WESTERN YEW

WESTERN YEWWestern yewWestern Yew

Western yewWestern Yew

Western Yew

WESTERN YEW(Taxus Brevifolia)The Pacific yew is an interesting tree, useful for many minor purposes, but it is not procurable in large quantities. Its north and south range covers more than 1,000 miles, from Alaska to central California; while the species occurs from the Pacific coast eastward to Montana. It approaches sea level on some of the Alaskan islands, and toward the southern part of its range it reaches an altitude of 8,000 feet.In Idaho it is called mountain mahogany, but apparently without good reason. Its color may bear some resemblance to that wood, but it is different in so many particulars that the name is not appropriate. The names western yew and Pacific yew are used interchangeably. Sometimes it bears the simple name yew; but since there is a yew in Florida, and another in Europe, it is well to give the western species a name which will distinguish it from others. The northwestern Indians called it “fighting wood,” which was the best description possible for them to give. They made bows of it, and it was superior to any other wood within their reach for that purpose. In fact, if they could have picked from all the woods of the United States they could scarcely have found its equal. It is very strong, though in elasticity its rating is under many other woods. It is of interest to note that five hundred or more years ago, the European yew (a closely related but different species) had nearly the same name in England that the northwestern Indians gave the western yew. It was called “the shooter yew,” because it was the bow wood of that time, and “bow staves,” which were rough pieces to be worked out by the bow makers, were articles of commerce. The search for it was so great, and so long-continued, that yew trees were well-nigh exterminated in the British Isles. It was, next to oak, and possibly above oak, the most indispensable wood in England at that time. It is instructive to observe that Indians who used the bow found the western yew as indispensable in their life as the English armies found the European yew at a time when the bow was the best weapon.The northwestern Indians put this remarkable wood to other uses. They made spears of it, and sometimes employed them as weapons of war, but generally as implements of the chase, particularly in harpooning salmon which in summer ascend the northwestern rivers from the Pacific ocean in immense schools. The Indians whittled fishhooks of yew before they were able to buy steel hooks from traders. Some of those unique hooks are still in existence, and speak well of the inventive genius of the wild fisherman of the wilderness. A proper crook wasselected where a branch joined the trunk, and serviceable fish hooks were made without any cross grain. They were strong enough to hold the largest fish that ascended the rivers. Sometimes a bone barb was skillfully inserted. The Indians found a further use for this wood as material for canoe paddles. It is so strong that handles can be made small and blades thin without passing the limit of safety. The manufacture of boat paddles from yew continues.More is used for fence posts than for any other one purpose. It is one of the most durable woods known where it must resist conditions conducive to decay. The name yew is said to be derived from a word in a north Europe language meaning everlasting. Yew fence posts are not named in statistics, and it is impossible to quote numbers. Their use is confined to the districts where they grow.The manufacturers of small cabinets draw supplies from this wood, but the fact is not mentioned in Pacific states wood-using statistics. It is particularly liked for turnery, such as small spindles used in furniture and in grill work. It takes an exceptionally fine polish, and the wood’s great strength makes the use of slender pieces practicable. Experiments have shown that this wood may be stained with success, but its natural color is so attractive that there is little need of staining unless the purpose is to imitate some more costly wood. If stained black it is an excellent substitute for ebony.Western yew figures little in lumber output. It is not listed in the markets. The few logs which reach sawmills are never again heard of, but probably most of the lumber is disposed of locally to those who need it. The tree is not of good form for saw timber. Burls are said to make beautiful veneer. Trunks are seldom round, but usually grow lopsided. Most of them are too small for sawlogs. The largest are seldom two feet in diameter, and generally not half that large. They are short and branched, the tree often dividing near the ground in several stems. The average tree is scarcely thirty feet high, but a few are twice that. Its growth is very slow. A six-inch trunk is seventy-five or 100 years old, and the largest sizes are from 200 to 350 years. It is evident, therefore, that efforts to grow western yew for commercial purposes will be few. Wild trees will be occasionally cut as long as they last, and they will probably last as long as any of their associates, for they are scattered sparingly over several hundred thousand square miles of country, and some of it rough and almost inaccessible. The best development of the species is in western Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.The leaves of western yew are one-half or five-eighths inch long. The fruit consists of red pulp enclosing a hard seed. Birds devour iteagerly. The fruit is not poisonous, as the yew berries of the Old World are. It ripens in September and falls in October. The wood is fine grained, clear rose red, becoming gradually duller on exposure. It weighs 39.83 pounds per cubic foot. Its fuel value is high.Florida Yew(Taxus floridana) is extremely local in its range, and small in size. Few trees are more than twenty-five feet high and one foot in diameter. They are bushy and of poor form for manufacturing. The only reported use is as fence posts. The wood’s durability fits it for that place. The species is found in Gadsden county, Florida. The leaves are one inch or less in length; flowers appear in March, and the fruit ripens in October. The wood is moderately heavy, hard, and narrow-ringed, for the trees grow slowly. Its color is dark, tinged with red, the thin sapwood being whiter. There is little prospect that the wood of this yew will ever be more important than it is now. It is often spoken of locally as savin, which name is likewise given to the red cedar (Juniperus virginiana), which is abundant in this yew’s range.California Nutmeg(Tumion californicum) is an interesting tree which ranges over a considerable portion of California, but is at its best in Mendocino county and the coast region north of San Francisco. It occurs also on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, in central California, at altitudes up to 5,000 feet. It receives its name from the resemblance of its seeds to nutmegs. Their surface is shriveled, but they do not have the nutmeg odor. The wood and the leaves, when bruised, give off an odor not altogether pleasing. On account of this, the tree has been called stinking cedar. In some localities it is called yew, and in others California false nutmeg, and coast nutmeg. Trees are generally small, with trunks of irregular form. The crown is open and usually extends to the ground; but in crowded situations, a rather shapely bole is developed, and the crown is small. The usual size of the tree does not exceed a height of fifty feet and a diameter of twenty inches. More trees are below than above that size; but in extreme cases the tree may reach a height of eighty-five feet and a diameter of four. The leaves in form and size resemble the foliage of yew, but their points are stiff and sharp, and if approached carelessly they will wound like cactus thorns. The fruit is an inch or more in length, a pulpy substance surrounding the seed. The wood possesses properties which ought to make it valuable, though reported uses are strictly local, such as small cabinet work and skiff making. It is bright lemon, yellow, rather hard, takes good polish, is of slow growth, with bands of summerwood thin but distinct, and medullary rays small, numerous, and obscure. Its weight is 29.66 pounds per cubic foot; it is not stiff or strong. It cannot attain high place as a manufacturing material, because it is too scarce, but itpossesses a beauty which must bring it recognition as a fine furniture, finish, and novelty wood. A few sawlogs go to mills in the region north of San Francisco, but the lumber is probably mixed with other kinds and it goes to market without a name. It ought to be put to a better use.Florida Torreya(Tumion taxifolium) is often called Chattahoochee pine in the region where it grows. That name is generally given to the tree when planted for ornament in yards, parks, and along streets of towns in northwestern Florida. It is known also as stinking cedar, stinking savin, and fetid yew. These names are generally applied to the forest-grown tree, particularly by those who cut it for fence posts, which is its principal use. Its range is local, being confined largely, if not wholly, to Gadsden county, Florida, where it grows on limestone soil. It can never have much importance as a commercial timber, because it is too scarce. In fact, it is in danger of extermination. Post cutters never spare it, and its range being so limited, there is not much hope for it. The interesting and beautiful tree is making a game fight for life. Many seedlings appear in the vicinity of old trees, while stumps, and even prostrate trunks, send up sprouts which, if let alone, grow to tree size. Sprouts on logs and stumps send roots to the ground as the seedling yellow birch does in damp northern woods. The yew-like leaves of Florida torreya are one and a half inch or less in length. The tree blooms in March and April, and the drupe-like fruit, an inch or more in length, is ripe by midsummer. The tree is from forty to sixty feet in height, and one to two feet in diameter. It is clothed in whorls of limbs, beginning near the ground, and tapering to the top. The wood is clear, bright yellow, the thin sapwood of lighter color; soft, easily worked, and susceptible of fine polish. It is very durable in contact with the soil. The green wood, and the bruised leaves and branches give off an odor suggesting the tomato vine. The texture and color of the wood indicate that it is well suited for fine cabinet work, but it is not a figured wood.Western yew branch

The Pacific yew is an interesting tree, useful for many minor purposes, but it is not procurable in large quantities. Its north and south range covers more than 1,000 miles, from Alaska to central California; while the species occurs from the Pacific coast eastward to Montana. It approaches sea level on some of the Alaskan islands, and toward the southern part of its range it reaches an altitude of 8,000 feet.

