nine lobes. When the leaves unfold they are brownish green and hairy
above and below; at maturity they are thin and firm, darker green and
shiny on the upper surface, silvery or light green and hairy below; from
seven to eight inches long, one to four inches broad; in autumn turning
a beautiful bright scarlet or vivid orange.
Commercially this wood is a white oak, and it is seldom or never sent to
market under its own name. There are no statistics of cut at the mills
or of stand in the forests. Lumbermen take the tree when they come to it
in the course of their usual operations, but never go out of their way
to get it. Though rather large stands occur in certain southern regions,
and scattering trees are found in large areas, the total quantity in the
country is known to be too small to give this tree an important place as
a source of lumber. Neither is there expectation that the future has
anything in store for this particular member of the tribe of oaks. The
wood rates high in physical properties; is strong as white oak, if not
stronger, tough, stiff, hard, and heavy. In contact with the ground it
is very durable. The heartwood is rich, dark brown, the sapwood lighter.
It may be said, generally, that since it goes to market as white oak,
and its buyers never object, it possesses the essential properties of
that wood, and is used in the same way as far as it is used at all.
ARIZONA WHITE OAK (_Quercus arizonica_) is the common and most generally
distributed white oak of southern New Mexico and Arizona where it
covers the hillsides and occurs in canyons at altitudes from 5,000 to
10,000 feet above sea level. It occasionally ascends nearly or quite to
the summits of the highest peaks. The form of the tree varies greatly,
as might be expected from a range extending from one to two miles above
sea level. On the dry, windswept summits the tree degenerates into a
shrub, with stiff, harsh branches. Lower down, in canyons and in other
situations where moisture may be had and the soil is fertile, trunks are
fifty or sixty feet high and three or four in diameter; but these are
not the usual sizes even in the best of the tree’s range, for it cannot
be classed as a timber tree.
The hardships of the desert have stunted it, and its form is rough. It
is important for fuel, and this has been its chief use. The region where
it occurs is thinly settled, and demand for lumber is small, but
stockmen build corrals and fences to enclose sheep and cattle, and the
Arizona white oak supplies some of the rough poles and posts for that
purpose. The wood is heavy, hard, strong, and the heartwood is almost
black, but the sapwood is lighter. The grain and figure of the wood are
not attractive, and what little may be sawed into lumber in the future
will be rather low-grade. The branches are crooked and when cut into
cordwood the ricks are so open that it is a common saying in the region
that “you can throw a dog through.” The wood burns well, and the demand
for fuel is large, in proportion to the population of the country.
The leaves of this oak are sometimes slightly lobed, and are sometimes
nearly as smooth as willow leaves. They are light red and covered with
hair when they unfold in the spring, but when mature they are dark
green, and shiny. Acorns are one inch or less in length, and rather
slender. They are very bitter, and wild animals are inclined to let them
alone, unless pressed by hunger, and then eat them sparingly. This
insures good reproduction, provided other conditions are favorable.
Though cordwood cutters may strip the large trees from the hills and
canyons, scrub growth may be expected to continue, particularly on high
mountains, and in ravines where roads cannot be built.
NETLEAF OAK (_Quercus reticulata_) will never attract lumbermen in
this country, but sometime they may send to the Sierra Madre
mountains of Mexico to procure it. In that region it is a tree large
enough for lumber; but the portion of its range overlapping on the
United States lies in southern Arizona and New Mexico among
mountains from 7,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level. Conditions are
unfavorable and the netleaf oak shows it by its stunted size and
rough form. The wood is hard, heavy, dark brown in color, with
lighter sapwood. The medullary rays are numerous and very broad. The
tree seldom exceeds forty feet in height and one foot in diameter.
The leaf is netted somewhat like that of the elm. The acorn is
usually not more than half an inch in length.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN OAK (_Quercus undulata_) bears acorns which may be
eaten like chestnuts, and not much more may be said for the tree in
the way of usefulness to man, though it is the salvation of some of
the small mammals of the bleak Texas and New Mexico hills where
there is little to eat and few places for concealment from hawks and
other enemies. The tree is also called scrub oak and shin oak. It
grows in Colorado, New Mexico, western Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and
Utah. At its best it rarely exceeds thirty feet high and a foot in
diameter, and it often forms a jungle of shrubs through which the
traveler must wade waist deep or go miles out of his way to pass
round it. Its leaf is one of the smallest of the oaks, and is
notched much like the chestnut leaf.
