have been classified in different ways, depending upon the purpose
in view. In the present treatment they will be divided in two
general groups, white oaks and black oaks. No effort will be made to
draw hard and fast lines, because it is not necessary. Oaks which
ripen their acorns in one year are listed as white oaks; those with
two year acorns, as black oaks. This is a botanical rather than a
lumberman’s classification; yet lumbermen recognize it in a general
way. White oak (_Quercus alba_) is clearly entitled to head the list
of white oaks, and red oak (_Quercus rubra_) should occupy a similar
position with regard to the black oak group. In numbers, the white
oaks and black oaks are nearly equally divided, one authority giving
twenty-seven species of white oak and twenty-five of black oak in
the United States; but botanists differ as to exact numbers of each.
The following species are usually classed as white oaks: White oak
(_Quercus alba_), valley oak (_Quercus lobata_), Brewer oak
(_Quercus breweri_), Sadler oak (_Quercus sadleri_), Pacific post
oak (_Quercus garryana_), Gambel oak (_Quercus gambelii_), post oak
(_Quercus minor_), Chapman oak (_Quercus chapmani_), bur oak
(_Quercus macrocarpa_), overcup oak (_Quercus lyrata_), swamp white
oak (_Quercus platanoides_), cow oak (_Quercus michauxii_), chestnut
oak (_Quercus prinus_), chinquapin oak (_Quercus acuminata_), dwarf
chinquapin oak (_Quercus prinoides_), Durand oak (_Quercus
breviloba_), Rocky Mountain oak (_Quercus undulata_), California
blue oak (_Quercus douglasii_), Engelmann oak (_Quercus
engelmanni_), Rocky Mountain blue oak (_Quercus oblongifolia_),
Arizona white oak (_Quercus arizonica_), Toumey oak (_Quercus
toumeyi_), netleaf oak (_Quercus reticulata_), California scrub oak
(_Quercus dumosa_), live oak (_Quercus virginiana_), Emory oak
(_Quercus emoryi_).
White oak grows in all the states east of the Mississippi river, and it
crosses that stream two or three hundred miles in some places. It
reaches eastern Nebraska and eastern Kansas, and runs southward through
Oklahoma to the Brazos river, Texas. It is scarce in the northern parts
of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Its total range covers an area of
more than 1,000,000 square miles. Like all other important timber trees,
it has regions where the species is best developed. The finest original
stands of white oak were found in the upper Ohio valley, beginning in
Indiana. The timber in many other districts was, and in some still is,
very good, such as southern Michigan, eastern Arkansas, some of the
Appalachian valleys and slopes, and in certain places along the upper
tributaries of streams flowing into the Atlantic ocean.
This tree is in the very front rank in economic importance, and it has
held that place since the earliest settlements in this country. No
forest tree was more evenly distributed than white oak over the eastern
half of the United States. It did not form pure forests of large extent,
as some of the pines did, but white oaks were within reach of almost
every part of the country. Conditions have greatly changed. The
establishment of farms where woods originally occupied the whole
country, lessened the abundance of oak long before lumbermen made it a
commodity; and since then, the cutting of billions of feet of it has
depleted or exhausted the supply in many regions. Still, white oak is as
widely dispersed as ever. It has not been completely exterminated in any
extensive region. White oak of as high grade goes to market now as ever
in the past, but in smaller amounts, and the lower grades go in
proportionately larger quantities. In other words, prime white oak has
passed its best day. A hundred years of use and abuse in states west of
the Alleghany mountains, and two hundred years in some of the regions
east, have reduced original forests to remnants. But with all that,
white oak remains undisputed king of American hardwoods.
At its best, white oak attains a height of 125 feet and a diameter of
six, but that size is unusual. A diameter of three feet and a height of
100 is above the average. The leaves are peculiar in that they hang on
the branches until late winter, sometimes dropping only in time to give
place to the new crop. They turn brown after the first hard frost. In
some sections of the Appalachian region white oak coppice (sprout
growth) is known as “red brush,” because of the adherence of the brown
leaves during winter. The leaves of some other species have the same
habit.
The wood of white oak is very strong, stiff, heavy, and durable when
exposed in all kinds of weather. Scarcely any other wood which can be
had in merchantable quantities equals white oak in these qualities. It
rates high in fuel value, and 6,000 pounds of dry wood when burned,
leaves about 245 pounds of ashes. The color of the heartwood is light
brown; the sapwood is thin; medullary rays are numerous and large; pores
large; summerwood broad and dense.
