Pulpwood

“ Paper birch is in this class. Aspen has replaced pines over large burned areas of the Rocky Mountains. It grows quickly but is weak if it has to contend with other trees. If crowded it speedily gives up the fight and dies. The wood is not strong, but is useful for several purposes. Next to spruce and hemlock, it is the most important pulpwood in this country, and it is coming into considerable use as lumber. The whiteness of the wood—it looks much like holly—makes it a favorite for small boxes and vessels for shipping and containing foods. ”

“ The manufacturers say, with hand on heart, that they do not use much wood pulp, but when one has passed a great paper-mill flanked on all sides by piles of spruce logs, with no bales of rags in sight anywhere, he is tempted to think otherwise! Modern forestry is now planting trees on waste lands for the pulp "crop," and the common poplar is coming in to relieve the spruces.
Beautiful trees are these spruces and firs, either in the forest or when brought by the planter to his home grounds. The leaves are much shorter than those of most pines, and clothe the twigs closely. ”

“ Lovejoy pointed out that in many cases the woods end of pulp production was very wasteful. As an example, he cited a given forest area, having a stand of one-third beech, birch and maple, one-third spruce and one-third hemlock and balsam. Only a small part of the stand offers good log timber, not sufficient to attract a sawmill. A contractor is obtained to get out the pulp stock, the mill specifying that the stock shall not exceed 5 per cent. species other than spruce. ”

“ It is cheap and, with care of the forests, inexhaustible, while our mineral wealth may some day be used up. Distilled wood gives wood alcohol. Partially burned wood is charcoal. In our forests much of the soft wood (the cone-bearing trees, spruce, balsam, hemlock, and pine) , and poplars, aspens, basswood, with some other species, make paper pulp. The daily newspaper and cheap books are responsible for inroads on our forests which cannot well be repaired. It is not necessary to take the largest trees to make pulp wood. ”

“ Altho the amount of wood used for paper pulp is small in comparison with the total lumber production, being about 5.4 per cent., yet this cutting of young growth keeps the forest land devastated. In 1906 nearly 9,000,000 tons of wood were used for paper pulp in the United States.
No one who is at all familiar with the situation doubts for an instant that we are rapidly using up our forest capital. In fact it is unquestionably safe to say that our present annual consumption of wood in all forms is from three to four times as great as the annual increment of our forests. ”

“ The whole is so keyed by the tip that as they hang head down it is possible to dislodge only the topmost scales and seeds. A very vigorous shake of the tree sends a cloud of these flying, but when you look at the tree you find that not a thousandth part of its store has been dispensed. When the midwinter snows lie deep all about, the paymaster wind will requisition these stores as needed for the tiny creatures of the wood and scatter{10} them wide on the white surface, till it will look as if spiced by the confectioner, so well does the forest take care of its own. ”

“ The flowering dogwood is one of our smaller trees, but is exceptionally favored with all manner of beauty. Although it is very common in many of the States, and is not without its special uses, it occupies a subordinate position in the eyes of the forester, being often no more than a mere shrub in form. And yet, while some of the larger trees by their majestic presence lend grandeur to the forest, the dogwood brings to it a charm not easily forgotten. ”

“ There is a difference in color between the outer and inner wood, the older wood becomes darker and is called the heart-wood, the outer is the sap-wood. In Birds-eye Maple, and some other woods, the abortive buds are seen. They are buried in the wood, and make the disturbance which produces the ornamental grain. In sections of Pine or Spruce, no ducts can be found. The wood consists entirely of elongated, thickened cells or fibres. In some of the trees the pith rays cannot be seen with the naked eye. ”

“ The next largest use of lumber is the grinding of it into pulp to be used in making paper for our books, magazines and newspapers, wrapping papers, etc. The woods used for this purpose are mostly spruce and hemlock. The great sources of supply of pulp-wood are Maine and Wisconsin, and large amounts are imported from Canada, which greatly lessens the drain on our own forests. ”

“ Here and there the poplar, with its flowerlike leaves, the black gum with its black tracery of downward turning branches, all edged with tender gray green.
It is too beautiful for words, and behind all, accenting and bringing out the light airy beauty, is the dark blue green of the solemn pine forest. ”

