ROOTS AND STEMS AND DOGWOOD BOLTS

A. G. HALL.

Good advice to the owner of a small tract of woodland is : "Stop, look, and know before you go into the woods with your ax."

A Florida farmer thought he had '00 acres of quite worthless woods spindly pines and dogwood trees because he had not taken the time to find out that sound dogwood bolts were in demand by manufacturers of shuttle blocks for the textile industry. He consulted a farm forester, fortunately, before he cleared his "worthless" land for pasture. Instead of being a liability, the trees netted him $40 a cord. Today that farmer is in the business of raising dogwood for shuttle blocks.

Similarly, individual walnut trees, sometimes worth from $50 to several hundred dollars each, are often saved from the fuel-wood pile by the timely advice of a county agent, extension for-ester, farm forester, or buyer of walnut veneer logs.

Very often the landowner has to be reminded that the plants of the forest all plants, not just the trees are composed of many parts into which nature has placed special properties or substances. The key to successful utilization of these many plants is to determine to what economic uses their special attributes are best adapted for the greatest return. A man also needs to know the markets and the best means of producing and harvesting the products for continuous crops. The owner of large tracts can concentrate on one or two products, like sawlogs and pulpwood, but the owner of a small property often must supplement the income from his main product with the income from several minor products.

The best sources of information are the State and Federal agricultural agencies and the trade associations, because they are in the business of discovering new and improved uses of forest products.

Roots and stems of plants may yield food, fiber, fuel, drugs, dyes, gums and resins, and wood specialties.

Leaves may contain oils and dyes or special fibers for special uses. They may have decorative value, or they may be ideal for composting.

The bark may be a source of cork, tannins, drugs, fiber, fuel.

Flowers, besides their decorative value, may also produce oils.

The fruits are important for food or oils. They might be marketed for their seed or for use as decorations.

The forest-land owner, therefore, loses nothing by taking the time to find out the full possibilities of his land, but he stands to lose present and future values if he makes a hasty move.

Planning for maximum use of a wooded area requires, first, a complete inventory, not only of the trees and woody plants but also of the small herbs and other vegetation that form the forest understory.

Few are the woodland products that do not have some utility.

FROM THE ROOTS come quite a number of products.

Recently I received a request from a New Jersey florist for a supply of Osmunda fern, a fairly common plant in the swamps and wet woods of the East and Northeast. The florist was seeking a source of the plant because he wanted to use its roots in the making of compost for growing orchids.

Ginseng, another plant of the forest floor, occurs in shady, well-drained locations in the hardwood forests from Maine to Minnesota and southward into the mountains of the Carolinas and Georgia. An export trade in ginseng has existed in this country for more than a century; the average annual value of the ginseng root for the Oriental market is about one million dollars. Ginseng is now cultivated, but the wild product found in the woodlands is highly favored in the trade and brings the highest prices. Forest plantings of ginseng, while slower growing than those in artificial shade, are less expensive to establish and require less attention.

Sassafras root finds a limited sale at roadside stands to persons to whom the use of a tonic of sassafras tea is traditional. This is a pin-money product. But both the root and the stem are used for the extraction of oils for the flavoring of root beers and some proprietary medicines. The oil is used also to produce an artificial "heliotrope" for the manufacture of perfumes.

The pitch-laden wood of the roots of some of the southern pines, because of their high inflammability, reach the market as "lighter knots" or "lighter" wood. Sure to blaze when they are exposed to flame, they are ideal for use in fireplaces.

Stumps and roots of the resinous species have also found a market by the ton in the South. A special process has been developed for extracting the resin. And owners of "worked out" turpentine stands have been able to realize a profit from clearing out the dead and dying trees.

During the Second World War, the impossibility of importing the foreign briar into this country for the manufacture of smoking pipes led to a revival of an old southern industry. In North Carolina and Tennessee, pipe blocks were made from laurel and rhododendron burls, the large, abnormal growths of hard wood that appear at the root collar of the shrubs. At that time, the burls were sold for 10 to 12 dollars a ton.

