Part 25
The wood is hard and brittle. A cubic foot weighs 51.43 pounds when thoroughly dry. The wood of mature trees is reddish-brown; but young and middle aged trunks are all sapwood, and are white from bark to center. When sapwood is exposed to the air a considerable time it changes color and becomes very dark brown. The medullary rays of this oak are broad, fairly numerous, and are darker than the surrounding wood. When the log is quarter-sawed, the exposed flecks of bright surface are the darkest parts. To that extent, it resembles quarter-sawed sycamore, but the woods do not look alike in any other particular. This oak is very porous, and the pores--as is usual with live oaks--are arranged in rows running from bark to center rather than parallel with the annual rings. No clear line is distinguishable between spring and summerwood.
Cordwood constitutes the most important use for California live oak. It rates high in fuel value, and the many large and crooked limbs make the tree an ideal one, from the cordwood cutter’s viewpoint. By carefully ricking the wood, with the crooks and elbows in every possible direction--at which some cordwood cutters are very proficient--a cord of wood may be constructed in the forest, which, when sold and delivered in the buyer’s shed, contracts like an accordion.
CANYON LIVE OAK (_Quercus chrysolepis_). This splendid California oak bears many names. It is an evergreen, and therefore is called live oak. It is hard when thoroughly seasoned, and this has won for it the name iron oak. Wagon makers often so designate it. It is called Valparaiso oak, but for what reason is not apparent. Black live oak doubtless refers to the dark color of the foliage. The most shapely trees grow in the bottoms of canyons, and the name, canyon live oak, refers to that circumstance. Hickory oak is not an appropriate name, though it doubtless implies that the wood possesses the toughness of hickory. It is about as tough as white oak. The name golden cup oak is a translation of its botanical name which, in Greek, means “golden scale,” a reference to a yellow tomentum or wool which covers the cups of the acorns. The wood’s hardness qualifies it to serve as mauls, hence the name maul oak.
The northern limit of its growth is in southern Oregon. It goes south from there on the coast ranges of California and the western slopes of the Sierra Nevadas to the highlands of southern California. Its growth on the mountains of southern Arizona and New Mexico is always shrubby. The lowest limit of its range is about 1,000 feet above sea level, the best specimens occurring at low altitudes in the sheltered canyons of the coast ranges of California. Gradually diminishing in size, it grows to the very tops of many of the high mountains, sometimes reaching 9,000 feet, being not more than a foot high at the upper limits of its range. In appearance this tree resembles the eastern live oak (_Quercus virginiana_), having the same majestic wide-spreading crown, except in the high altitudes where it forms dense thickets covering large areas.
When in its favorite habitat, the massive proportions and majestic appearance of this tree are imposing, the crown sometimes being 150 feet across, the bole short and thick, and the great branches long and horizontal. It is not clothed in the somber Spanish moss that is often present on the great live oaks of the southeastern states, but there is a similarity of appearance in the drooping slender twigs. One hundred and fifty feet across is cited as an unusual width of crown, one hundred feet being a good average size, and forty or fifty feet the usual height, although it sometimes reaches 100. The bole is vested in a gray-brown, reddish-tinged bark, about an inch thick, and broken into numerous scales which in old age become flaky and pliable and fall off.
The bark is light colored, and has the stringy character of white oak. The tree would readily pass for a white oak were it not for its two-year acorns which class it in the black oak group. The wood resembles white oak, and weighs 52.93 pounds per cubic foot.
Few oaks, if any, retain their leaves a longer time than this. They remain on the branches three or four years. Most evergreen oaks shed theirs at the beginning of the second year. The leaves of this tree are peculiar in another way. They assume various forms. That in itself is not unusual and occurs with many species; but the canyon live oak has one pattern of leaf for the young tree, another for the old. One form has a margin with sharp, hooked teeth; another has smooth-margined leaves, and there are various intermediate forms. Sizes vary no less than shapes of both acorns and leaves. Some acorns are half an inch in length, others two inches.
The canyon live oak is believed to be long-lived, but further information is desirable. The massive trunks represent centuries. They usually occur in sheltered places which are measurably secure from the ordinary perils which beset trees, notably the woodsman’s ax and the periodic forest fire. The bottoms of canyons where this oak makes choice of situation do not usually burn fiercely, and trees sheltered there escape. Cordwood cutters are the most constant peril to good fuel trees in California; but many a canyon is safe from their invasions, because of lack of roads. There the most magnificent oaks rear their crowns in security, while trees of inferior size and character, which grow on exposed slopes and flats, fall before the cordwood cutter, and go to the ricks in village woodyards.
The wood of canyon live oak is superior to that of any other oak in its range. It is of light brown color, and is tough, strong, stiff, and heavy. The trunks are generally unsuitable for sawlogs, being too short, but when a chance tree is found that may be cut into lumber, it is considered a prize. Trunks are seldom good for more than one sawlog. In that respect this oak may be compared with the southern live oak. The scarcity of good hardwoods on the Pacific coast adds to the value of what may be found there. If the canyon live oak grew in the East, and developed a trunk of the same size and shape as it has in its present home, it would attract no more attention from the users of hardwoods than the live oak in the South attracts now. But place makes great difference.
