Identifier: treebookpopularg1920roge (find matches)
Title: The tree book : A popular guide to a knowledge of the trees of North America and to their uses and cultivation
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Rogers, Julia Ellen, b. 1866
Subjects: Trees
Publisher: New York : Doubleday, Page
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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ng andfencing material and good fuel. Oxen drag the mesquite outby the roots, and it is cut into posts, railroad ties and frames forthe adobe houses. The leaves are like those of our honey locust, but muchreduced in size. The tree furnishes little shade. But youngshoots, leaves and the greenish, fragrant flowers which come insuccessive crops from May to July, are all cropped eagerly bycattle. So are the long, slim, sweet pods which are also used asfood by Indians and Mexicans. The sharp, spiny branches ofthis shrub make it a good hedge plant, and the complex rootsystem makes it invaluable for the holding of sand dunes. Alto-gether the mesquite is one of the most useful trees in the silvaof this country. Aborigines in the American desert might wellworship it as the Hindoos do a related species. The Screw Bean, or Screw-pod Mesquite (Prosopispubescens, Benth.), with hoary foliage, grows in the same region,and differs from the true mesquite chiefly in having its podsspirally twisted. 346
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Copyright, 1905, by Doubleday, Page & Company CLAMMY LOCUST (Robinia viscosa) CHAPTER XLI: THE LIGNUM-VH7E Family Zygophyllace^ The Lignum-vitae is Guaiacum sanctum, Linn.—The chiefreason for mentioning this tree is that its wood is one of thetoughest and hardest known to commerce. It is very closegrained, and varies from dark green to yellowish brown. It isused for sheaths of ships blocks, pulleys, cogs and other bearingsin machinery, and also for tenpin balls. The heart wood, chippedand heated, yields a medicinal gum. The tree grows on the Bahamas, the Antilles and the Florida.Keys. It is squatty and gnarled, but beautiful in its silvervbark, little, lustrous, ash-like leaves and delicate blue flowerwhich keep on opening for weeks. The fruit is a little fleshy5-celled capsule of bright orange colour. The West Indian Guiacum officinale, Linn., ranks with thespecies just described in commercial importance. No distinctionis made between the two woods in the trade. 347 CHAPTER XLI

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