In Idaho it is called mountain mahogany, but apparently without good reason. Its color may bear some resemblance to that wood, but it is different in so many particulars that the name is not appropriate. The names western yew and Pacific yew are used interchangeably. Sometimes it bears the simple name yew; but since there is a yew in Florida, and another in Europe, it is well to give the western species a name which will distinguish it from others. The northwestern Indians called it “fighting wood,” which was the best description possible for them to give. They made bows of it, and it was superior to any other wood within their reach for that purpose. In fact, if they could have picked from all the woods of the United States they could scarcely have found its equal. It is very strong, though in elasticity its rating is under many other woods. It is of interest to note that five hundred or more years ago, the European yew (a closely related but different species) had nearly the same name in England that the northwestern Indians gave the western yew. It was called “the shooter yew,” because it was the bow wood of that time, and “bow staves,” which were rough pieces to be worked out by the bow makers, were articles of commerce. The search for it was so great, and so long-continued, that yew trees were well-nigh exterminated in the British Isles. It was, next to oak, and possibly above oak, the most indispensable wood in England at that time. It is instructive to observe that Indians who used the bow found the western yew as indispensable in their life as the English armies found the European yew at a time when the bow was the best weapon.

The northwestern Indians put this remarkable wood to other uses. They made spears of it, and sometimes employed them as weapons of war, but generally as implements of the chase, particularly in harpooning salmon which in summer ascend the northwestern rivers from the Pacific ocean in immense schools. The Indians whittled fishhooks of yew before they were able to buy steel hooks from traders. Some of those unique hooks are still in existence, and speak well of the inventive genius of the wild fisherman of the wilderness. A proper crook wasselected where a branch joined the trunk, and serviceable fish hooks were made without any cross grain. They were strong enough to hold the largest fish that ascended the rivers. Sometimes a bone barb was skillfully inserted. The Indians found a further use for this wood as material for canoe paddles. It is so strong that handles can be made small and blades thin without passing the limit of safety. The manufacture of boat paddles from yew continues.

More is used for fence posts than for any other one purpose. It is one of the most durable woods known where it must resist conditions conducive to decay. The name yew is said to be derived from a word in a north Europe language meaning everlasting. Yew fence posts are not named in statistics, and it is impossible to quote numbers. Their use is confined to the districts where they grow.

The manufacturers of small cabinets draw supplies from this wood, but the fact is not mentioned in Pacific states wood-using statistics. It is particularly liked for turnery, such as small spindles used in furniture and in grill work. It takes an exceptionally fine polish, and the wood’s great strength makes the use of slender pieces practicable. Experiments have shown that this wood may be stained with success, but its natural color is so attractive that there is little need of staining unless the purpose is to imitate some more costly wood. If stained black it is an excellent substitute for ebony.

Western yew figures little in lumber output. It is not listed in the markets. The few logs which reach sawmills are never again heard of, but probably most of the lumber is disposed of locally to those who need it. The tree is not of good form for saw timber. Burls are said to make beautiful veneer. Trunks are seldom round, but usually grow lopsided. Most of them are too small for sawlogs. The largest are seldom two feet in diameter, and generally not half that large. They are short and branched, the tree often dividing near the ground in several stems. The average tree is scarcely thirty feet high, but a few are twice that. Its growth is very slow. A six-inch trunk is seventy-five or 100 years old, and the largest sizes are from 200 to 350 years. It is evident, therefore, that efforts to grow western yew for commercial purposes will be few. Wild trees will be occasionally cut as long as they last, and they will probably last as long as any of their associates, for they are scattered sparingly over several hundred thousand square miles of country, and some of it rough and almost inaccessible. The best development of the species is in western Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

The leaves of western yew are one-half or five-eighths inch long. The fruit consists of red pulp enclosing a hard seed. Birds devour iteagerly. The fruit is not poisonous, as the yew berries of the Old World are. It ripens in September and falls in October. The wood is fine grained, clear rose red, becoming gradually duller on exposure. It weighs 39.83 pounds per cubic foot. Its fuel value is high.

Florida Yew(Taxus floridana) is extremely local in its range, and small in size. Few trees are more than twenty-five feet high and one foot in diameter. They are bushy and of poor form for manufacturing. The only reported use is as fence posts. The wood’s durability fits it for that place. The species is found in Gadsden county, Florida. The leaves are one inch or less in length; flowers appear in March, and the fruit ripens in October. The wood is moderately heavy, hard, and narrow-ringed, for the trees grow slowly. Its color is dark, tinged with red, the thin sapwood being whiter. There is little prospect that the wood of this yew will ever be more important than it is now. It is often spoken of locally as savin, which name is likewise given to the red cedar (Juniperus virginiana), which is abundant in this yew’s range.

California Nutmeg(Tumion californicum) is an interesting tree which ranges over a considerable portion of California, but is at its best in Mendocino county and the coast region north of San Francisco. It occurs also on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, in central California, at altitudes up to 5,000 feet. It receives its name from the resemblance of its seeds to nutmegs. Their surface is shriveled, but they do not have the nutmeg odor. The wood and the leaves, when bruised, give off an odor not altogether pleasing. On account of this, the tree has been called stinking cedar. In some localities it is called yew, and in others California false nutmeg, and coast nutmeg. Trees are generally small, with trunks of irregular form. The crown is open and usually extends to the ground; but in crowded situations, a rather shapely bole is developed, and the crown is small. The usual size of the tree does not exceed a height of fifty feet and a diameter of twenty inches. More trees are below than above that size; but in extreme cases the tree may reach a height of eighty-five feet and a diameter of four. The leaves in form and size resemble the foliage of yew, but their points are stiff and sharp, and if approached carelessly they will wound like cactus thorns. The fruit is an inch or more in length, a pulpy substance surrounding the seed. The wood possesses properties which ought to make it valuable, though reported uses are strictly local, such as small cabinet work and skiff making. It is bright lemon, yellow, rather hard, takes good polish, is of slow growth, with bands of summerwood thin but distinct, and medullary rays small, numerous, and obscure. Its weight is 29.66 pounds per cubic foot; it is not stiff or strong. It cannot attain high place as a manufacturing material, because it is too scarce, but itpossesses a beauty which must bring it recognition as a fine furniture, finish, and novelty wood. A few sawlogs go to mills in the region north of San Francisco, but the lumber is probably mixed with other kinds and it goes to market without a name. It ought to be put to a better use.

Florida Torreya(Tumion taxifolium) is often called Chattahoochee pine in the region where it grows. That name is generally given to the tree when planted for ornament in yards, parks, and along streets of towns in northwestern Florida. It is known also as stinking cedar, stinking savin, and fetid yew. These names are generally applied to the forest-grown tree, particularly by those who cut it for fence posts, which is its principal use. Its range is local, being confined largely, if not wholly, to Gadsden county, Florida, where it grows on limestone soil. It can never have much importance as a commercial timber, because it is too scarce. In fact, it is in danger of extermination. Post cutters never spare it, and its range being so limited, there is not much hope for it. The interesting and beautiful tree is making a game fight for life. Many seedlings appear in the vicinity of old trees, while stumps, and even prostrate trunks, send up sprouts which, if let alone, grow to tree size. Sprouts on logs and stumps send roots to the ground as the seedling yellow birch does in damp northern woods. The yew-like leaves of Florida torreya are one and a half inch or less in length. The tree blooms in March and April, and the drupe-like fruit, an inch or more in length, is ripe by midsummer. The tree is from forty to sixty feet in height, and one to two feet in diameter. It is clothed in whorls of limbs, beginning near the ground, and tapering to the top. The wood is clear, bright yellow, the thin sapwood of lighter color; soft, easily worked, and susceptible of fine polish. It is very durable in contact with the soil. The green wood, and the bruised leaves and branches give off an odor suggesting the tomato vine. The texture and color of the wood indicate that it is well suited for fine cabinet work, but it is not a figured wood.

