32 



THE LUMBER TRADE JOURNAL 



[New Orleans, La., June 15, 1912. 



both past and present, say that the mesquite area 

 is at least double now what it was when the state 

 came into the Union. Old stands were scattered 

 here and there, 'but hundreds of square miles which 

 were in grass only, and little of that, half a century 

 ago, ,now support forests of mesquite. It is per- 

 haps a misnomer to designate some of these stands 

 as forests, for they present a rather ragged and 

 sorry appearance, but they are forests in the pro- 

 cess of forming. The old growth, which is found 

 principally in the counties bordering on the lower 

 Rio Grande, is made up of trunks of large size, but 

 the stands that have come on within the past fifty 

 or sixty years are of smaller trees. A large mes- 

 quite trunk is from one to three feet in diameter; 

 a small one from one foot down to an inch or two. 

 A person 'would need to hunt from center to cir- 

 cumference of Texas to find many mesquite trunks 

 that would make a straight saw-log twelve feet long. 

 The tree is generally one of the most crooked, de- 

 formed and unpromising in the whole country; and 

 its habit of dividing into forks near the ground, 

 like a peach tree, makes it still more difficult to 

 make use of. In fact, in winter when mesquite trees 

 are bare of leaves the appearance of a forest re- 

 minds the observer of an old, neglected, diseased, 

 moss-grown peach orchard in the eastern states; 

 but in summer the leaves conceal much of the trunk 

 scaliness and deformity, and there is something pos- 

 itively restful and attractive in the prospect of a 

 wide range of these trees, covering hills and prai- 

 ries. The leaves are compound like the acacias, and 

 are delicate and graceful. 



The spread of mesquite in the last fifty or sev- 

 enty-five years has been attributed to the 

 checking of grass fires which Indians once set year- 

 ly to keep the prairies open. The dispersion of the 

 trees is facilitated by the scattering of seeds by 

 cattle which feed on the pods. It is a tree hard to 

 kill. Roots send up sprouts year after year during 

 long periods. Sometimes, but not often in Texas, 

 when adverse circumstances become so severe that 

 the mesquite tree can no longer survive above the 

 surface, it grows beneath the ground, sending only 

 a few sprouts up for air. "Dig for wood" is a term 

 applied to trees of that kind, when fuel is dragged 

 out with mattocks, grab 'hooks, and oxen. 



The roots of the mesquite penetrate farther be- 

 neath the surface for water than any other known 

 tree in this country. Depths of fifty or sixty feet 

 are occasionally reached. Well diggers on the fron- 

 tiers learned to go to the mesquite for water. 

 Large trunks never develop unless their roots are 

 abundantly supplied with moisture. Railroad engi- 

 neers on the "Staked Plains" of Northwestern Tex- 

 as turned that knowledge to account in boring wells. 



Though mesquite is seldom or never mentioned 

 in the lumber business, it is and has been one of 

 the most important trees of the state. Its fuel 

 value is very great. It has cooked more food, 

 warmed more buildings, burned more bricks, than 

 any other wood in Texas. The tannic acid in it in- 

 jures boilers and it is not much used for steam pur- 

 poses. It is a high-grade furniture material, though 

 it is difficult to work because of its exceeding hard- 

 ness. Ordinary wood-working tools and machinery 

 will not stand it. Suites of nine pieces are sold in 

 San Antonio at $200 or $300. The merchants find 

 difficulty in getting mesquite furniture made. Fac- 

 tories do not want to handle it. though the articles 

 sell higher than mahogany. Large, heavy tables, 

 deeply carved, are sold in some of the cities, but 

 all seem to be made to order and lareelv by hand. 

 The appearance of the polished and finished wood 

 is a little lighter in color than mahogany. It is not 

 uniform in color, but shades from tone to tone in 

 the same piece. A little of the lighter colored sap- 

 wood is worked in with pleasing effect. Some of 

 the tones resemble black walnut, and some suggest 

 the luster of polished cherry. 



House movers in Central and Southern Texas 

 make rollers of mesquite. It is of such hardness 

 that some claim a set of mesquite rollers will out- 

 last three of maple or black gum. The wood is brit- 

 tle, however, and is apt to break if subjected to 

 heavy blows or jolts. Notwithstanding its brittle- 

 ness, it has always been used for lintels and short 

 beams. The Indians so used it in New Mexico be- 

 fore the Spaniards reached the country, three hun- 

 dred years ago, and the Spaniards in Southern and 

 Western Texas used it in constructing their forts, 

 churches, and missions. The heartwood is almost 

 immune from decay. Pence posts outlast the men 

 that set them. A timber taken this year from the 

 Alamo at San Antonio was said to have served more 

 than 190 years, witn no sign of decav. It was set 

 apart for manufacturing souvenirs. Paving blocks 

 at San Antonio, Brownsville, and other places are 

 reported to wear longer than stone pavement sub- 

 jected to the same wear. Railroads in the vicinitv 

 of Brownsville employ this wood for crossties, but 

 it is so hard that holes must be bored for spikes. 