The medullary rays of no wood in this or any other country are more
utilized to commercial advantage than those of white oak. Quarter-sawing
is for the purpose of bringing them out. They are the bright streaks,
clearly visible to the naked eye in the end of an oak log, radiating
from the center outward like the spokes of a wheel. Many are too thin to
be visible without a magnifying glass. By quarter-sawing, the rays are
cut edgewise and appear as bright streaks or patches, often called
“mirrors,” on the surface of boards. The woodworker knows how to finish
the boards and treat them with fillers to bring out the figures.
White oak is a porous wood. Some of the pores are large enough to be
visible without a glass, and twenty times as many more can be seen only
when magnified. The direction of the pores is up and down the trunk of
the tree, and they are seen to best advantage in the end of a stick,
although they are always more or less visible on the side of a board
when the cutting is a little across the grain. The pores thus cut
diagonally across are taken advantage of by the finisher who works
stains and fillers into them, and changes their natural color, thereby
accentuating the wood’s figure.
The possibilities of white oak are almost infinite. It is good for
nearly anything for which any wood is used. It is not the best for
everything, but does well for most. Hickory is more resilient, ironwood
is stronger, locust more durable, white pine warps and checks less; but
white oak has so many good qualities in a fair degree that it can afford
to fall below the highest in some, and still rank above competitors on
general averages. It ranks high in shipbuilding, general construction,
furniture manufacturing, finish and fixtures, the making of agricultural
implements, car building, vehicle stock, cooperage, and many more.
It is one of the most important of American veneer woods. It is sawed
very thin, and is glued upon cores of other wood, thus becoming the
covering or outside part. The purpose of using oak veneer instead of the
solid wood is twofold. First, it goes farther, and second, a well-built
article with veneer outside and a core of other woods which stand well,
is superior to a solid oak article, except in cases where great strength
is the object sought, or where deep carving is desired.
The continued use of white oak is assured. It is not necessary to seek
new uses for it. The demand is as great as the supply can meet, but the
supply is not assured for the distant future. There will always be some
white oak in the country; but the best has been or is being cut. The
tree grows slowly, and good quarter-sawed white oak cannot be cut from
young trees. An age of about 150 years is necessary. Most good white oak
lumber today is cut from trees 200 or more years old. When the present
supply of venerable oaks has been exhausted, prime oak lumber will be
largely a thing of the past. Fortunately, that time has not yet arrived.
About eighty years are required to grow a white oak of crosstie size.
Those who will grow oak for market in the future will probably not wait
much longer than eighty years to cut their trees, and the result will be
a scarcity of mature trunks for lumber and veneer.
DURAND OAK (_Quercus breviloba_). In some parts of Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana this tree goes to the lumber yard as
white oak, and no one is injured by the substitution, for it is
heavy, hard, and strong, and is of good color. The wood weighs 59.25
pounds per cubic foot, which places it above the average weight of
white oak. It is said to be less tough than white oak. The tree
varies greatly in different parts of its range which extends from
central Alabama across Texas and into Mexico. It is known as white
oak, Texas white oak, shin oak, pin oak, and basket oak. Its best
development is in the eastern part of its range where trees eighty
or ninety feet high are common; but in Texas the average is scarcely
thirty feet high and one in diameter. Westward in Texas it becomes
shrubby, and forms extensive thickets of brush.
CHAPMAN OAK (_Quercus chapmani_) is put to little use, because
trunks are too small. They are seldom more than a foot in diameter,
and are often little more than shrubs. The tree grows in the pine
barrens near the coast from South Carolina to Florida, and it is
found also in great abundance, but generally of small size, on the
west coast of Florida from Tampa to the Apalachicola river.
[Illustration]
BUR OAK
[Illustration: BUR OAK]
BUR OAK
(_Quercus Macrocarpa_)
This splendid oak was named by Michaux, a French traveler and botanist
who visited many parts of eastern and southeastern United States more
than a century ago. The botanical name _macrocarpa_, means “large
fruit.” The bur oak bears small acorns in the North, and very large ones
in the South. They are sometimes two inches long and one and a half
inches wide, and “large-fruit” oak is an appropriate name for the tree
in the South, but would not be near the northern limit of its range.