ALVORD OAK (_Quercus alvordiana_) is little known and will probably
never be of much importance. It grows in the region of Tehachapi
mountains, the northern border of the Mojave desert, in California,
and was named for William Alvord of that state. The leaf is toothed,
and the acorn smooth. No record has been found of any use of the
wood, and when Sudworth compiled his book, “Forest Trees of the
Pacific Slope,” he was unable to procure enough leaves, flowers, and
fruit to enable him to give a botanical description. It may
therefore be regarded as one of the scarcest oaks in the United
States, which fact gives it a certain interest.
SADLER OAK (_Quercus sadleriana_) is one of the minor oaks of the
Pacific coast, and is popularly and properly called scrub oak by
those who encounter it on high, dry slopes of northern California
and southern Oregon mountains, from 4,000 to 9,000 feet above the
sea. It forms dense thickets, and passes for an evergreen. Its
leaves remain on the branches only thirteen months. The leaves are
toothed like those of chestnut. The acorns are matured in one
season. The name Sadler oak was given it in honor of a Scottish
botanist. Trees are too scarce and too small to have much value,
except as a ground cover.
BREWER OAK (_Quercus breweri_) grows on the west slope of the Sierra
Nevada mountains in California, from Kaweah river northward to
Trinity mountains. It is often little more than a shrub, and its
usefulness to man lies less in the quantity of wood it produces than
in the protection the dense thickets, with their network of roots,
afford steep hillsides. Gullying in time of heavy rain cannot take
place where this oak’s matted masses of roots bind the soil. Sprouts
rise freely from the roots, and thickets are reproduced in that way
rather than from acorns, although in certain years crops of acorns
are bountiful. The trunks are too small to make any kind of lumber,
but are capable of supplying considerable quantities of fuel.
[Illustration]
POST OAK
[Illustration: POST OAK]
POST OAK
(_Quercus Minor_)
Post oak is the most common name for this tree but various sections of
its range have given it their own names which probably have local
significance. The following names are in use in the localities denoted:
post oak in the eastern and Gulf states, Connecticut to Texas, and in
Arkansas and West Virginia; box white oak in Rhode Island; iron oak in
Delaware, Mississippi and Nebraska; chêne étoile in Quebec; overcup oak
in Florida; white oak in Kentucky and Indiana; box oak and brash oak in
Maryland.
Toward the northern portion of the range of this tree it is small, and
in early times it was little used except for fence posts. Its durability
fitted it for that use, and it is said the common name was due to that
circumstance. The name iron oak was used by shipbuilders who sometimes
bought small knees made of this wood. Baltimore oak was an early name
which is not now in use. It was generally applied to white oak, but it
included some post oak shipped from the Chesapeake bay region.
Post oak is botanically and commercially a white oak and is seldom
distinguished from the true white oak, _Quercus alba_, in commerce. It
is seen at its best in the uplands of the Mississippi basin and in the
Gulf states west of the Mississippi, where it attains a considerable
size. In the northeastern states and in Florida it is small, becoming
shrubby in some localities, and more or less of local growth. Limestone
uplands or dry, sandy or gravelly soils seem to offer the best
conditions for its existence, where it grows in company with black jack,
red and white oak, sassafras, dogwood, gums, and red cedar.
The range of growth of post oak extends from New Brunswick south through
the Atlantic states into Florida; west through the Gulf states and
throughout the Mississippi river system, growing west brokenly to
Montana. It is the common oak of central Texas but in the North it is
rather scarce, becoming more plentiful in the lower Appalachians.
