The wood is soft and brittle, but it has durability when placed in contact with the soil, which makes it useful for posts and rails. It is also used for ox yokes and cooperage. Oil of sassafras, which is distilled from the bark of the roots, is used for perfuming soap. This tree is confined to eastern North America, and deserves far more attention than has been given it by landscape gardeners,—it is a beautiful tree as well as an individual one. _Sassafras_ was a popular name used by the French in Florida, and it has become both its generic and specific name. CHAPTER XII THE MAGNOLIA AND TULIP TREE, THE CATALPA, THE AILANTHUS, AND THE ARALIA [Illustration: The Magnolia and the Tulip-tree.] Chapter XII THE MAGNOLIA AND TULIP TREE, THE CATALPA, THE AILANTHUS, AND THE ARALIA Families Magnoliaceæ, Bignoniaceæ, Simaroubaceæ, and Araliaceæ The magnolia family is made up of trees and shrubs belonging mainly to the tropics, but it has two genera in the Northeastern States,—the magnolia and the tulip tree. They are particularly interesting in winter on account of the buds which are covered with stipules forming bud-scales and which protect the undeveloped leaves until they open in the spring. There are six species of magnolia in the United States, but only one is found growing wild in New England. The tulip tree is the only species in the genus _Liriodendron_ and it is found only in eastern North America and western China. [Sidenote: Swamp Magnolia; Sweet Bay _Magnolia glauca_] _A shrub or slender tree, 4 to 30 feet high, with light brown bark. The recent shoots are a bright green, and like the buds they have a tendency towards downiness. Alternate leaf-scars._ This magnolia is found growing more or less commonly in swamps from New Jersey to Florida, but it is rare in the north. Over a hundred years ago it was discovered growing wild in Essex County, Massachusetts, by a minister of Ipswich, the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, and it is still found in the swamps near Gloucester. It is a low shrub in the north, but in the south it grows to be a slender tree. The wood which is soft and light is occasionally used in the south for making broom handles. The roots of the swamp magnolia are very fleshy, and they used to be eaten by beavers. The early settlers in Pennsylvania called it the “beaver tree” and baited their traps to catch beavers with pieces of the roots. The name was given to the genus in honor of Pierre Magnol, a professor of botany at Montpellier in the seventeenth century, the specific name, _glauca_ (glaucous) refers to the bloom on the under side of the leaves.