AMERICAN FOREST TREES 525 



marketed in ways peculiar to itself. Log cutters in hardwood forests 

 pay little attention to it. The dogwood harvest comes principally from 

 southern states. Village merchants are the chief collectors, and they 

 sell to contractors who ship to buyers in the manufacturing centers. 

 The village merchants buy from farmers, who cut a stick here and 

 there as they find it in woodlots, forests, or by the wayside, on their 

 own land or somebody else's. When the cutter next drives to town he 

 throws his few dogwoods in the wagon, and trades them to the store 

 keeper for groceries or other merchandise. It is small business, but in 

 the aggregate it brings together enough dogwood to supply the trade. 



Dogwood has many uses, but none other approaches shuttle making 

 and golfhead manufacture in importance. The wood is made into 

 brush blocks, wedges, engraver's blocks, tool handles, machinery 

 bearings as a substitute for lignum-vitae, small hubs, and many kinds of 

 turnery and other small articles. 



WESTERN DOGWOOD (Cornus nuttallii) is a larger, taller tree than 

 the eastern flowering dogwood. A height of 100 feet is claimed for it in 

 the low country along the coast of British Columbia, but there are no 

 authentic reports of trees so large anywhere south of the boundary 

 between Canada and the United States. Its height ranges from twenty 

 to fifty feet, and its diameter from six to twenty inches. The appearance 

 is much the same as its eastern relative. Its berries are red, and grow 

 in clusters of forty or less; the bark on old trunks is rough, but is smooth 

 on those of medium size ; the flowers are generally described as very large 

 and showy, but the true flower is quite an inconspicuous affair, being a 

 small, greenish-yellow, button-like cluster, surrounded by four or six 

 snowy-white or sometimes pinkish scales which are popularly but 

 erroneously supposed to form a portion of the real flower. The western 

 dogwood in its native forest often puts out flowers in autumn; is well 

 supplied with foliage which assumes red and orange colors in the fall 

 when the showy berries are at their best. However, the tree has not yet 

 won its way into the good graces of landscape gardeners, and has not 

 been much planted in parks. It wants some of the good points possessed 

 by the flowering dogwood. The western tree shows to best advantage in 

 its native forest where it thrives on gentle mountain slopes and in low 

 bottoms, valleys, and gulches, provided the soil is well drained and rich. 

 It runs southward fifteen hundred miles from Vancouver island to south- 

 ern California. It cares little for sunshine, and often is found growing 

 nicely in dense shade. Seedlings do better where shade is deep. The 

 wood is lighter but somewhat stronger than that of the flowering dog- 

 wood; is pale reddish-brown, with thick sapwood; is hard, and checks 

 badly in seasoning. Mature trees are from 100 to 150 years. 