The broad, dense, round-topped crown of the post oak with its peculiar
foliage make it very noticeable in the woods, even to the casual
observer. Its dark green looks almost black at a distance. The tree has
an average height of sixty or eighty feet and is about two feet in
diameter, but in exceptional cases it reaches one hundred feet in height
and has a diameter of three feet. It has a moderately thick, dark brown
bark with a reddish tinge and deep fissures, the broad ridges being
covered with thin scales. On the branches it becomes much thinner, and
lighter in color, the branchlets being unfissured and glabrous in the
second year, although fuzzy at first. They are rather heavy and rounded
and terminate in short round buds with conspicuous scales. A noticeable
feature of the tree is the peculiar branching. The limbs are heavy and
crooked, separating often, with wide angles, forming knees which when
big enough, have a commercial value.
When the tree is in foliage the tufted appearance of the leaves grouped
on the ends of the twigs gives it a distinctive look. They bear some
resemblance to a star, and for that reason some botanists have named the
species _stellata_. The leaves are five or seven inches long usually,
but in some cases, especially on young specimens, they are ten or more
inches long. They are dark, shiny-green and on a short petiole, the
veins and midrib being heavy and conspicuous. The identification of
these leaves is easy as they are heavy in texture, are bilaterally
developed with a large, obtuse lobe on each side about in the middle,
giving them a maltese cross effect. They are very persistent, staying on
the tree until the new leaves push them off in the spring.
The form of post oak is not ideal from the lumberman’s viewpoint. The
tree does not prune itself well. Straggling limbs adhere to the trunk
and prevent the clean bole which often makes white oak so attractive.
The wood weighs 52.14 pounds per cubic foot. The name iron oak referred
to the weight as well as the strength of the wood. It is rather
difficult to season, and is inclined to check badly. The medullary rays
are broad and numerous, and checking is apt to develop along the rays.
The summerwood occupies about half of the annual ring, and is dense and
dark colored. Large pores are abundant in the springwood, and smaller
ones in the summerwood.
Formerly this tree was known in some sections as turkey oak, though the
name is no longer heard, but is now applied to another oak in the South.
The acorns are small enough to be eaten by turkeys, and when those game
birds were wild in the woods they frequented parts of the forests where
post oaks grew, and hunters knew where to find them. The uses of post
oak for building and manufacturing purposes are the same as for white
oak as far as they go, but post oak is not so extensively employed.
The earliest railroads in America were built in the region where post
oak of excellent quality grew, and it saw service from the first as
crossties, and car and bridge timbers. It is still used for those
purposes. Its other important uses are as furniture material, both as
solid stock and veneer; interior finish and fixtures for offices, banks,
and stores; musical instruments, including frames, braces, and veneers;
baskets, crates, and shipping boxes; vehicles, particularly tongues,
axles, and hounds of heavy wagons; flooring, stair work, balusters.
Post oak will do well on land too gravelly and thin to sustain good
white oak growth. To that extent the two species are not competitors for
ground, and post oak is assured a place in future woodlots, but it
cannot be expected ever to equal white oak in commercial importance,
while as an ornamental tree it is not usually favored because the shape
of its crown is not altogether pleasing. Its very dark foliage, however,
is admired by many and gives the tree an individuality.
SWAMP WHITE OAK (_Quercus platanoides_). This tree’s botanical name
means “broadleaf oak,” and that is a good description as far as it goes,
but it does not apply solely to this species. The characteristic which
fixes it best in the minds of most people is its preference for low, wet
soil. Its two common names are swamp oak and swamp white oak, yet it is
not really a swamp tree, such as the northern white cedar, southern
white cedar, cypress, and tupelo are. It does not associate with any of
those trees. It prefers river banks, and does not object to a good deal
of water about its roots, though it grows nicely in situations out of
reach of all overflow, and often side by side with silver maple,
hickory, ash, and several other oaks. The leaf resembles that of
chestnut oak, and the bark is somewhat like chestnut oak, but the wood
passes in market for white oak, and is a good substitute for it, though
the resemblance is not so close that one need be mistaken for the other.
The tree averages about seventy feet high with a diameter of two feet,
but much larger trunks are common. The famous “Wadsworth oak,” which
stood on the bank of the Genesee river in western New York, about a mile
from the village of Geneseo, was a swamp white oak. It had a trunk
diameter of nine feet, but it was not tall in proportion. It met its
overthrow by the undermining of the river bank in time of flood. That is
a common fate for this tree, because of its preference for river banks.
