TILIACEjE. 



SILVA OF NO E Til AMEPiICA. 



53 



states to Virginia and along the Alleghany Mountains to Alabama and Georgia, and west in the United 

 States to eastern Dakota, eastern Nebraska and Kansas, the Indian Territory and eastern Texas. 



Tilici Americana is one of the most common trees in the northern forest. It occupied, before the 

 country was generally cleared, large tracts of the richest land to the exclusion of other trees, or often 

 formed two thirds of the forest growth. Its usual associates in the forest, when it grows "with other 

 trees are the Sugar Maple, the White Elm, the White Oak, and the Hickories. It is less conunon 

 towards the southern and western limits of its range than it is near the northern boundary of the United 

 States • reaching, however, its greatest size on the bottom-lands of the streams which flow from the north 



into the lower Ohio River.^ 



The wood of Tilia Americana contains numerous obscure medullary rays; it is Hght brown, 

 faintly tin«-ed with red, and hardly distinguishable from the thick sapwood consisting usually of from 

 fifty-five to sixty-five layers of annual gro^vth. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 

 0.4525 a cubic foot of the dry wood weighing 28.20 pounds. It is largely sawed into lumber, and 

 under the name of whitewood is used in the manufacture of wooden ware, cheap furniture, the panels 

 and bodies of carriages, and the inner soles of shoes. It is one of the woods prmcipally used in 

 America in the manufacture of paper pulp, the quick decomposition of the sap, however, making it 

 unfit for white paper. The inner bark is occasionally made into coarse cordage and matting, although 

 this industry has never attained any importance in the United States. 



The earliest mention of the Linden in America appears in the remonstrance carried to Holland in 

 1649 by a delegation of the citizens of New Netherland under the lead of Adrien Van der Donck, and 

 printed at the Hague in 1650.^ It was described by Plukenet^ in 1700, and was first sent to England 

 by Catesby, and cultivated at Chelsea by PhiHp Miller in 1752.^ 



The large size which the American Linden attains in good soil,' its graceful habit, rapid growth, 

 ample dark green foHage and fragrant flowers, make it one of the most desirable ornamental trees in 

 the northern part of the United States, where it suffers less from insects than any of the foreign species 

 which have been planted there. Several Lindens have appeared in European nurseries which must be 

 considered varieties of the American Lmden, or as hybrids influenced by it.'' 



1 Kidgway, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mw:. 1883, Gl. 



2 « There are three varieties of beech, — water heech, common 

 heech, and hedge beech, — also axe-handle wood, two species of ca^ 

 noe wood, ash, birch, fir, fire-wood, wild cedar, linden, alder, willow, 

 thorn, elder, and many other kinds, useful for various purposes, hut 

 unknown to us by name, and which the carpenters will be glad to 

 submit for examination." (Representation from New-Nether-Land, 

 Concerning the Situation, Fruitfulness, and poor Condition of the same. 

 English ed. Henry C. Murphy, 14.) 



"The Line-tree with long nuts, the other kind I could never find ; 

 the wood of this Tree, Laurel, Rhamnus, Holly, and Ivy, are ac- 

 counted for woods that cause fire by attrition." {An Account of 

 Two Voyages to New England, by John Josselyn, Gent., 69, 1675.) 



3 Tilia ampUssimis glahrk foliis, nostrati similis, ex Terra Mari- 

 ana, Aim. Bot. Mant. 181. 



Tilia foliis majoribus mucronath, Clayton, Fl. Virgin. 58. — Duha- 



mel, Traito'des Arlres, ii. 334. 



Tilia foliis cordatis acuminatis serratis, subtus pilosis floribus necta- 



rio instructis, Miller, Diet. ed. 6, No. 3. 



Tilia foliis cordatis obliquis glabris subserratis cum acuvilne, floribus 

 nectario instructis, Miller, Diet. ed. 6, No. 4. 



* Aiton, Hort. Kew. ii- 22D. 



6 Tilia Americana is known in some parts of the country as Lime- 

 tree, Whitewood, Lin, and Bee-tree. 



6 Tilia Americana Moltke.— Tilia hjhrida superha, etc. 