It is known in different regions as bur oak, mossy cup oak, overcup oak,
scrub oak, and mossy cup white oak. Bur oak is a name suggested by the
acorn which has a fringe round the cup like a bur. This is the oak which
gave name to James Fenimore Cooper’s book, “Oak Openings” a romance of
early days in Michigan. Oak openings were areas where fires had killed
the old timber, and a young growth had sprouted from stumps and roots,
or had sprung up from seeds buried in the ground beyond the reach of the
fire. Some of those tracts were very large, and they were not confined
to any one state. They existed in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
Dakota, and elsewhere. Bur oak, because it is a vigorous species, was
able to take possession of such burned areas, to the exclusion of most
others.
Few American oaks have a wider range. It extends from Nova Scotia to
Manitoba, and in the United States is found in most states east of the
Rocky Mountains. It extends farther west and northwest than any other
commercial oak of the Atlantic states. In a range of so great
geographical extent the bur oak finds it necessary to adapt itself to
many kinds of land. It prefers low tracts where water is sufficient but
not excessive, but it grows well in more elevated situations, provided
the soil is fertile. It is not a poor-land tree. In the primeval forests
it attained largest size in Indiana and Illinois. The largest trees were
from 150 to 170 feet high and four to seven in diameter. Sizes varied
from that extreme down to the other extreme near the outskirts of its
range where the growth was stunted. Large quantities of very fine logs
have been cut from trunks from two to four feet in diameter, and forty
to sixty feet to the limbs.
The leaves of bur oak are from six to twelve inches long, simple and
alternate; the petioles are thick with flattened and enlarged bases; the
leaves are wedge-shaped at the base, and have from five to seven long,
irregular lobes, the terminal one very large and broad. They are dark
green in color, and are smooth and shiny above, silvery white and
pubescent below. The edge of the leaf is notched somewhat like chestnut,
but the teeth or notches are not so sharp.
The twigs are provided with corky wings, or flattened keels of bark,
along their sides. Some of the wings are an inch or more wide. They are
apt to escape notice when the tree is in leaf, but in the winter the
bare twigs look rough and ragged.
The weight of bur oak is approximately the same as white oak, and the
two woods are much the same in strength and elasticity. The bands of
summerwood are broad and dense, and the springwood is filled with large
pores. The medullary rays are broad, but not numerous in comparison with
white oak. They are sufficiently conspicuous to show well in
quarter-sawing.
Bur oak nearly always goes to market as white oak, or simply as oak, and
it is difficult to ascertain all the uses found for it. Some factories
which make furniture, finish, vehicles, and other articles that figure
in the country’s trade, attempt to identify the woods they use. That is
done as carefully in Michigan as anywhere else, though comparatively few
of the factories carry out the plan even in that state where many of the
best wood-using establishments of the country are located. In a report
issued in 1912 which gave statistics collected from more than eight
hundred Michigan factories, bur oak received separate consideration. The
uses there are doubtless representative, and will hold throughout the
country wherever bur oak is fairly abundant. It is listed as baseboards,
billiard table rims, bookcases, clay working machines, filing cabinets,
furniture, hand sleds, hay balers, interior finish, molding, tinplate
boxes, wagon sills, work benches. The amount of wood used in the state
was nearly 900,000 feet, according to the reports; but it certainly does
not include all. What it does show, however, is that bur oak is one of
the substantial woods of that region, and that it possesses properties
which fit it for many important places in the country’s industries.
Bur oak contributes to the output of cooper shops. Slack coopers class
it with many other hardwoods for the manufacture of barrels for
vegetables and various other commodities, while the makers of barrels
for liquids put bur oak in with white oak.
The future of bur oak does not promise much after the trees which now
remain have been cut. That does not mean that the species will become
extinct, for that is improbable; but when the mature trees which
developed during two or three hundred years of forest conditions have
passed away, there is not much prospect of others being left to grow to
the age and size which will make them valuable as lumber. Woodlot
owners will not wait much longer than the seventy-five or one hundred
years required to grow trees of crosstie size. Railroads pay good prices
for this wood, for it lasts well, holds spikes in a satisfactory manner,
and is strong and hard. As far as can be seen, bur oak will fare in the
future about like white oak; that is, few trees will be left standing
long enough to attain large size, because it will pay better to cut them
while comparatively small.