Its range is from Maine to Wisconsin and Iowa. It follows the mountains
to northern Georgia; and west of the Mississippi it grows as far south
as Arkansas. The species is best developed in western New York,
northwestern Pennsylvania, and along the southern shores of Lakes Erie
and Michigan.
Trees do not clear themselves of branches on their lower trunks very
early in life, and lumber more or less knotty results. It is possible,
however, to cut a fairly large proportion of clear boards. The wood is
of about the same weight as white oak, and is hard, strong, and tough.
Its color is light brown, and the thin sapwood is hardly distinguishable
from the heart. The medullary rays are as large as those of white oak,
but are few. For that reason, swamp white oak does not give very
satisfactory results when quarter-sawed. The bright patches are too
scarce. Neither does it show as many of these rays as chestnut oak. The
wood is very porous, but the large pores are confined to the springwood,
while the broad bands of summerwood are dense. The contrast between the
two parts of annual rings forms a strong, but not particularly handsome
figure when the lumber is sawed tangentially--that is, from the side of
the log. The wood finisher can improve this oak’s natural appearance by
employing fillers and stains to lighten shades or deepen tints. The uses
of this oak are numerous. It is excellent fuel, and is rather low in
ash; it is weaker and more brittle than white oak; but it is quite
satisfactory for railroad ties, car building, house finish, furniture,
some parts of heavy vehicles, certain kinds of cooperage, and for farm
implements.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN BLUE OAK (_Quercus oblongifolia_) is named from the
blue color of its foliage, though what little lumber is cut from it,
is bought and sold as white oak. It is of little importance, yet in
the almost timberless mountains of western Texas it supplies some of
the urgent wants of a scattered population. It bears willow-like
leaves one or two inches long, and less than an inch wide; but on
vigorous shoots they are larger. The acorns are very small. Trees
seldom exceed thirty feet in height, and a diameter of twenty
inches; and often the trunk is divided near the ground in three or
four stout, crooked forks. Ordinarily, it is an impossible tree to
lumber, but sometimes a few logs find their way to sawmills and a
little passable lumber is produced. The wood weighs 58 pounds per
cubic foot. It is strong, but when it breaks, it snaps short. The
heartwood is darker than in most oaks, and the sapwood is brown. The
tree is useful for fuel. Charcoal for local blacksmith shops is
manufactured from the wood. It is abundant on many of the sterile
slopes and mesas of New Mexico and Arizona, but usually in the form
of brush about the heads of canyons.
[Illustration]
COW OAK
[Illustration: COW OAK]
COW OAK
(_Quercus Michauxii_)
This oak’s acorns are remarkably free from the bitterness due to tannin
and are therefore pleasant to the taste. Herbivorous animals eat them
when they are to be had, and the eagerness with which cattle gather them
in the fall is doubtless the reason for calling the tree cow oak. Hogs
and sheep are as eager hunters for the acorns as cattle are, and the
half-wild swine in the southern forests become marketable during the two
months of the acorn season. Children know the excellency of the cow oak
acorns, and gather them in large quantities during the early weeks of
autumn in the South. The tree is widely known as basket oak, and the
name refers to a prevailing use for the wood in early times, and a
rather common use yet. Long before anyone had made a study of the
structure of this wood, it was learned that it splits nicely into long,
slender bands, and these were employed by basket weavers for all sorts
of wares in that line. Tens of thousands of baskets were in use before
the war in the southern cottonfields, and they have not gone out of use
there yet. It is safe to say that millions of dollars worth of cotton
has been picked and “toted” in baskets made of this oak. It was natural,
therefore, that the name basket oak should be given it. Large, coarse
baskets are still made of splits of this wood, and china and other
merchandise are packed in them; while baskets of finer pattern and
workmanship are doing service about the farms and homes of thousands of
people.
