Technology Research 2.14.12

In your post you must address the following
1. How can you identify the resource?
what does it look like?
Does it look that way year round?  If not how can you identify it during different times?
2. What is the range for this resource? Where can I find it in the United States?
3. What would native populations used these resources for?
Do they have medicinal value?
Can they be used to make fire?
Can you make a container, cordage, digging stick some other primitive technology with this resource?
4. Are there any hazards to this resource?
Is it poisonous if ingested? Can it cause a rash? does it smell bad? something like that.

• • Red cedar
    1. The bark is reddish-brown, fibrous, and peels off in narrow strips. The leaves are of two types; sharp, spreading needle-like juvenile leaves 5–10 cm long, and tightly adpressed scale-like adult leaves 2–4 mm 

    long; they are arranged in opposite decussate pairs or occasionally whorls of three. 
    2. A species of juniper native to eastern North America, from southeastern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, east of the Great Plains
    3. If correctly prepared, it makes excellent English longbows, flatbows, and Native American sinew-backed bows or fence posts [more modern]. The cones are used to flavor gin and as a kidney medicine.
    4. It sheds pollen which people can be allergic to.
    
    Osage Orange
    1. Small deciduous tree or large shrub, typically growing to 8–15 metres tall. It is dioecious, with male and female flowers on different plants.
    2. Occurred historically in the Red River drainage of Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas and in the Blackland Prairies, Post Oak Savannas, and Chisos Mountains of Texas.
    3.Tool handles, treenails, fence posts, electrical insulators, and other applications requiring a strong dimensionally stable wood that withstands rot. Straight-grained osage timber (most is knotty and twisted) makes very good bows.
    4.Today, the fruit is sometimes used to deter spiders, cockroaches, boxelder bugs, crickets, fleas, and other arthropods.
• Willow

  • 1. Found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Willows are very cross-fertile, and numerous hybrids occur, both naturally and in cultivation. Willows all have abundant, watery bark, sap which is heavily charged with salicylic acid, soft, usually pliant, tough wood, slender branches, and large, and fibrous.  

    The roots are remarkable for their toughness, size, and tenacity to life, and roots readily grow from aerial parts of the plant.The leaves are typically elongated, but may also be round to oval, frequently with a serrated margin. 
    
    
    Ash
    1. The ash tree is a strong, medium to very large tree, depending on type, and a relative of the olive tree. Ash trees have an opposite branching structure, with multiple leaflets. Depending on species, ash tree leaves are green, turning yellow or purple-burgundy in the fall. The seeds of the ash tree are winged and when they fall from the tree they tend to spin, giving the seeds a helicopter like characteristic, which is where the seeds get their nickname from, helicopter seeds. An interesting fact about the ash tree is its characteristic agile wood is used to make baseball bats.
    
    Poplar
    1. Native to most of the Northern Hemisphere. The bark on young trees is smooth, white to greenish or dark grey. on old trees it remains smooth in some species, but becomes rough and deeply fissured in others. The leaves are spirally arranged, and vary in shape from triangular to circular or (rarely) lobed, and with a long petiole; in species in the sections Populus and Aigeiros, the petioles are laterally flattened. Leaf size is very variable even on a single tree, typically with small leaves on side shoots, and very large leaves on strong-growing lead shoots.