Part 28

TURKEY OAK

TURKEY OAK

(Quercus Catesbæi)

The claim that this tree is called turkey oak because turkeys feed on the acorns, is not well founded. In common with nearly all members of the black oak group, to which this species belongs, the acorns of turkey oak are bitter, and unless animals are pressed by hunger they do not eat them. It is evident that the shape of the leaves gives this tree its name. They bear considerable resemblance to the foot of a turkey. There is at least enough similitude to suggest the name, and it is not inappropriate. Many people now use the term without thinking of its origin, and if asked their opinion say that fondness of turkeys for the acorns led to the name.

The tree has other names in different regions. In North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Florida it is known as scrub oak. The name fits it well in certain places, for when it grows on poor soil and in adversity, it degenerates into a low, straggling thicket, frequently not trees at all, but shrubs. It is called black jack in South Carolina but the name belongs to another species (Quercus marilandica). In the same state it is known as barren scrub oak, because it is very small and is found on poor lands popularly known as barrens. Some call it forked-leaf black jack, but the name is usually shorter, and forked-leaf, or forked-leaf oak, is a name well understood among lumbermen, and the people generally over much of the tree’s range. Some of the leaves show clearly-defined three forks, the middle one longer than the others; but in other leaves, often from the same tree, the forks are not so regularly outlined. This tree, like many other oaks, exhibits considerable variation in the forms of leaves.

There is nothing peculiar in the form and appearance of the acorns. They average about one inch long and three-quarters of an inch wide, and sit in shallow cups. They mature the second year. The bark of old trees is black near the ground, rather rough, and an inch or more thick.

It is difficult to name an average size for turkey oak. The largest trunks are three or four feet in diameter and eighty feet high, but the trees cut for sawlogs are only fifty or sixty feet high and two in diameter, in most of the regions. As previously stated, much of the stand is stunted and some of it is only brush. All sizes are found, from large, first rate trunks down to shrubs. Large trees which grow in forests, prune themselves well and their trunks compare favorably with red oaks.

The tree’s range has its northeastern limit in North Carolina, and extends to Peace Creek, Florida. It is found westward to Louisiana where fair-sized timber grows, but in small quantities. It is usually considered that its best development is in South Carolina and Georgia, but good trees are likely to be found in any part of its range. It is distinctly a tree of the South. It was named by Michaux, the well-known French botanist who visited the southern states early in the nineteenth century, and he named it in honor of Mark Catesby who explored the region much earlier and wrote concerning its trees and other natural history.

Turkey oak is one of the little-known trees of the South, as far as lumbermen are concerned. They know it well enough in the woods, but not at sawmills. When cut into logs it ceases to be turkey oak and becomes red oak, and under that name it goes to the lumber yard, and later to market. Users of red oak lumber do not object to the occasional piece of turkey oak mixed with it--if they ever find it out, which few of them do. Nevertheless, the consensus of opinion among sawmill men is that turkey oak ought to rate below red oak.

Tests of the wood to determine its character and qualities do not justify so low an estimate of turkey oak. Sargent found it stronger and more elastic than white oak, while a little lighter in weight. It is nearly equal to white oak in fuel value. It is hard, compact, and the rings of annual growth are marked by several rows of large, open ducts. The medullary rays are broad and conspicuous. The color is light brown, tinged with red, the sapwood somewhat lighter.

A special investigation of the uses of turkey oak in one of the southern states brought out the fact that it meets requirements well and fills a place in several wood-using industries in that region. Vehicle makers find it satisfactory in a number of places. It is made into bottoms of wagon beds, felloes, bolsters, axles, hubs, hounds, tongues, spokes, standards, sandboards, and reaches. These constitute nearly all parts of heavy vehicles. The wood is made into telegraph brackets, but apparently not in large quantities. Car builders employ it for frames and floors. It is made into ordinary matched flooring and goes in with other oaks. It is used as a general furniture wood, both as outside material, and inside frames. It may be quarter-sawed to advantage. It is employed also as interior finish, which demands lumber of practically the same grades as go into furniture. Mantels of this wood compare favorably with those of red oak. Chair makers cut stock from turkey oak. It is not abundant anywhere, otherwise it would be of much importance.

The forests of the United States contain so many valuable oaks that a scarce and geographically restricted species like turkey oak cannot be expected to attract much attention in the future. Nevertheless, it is a strong, interesting tree. It takes advantage of every opportunity to develop. When an acorn germinates in good soil, and receives sufficient light and moisture, it produces a merchantable tree; but in poor soil and under unfavorable circumstances it becomes a stunted bush only. Woodlots of turkey oak planted in fertile land would probably do as well as most of the southern red oaks under like conditions. The tree is not apt to get justice, because of the prejudice against it.

