232 



Garden and Forest. 



[May 15, }i 



Orange, Pomegranate and Black Locust-wood all "acacia," 

 that the oak-like woods are all "oak," and the yellow woods all 

 " lemon." 



The Japanese Quince fruits so freely here that alert house- 

 keepers are making jelly out of it. The product is better than 

 either apple or the common quince jellies, and would prove 

 verv marketable if it could be obtained in sufficient qviantities. 

 At present it is rare, and highly prized by the esoteric initiates. 



The prettiest spring-blooming shrub I have seen among new 

 things is a Japanese A|)ricot, sent over in a lot of Japan Plums 

 from Tokio some five years since, and fnnting only last year. 

 The blossoms are very abundant, being fragrant, and massed 

 as they are, and tinted slightly, but deeper in color than the 

 common Apricot, they have attracted much attention. The 

 fruit is small and liitter. , r-, . 



Berkeley, Cal. Charles Howard i>hi7in. 



The Liquidambar. 



THE North American Liquidambar, or Sweet Gum, as 

 it is more familiarly called, is the type of a small 

 genus of three or perhaps four or five species of trees pe- 

 culiar to eastern North America, Mexico and Central Amer- 

 ica in the New World, and to Asia Minor and eastern Asia 

 in the Old World. The genus belongs with the Witch 

 Hazels and is characterized by naked flowers, usually of 

 only one sex, produced in nodding, racemed, globular 

 heads or catkins — the male consisting of a cluster of nu- 

 merous stamens with short filaments intermixed with 

 minute scales, the females of many two-celled and two- 

 beaked ovaries from the axils of the minute scales, all co- 

 hering together, hardening in fruit, and forming a spheri- 

 cal, woody head of pods which opens between the oval- 

 shaped beaks. The styles are two, stigmatic on the inner 

 surface ; ovules numerous, seeds few, covered with a 

 wing-angled seed-coat. 



The North American Liquidambar (Z. Styraciflua) is one 

 of the most beautiful and characteristic trees found in the 

 forests of the eastern portion of the continent. It rises 

 under exceptionally favorable conditions to a height of 

 more than 150 feet, with a tall, perfectly straight trunk, 

 four or sometimes five feet in diameter, destitute of 

 branches for seventy or eighty feet, and covered with 

 pale brown, slightly furrowed bark. The branches are 

 small and short in proportion to the height of the tree, and 

 the outline of the head, even upon young trees which 

 have had abundant room for free development, is narrowly 

 pyramidal. Broad, corkey wings grow on the young 

 branches, and make this tree in winter a conspicuous and 

 always striking object. The leaves are rounded, deeply 

 five to seven-lobed, so that they appear almost star- 

 shaped, three or four inches across ; they are thin, and 

 shining especially on the upper surface, perfectly smooth, 

 and borne on slender petioles. They are pleasantly fra- 

 grant when bruised, and in autumn turn to the most bril- 

 liant scarlet. There are few trees of the American forest 

 which surpass the Liquidambar in the splendor of the au- 

 tumnal coloring of its foliage. 



The wood of the North American Liquidambar is heavy, 

 rather hard, tough, although not particularly strong, close 

 grained, satiny and susceptible of a good polish. A cubic 

 foot of the thoroughly seasoned wood weighs 36.82 

 pounds, or rather more than that of our common Wild 

 Cherry and of the Black Walnut, but a good deal less than 

 white oak. The color is bright brown faintly tinged with 

 red, and of the sap-wood nearly white. It is difficult to 

 season, showing a tendency to warp and shrink badly. 

 Experience and the adoption of better methods are grad- 

 ually overcoming this difficulty, however, and large quan- 

 tities of this lumber are now manufactured into furniture 

 or used in the interior finish of buildings for which, 

 when once thoroughly seasoned, the hardness, solidity 

 and pleasant coloring and texture adapt it. It has been 

 used to a considerable extent in some parts of the West 

 for the plates and even for the frames of buildings, and 

 largely in some western cities for street pavement-blocks. 



