American Forest Trees Part 17

Cordwood cutters have stripped the last tree from large areas where much once grew. This oak never forms forests. The trees seldom grow as close together as apple trees in an orchard.

GAMBEL OAK (_Quercus gambelii_) was destined by nature to occupy an inferior place in the country's timber resources. It occupies a region of stunted vegetation among the dry mountains and plateaus of the Southwest, and except where it grows in better situations than usual, it is too small to be properly called a tree. It is at its best among the mountains of southeastern Arizona where it grows in canyons that can maintain a little damp soil. There it occasionally reaches a height of thirty feet and a diameter of a foot or less. In most other parts of its range it is simply a tangled, sprawling thicket of brush, covering the dry, rocky mountain ridges, and along the bases of cliffs. It is found from Colorado to western Texas, and westward into Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. The leaves are small, thick, firm, and hairy, typical of desert foliage which must husband the scant water supply. The acorns are pretty large for a tree so stunted, and they are tempting bait for birds and rodents of the region. The acorns are sweet. If this oak's reproduction depended on acorns alone it is doubtful if it would hold its ground in the face of perpetual adversity; but its roots send up distorted and stunted sprouts which cover the ground, affording hiding places for the few acorns which escape their hungry enemies. Man puts this oak to few uses. It affords a pretty good cla.s.s of fuel for camp fires, but cordwood cutters cannot make much out of it. In rare instances frontier ranches use a few of the unshapely poles for corral fences, but only as a case of last resort. The names bestowed upon the tree by those who know it best are uncomplimentary. They call it shin oak, pin oak, scrub oak, mountain oak, and Rocky Mountain oak.

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FORKED-LEAF WHITE OAK

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FORKED-LEAF WHITE OAK

(_Quercus Lyrata_)

The leaf gives this tree its name in the best part of its southern range. The tree bears much resemblance to the bur oak on the one hand, and swamp white oak on the other. The names by which it is known in different regions indicate as much.

In North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Illinois it is commonly known as overcup; in Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri it is called the swamp post oak; the name water white oak is applied to it in Mississippi and parts of South Carolina; swamp white oak in Texas; forked-leaf white oak among lumbermen in several of the southern states. The last name scarcely describes the leaf, for no one is apt to notice any fork, unless his attention is called to it. The fact is, the name forked-leaf oak is applied oftener to the turkey oak (_Quercus catesbaei_) than to this one. However, since the ranges of the two species are not the same, misunderstandings in practice are not apt to arise as to which is meant when the forked leaf is referred to. The fact that turkey oak belongs in the black oak group, ripening its acorns in two years, and this one is a white oak with one year acorns, is of further a.s.sistance in keeping the species separate.

The range of the forked-leaf white oak is from Maryland, along the Potomac river near the District of Columbia, southward to parts of Florida; westward through the Gulf states to the Trinity river in Texas; throughout Arkansas, sections of Missouri, central Tennessee, southern Illinois and Indiana.

It shows preference for river swamps, and small deep depressions in rich bottom lands where moisture is always abundant. It has never amounted to much in the Atlantic states, and its best development is found in the moist, fertile valley of Red river in Louisiana, and in certain parts of Arkansas and Texas. Its geographical range is pretty large, but as a timber tree it is confined to a comparatively restricted region west of the Mississippi. Good trees are found in other parts of its range.

Lumbermen do not find it in extensive forests or pure stands, but isolated trees or small groups occur with other hardwoods.

This species of oak grows occasionally to a height of 100 feet, though its average is about seventy feet. It has a trunk two to three feet in diameter, which spreads out after attaining a height of fifteen or twenty feet, into small, often pendulous branches, forming a symmetrical round top. The branchlets are green, slightly tinged with red; covered with short hairs when first appearing, becoming grayish and shiny during their first winter, eventually turning ashen gray or brown.

The bark is three-quarters or one inch thick, light gray in color, shedding in thick plates, its surface being divided into thin scales.

The winter buds are about one-eighth of an inch long and have light colored scales. The staminate flowers grow in long, slender, hairy spikes from four to six inches long; the calyx is light yellow and hairy. The pistillate flowers are stalked and are also covered with hairs.

The fruit of forked-leaf white oak is often on slender, fuzzy stems, sometimes an inch or more in length, but is often closely attached to the twig that bears it; the acorn is about one inch long, broad at the base, light brown and covered with short, light hairs, and usually almost entirely enclosed in the deep, spherical cup, which is bright reddish-brown on its inside surface, and covered on the outside with scales; thickened at the base, becoming thinner and forming an irregular edge at the margin of the cup. The cup often almost completely envelopes the acorn. The fruit then looks somewhat like a rough, nearly spherical b.u.t.ton.

This oak's leaves are long and slender, and are divided in from five to 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 quant.i.ty 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 alt.i.tudes 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 cla.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.ses 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 quant.i.ty 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 ma.s.ses 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 quant.i.ties of fuel.

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POST OAK

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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; chene etoile 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 circ.u.mstance. 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, sa.s.safras, 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, bal.u.s.ters.