14 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



AMERICAN FOREST TREES. 



Hackberry. 



Ccltis occidentalis — Linn. 



Hackberry is found from the St. Law- 

 rence river southward through Ontario ; 

 from Massachusetts Bay westward to Ne- 

 braska, North Dakota, Idaho, eastern Wash- 

 ington and the valley of the Snake river in 

 Oregon; through Nevada and New 

 Mexico to parts of Florida, and in 

 middle Tennessee, Missouri, " Mis- 

 sissippi, Arkansas, Kansas, Indian 

 Territory and eastern Texas. 



The tree is called hackberry in 

 New Hampshire, Vermont, Ehode 

 Island, New York, New Jersey, Del- 

 aware, Pennsylvania, West Vir- 

 ginia, North Carolina, South Caro- 

 Una, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, 

 Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, Arkan- 

 sas, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, 

 Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, 

 Nebraska, Michigan, Minnesota, 

 South Dakota, Ohio and Ontario; 

 sugarberry in New York, Pennsyl- 

 vania, Delaware, North Carolina, 

 South Carolina and Minnesota; net- 

 tletree in Khode Island, Massachu- 

 setts, Delaware and Michigan; 

 American nettletree in Tennessee; 

 hoop ash in Vermont ; one-berry in 

 Rhode Island; hack-tree in Minne- 

 sota; juniper-tree and bastard elm 

 in New Jersey. 



This tree is of the elm family. 

 In shape it is round-topped, with 

 spreading or pendulous branches. 

 It sometimes reaches a height of 130 

 feet in the South, particularly in the 

 Ohio river basin, though it is usu- , 

 ally much smaller. The trunk is 

 straight and slender, though some- 

 times two to three feet in diameter 

 in the larger specimens. The 

 branches are slender and glabrous 

 when first appearing, containing a 

 thick, pale pith; they are Ugbt 

 green, becoming tinged with red. 



The bark of hackberry bears a 

 very close resemblance to that of 

 beech, being greenish-grey in color, 

 smooth and thin. The tree without 

 its foliage is often mistaken for 

 beech, although in general contour 

 hackberry does not resemble it. 



The leaves of hackberry are broad, 

 gradually sloping to a narrow 

 pointed apex; rounded at the base; 

 sharply serrate. In color they are 

 bright green, glabrous and lustrous on the 

 upper surface, lighter below and sometimes 

 pubescent along the ribs. The petioles are 

 short and grooved. The flowers are greenish 

 and axillary. The staminate ones are in clus- 

 ters, while the pistillate are solitary. The 

 calyx is divided into five lobes, is tinged 

 with red and sometimes furnished with a tuft 

 of hair. The fruit of hackberry grows on 



THIRTY-THIRD PAPER. 



a sleiuler stem; it is about a quarter of an 

 inch in length ; has a dark purple skin and 

 deep yellow flesh and brown nut. It ripens in 

 September or October, and is sweet and edible. 

 Hackberry is a rapidly growing tree. It 

 is admirable for transplanting, and fine speci- 

 mens are very effective in landscape garden- 



purposes. Its fruit, remaining on the tree 

 through the winter, is a favorite food of 

 robins. The chief insect enemy of the tree, 

 the haekberry-gall, does no great harm to it. 

 The wood of hackbeny resembles ash to a 

 considerable extent, although it is somewhat 

 softer, and not as strong. It is coarse-grained, 

 with light yellowish heartwood and 

 lighter sapwood. While up to this 

 time the commercial use of the wood 

 has been confined to building pur- 

 poses and cheap furniture, it has 

 qualities that will bring it into ac- 

 tive commercial demand, owing to 

 the great scarcity of ash, as a sub- 

 stitute for that wood. For pur- 

 poses where the elasticity and 

 strength of white ash are not ex- 

 tremely essential, hackberry makes 

 an excellent substitute. In fact, 

 such of the lumber as comes into 

 the market at this time is sold as 

 ash. 



Unfortunately the quantity of 

 hackberry growth in the average 

 hardwood forest is not suflBcient to 

 insure a very large output of the 

 wood. The operator in the middle 

 South who manufactures five to 

 ten million feet of hardwoods an- 

 nually is likely not to secure more 

 than two or three hundred thousand 

 feet of hackberry in that time. 

 However, such quantity of the wood 

 as may be developed has commercial 

 possibilities of rather a high order 

 and will command a price approxi- 

 mating that of white ash in the near 

 future. Unlike southern ash, it is 

 not afflicted with ' ' calico ' ' discolor- 

 ation, and will therefore be highly 

 appreciated for many uses. 



TYPICAL FOREST GROWTH HACKRERRY, WASniNGTON 

 COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI. 



ing. The tree displays wonderful tolerance 

 of long spells of dry weather. W. H. Free- 

 man, secretary of the Indiana Stata> Board of 

 Forestry, says that hackberry has been but 

 little planted as a shade tree, altogether too 

 little to his notion. He says that while it is 

 not as graceful in figure or as rich in foliage 

 as some other trees, it grows rapidly and its 

 good appearance at all stages of development 

 makes it specially valuable for ornamental 



Black Walnut Gun Stocks. 



A minor but important use to 

 which black walnut is placed is for 

 the making of gun stocks. East- 

 ern gun manufacturers consume 

 many thousands of "blanks" in 

 the manufacture of rifles for gov- 

 ernment use, as well as for fancy 

 rifles and shotguns for sportsmen. 

 The blank for a regulation army 

 rifle contains eight inches of lum- 

 ber and sells for from ten to 

 twelve cents at the gun factories. 

 The beautifully figured walnut blanks to 

 be used for fancy shotguns contain 

 twelve inches of lumber and command 

 a price of from seventy-five cents to 

 two dollars and a half, the highest price 

 being paid for a full figured blank of crotch 

 walnut. Two hundred and fifty dollars a 

 thousand is quite a handsome price for even 

 the highest type of either foreign or domes-* 

 tic woods. 



