Part 25

This tree’s range extends from northern New York, along Lake Champlain and the Hudson river westward through southern Ontario, and southward into parts of Nebraska and Kansas; on its eastern boundary it extends as far south as the District of Columbia and along the upper Potomac; the growth west of the Alleghany mountains reaches into central Alabama and Mississippi, through Arkansas and the northern portion of Louisiana to the eastern part of Oklahoma and parts of Texas even to the canyons of the Guadalupe mountains, in the extreme western part of that state. It is a timber tree of much importance in Texas, and in 1910 manufacturers reported the use of 1,152,000 feet in that state, largely for making furniture and vegetable crates.

The chinquapin oak is named from the form of its leaf. Its acorn bears no resemblance to the nut of chinquapin. Trees average smaller in size than white oak, but when all circumstances are favorable they compare well with any of the other oaks. In the lower Wabash valley, trees of this species were found in the original forests 160 feet high and four or five in diameter. When it grows in crowded stands it develops a tall, symmetrical trunk, clear of limbs; but it is shorter in open growth. The base is often much buttressed.

The wood is very heavy, hard, strong, stiff, and durable. In color the heartwood is dark, the sapwood lighter. The springwood is narrow and filled with large pores, the summerwood broad and dense. Medullary rays are less numerous and scarcely as broad as in chestnut oak, which this wood resembles. It checks badly in drying, both by kiln and in the open air; but when properly seasoned it is an excellent wood for most purposes for which white oak is used. It shows fewer figures when quarter-sawed than white oak shows, but it is satisfactory for many kinds of furniture, particularly when finished in mission style.

Railroads throughout the region where this species is found have laid chinquapin oak ties in their tracks for many years and they give long service, because they resist decay and are hard enough to stand the wear of the rails. In early times in the Ohio valley it helped to fence many a farm when the material for such fences was the old style fence rail, eleven feet long, mauled from the straightest, clearest timber afforded by the primeval forest. It had for companions many other oaks which were abundant there, and it was on a par with the best of them. In the first years of steamboating on the Ohio river, when the engines used wood for fuel, they provided a market for many an old rail fence. The rails were the best obtainable fuel, and the chinquapin oak rails in the heaps were carefully looked for by the purchasers, because they were rated high in fuel value. It is now known that chinquapin oak in combustion develops considerably more heat than an equal quantity of white oak.

When southern Indiana and Illinois were furnishing coopers with their best staves, chinquapin oak was ricked with white oak, and no barrel maker ever complained. The pores in the wood seem large, but in old timber which is largely heartwood, the pores become clogged by the processes of nature, and the wood is made proof against leakage. That is what gives white oak its superiority as stave timber. It has as many pores as red oak, but upon close examination under a magnifying glass, they are found to be plugged, while red oak’s pores are wide open. The result is that red oak barrels leak through the wood; those made of white oak do not. Chinquapin oak possesses the same properties, which account for its reputation as stave material.

The future for chinquapin oak is not quite as promising as that of chestnut oak. The former’s choice growing place is on rich soil and in damp situations. These happen to be what the farmer wants, and he will not leave the chinquapin oak alone to grow in nature’s method, nor will he plant its acorns in places where the trees will interfere with his cornfields and meadows. Consequently, the tree is apt to receive scant consideration after the original forests have disappeared; while its poor cousin, the chestnut oak, will be left to make its way on sterile ridges, and may even receive some help from the forester and woodlot owner.

VALLEY OAK (Quercus lobata) is often considered to be the largest hardwood of the Pacific coast. Trunk diameters of ten feet have been recorded, and heights more than 100; but such measurements belong only to rare and extraordinary individuals. The average size of the tree is less than half of that. The most famous tree of this species is the Sir Joseph Hooker oak, near Chico, California, though it is not the largest. It is seven feet in diameter and 100 high. It was named by the botanist Asa Gray in 1877. This species is commonly called California white oak, which name would be unobjectionable if it were the only white oak in California. A more distinctive name is weeping oak, which refers to the appearance of the outer branches. It is called swamp oak, but without good reason, though the ground on which it grows is often swampy during the rainy season. The name valley oak is specially appropriate, since its favorite habitat is in the broad valleys of central California. Its range does not go outside that state, neither does the tree grow very high on the mountains. Its range begins in the upper Sacramento valley and extends to Tejon, south of Lake Tulare, a distance north and south of about five hundred miles, while east and west the tree is found from the Sierra foothills to the sea, 150 or 200 miles. Its characteristic growth is in scattered stands. It does not form forests in the ordinary sense. Two or three large trees to the acre are an average, and often many acres are wholly missed. The form of trees, and the wide spaces between them, resemble an old apple orchard, though few apple trees live to attain the dimensions of the valley oak of ordinary size. The best stands were originally in the Santa Clara valley and in the central part of the San Joaquin valley in the salt grass region north of Lake Tulare in Kings and Fresno counties. Most of the largest trees were cut long ago.

