Part 27

This oak is one of the easiest to identify. The inner layer of the bark is yellow. The point of a knife easily reaches it; cutting through a deep crack in the bark, and no mistake is possible, for no other oak has the yellow layer of bark. The tree may be identified by leaves, flowers, and fruit, but the process is not always easy, for other members of the black oak group bear more or less resemblance to this one.

The yellow oak’s range extends over nearly or quite a million square miles. It exceeds the limits of most oaks in its geographical extension. It endures severe winters and hot summers. The northern limit of its range lies in Maine; it grows westward across southern Canada to Minnesota; it extends two hundred miles west of the Mississippi into eastern Nebraska and Kansas, and follows that meridian south into Texas. It reaches the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi, and is found in many localities in all the southern states, and along the foothills of the Appalachian ranges. It attains its largest size in the lower Ohio valley. The average height is seventy or eighty feet, and its diameter two or three feet. In some localities the trees are scrubby and produce little merchantable timber.

The growth rings are only moderately wide in the typical yellow oak; the ring is divided nearly evenly between springwood and summerwood. The former contains two or three rows of large, open pores. The medullary rays are fewer and smaller than those commonly found in oaks. A general average of the properties of the wood is somewhat difficult to give, because of remarkable variation in trees which grow under different conditions. In some instances, where the soil is fertile and climate favorable, the yellow oak produces a large, clear trunk, with sound wood, of good color, and equal to that of red oak; but the reverse is often the case--trunks are small and rough, wood hard and brittle, color not satisfactory, and strength not up to standard. Sometimes first class yellow oak passes without question as good red oak in the finish and furniture business, but that is not its usual course. Well developed wood is heavy, hard, strong, bright brown, tinged with red, with thin, lighter colored sapwood. Its weight is 43.9 pounds per cubic foot.

The uses of yellow oak follow red oak pretty closely, but are not so extensive. Figures cannot be given to show the total annual cut of yellow oak, but the output is likely much below red oak, though it is found over a wider area, and some of it gets into the lumber yards in all regions where it grows. It is made into furniture from Maine to Louisiana. In cheaper grades of furniture, it may be the outside material, but its place is usually as frame stock, to give strength, but is not visible in the finished article. An exception to this is found in chairs where yellow oak is one of several species which go regularly to the sawmills which cut chair stock. Massachusetts snow plow makers use it, but of course it fills no such place in the South. In Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas it is bought by manufacturers of agricultural machinery. It is worked into cotton gins in Mississippi. Some extra fine stands of this oak occur in the Delta region of Mississippi. Frames of freight cars are made of it in Louisiana and Texas, and warehouse and depot floors are occasionally laid of this lumber. It is floor material in Michigan also, but that is of a better class than is required for warehouses. It is not infrequently sold as red oak for flooring and interior finish. Throughout the whole extent of yellow oak’s range it finds its way to wagon shops. It is less tough than white oak, but in many places, such as bolsters, sandboards, and hounds, it serves as well. Warehouse trucks and push cars are of this wood in many instances.

Slack coopers convert this wood into their wares in many regions. The pores are too open to permit its use as tight cooperage, where liquids are to be contained, but for barrels and kegs of many kinds, as well as for boxes, baskets, and crates, it meets all requirements. It is good fuel. Many burners of brick and pottery show it preference, and charcoal burners make a clean sweep of it when it occurs in the course of their operations; though when it is desirable to save the by-products of charcoal kilns or retorts, yellow oak is considered less valuable than birch, beech, and maple.

The bark of this tree is employed less now than formerly for dyeing purposes. Aniline dyes have taken its place. In pioneer times the bark was one of the best coloring materials the people had, and every family looked after its own supply as carefully as it provided sassafras bark for tea, slippery elm bark for poultices, and witch hazel for gargles. The oak bark was peeled, dried, and pounded to a powder. The mass was sifted, and the yellow particles, being finer than the black bark, passed through the screen, and were set apart for the dye kettle, while the screenings were rejected. Various arts and sciences were called into requisition to add to or take from the natural color which the bark gave the cloth. Salts of iron were commonly employed to modify the deepness of the yellow.

The acorns of this oak are bitter, and escape the mast hunters. Old stumps have little need to send up sprouts, for acorns keep the species alive. Yellow oaks are in no immediate danger of extermination. Nature plants generously, and the tree can get along on poor soil where the farm hunter is not apt to molest it. It has a fairly thick bark, and is able to take care of itself in a moderate fire, except when the seedlings are quite small. The young tree’s tap root is much developed, and goes deep for moisture, and the growing sapling flourishes on ground where some other species would suffer for water.

