COMMERCIAL USES OF TULIP OR YELLOW POPLAR 



835 



OUTLINE OF LEAF, BUD AND FLOWER OF TULIP OR YELLOW 



POPLAR TREE 



The flowers are tulip-shaped, greenish-yellow, with darker yellow and deep orange 

 on the tip of the petals. They grow on stout stems that stand erect above the 

 foliage and are complete and perfect. 



dose resemblance of its flowers in form to that of the 

 tulip of our flower gardens ; and, besides that, tulip tree 

 is the scientific or botanical name also. 



But the lumbermen of the country have fixed upon 

 yellow poplar and there is no more prospect of its name 

 being changed by them than there is in their calling 

 liquidambar by its correct name instead of designating 

 it red gum, when it is no more a gum than is the tulip 

 tree a poplar. In this portion of the article on tulip it 

 will be referred to as the yellow poplar the lumberman's 

 name for it. 



Aside from the great sugar pine, or redwood, of the 

 Pacific slope, there is no tree from which the lumber- 

 man can secure such broad boards and planks of clear 

 stuff that have so great an economic value for so many 

 purposes, and which is so close to the wood of the white 

 pine in character and general utility, as he can get out of 

 the mature yellow poplar, and for many purposes it is 

 fully equal to the pine. It is true it is not so soft or so 

 strong, or so easily worked, nor is it as durable when 

 exposed to the weather, but it shrinks little when season- 

 ing, does not warp, "stays in its place," as the workman 

 says, does not split when a nail is driven near the end, 

 takes glue and stain well, and actually presents a better 

 surface for paint than pine, for it has no pitch to stain 

 or disfigure the paint, and, because of a slight roughness 

 of the surface, paint does not scale or peel oflf. In fact 

 it is one of the best paint-holding woods in commercial 



use. It has no odor or offensive smell to injure 

 any article that may be enclosed in a receptacle 

 made from it. 



But the big trees have their drawback. .The 

 wood in these is brittle and unless great care is 

 taken in felling them and such care does not 

 always insure success such trees will break 

 when striking the ground. Of course the chop- 

 per will select, if possible, some less valuable tree 

 to fall his big yellow poplar against, thus con- 

 verting the poorer one into a sort of buffer, but 

 it is generally done to the more or less damage of 

 the innocent tree selected, and both may be more 

 or less injured. Great care should be taken in 

 felling large trees that they do not strike stumps 

 or logs, for if they do they are almost certain 

 to break, and, frequently, in more than one 

 place. 



The quantity of yellow poplar in the forests 

 before the first settlers disturbed it, and the 

 quantity still remaining, are not known. Ex- 

 perienced lumbermen who buy and sell stumpage 

 figure that for unculled woods a yellow poplar 

 stand of 1,000 feet to the acre is a good average. 

 Assuming that to have been the average before 

 lumbermen and settlers disturbed it, and assum- 

 ing further that the region of good poplar cov- 

 ered 300,000 square miles, the total stumpage 

 was about 190 billion feet. Compared with that, 

 the remaining amount is small. The region 

 north of the Ohio River, and States north of 



By courtesy the Manual Arts Press 



AREA OF TULIP OR YELLOW POPLAR 



Showing the States in which it grows. Most of the trees cut and rnade 

 into lumber during the past few years have been from West Virginia, 

 Tennessee and Kentucky, these States furnishing more than half of 

 the total cut. 



West Virginia, have little. The bulk of it is in West Vir- 

 ginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. They furnished over 

 one-half of the total cut in 1913, and Virginia alone nearly 

 one-fourth. If it be assumed that the cut in a State is 

 in proportion to the quantity growing there, a basis is 

 found on which to estimate, approximately, the country's 

 total stumpage. An estimate of Kentucky's yellow poplar 

 stumpage in 1908 placed it at 1,849,950,000 feet. The cut 