The leaves are lobed like white oak (Quercus alba) but are smaller, seldom more than four inches long and two wide. The acorns are uncommonly long, some of them being two and a half inches, sharp pointed, with shallow cups. The wood of this oak is brash and breaks easily. It is far below good eastern oak in strength and elasticity. It weighs 46.17 pounds per cubic foot. The tree grows rapidly, and its wide, clearly defined annual rings are largely dense summerwood. The springwood is perforated with large pores. The color of the wood is light brown, the sapwood lighter. Except as fuel, the uses found for valley oak hardly come up to what might be expected of a tree so large. It is not difficult, or at least was not difficult once, to cut logs sixteen feet long and from three to five in diameter. Such logs ought to make good lumber. The medullary rays indicate that the wood can be quarter-sawed to advantage; yet there is no account that any serious attempt was ever made to convert the valley oak into lumber. The wood has some objectionable properties, but it has escaped the sawmill chiefly because hardwood mills have never been numerous in California, and they have been especially few in the regions where the best valley oaks grow. The tree has been a great source of fuel. It usually divides twenty or thirty feet from the ground into large, wide-spreading branches, tempting to the woodchopper. In central California, twenty or thirty years ago, it was not unusual to haul this cordwood twenty-five miles to market. Stockmen employed posts and rails split from valley oak to enclose corrals and pens on the open plains for holding cattle, sheep, and horses. The acorns are edible, and were formerly an article of food for Indians who gathered them in considerable quantities in the fall and stored them for winter in large baskets which were secured high in the forks of trees to be out of reach of all ordinary marauders. The baskets were made rain proof by roofing and wrapping them with grass. When the time came for eating the acorns, they were prepared for use by hulling them and then pounding them into meal in stone mortars. The hulling was done with the teeth, and was the work of squaws. The custom of eating the acorns has largely ceased with the passing of the wild Indians from their former camping places; but the stone mortars by hundreds remain in the vicinity of former stands of valley oak.

This splendid tree is highly ornamental, but it has not been planted, and perhaps it will not become popular. Nature seems to have confined it to a certain climate, and it is not known that it will thrive outside of it. It will certainly disappear from many of the valleys where the largest trees once grew. The land is being taken for fields and vineyards, and the oaks are removed. Some will remain in canyons and rough places where the land is not wanted, and one of the finest species of the United States will cease to pass entirely from earth. The largest of these oaks have a spread of branches covering more than one-third of an acre.

LIVE OAK

LIVE OAK

(Quercus Virginiana)

The history of this live oak is a reversal of the history of almost every other important forest tree of the United States. It seems to be the lone exception to the rule that the use of a certain wood never decreases until forced by scarcity. There was a time when hardly any wood in this country was in greater demand than this, and now there is hardly one in less demand. The decline has not been the result of scarcity, for there has never been a time when plenty was not in sight. A few years ago, several fine live oaks were cut in making street changes in New Orleans, and a number of sound logs, over three feet in diameter, were rolled aside, and it was publicly announced that anyone who would take them away could have them. No one took them. It is doubtful if that could happen with timber of any other kind.

The situation was different 120 years ago. At that time live oak was in such demand that the government, soon after the adoption of the constitution, became anxious lest enough could not be had to meet the requirements of the navy department. The keels of the first war vessels built by this government were about to be laid, and the most necessary material for their construction was live oak. The vessels were to be of wood, of course; and their strength and reliability depended upon the size and quality of the heavy braces used in the lower framework. These braces were called knees and were crooked at right angles. They were hewed in solid pieces, and the largest weighed nearly 1,000 pounds. No other wood was as suitable as live oak, which is very strong, and it grows knees in the form desired. The crooks produced by the junction of large roots with the base of the trunk were selected, and shipbuilders with saws, broadaxes, and adzes cut them in the desired sizes and shapes.

