ON THE BRITISH OAK.
Whilst the discussion is still pending, of iron against wooden bulwarks,
if only for the love we feel towards the “brave old oak,” a few notes
upon the forms of this truly national tree can hardly fail to be
acceptable. At starting, however, we must bear in mind, that though we
have ever looked upon the oak as so thoroughly British that we had
almost been brought to think that it was made for the sole glory of our
land, yet there are those who would wish to cast a doubt upon its true
aboriginal nature, and who, according to their custom, represent
everything great as borrowed from the Continent. What says, however,
that pleasant discourser on forest trees, Jacob George Strutt, of
imperishable sylvan fame:—“In proportion as the oak is valued above all
other trees, so is the English oak esteemed above that of any other
country, for its particular characteristics of hardness and toughness,
qualities which so peculiarly fit it to be the ‘father of ships,’ and
which are so admirably expressed in two epithets by that great poet, to
whom the book of nature and of the human heart seemed alike laid open:—
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulph’rous bolt
Splitt’st the _unwedgeable_ and _gnarled_ oak,
Than the soft myrtle.”—SHAKESPEARE.
Selby again, in his “History of Forest Trees,” a work which should be
in the hands of all lovers of the beautiful natural objects of which it
treats, describes the finding of some bog oaks, which would almost
connect the present race with a fossilized past:—
At the Linden, the seat of C. W. Bigge, Esq., the trunk of a
magnificent oak was extracted from a peat moss that fills a small
basin or hollow, evidently produced by the stagnation of a stream,
which now passes through it, and which, at some distant period, had
been dammed back by the fall of the trees upon its margins. This
oak was covered by a layer of the peat to the depth of about three
feet, and was discovered by probing the moss. The trunk, with a
small portion of one of the larger limbs, was with great labour and
difficulty dragged from its miry bed. The contents of the portion
recovered contained 545 cubic feet, although the whole of the
sap-wood had perished. The timber was perfectly sound, and the
tree, by whatever accident it had been overthrown, had fallen in
the vigour of its growth. When sawn up, the interior planks were
found of a deep rich brown colour; those nearer the exterior
darker, or approaching to black. A variety of elegant furniture has
been made from the wood; but it has been found necessary, for fine
cabinet-work, to have it cut into veneers, for, when worked in
bulk, it is apt to crack and become warped. Remains of other huge
oaks have also been met with on the banks of the Tyne, the Alne,
and other rivers, as well as in various bogs and morasses; and we
mention these instances to show that in a district where, at the
present day, nothing but recently-planted oak or dwarfish timber
from stock-shoots exists, in former times the monarch of the forest
grew luxuriantly, and attained a splendid development; and also as
an inducement to the planter not to neglect the liberal insertion
of this national tree wherever soil and situation are found
congenial to its growth. In other parts of England, the oak still
grows in all its native magnificence of form and dimensions, and
the remains of those ancient forests, which are chronicled by our
earliest writers, and which, in the time of our Saxon ancestors,
spread over the greater portion of the country, are still to be
traced in the venerable but living relics of enormous oaks, many of
which are supposed to number more than a thousand years.
Not to neglect to plant the national tree! We hope indeed that there is
no possessor of broad acres who does not esteem it a duty, regardless of
profit, to provide for a succession of forest kings, if only to beautify
the face of the country, and to leave the people of the present, some
grand living object to connect them with the history of the past. In
fact, planting of the “British oak” has not only been considered a duty,
but followed out with the keenest pleasure by the country gentleman. In
so doing, the question has scarcely until lately occurred, is the
British oak always the same? or, are there not different species, or at
least varieties of the genus _quercus_ which have been confounded by the
planter? To this question we now propose to address our inquiries.
On referring to different authors, we shall find mention of the
following names as applied to the British oak:—
1. Quercus robur, _Linn_.
2. „ sessiliflora, _Salisbury_.
3. „ intermedia, _Don_.