Similarly, the heavy burl growth at the root collar of the western manzanita was developed into pipe materials. The market for those products fell off after the war, but burl growth, because of its intricate design and generally hard wood, has a limited market for specialty items.

THE STEMS yield items that many of us are not aware of.

Many trees, often individuals of a species rather than a whole stand, have special uses worth investigating before the tree is consigned to the sawmill or pile of fuel wood. The veneer industry is particularly interested in these special uses. Frequently the butt log of an old, sound walnut tree will be worth many times for veneer what it would bring as a sawlog. The prices sometimes realized running into a thousand dollars or more for one tree warrant investigation.

Other hardwoods may also find a veneer market oak, yellow-poplar, redgum, maple, and the cottonwood, among them.

To bring the highest prices, veneer logs or bolts should be straight, symmetrical, large, and free of defects.

Likewise in demand is eastern red-cedar, the tree from which pencils, cedar lining for chests, and some insect repellents are made. Large redcedar is eagerly sought by manufacturers of cedar chests; and small stock of the fence-post variety will be purchased by the pencil-block companies. Even the sawdust of the tree, if produced in quantity, is the source of cedar oil.

Baseball bats are made from young, second-growth white ash; wood from old trees is usually too fine-grained and brittle for the purpose. Hence the owner of a stand of young ash may often realize a considerably greater income from the sale of ash bolts than from logs for lumber. Before cutting his ash into the short 40-inch bolts required by bat manufacturers, he should check with the buyers to determine whether his wood meets specifications. About 750,000 board feet of ash is used annually to keep baseball teams supplied.

A somewhat similar market is the one for handle stock. Good handles for striking and lifting tools require qualities not often found in sawed boards. Consequently they are produced from bolts or short logs of hickory and ash. Samples should be sent to the manufacturers before extensive harvesting is undertaken.

Excelsior bolts cut from aspen, basswood, cottonwood, white pine, buckeye, and some other woods find a ready market as packing material. In Michigan alone, chiefly in the Upper Peninsula, 49,554 cords of excelsior bolts were marketed in 1946. For the Lake States, the total was 95,463 cords, twice the amount in 1936.

American farmers use an estimated 500 million wooden fence posts annually, but probably fewer than 5 percent of them are given preservative treatment to lengthen their useful life. For untreated posts, the more decay-resistant woods must be used, but their life can be considerably extended by simple treating methods. For the less resistant species, treatment is necessary if satisfactory use is to be obtained. The woodland owner, then, will do well to establish his fence-post business on a quality basis.

Small poles, likewise, are a marketable item in farming areas. And where vegetable gardening is carried on in areas with limited wood supply, the woodland owner may also find a market for small but straight material for bean poles.

Sound, clear white oak is the source of tight cooperage, the barrels used to hold liquids. The supply of this mate-rial has reached an all-time low, and consequently the prices for good cooperage stock are at an all-time high. While other types of containers have taken the place of wooden ones for some liquids, there are still others, notably whiskey, for which a suitable substitute for wood has not yet been found. The owner of any of the various species of white oak should investigate this market.

Another little-known product of the woodland is basket willow. The American green willow, a tree of the clay loam soils of the East and South, often grows where few other commercial products will grow in lands subject to flooding and on the borders of lakes, streams, and rivers. The marketable product is the rods, or young shoots, that spring from well-established rootstocks or stumps. Willow may be propagated by setting out cuttings about 10 inches long in the early spring. The cuttings root easily in the moist earth and within a few years have developed well-rooted stock from which rods can be harvested each year. Peeled willow brings the highest prices in the basket market. Before undertaking any extensive propagation, the owner should be sure a local market exists, however; the industry is diminishing in this country.

The California-laurel, or the Oregon-myrtle, neither a laurel nor a myrtle, belongs to a family that includes the eastern sassafras and the "loblolly bays" of the South. It grows from southwestern Oregon to the southern border of California. Its beautiful grain makes it valuable for cabinet and finishing work. The wood, therefore, becomes a specialty item that brings a better price for special uses than it does as lumber.