WHITELEAF OAK (Quercus hypoleuca). The beauty of this small evergreen oak of the mountains of western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, is in its foliage rather than its wood. Large trunks--that is, those twenty inches or more in diameter--are apt to be hollow, but the sound wood is employed in repairing wagons in local shops, and in rough ranch timbers. Its importance will never extend beyond the region where it grows, but in that region it will continue to be used where nothing better can be obtained. The largest trees are sixty feet high, and two in diameter, but few reach those dimensions. It is an arid land oak. It grows at from 4,000 to 6,000 feet elevations on mountains and plateaus. The leaves remain thirteen months on the twigs. They are of the willow form, ranging from two to four inches in length and one-half to one in width. The acorns are small and bitter. The strength of this oak is remarkable, if it may be judged by the figures given by Sargent. Two samples of wood procured by himself and Dr. Engelmann on a dry, gravelly ground among the Santa Rita mountains in Arizona, showed breaking strength sixty-one per cent greater than the average given by the same author for white oak. The stiffness of the specimens was a little above white oak, and the weight three pounds more per cubic foot. It should be borne in mind, however, that results derived from a test of only two samples are not a safe basis for concluding that the wood generally will average of so great strength. The annual rings of growth are not clearly marked. The wood is porous, but the pores are not generally arranged in bands, although they occasionally follow that arrangement. The medullary rays are broad and abundant, but are rather short, measured along the radial lines. They are of pink color, a characteristic not unusual with oaks in semi-arid regions. The foliage is doubtless the most valuable characteristic of whiteleaf oak. The leaves are silver white below, and dark green above. When they are agitated by wind the flashing of the different tones and tints in the sunshine presents an attractive picture. It belongs to the willow oak branch of the red oak group, and bears two-year acorns.

SCARLET OAK

SCARLET OAK

(Quercus Coccinea)

The name of scarlet oak is in use in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, and Ontario; red oak is the name in North Carolina, Alabama, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Minnesota; black oak in Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and Spanish oak in North Carolina.

The name is descriptive of the autumn leaves. Artists dispute among themselves whether the leaves are scarlet, red, or crimson. In their opinion a good deal of difference exists between these colors, rendering it quite incorrect to give one color the name of another. As for the artists, they are probably correct in their analysis of colors, but the general public knows the tree as scarlet oak, and it will doubtless be called by that name by most people who speak of the tree in the woods, while those who refer to the wood after it is sawed will speak of it as red oak.

The leaves of scarlet oak are rather persistent, and remain on the twigs late in the season. The brilliancy of this tree is rendered doubly conspicuous, when it is contrasted with the surrounding sombre, winter colors.

In appearance the tree is striking for its delicacy of foliage and twigs. The crown is always narrow and open, and in forest growth is compressed. The height, in good specimens, is about one hundred feet, but it often exceeds that size. In diameter it grows as large as four feet. The mature bark is dark in color and broken into broad, smooth ridges and plates, edged with red. It shows a reddish inner bark when cut and this may be relied upon to identify the tree. The leaves are four or five inches long; deeply sinused, three or four on a side; long, bristle-toothed lobes, broad at the base; acorns bitter, mature in two years; sessile, brown; cup closely drawn in at the edge.

Its range comprises the northeastern quarter of the United States. Beginning in southern Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, it grows through middle New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa to eastern Nebraska. Southward it extends along the coast through Virginia and inland along the mountains to South Carolina and Georgia. The growth is abundant over most of the range, the favorite habitat being dry, gravelly uplands. It seems to be most abundant along the northern part of the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts to New Jersey, and is less common in the interior, and on the prairies skirting the western margins of the eastern forests. The average size of the tree is from seventy to eighty feet high and two or three in diameter. In many regions it is much smaller, while no very large trees have been reported.

The wood is heavy, strong, hard; the layers of annual growth are strongly marked by several rows of large, open ducts; the summerwood is dense and occupies half the yearly ring; the medullary rays are much like those of red oak, though scarcely as broad. They run in straight lines radially, and show well in quarter-sawing. The color of the wood is light brown or red, the thin sapwood rather darker.

This wood is practically of the same weight as white oak; but it is rated considerably stronger and stiffer. A number of writers have listed scarlet oak low in fuel value. Theoretically, the fuel values of woods are proportionate to their weights, except that resinous woods must be compared with resinous, and non-resinous with non-resinous. In practice, however, every fireman who feeds a furnace with wood knows that different woods develop different degrees of heat, though they may weigh the same. Results are modified by various circumstances and conditions, and for that reason theory and practice are often far apart in determining how much heat a given quantity of wood is good for.

