Families Tiliaceæ, Hamamelidaceæ, and Lauraceæ
The Tiliaceæ are a tropical family with a single genus, the linden, as a representative in our climate. There are two species found wild south of New York besides the common linden, the small leaved basswood and the white basswood, but the common linden and the European linden are the two trees found commonly in New England.
Linden; Basswood Tilia americana
A tall tree, 60 to 80 feet high, frequently excurrent. The bark is rather smooth with shallow, close furrows, and the twigs are smooth, with a good deal of color. The leaf-scars are alternate, and the buds are smooth and red, the terminal one often being absent.
The main trunk of the linden frequently extends upwards undivided through the crown to the tip of the tree, with small branches growing from the trunk all the way up. This excurrent characteristic of the linden is especially marked in young trees which have grown in open situations, but even when the trunk has divided into large branches, or has grown in the forest shaded by other trees, and has lost its excurrent shape, the small branches growing directly out of the trunk distinguish it from other trees. The color in the young stems and buds is another means of its identification, and in early spring the deepening color in the twigs from the rising sap, shows that the linden is almost as responsive as the willow to warm rains and sunshine.
The wood is soft and white and close-grained. It is used for carving in the interior finish of houses, and for making wooden ware and cheap furniture. Sugar has been made from the sap, and the inner bark is made into a coarse cordage and matting, and in Europe a coarse cloth is made from it.
The Latin generic name probably comes from ptilon, the Greek word for a feather, in allusion to the feather-like bracts on the clusters of the flowers. The specific name, americana, was given to our native linden to distinguish it from the European species.
AMERICAN LINDEN
Tilia americana
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The linden is found growing wild in rich woods from New Brunswick to Georgia and as far west as Kansas.
The European lindens, or as they are called in England “lime trees,” may be distinguished from our linden by their twigs, which are more numerous and more slender than those of our species. The linden has long been a favorite tree for formal effects, both in Europe and in this country. “The French,” Du Hamel says, “growing tired of the horsechestnut for avenues, adopted the lime for that purpose, in the time of Louis XIV., and accordingly the approaches to the residences of the French, as well as the English gentry of that date are bordered with lime trees.” Since the day of the modern school of landscape gardening the linden is not nearly so much planted as it used to be.
A successful experiment has been tried in Germany of making table oil from the seeds of this tree. A paste like chocolate has also been made from the fruit, but it does not keep. The family name of Linnæus, the famous botanist, was originally derived from linn, the Swedish name for the linden, a large tree having always stood by the old family homestead.
The European lindens are not so well suited to our climate as our native basswood, but it seems to be more generally planted in our city streets, in spite of this fact.
The Hamamelis family is a small order of trees and shrubs with two genera in the United States,—the Hamamelis and Liquidambar; each genus has but one species.
Liquidamber; Sweet Gum Liquidambar styraciflua
A large tree, 30 to 150 feet high, with deeply furrowed bark. The twigs are covered with corky ridges. The leaf-scars are alternate. The buds are reddish in color and smooth. The pith is in the form of a pentagon when the twig is cut across. The fruit is a round, dry, open, rough catkin hanging on the tree through the winter.
LIQUIDAMBER
Liquidambar styraciflua
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The liquidamber is at all times beautiful, and in winter the broad, corky wings along the twigs give it a singular appearance, adding much to one’s interest in the tree. It is unusual to find so much color in corky ridged stems as in those of the liquidamber. The stems of the cork elm and the mossy cup oak have these peculiar corky layers, but neither of them have smooth, polished stems between the broken ridges, nor such radiant color as those of the liquidamber. When this tree grows in open situations its trunk divides a short distance from the ground, and the branches form a pyramidal head. In moist Southern forests, however, where the liquidamber grows to be very tall, its trunk is straight, a uniform size in diameter, and often undivided into branches to the height of seventy or eighty feet. Michaux describes a liquidamber which he found growing in a swamp in Georgia, which measured fifteen feet and seven inches in circumference at five feet from the ground, and these trees sometimes grow to be over 150 feet high when the conditions are favorable to their growth.