Western yew branch

WHITE OAKWhite oakWhite Oak

White oakWhite Oak

White Oak

WHITE OAK(Quercus Alba)Oaks belong to the beech family, that is, the “foodtrees,”[3]though most acorns are too bitter and contain too much tannin to be edible; some may be eaten, and for that reason the ancients classed them among the food trees. “Quercus,” which is the name of the genus, means oak in the language of northwestern Europe. The name white oak nearly always suffices, but in Arkansas it is often called stave oak because it is the best stave timber in that region. It could with equal reason be called stave oak nearly anywhere, for it is excellent material for tight cooperage. Formerly it was sometimes called Baltimore oak, because many of the staves of export were shipped from that city. That name, however, belonged more to post oak (Quercus minor) than to white oak, because the fine staves which went out of Chesapeake bay in the export trade, were largely post oak. It matters little now, for the name Baltimore oak is not much used, and white oak may be said to have only one trade name. After the wood is dressed, it has different names referring to the style of finish and not to the wood itself.[3]The oaks of this country, which number more than fifty species, have been classified in different ways, depending upon the purpose in view. In the present treatment they will be divided in two general groups, white oaks and black oaks. No effort will be made to draw hard and fast lines, because it is not necessary. Oaks which ripen their acorns in one year are listed as white oaks; those with two year acorns, as black oaks. This is a botanical rather than a lumberman’s classification; yet lumbermen recognize it in a general way. White oak (Quercus alba) is clearly entitled to head the list of white oaks, and red oak (Quercus rubra) should occupy a similar position with regard to the black oak group. In numbers, the white oaks and black oaks are nearly equally divided, one authority giving twenty-seven species of white oak and twenty-five of black oak in the United States; but botanists differ as to exact numbers of each. The following species are usually classed as white oaks: White oak (Quercus alba), valley oak (Quercus lobata), Brewer oak (Quercus breweri), Sadler oak (Quercus sadleri), Pacific post oak (Quercus garryana), Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii), post oak (Quercus minor), Chapman oak (Quercus chapmani), bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa), overcup oak (Quercus lyrata), swamp white oak (Quercus platanoides), cow oak (Quercus michauxii), chestnut oak (Quercus prinus), chinquapin oak (Quercus acuminata), dwarf chinquapin oak (Quercus prinoides), Durand oak (Quercus breviloba), Rocky Mountain oak (Quercus undulata), California blue oak (Quercus douglasii), Engelmann oak (Quercus engelmanni), Rocky Mountain blue oak (Quercus oblongifolia), Arizona white oak (Quercus arizonica), Toumey oak (Quercus toumeyi), netleaf oak (Quercus reticulata), California scrub oak (Quercus dumosa), live oak (Quercus virginiana), Emory oak (Quercus emoryi).White oak grows in all the states east of the Mississippi river, and it crosses that stream two or three hundred miles in some places. Itreaches eastern Nebraska and eastern Kansas, and runs southward through Oklahoma to the Brazos river, Texas. It is scarce in the northern parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Its total range covers an area of more than 1,000,000 square miles. Like all other important timber trees, it has regions where the species is best developed. The finest original stands of white oak were found in the upper Ohio valley, beginning in Indiana. The timber in many other districts was, and in some still is, very good, such as southern Michigan, eastern Arkansas, some of the Appalachian valleys and slopes, and in certain places along the upper tributaries of streams flowing into the Atlantic ocean.This tree is in the very front rank in economic importance, and it has held that place since the earliest settlements in this country. No forest tree was more evenly distributed than white oak over the eastern half of the United States. It did not form pure forests of large extent, as some of the pines did, but white oaks were within reach of almost every part of the country. Conditions have greatly changed. The establishment of farms where woods originally occupied the whole country, lessened the abundance of oak long before lumbermen made it a commodity; and since then, the cutting of billions of feet of it has depleted or exhausted the supply in many regions. Still, white oak is as widely dispersed as ever. It has not been completely exterminated in any extensive region. White oak of as high grade goes to market now as ever in the past, but in smaller amounts, and the lower grades go in proportionately larger quantities. In other words, prime white oak has passed its best day. A hundred years of use and abuse in states west of the Alleghany mountains, and two hundred years in some of the regions east, have reduced original forests to remnants. But with all that, white oak remains undisputed king of American hardwoods.At its best, white oak attains a height of 125 feet and a diameter of six, but that size is unusual. A diameter of three feet and a height of 100 is above the average. The leaves are peculiar in that they hang on the branches until late winter, sometimes dropping only in time to give place to the new crop. They turn brown after the first hard frost. In some sections of the Appalachian region white oak coppice (sprout growth) is known as “red brush,” because of the adherence of the brown leaves during winter. The leaves of some other species have the same habit.The wood of white oak is very strong, stiff, heavy, and durable when exposed in all kinds of weather. Scarcely any other wood which can be had in merchantable quantities equals white oak in these qualities. It rates high in fuel value, and 6,000 pounds of dry wood when burned, leaves about 245 pounds of ashes. The color of the heartwood is lightbrown; the sapwood is thin; medullary rays are numerous and large; pores large; summerwood broad and dense.The medullary rays of no wood in this or any other country are more utilized to commercial advantage than those of white oak. Quarter-sawing is for the purpose of bringing them out. They are the bright streaks, clearly visible to the naked eye in the end of an oak log, radiating from the center outward like the spokes of a wheel. Many are too thin to be visible without a magnifying glass. By quarter-sawing, the rays are cut edgewise and appear as bright streaks or patches, often called “mirrors,” on the surface of boards. The woodworker knows how to finish the boards and treat them with fillers to bring out the figures.White oak is a porous wood. Some of the pores are large enough to be visible without a glass, and twenty times as many more can be seen only when magnified. The direction of the pores is up and down the trunk of the tree, and they are seen to best advantage in the end of a stick, although they are always more or less visible on the side of a board when the cutting is a little across the grain. The pores thus cut diagonally across are taken advantage of by the finisher who works stains and fillers into them, and changes their natural color, thereby accentuating the wood’s figure.The possibilities of white oak are almost infinite. It is good for nearly anything for which any wood is used. It is not the best for everything, but does well for most. Hickory is more resilient, ironwood is stronger, locust more durable, white pine warps and checks less; but white oak has so many good qualities in a fair degree that it can afford to fall below the highest in some, and still rank above competitors on general averages. It ranks high in shipbuilding, general construction, furniture manufacturing, finish and fixtures, the making of agricultural implements, car building, vehicle stock, cooperage, and many more.It is one of the most important of American veneer woods. It is sawed very thin, and is glued upon cores of other wood, thus becoming the covering or outside part. The purpose of using oak veneer instead of the solid wood is twofold. First, it goes farther, and second, a well-built article with veneer outside and a core of other woods which stand well, is superior to a solid oak article, except in cases where great strength is the object sought, or where deep carving is desired.The continued use of white oak is assured. It is not necessary to seek new uses for it. The demand is as great as the supply can meet, but the supply is not assured for the distant future. There will always be some white oak in the country; but the best has been or is being cut. The tree grows slowly, and good quarter-sawed white oak cannot be cutfrom young trees. An age of about 150 years is necessary. Most good white oak lumber today is cut from trees 200 or more years old. When the present supply of venerable oaks has been exhausted, prime oak lumber will be largely a thing of the past. Fortunately, that time has not yet arrived. About eighty years are required to grow a white oak of crosstie size. Those who will grow oak for market in the future will probably not wait much longer than eighty years to cut their trees, and the result will be a scarcity of mature trunks for lumber and veneer.Durand Oak(Quercus breviloba). In some parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana this tree goes to the lumber yard as white oak, and no one is injured by the substitution, for it is heavy, hard, and strong, and is of good color. The wood weighs 59.25 pounds per cubic foot, which places it above the average weight of white oak. It is said to be less tough than white oak. The tree varies greatly in different parts of its range which extends from central Alabama across Texas and into Mexico. It is known as white oak, Texas white oak, shin oak, pin oak, and basket oak. Its best development is in the eastern part of its range where trees eighty or ninety feet high are common; but in Texas the average is scarcely thirty feet high and one in diameter. Westward in Texas it becomes shrubby, and forms extensive thickets of brush.Chapman Oak(Quercus chapmani) is put to little use, because trunks are too small. They are seldom more than a foot in diameter, and are often little more than shrubs. The tree grows in the pine barrens near the coast from South Carolina to Florida, and it is found also in great abundance, but generally of small size, on the west coast of Florida from Tampa to the Apalachicola river.White oak branch

