American Forest Trees Part 8

(_Chamaecyparis Thyoides_)

This tree is called southern white cedar to distinguish it from northern white cedar or arborvitae. When there is little likelihood of confusion, the name white cedar is applied locally in different parts of its range from Ma.s.sachusetts to Florida. It is a persistent swamp tree and on that account has been called swamp cedar; but that name alone would not distinguish it from the northern white cedar, for both grow in swamps; but it does separate it from red cedar which keeps away from swamps. The ranges of the two are side by side from New England to Florida. Post cedar is a common name for it in Delaware and New Jersey, because of the important place it has long filled as fence material; but again, the name does not set it apart from red cedar or northern white cedar, for both are used for posts. The only name thus far applied, which clearly distinguishes it from a.s.sociated cedars, is southern white cedar. Its range extends northward to Maine, but the tree's chief commercial importance has been in New Jersey and southward to North Carolina, very near the coast. Somehow, it seems to skip Georgia where no one has reported it for many years, though there is historical evidence that it once grew in that state. It grows as far west as Mississippi, but is scarce.

The small leaves remain green two years and then turn brown but adhere to the branches several years longer. The fruit is about one-fourth inch in diameter, and the small seeds are equipped with wings.

The wood is among the lightest in this country. It is only moderately strong and stiff. The tree usually grows slowly. Fifty years may be required to produce a fence post, but under favorable conditions results somewhat better than that may be expected. The summerwood of the yearly ring is narrow, dark in color, and conspicuous, making the counting of the rings an easy matter. The medullary rays are numerous but thin. When the sap is cut tangentially in very thin layers it is white and semi-transparent, presenting somewhat the appearance of oiled paper. The heartwood is light brown, tinged with red, growing darker with exposure.

The wood is easily worked, and is very durable in contact with the soil.

Fence posts of this wood have been reported to stand fifty years, and s.h.i.+ngles are said to last longer. Trees reach a height of eighty feet and diameter of four; but such are of the largest size. Great numbers are cut for poles and posts which are little more than a foot in diameter. Few forest trees grow in denser stands than this. It often takes possession of swamps, crowds out all other trees, and develops thickets so dense as to be almost impenetrable. Southern white cedar is cut in ten or twelve states, but the annual supply is not known, because mills generally report all cedars as one, and the regions which produce this, produce one or more other species of cedar also. It has held its place nearly three hundred years, and much interesting history is connected with it. A considerable part of the Revolutionary war was fought with powder made from white cedar charcoal burned in New Jersey and Delaware. However, that was by no means the earliest place filled by this wood.

Two hundred years ago in North Carolina John Lawson wrote of its use for "yards, topmasts, booms, bowsprits for boats, s.h.i.+ngles, and poles." It was cut for practically the same purposes in New Jersey at an earlier period, and 160 years ago Gottlieb Mittelberger, when he visited Philadelphia, declared that white cedar was being cut at a rate which would soon exhaust the supply. But that prophecy, like similar predictions that oak and red cedar were about gone, proved not well founded. Seventy years after the imminent exhaustion of this wood was foretold, William Cobbett, an English traveler, declared with evident exaggeration that "all good houses in the United States" were roofed with white cedar s.h.i.+ngles.

After boat building, the first general use of the southern white cedar was for fences and farm buildings, and doubtless twenty times as much went to the farms as to the boat yards. In all regions where the wood was convenient, little other was employed as fencing material, and many of the earliest houses in New Jersey and some in Pennsylvania were constructed almost wholly of this wood. Small trees which would split two, three, and four rails to the cut, were mauled by thousands to enclose the farms. The bark soon dropped off, or was removed, and the light rails quickly air-dried, and decay made little impression on them for many years. The larger trunks were rived for s.h.i.+ngles or were sawed into lumber. About 1750 the use of round cedar logs for houses and barns began to give way to sawed lumber. It was an ideal milling timber, for the logs were symmetrical, clear, and easily handled. North Carolina sawmills were at work on this timber many years before the Revolution.

