AMERICAN FOREST TREES 471 



given their proper names, but they are listed as oak in sawmill output, 

 and thus the genus, if not the species is given credit. But willow is al- 

 most totally ignored. The United States census in 1910 credited to all 

 the willow lumber in this country an amount less than a million and a half 

 feet ; yet a single mill in Louisiana, and not a large mill at that, cut and 

 sold four times that much during that year. The wood was cut by 

 hundreds of other mills, some a few logs only, others considerable 

 quantities. 



It is sold for various purposes, and much of it goes as cottonwood. 

 In some instances it is called brown cottonwood. Probably ninety per 

 cent is made into boxes, but it has many other uses. It is cut into 

 excelsior, made into rotary cut veneer, and finds place in the manu- 

 facture of furniture; it is a common woodenware material; slack coopers 

 make barrels of it; and it is turned for baseball bats. 



The supply of black willow in this country is not small. It is 

 usually found in wet situations along streams. Sometimes islands and 

 low flats are taken possession of and pure stands result. The growth is 

 sometimes phenomenal. Trunks may add nearly or quite an inch to 

 then- diameter per year when conditions are exceptionally favorable. 

 Instances, apparently well authenticated, are reported of abandoned 

 fields along the Mississippi, which in sixty years grew 100,000 feet of 

 willow per acre. 



LONGSTALK WILLOW (Salix longipes) sometimes grows to a height of thirty 

 feet with a diameter of six or eight inches. Its range extends from Maryland to 

 Texas, and is at its best in the Ozark region of southwestern Missouri and north- 

 western Arkansas. 



ALMONDLEAF WILLOW (Salix amygdaloides) grows across northern United 

 States and southern Canada from New York to Oregon, and occurs as far south as 

 Missouri and Ohio, and is abundant in the lower Ohio valley. At its best it is seventy 

 feet high and two feet in diameter. The wood is light, soft, and the heartwood is 

 brown. 



SMOOTHLEAF WILLOW (Salix lavigata) attains a diameter of one foot and a 

 height of forty or fifty. It is a Pacific coast tree, occurring in California on the western 

 slopes of the Sierra Nevadas up to an altitude of 3,000 feet. It is known as black 

 willow. The wood is pale reddish-brown. 



SiLVERLEAF WILLOW (Salix sessUifolia) looks like longleaf willow, and though 

 usually a shrub it sometimes is twenty-five feet high and ten inches in diameter. 

 It grows from the mouth of the Columbia river to southern California. 



YEWLEAF WILLOW (Salix taxifolia) ranges from western Texas, Through 

 southern Arizona into Mexico and Central America. Trees are occasionally forty 

 feet high and more than one foot in diameter. A little fuel and fence posts are cut 

 from this willow. 



BEBB WILLOW (Salix bebbiana) is nearly always shrubby, but occasionally 

 reaches a trunk diameter of six or eight inches and a height of twenty feet. Its 

 northern limit lies within the Arctic circle, its southern in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, 

 and Arizona. West of Hudson bay it forms almost impenetrable thickets, and a 

 Colorado it ascends mountains to elevations of 10,000 feet. 