Oaks belong to the beech family, that is, the “foodtrees,”[3]though most acorns are too bitter and contain too much tannin to be edible; some may be eaten, and for that reason the ancients classed them among the food trees. “Quercus,” which is the name of the genus, means oak in the language of northwestern Europe. The name white oak nearly always suffices, but in Arkansas it is often called stave oak because it is the best stave timber in that region. It could with equal reason be called stave oak nearly anywhere, for it is excellent material for tight cooperage. Formerly it was sometimes called Baltimore oak, because many of the staves of export were shipped from that city. That name, however, belonged more to post oak (Quercus minor) than to white oak, because the fine staves which went out of Chesapeake bay in the export trade, were largely post oak. It matters little now, for the name Baltimore oak is not much used, and white oak may be said to have only one trade name. After the wood is dressed, it has different names referring to the style of finish and not to the wood itself.

[3]The oaks of this country, which number more than fifty species, have been classified in different ways, depending upon the purpose in view. In the present treatment they will be divided in two general groups, white oaks and black oaks. No effort will be made to draw hard and fast lines, because it is not necessary. Oaks which ripen their acorns in one year are listed as white oaks; those with two year acorns, as black oaks. This is a botanical rather than a lumberman’s classification; yet lumbermen recognize it in a general way. White oak (Quercus alba) is clearly entitled to head the list of white oaks, and red oak (Quercus rubra) should occupy a similar position with regard to the black oak group. In numbers, the white oaks and black oaks are nearly equally divided, one authority giving twenty-seven species of white oak and twenty-five of black oak in the United States; but botanists differ as to exact numbers of each. The following species are usually classed as white oaks: White oak (Quercus alba), valley oak (Quercus lobata), Brewer oak (Quercus breweri), Sadler oak (Quercus sadleri), Pacific post oak (Quercus garryana), Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii), post oak (Quercus minor), Chapman oak (Quercus chapmani), bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa), overcup oak (Quercus lyrata), swamp white oak (Quercus platanoides), cow oak (Quercus michauxii), chestnut oak (Quercus prinus), chinquapin oak (Quercus acuminata), dwarf chinquapin oak (Quercus prinoides), Durand oak (Quercus breviloba), Rocky Mountain oak (Quercus undulata), California blue oak (Quercus douglasii), Engelmann oak (Quercus engelmanni), Rocky Mountain blue oak (Quercus oblongifolia), Arizona white oak (Quercus arizonica), Toumey oak (Quercus toumeyi), netleaf oak (Quercus reticulata), California scrub oak (Quercus dumosa), live oak (Quercus virginiana), Emory oak (Quercus emoryi).

[3]The oaks of this country, which number more than fifty species, have been classified in different ways, depending upon the purpose in view. In the present treatment they will be divided in two general groups, white oaks and black oaks. No effort will be made to draw hard and fast lines, because it is not necessary. Oaks which ripen their acorns in one year are listed as white oaks; those with two year acorns, as black oaks. This is a botanical rather than a lumberman’s classification; yet lumbermen recognize it in a general way. White oak (Quercus alba) is clearly entitled to head the list of white oaks, and red oak (Quercus rubra) should occupy a similar position with regard to the black oak group. In numbers, the white oaks and black oaks are nearly equally divided, one authority giving twenty-seven species of white oak and twenty-five of black oak in the United States; but botanists differ as to exact numbers of each. The following species are usually classed as white oaks: White oak (Quercus alba), valley oak (Quercus lobata), Brewer oak (Quercus breweri), Sadler oak (Quercus sadleri), Pacific post oak (Quercus garryana), Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii), post oak (Quercus minor), Chapman oak (Quercus chapmani), bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa), overcup oak (Quercus lyrata), swamp white oak (Quercus platanoides), cow oak (Quercus michauxii), chestnut oak (Quercus prinus), chinquapin oak (Quercus acuminata), dwarf chinquapin oak (Quercus prinoides), Durand oak (Quercus breviloba), Rocky Mountain oak (Quercus undulata), California blue oak (Quercus douglasii), Engelmann oak (Quercus engelmanni), Rocky Mountain blue oak (Quercus oblongifolia), Arizona white oak (Quercus arizonica), Toumey oak (Quercus toumeyi), netleaf oak (Quercus reticulata), California scrub oak (Quercus dumosa), live oak (Quercus virginiana), Emory oak (Quercus emoryi).

White oak grows in all the states east of the Mississippi river, and it crosses that stream two or three hundred miles in some places. Itreaches eastern Nebraska and eastern Kansas, and runs southward through Oklahoma to the Brazos river, Texas. It is scarce in the northern parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Its total range covers an area of more than 1,000,000 square miles. Like all other important timber trees, it has regions where the species is best developed. The finest original stands of white oak were found in the upper Ohio valley, beginning in Indiana. The timber in many other districts was, and in some still is, very good, such as southern Michigan, eastern Arkansas, some of the Appalachian valleys and slopes, and in certain places along the upper tributaries of streams flowing into the Atlantic ocean.

This tree is in the very front rank in economic importance, and it has held that place since the earliest settlements in this country. No forest tree was more evenly distributed than white oak over the eastern half of the United States. It did not form pure forests of large extent, as some of the pines did, but white oaks were within reach of almost every part of the country. Conditions have greatly changed. The establishment of farms where woods originally occupied the whole country, lessened the abundance of oak long before lumbermen made it a commodity; and since then, the cutting of billions of feet of it has depleted or exhausted the supply in many regions. Still, white oak is as widely dispersed as ever. It has not been completely exterminated in any extensive region. White oak of as high grade goes to market now as ever in the past, but in smaller amounts, and the lower grades go in proportionately larger quantities. In other words, prime white oak has passed its best day. A hundred years of use and abuse in states west of the Alleghany mountains, and two hundred years in some of the regions east, have reduced original forests to remnants. But with all that, white oak remains undisputed king of American hardwoods.

At its best, white oak attains a height of 125 feet and a diameter of six, but that size is unusual. A diameter of three feet and a height of 100 is above the average. The leaves are peculiar in that they hang on the branches until late winter, sometimes dropping only in time to give place to the new crop. They turn brown after the first hard frost. In some sections of the Appalachian region white oak coppice (sprout growth) is known as “red brush,” because of the adherence of the brown leaves during winter. The leaves of some other species have the same habit.

The wood of white oak is very strong, stiff, heavy, and durable when exposed in all kinds of weather. Scarcely any other wood which can be had in merchantable quantities equals white oak in these qualities. It rates high in fuel value, and 6,000 pounds of dry wood when burned, leaves about 245 pounds of ashes. The color of the heartwood is lightbrown; the sapwood is thin; medullary rays are numerous and large; pores large; summerwood broad and dense.

The medullary rays of no wood in this or any other country are more utilized to commercial advantage than those of white oak. Quarter-sawing is for the purpose of bringing them out. They are the bright streaks, clearly visible to the naked eye in the end of an oak log, radiating from the center outward like the spokes of a wheel. Many are too thin to be visible without a magnifying glass. By quarter-sawing, the rays are cut edgewise and appear as bright streaks or patches, often called “mirrors,” on the surface of boards. The woodworker knows how to finish the boards and treat them with fillers to bring out the figures.

White oak is a porous wood. Some of the pores are large enough to be visible without a glass, and twenty times as many more can be seen only when magnified. The direction of the pores is up and down the trunk of the tree, and they are seen to best advantage in the end of a stick, although they are always more or less visible on the side of a board when the cutting is a little across the grain. The pores thus cut diagonally across are taken advantage of by the finisher who works stains and fillers into them, and changes their natural color, thereby accentuating the wood’s figure.

