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Record Group Number: 900000
Series/Collection Number: M82- 98
Creator:
Title, Dates: American tung oil trees photographs, ca. 1940s-1950s
Amount: 2 photographs
Medium Included: photographs
Organization/Arrangement: Unarranged.
Restrictions:
Terms Governing Use:
Biographical/Historical:     The tung tree (Aleurites fordii of the family Euphorbiaceae), also called the tung-nut, tung-oil, or china wood-oil tree, is native to mainland Southeast Asia. The word "tung" is Chinese for "heart," the general shape of the leaf. Tung oil is a yellow to brown oil obtained by mechanically pressing the sun-dried nuts or seeds of several species of Aleurites. Because of its superior drying quality as compared with linseed oil, tung oil is used extensively in the manufacture of varnishes, paints, and enamels. It is also used in manufacturing linoleum, India rubber substitutes, and in some insulating and waterproofing materials and lacquers. It is expensive and is frequently adulterated with cottonseed, soya bean, or other oils.

    The plant was first brought to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. The scarcity of imports during World War II led to the cultivation of tung oil trees in the southern U.S. By 1964, there were about 1.7 million tung trees in Florida. Production of nuts amounted to 123,300 tons with a value of $7.6 million.

    Leon County was the first place in America where tung trees were cultivated, where the first American tung oil was produced and where the first bearing tung-oil grove was planted. In 1906 the superintendent of cemeteries in Tallahassee received 5 five-year-old seedlings. He passed at least one on to William H. Raynes, a horticulturist who lived two miles east of town near Miccosukee Road. In 1908 an offspring of the tree was planted in Tallahassee's Old City Cemetery. Both trees died by the 1950s.
Summary:     This collection contains two photographs of tung oil trees in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1906 and 1908. One image is the "Raynes Tree," planted in 1906, and the second image is the "Cemetery Tree," planted in the Old City Cemetery in 1908.
Finding Aids:
Additional Physical Form: These images have been digitized and are available on the Florida Memory web site: https://www.floridamemory.com/discover/photographs/
Reproduction Note:
Location of Originals/Duplicates:
Associated Materials:
Language Notes:
Ownership/Custodial History:
Publication Note:
General Note: Florida Photographic Collection Number P1982-98.
Electronic Records Access: https://www.floridamemory.com/discover/photographs/
Subject Access Fields: Trees.
Tung oil.
Tung tree.
Photographs. aat
Tallahassee (Fla.)
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