840 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Yellow poplar is exported to nearly all civilized coun- 

 tries. Practically the world's whole supply comes from the 

 United States, and regular shipments go to Great Britain, 

 France, C.emiany, Sweden, South America, South Africa, 

 West Indies, Mexico, and Central America. Export logs 

 are usually 8 to 1(> feet long, but planks form 

 the bulk of foreign shipments. If thin pieces go, 

 they are cleated or bound in bundles to lessen 

 risk of damage. \'ery thin and very wide 

 pieces tind foreign sale at highest prices. 



Yellow poplar is well adapted to preservative 

 treatment, but it has not been extensively used 

 in that way because cheaper woods take its place. 



is given as a remedy for rheumatism as well as for inter- 

 mittent fevers. 



Yellow poplar enters into the manufacture of pulp 

 and is used in paper-making, pressed pulp ware, papier 

 mache, and artificial silk. 



THE BV-I'RODfCTS 



Yellow poplar is not much employed in distilla- 

 tion, and its by-products along that line do not 

 figure largely in commerce. The bark contains a 

 bitter principle, known as liriodendron, which 

 has been used as a medicine for malaria since 

 the days of the Indian doctors. It is not re- 

 garded as the equal of quinine. In the mountain 

 regions where yellow poplar grows, the people This si 

 make medicine by pounding the bark, mixing 

 it with dogwood bark, and soaking the mixture in water 

 eight days. Some claim that whisky is a more efficacious 

 solvent, and the mountaineers prefer it. The mixture 



FOR AUTOMOBILE LIMOUSINES 



lows the metal covering of yellow poplar, which is much in demand for 

 this kind of work and is also used extensively for wagon bodies. 



[American Forestry is indebted to the United States Forest 

 Service, Office of Industrial Investigations, for much of the in- 

 formation contained in this article on commercial uses of yel- 

 low poplar.] 



Characteristics and Seeding of the TuHp Tree 



By S. B. Elliott 



AWAY back in the dim past, millions of years ago 

 / \ it must have been, for it was in what is geologi- 

 * ^cally known as the Cretaceous and Tertiary ages, 

 there grew several species of trees which were closely 

 allied, if not the actual progenitors, to two species now 

 to be found growing on our planet. The remains of these 

 ancient trees can be seen in some of the rocks of the 

 periods named, and they make clear to us what Elpenor 

 enjoined Ulysses to provide for him; that is, a record 

 that they "had lived." Botanists have given our modem 

 species the name of Liriodendron, a term composed of 

 two Greek words meaning tulip tree in our vernacular, 

 and have likewise added the Latin affix tulipifera 

 which has the same meaning as the Greek name render- 

 ing its full technical name Lmodcndron tulipifera. One 

 of these modern species is indigenous 'to China and the 

 other to that part of the United States bounded by a line 

 drawn from central New York to Michigan on the north, 

 and the Gulf of Mexico on the south, and from some two 

 or three hundred miles west of the Mississippi River on 

 the west to the Atlantic Ocean on the east. 



While it was found, here and there, over a large part 

 of the territory indicated as its natural range it was 

 rarely, or never beyond a few acres in extent, found in 

 a pure stand. It grew along with oaks, chestnut, hick- 

 ories, cherry, ash, maple, and other broad-leaf trees, but 



seldom with hemlock and pine as near neighbors. It 

 was to be seen in its greatest abundance and in its best 

 development along the valleys of the Ohio River and its 

 tributaries, and on the slopes of those valleys and on 

 the slopes and crests of the Appalachian Mountains. 



Of all the broad-leaf trees of the United States none 

 attains its grandeur and magnificence of form or vies with 

 it in length, uniformity, or symmetry of stem ; and only 

 the sycamore can compete successfully with it in diame- 

 ter, while that tree utterly fails to equal it in all other 

 attributes of greatness or economic value. It was not un- 

 usual, and it may be so still, to find trees 6 to 8 and even 

 10 feet in diameter, with a stem clean of limbs for 80 

 to 90 feet and a crown of foliage reaching at the apex 

 150 or even 200 feet from the ground. 



Except in its infancy it is emphatically light-demand- 

 ing, or, as the foresters say, an "intolerant" tree. When 

 grown in the open it will then throw out limbs close to 

 the ground and assume a rounded sort of a crown with 

 many specialized limbs reaching out from the center a 

 distance equal to fully one-half the height of the tree; 

 but if grown in a dense stand, or in a stand approxi- 

 mating such a condition, with competitors for light at 

 all equal to it in rapidity of growth, it will shoot up a 

 sharp-pointed conical crown, drop all its lower limbs for 