It was acceptable material for doors, window frames, rafters, and floors, but especially for s.h.i.+ngles which were split with frow and mallet, and were from twenty-four to twenty-seven inches long. They were known in market as juniper s.h.i.+ngles and sold at four and five dollars a thousand. About 1750 builders in Philadelphia were criticized because they constructed houses with no provision for other than white cedar roofs; the walls being too weak for heavier material which would have to be subst.i.tuted when cedar could be no longer procured. Philadelphia was not alone in its preference for cedar roofs. Large s.h.i.+pments of s.h.i.+ngles were going from New Jersey to New York, and even to the West Indies earlier than 1750.

Southern white cedar is said to have been the first American wood used for organ pipes. The resonance of cedar s.h.i.+ngles under a pattering rain suggested this use to Mittelberger when he visited America, and he tried the wood with such success that he p.r.o.nounced it the best that he knew of for organ pipes.

Coopers were among the early users of white cedar. The "cedar coopers of Philadelphia" were famous in their day. They used this wood and also red cedar (_Juniperus virginiana_), and their wares occupied an important place in domestic and some foreign markets. Small vessels prevailed, such as pails, churns, firkins, tubs, keelers, piggins, noggins, and kegs. The ware was handsome, strong, durable, and light in weight. Oil merchants, particularly those who dealt in whale oil which was once an important commodity, bought tanks of southern white cedar. It is a dense wood and seepage is small.

A peculiar superst.i.tion once prevailed, and has not wholly disappeared at this day, that white cedar possessed powerful healing properties. It was thought that water was purified by standing in a cedar bucket, and even that a liquid was improved by simply running through a spigot of this wood. Some eastern towns at an early period laid cedar water mains, partly because the wood was known to be durable, and partly because it was supposed to exercise some favorable influence upon the water flowing through the pipes. It was even believed that standing trees purified the swamps in which they grew. Vessels putting to sea from Chesapeake bay, sometimes made special effort to fill their water casks with water from the Dismal swamp, where cedars grew abundantly in the stagnant lagoons.

About 100 years ago it was found that whole forests of cedar had been submerged in New Jersey during prehistoric times, and that deep in swamps the trunks of trees were buried out of sight. No one knows how long the prostrate trees had lain beneath the acc.u.mulation of peat and mud, but the wood was sound. Mining the cedar became an important industry in some of the large swamps, and it has not ended yet. The wood is sound enough for s.h.i.+ngles and lumber, though it has been buried for centuries, as is proved by the age of the forests which grew over the submerged logs. Sometimes a log which has lain under water hundreds of years, rises to the surface by its own buoyancy when pressure from above is removed. This is remarkable and shows how long a time this cedar resists complete waterlogging. The wood of green cedar has a strong odor, and that characteristic remains with the submerged trunks.

Experienced men who have been long engaged in mining the timber, are able to tell by the odor of a chip brought to the surface from a deeply submerged log whether the wood is sufficiently well preserved to be worth recovering and manufacturing. Trunks six feet in diameter have been brought to the surface. Few if any living white cedars of that size exist now.

Many of the early uses of southern white cedar have continued till the present time, but in much smaller quant.i.ties. Fence rails are no longer made of it; s.h.i.+ngles and cooperage have declined. On the other hand, it now has some uses which were unknown in early times, such as telephone and telegraph poles, crossties, and piling for railroad bridges and culverts.

The supply of southern white cedar is not large, and it is being cut faster than it is growing. The deep swamps where it grows protect white cedar forests from fire, and for that reason it is more fortunate than many other species. Not even cypress can successfully compete with it for possession of water soaked mora.s.ses. It does not promise great things for the future, for it will never be extensively planted. Its range has been pretty definitely fixed by nature to deep swamps near the Atlantic coast. Within those limits it will be of some importance for a long time. Where it finds its most congenial surroundings, little else that is profitable to man will grow. This will save it from utter extermination, because much of the land which it occupies will never be wanted for anything else.

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INCENSE CEDAR

[Ill.u.s.tration: INCENSE CEDAR]

INCENSE CEDAR

(_Libocedrus Decurrens_)

In California and Oregon this tree is known as white cedar, cedar, and incense cedar; in Nevada and California it is called post cedar and juniper, and in other localities it is red cedar and California post cedar. It is a species of such strong characteristics that it is not likely to be confused with any other. Though different names may be applied to it, the ident.i.ty of the tree is always clear.