When the structure of wood became a subject of study among
dendrologists, the secret of the cow oak’s adaptability to basket making
was discovered. The annual rings of growth are broad, and the bands of
springwood and summerwood are distinct. The springwood is so perforated
with large pores that it contains comparatively little real wood
substance. The early basket maker did not notice that but he found by
experimenting that the wood split along the rings of growth into fine
ribbons. The splitting occurs along the springwood. Ribbons may be
pulled off as thin as the rings of annual growth, that is, from an
eighth to a sixteenth of an inch thick. These are the “splits” of which
baskets are made. When subjected to rough usage, such as being dragged
and hauled about cornfields and cotton plantations, such a basket will
outlast two or three of willow.
The tree is sometimes called swamp white oak, and swamp chestnut oak. It
bears some resemblance to the swamp white oak (_Quercus platanoides_)
and some people believe that both are of one species, but of slightly
different forms. It is not surprising that there should be a conflict of
names and confusion in identification. The leaf resembles that of the
chestnut oak, and to that fact is due the belief which some hold that
the chief difference between the trees is that the chestnut oak
(_Quercus prinus_) grows on dry land and cow oak in damp situations.
Botanists make a clear distinction between cow oak and all other
species, though it closely resembles some of them in several
particulars.
From the northern limits of its growth in Delaware, where it is not of
any considerable size, it extends south through the Atlantic states and
into Florida, west in the Gulf states to the Trinity river in Texas, and
up the Mississippi valley, including in its range Arkansas, eastern
Missouri, southern Indiana and Illinois and western Kentucky and
Tennessee. It is distinctly of the South and may be considered the best
southern representative of the white oak group. It does best in swampy
localities where it is found in company with water hickory, sweet
magnolia, planer tree, water oak, willow oak, red maple, and red and
black gum.
In general appearance the tree gives the impression of massiveness and
strength, offset by the delicate, silvery effect of the bark and the
lining of the foliage. The usual height is sixty or eighty feet, but it
often exceeds a hundred feet, the bole attaining a diameter of as high
as seven feet and showing three log lengths clear. The characteristic
light gray, scaly, white oak bark covers trunk and heavy limbs, which
rise at narrow angles, forming a rounded head and dividing into stout
branches and twigs. The winter buds are not characteristic of white oak,
being long and pointed rather than rounded. They are about a half inch
in length, scaly, with red hairs and usually in threes on the ends of
the twigs. The general texture of the leaves is thick and heavy, their
upper surfaces being dark, lustrous green and the lower white and
covered with hairs. They are from five to seven inches long with
petioles an inch in length and of the general outline of the chestnut
leaf. Their rich crimson color is conspicuous in the fall after turning.
The wood of cow oak is hard, heavy, very tough, strong, and durable. The
heartwood is light brown, the sapwood darker colored. It weighs 50.10
pounds per cubic foot, and is not quite up to white oak in strength and
elasticity. In quarter-sawing it does not equal white oak, because the
medullary rays, though broad, are not regularly distributed, and the
surface of the quarter-sawed board has a splotchy appearance, and it is
not as easy to match figures as with white oak.
Cow oak is one of the most important hardwoods of the South. Its uses
are much the same as those for white oak farther north. The custom of
calling it white oak when it goes to market renders the collection of
statistics of uses difficult. Sawmills seldom or never list cow oak in
making reports of cut. Factories which further manufacture lumber, after
it leaves the mill, sometimes distinguish between cow oak and other
oaks. It has been found suitable material in the South for canthook
handles where it takes the place of hickory which is more expensive. It
is reported for that use in considerable quantity in Louisiana. The
handles are subjected to great strain and violent shocks. The billets
are split to the proper size, because if they are sawed they are liable
to contain cross grain which is a fatal defect. The wood is cut in
dimensions for chair stock and furniture, the better grades usually
going to furniture factories. Defective logs, short lengths, and odds
and ends may be worked into chair stock which contains a large
proportion of small pieces. The making of large plantation baskets of
this wood is still a fairly large business in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Braided bottoms of cheap chairs are of the same workmanship as baskets.
Vehicle makers in the South are large users of this wood. It is employed
in heavy wagons chiefly, and is worked into many parts, including axles,
bolsters, felloes, hubs, hounds, tongues, reaches, spokes, and
bedbottoms.