When the building of the first ships of the navy was undertaken, the alarm was sounded that live oak was scarce, and that speculators were buying it to sell to European governments. Congress appropriated large sums of money and bought islands and other lands along the south Atlantic and Gulf coast, where the best live oak grew. In Louisiana alone the government bought 37,000 live oak trees, as well as large numbers in Florida and Georgia. In some instances the land on which the trees stood was bought.

Ship carpenters were sent from New England to hew knees for the first vessels of the navy. The story of the troubles and triumphs of the contractors and knee cutters is an interesting one, but too long for even a summary here; suffice it that in due time the vessels were finished. The history of those vessels is almost a history of the early United States navy. Among their first duties when they put to sea was to fight French warships, when this country was about to get into trouble with Napoleon. They then fought the pirates of North Africa, and there one of the ships was burned by its own men to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy. “Old Ironsides,” another of the live oak vessels, fought fourteen ships, one at a time, during the war of 1812, and whipped them all. Another of the vessels was less fortunate. It was lost in battle, in which its commander, Lawrence, was killed, whose last words have become historic: “Don’t give up the ship.” Another came down to the Civil war and was sunk in Chesapeake bay.

The invention of iron vessels ended the demand for live oak knees. The government held its land where this timber grew for a long time, but finally disposed of most of it. Part of that owned in Florida was recently incorporated in one of the National Forests of that state.

Live oak is a tree of striking appearance. It prefers the open, and when of large size its spread of branches often is twice the height of the tree. Its trunk is short, but massy, and of enormous strength; otherwise it could not sustain the great weight of its heavy branches. Some of the largest limbs are nearly two feet in diameter where they leave the trunk, and are fifty feet long, and some are seventy-five feet in length. Probably the only tree in this country with a wider spread of branches is the valley oak of California. The live oak’s trunk is too short for more than one sawlog, and that of moderate length. The largest specimens may be seventy feet high and six or seven feet in diameter, and yet not good for a sixteen-foot log. The enormous roots are of no use now. When land is cleared of this oak, the stumps are left to rot.

The range of live oak extends 4,000 miles or more northeast and southwest. It begins on the coast of Virginia and ends in Central America. It is found in Lower California and in Cuba. In southern United States it sticks pretty closely to the coastal plains, though large trees grow 200 or 300 feet above tide level. In Texas it is inclined to rise higher on the mountains, but live oak in Texas seldom measures up to that which grows further east. In southern Texas, where the land is poor and dry, live oak degenerates into a shrub. Trees only a foot high sometimes bear acorns. In all its range in this country, it is known by but one English name, given it because it is evergreen. The leaves remain on the tree about thirteen months, following the habit of a number of other oaks. When new leaves appear, the old ones get out of the way.

The wood is very heavy, hard, strong, and tough. In strength and stiffness it rates higher than white oak, and it is twelve pounds a cubic foot heavier. The sapwood is light in color, the heartwood brown, sometimes quite dark. The pores in the sapwood are open, but many of them are closed in heartwood. The annual rings are moderately well defined. The large pores are in the springwood, and those of the summerwood are smaller, but numerous. The medullary rays are numerous and dark. Measured radially, they are shorter than those of many other oaks. They show well in quarter-sawed lumber, but are arranged peculiarly, and do not form large groups of figures; but the wood presents a rather flecked or wavy appearance. The general tone is dark brown and very rich. It takes a smooth polish. When the wood is worked into spindles and small articles, and brightly polished, its appearance suggests dark polished granite, but the similitude is not sustained under close examination. Grills composed of small spindles and scrollwork are strikingly beautiful if displayed in light which does the wood justice. Composite panels are manufactured by joining narrow strips edge to edge. Selected pieces of dressed live oak suggest Circassian walnut, but would not pass as an imitation on close inspection. It may be stated generally that live oak is far from being a dead, flat wood, but is capable of being worked for various effects. Its value as a cabinet material has not been appreciated in the past, nor have its possibilities been suspected. It dropped out of notice when shipbuilders dispensed with it, and people seem to have taken for granted that it had no value for anything else. The form of the trunks makes possible the cutting of short stock only; but there is abundance of it. It fringes a thousand miles of coast. Many a trunk, short though it is, will cut easily a thousand feet of lumber. Working the large roots in veneer has not been undertaken, but good judges of veneers, who know what the stumps and roots contain, have expressed the opinion that a field is there awaiting development.