It is difficult to procure exact information regarding the uses of scarlet oak. It never goes to market under its own name. An examination of wood-using reports from a dozen states within scarlet oak’s range does not reveal a single mention of this wood for any purpose. It is certain, nevertheless, that much goes to market and that it has many important uses. It loses its identity and is bought and sold as red oak. Under the name of that wood it is manufactured into furniture, finish, agricultural implements, cars, boats, wagons and other vehicles, and many other articles. One of the most important markets for scarlet oak is in chair factories. Its grain is attractive enough to give it place as outside material, and its strength fits it for frames and other parts which must bear strain. Chair stock mills which clean up woodlots and patches of forest where scarlet oak grows in mixture with other species of oak, take all that comes, without being particular as to the exact kind of oak. Slack coopers follow much the same course. A wood strong enough to meet requirements, is generally acceptable. Scarlet oak is usually considered unsuitable for tight cooperage, on account of the large open pores of the wood, which permit leakage of liquids. It meets considerable demand in the manufacture of boxes and crates, particularly the latter.

The size and quality of logs which a tree may furnish to a sawmill is no measure of its full value. Scarlet oak is far better known as an ornamental tree than for its wood. It has been planted in this country and in Europe. Its brilliant foliage is greatly admired. No other oak equals it, and it compares favorably with sugar maple, black gum, and dogwood. It is an ornament to parks and private grounds, though the brilliancy of its foliage is seldom exhibited to as good advantage in cultivation as in the native forest where contrasts are more numerous, and nature does its work unhindered by man. The scarlet oak is not a rapid grower, and the form of the tree is not perfectly symmetrical. The spring leaves are red, the summer foliage bright, rich green, the autumn scarlet--a variety not equalled by many forest trees.

WILLOW OAK (Quercus phellos) is named for its leaves which look like those of willow. There is a group of such oaks with leaves similar, and they are known collectively as willow oaks. The one here described may be considered typical of the group.

This oak is apt to present rather a surprising appearance to those who have seen nothing but those oaks whose leaves are lobed or cleft. It belongs to the red oaks. Like others of this division it has a tendency to hybridize, several varieties being known. Willow oak is a denizen of the southern Atlantic and southeastern states and favors rich, moist soil, either on uplands or on bottoms, along the margins of streams or swamps. It does not go inland as far as the foothills of the ranges and is found most abundantly in the basin of the lower Mississippi. Beginning in New York, the range extends southward into Florida, along the Gulf states, touching Texas, up through Arkansas, touching Missouri and Kentucky, down through western Tennessee and southern Georgia rounding the southern end of the Appalachians.

Young trees have a slender delicate pendant appearance of twigs and foliage more typical of the willow than of oak; but in time they become more rugged, although the branching and foliage are always more delicate than is usual with oaks. The tree attains a height of eighty feet and a diameter up to four feet, but usually is about half of this. It is clothed in a smooth, brown bark, ridged only in older trees. The leaves are about five inches long and narrow in proportion, are of shiny, leathery texture, dark above and pale below. The acorns are on short stalks, solitary or in pairs, and ripen in two years, are short and rounded and in shallow cups.

The weight of willow oak is approximately the same as white oak. It is slightly stronger but less elastic. Its annual rings contain broad bands of small open ducts parallel to the thin, dark, medullary rays. The wood is reddish-brown in color, the thick sapwood darker brown. The fuel value is rated the same as white oak, but the wood contains more ash.

Willow oak is much used in the South, but usually under the name red oak. Lumbermen seldom speak of it as willow oak. The species is as highly developed in Louisiana as anywhere else, and the uses found for the wood in that state will probably be found for it wherever the tree grows in commercial quantities. A report on the manufacture of wooden commodities in Louisiana, published in 1912, listed the following uses for willow oak: Agricultural implements, balustrades, bar tops, bedsteads, bottoms for wagon beds, bridge approaches and floors, chairs, church pews, cot frames, doors, floors, frames, interior finish, molding, newel posts, pulpits, railing, screens, slack cooperage, stairwork, store fixtures, wagon axles, and other vehicle parts.

These uses coincide nearly with those of red oak, and indicate the important position occupied by willow oak in the country’s industries. Those who handle the wood complain that its seasoning qualities are poor, and that care is necessary to bring satisfactory results. It works nicely and stands well after the seasoning is accomplished.

Willow oak grows rapidly. It is doubtful if any oak in this country surpasses it. It wants damp, rich soil and a warm climate, to do its best. Some of the bottom lands in the lower Mississippi valley have produced splendid stands of willow oak, the trunks being tall and clear of limbs, and the wood sound.

The willow oak is much planted for ornamental purposes in the southern states. It manages to keep alive when planted as far north as Massachusetts, but the grace of its form is not fully developed much north of the Potomac river. It is a common street tree in the South, and its airy foliage forms a pleasing contrast with the heavy, dark-green of the magnolia.