American Forest Trees Part 16

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 a.s.sociates, 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, Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 it eagerly. 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 californic.u.m_) 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 alt.i.tudes 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 it possesses 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 princ.i.p.al 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.

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WHITE OAK

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 cla.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+pped 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 cla.s.sified 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 cla.s.sification; yet lumbermen recognize it in a general way. White oak (_Quercus alba_) is clearly ent.i.tled 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 cla.s.sed 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 ac.u.minata_), 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. It reaches 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 quant.i.ties. In other words, prime white oak has pa.s.sed 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 quant.i.ties 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 light brown; 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 gla.s.s. 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 gla.s.s, 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 compet.i.tors on general averages. It ranks high in s.h.i.+pbuilding, 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 a.s.sured. 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 a.s.sured 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 cut from 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 subst.i.tution, 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, s.h.i.+n 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

BUR OAK

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 name _macrocarpa_, 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 quant.i.ties 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 dark green in color, and are smooth and s.h.i.+ny above, silvery white and p.u.b.escent 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed away, there is not much prospect of others being left to grow to the age and size which will make them valuable as lumber. Woodlot owners 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 acc.u.mulation 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 a.s.sociated 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 alt.i.tude 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 a.s.sumed peculiar forms. In positions exposed to the never-ceasing sea winds which sweep up the valleys, the blue oaks lie p.r.o.ne 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 gra.s.s 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 a.s.sume that form, but may be short and symmetrical, or very long and slender. Woodp.e.c.k.e.rs store these acorns in large numbers, and they search out peculiar places for their h.o.a.rds. 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 woodp.e.c.k.e.r 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 woodp.e.c.k.e.r's purpose is to wait until the acorns become infested with larvae. 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. The annual 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.