The possibilities of white oak are almost infinite. It is good for nearly anything for which any wood is used. It is not the best for everything, but does well for most. Hickory is more resilient, ironwood is stronger, locust more durable, white pine warps and checks less; but white oak has so many good qualities in a fair degree that it can afford to fall below the highest in some, and still rank above competitors on general averages. It ranks high in shipbuilding, general construction, furniture manufacturing, finish and fixtures, the making of agricultural implements, car building, vehicle stock, cooperage, and many more.

It is one of the most important of American veneer woods. It is sawed very thin, and is glued upon cores of other wood, thus becoming the covering or outside part. The purpose of using oak veneer instead of the solid wood is twofold. First, it goes farther, and second, a well-built article with veneer outside and a core of other woods which stand well, is superior to a solid oak article, except in cases where great strength is the object sought, or where deep carving is desired.

The continued use of white oak is assured. It is not necessary to seek new uses for it. The demand is as great as the supply can meet, but the supply is not assured for the distant future. There will always be some white oak in the country; but the best has been or is being cut. The tree grows slowly, and good quarter-sawed white oak cannot be cutfrom young trees. An age of about 150 years is necessary. Most good white oak lumber today is cut from trees 200 or more years old. When the present supply of venerable oaks has been exhausted, prime oak lumber will be largely a thing of the past. Fortunately, that time has not yet arrived. About eighty years are required to grow a white oak of crosstie size. Those who will grow oak for market in the future will probably not wait much longer than eighty years to cut their trees, and the result will be a scarcity of mature trunks for lumber and veneer.

Durand Oak(Quercus breviloba). In some parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana this tree goes to the lumber yard as white oak, and no one is injured by the substitution, for it is heavy, hard, and strong, and is of good color. The wood weighs 59.25 pounds per cubic foot, which places it above the average weight of white oak. It is said to be less tough than white oak. The tree varies greatly in different parts of its range which extends from central Alabama across Texas and into Mexico. It is known as white oak, Texas white oak, shin oak, pin oak, and basket oak. Its best development is in the eastern part of its range where trees eighty or ninety feet high are common; but in Texas the average is scarcely thirty feet high and one in diameter. Westward in Texas it becomes shrubby, and forms extensive thickets of brush.Chapman Oak(Quercus chapmani) is put to little use, because trunks are too small. They are seldom more than a foot in diameter, and are often little more than shrubs. The tree grows in the pine barrens near the coast from South Carolina to Florida, and it is found also in great abundance, but generally of small size, on the west coast of Florida from Tampa to the Apalachicola river.

Durand Oak(Quercus breviloba). In some parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana this tree goes to the lumber yard as white oak, and no one is injured by the substitution, for it is heavy, hard, and strong, and is of good color. The wood weighs 59.25 pounds per cubic foot, which places it above the average weight of white oak. It is said to be less tough than white oak. The tree varies greatly in different parts of its range which extends from central Alabama across Texas and into Mexico. It is known as white oak, Texas white oak, shin oak, pin oak, and basket oak. Its best development is in the eastern part of its range where trees eighty or ninety feet high are common; but in Texas the average is scarcely thirty feet high and one in diameter. Westward in Texas it becomes shrubby, and forms extensive thickets of brush.

Chapman Oak(Quercus chapmani) is put to little use, because trunks are too small. They are seldom more than a foot in diameter, and are often little more than shrubs. The tree grows in the pine barrens near the coast from South Carolina to Florida, and it is found also in great abundance, but generally of small size, on the west coast of Florida from Tampa to the Apalachicola river.

White oak branch

BUR OAKBur oakBur Oak

Bur oakBur Oak

Bur Oak

BUR OAK(Quercus Macrocarpa)This splendid oak was named by Michaux, a French traveler and botanist who visited many parts of eastern and southeastern United States more than a century ago. The botanical namemacrocarpa, means “large fruit.” The bur oak bears small acorns in the North, and very large ones in the South. They are sometimes two inches long and one and a half inches wide, and “large-fruit” oak is an appropriate name for the tree in the South, but would not be near the northern limit of its range.It is known in different regions as bur oak, mossy cup oak, overcup oak, scrub oak, and mossy cup white oak. Bur oak is a name suggested by the acorn which has a fringe round the cup like a bur. This is the oak which gave name to James Fenimore Cooper’s book, “Oak Openings” a romance of early days in Michigan. Oak openings were areas where fires had killed the old timber, and a young growth had sprouted from stumps and roots, or had sprung up from seeds buried in the ground beyond the reach of the fire. Some of those tracts were very large, and they were not confined to any one state. They existed in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Dakota, and elsewhere. Bur oak, because it is a vigorous species, was able to take possession of such burned areas, to the exclusion of most others.Few American oaks have a wider range. It extends from Nova Scotia to Manitoba, and in the United States is found in most states east of the Rocky Mountains. It extends farther west and northwest than any other commercial oak of the Atlantic states. In a range of so great geographical extent the bur oak finds it necessary to adapt itself to many kinds of land. It prefers low tracts where water is sufficient but not excessive, but it grows well in more elevated situations, provided the soil is fertile. It is not a poor-land tree. In the primeval forests it attained largest size in Indiana and Illinois. The largest trees were from 150 to 170 feet high and four to seven in diameter. Sizes varied from that extreme down to the other extreme near the outskirts of its range where the growth was stunted. Large quantities of very fine logs have been cut from trunks from two to four feet in diameter, and forty to sixty feet to the limbs.The leaves of bur oak are from six to twelve inches long, simple and alternate; the petioles are thick with flattened and enlarged bases; the leaves are wedge-shaped at the base, and have from five to seven long, irregular lobes, the terminal one very large and broad. They are darkgreen in color, and are smooth and shiny above, silvery white and pubescent below. The edge of the leaf is notched somewhat like chestnut, but the teeth or notches are not so sharp.The twigs are provided with corky wings, or flattened keels of bark, along their sides. Some of the wings are an inch or more wide. They are apt to escape notice when the tree is in leaf, but in the winter the bare twigs look rough and ragged.The weight of bur oak is approximately the same as white oak, and the two woods are much the same in strength and elasticity. The bands of summerwood are broad and dense, and the springwood is filled with large pores. The medullary rays are broad, but not numerous in comparison with white oak. They are sufficiently conspicuous to show well in quarter-sawing.Bur oak nearly always goes to market as white oak, or simply as oak, and it is difficult to ascertain all the uses found for it. Some factories which make furniture, finish, vehicles, and other articles that figure in the country’s trade, attempt to identify the woods they use. That is done as carefully in Michigan as anywhere else, though comparatively few of the factories carry out the plan even in that state where many of the best wood-using establishments of the country are located. In a report issued in 1912 which gave statistics collected from more than eight hundred Michigan factories, bur oak received separate consideration. The uses there are doubtless representative, and will hold throughout the country wherever bur oak is fairly abundant. It is listed as baseboards, billiard table rims, bookcases, clay working machines, filing cabinets, furniture, hand sleds, hay balers, interior finish, molding, tinplate boxes, wagon sills, work benches. The amount of wood used in the state was nearly 900,000 feet, according to the reports; but it certainly does not include all. What it does show, however, is that bur oak is one of the substantial woods of that region, and that it possesses properties which fit it for many important places in the country’s industries.Bur oak contributes to the output of cooper shops. Slack coopers class it with many other hardwoods for the manufacture of barrels for vegetables and various other commodities, while the makers of barrels for liquids put bur oak in with white oak.The future of bur oak does not promise much after the trees which now remain have been cut. That does not mean that the species will become extinct, for that is improbable; but when the mature trees which developed during two or three hundred years of forest conditions have passed away, there is not much prospect of others being left to grow to the age and size which will make them valuable as lumber. Woodlotowners will not wait much longer than the seventy-five or one hundred years required to grow trees of crosstie size. Railroads pay good prices for this wood, for it lasts well, holds spikes in a satisfactory manner, and is strong and hard. As far as can be seen, bur oak will fare in the future about like white oak; that is, few trees will be left standing long enough to attain large size, because it will pay better to cut them while comparatively small.California Blue Oak(Quercus douglasii) receives its name from the color of its foliage in spring and early summer in the valleys and on the rolling foothills of central California. Later in the summer, when the dry season is on, the leaves lose some of their blue, on account of age, but more from an accumulation of dust; but even then the form of the tree, from its habit of growing in open formation like an old apple orchard, presents an attractive picture. It is often associated with the valley oak, which is larger and more stately, but the blue oak loses nothing by the contrast. It is occasionally called rock oak, but for what reason is not clear. It is known, too, as mountain white oak, or simply white oak, and as blue oak. Its range covers central California from Mendocino to the Mojave desert, and from the immediate coast inland through the valleys to the Sierras, and upward to an altitude of 4,000 feet where the tree degenerates into a shrub which has neither beauty nor utility. The species reaches its best development in the Salinas valley from twenty to sixty miles from the coast. There the largest trees are found, and also some that have assumed peculiar forms. In positions exposed to the never-ceasing sea winds which sweep up the valleys, the blue oaks lie prone like logs, their tops pointing away from the wind. They grew in that unnatural position, having been pressed flat by the wind since they were seedlings. This oak’s ashen gray bark harmonizes well with the dry summer grass and dull sand and gravel which surround it during the hot period. The branches are often covered with green-gray lichens which somewhat modify the aspect of the tree under close inspection. The leaves are irregular in form. Some closely resemble leaves of the eastern white oak, while others are almost or quite without lobes. During the growing season the acorns are deep green, but when approaching maturity they change to a chestnut-brown. They vary in shape as much as the leaves. Some are almost eggshaped, bulging out above the cup which seems too small; but all of them do not assume that form, but may be short and symmetrical, or very long and slender. Woodpeckers store these acorns in large numbers, and they search out peculiar places for their hoards. A knot hole in the weatherboarding of an old barn, granary, or school house is considered ideal, though when the acorns are so disposed of, they are out of reach of the woodpecker forever. Another method is to peck holes just large enough for an acorn in fence posts or dead tree trunks, and hammer the acorns tightly in, small end first. The surfaces of dead trees are sometimes absolutely covered with such holes, each with its acorn. The woodpecker’s purpose is to wait until the acorns become infested with larvæ. He has no intention of eating the acorn itself.California blue oaks range in height from shrubs to trees of ninety feet, with diameters of three or four feet. The average height is about forty-five and the diameter two or less. The trunk frequently divides a few feet from the ground into large limbs. That form excludes the wood from sawmills, and only in rare cases does any of it find its way there. The lumber is of poor quality, brittle, black, and otherwise defective. The sapwood is white and thick. A cubic foot weighs 55.64 pounds, or nearly ten more than eastern white oak. It is weak, and is low in elasticity. Theannual rings are often nearly invisible, because the pores are scattered evenly and do not form bands. The medullary rays are broad, in the heart black, in the sapwood white. If the wood were otherwise suitable, pleasing effects might be produced by quarter-sawing, but as far as known, no attempts have been made to do this. Now and then a suitable log might be found. The importance of this oak lies in its fuel value. It rates above white oak in theoretical tests, but it is heavier in ash, and in practice it hardly measures up to white oak. It grows slowly and is destined to disappear as a source of fuel supply. Reproduction has nearly ceased in most parts of its range, due largely to the perseverance of hogs in eating the acorns. 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 class 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.Bur oak leaf and acorn