Its range extends north and south nearly 1,000 miles, from Oregon to Lower California. It is a mountain species, and it faces the Pacific ocean in most of its range. In the North it occupies the western slope of the Cascade mountains in southern Oregon and northern California; and it grows on the western slope of the Sierras for five hundred miles, at alt.i.tudes of from 4,000 to 8,000 feet, where it is mixed with sugar pine, western yellow pine, white fir, and sequoias.

It is a fine, shapely tree, except that the b.u.t.t is much enlarged. It has the characteristic form of a deep swamp tree, but it has nothing to do with swamps. Its best development is on the Sierra Nevada mountains, where swamps are few, and the incense cedar avoids them. It occupies dry ridges and slopes, but not sterile ones. It must have as good soil as the sugar pine demands. Its height when mature ranges from seventy-five to 125 feet, diameter four feet from the ground, from three to six feet, but some trees are larger. It is not a rapid grower, but it maintains its vigor a long time. As an average, it increases its diameter an inch in from seven to ten years.

The wood is dense. It contains no pores large enough to be seen with an ordinary reading gla.s.s. The medullary rays are so small as to be generally invisible to the naked eye, but when magnified they are shown to be thin and numerous. The summerwood forms about one-fourth of the annual ring. The wood is nearly as light as white pine, is moderately strong, is brittle, straight grained, the heartwood is reddish, the thick sapwood nearly white. It is an easy wood to work, and in contact with the soil it is very durable.

The incense cedar is the only representative of its genus in the United States. It has many relatives in the pine family, but no near ones. Its kin are natives of Formosa, China, New Zealand, New Guinea, and Patagonia.

The name incense cedar refers to the odor of the wood rather than of the leaves. Those who work with freshly cut wood are liable to attacks of headache, due to the odor; but some men are not affected by it.

The forest grown tree is of beautiful proportions. Unless much crowded for room, it is a tall, graceful cone, the branches drooping slightly, and forming thick ma.s.ses. In the Sierra Nevada mountains, within the range of this cedar, the winter snows are very heavy. It is not unusual for two or three feet of very wet snow to fall in a single day. The incense cedar's drooping branches shed the snow like a tent roof, and a limb broken or seriously deformed by weight of snow is seldom seen. Deer and other wild animals, when surprised by a heavy fall of snow, seek the shelter of an incense cedar, if one can be found, and there lie in security until the storm pa.s.ses.

It is a tree which does fairly well in cultivation, and several varieties have been developed. It lives through the cold of a New England winter. Its cones are about three-fourths inch in length, and ripen in the autumn.

Incense cedar has filled an important place in the development of the great central valley of California, where it has supplied more fence posts than any other tree. Posts of redwood have been its chief compet.i.tor, but generally the region has been divided, and each tree has supplied its part. The redwood's field has been the coast, the cedar's the inland valley within reach of the Sierras. It has been nothing unusual for ranchmen to haul cedar posts on wagons forty or fifty miles.

The manufacture of posts from incense cedar has entailed an enormous waste of timber. The thick sapwood is not wanted, and in the process of converting a trunk into posts, the woodsman first splits off the sap and throws it away. In trunks of small and medium size, the sapwood may amount to more than the heartwood, and is a total loss.

The tree's bark is thick and stringy, and it is generally wasted; but in some instances it is used as a surface dressing for mountain roads. It wears to pieces and becomes a pulpy ma.s.s, and it protects the surface of the road from excessive wear, and from was.h.i.+ng in time of heavy rain.

Approximately one-half of the incense cedar trees, as they stand in the woods, are defective. A fungus (_Daedalia vorax_) attacks them in the heartwood and excavates pits throughout the length of the trunks. The galleries resemble the work of ants, and as ants often take possession of them and probably enlarge them, it is quite generally believed that the pits are due to ants. The excavations are frequently filled with dry, brown dust, sometimes packed very hard and tight. The cedar thus affected resembles "pecky cypress," and it is believed that the same species of fungus, or a closely related species, is responsible for the injury to both cypress in the South and incense cedar on the Pacific coast. It is not generally regarded by users of cedar posts that the honey-combed condition of the wood lessens the service which the post will give, unless by weakening it and causing it to break, or by rendering it less able to hold the staples of wire fences, or nails of plank and picket fences.