This method of nomenclature would, however, be only tenable on the
supposition that we considered the trees so named _specifically_
distinct; but as we incline to believe them to be only varieties—though
highly important as such—we intend to treat of them as follows:—
1st. QUERCUS ROBUR PEDUNCULATA.
2nd. „ „ SESSILIFLORA.
3rd. „ „ INTERMEDIA.
[Illustration: Plate II.
J. E. Sowerby, sc.
W. West, imp.
Quercus Robur Sessiliflora.]
1st. _Quercus Robur pedunculata_ is readily distinguished in trees
separate from others by its robust habits, thick, gnarled, twisted, and
more or less horizontally inclined branches. The leaves have
comparatively few broad, wavy indentations, and are set on a short
leaf-stalk (petiole) (Plate I. fig. _a_), the fruit being situate on
long footstalks (peduncles), varying from two to upwards of four inches
(fig. _b_).
This is the typical British oak, the pride of our sailors, when men
fought bravely and did not care to vie with each other as to who should
make the most secure skulking-places. The tree—
Whose roots descend
As low towards Pluto’s realms, as high in air
Its massive branches rise. The utmost rage
Of wintry storms howls o’er its strength in vain.
Successive generations of mankind,
Revolving ages flourish and decay,
Yet still immovable it stands, and throws
Its vigorous limbs around, and proudly bears
With firm and solid trunk its stately form,
A mighty canopy of thickest shade.
VIRGIL, _Georg._ ii. 291.
This is the tree that seems to be longer lived than any other in
Britain, and though it would appear to be the prey of nearly, if not
quite, two hundred species of insects, it has still had vigour of
constitution to survive them all; and in many instances we might point
to brave old trees which must have been veterans at the time of the
Norman Conquest. Now, however, they are old and staggy, with hollow
trunks truly—but what trunks!—from forty to fifty feet in circumference,
presenting the following picture to us as it did to Spenser:—
There grew an aged tree on the green,
A goodly oak some time had it been,
With arms full long, and largely displayed,
But of their leaves they were disarrayed;
The body big, and mightily pight,
Thoroughly rooted, and of wond’rous height:
Whilom had been the king of the field,
And mockel mast to the husband did yield;
And with his nuts larded many a swine,
But now the grey moss marred his rine;
His bared boughs were beaten with storms,
His top was bald and wasted with worms,
His honour decay’d, his branches sere.
_Shepherd’s Calendar._
This, indeed, is a melancholy sight, like the Stag’s Horn Oak by the
roadside between Farnham and Woolmer, in the ancient boundary of Alice
Holt Forest; yet this has a young tree growing by its side, perhaps one
of his own children, which gracefully conceals much of his gaunt
nakedness. In the same forest are many old staggy trees, their contorted
horn-like branches sticking out in a most picturesque manner from the
top and sides of a still leafy head. In these the white owls may yet be
seen peering out of dark cavernous hollows as they did in Gilbert
White’s day; and during the summer of 1861 we with pleasure watched
their motions, which so minutely agreed with those described by the
father of observing naturalists, that we cannot forbear quoting his
remarks thereon in his “Natural History of Selborne,” a not very distant
parish from the Holt, and to which he indeed often refers:—
As I have paid particular attention to the manner of life of these
birds (the White Owl), during their season of breeding, which lasts
the summer through, the following remarks may not be unacceptable.
About an hour before sunset (for then the mice begin to run), they
sally forth in quest of prey, and hunt all round the hedges of
meadows and small enclosures for them, which seem to be their only
food. In this irregular country we can stand on an eminence and see
them beat the fields over like a setting-dog, and often drop down
in the grass or corn. I have minuted these birds with my watch for
an hour together, and have found that they return to their nest,
the one or the other of them, about once in five minutes;
reflecting at the same time on the adroitness that every animal is
possessed of as far as regards the well-being of itself and
offspring.