This splendid oak was named by Michaux, a French traveler and botanist who visited many parts of eastern and southeastern United States more than a century ago. The botanical namemacrocarpa, means “large fruit.” The bur oak bears small acorns in the North, and very large ones in the South. They are sometimes two inches long and one and a half inches wide, and “large-fruit” oak is an appropriate name for the tree in the South, but would not be near the northern limit of its range.

It is known in different regions as bur oak, mossy cup oak, overcup oak, scrub oak, and mossy cup white oak. Bur oak is a name suggested by the acorn which has a fringe round the cup like a bur. This is the oak which gave name to James Fenimore Cooper’s book, “Oak Openings” a romance of early days in Michigan. Oak openings were areas where fires had killed the old timber, and a young growth had sprouted from stumps and roots, or had sprung up from seeds buried in the ground beyond the reach of the fire. Some of those tracts were very large, and they were not confined to any one state. They existed in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Dakota, and elsewhere. Bur oak, because it is a vigorous species, was able to take possession of such burned areas, to the exclusion of most others.

Few American oaks have a wider range. It extends from Nova Scotia to Manitoba, and in the United States is found in most states east of the Rocky Mountains. It extends farther west and northwest than any other commercial oak of the Atlantic states. In a range of so great geographical extent the bur oak finds it necessary to adapt itself to many kinds of land. It prefers low tracts where water is sufficient but not excessive, but it grows well in more elevated situations, provided the soil is fertile. It is not a poor-land tree. In the primeval forests it attained largest size in Indiana and Illinois. The largest trees were from 150 to 170 feet high and four to seven in diameter. Sizes varied from that extreme down to the other extreme near the outskirts of its range where the growth was stunted. Large quantities of very fine logs have been cut from trunks from two to four feet in diameter, and forty to sixty feet to the limbs.

The leaves of bur oak are from six to twelve inches long, simple and alternate; the petioles are thick with flattened and enlarged bases; the leaves are wedge-shaped at the base, and have from five to seven long, irregular lobes, the terminal one very large and broad. They are darkgreen in color, and are smooth and shiny above, silvery white and pubescent below. The edge of the leaf is notched somewhat like chestnut, but the teeth or notches are not so sharp.

The twigs are provided with corky wings, or flattened keels of bark, along their sides. Some of the wings are an inch or more wide. They are apt to escape notice when the tree is in leaf, but in the winter the bare twigs look rough and ragged.

The weight of bur oak is approximately the same as white oak, and the two woods are much the same in strength and elasticity. The bands of summerwood are broad and dense, and the springwood is filled with large pores. The medullary rays are broad, but not numerous in comparison with white oak. They are sufficiently conspicuous to show well in quarter-sawing.

Bur oak nearly always goes to market as white oak, or simply as oak, and it is difficult to ascertain all the uses found for it. Some factories which make furniture, finish, vehicles, and other articles that figure in the country’s trade, attempt to identify the woods they use. That is done as carefully in Michigan as anywhere else, though comparatively few of the factories carry out the plan even in that state where many of the best wood-using establishments of the country are located. In a report issued in 1912 which gave statistics collected from more than eight hundred Michigan factories, bur oak received separate consideration. The uses there are doubtless representative, and will hold throughout the country wherever bur oak is fairly abundant. It is listed as baseboards, billiard table rims, bookcases, clay working machines, filing cabinets, furniture, hand sleds, hay balers, interior finish, molding, tinplate boxes, wagon sills, work benches. The amount of wood used in the state was nearly 900,000 feet, according to the reports; but it certainly does not include all. What it does show, however, is that bur oak is one of the substantial woods of that region, and that it possesses properties which fit it for many important places in the country’s industries.

Bur oak contributes to the output of cooper shops. Slack coopers class it with many other hardwoods for the manufacture of barrels for vegetables and various other commodities, while the makers of barrels for liquids put bur oak in with white oak.

The future of bur oak does not promise much after the trees which now remain have been cut. That does not mean that the species will become extinct, for that is improbable; but when the mature trees which developed during two or three hundred years of forest conditions have passed away, there is not much prospect of others being left to grow to the age and size which will make them valuable as lumber. Woodlotowners will not wait much longer than the seventy-five or one hundred years required to grow trees of crosstie size. Railroads pay good prices for this wood, for it lasts well, holds spikes in a satisfactory manner, and is strong and hard. As far as can be seen, bur oak will fare in the future about like white oak; that is, few trees will be left standing long enough to attain large size, because it will pay better to cut them while comparatively small.