CALIFORNIA BLACK OAK (Quercus californica) ranges from central Oregon southward through the coast region of California nearly to the Mexican boundary. It occurs also on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas in California. It is not found on the plains or near the sea, but occurs on mountain slopes, low summits, elevated valleys, and in canyons. In the North, it ranges from 1,500 to 3,000 feet and in the South it ascends to 9,000 feet. This far western oak bears more resemblance to the yellow oak (Quercus velutina) of the East than to any other. Trees have been reported 100 feet high and four in diameter, but they are scarce. Seventy-five feet high and two or three feet in diameter are usual dimensions of mature timber. The trees are inclined to be angular in the outlines of their crowns. The leaves fall in autumn, but the acorns persist two years. They sit deep in their rough cups. The trunk is habitually crooked. It leans out of plumb, and lacks the nicely balanced poise which adds to the attractiveness of some oaks. The large boles are usually hollow, dead at the tops, or otherwise defective. That condition is apparently due to old age. Trees stand long after they pass maturity and start on their decline. They die by inches, and not infrequently they decay and crumble by piecemeal both at the bottom and at the top. At best the trunk of this oak is of poor form for saw timber. It divides into large limbs ten or twenty feet from the ground. It is of slow growth, and it reaches old age--possibly as much as 350 years in extreme cases. The wood is very porous, but the pores are not in rows. The medullary rays are thin and distinct. It is not known that any quarter-sawing has been attempted, and it would hardly be profitable. The wood is pale red, exceedingly brittle, firm, light for oak, and it has a distinct odor of tannin with which both the wood and the bark are heavily charged. The principal uses to which this oak is put in California and Oregon are as fuel and ranch timbers, the latter being of the simplest and roughest sort. Its fuel value is high, compared with other woods of the region. Some use was made of the bark for tanning purposes years ago on the Pacific slope, but it does not appear to go to market now.

BLUE JACK OAK (Quercus brevifolia) bears several names, upland willow oak, to distinguish it from other willow oaks which grow in swamps, sand jack, referring to the land on which it grows, high-ground willow oak, turkey oak, shin oak and cinnamon oak. No reason is known for the last name which is not used outside of Florida. The tree grows in a narrow strip along the coast from North Carolina to Texas, crossing northern Florida. The blue jack oak sometimes attains a height of fifty feet and a diameter of twenty inches; but that is its best. It is usually fifteen or twenty feet high and a few inches in diameter. The leaves are from two to five inches long and quite narrow, closely resembling those of willow. The acorns are abundant, but small. The tree is of so little value that it does not interest the lumberman. It occupies waste land, and may produce a little fuel without crowding more valuable trees, but is in every way inferior to the black jack oak (Quercus marilandica), which overlaps its range a little, but is a northern species. The wood of blue jack oak is hard, strong, light brown in color, with darker-colored sapwood.

SPANISH OAK

SPANISH OAK

(Quercus Digitata)

One of the first difficulties in an attempt to clear up the misunderstandings regarding Spanish oak is to confine the name to the species to which it belongs. That is no easy task, because the name has been applied to numerous oaks in various parts of the country, and without any apparent reason. Some of these bear little resemblance to Spanish oak and grow almost wholly outside its range. It is not a case of mistaking one for the other, for there is no mistake. Some speak of the common red oak as Spanish oak, others bestow that name on yellow oak, others on black jack oak, or scarlet oak, or any one of several others. It appears, however, that the name is not applied to any member of the white oak group.

It is said that Spanish oak and Norway pine were named by the same process. Each got its name because it was supposed to be similar to a species in the old country--the pine like an evergreen of north Europe, and the oak like a broadleaf tree of Spain. It was learned later that both the American species were different from those of Europe which they resembled.

The peculiar drooping foliage of Spanish oak gives the tree a character which impresses a person who sees the full-leafed crown for the first time. The leaves are six or seven inches long and four or five wide. Their forms vary within wide limits, and their shapes change from week to week while growing. Some have no lobes or sinuses, others have them in rudimentary form only, while in still others they are well developed.

The tree is often called red oak, particularly by lumbermen who cut it and send it to market with red oak. In Louisiana it is known as Spanish water oak, there being much resemblance between it and water oak (Quercus nigra) with which it is associated. Its range covers more than 200,000 square miles, beginning at the north in New Jersey and following down the coast regions to central Florida. It extends westward into Texas to the valley of the Brazos river; northward to Missouri and southern Indiana and Illinois. It does not grow far inland from the coast in the north Atlantic states, but further south it is common on the coast plain between the sea and the base of the mountains. It is often found on dry sand hills in that region. The largest Spanish oaks on record grew in the lower Ohio valley, particularly along the Wabash river. It is usually of medium size and large trunks are seldom seen. The average height is seventy or eighty feet, diameter two or three. In the open, the crown is broad and low, but in forests the trunk prunes itself fairly well, and makes good saw timber, as far as form and size are concerned. The acorns ripen in two years, and are bitter. The bark is rich in tannin, but tanneries do not use much of it.

