Upas (Antiaris toxicaria). A tree found in the Philippine Islands and tropical Asia. The fiber of the bark is sometimes made into cloth and the juice of the roots is used by the Malays for poisoning their arrows. This tree figures in both religion and mythology.
Walnut (Juglans), a genus of about ten species, mostly natives of North America and Asia. The Black Walnut is sometimes one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five feet high, growing from Ontario to Florida, west to Nebraska and Texas. The dark brown wood is largely used for cabinet making and gunstocks. The White Walnut or Butternut resembles the black walnut, but is seldom over one hundred feet high. The wood is used in the interior finish of houses and for furniture. The California Walnut, a tree sometimes sixty-five feet high, is often cultivated in California for shade and as a stock on which to graft the English Walnut. The English Walnut is sixty to ninety feet high, native of Persia, and has long been cultivated for its edible nuts.
Willow (Salix), a genus of over one hundred and fifty species, mostly of cool, northern regions, fully one-half occurring within the United States. The leaves are egg-shaped and wrinkled; the blossoms yellow and greenish. They possess great quantities of honey, and attract, therefore, all kinds of insects, especially bees. The Weeping Willow is much planted for ornament. The European Osier is cultivated for its twigs. Of the native species, the shrubby Shining Willow, the Black Willow, is sometimes forty feet high, and the Heart-leaved Willow are among the best known.
Yew (Taxus), a genus of some six trees and shrubs, are widely distributed in the northern hemisphere, three species occurring in the United States. The American Yew is a low, straggling shrub seldom over five feet high growing in woods from Newfoundland to Manitoba and south to Virginia and Iowa. The Florida Yew is a bushy tree rarely twenty-five feet high. The California Yew is a tree forty to fifty feet high occurring from British Columbia to California, sometimes cultivated in gardens in Europe. The hard wood is used for fence posts. The European Yew is a native of Europe and Siberia reaching a height of forty feet.
VIII. FIBER AND COMMERCIAL PLANTS
The cultivation of the fiber-yielding plants and the manufacture of their products into textiles, ropes, cordage, and matting are among the most important industries of the world, and afford employment directly and indirectly to many millions of people. The industries, moreover, are of great antiquity, for we have definite evidence from the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland that flax was cultivated and used as a textile during the Stone Age, and the occurrence of linen cloth in the tombs of Egypt and constant references to the same material in the earliest books of the Bible are well known to everyone. How and when mankind first became aware of the possibilities of vegetable fibers as materials for clothing it is not easy to say, but it is not improbable that he first employed the fibers to supply his need for string cordage, especially in his hunting expeditions, and that gradually the idea of weaving the strings to form a fabric occurred to him. The apparatus employed must have been of extreme simplicity and the finished product crude according to modern ideas; but that thousands of years ago textiles of superlative quality, rivaling anything that can be produced to-day, were manufactured by Eastern races is a matter of history and observation.
Annotto, Anatto or Arnotto. The red substance imported under this name consists of the aggregated seed pellicles of Bixa Orellana. The coloring matter is best extracted by alcohol, as it is not very soluble in water. It is the source of coloring for dairy products, being the standard butter and cheese color in the United States, England and Holland. Has also a limited use as a dye in calico printing. It was anciently used by natives of Brazil, Central America, and West Indies to stain their bodies red, and by Mexicans in painting. Cultivation prehistoric in tropical America. Now naturalized in India.
Bamboo (Bambusa) grows in the tropics of Asia, Africa and America. The plants are in reality merely gigantic grasses. The stems are hollow and contain only a light pith, but they are jointed and at the nodes strong partitions stretch across the inside. They grow in clumps, and may reach a height of one hundred and twenty feet and a thickness of ten inches. Some species flower only once, some every year, and others at longer intervals.
The Bamboo is noted for its great economic importance, and serves a variety of useful purposes. The young shoots of some species are cut when tender and eaten like asparagus; the seeds also are sometimes used as food, and for making beer; some species exude a saccharine juice at the nodes which is of domestic value.