Mesquite baskets are made by hand of splits the 

 size of knitting needles, some of white sapwood, 

 others of dark heartwood. Such baskets, large 



enough to contain five quarts, sell in the curio shops 

 at San Antonio for $1.25 each. 



Some wagon makers insist that mesquite is in 

 the same class with osage orange for wagon felloes 

 in hot, dry regions; but it does not appear that much 

 of it is so used. The brittleness of the wood is 

 against it, in use as felloes, except for vehicles of 

 the heaviest sort where large pieces are demanded. 



Among the uses of mesquite, by-products are an 

 important consideration. The pods are food for 

 farm stock. Before the first railroad reached San 

 Antonio mesquite pods were a regular market com- 

 modity. The Mexicans know how to make bread 

 and brew beer from the fruit; tan leather with the 

 resin; dye leather, cloth, and crockery with the 

 tree's sap; make ropes and baskets of the bark. 

 Parched pods are a substitute for coffee; bees store 

 honey from the bloom which remains two months 

 on the trees; riled water is purified with a decoc- 

 tion of mesquite chips; vinegar is made from the 

 fermented juice of the legumes; tomales of mes- 

 quite bean meal, pepper, chicken, and cornshucks; 

 mucilage from the gum; and candy and gum drops 

 from the dried sap. 



One of the most promising uses for this wood is 

 in turnery. Short lengths can be utilized to ad- 

 vantage. The artistic color fits it for the manufac- 

 ture of lodge gavels, curtain rings, goblets, plaques, 

 trays, and numerous kinds of novelties. Spindles 

 for grills and stairways do not suffer in comparison 

 with black walnut, mahogany, cherry, and teak. 



UNREPORTED WOODS. 



An inspection of Table 1 will show that several 

 of the woods listed are accompanied by no figures 

 giving the feet used annually. That is because no 

 manufacturer reported those woods. As far as lists 

 sent in by the makers of furniture, finish, boats, 

 vehicles, and other commodities are concerned, the 

 table might have ended with African mahogany. 

 That wood in the table, however, is followed by 

 others. Some of these have been mentioned in the 

 foregoing discussion, where they were included un- 

 der the names of others, as the elms, hickories, and 

 maples, and the reason for including others, though 

 not mentioned by any manufacturer, will now be 

 given. 



During the progress of the field, work in Texas 

 many parts of the state were visited, and it was 

 discovered that several woods were being cut in 

 the forests, sent to sawmills, cut into lumber and at 

 that stage they disappeared from view. If this lum- 

 ber were used in the rough as in construction of 

 buildings, fences, and the like, and was not further 

 manufactured this investigation was done with it; 

 for it took into account such lumber only as passed 

 through further stages of manufacture. Careful in- 

 quiry developed the fact that much of the lumber 

 which, under its own name, had dropped out of sight 

 after it left the saws, was being shipped to fac- 

 tories under other names, or by no names at all. 



In addition to these, many woods in Texas are 

 employed to a small extent, or for a few special 

 purposes, yet seldom find their way to factories. 

 They are of some value locally, but are practically 

 unknown to the general manufacturer; and if there 

 were not believed to be a future for them, they 

 might very well De passed without mention. But it 

 may be taken for certain that every wood fit for 

 anything has a future. It is not necessarily a ques- 

 tion of quantity. Very scarce woods may exactly 

 meet special demands, thereby becoming valuable. 

 There are rare woods in some of the world's mar- 

 kets worth from $1 to $3 a square foot. Woods of 

 that kind need not be plentiful to be valuable 

 Texas may not have any which will ever be worth 

 that much, yet its forests produce many hard, 

 strong, beautifully colored woods, and the public 

 knows very little about them. 



In collecting material for this repart on the use 

 of Texas woods, a special effort was made to find 

 out something more about the scarce tree species 

 as well as the plentiful. To obtain that information 

 it became necessary to depart somewhat from beat- 

 en paths usually followed by compilers of statistics, 

 and to approach as nearly as possible the original 

 sources of information the people who use the 

 woods and know about them. No tree was passed 

 by because its trunk was small, or gnarly, or knot- 

 ted, or twisted ,and no pains were spared to ascer- 

 tain if anybody had ever tried the wood for anv 

 useful purnose, and what success attended such 

 trial. In the list of eighty-one minor species (so- 

 ralled) which follow, not one is included which was 

 not found to have been used for some purpose. In 

 nearly every instance the wood was examined to 

 ascertain as many of its properties as could be de- 

 termined by such an inspection; and in as many 

 instances as possible the living tree was sought in 

 the woods, and was examined with a view to de- 

 termining size and form as well as the probable 

 quantity of the timber available. Figures showing 

 quantity, however, if they are to be of value, should 

 be based on more general and more widely-collected 



information than could be procured in the short 

 period given to this study in Texas. 