The tree is not generally abundant. Some large areas within its range have little, and thick stands are unusual anywhere. It is one of the oaks which lumbermen neither reject nor seek. They cut it in course of operations, and saw it and sell it under the common name, red oak.

The wood is heavy, very hard, and strong. It is reputed to decay more rapidly than most oaks, and it checks badly in seasoning. The annual rings of growth are broad, and the springwood is marked by several rows of large open pores. The medullary rays are few but conspicuous; color light red, the sapwood lighter. The wood weighs about three pounds less than white oak per cubic foot, and its fuel value is less.

It is not easy to compile an account of the uses of Spanish oak by the various industries of this country, for the reason that other oaks pass by its name and it is known by names which should not be applied to it. It is shown, however, where special studies of its utilization have been made that it is a useful wood for many purposes. It is a useful furniture material, and though statistics do not give separate figures for it, evidently the total quantity consumed yearly runs into many millions of feet. It is much employed in the manufacture of tables, chiefly for frames, but occasionally as the outside material. It may be quarter-sawed, if good logs are selected. The chair factories in North Carolina use about 44,000,000 feet of oak yearly, and Spanish oak supplies a rather large share of the material. It is employed as interior finish in that state, and also for mission furniture, brackets for telegraph and telephone poles, refrigerators, and kitchen safes. Slack coopers and manufacturers of boxes and crates find the wood suitable for their wares; but its open pores stand in the way of its use for tight cooperage.

Similar uses of the wood occur in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and it may be assumed that they occur also in all other portions of Spanish oak’s range. It goes to wagon shops in Texas where it is substituted for red oak. It is employed also in the manufacture of rice hullers and cotton gins. Lumbermen in northern Louisiana use log trucks with axles, felloes, and other heavy parts of Spanish oak, and it is frequently preferred for stone wagons.

In practically all large shipments of southern red oak to the North, some Spanish oak is mixed. It could not be otherwise, since this wood is cut in the forest with other red oaks, is sawed and stocked with them, and goes with them to market.

BLACK JACK OAK (Quercus marilandica) is one of the scrub trees of this country, and few good words are ever heard for it; yet it has redeeming qualities. Lumbermen have not paid much attention to it and never will, for only when at its best is the trunk large enough for any kind of sawlog, and there has been little inclination to use it for anything else. It attains size fitting it for fence posts, and sometimes it performs service along that line; but the small trunks are nearly all sapwood, and decay strikes them quickly. The bark is black, hence the name, and it is exceedingly rough, and is broken in squares. The leaves are large and pear-shaped, with the broad end opposite the stem. Some are slightly lobed. A vigorous black jack oak, standing in open ground, presents a fine appearance. The crown is wide and is frequently conical, the limbs small, and are set in the trunk on nearly horizontal lines. The range of this unloved species covers 600,000 or more square miles, beginning in New York, running west to central Nebraska, south through Texas nearly to the Rio Grande, and in Florida to Tampa. It is not an aggressive tree and has permitted itself to be crowded off the good land until it has formed the habit of occupying geographical left-overs in the form of sand banks and wornout fields. In the northeastern part of its range it is often associated with scrub pine (Pinus virginiana), because the two have similar habits and are content to live in perpetual poverty on dry gravel or thin sand. Large trunks are not possible under such circumstances, and first-class wood is unusual. Black jack oak at its best may attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of eighteen inches, but it is oftener twenty feet high and six inches through. It grows with moderate rapidity and does not live long.

The annual rings are often indistinct. The wood is hard, heavy, and strong, and checks badly in seasoning. The medullary rays are broad and conspicuous, the wood dark brown in color, the sapwood lighter. This oak is very high in ash contents, more than one per cent of the dry weight of wood going to ashes when burned. The tree reaches its best development in the lower Mississippi valley, and in eastern Texas. Comparatively few uses for it have been found. Cordwood cutters find it valuable where it abounds in sufficient quantity, and it has been burned for charcoal for iron foundries and blacksmith shops. Small amounts are occasionally found in wood-using factories in Texas, but only when logs with considerable heartwood can be procured. The sap is characterless and seems to be utterly rejected at the factory. Sometimes the rich brown of the heartwood is attractive, but more frequently the wood is ringed and splotched with different colors, not distributed in a way to give any artistic effect. When a satisfactory stick is found, it can be worked into balusters and small spindles which show grain well. It is also worked into broad panels made up of narrow, quarter-sawed strips, which exhibit the dark flecks of the wood to good advantage.