Published reports of the uses of woods of various states seldom mention live oak. In Texas some of it is employed in the manufacture of parquet flooring. It is dark and contrasts with the blocks or strips of maple or some other light wood. It is turned in the lathe for newel posts for stairs, and contributes to other parts of stair work. In Louisiana it is occasionally found in shops where vehicles are made. It meets requirements as axles for heavy wagons. Stone masons’ mauls are made of live oak knots. They stand nearly as much pounding as lignum-vitæ. More live oak is cut for fuel than for all other purposes. It develops much heat, but a large quantity of ashes remains.

The live oak is the most highly valued ornamental tree of the South, though it has seldom been planted. Nature placed these oaks where they are growing. Many an old southern homestead sits well back in groves of live oak. Parks and plazas in towns have them, and would not part with them on any terms. Tallahassee, Florida, is almost buried under live oaks which in earlier years sheltered the wigwams of an Indian town. Villages near the coasts of both the Gulf and the Atlantic in several southern states have their venerable trees large enough for half the people to find shade beneath the branches at one time. Many fine stands have been cut in recent years to make room for corn, cane, and rice.

Many persons associate the live oak with Spanish moss which festoons its branches in the Gulf region. The moss is no part of the tree, and apparently draws no substance from it, though it may smother the leaves by accumulation, or break the branches by its weight. Strictly speaking, the beard-like growth is not moss at all, but a sort of pine apple (Dendropogon usenoides) which simply hangs on the limbs and draws its sustenance from water and air. It is found on other trees, besides live oak, and dealers in Louisiana alone sell half a million dollars worth of it a year to upholsterers in all the principal countries of the world.

RED OAK

RED OAK

(Quercus Rubra)

Red oak belongs to the black oak group. Other species usually listed as black oaks are Pin oak (Quercus palustris), Georgia oak (Quercus georgiana), Texan red oak (Quercus texana), Scarlet oak (Quercus coccinea), Yellow oak (Quercus velutina), California black oak (Quercus californica), Turkey oak (Quercus catesbæi), Spanish oak (Quercus digitata), Black Jack oak (Quercus marilandica), Water oak (Quercus nigra), Willow oak (Quercus phellos), Laurel oak (Quercus laurifolia), Blue Jack oak (Quercus brevifolia), Shingle oak (Quercus imbricaria), Whiteleaf oak (Quercus hypoleuca), Highland oak (Quercus wislizeni), Myrtle oak (Quercus myrtifolia), California live oak (Quercus agrifolia--sometimes classed with white oaks), Canyon live oak (Quercus chrysolepis), an evergreen oak with no English name, (Quercus tomentella), Price oak (Quercus pricei), Morehus oak (Quercus morehus), Tanbark oak (Quercus densiflora), Barren oak (Quercus pumila).

When a lumberman speaks of red oak he may mean any one of a good many kinds of trees, but when a botanist or forester uses that name he means one particular species and no other. For that reason there is much uncertainty as to what species is in the lumberman’s mind when he speaks of red oak. It means more to him than a single species, depending to a considerable extent upon the part of the country where he is doing business. If he is in the Gulf states, and has in mind a tree which grows there, he does not refer to the tree known to botanists as red oak. He may mean the Texan or southern red oak (Quercus texana), or the willow oak (Quercus phellos), or the yellow oak (Quercus velutina), or any one of several others which grow in that region; but the typical red oak does not grow farther south than the mountains of northern Georgia; and any one who is cutting oak south or southwest of there, is cutting other than the true red oak. That does not imply that he is handling something inferior, for very fine oak grows there; but in an effort to separate the commercial black oaks into respective species, it is necessary to define them by metes and bounds of ranges as well as to describe them by characteristics of leaves, acorns, and wood. The time will probably never come in this country when the sawmill man will pile each species of oak separately in his yard, and sell separately; but the tendency is in that direction. The twenty-five or more black oaks in this country all have some characteristics in common; but they are by no means all valuable alike, or all useful for the same purposes. For that reason, the demands of trade require, and will require more and more as higher utilization is reached, that certain kinds of red oak or black oak be sold separately.