“ Wood in its quality and uses like white cedar. Thick, red heartwood, changing to reddish brown when seasoned. Thin sapwood, nearly white, coarse, straight grain, compact structure. Light, not strong, soft, very durable in contact with the soil, not resinous, easily worked, does not burn easily, receives high polish. Used for timber, shingles, flumes, fence posts, coffins, railway ties, water pipes, interior decorations, and cabinetmaking. A very large tree, limited to the coast ranges of California, and forming considerable forests, which are rapidly being converted into lumber. ”

“ On the plain below the poplars shimmer and quiver translucent green in the ecstasy of young leaves all tremulous with happiness and the tingle of surgent sap. Yet neither tree nor shrub nor any flowering herb seems to so stand on tiptoe for a flight into the blue heaven above, blossom and leaf and branch and trunk, as does this dainty delight of the shady hillside, the flowering dogwood.
The summer does not explode as does the spring. ”

“ The large vessels of the spring-wood, occupying six to ten per cent of the volume of a log in very good oak, and twenty-five per cent or more in inferior and narrow-ringed timber, are a very important feature, since it is evident that the greater their share in the volume, the lighter and weaker the wood. They are smallest near the pith, and grow wider outward. They are wider in the stem than limb, and seem to be of indefinite length, forming open channels, in some cases probably as long as the tree itself. ”

“ Statistics giving comforting assurance of an abundant yield still at hand do not consider the effect upon wood industries of the substitution of timber of a few kinds only to fill a widely varying demand. The presence of hardwoods in the southern Appalachians and pine in the southern pine belt, in quantity sufficient to replace for some time the waning supply of spruce in the north woods, offers no substitute for the latter species in the manufacture of paper pulp. ”

“ Poplar.—A large family of trees of which nine members are recognized in North America. All have light and soft woods of little value except for making boxes, packing cases and wood pulp.
Their value lies in hardiness, quick growth and ability to cover burned areas so as to give a forest cover in localities where other trees will not grow. The balsam poplar, or balm of Gilead, formerly planted extensively as a shade tree, reaches well up into Alaska, and in the Yukon territory reaches a height of a hundred feet. ”

“ Around the base is a circular ring of dark rich mold which was once the bark on the stump. This has in every case fallen off and crumbled to humus, leaving the heart-wood exposed. Mosses gray and green cling to this and cover it, and because it retains its shape you might almost think it sound, but a kick or a stab with your walking-stick will prove{31} the opposite. It is but punk, standing in the breathless, windless silence of the wood, mute monument to a glory that is departed, waiting itself to pass on at a touch. ”

“ It may be possible that with such an annual crop the farmers of New England will see their hillsides and valleys once more sources of wealth. It may be possible to mould the pulp made from this shrub into material of any form or shape from house lumber and box boards to brush woods, and from railroad ties to spools, as flexible as wood, as indestructible as stone, and as incombustible as iron. ”

“ The most valuable trees for lumber are spruce, white pine, hemlock, cedar, white birch, ash, maple and basswood; all excepting pine and hemlock and poplar in addition are ground into wood pulp for the manufacture of paper. ”

“ If we consider only the heartwood, the black color of the persimmon, the dark brown of the walnut, the light brown of the white oaks, the reddish brown of the red oaks, the yellowish white of the tulip and poplars, the brownish red of the redwood and cedars, the yellow of the papaw and sumac, are all reliable marks of distinction and color. Together with luster and weight, they are only too often the only features depended upon in practice. Newly formed wood, like that of the outer few rings, has but little color. ”

“ Common, and best developed in the lower Ohio Valley, but occurs from New York to Texas and Missouri.
POPLAR (See also Tulip Wood)
Wood light, very soft, not strong, of fine texture, and whitish, grayish to yellowish color, usually with a satiny luster. The wood shrinks moderately (some cross-grained forms warp excessively) , but checks very little in seasoning; is easily worked, but is not durable. Used in cooperage, for building and furniture lumber, for crates and boxes (especially cracker boxes) , for woodenware, and paper pulp. ”