CALIFORNIA BLUE OAK (_Quercus douglasii_) receives its name from the
color of its foliage in spring and early summer in the valleys and
on the rolling foothills of central California. Later in the summer,
when the dry season is on, the leaves lose some of their blue, on
account of age, but more from an accumulation of dust; but even then
the form of the tree, from its habit of growing in open formation
like an old apple orchard, presents an attractive picture. It is
often associated with the valley oak, which is larger and more
stately, but the blue oak loses nothing by the contrast. It is
occasionally called rock oak, but for what reason is not clear. It
is known, too, as mountain white oak, or simply white oak, and as
blue oak. Its range covers central California from Mendocino to the
Mojave desert, and from the immediate coast inland through the
valleys to the Sierras, and upward to an altitude of 4,000 feet
where the tree degenerates into a shrub which has neither beauty nor
utility. The species reaches its best development in the Salinas
valley from twenty to sixty miles from the coast. There the largest
trees are found, and also some that have assumed peculiar forms. In
positions exposed to the never-ceasing sea winds which sweep up the
valleys, the blue oaks lie prone like logs, their tops pointing away
from the wind. They grew in that unnatural position, having been
pressed flat by the wind since they were seedlings. This oak’s ashen
gray bark harmonizes well with the dry summer grass and dull sand
and gravel which surround it during the hot period. The branches are
often covered with green-gray lichens which somewhat modify the
aspect of the tree under close inspection. The leaves are irregular
in form. Some closely resemble leaves of the eastern white oak,
while others are almost or quite without lobes. During the growing
season the acorns are deep green, but when approaching maturity they
change to a chestnut-brown. They vary in shape as much as the
leaves. Some are almost eggshaped, bulging out above the cup which
seems too small; but all of them do not assume that form, but may be
short and symmetrical, or very long and slender. Woodpeckers store
these acorns in large numbers, and they search out peculiar places
for their hoards. A knot hole in the weatherboarding of an old barn,
granary, or school house is considered ideal, though when the acorns
are so disposed of, they are out of reach of the woodpecker forever.
Another method is to peck holes just large enough for an acorn in
fence posts or dead tree trunks, and hammer the acorns tightly in,
small end first. The surfaces of dead trees are sometimes absolutely
covered with such holes, each with its acorn. The woodpecker’s
purpose is to wait until the acorns become infested with larvæ. He
has no intention of eating the acorn itself.
California blue oaks range in height from shrubs to trees of ninety
feet, with diameters of three or four feet. The average height is
about forty-five and the diameter two or less. The trunk frequently
divides a few feet from the ground into large limbs. That form
excludes the wood from sawmills, and only in rare cases does any of
it find its way there. The lumber is of poor quality, brittle,
black, and otherwise defective. The sapwood is white and thick. A
cubic foot weighs 55.64 pounds, or nearly ten more than eastern
white oak. It is weak, and is low in elasticity. The annual rings
are often nearly invisible, because the pores are scattered evenly
and do not form bands. The medullary rays are broad, in the heart
black, in the sapwood white. If the wood were otherwise suitable,
pleasing effects might be produced by quarter-sawing, but as far as
known, no attempts have been made to do this. Now and then a
suitable log might be found. The importance of this oak lies in its
fuel value. It rates above white oak in theoretical tests, but it is
heavier in ash, and in practice it hardly measures up to white oak.
It grows slowly and is destined to disappear as a source of fuel
supply. Reproduction has nearly ceased in most parts of its range,
due largely to the perseverance of hogs in eating the acorns.
Cordwood cutters have stripped the last tree from large areas where
much once grew. This oak never forms forests. The trees seldom grow
as close together as apple trees in an orchard.