The Liquidambar first makes its appearance in 

 Connecticut, near the shore of Long Island Sound, in the 

 vicinity of New Haven. It is confined at first to 

 the neighborhood of the coast, but soon extends further 

 inland, and, with the exception of the Allegheny ridges, 

 is found all over the United States from New Jersey and 

 southern Indiana and Illinois to southern Florida and the 

 valley of the Trinity River in Texas. The climate of west- 

 ern Texas is too dry for this tree ; but it reappears on the 

 mountains of central and southern Mexico, where it often 

 forms an important part of the forest-growth, and extends 

 to Guatemala and Central America, or is represented there 

 by one or two closely related and little known species.* 

 It is one of the most common trees of the Mississippi 

 basin, where, on the deep, rich, and often submerged bot- 

 tom-lands lining the streams, it forms, with the Cotton- 

 gum {Nyssa uniflord) and the Cottonwood {Populus mon- 

 ili/era), a large proportion of the tree-growth. Here it 

 attains its greatest size and best development, forming 

 vast forests, of which an idea may be obtained from an 

 illustration upon page 235, taken from a photograph, by Mr. 

 Robert Ridgway, of the Smithsonian Institution, to whom 

 this journal is indebted for the permission to reproduce 

 it. It represents a forest scene near Mt. Carmel, in south- 

 ern Illinois, and the tree wnth the tall, clear stem in the 

 middle of the picture is a Liquidambar of not unusual size 

 or height. 



The American Liquidambar is destined to supply a large 

 amount of useful timber long after more valuable trees 

 like the Cherry, the Yellow Poplar and the Black Walnut 

 are practically exterminated for commercial purposes. The 

 fact that the real home of this tree in those parts of the 

 country where it attains its greatest development is in deep 

 swamps, always inundated every year during several 

 weeks at a time, and incapable of being drained and there- 

 fore of being cultivated, will insure, with slight attention, 

 its perpetuation, and will make the future supply of the 

 wood of this tree reasonably certain. 



The name Liquidambar, applied by Linnaeus to this tree, 

 has reference to the fragrant terebinthine juice which ex- 

 udes from the stem. This exudation is sometimes collected 

 by herbalists and used in the form of a syrup as a substi- 

 tute for storax in the treatment of catarrhal troubles, or 

 externally as an ointment. This resinous exudation in- 

 creases in proportion to the warmth of the climate in which 

 the tree is found. It is almost wanting in trees growing 

 at the northern limit of the species, and is produced in 

 much larger quantities from trees in Mexico and Central 

 America than from those growing in any part of the United 

 States. 



The American Liquidambar is a tree of first-rate im- 

 portance in ornamental planting. It is easily raised 

 from seed ; it can be transplanted without difficulty ; 

 it grows rapidly, and is not particular about soil. A 

 single specimen upon a lawn is always a handsome 

 object, and the narrow, pyramidal shape of the head 

 adapts it for general street-planting. The leafless branches 

 afford a curious and interesting sight, and the splendor 

 of its autumnal foliage places it in the front rank of 

 trees to plant for autumn effects. It is not, unfortunately, 

 perfectly hardy in eastern New England, suffering here 

 in severe winters. 



Liquidambar Orientalis, Mill., furnishes the liquid storax of 

 commerce. This tree forms forests of considerable extent 

 in the south-western part of Asia Minor. It is described 

 as a handsome tree thirty or forty feet high, resembling 

 the Plane, f A detailed and very interesting account of the 

 history, properties and uses of liquid storax and of the 

 methods used by the wandering tribes of Turcomans for ex- 

 tracting it from the trees will be found in Fluckinger and 

 Hanbury's "Pharmacographia," p. 241. It is a remarkable 

 fact (although not at all an isolated one, for there is still much 

 to be learned of the plants from which eastern nations 



*Henesley, Bot. Am. Cent., i., 400. 



t There is a good figure of this species in Hooker's Icones, t. 1019. 



