22 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



October 25, 1916 



of this valuable wood. As is commonly known, it is an exclusively 

 American tree. 



Black Walnitt 

 Black walnut and yellow poplar are competitors in the contest for 

 the best soil, and their habits are much alike in other respects. 

 The black walnut does not occur in extensive stands, but a tree 

 here and there, or in groups of two, three, or half a dozen, as in 

 the case of poplar. Eastern Tennessee has produced much high- 

 grade black walnut, and it is not all gone yet. Trees here and 

 there are cut and the logs are brought together for conversion into 

 lumber for export. The home demand is now so great and the 



RED OAK 



price so satisfactory that it may be predicted that little black wal- 

 nut lumber will go to foreign furniture makers, though the makers 

 of gunstocks may still get it if they are willing to pay the price. 

 The hardwoods of eastern Tennessee are a different group from 

 those which find their market in the western part of the state, about 

 Memphis. The latter come chiefly from the lower Mississippi valley 

 and tributary rivers; while eastern Tennessee depends largely upon 

 its own territory for hardwoods; but if a deficiency occurs it can 

 be made good by drawing upon the regions across state lines — 

 north, east, and south. Among the hardwoods more or less abundant 

 in eastern Tennessee are those which follow: 



Miscellaneous 



Butternut. This is a close relative of black walnut, but the 

 wood is of lighter color, Ond usually lacks figure other than that 

 produced by the annual growth rings. Select butternut may be fin- 

 ished to imitate Circassian walnut quite closely. Its clouded figure 

 scarcely measures up with that of red gum as an imitation of the 

 imported walnut; but the open pores in the growth rings give it an 

 advantage over gum in that particular. 



Hickory. Eight or more species of hickory occur in the eastern 

 part of the state, and the quality of the wood is excellent. The 

 most important hickories in the region are bitternut, pignut, and 

 shagbark. 



Birch. Three kinds of birch have their homes among the valleys 

 and mountains in the eastern part of the state. Sweet or cherry 

 birch is first in importance; yellow birch grows higher on the moun- 

 tains; while river birch, as its name implies, ranges in the valleys 

 near the banks of large streams. Lumber cut from its trunk is 

 substantial, but it is plain in color, wanting in figure, and is not 

 much in demand. The two other birches, the yellow and the sweet, 

 are easy enough to distinguish as trees, at least until very old age; 

 but the lumber is so much alike that no one attempts to keep the 

 two apart in the market. 



Beech. Only one kind of native beech grows in this country, 

 but there is remarkable difference in the quality of beech lumber. 

 Some is hard, sound, and of rich color, while other is poor in most 

 respects, owing to diseases to which this tree is subject, and prob- 

 ably due somewhat to the soil where the timber grows. Tennessee 

 mills cut nearly 12,000,000 feet of beech lumber yearly, and it is of 

 high class. 



Cucumber meets no great demand, nor is the supply large; yet 

 the wood is of good quality, and the mountains of Tennessee produce 

 some of the best. Cucumber hardly receives full credit, because 

 most of it is marketed either as sap poplar or as basswood. 



Buckeye is in the same category as cucumber. It is seldom sold 

 as lumber under its own name, but commonly as sap poplar. It is 

 not abundant, but some fine trees occur in the rich valleys of eastern 

 Tennessee. 



Basswood is better known and more plentiful than cucumber and 

 buckeye ; but in character it is much like them. It has the ad- 

 vantage of going by its proper name, though in eastern Tennessee 

 it is customary to call it linn. The cut of basswood in the state 

 exceeds 9,000,000 feet a year. One of its best places is in the fur- 

 niture factory where it is made into kitchen furniture, or consti- 

 tutes the interior parts of high-grade furniture. It is one of the 

 softest of the commercial woods of the United States. 



Locust. 'While basswood is one of the softest of the so-called 

 "hardwoods," locust is one of the hardest. It is not often cut for 

 lumtfei, but meets its principal use as fence posts, insulator pins 

 for telephone lines, buggy hubs, pins for ship builders, and as 

 policemen's clubs. The tree grows to perfection in eastern Tennes- 

 see where heights exceeding one hundred feet and diameter more 

 than two are found. 



MIaple. Both hard and soft maples abound in the eastern part of 

 the stnte, and the yearly lumber cut is nearly 15,000,000 feet. That 

 is not a large maple output compared with some of the northern 

 states; but it shows that eastern Tennessee is able to meet the 

 demands of its factories for maple lumber. The ordinary sugar 

 tree is the hard maple. All ethers are soft, as the term ia com- 

 monly used. 



Dogwood. This can properly be classed as the smallest of Amer- 

 ica's commercial trees. There are some trees which at full maturity, 

 are of smaller size than dogwood, but they are not named in the 

 lumber business. Dogwood "sawlogs" are seldom more than six 

 feet long and from six to ten inches in diameter. One such log 

 to a tree is all that anybody expects. In the mountains of eastern 

 Tennessee small portable mills go about where piles of dogwood 

 logs or billets have beer collected by farmers and lumbermen, and 

 saw the stuff into shuttle blocks about eighteen inches long and 

 less than three inches square. These blocks are shipped to factories 

 which complete the shuttles and sell them to textile mills. The 



