AMERICAN FOREST TREES 639 



prove monotonous. The annual cut in this country, exclusive of veneer, 

 is nearly 350,000,000 feet, and the demand for veneer takes many 

 millions more. 



Basswood is named for the bark, and the spelling was formerly 

 bastwood. The manufacture of articles from the bark was once a 

 considerable industry, not so much in this country as in Europe. How- 

 ever, some use has been made of the bark here. Louisiana negroes make 

 horse collars of it by braiding many strands together, and chair bottoms 

 are woven of it in lieu of cane and rattan, and it is likewise woven into 

 baskets of coarse kinds. Bark is prepared for this use by soaking it in 

 water, by which the annual layers of the bark are separated, long, thin 

 sheets are produced, and these are reduced to strips of the desired width. 



The annual cut of basswood lumber is declining with no probability 

 that it will ever again come up to past figures; but basswood is in no 

 immediate danger of disappearing from American forests. It is not 

 impossible that it may be planted for commercial purposes. In central 

 Europe, forests of basswood, there called linden, are maintained for the 

 honey which bees gather from the bloom. In this country it is often 

 called beetree because of the richness of its flowers in nectar. Possibly 

 bee owners may grow forests for the honey, and when trees are mature, 

 dispose of them for lumber. 



WHITE BASSWOOD (Tilia heterophytta) attains a trunk diameter as great as that 

 of the common basswood, but is not as tall. Trees sixty or seventy feet high are 

 among the tallest. This species ranges from New York to Alabama, and is found as 

 far west as southern Illinois, and its best development is among the rich valleys and 

 fertile slopes of the Appalachian mountains from Pennsylvania southward. It is 

 the prevailing basswood of West Virginia, and reaches its largest size on the high 

 mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. It averages about two pounds lighter 

 per cubic foot than the common basswood, but ordinarily neither the lumber nor 

 the standing trees of the two species are distinguished. Only persons somewhat 

 skilled in botany are able to tell one species of basswood from another as they occur 

 in the forests of this country. 



DOWNY BASSWOOD (Tilia pubescens) is a southern member of the basswood 

 group, and is scarce. Its range extends from North Carolina to Arkansas and Texas. 

 Trees are rarely more than forty feet high and fifteen inches in diameter. The wood 

 is light brown, tinged with red, and the sap is hardly distinguishable from the heart. 

 As far as it is used at all, its uses are similar to those of other basswoods. 



SOUTHERN BASSWOOD (Tilia australis) is confined, as far as is now known, to a 

 small section of Alabama, where it attains a height of sixty feet in rich woodlands. 

 No reports on the quality of the wood have been published, and the species is too 

 scarce to possess much interest to others than systematic botanists. 



FLORIDA BASSWOOD (Tilia floridana), as its name suggests, is a Florida species, 

 and has not been reported elsewhere. It seems to be the smallest of American 

 basswoods, the largest trees being little more than thirty feet high. No tests of the 

 wood have been made and no uses reported. 



MICHAUX BASSWOOD (Tilia mickauxii) has been listed for a long time, but is 



