Читать книгу American Forest Trees - Henry H. Gibson - Страница 33

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This tree is called southern white cedar to distinguish it from northern white cedar or arborvitæ. When there is little likelihood of confusion, the name white cedar is applied locally in different parts of its range from Massachusetts 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 associated 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 shingles 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, shingles, 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 shingles.

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 shingles 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 shingles which were split with frow and mallet, and were from twenty-four to twenty-seven inches long. They were known in market as juniper shingles 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 substituted when cedar could be no longer procured. Philadelphia was not alone in its preference for cedar roofs. Large shipments of shingles 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 shingles under a pattering rain suggested this use to Mittelberger when he visited America, and he tried the wood with such success that he pronounced 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 superstition 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 accumulation 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 shingles 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 quantities. Fence rails are no longer made of it; shingles 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 morasses. 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.