Post makers often prefer fire-killed timber. If a tree is found with the sapwood consumed, as is not unusual, it is nearly always free from fungous attack. The reason it stands through the fire which burns the sapwood off, is that the heart is sound--if it were not sound, the whole tree would be consumed.

The wood of the incense cedar is serviceable for many purposes. The rejection of the sapwood by so many users is the most discouraging feature. The heart, when free from fungus, is a fine, attractive material that does not suffer in comparison with the other cedars, though it may not equal some of them for particular purposes. Tests show it fit for lead pencils, and recent purchases of large quant.i.ties have been made by pencil makers. Clothes chests and wardrobes are manufactured from this wood on the a.s.sumption that the odor will keep moths out of furs and other clothing stored within. It has been used for cigar boxes, but has not in all instances proven satisfactory. The odor of the wood is objected to by some smokers. Another objection and a somewhat peculiar one, has been filed against incense cedar as a cigar box material. It is claimed that the boxes are attacked voraciously by rats which gnaw the wood, to which they are doubtless attracted by the odor.

Sawmills turn out incense cedar lumber which is worked into frames for doors and windows, and doors are made of it, and also interior finish.

s.h.i.+pments of inch boards are sold in New York and Boston, and exports go to London, Paris, and Berlin.

The long period during which incense cedar has been used and wasted, has reduced the supply in most regions, but there is yet much in the forest.

It is never lumbered separately, but only in connection with pine and fir; but post makers have always gone about picking trees of this species and pa.s.sing by the a.s.sociated species.

ALLIGATOR JUNIPER (_Juniperus pachyphla_) is so named from its bark which is patterned like the skin of an alligator. It is called oak-barked cedar in Arizona, mountain cedar in Texas, and checkered-barked juniper in other places. Its range lies in southwestern Texas, about Eagle pa.s.s and Limpia mountains, and westward on the desert ranges of New Mexico and Arizona, south of the Colorado plateau, and among the mountains of northern Arizona. Its range extends southward into Mexico. It is one of the largest of the junipers, but only when circ.u.mstances are wholly favorable. It is then sixty feet high, and four or five feet in diameter; but it is generally small and of poor form for lumber, because of its habit of separating into forks near the ground.

It does best at elevations of from 4,000 to 6,000 feet in bottoms of canyons and ravines. The grayish green color of the foliage is due to the conspicuous white glands which dot the center of each leaf. The berries are small and blue, of sweetish taste which does not particularly appeal to the palate of civilized man, but the Indians of the region, whose normal state is one of semi-starvation, eat them with relish. The line separating heartwood from sap in alligator juniper is frequently irregular and vague, and like some of its kindred junipers of the West, patches of sap are sometimes buried deep in the heartwood, while streaks of heartwood occur in the sap. This heartwood is usually of a dirty color, suggesting red rocks and soil of the desert where it grows. Small articles which can be made of wood selected for its color are attractive. They may be highly polished, and the surface takes a satiny finish; but the wood does not show very well in panel or body work where wide pieces are used. The best utilization of alligator juniper appears to lie in small articles. It is fine for the lathe, and goblets, napkin rings, match safes, and handkerchief boxes are manufactured from the wood in Texas. Its rough uses are as fence posts and telephone poles. It is durable in contact with the soil.

CALIFORNIA JUNIPER (_Juniperus californica_) is called white cedar, juniper, sweet-fruited juniper, and sweet-berried cedar. Its range is in California south of Sacramento, among the ranges of the coast mountains, and the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Its height runs from twenty to forty feet, diameter one to two. The leaves fall in the second or third year. This tree is of poor form and size for lumber. Trunks frequently divide into branches near the ground. The wood resembles that of other western junipers, and usually the fine color which distinguishes the red cedar of the East is wanting, and in its stead is a dull brown, tinged with red. The wood is soft and durable, and is strongly odorous. The sapwood is thin and is nearly white. Fuel and fence posts are the most important uses of the California juniper. Indians eat the berries raw or dry them and pound them to flour.

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WESTERN RED CEDAR

[Ill.u.s.tration: WESTERN RED CEDAR]

WESTERN RED CEDAR

(_Thuja Plicata_)