The Witch Hazel and the Sweet Gum 



Valuable ornamental and shade trees. Lumber used for railroad 

 ties, paving blocks, shingles, fruit boxes, spools; choice pieces 

 known as "satin walnut," used for veneering furniture and for 

 interior finishing of houses. Dyed black, it imitates ebony, in 

 picture frames and cabinet work. 



The sweet gum is probably more closely linked with planta- 

 tion life in the South than any other tree. It grows in the swamps, 

 and many a slave hugged the slender shaft of a leafy gum tree 

 while he waited all day for the north star to point him the way 

 to freedom. Here the 'possum and the 'coon found similar 

 refuge from hunters and their dogs; and it was a hollow gum tree 

 that old "Nicodemus, the slave," was buried in to be waked in 

 time for the great jubilee! As a child, I lived in a state north of 

 the range of the most intrepid liquidambar tree. I recall with 

 great vividness an old ex-slave's description and eulogy of the 

 tree, and the song he sang, full of the exaltation his dearly bought 

 freedom always roused in him especially the thrilling chorus: 



"Da's a good time comin', 'tis almos' heah, 

 Hit's bin long, long on de way: 

 Run 'n' tell 'Lijah t' hurry up. Pomp', 

 Meet us at de gum tree, down in de swamp; 

 Wake Nicodemus to-day!" 



Travellers in the bayou country of the Mississippi Valley 

 can easily verify the statement that a hollow gum tree is large 

 enough to entomb a man. Giants exist there to-day, standing 

 in rich bottom lands, or on soil that is inundated a part of the 

 year, whose trunks, 15 feet or more in girth, carry their tops 150 

 feet into the air. These trees, often bare of branches for half 

 their height, look like great columns set amid the tropical vegeta- 

 tion, and towering high above most of their neighbour trees. 

 In its northern range the tree sacrifices size but not beauty. 



It is good to take a whole year to get acquainted with the 

 sweet gum, and it doesn't really matter when one begins. The 

 seed balls swing on the trees in winter, looking like the button- 

 balls of the sycamore. A second glance shows the paired "cows' 

 horns" above the gaping pods, and the crowded, undeveloped, 

 seeds shake out like sawdust. An easier way to identify the tree 

 is by the narrow blade-like ridges of bark that in most cases adorn 

 the twigs. Strangely, these are on the upper side of horizontal 

 twigs, and all around the vertical ones. The shading of olives 



27^ 



