Читать книгу American Forest Trees - Henry H. Gibson - Страница 17

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Few trees have more names than this. The names, however, may be separated into groups, one group referring to the foliage, another to the situations in which the tree grows, and a third to certain characters or uses of the wood. Names descriptive of the leaves are longschat pine, longshucks pine, shortleaf pine, foxtail pine, and longstraw pine. The names which refer to locality or situation are loblolly pine, old-field pine, slash pine, black slash pine, Virginia pine, meadow pine and swamp pine. Names which refer to the character of the wood or of the standing tree are torch pine, rosemary pine, frankincense pine, cornstalk pine, spruce pine, and yellow pine. Not one of these names is applied to the tree in its entire range, and it has several names other than those listed. Sap pine is widely applied to the lumber, because the tree’s sapwood is very thick, sometimes amounting to eighty per cent of a trunk. It has borne the name old-field pine for a hundred and fifty years in Virginia, and the name suggests a good deal of history. Some of the improvident early Virginia tobacco growers neglected to fertilize their fields, and the land wore out under constant cropping, and was abandoned. The pine quickly took possession, for the fields which were too far exhausted to produce tobacco or corn were amply able to grow dense stands of loblolly pine, and the farmers noticing this, called it old-field pine. It has been taking possession of abandoned fields in Virginia and North Carolina ever since, and the name still applies. The tree grows from New Jersey to Florida, west to Texas, north to Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia, but it does not cover the whole territory thus outlined. It is very scarce near its northern limit. There is evidence that the range of loblolly has extended in historic times, not into new or distant regions, but outside the borders which once marked its range. Since white men in Texas stopped the Indians’ grass fires, the pine has encroached upon the prairie. Early writers in Virginia and North Carolina spoke of pine as scarce or totally wanting, except on the immediate coast. It is now found from one hundred to two hundred miles inland, and many sawmills now cut logs which have grown in fields abandoned since the Revolutionary war. This has occurred on the Atlantic coast rather than west of the Appalachian ranges of mountains. Virginia has more sawmills than any other state, and many of them are working on loblolly pine which has grown in the last hundred years.

The tree bears seeds abundantly and scatters them widely. It is vigorous, grows with great rapidity, and is able to fight its way if it finds conditions in any way favorable. Turpentine operators have not found the working of loblolly pine profitable, and this has relieved it of a drain which has done much to deplete the southern forests of longleaf pine.

Loblolly’s leaves are from six to nine inches long, and fall the third year. This species, in common with other southern yellow pines, is disposed to grow tall, clear trunks, with a meager supply of limbs and foliage at the top. The lumber sawed from trunks of that kind is clear of knots. No other important forest tree of the United States comes as nearly being a cultivated tree as the loblolly pine. This is particularly true in the northeastern part of its range, in North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. Though nature has done the actual planting, men provided the seed beds by giving up old fields to that use; and many of the stands are as thick and even as if they had been planted and cared for by regular forestry methods. Trees are from eighty to one hundred feet tall, and from two to four in diameter, some very old ones being a little larger.

The annual rings of loblolly pine are broad, with good contrast between the spring and summer growth. The wood is light, not strong, brittle, not durable, very resinous, the resin passages are few and not conspicuous; medullary rays are numerous and obscure; color, light brown, the thick sapwood orange or nearly white. When this tree is of slow growth it is lighter, less resinous, and has thinner sapwood. It is sometimes known as rosemary pine.

The use of loblolly pine lumber was greatly stimulated when the custom of drying it in kilns became general. It is largely sapwood and dries slowly in air. Its market is found in all eastern and central parts of the United States, and it is exported to Europe and Central and South America. It is a substantial material for many common purposes and its use is very large on the Atlantic coast. In quantity it exceeds any other species in the wood-using industries of Maryland, and all others combined in North Carolina. It is not as often employed in heavy structural timbers as longleaf pine, but in the market of which Baltimore is the center, much use is made of it for that purpose. It is ten pounds a cubic foot lighter than longleaf, has about three-fourths of the strength, and nearly four-fifths of longleaf’s elasticity. It is thus seen to be considerably inferior to it as a structural timber where heavy loads must be sustained; but builders use it for many purposes in preference to or on an equality with longleaf. It is fine for interior finish and doors. Railroads employ large quantities in building freight cars, much for crossties, and bridge builders find many places for it. It is not a long lasting wood when exposed to weather, unless it has been treated with creosote to preserve it from decay. It is one of the most easily treated woods.