California Blue Oak(Quercus douglasii) receives its name from the color of its foliage in spring and early summer in the valleys and on the rolling foothills of central California. Later in the summer, when the dry season is on, the leaves lose some of their blue, on account of age, but more from an accumulation of dust; but even then the form of the tree, from its habit of growing in open formation like an old apple orchard, presents an attractive picture. It is often associated with the valley oak, which is larger and more stately, but the blue oak loses nothing by the contrast. It is occasionally called rock oak, but for what reason is not clear. It is known, too, as mountain white oak, or simply white oak, and as blue oak. Its range covers central California from Mendocino to the Mojave desert, and from the immediate coast inland through the valleys to the Sierras, and upward to an altitude of 4,000 feet where the tree degenerates into a shrub which has neither beauty nor utility. The species reaches its best development in the Salinas valley from twenty to sixty miles from the coast. There the largest trees are found, and also some that have assumed peculiar forms. In positions exposed to the never-ceasing sea winds which sweep up the valleys, the blue oaks lie prone like logs, their tops pointing away from the wind. They grew in that unnatural position, having been pressed flat by the wind since they were seedlings. This oak’s ashen gray bark harmonizes well with the dry summer grass and dull sand and gravel which surround it during the hot period. The branches are often covered with green-gray lichens which somewhat modify the aspect of the tree under close inspection. The leaves are irregular in form. Some closely resemble leaves of the eastern white oak, while others are almost or quite without lobes. During the growing season the acorns are deep green, but when approaching maturity they change to a chestnut-brown. They vary in shape as much as the leaves. Some are almost eggshaped, bulging out above the cup which seems too small; but all of them do not assume that form, but may be short and symmetrical, or very long and slender. Woodpeckers store these acorns in large numbers, and they search out peculiar places for their hoards. A knot hole in the weatherboarding of an old barn, granary, or school house is considered ideal, though when the acorns are so disposed of, they are out of reach of the woodpecker forever. Another method is to peck holes just large enough for an acorn in fence posts or dead tree trunks, and hammer the acorns tightly in, small end first. The surfaces of dead trees are sometimes absolutely covered with such holes, each with its acorn. The woodpecker’s purpose is to wait until the acorns become infested with larvæ. He has no intention of eating the acorn itself.California blue oaks range in height from shrubs to trees of ninety feet, with diameters of three or four feet. The average height is about forty-five and the diameter two or less. The trunk frequently divides a few feet from the ground into large limbs. That form excludes the wood from sawmills, and only in rare cases does any of it find its way there. The lumber is of poor quality, brittle, black, and otherwise defective. The sapwood is white and thick. A cubic foot weighs 55.64 pounds, or nearly ten more than eastern white oak. It is weak, and is low in elasticity. Theannual rings are often nearly invisible, because the pores are scattered evenly and do not form bands. The medullary rays are broad, in the heart black, in the sapwood white. If the wood were otherwise suitable, pleasing effects might be produced by quarter-sawing, but as far as known, no attempts have been made to do this. Now and then a suitable log might be found. The importance of this oak lies in its fuel value. It rates above white oak in theoretical tests, but it is heavier in ash, and in practice it hardly measures up to white oak. It grows slowly and is destined to disappear as a source of fuel supply. Reproduction has nearly ceased in most parts of its range, due largely to the perseverance of hogs in eating the acorns. 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 class 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.

California Blue Oak(Quercus douglasii) receives its name from the color of its foliage in spring and early summer in the valleys and on the rolling foothills of central California. Later in the summer, when the dry season is on, the leaves lose some of their blue, on account of age, but more from an accumulation of dust; but even then the form of the tree, from its habit of growing in open formation like an old apple orchard, presents an attractive picture. It is often associated with the valley oak, which is larger and more stately, but the blue oak loses nothing by the contrast. It is occasionally called rock oak, but for what reason is not clear. It is known, too, as mountain white oak, or simply white oak, and as blue oak. Its range covers central California from Mendocino to the Mojave desert, and from the immediate coast inland through the valleys to the Sierras, and upward to an altitude of 4,000 feet where the tree degenerates into a shrub which has neither beauty nor utility. The species reaches its best development in the Salinas valley from twenty to sixty miles from the coast. There the largest trees are found, and also some that have assumed peculiar forms. In positions exposed to the never-ceasing sea winds which sweep up the valleys, the blue oaks lie prone like logs, their tops pointing away from the wind. They grew in that unnatural position, having been pressed flat by the wind since they were seedlings. This oak’s ashen gray bark harmonizes well with the dry summer grass and dull sand and gravel which surround it during the hot period. The branches are often covered with green-gray lichens which somewhat modify the aspect of the tree under close inspection. The leaves are irregular in form. Some closely resemble leaves of the eastern white oak, while others are almost or quite without lobes. During the growing season the acorns are deep green, but when approaching maturity they change to a chestnut-brown. They vary in shape as much as the leaves. Some are almost eggshaped, bulging out above the cup which seems too small; but all of them do not assume that form, but may be short and symmetrical, or very long and slender. Woodpeckers store these acorns in large numbers, and they search out peculiar places for their hoards. A knot hole in the weatherboarding of an old barn, granary, or school house is considered ideal, though when the acorns are so disposed of, they are out of reach of the woodpecker forever. Another method is to peck holes just large enough for an acorn in fence posts or dead tree trunks, and hammer the acorns tightly in, small end first. The surfaces of dead trees are sometimes absolutely covered with such holes, each with its acorn. The woodpecker’s purpose is to wait until the acorns become infested with larvæ. He has no intention of eating the acorn itself.

California blue oaks range in height from shrubs to trees of ninety feet, with diameters of three or four feet. The average height is about forty-five and the diameter two or less. The trunk frequently divides a few feet from the ground into large limbs. That form excludes the wood from sawmills, and only in rare cases does any of it find its way there. The lumber is of poor quality, brittle, black, and otherwise defective. The sapwood is white and thick. A cubic foot weighs 55.64 pounds, or nearly ten more than eastern white oak. It is weak, and is low in elasticity. Theannual rings are often nearly invisible, because the pores are scattered evenly and do not form bands. The medullary rays are broad, in the heart black, in the sapwood white. If the wood were otherwise suitable, pleasing effects might be produced by quarter-sawing, but as far as known, no attempts have been made to do this. Now and then a suitable log might be found. The importance of this oak lies in its fuel value. It rates above white oak in theoretical tests, but it is heavier in ash, and in practice it hardly measures up to white oak. It grows slowly and is destined to disappear as a source of fuel supply. Reproduction has nearly ceased in most parts of its range, due largely to the perseverance of hogs in eating the acorns. 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 class 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.

Bur oak leaf and acorn

FORKED-LEAF WHITE OAKForked-leaf white oakForked-Leaf White Oak

Forked-leaf white oakForked-Leaf White Oak

Forked-Leaf White Oak

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 catesbæi) 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 assistance 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; coveredwith 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 button.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 quantity 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 Arizonawhere it covers the hillsides and occurs in canyons at altitudes 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 classed 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 usefulnessto 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 pass 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 passes 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 quantity 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 masses 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 quantities of fuel.Forked leaf white oak branch

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 catesbæi) 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 assistance 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; coveredwith 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 button.

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 quantity 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 Arizonawhere it covers the hillsides and occurs in canyons at altitudes 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 classed 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 usefulnessto 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 pass 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 passes 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 quantity 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 masses 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 quantities of fuel.

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 usefulnessto 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 pass 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 passes 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 quantity 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 masses 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 quantities of fuel.