“ The pine wood loves a clean floor, and is intolerant of undergrowth. Grasses and sedges, with all bushes, it frowns upon, as a model housekeeper frowns upon dirt. A plain brown carpet suits it best, with a modest figure of green—preferably of evergreen—woven into it; a tracery of partridge-berry vine, or, it may be, of club moss, with here and there a tuft of pipsissewa and pyrola. ”

“ The beautiful dog-wood's sweeping sprays and broad leaves, the maiden-hairs glossy wreathes and pearly buds, and the soft emerald moss, clothing the old fallen trees with its velvet tapestry, and hiding their decay with its cool rich beauty, while the sun light falls in golden tracery down the birch trees silver trunk, and the sparkling water flashes in the rays, or sings on its sweet melody unseen amid the luxuriant vegetation that conceals it. ”

“ This is a very important question, as woods that are too hard, too soft, too wet, too oily, too gummy, or too resinous will not produce fire. The wood should be soft enough to wear away, else it produces no punk, and hard enough to wear slowly, or the heat is not enough to light the punk, and, of course, it should be highly inflammable. Those that I have had the best luck with are balsam fir, cottonwood roots, tamarack, European larch, red cedar, white cedar, Oregon cedar, basswood, cypress, and sometimes second-growth white pine. ”

“ Leaves may still cling to the newest growths of underwood long after the older underwood is gaunt and bare. The sap, perhaps, is fresher and more vigorous in the younger wood—prolonging the period of ripening—and the new buds have not pushed out far enough to dislodge the leaves. In coppices that have been thinned one sees how unusually big, and how strong and enduring, are the leaves on the shoots of tree-stumps—as though the whole energy of what was once a tree is concentrated in the few shoots and leaves. ”

“ Yet these tangled tips with those already frozen firmly to the trees, and made a wonderful snow growth the whole woodland through. The next morning it hung there untouched in the crystal stillness and as the{172} woodland people waked they might well have rubbed their eyes, for they had found a new world.
It was a mystical white world that had crowded in and mocked the slender growth of all trees and shrubs with swollen facsimiles in white. The northerly side of tree-trunks, large or small, showed no longer gray bark or brown, rough or smooth. ”

“ The Lombardy poplar, a variety of the black poplar of Europe, is a familiar tree figure along roadsides, and often marks boundary lines between farms. Each tree is an exclamation point, its branches short and numerous, rising toward the zenith. The roundish leaves that twinkle on these aspiring branches make the tree pretty and interesting when young—just the thing to accent a group of round-headed trees in a park. ”

“ One is the Lombardy Poplar, which grows tall and slender like a church spire; its branches rise upward like the flame of a torch, and the tree trunk is clothed to the very ground with withered branches, which never spread outwards, but grow close to the main stem. ”

“ Red Fir (Pseudotsuga taxifolia) (Oregon Pine, Puget Sound Pine, Yellow Fir, Douglas Spruce, Red Pine) . Heartwood light red or yellow in color, sapwood narrow, nearly white, comparatively free from resins, variable annual rings. Wood usually hard, strong, difficult to work, durable, splinters easily. Used for heavy construction, dimension timber, railway ties, doors, blinds, interior finish, piles, etc. ”

“ In most hard pines, like the long-leaf, the dark summer-wood appears as a distinct band, so that the yearly ring is composed of two sharply defined bands—an inner, the spring-wood, and an outer, the summer-wood. But in some cases, even in hard pines, and normally in the woods of white pines, the spring-wood passes gradually into the darker summer-wood, so that a darkly defined line occurs only where the spring-wood of one ring abuts against the summer-wood of its neighbor. ”

“ But in those we now speak of, the perfect wood was separated by another circle of white wood, so that on cutting the trunks of them we saw alternately circles of sap and perfect wood, and afterwards a clump of the latter, which was more or less considerable, according to the different soils and situations; in strong and forest earth it is more scarce than in glades and light earth. ”

“ The redwood is the only lumber that can take the place of the white pine, answer as a satisfactory substitute for mahogany and black walnut, displace oak for railroad ties, cypress and cedar for shingles, and surpass all other woods for durability when in contact with the earth or when exposed to moisture. ”