Butternut bark has played a rather important role in the country’s
affairs. Doctors in the Revolutionary war made much of their medicine of
the roots and bark of this tree. Drugs were unattainable, and physicians
were forced to betake themselves to the woods for substitutes, and their
pharmacopoeias were enriched by the butternut tree. Housewives dyed
cloth a brown color with this bark long before aniline dyes found their
way into this country. Whole companies of Confederate soldiers from the
mountain regions in the Civil war wore clothes dyed in decoctions of
butternut bark, and popularly known as “butternut jeans.”
The annual output of butternut lumber is placed at a little more than
1,000,000 feet a year. It is widely used, but in small amounts. In
Maryland it is made into ceiling and flooring; in North Carolina into
cabinet work, fixtures for stores and offices, and into furniture; in
Michigan its reported uses are boat finish, interior finish for houses,
molding, and screen frames. In Illinois it is used for all the purposes
listed above and also for church altars and car finish. These uses are
doubtless typical, and hold good in all parts of the country where any
use is made of butternut.
The wood has figure similar to that of black walnut, but the color is
lighter. It is nearer brown than black. The pores are diffused through
the annual ring, but are more numerous and of larger size in the inner
than in the outer part. The springwood blends gradually with the wood of
the latter part of the season, without sharp distinction, but the ring
terminates in a black line which is the chief element of contrast in the
wood’s figure.
The future value of butternut will be less in the lumber than in the
nuts. The tendency in that direction is now apparent. When land is
cleared, the trees which would formerly have gone to the sawmill, are
now left to bear nuts. The averaged price paid by factories in North
Carolina for butternut is $40 a thousand feet. It is cheaper in the Lake
States.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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