Part 44 (2/2)
The coffeetree's range has been considerably extended by planting for ornament. In summer it is attractive, but from the first autumn frost until the leaves put out the following spring, it is uninteresting. The spring leaves are late, and the branches are bare more than half the year.
The wood is heavy, strong, and durable in contact with the soil. The heart is rich light brown, tinged with red, the sapwood thin and lighter colored. Annual rings are distinct. The springwood is porous and wide, the summerwood dense. The medullary rays are inconspicuous and of no value in giving figure to the wood. When the annual rings are cut diagonally across they give figure like that of ash. The wood of the coffeetree has never been in much demand. Furniture makers may use it sometimes, but specific instances of such use do not exist in manufacturers' reports. There are many places in furniture and finish which it might fill in a satisfactory manner.
It is suitable for fence posts, and that is where it commonly gives service. It is occasionally employed as frame work in house and barn building, but is not sought for that purpose, and is used only when it happens to be at hand. Though the tree has the habit of branching, some of the trunks grow tall and shapely, and are good for two or three sawlogs or railcuts. An occasional tree serves as fuel. Medicine is sometimes made of a decoction of the fresh green pulp of unripe pods; and the leaves are reported to produce a fly poison if soaked in water.
REDBUD (_Cercis canadensis_) is also known as Judas tree, red Judas tree, Canadian Judas tree, and salad tree. The last name refers to a custom in some parts of its range of making salad of the flowers. It is the flower rather than the bud that is red and gives the tree its name, the bloom being conspicuous in early spring. The tree ranges from New Jersey to Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, but reaches its fullest development in southern Arkansas, Oklahoma, and eastern Texas where trunks fifty feet high and a foot in diameter are found. It is shrubby in many parts of its range. Leaves are not compound. The fruit is a pink or rose-colored pod two or three inches in length, and by some is considered nearly as ornamental though not as showy as the flowers.
No one ever thinks of redbud as a timber tree or considers its wood, yet it might be used for a number of purposes. It is heavy and hard, but weak; and the heartwood is rich dark brown tinged with red. The tree is planted for ornament in this country and Europe.
TEXAS REDBUD (_Cercis reniformis_) differs somewhat from the common redbud, but it takes a botanist to point out the differences. The largest trees are forty feet high and a foot in diameter; the range extends from eastern Texas into Mexico; the wood closely resembles that of the other species, and is not known to be used for any purpose.
CALIFORNIA REDBUD (_Cercis occidentalis_) is often cla.s.sed as a shrub, but Sudworth gives it a place among the forest trees of the Pacific coast. The pea-shaped flowers are a clear magenta color. The pods turn purple when ripening but afterwards change to russet-brown. The wood is dark yellowish-brown, but because of the smallness of the trunks, it can never be important. The tree is found along the California mountains, six hundred miles north and south; is an abundant seeder, and is valuable as a protection to slopes and ravines, and as an ornament.
HORSEBEAN (_Parkinsonia aculeata_) is generally called retama in the valley of the lower Rio Grande in Texas where the species attains its largest size. Trees are occasionally thirty feet high and a foot or more in diameter. Trunks usually separate in several stems near the ground.
The range extends from southern Texas to California, and the species is naturalized in south Florida, the West Indies, and many tropical countries. Leaves vary in form, and are occasionally eighteen inches long. Fruit consists of pods, each containing from two to eight beans.
The yellow flowers are small and fragrant; the bark on young twigs is green, but on older trunks is brown. The brown, however, is easily rubbed off, exposing the green beneath, as may be seen in school grounds in some of the southern towns in Texas where this tree has been planted for ornament, and abrasions, due to children climbing about the spreading stems, keep the bark green. The upper branches are armed with thorns which discourage the climbing propensities of children. The wood is heavy, hard, tinged with yellow, and is made into small novelties, but is not of much importance.
SMALL-LEAF HORSEBEAN (_Parkinsonia microphylla_) is well named, for the compound leaves, with four or six pairs of leaflets, are about an inch long, covered with hairs, and fall at the end of a few weeks.
Consequently, the tree is bare most of the year, except for the pale yellow flowers which appear in spring before the leaves, and the cl.u.s.ters of striped pods, each containing from one to three beans. The pods are nearly always present, for they have the pea family habit of adhering to the branches a long time. Trees reach a height of fifteen or twenty feet, and a diameter of ten inches or less. The wood is very hard and dense, in color deep yellowish-brown, often mottled and streaked with dull red; the sapwood thick and yellow. The wood is suitable for small articles, but its scarcity renders it of little importance. It is found in the deserts of southern Arizona and the adjacent parts of California, and is usually a small shrub.
JAMAICA DOGWOOD (_Ichthyomethia piscipula_) is the lone representative of the genus, and is found in this country only in southern Florida. It is not in the same family with the dogwoods, and its name is misleading.
The Carib Indians formerly used the leaves to stupify fish and render them easier to catch; hence the botanical name. The leaves are compound, but bear little resemblance to the foliage of most members of the pea family to which this tree belongs. The flowers are the tree's chief source of beauty, and are delicately cl.u.s.tered, hanging in bunches a foot long. The fruit is a pod three or four inches long, with four wings running the full length. The wings are useless for flying. Trees are forty or fifty feet high and two or three feet in diameter; are common in southern Florida and on the islands. The wood is of considerable importance in the region where it grows but figures little in general markets. It weighs 54.43 pounds per cubic foot, and is moderately strong and stiff. In color it is a clear yellow-brown, with thick, lighter colored sapwood. It is very durable in contact with the ground, and in Florida it is used for posts, and occasionally for railway ties. It has been commonly reported as a wood for boatbuilding in Florida, but its importance for that purpose has probably been overstated, since an investigation of the boatbuilding industry in Florida failed to find one foot of this wood in use, although some may be employed but not listed in reports.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
YELLOW-WOOD
[Ill.u.s.tration: Yellow-wood]
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 cl.u.s.ters of white flowers differs from those of all a.s.sociated 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 cl.u.s.ters 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.
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