CUCUMBER-TREE WOOD, BASSWOOD. (_Magnolia_.) (_Tilia_.) These trees are not related, but are all noted for woods with soft, fine qualities, such as fit them for carvings, woodenware, and paper-pulp. No one of the woods is durable when exposed, and all are used for boxes because they nail without splitting. The names are commercially interchangeable. The whitewood or tulip tree (_Liriodendron tulipifera_) is a native of America and an acclimated tree in Europe. It is the sole surviving species of its genus. The wood is soft, stiff, clean, fine, straight-grained, and obtainable in large-sized pieces. Much whitewood is made into lumber, the wood standing among those of the broadleaf series as white pine does among the conifers. Whitewood is particularly suitable for carvings. In spite of its name it is largely greenish yellow. It is often divided commercially, according to color, into "white poplar" and "yellow poplar." Trunks often attain to a very large size. Matthews mentions a specimen[48] thirty-three feet in circumference. The species may be known by its large tulip-shaped flower. _Liriodendron_ is from two Greek words meaning lily and tree. [Illustration: WHITEWOOD (_Liriodendron tulipifera_).] [Illustration: PLATE 16. WHITEWOOD OR TULIP TREE (_Liriodendron tulipifera_).] The poplars, sometimes called cottonwoods because of their seeds covered with a cotton-like down, are represented on both continents. The wood was made into shields by the [p081] ancients, because it was light and tough and would indent without breaking. The wood is often substituted for whitewood, but is less desirable, although valuable as a basis for paper-pulp. The trees may be known by the long drooping catkins that appear early in the spring before the leaves, and that are followed by white downy seeds that soon escape to whiten the surrounding ground. The poplars are noted for foliage more or less constantly in agitation. This peculiarity, so pronounced in the aspen (_Populus tremuloides_), is due to the very long petioles or leaf-stems. The cottonwoods abound in many otherwise arid regions of American Western deserts. The cucumber trees are of the magnolia family and grow in many of the Eastern States. The wood resembles and is probably often mistaken for whitewood, for which it is a fair substitute. The trees may be known by their fruit, which resembles vegetable cucumbers. Magnolia is from Magnol, a botanist of the seventeenth century.