In North Carolina and Virginia loblolly tobacco hogsheads are common; and box factories within easy reach of it use much. A list of its uses, compiled from reports of factory operations in Maryland, will give an idea of the range it covers: Basket bottoms, beer bottle boxes, boats, cart bodies, crates, flooring, frames for doors and windows, fruit boxes, interior finish, nail kegs, oyster boxes, seats for boats, siding for houses, staves for slack cooperage, store fixtures, wagon beds, balusters, brackets, chiffoniers, mantels, molding, picture frames, stair railing, sash, scrollwork, sideboards, tables.

The amount of loblolly pine timber in this country is not known. No other important species comes so near growing as much as is cut from year to year. It covers 200,000 square miles with stands ranging from little or nothing in some parts to 20,000 feet per acre in others, or more in exceptional cases. The area of fully stocked loblolly pine is believed to be as large now as it ever was. Before the Civil war it was predicted that its period of greatest production was over; but large tracts are now being logged on which the pine seeds had not been sown in 1860.

Pond Pine (Pinus serotina). Sargent’s table of weights of woods shows this to be the heaviest pine of the United States; but, as his calculations were made from a single sample which grew in Duval county, Florida, further data should be secured before his figures, 49.5 pounds per cubic foot, are accepted as an average weight for the species. It is rated in strength about equal to longleaf and Cuban pine. Its structure shows a large percentage of dense summerwood in the yearly ring. The leaves are in clusters of three, rarely four, and are six or eight inches long, and fall in their third and fourth years. The name suggests that the cones are tightly closed, and that they adhere tenaciously to the twigs on which they grow. This is found true. The principal impression made on a person who sees the pond pine for the first time is that it is overloaded with cones, and that it must be a prolific seeder. Better acquaintance modifies the latter part of that impression. It is overloaded with cones, but most of them are many years old, and have long been seedless, although most of the trees have the seed crops of two years on the branches at one time. Enough seed is shed to perpetuate the species, but too little to insure an aggressive spread into surrounding vacant ground. The pond pine may reach a diameter of three feet and a height of eighty, but that is twice the average size. The wood is very resinous, and is brittle.

Scrub Pine (Pinus virginiana). This tree is often called Jersey pine because it is a prominent feature of the landscapes in the southern part of that state where it has spread extensively since the settlement of the country. Its short needles have been responsible for several of its names, among them being shortshuck pine in Maryland and Virginia, shortshat pine in Delaware, shortleaved pine in North Carolina, and spruce pine and cedar pine in some parts of the South. In Tennessee it is known as nigger pine, and in some parts of North Carolina as river pine. The range is fairly well outlined by the above discussion of its names. It grows from New York to South Carolina, and west of the mountains it is found in northern Alabama and middle Tennessee, in Kentucky and West Virginia. It reaches its largest size in southern Indiana where it is sometimes 100 feet high and three in diameter. It is there a valuable tree for many purposes, but is not abundant. Its average size is small in the eastern states, usually not over fifty feet high, and often little more than half of that. Few trunks east of the Allegheny mountains are more than eighteen inches in diameter. The name scrub pine is an index to the opinions held by most people regarding this tree. It is often considered an encumbrance rather than an asset; yet statistics of wood-using industries hardly justify that view. Millions of feet of it are employed annually in each of the states of New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, for boxes, slack cooperage, and common lumber. The wood is moderately strong, but is not stiff. It is medium light, soft, brittle, with summerwood narrow and very resinous. Its color is light orange or yellow, the thick sapwood ivory white. The needles are from one and a half to three inches long, and fall in the third and fourth years. Cones are two or three inches long, and scatter their seeds in autumn. The wings are too small to carry the seeds far, yet the tree succeeds in quickly spreading into surrounding vacant spaces. Cones adhere to the branches three or four years. Tar makers and charcoal burners utilized scrub pine in New Jersey, northeastern Maryland and southeastern Pennsylvania a century and a half ago. The tree seems to be as abundant now as it ever was. Unless it occupies very poor land—which it generally does—the growth is liable to be suppressed and crowded to death by broadleaf trees before the stands become very old. As a species, it is weak in self-defense, and it owes its survival to its habit of retreating to poor soils where enemies cannot follow. It may be said of it as the Roman historian Tacitus said of certain men: “The cowards fly the farthest, and are the longest survivors.”