Factories in California do not report the use of much of this oak, yet considerable quantities of it are in service. The most important place found for it is in country and village blacksmith shops, where wagons are repaired. Nearly every piece of wood which goes into a wagon, except the bed, may be this oak. Many persons consider it the best wagon timber on the Pacific coast, and it is particularly valued for tongues, not only for wagons, but for heavy log trucks which are operated by several yoke of oxen. The wood is likewise made into singletrees. It has always been in use in California for pack saddles. That article is small, but many saddles were formerly made, and the pack saddle is still an important article in the mountains. Trains of mules, horses, and burros thread the narrow paths, where wheeled vehicles cannot go, and deliver supplies to camps and mines in remote districts. The pack saddle’s strength is frequently all that intervenes between the load and destruction; for the snapping of a piece of wood may let the pack go over a precipice beyond recovery. The pack trains are slowly passing out of use in the West, as they long ago disappeared from the “bridle paths” of eastern mountains and forests; but they are still to be seen among the fastnesses of the Sierra Nevadas, as in the days when a western poet burst into inspired song of the long pack trains going
“Up and down o’er the mountain trail With one horse tied to another’s tail.”
HUCKLEBERRY OAK (_Quercus chrysolepis vaccinifolia_) is a variety of canyon live oak, and is never large enough to supply wood for any purpose, but is valuable as a covering to the ground on exposed mountains. It is usually a shrub, and specimens no more than a foot high are mature and bear acorns enormously out of proportion to the size of the tree. If the canyon live oak of largest size in the low hills bore acorns proportionately as large, they would be the size of barrels. The huckleberry oak’s acorns are set in their golden cups. The name huckleberry is applied because of a fancied resemblance of the leaves to those of huckleberries. They are generally less than one inch in length, sometimes not half an inch. This unique variety of oak ranges on elevated slopes and ridges of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the traveler in climbing to the peaks is often grateful for the privilege of pulling himself up the steep slopes by grasping in his hands the tops of full grown trees.
PALMER OAK (_Quercus chrysolepis palmeri_) is considered a variety of canyon live oak by some, but Sudworth believes it is a distinct species, and draws his conclusion from forms of leaves, flowers, and fruit. It forms large thickets on foothills and plateaus near the southern boundary of California, eighty miles or more east of San Diego. The trees do not attain sufficient size to give them commercial importance.
[Illustration]
CALIFORNIA TANBARK OAK
[Illustration: CALIFORNIA TANBARK OAK]
CALIFORNIA TANBARK OAK
(_Quercus Densiflora_)
Botanists dispute the right of this tree to the name of oak, and some of them refuse to call it an oak. It is admitted that it possesses characters not found in any other oak, but these are important to the botanist only, while laymen have never considered the tree anything but an oak. It has been variously called tanbark oak, chestnut oak, California chestnut oak, live oak, and peach oak. The trunk, branches, and foliage look much like chestnut. The leaf is like the chestnut’s, but it is evergreen. There are three or four crops on the tree at one time, and none fall until they are three or four years old. Young leaves are remarkably woolly, but late in their first summer they get rid of most of the fuzz, and become thick in texture.
Tanbark oaks are of all sizes, from mere shrubs on high mountains in the northern Sierra Nevadas to fine and symmetrical timber in the damp climate of the fog belt between San Francisco and the Oregon line. The average height of mature trees is from seventy to 100 feet, with diameters up to six feet in rare cases, though more trunks are under than over two feet in diameter.
The range of this oak reaches southern Oregon on the north, and runs southward three or four hundred miles along the Sierra Nevada mountains, to Mariposa county, and six hundred miles through the Coast range to Santa Barbara county. The tree is affected by climatic conditions, and where surroundings do not suit, it is small and shrubby, often less than ten feet high. It does best in the redwood belt where fogs from the Pacific ocean keep the air moist and the ground damp. It sometimes associates with Douglas fir, and at other times with California live oak. If it grows in dense side shade it loses its lower branches and develops a long, clean trunk; but in open ground it keeps its limbs until late in life.
This is the most important source of tanbark on the Pacific coast, and up to the present it has been procurable in large quantities. The annual output is nearly 40,000 tons, and it commands a higher price than the bark of any other oak or of hemlock. The absence of other adequate tanning materials on the Pacific coast gives this tree much importance. Its range covers several thousand square miles, and the stand is fairly good on much of it. But on the other hand, the destruction of timber to secure the bark has been excessive. What occurred with chestnut oak and hemlock in the East, is occurring with tanbark oak in the West. Trees are cut and peeled, and are left by thousands to rot in the woods, or to feed fires and make them more destructive. The bark peelers do their principal work in the California redwood region, because there the oak is at its best. Economic conditions make the salvage of the trunks impossible. The bark can be hauled to market, but the wood is unsalable at living prices, after the long haul. It has, therefore, been usually abandoned, and becomes a total loss. It cannot even be sold for fuel, because the country within reach of it is thinly settled, and wood is plentiful on every side.
