The largest acorn I know is the fruit of the bur oak, and it is borne in
a mossy cup, indeed. The cup’s scales are drawn out into long, hairy
points, and those near the rim form a loose fringe. Once in a while you
may find an acorn almost covered up in its husk. But as a rule, the nut
is a little more than half-covered. Sometimes these nuts are two inches
long, but this is not usual. They are over an inch long, and almost as
broad, and the meat is white and sweet. No wonder squirrels harvest the
crop, and young trees spring up wherever an acorn is missed by the hungry
creatures.
The bur oak is a shaggy tree, for it sheds its bark in big flakes, like
the sycamore. The small branches are stout, and their bark is developed
into corky wings, like the sweet gum. The tree is irregular in shape,
too, its gnarled limbs are thrown out in any direction, and so the top is
often unsymmetrical. But it is a rugged and picturesque tree, in spite of
all its faults, and it adds beauty of an unusual kind to parks and
woodlands.
In Sioux City, Iowa, an aged bur oak stands in Riverside Park. It is
called “The Council Oak,” for it was a venerable tree in the days when
the Indians lived on the banks of the Missouri River. Under this tree
their chieftains used to meet the white men, and talk over the questions
that interested both. Here treaties were drawn up and signed that kept
peace between the red and white men.
I promise a great deal of pleasure to any one who plants a mossy-cup
acorn. The seedling tree is wonderfully vigorous in growth. The leaves
are often a foot long in the first years of the tree’s life. The blades
are thick, lustrous above, and woolly lined, the finger lobes irregular,
and two opposite, deep sinuses near the middle of the leaf cut it almost
in two!
Before the tree is more than a sapling it blossoms and bears big acorns
in their handsome mossy cups. There is no stage in the life of one of
these oaks that is not beautiful and interesting.
This tree is found from Nova Scotia to Western Texas. It forms forests in
Winnipeg, and “oak openings” in Minnesota and Dakota. It is as much at
home in the hot, arid stretches of the plains of the West and Southwest
as in the raw, damp air of the New England coasts. In the rich valley of
the Ohio River it reached nearly two hundred feet in height in the virgin
forests.
Unlike many oaks, it may be safely transplanted while young.