Notwithstanding the good done by these birds in keeping under mice, all
our eloquence could scarcely preserve them from the onslaught of the
keeper; they were, however, protected during our pleasant sojourn at the
Holt; but we much fear only, after all, to gratify the taste for stuffed
birds, a _love_ which is equally fatal to the feathered race (and
especially the finest examples thereof) as the _hate_ of the keeper.
But we are digressing sadly, and must return to _Quercus Robur
pedunculata_, and complete our observations thereon with the statement
that most, if not all, the nobler examples of oaks in England belong to
this form. Selby directs attention to the “Flitton Oak, in Devonshire,
of the _Sessiliflora_ variety, supposed to be one thousand years old,
and which is thirty-three feet in circumference at one foot from the
ground.” However, nearly every historical oak is of the pedunculate
variety. In the Holt forest are still left some huge examples; the same
in the Dean forest; and Braydon, near Swindon, Wilts, though
disafforested, can yet show noble trees of this form. Indeed, throughout
England it is difficult to meet with many examples of any other form,
except in Wyre forest, Worcestershire, where the tree next to be
described is perhaps the more general, and it would also appear that in
the New Forest the _Q. sessiliflora_ is also frequently met with.
_Quercus Robur sessiliflora_ may be generally described as of a more
upright and formal habit. Limbs straighter and less gnarled. Bark
usually smoother than the former. The leaf has many sinuosities, and is
set on a comparatively long leaf-stalk (petiole) (Plate II. fig. _a_).
The fruit, on the contrary, is so nearly sessile that it may be said to
have little more than the indication of a peduncle (fig. _b_).
We have already stated our opinion that the sessile-fruited oak does not
usually attain the huge dimensions of the pedunculate form; but on the
other hand we incline to the belief that it grows more rapidly, and is
best adapted for a lighter soil than the latter. There are conditions
which might to a greater or less extent affect the quality of its
timber, but we do not think that there is much difference in this
respect. We believe that their wood has been used indifferently, and the
quality is influenced by surrounding circumstances. Selby, in his
“History of Forest Trees,” states on this head:—“The result, perhaps, of
some original constitutional defect, or arising from the nature of the
soil, situation, or other local peculiarities of the ground upon which
the timber has been raised; such at least is the result of our own
experience, as we have met with oak of the _peduncled_ kind, its timber
possessing all the inferior qualities attributed to, and supposed to be
possessed exclusively by, _Q. sessiliflora_.” The longer, straighter
spars of the Sessiliflora, in days when oak was so uniformly used for
roofs, seem to have pointed out this variety for roof-timbering; and
hence some of the finest ancient timbered roofs of this country have
been ascertained to have been formed from its wood. With respect to
these the opinion long prevailed that they were formed of the wood of
the Spanish chestnut. This, however, is but a poor timber tree, as, long
before it could afford so large a scantling as would be required by the
roof of the Parliament House at Edinburgh or of Westminster Abbey (both
of which were supposed to be of chestnut), the chestnut would begin to
decay at the heart; in fact, just at the period when the heart-wood of
oak begins to harden, that of the chestnut would appear to deteriorate.
_Quercus Robur intermedia_, having a petiole intermediate in length
between the other two varieties described, and a peduncle varying from a
quarter to one inch in length, may with propriety be deemed a variety
intermediate between “Sessiliflora” and “Pedunculata,” and a comparison
of the three will substantiate its claim to this title.
As a tree it is impossible to make out any specific character from its
mode of growth, and, indeed, without the fruit, it is extremely
difficult even to distinguish it as a variety.
It occurs—only occasionally—in the Cotteswold district, and we suppose
the same elsewhere. One meets with it here and there in the hedge-rows,
and in Oakley Park, the seat of Earl Bathurst, we can point out a few
specimens.
[Illustration: Galls of the _Cynips Quercus petiolata_.
(Natural size.)]