The main purpose of the search for unreported 

 species those which no manufacturer listed or de- 

 scribed was to ascertain the kinds and qualities of 

 such woods, and not to attempt a compilation of 

 figures showing the total available amount of each 

 in the state. 



The identification of many of the woods in use 

 was difficult. Three or four names may be locally 

 applied to the same wood, or three or four woods 

 pass by the same name. The identification of each 

 species, as accurately as it could be worked out un- 

 der the somewhat unfavorable and trying circum- 

 stances, is shown in Table I. The English name (if 

 it has any) is given in the first column, and the 

 Latin or scientific name in the second. The names, 

 both common and scientific, are those recognized 

 as official in the United States Forest Service's 

 check list of trees. This explanation is made be- 

 cause some species have many names and it is not 

 practicable to give all of them in a tatole. 



In studying the list of unreported and so-called 

 minor species it should be borne in mind from the 

 beginning that most of the woods are scarce. Few 

 of them will ever become attractive to the manu- 

 facturer because they can be had in large amounts. 

 Their value must come from a consideration of their 

 quality, not their quantity. Those who look for the 

 latter in Texas will seek it in the yellow pines, 

 the oaks, cypress, red cedar, tupelo and red gum. 



Most of the minor species are hardwoods very 

 hard, strong, durable and many of them are of rare 

 and beautiful colors. They are in the class with 

 fine cabinet woods, such as mahogany, teak, prima 

 vera, ebony, walnut, cherry, and others. Their best 

 use appears to lie in the direction of expensive 

 wares. They ought to find place in the manufac- 

 ture of a long list of commodities in which small 

 pieces can be used, and first cost of wood is not a 

 serious matter. High-grade musical instruments 

 would come in for first consideration. Some of the 

 acacias, ebonies, mesquites and other hard, splen- 

 didly colored woods, growing for hundreds of miles 

 along the Rio Grande valley, could be manufactured 

 into veneers that would compare with most of the 

 rare tropical species. The wood carver can find ma- 

 terial there; so can the maker of costly furniture; 

 of artistic wooden-ware; of novelties, specialties, 

 and souvenirs. The idea of cheapness of the fin- 

 ished product should not be the controlling factor 

 with those who turn their attention to the rare 

 woods of southern Texas; but high-grade should 

 hold first place. 



The necessarily brief descriptions of the woods 

 which follow, and the mention of a few uses already 

 found for them, are offered only as suggestions to 

 indicate the direction in which interested parties 

 might make further investigations. 



Agarita. The value of this small tree is due to 

 the rich yellow color of the wood, and its fine grain. 

 It is used In small turnery, such as napkin rings, 

 checker pieces, handles for paper knives, crochet 

 hooks, button hooks, hairpin boxes, and articles of 

 that kind. It is one of several different colored 

 woods which are glued together in small strips, the 

 whole forming a block large enough for turning 

 small objects on the lathe. The strong contrast be- 

 tween the different-colored woods joined in the gob- 

 let, ,cup, ring, vase, or box, in its finished form, is 

 very striking. Agarita is said to possess the deep- 

 est yellow color of all American woods. In Texas 

 the turners who use it join it with holly, Texas 

 ebony, junco, prickly ash, red or scarlet haw, Texas 

 cat's claw, buckeye, sumach, and other richly col- 

 ored woods to give the desired contrast in com- 

 posite work. 



Agarita seldom attains a diameter above five 

 inches, and In Texas a two-inch stem is up to the 

 average. The roots are as yellow as the trunk wood 

 and are put to the same use. It is the opinion of 

 some persons that the growing of this small tree 

 for its wood might be made profitable. It is grown 

 now for ornamental purposes, and use has been 

 made of its sour, edible berries. It reaches its best 

 development in New Mexico and Arizona. 



Alligator Juniper. Two of the five junipers or 

 cedars of Texas were not reported by any manufac- 

 turers. This is one, and drooping juniper was the 

 other. This may justly 'be considered the poorest in 

 form of the cedars of the state,,, though it is not the 

 smallest. Trees have been reported five feet in di- 

 ameter and sixty feet high. ,but such are extreme 

 cases. Some use is made of the wood by hand-work- 

 ing it into furniture and clothes chests. A little 

 goes to lathes in Austin and San Antonio to be made 

 into novelties, such as trays, cups, rings, and match 

 safes. Small boxes for -handkerchiefs and collars 

 are made in cubical form by joining pieces together, 

 and some are turned from solid blocks, the lid being 

 also turned. 



The line separating sapwood from the heartwood 

 in alligator juniper is often irregular and vague. 

 Patches of sap may be included in the heartwood, 

 while streaks of the latter are enclosed in folds 