GAMBEL OAK (_Quercus gambelii_) was destined by nature to occupy an
inferior place in the country’s timber resources. It occupies a
region of stunted vegetation among the dry mountains and plateaus of
the Southwest, and except where it grows in better situations than
usual, it is too small to be properly called a tree. It is at its
best among the mountains of southeastern Arizona where it grows in
canyons that can maintain a little damp soil. There it occasionally
reaches a height of thirty feet and a diameter of a foot or less. In
most other parts of its range it is simply a tangled, sprawling
thicket of brush, covering the dry, rocky mountain ridges, and along
the bases of cliffs. It is found from Colorado to western Texas, and
westward into Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. The leaves are small,
thick, firm, and hairy, typical of desert foliage which must husband
the scant water supply. The acorns are pretty large for a tree so
stunted, and they are tempting bait for birds and rodents of the
region. The acorns are sweet. If this oak’s reproduction depended on
acorns alone it is doubtful if it would hold its ground in the face
of perpetual adversity; but its roots send up distorted and stunted
sprouts which cover the ground, affording hiding places for the few
acorns which escape their hungry enemies. Man puts this oak to few
uses. It affords a pretty good class of fuel for camp fires, but
cordwood cutters cannot make much out of it. In rare instances
frontier ranches use a few of the unshapely poles for corral fences,
but only as a case of last resort. The names bestowed upon the tree
by those who know it best are uncomplimentary. They call it shin
oak, pin oak, scrub oak, mountain oak, and Rocky Mountain oak.
[Illustration]
FORKED-LEAF WHITE OAK
[Illustration: FORKED-LEAF WHITE OAK]
FORKED-LEAF WHITE OAK
(_Quercus Lyrata_)
The leaf gives this tree its name in the best part of its southern
range. The tree bears much resemblance to the bur oak on the one hand,
and swamp white oak on the other. The names by which it is known in
different regions indicate as much.
In North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi,
Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Illinois it is commonly known as
overcup; in Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and
Missouri it is called the swamp post oak; the name water white oak is
applied to it in Mississippi and parts of South Carolina; swamp white
oak in Texas; forked-leaf white oak among lumbermen in several of the
southern states. The last name scarcely describes the leaf, for no one
is apt to notice any fork, unless his attention is called to it. The
fact is, the name forked-leaf oak is applied oftener to the turkey oak
(_Quercus catesbæi_) than to this one. However, since the ranges of the
two species are not the same, misunderstandings in practice are not apt
to arise as to which is meant when the forked leaf is referred to. The
fact that turkey oak belongs in the black oak group, ripening its acorns
in two years, and this one is a white oak with one year acorns, is of
further assistance in keeping the species separate.
The range of the forked-leaf white oak is from Maryland, along the
Potomac river near the District of Columbia, southward to parts of
Florida; westward through the Gulf states to the Trinity river in Texas;
throughout Arkansas, sections of Missouri, central Tennessee, southern
Illinois and Indiana.
It shows preference for river swamps, and small deep depressions in rich
bottom lands where moisture is always abundant. It has never amounted to
much in the Atlantic states, and its best development is found in the
moist, fertile valley of Red river in Louisiana, and in certain parts of
Arkansas and Texas. Its geographical range is pretty large, but as a
timber tree it is confined to a comparatively restricted region west of
the Mississippi. Good trees are found in other parts of its range.
Lumbermen do not find it in extensive forests or pure stands, but
isolated trees or small groups occur with other hardwoods.
This species of oak grows occasionally to a height of 100 feet, though
its average is about seventy feet. It has a trunk two to three feet in
diameter, which spreads out after attaining a height of fifteen or
twenty feet, into small, often pendulous branches, forming a symmetrical
round top. The branchlets are green, slightly tinged with red; covered
with short hairs when first appearing, becoming grayish and shiny during
their first winter, eventually turning ashen gray or brown.
The bark is three-quarters or one inch thick, light gray in color,
shedding in thick plates, its surface being divided into thin scales.
The winter buds are about one-eighth of an inch long and have light
colored scales. The staminate flowers grow in long, slender, hairy
spikes from four to six inches long; the calyx is light yellow and
hairy. The pistillate flowers are stalked and are also covered with
hairs.
The fruit of forked-leaf white oak is often on slender, fuzzy stems,
sometimes an inch or more in length, but is often closely attached to
the twig that bears it; the acorn is about one inch long, broad at the
base, light brown and covered with short, light hairs, and usually
almost entirely enclosed in the deep, spherical cup, which is bright
reddish-brown on its inside surface, and covered on the outside with
scales; thickened at the base, becoming thinner and forming an irregular
edge at the margin of the cup. The cup often almost completely envelopes
the acorn. The fruit then looks somewhat like a rough, nearly spherical
button.