Passing from the subject of the varieties of our British oak, it now
remains to mention a most formidable enemy by which it has of late years
been attacked, and so exclusively, that in plantations where may be
found the American oaks, the Ilex oak, and Turkey oak trees, it has been
the only one subjected to the operations of the new gall pest. It has
long been known that our native oaks were subject to excrescences of
different forms and sizes, such, for example, as oak-apples, oakleaf
galls, oak spangles, &c., all of which were ascertained to be caused by
several species of _cynips_; but lately we have to lament the
introduction of a new species of the same insect, forming a new kind of
gall, which, instead of attacking the backs of the leaves, as does the
oakleaf gall, occupies the stem that belongs to the leaf; in fact, the
attacked leaves seem to be converted into bunches of galls, as
represented in the adjoining figure, which presents an illustration of
the new pest. They are hard galls, more or less like the “nut-gall” from
Aleppo, of which ink is made, and it will be seen that the little twig
supports no less than five galls, in the interior of each of which may
be found the maggot or _larva_ of an insect; and, as this is affected at
the expense of the buds and leaves, the mode of injury must be obvious,
as the new twigs which would have been formed, had there been no galls,
would in their turn have produced branches and leaves. Trees thus
infested are crippled as though they had been subjected to constant
pruning.
As much of the natural history of the _cynips_, by which these gall-nuts
are formed, as is necessary for our purpose, may be gathered from a
paper by Mr. Parfitt, who seems to have well studied the gall insect in
Devon, its head-quarters. We quote it from the Journal of the Bath and
West of England Agricultural Society for 1861:—
The eggs deposited by the females in the oak buds in September
remain there in a state of apparent quiescence till the following
spring; then, as soon as the sap begins to flow, the irritant
injected into the wound at the same time the _egg_ was deposited,
or possibly the combined action of the egg and irritant, causes the
sap to diverge; that portion of the bud which should have formed a
young shoot is converted into a spherical ball; the outer scales of
the bud fall away, and it is the woody secretion which entirely
forms the gall. The cells in the gall are not elongated and
regular, as in the young shoot, but confused and irregular; and in
the centre of each gall lies a young grub of the _cynips_, forming
a living nucleus, around which is deposited a thin, hard, woody
envelope, much more compact in substance than the sponge-like
tissue which fills up the interstice between it and the shining
outer coat of the gall. This compactness of structure is a
necessary and all-wise provision of nature for protecting the
delicate insect which lies within from destruction; for if the gall
were composed entirely of large spongy cells, the rapid flow of sap
in the early spring would be more than the creature could consume,
and it would consequently be drowned. I am aware that some
naturalists incline to the opinion that the _larvæ_ of the _cynips_
feed on the gall. From this view, however, I venture to dissent;
for not only is it inconsistent with the structure of the
creature’s mouth, and the position in which the young _larvæ_ are
invariably found, with the head tucked under the apex of the
abdomen, but if they fed on the substance or crude material of the
gall, the undigested parts would certainly be found in the
interior of its cell: in other words, the excrement would be there,
for there is no outlet, and the lacteals or absorbent vessels of
the gall could not take it up. I therefore think that the creature
feeds entirely on the sap of the tree—an elaborate food fit for it
without the need of mastication. This explains how it happens that
the galls of commerce, with the insects in them, are so much better
and dearer than those from which the _cynips_ has escaped; in a
word, the tannic acid is more abundant.
It has been before observed, that there are two broods of the
insect in a season; thus, those which do not emerge from the gall
in September remain on till the following April or May. This is a
wise provision of nature for continuing the species, should
anything befall the autumn brood; and it is the more deserving of
notice, because the gall-producing _cynips_ has a deadly enemy
which accompanies or follows it in its flight from bud to bud, and
deposits an egg wherever it finds the egg of the _cynips_. Here, as
soon as the _cynips_ larva is hatched, the larva of the parasite is
hatched also; forthwith the latter proceeds to eat a hole in the
skin of the rightful occupant of the nidus, and the two larvæ go on
growing together till the _cynips_ is ready to assume the pupal
state; then the parasite cuts the vital thread of the _cynips_, and
uses its skin for a pupal envelope for itself; and thus, instead of
the gall-fly emerging into day, a beautiful green insect makes its
appearance on the stage of life. I had the pleasure of first
discovering this parasite while engaged in studying the _cynips_;
it belongs to the genus _Callimone_, and from the fact of having
discovered it in Devonshire, I gave it the name of _Callimone
Devoniensis_. It is one of the handsomest of our British insects;
its costume a brilliant green, shot with gold; the abdominal
segments green, gold, and purple; legs yellow; tarsi reddish; and
it has four beautiful transparent and iridescent wings.
