rotary veneer. By that method of conversion the birdseye and the pitted and mottled effects are brought out in the best possible manner. Veneers so cut from logs selected for the figure, possess a rare beauty which no other American wood equals. There is a pleasing blend of tones, which are due to the direction in which the distorted grain is cut. This distinguishes the wood from all others and gives it an individuality. Much of the figure appears to be due to the presence of adventitious buds, similar to those supposed to be responsible for the birdseye effect in maple.

The leaves of silverbell are bright green at maturity and are from four to six inches long and two or three wide. They turn yellow before falling in autumn. The flowers give the tree its name, for they resemble delicate bells, about one inch in length. They appear in early spring when the leaves are one-third grown, on slender, drooping stems from one to two inches long. The trees are loaded throughout the whole crown, and present an appearance that is seldom surpassed for beauty in the forests of this country.

The fruit is peculiar and is not particularly graceful. It has too much the appearance of the load carried by a well-fruited vine of hops. It ripens late in autumn and persists during most of the winter. There is nothing in its color, shape, or taste to tempt birds or other creatures to make food of it, though, under stress of circumstances, they may sometimes do so. The fruit is two inches or less in length and an inch wide, and has four wings, which seem to be practically useless for flight. The seed is about half an inch long.

The bark of the trunk is bright red-brown and about half an inch thick, with broad ridges which separate on the surface into thin papery scales. The young branches wear an early coat of thick, pale wool or hairs, light, reddish-brown during the first summer, but later changing to an orange color.

The botanical range of the species is extensive, though the tree-form is confined to a few counties among the southern Appalachian mountains. The northern limit of its range is in West Virginia where it is so scarce that many a woodsman never recognizes it. Unless it is caught while in the full glory of its bloom, it attracts no attention. It is not there a tree, but a shrub, hidden away among other growth, along mountain streams or on slopes where the soil is fertile. The blooming shrub might, at a distance, be mistaken for a dogwood in full blossom, but a closer inspection corrects the mistake.

It is true of this species as of many others that the range has been greatly extended by planting. The bell-like white flowers early drew attention of nurserymen who were on the lookout for trees for ornamental planting. It was carried to Europe long ago, and graces many a yard and park in the central and northern countries of that continent. It now grows and thrives in the United States six hundred miles northeast of its natural range, where it endures the winters of eastern Massachusetts, blooms as bounteously as in its native haunts among the shaded streams of the Alleghany mountains.

SNOWDROP TREE (Mohrodendron dipterum) is a near relative of the silverbell tree, and looks much like it, except that it is smaller, has larger leaves, and the flowers are creamy-white. The two occupy the same territory in part of their ranges, but they differ in one respect. The silverbell tree grows with great luxuriance among the mountains while the snowdrop tree keeps to the low country and is seldom or never found growing naturally at any considerable elevation. It prefers swamps or damp situations near the coast. While the silverbell tree’s range includes West Virginia, that of the snowdrop extends no farther north than South Carolina. It follows the coast to Texas, and runs north through Louisiana to central Arkansas. Its range has been greatly enlarged by planting, and the northern winters do not kill it on the southern shores of Lake Erie. The largest trees are about thirty feet high and six inches in diameter, but the growth in most places is shrubby. Leaves are four or five inches long and three or four wide. Flowers are one inch long and are borne in profusion. They constitute the tree’s chief value as an ornament, though the foliage is attractive. The bloom lasts a month or six weeks, from the middle of March till the last of April. The fruit has two wings instead of four, as with silverbell, but occasionally two rudimentary wings are present. The wood is light, soft, strong, color light brown, with thicker, lighter sapwood. The smallness of the trunks makes their use for lumber impossible. The species is valuable for ornamental purposes only, and has been planted both in this country and Europe. It has a number of names by which it is known in different localities, among them being cowlicks in Louisiana, and silverbell tree in the North where it has been planted outside of its natural range.

SYCAMORE

SYCAMORE