The wood is heavy and close-grained and is used in cabinet making, for fruit boxes, and for the outside finish of houses. Professor Sargent says that the future supply of the wood is reasonably certain from 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 cultivated. The generic name, Liquidambar, from liquidus (liquid), ambar (amber), was given to this tree by Linnæus in reference to the fragrant juice which exudes from its stems. It is sometimes collected and used as an ointment in medicine. The flow of resinous balsam increases according to the warmth of the climate in which the liquidamber is found. The specific name, styraciflua, from the Latin word styrax (storax), also alludes to this juice, storax being a resinous gum.
The liquidamber is found growing in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and from there southward to Florida and westward. It grows well in gardens in the neighborhood of Boston; but it is liable to suffer after severe winters throughout Eastern New England.
The witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) is a small tree or shrub, 10 to 30 feet high, with a smooth brown bark and flat branches, covered through the winter with woody fruit capsules. It is found on the borders of moist woods throughout New England and its profusion of yellow thread-like flowers in the bare November woods make it a striking object in autumn. The combination on a single tree, at the same time, of blossoms and ripe fruit is unusual in any climate, and the witch-hazel is the only example of it in the Northeastern States. Linnæus gave it the Greek name hamamelis, which means bearing flowers together with the fruit.
SASSAFRAS
Sassafras sassafras
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The Indians were the first to use the bark for curing inflammations, and its medicinal virtues have long been recognized, in spite of the fact that chemists consider that it has no active medicinal properties. On the slopes of some of the southern mountains the witch-hazel becomes a small tree, although we are accustomed to find it a rather straggling shrub in our New England woods.
The Lauraceæ are an order of aromatic trees and shrubs found chiefly in the tropics; of trees there is a single genus of a single species found in New England,—the sassafras.
Sassafras Sassafras sassafras
A tree common in rich woods. It is 15 to 100 feet high, with a rough bark and twisted branches. Green twigs, smooth and sweet scented, with an aromatic mucilaginous juice. Large buds; semi-oval, semicircular, alternate leaf-scars. The flowers come a little before the leaves unfold. The aromatic fragrance is strongest in the bark of the roots.
Few trees are more interesting in winter than the sassafras. The color of their smooth, bare stems is an exquisite shade of green, the terminal buds are large for the size of the slender twigs and tiny leaf-scars, and the delicious, aromatic taste and fragrance when the twigs are broken are most unusual. The branches often have a curious spirally twisted appearance, a corkscrew effect, which with the rough bark of the trunk give the tree an ancient weather-beaten aspect when it is comparatively young. The sassafras was one of the first American trees which became known in Europe. In the middle of the sixteenth century the French in Florida were told by the Indians about its curative properties, and from that time it was sought after,—sassafras roots having formed a part of the first cargo exported from Massachusetts. J. C. Loudon, an English writer on trees sixty years ago, had an original theory, that the discovery of America was largely due to the sassafras. “It was its strong fragrance smelt by Columbus,” he says, in the third volume of his “Arboretum,” “that encouraged him to persevere when his crew mutinied, and enabled him to convince them that land was near at hand.”
TRUNK OF A SASSAFRAS
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Thoreau in his walks through the winter woods about Concord in February says: “When I break off a twig of green-barked sassafras, as I am going through the woods now, and smell it, I am startled to find it as fragrant as in summer. It is an importation of all the spices of Oriental summers into our New England winter, very foreign to the snow and the oak leaves.” This Oriental spiciness may be partly accounted for by the fact that our sassafras is related to the camphor and cinnamon trees of the tropics.
The wood is soft and brittle, but it has durability when placed in contact with the soil, which makes it useful for posts and rails. It is also used for ox yokes and cooperage. Oil of sassafras, which is distilled from the bark of the roots, is used for perfuming soap. This tree is confined to eastern North America, and deserves far more attention than has been given it by landscape gardeners,—it is a beautiful tree as well as an individual one.
Sassafras was a popular name used by the French in Florida, and it has become both its generic and specific name.
Chapter XII
THE MAGNOLIA AND TULIP TREE, THE CATALPA, THE AILANTHUS, AND THE ARALIA
The Magnolia and the Tulip-tree.