It has been stated that oak-galls are produced at the expense of
acorns. From this view my experience leads me to dissent. In
exceptional instances it may have been the case; but as a rule the
_cynips_ confines its attacks to young trees and young growths in
hedges, within a range of ten or twelve feet from the ground, and
the nearer the ground the more numerous the galls. Young trees
which have not attained a greater height than that I have indicated
suffer so much that many of them can scarcely make headway against
their foe; and in several nurseries I have visited, where it might
be expected that greater care would be paid than in the case of
ordinary plantations, the young stock of oaks has been rendered
quite unsaleable by the pest. This year I have noticed the progress
of the insect on two groups of young English and Turkey oaks
growing side by side; and although there are hundreds of galls on
the English oaks, there are none on the Turkey oaks. From this I am
led to infer that the species of _cynips_ now under notice is
confined in its depredations to the English oak; and as it
invariably selects trees of younger or restricted growth—probably
because the temperature at a higher elevation than ten or twelve
feet from the earth is unfavourable to it—it would seem that
children might be advantageously employed in young plantations in
collecting the galls by means of cutting-hooks, such as are used
for thistles. The galls, when once collected, might either be
crushed for tanning purposes, or consumed by fire, and if the
process were repeated for two or three seasons, it is more than
probable that the plantation would be altogether free from the
pest.
These able remarks not only well describe the nature of the attack, but
also point to a cure—a matter to which we would direct the most serious
attention of the planter; for we may state that, in 1853, we saw some
very small oak trees, in the neighbourhood of Dawlish, Devon, from which
some hundreds of these galls might have been gathered. This was the
first time we had noticed this pest, though it appears that it had been
under Mr. Parfitt’s notice as long as a dozen years. Since then (1853)
we have traced it in its progress as follows:—
Having observed the galls in Devon in 1853, we were yearly on the
look-out in the Midland and Eastern counties for its appearance, and the
following dates will show that its spread, though gradual, was
sufficiently rapid:—
The galls were gathered in Devon in 1853
The same kind in Somerset, in 1854
In Gloucester, on the west side of the river Severn,
Forest of Dean, in 1855
In Gloucester, east side of the Severn, and as far as
Oakley Park, Cirencester, in 1856
In Worcestershire, in 1857
In North Wales, Beddgelert (pointed out to us by
John Savory, Esq.), in 1859
In Sussex, very sparingly, in 1860
In Alice Holt Forest, and far from abundant, in 1861
About Hastings, very plentifully, in 1862
We have this season observed a lot of the young galls; but last year,
for the first time, we discovered that, in many cases, the maggot had
been extracted by some small bird, one of the titmice (_Parus
cæruleus_); and, if so, wherever young oaks may be growing, it should
afford an additional reason for the protection of these useful birds.
The magnitude of the evil, unless checked by some means, may be
estimated from the fact that, in 1856, we could scarcely find half a
dozen galls within a wide district, and now all around may be found
trees, not more than 10 feet high, upon which are no less than from one
to five hundred distinct galls.
We conclude these remarks upon our native oaks with the fervent hope
that in “Merry England” it may ever be as described by dear old
Chaucer:—
A pleasant grove
* * * * *
In which were okes grete, streight as a line,
Undir the which the grass so fresh of hew
Was newly sprong, and an eight fote, or nine,
Every tree well from his fellow grew,
With branches brode, laden with levis new,
That, sprongin out agen, the sonnè shene.
Some very rede; and some a glad light grene.
_The Floure and the Leafe._