Though called yellow-poplar, because of its light-colored softwood, it is really a member of the magnolia family and bears the scientific name Liriodendron tulipifera, “lily tree bearing tulips.” Its large flowers, a blend of green and yellow tinged with orange, are among the early spring arrivals in the forest, a welcome source of nectar to honeybees. The blossoms emerge above a background of long-stemmed, glossy, notched leaves that tremble in the slightest breeze. The flowers develop into dry, cone-like fruit, from which winged seeds fall twirling to the ground.
Young trees shoot toward the light and, in some of the best stands, grow 50 feet in 10 years. The twigs and branches of very small yellow-poplars are tasty to deer, which sometimes cause extensive damage.
With its attractive flowers, foliage, and symmetrical form, the yellow-poplar is frequently adapted for shade and ornamentation. The straight-grained wood of yellow-poplar is used in furniture and woodware, for veneer, and in construction. Its importance as a lumber tree has increased immensely since the tragic loss of the once great forests of chestnut. (Many foresters regarded the chestnut as the finest hardwood tree in America before it fell victim to a relentless blight, a fungus introduced from Asia.) Its nuts were a food staple of squirrels, turkeys, bears, and other animals, all of which have suffered since the passing of the chestnut. No remedy has been found for the blight, but Forest Service researchers have been encouraged recently in their efforts to breed a blight-resistant chestnut.
Sugar Maple, the most abundant and versatile of all the maples, the showy beauty of the autumn landscape, is notable as the source of fine hardwood lumber and maple sirup. It is found in nearly every State east of the Great Plains, with its largest stands, usually mixed with other hardwoods, in the Lake States and New England. Sugar maple grows slowly but lives 300 to 400 years, reaching heights of 80 to 120 feet. It is the State tree of New York, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The apt scientific name, Acer saccharum, refers to the sweetness of the sap, from which maple sirup and sugar are boiled when winter is on the wane. Like the sugarcane and sugarbeet, this maple is characterized by an unusually high concentration of sugar, produced the year before and stored in roots and trunk during the dormancy of winter. With leaf buds swelling and the imminence of spring, the sap rises and is tapped just inside the bark by driving in a spout and attaching a tube or hanging a bucket beneath it. In this sturdy, stately tree, tapping may go on for years without seriously affecting the life of the tree or the quality of its wood. In spring, after the sugaring-off season, the maple sends forth myriads of greenish-yellow clustered flowers from which bees obtain pollen and nectar. In early summer seeds mature and fall to the ground on papery wings. Later, in autumn, sugar residue in heart-shaped thin leaves combines chemically with other substances to produce the most striking orange-yellows and reds of the hardwood landscape.
Maple has been a choice wood since the time of the Romans, who used it for their pikes and lances as well as furniture. Known to the lumber trade as hard maple, the strong, close-grained wood makes firm flooring, lustrous furniture, bowling alleys and pins, and musical instruments. Accidental forms known as curly maple and birdseye maple are prized for fancy-figured furniture and cabinets.
White Oak has been known and loved since the earliest days of settlement in the New World. It reminded the colonists of the English oak—and the Indians showed how to boil and eat its large acorns. White oak grows from New England south to Florida, through the Middle West to the Lake States, and as far west as Oklahoma and Texas. It is the State tree of Connecticut and Maryland, while “native oak” is the State tree of Illinois.
This tall, broad-crowned tree reaches heights of 80 to 100 feet (maximum, 150 feet), with diameters of 3 to 6 feet. Its whitish or pale gray bark is decidedly lighter in color than that of the black (or red) oak group. Its scientific name Quercus alba includes the classic Latin generic name for all oaks, Quercus, and alba (white), applied by the famous botanist Linnaeus.