Forked leaf white oak branch

POST OAKPost oakPost Oak

Post oakPost Oak

Post Oak

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; chêne étoile 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 circumstance. 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, sassafras, 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 beingcovered 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 speciesstellata. 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, balusters.Post oak will do well on land too gravelly and thin to sustain good white oak growth. To that extent the two species are not competitors for ground, and post oak is assured a place in future woodlots, but it cannot be expected ever to equal white oak in commercial importance, while as an ornamental tree it is not usually favored because the shape of its crown is not altogether pleasing. Its very dark foliage, however, is admired by many and gives the tree an individuality.Swamp White Oak(Quercus platanoides). This tree’s botanical name means “broadleaf oak,” and that is a good description as far as it goes, but it does not apply solely to this species. The characteristic which fixes it best in the minds of most people is its preference for low, wet soil. Its two common names are swamp oak and swamp white oak, yet it is not really a swamp tree, such as the northern white cedar, southern white cedar, cypress, and tupelo are. It does not associate with any of those trees. It prefers river banks, and does not object to a good deal of water about its roots, though it grows nicely in situations out of reach of all overflow, and often side by side with silver maple, hickory, ash, and several other oaks. The leaf resembles that of chestnut oak, and the bark is somewhat like chestnut oak, but the wood passes in market for white oak, and is a good substitute for it, though the resemblance is not so close that one need be mistaken for the other. The tree averages about seventy feet high with a diameter of two feet, but much larger trunks are common. The famous “Wadsworth oak,” which stood on the bank of the Genesee river in western New York, about a mile from the village of Geneseo, was a swamp white oak. It had a trunk diameter of nine feet, but it was not tall in proportion. It met its overthrow by the undermining of the river bank in time of flood. That is a common fate for this tree, because of its preference for river banks. Its range is from Maine to Wisconsin and Iowa. It follows the mountains to northern Georgia; and west of the Mississippi it grows as far south as Arkansas. The species is best developed in western New York, northwestern Pennsylvania, and along the southern shores of Lakes Erie and Michigan.Trees do not clear themselves of branches on their lower trunks very early in life, and lumber more or less knotty results. It is possible, however, to cut a fairly large proportion of clear boards. The wood is of about the same weight as white oak, and is hard, strong, and tough. Its color is light brown, and the thin sapwood is hardly distinguishable from the heart. The medullary rays are as large as those of white oak, but are few. For that reason, swamp white oak does not give verysatisfactory results when quarter-sawed. The bright patches are too scarce. Neither does it show as many of these rays as chestnut oak. The wood is very porous, but the large pores are confined to the springwood, while the broad bands of summerwood are dense. The contrast between the two parts of annual rings forms a strong, but not particularly handsome figure when the lumber is sawed tangentially—that is, from the side of the log. The wood finisher can improve this oak’s natural appearance by employing fillers and stains to lighten shades or deepen tints. The uses of this oak are numerous. It is excellent fuel, and is rather low in ash; it is weaker and more brittle than white oak; but it is quite satisfactory for railroad ties, car building, house finish, furniture, some parts of heavy vehicles, certain kinds of cooperage, and for farm implements.Rocky Mountain Blue Oak(Quercus oblongifolia) is named from the blue color of its foliage, though what little lumber is cut from it, is bought and sold as white oak. It is of little importance, yet in the almost timberless mountains of western Texas it supplies some of the urgent wants of a scattered population. It bears willow-like leaves one or two inches long, and less than an inch wide; but on vigorous shoots they are larger. The acorns are very small. Trees seldom exceed thirty feet in height, and a diameter of twenty inches; and often the trunk is divided near the ground in three or four stout, crooked forks. Ordinarily, it is an impossible tree to lumber, but sometimes a few logs find their way to sawmills and a little passable lumber is produced. The wood weighs 58 pounds per cubic foot. It is strong, but when it breaks, it snaps short. The heartwood is darker than in most oaks, and the sapwood is brown. The tree is useful for fuel. Charcoal for local blacksmith shops is manufactured from the wood. It is abundant on many of the sterile slopes and mesas of New Mexico and Arizona, but usually in the form of brush about the heads of canyons.Post oak branch

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; chêne étoile 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 circumstance. 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, sassafras, 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 beingcovered 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 speciesstellata. 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, balusters.

Post oak will do well on land too gravelly and thin to sustain good white oak growth. To that extent the two species are not competitors for ground, and post oak is assured a place in future woodlots, but it cannot be expected ever to equal white oak in commercial importance, while as an ornamental tree it is not usually favored because the shape of its crown is not altogether pleasing. Its very dark foliage, however, is admired by many and gives the tree an individuality.

Swamp White Oak(Quercus platanoides). This tree’s botanical name means “broadleaf oak,” and that is a good description as far as it goes, but it does not apply solely to this species. The characteristic which fixes it best in the minds of most people is its preference for low, wet soil. Its two common names are swamp oak and swamp white oak, yet it is not really a swamp tree, such as the northern white cedar, southern white cedar, cypress, and tupelo are. It does not associate with any of those trees. It prefers river banks, and does not object to a good deal of water about its roots, though it grows nicely in situations out of reach of all overflow, and often side by side with silver maple, hickory, ash, and several other oaks. The leaf resembles that of chestnut oak, and the bark is somewhat like chestnut oak, but the wood passes in market for white oak, and is a good substitute for it, though the resemblance is not so close that one need be mistaken for the other. The tree averages about seventy feet high with a diameter of two feet, but much larger trunks are common. The famous “Wadsworth oak,” which stood on the bank of the Genesee river in western New York, about a mile from the village of Geneseo, was a swamp white oak. It had a trunk diameter of nine feet, but it was not tall in proportion. It met its overthrow by the undermining of the river bank in time of flood. That is a common fate for this tree, because of its preference for river banks. Its range is from Maine to Wisconsin and Iowa. It follows the mountains to northern Georgia; and west of the Mississippi it grows as far south as Arkansas. The species is best developed in western New York, northwestern Pennsylvania, and along the southern shores of Lakes Erie and Michigan.

Trees do not clear themselves of branches on their lower trunks very early in life, and lumber more or less knotty results. It is possible, however, to cut a fairly large proportion of clear boards. The wood is of about the same weight as white oak, and is hard, strong, and tough. Its color is light brown, and the thin sapwood is hardly distinguishable from the heart. The medullary rays are as large as those of white oak, but are few. For that reason, swamp white oak does not give verysatisfactory results when quarter-sawed. The bright patches are too scarce. Neither does it show as many of these rays as chestnut oak. The wood is very porous, but the large pores are confined to the springwood, while the broad bands of summerwood are dense. The contrast between the two parts of annual rings forms a strong, but not particularly handsome figure when the lumber is sawed tangentially—that is, from the side of the log. The wood finisher can improve this oak’s natural appearance by employing fillers and stains to lighten shades or deepen tints. The uses of this oak are numerous. It is excellent fuel, and is rather low in ash; it is weaker and more brittle than white oak; but it is quite satisfactory for railroad ties, car building, house finish, furniture, some parts of heavy vehicles, certain kinds of cooperage, and for farm implements.

Rocky Mountain Blue Oak(Quercus oblongifolia) is named from the blue color of its foliage, though what little lumber is cut from it, is bought and sold as white oak. It is of little importance, yet in the almost timberless mountains of western Texas it supplies some of the urgent wants of a scattered population. It bears willow-like leaves one or two inches long, and less than an inch wide; but on vigorous shoots they are larger. The acorns are very small. Trees seldom exceed thirty feet in height, and a diameter of twenty inches; and often the trunk is divided near the ground in three or four stout, crooked forks. Ordinarily, it is an impossible tree to lumber, but sometimes a few logs find their way to sawmills and a little passable lumber is produced. The wood weighs 58 pounds per cubic foot. It is strong, but when it breaks, it snaps short. The heartwood is darker than in most oaks, and the sapwood is brown. The tree is useful for fuel. Charcoal for local blacksmith shops is manufactured from the wood. It is abundant on many of the sterile slopes and mesas of New Mexico and Arizona, but usually in the form of brush about the heads of canyons.

Rocky Mountain Blue Oak(Quercus oblongifolia) is named from the blue color of its foliage, though what little lumber is cut from it, is bought and sold as white oak. It is of little importance, yet in the almost timberless mountains of western Texas it supplies some of the urgent wants of a scattered population. It bears willow-like leaves one or two inches long, and less than an inch wide; but on vigorous shoots they are larger. The acorns are very small. Trees seldom exceed thirty feet in height, and a diameter of twenty inches; and often the trunk is divided near the ground in three or four stout, crooked forks. Ordinarily, it is an impossible tree to lumber, but sometimes a few logs find their way to sawmills and a little passable lumber is produced. The wood weighs 58 pounds per cubic foot. It is strong, but when it breaks, it snaps short. The heartwood is darker than in most oaks, and the sapwood is brown. The tree is useful for fuel. Charcoal for local blacksmith shops is manufactured from the wood. It is abundant on many of the sterile slopes and mesas of New Mexico and Arizona, but usually in the form of brush about the heads of canyons.

Post oak branch

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