I think that I have made out two kinds of poplar,—the Populus tremuloides, or American aspen, and the P. grandidentata, or large American aspen, whose young leaves are downy.
Michaux says that the locust begins to convert its sap into perfect wood from the third year; which is not done by the oak, the chestnut, the beech, and the elm till after the tenth or the fifteenth year.
He quotes the saying, “The foot of the owner is the best manure for his land.” “He” is Augustus L. Hillhouse, who writes the account of the olive at the request of Michaux.
The elder Michaux found the balsam poplar (P. balsamifera) very abundant on Lake St. John and the Saguenay River, where it is eighty feet high and three feet in diameter. This, however, is distinct from the P. candicans, heart-leaved balsam poplar, which M. finds hereabouts, though never in the woods, and does not know where it came from.
He praises the Lombardy poplar because, its limbs being compressed about the trunk, it does not interfere with the walls of a house nor obstruct the windows.
No wood equal to our black ash for oars, so pliant and elastic and strong, second only to hickory for handspikes; used also for chair-bottoms and riddles.
The French call the nettle-tree bois inconnu.
Our white elm (Ulmus Americana) “the most magnificent vegetable of the temperate zone.”
The Pinus mitis, yellow pine, or spruce pine, or short-leaved pine. A two-leaved pine widely diffused, but not found northward beyond certain districts of Connecticut and Massachusetts. In New Jersey fifty or sixty feet high and fifteen to eighteen inches in diameter. Sometimes three leaves on fresh shoots; smallest of pine cones; seeds cast first year. Very excellent wood for houses, masts, decks, yards, beams, and cabins, next in durability to the long-leaved pine. Called at Liverpool New York pine. Its regular branches make it to be called spruce pine sometimes.
Pinus australis, or long-leaved pine, an invaluable tree, called yellow pine, pitch pine, and broom pine where it grows; in the North, Southern pine and red pine; in England, Georgia pitch pine. First appears at Norfolk, Virginia; thence stretches six hundred miles southwest. Sixty or seventy feet high, by fifteen to eighteen inches; leaves a foot long, three in a sheath; negroes use them for brooms. Being stronger, more compact and durable, because the resin is equally distributed, and also fine-grained and susceptible of a bright polish, it is preferred to every other pine. In naval architecture, most esteemed of all pines,—keels, beams, side-planks, trunnels, etc. For decks preferred to yellow pine,—and flooring houses. Sold for more at Liverpool than any other pine. Moreover it supplies nearly all the resinous matter used and exported. Others which contain much pitch are more dispersed. At present (1819) this business is confined to North Carolina.