Part 27 (2/2)

Black walnut is never used as rough lumber. It all goes to factories of some kind to be converted into finished commodities. It is not possible to say where it all goes, for statistics of manufacture are fragmentary in this country. It may be of interest to know that demand for walnut by factories in the following states was 11,641,137 feet in 1910: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Ma.s.sachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas. The wood served so many purposes that a list of them would be monotonous. In Illinois the largest users are the sewing machine and the musical instrument industries; in Michigan the makers of automobiles and of musical instruments; in Kentucky the manufacturers of coffins, furniture, and musical instruments; in Ma.s.sachusetts, the makers of furniture and of firearms. These uses probably afford a fairly accurate index for the whole country. During the Civil war the largest demand for walnut came from gunstock makers. Doubtless the largest use from 1865 to 1885 was for furniture.

Much of the best black walnut is exported. The logs are flattened on the four sides to make them fit better in s.h.i.+ps and cars, and also to be rid of most of the sapwood which is valueless. The ends are painted with red lead or some other substance to lessen liability to check. Sometimes export walnut is sawed in thick planks.

Large quant.i.ties of old-time walnut furniture have been resurrected in recent years from granary and garret where it was stored long ago to have it out of the way. Some of the old beds, lounges, cupboards, and chairs were of heavy, solid walnut, the kind not made now. Some of it has been furbished, re-upholstered, and set among the heirlooms; other pieces have been sold to furniture makers who saw the solid wood in veneers, and use it again.

The search for old walnut did not stop with dragging antique furniture from cubbyholes and attics, but two-inch lumber has been pulled from floors of old barns, and mills. Many old fence rails were made into gun stocks during the Civil war. Later, walnut stumps were pulled from field and wayside, and went to veneer mills. Some finely figured wood comes from stumps where roots and trunk join.

An occasional walnut tree develops a large burl which is valued for its figured wood. Sometimes the burl is the form of a door k.n.o.b, with the tree trunk growing through the center. The burl sometimes has a diameter three or four times as great as the trunk. The origin of such burls is supposed to be a ma.s.s of buds which fail to break through the bark.

Black walnut has a compound leaf from one to two feet long, with from fifteen to twenty-three leaflets, each about three inches long and an inch or two wide. The nuts ripen in the fall, and are valuable. They are borne chiefly by trees growing in open ground; forest trees do not bear until old, and then only a few nuts. The walnuts which germinate are usually those buried by squirrels, and forgotten.

Within the past twenty or thirty years plantations have been made in states of the Middle West. Many young planted trees have been cut for fence posts, with disappointing results. It was known that old walnut is durable, and it was supposed young trunks would be, when used for posts; but young trees are nearly all sapwood which rots quickly.

Forest grown walnut trees vary in size from a diameter of two feet and a height of fifty, to a diameter of six or more and a height of 100 or 120. Trunks which grow in the shade are tall, clear, and symmetrical; those in the open are shorter, with more taper.

PALE-LEAF HICKORY (_Hicoria villosa_) is a small tree but large enough to be useful wherever it exists in sufficient quant.i.ty. The largest specimens attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of eighteen inches. The tree bears nuts when very small, and the kernel is sweet. The bark of this hickory is rough but not s.h.a.ggy. The range extends from New Jersey to Florida and west to Missouri and Texas. It is most abundant in the lower Appalachian ranges. The wood possesses the common characteristics of the hickories, and it is cut with them wherever it is found, but is seldom or never reported separately in lumber operations.

SMALL PIGNUT HICKORY (_Hicoria odorata_) is considered a species by some botanists while others regard it as a variety. It is called small pignut in Maryland, and occasionally little s.h.a.gbark. This last name refers to the roughness of the bark which resembles the bark of elm. The range of the tree extends from Ma.s.sachusetts to Missouri and south to the Ohio and the Potomac rivers. The wood differs little from that of pignut hickory, and the uses are the same. No distinction is made between them at the shop and factory.

This tree is by some botanists believed to be a hybrid between s.h.a.gbark and pignut. It is sometimes called false s.h.a.gbark. The nut is edible.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

b.u.t.tERNUT

[Ill.u.s.tration: b.u.t.tERNUT]

b.u.t.tERNUT

(_Juglans Cinerea_)

This tree is known as b.u.t.ternut or as white walnut in all parts of its range. b.u.t.ternut is in reference to the oily kernel of the nuts, and white walnut is the name given by those who would distinguish the tree from black walnut. Persons acquainted with one of the species in its native woods are usually sure to be acquainted with the other, for their ranges are practically co-extensive, except that black walnut extends farther southwest, b.u.t.ternut farther northeast. b.u.t.ternut grows from New Brunswick to South Dakota, from Delaware to Arkansas, and along the Appalachian highlands to northern Georgia and Alabama.

b.u.t.ternut resembles black walnut in a good many ways and differs from it in several. They are very closely related botanically--as closely as are brothers in the same household. Black walnut is larger, stronger, better known, and has always dominated and eclipsed the other in usefulness and public esteem; yet b.u.t.ternut is a tree both useful and interesting. No person acquainted with both would ever mistake one for the other, winter or summer. Botanists tell how to distinguish b.u.t.ternut from black walnut by noting minor differences. The person who is not a botanist needs no such help. He knows them at sight, and there is no possibility of mistaking them.

b.u.t.ternut in the forest may attain a height of eighty or 100 feet, and a diameter of three, but few persons ever see a specimen of that size, and never in open ground. In shade, the b.u.t.ternut does its best to get its crown up to light and suns.h.i.+ne, but it is weak. It often gives up the struggle and remains in the shade of trees which overtop it. In that situation its crown is small, thin, and appears to rest lightly in the form of a small bunch of yellowish-green leaves on the top of a tall, spindling bole, which is seldom straight, but is made up of slight, undulating curves. The pale, yellowish tinge of the bark suggests a plant deprived of suns.h.i.+ne.

When b.u.t.ternut grows in open ground where light falls upon its crown and on all sides, it a.s.sumes a different form and presents another figure.

The trunk is nearly as short as that of an apple tree. It divides in large branches and limbs, and these spread wide; leaves are healthy, yet the crown of a b.u.t.ternut always looks thin compared with that of the black walnut. Tests show that b.u.t.ternut wood, when thoroughly dry, is somewhat stiffer than black walnut; but it is light and weak. It is about two-thirds as heavy and two-thirds as strong as black walnut. The growing tree betrays the wood's weakness. Large limbs snap in storms.

Trees become lopsided, and a symmetrical, well-proportioned b.u.t.ternut crown is an exception. The broken branches leave openings for the entrance of decay, and b.u.t.ternuts nearly always die of disease rather than of old age.

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