Large oaks are felled, because the bark can not be stripped from the trunks in any other way, and small trees are not spared. The peelers often do not take the trouble to cut them down, but strip off the bark as high as a man can reach, and leave them standing. A future tree is thus destroyed for the sake of a strip of bark a few feet long. Such trees live a year or two, sometimes several years, before yielding to the inevitable. Usually, as a last expiring effort, they bear an abnormally large crop of acorns. That performance, in the language of the bark peelers, is “the last kick.” A tanbark slashing, when the peelers are ready to abandon it, is a sorry spectacle. The barkless and sun-cracked trunks strew the ground, the tops and limbs are piled in windrows, the small peeled trees stand dying, and the last ricks of bark have been sledded down the tote roads, marking the close of operations in that district. A few months later, when fire runs through, the end of the tanbark oak on that tract is accomplished.
Within recent years commendable efforts have been made to use the wood as well as the bark. One of the first steps in that direction was to overcome the prejudice against the wood. It was long considered to be valueless. That belief was founded on the single fact that this oak is difficult to season. Few woods in this country check as badly as this, when it is left exposed to sun and wind after the bark has been removed. It checks both radially and along the annual rings. The medullary rays are broad and extend much of the distance from the center to the outside. These are natural lines of cleavage when the log begins to season and the internal stresses develop. It must be admitted that the prospect of making anything out of timber of that character is discouraging; but it has been accomplished, and tanbark oak is now a material of considerable value.
The wood has about the strength and stiffness of white oak, while it is four pounds lighter per cubic foot. The structure is similar to that of California live oak, but the pores of tanbark oak are smaller. They run in rows from center to circumference. The medullary rays are broad enough to show well in quarter-sawing, but the wood’s appearance when so worked is not wholly satisfactory. The exposed flat surfaces of the rays show a faint purplish or violet tinge which is considered objectionable. But when the wood is worked plain it is dependable and substantial. It makes good flooring, fairly good furniture, finish, vehicles, and agricultural implements. It is perishable when placed in damp situations, and this detracts somewhat from its value as railway ties; but the wood’s porous nature indicates that it will readily yield to preservative treatment.
Since the value of the wood is coming to be understood it is to be expected that less of it will be destroyed than formerly, and that second growth will be given opportunity to hold the ground when old stands are cut. The tree is a prolific seeder, but not every year, and seedlings come up abundantly in sheltered places. Sprouts rise from stumps and grow to vigorous trees. It would seem, therefore, that the tanbark oak will hold at least part of the ground where nature planted it.
TOUMEY OAK (_Quercus toumeyi_). No oak in this country has smaller leaves than this. They are usually less than three-fourths of an inch long and half an inch wide, and they hang on petioles one-sixteenth inch long. The leaves have no lobes or notches. They remain all winter and fall in the spring in time to make room for the new crop. The acorns are nearly as long as the leaves and ripen in June of the first year. Few persons ever see this oak, for its known range is restricted to Mule mountain, in Cochise county, southeastern Arizona. It attains a height of twenty-five or thirty feet, and a diameter of six or eight inches. The trunk is not only small, but is of form so poor that it can never be of value for anything but fuel. It divides near the ground into crooked branches. The heart of the tree is light brown, the thick sapwood is lighter.
WOOLLY OAK (_Quercus tomentella_) has apparently been crowded off the American continent and has taken refuge on islands off the southern California coast. As far as known, not a single tree stands on the mainland, but several groves, with a few isolated specimens, are found on Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and Catalina islands, where they are huddled together in the bottoms of sheltered canyons. The leaves are thick, leathery, and are toothed like holly. The trees are evergreen. The acorns do not mature until the second season. They are generally more than an inch long. The scarcity of this oak relegates it to an unimportant place among commercial woods. This seems unfortunate, for the appearance of the wood indicates that it possesses excellent properties. No other oak looks like this wood. It is decidedly yellow, and is dense and firm. The medullary rays are different from those of any other oak. When seen in cross section they are arranged in short, wavy lines, broadest in the middle and tapering toward both ends. The pores are arranged between the rays, and follow wavy lines also. Trees grow with fair rapidity, and the largest on the islands are seventy-five feet high and two in diameter.
BARREN OAK (_Quercus pumila_) is called dwarf black oak, or simply scrub oak. Its habit of growing on barren land is responsible for its common name which some people shorten to “bear” oak. It is one of the poorest oaks of the East, and it seldom grows more than twenty-five feet high and a few inches in diameter. Its range follows the Atlantic coast southward from Mount Desert Island, Maine, to North Carolina. It is probably more abundant on the pine barrens of New Jersey than elsewhere. The trunks are too small to be of use for anything but fuel.
PRICE OAK (_Quercus pricei_) is a California tree, supposed to be very local in its range, since it has not been found outside the drainage basin of a small stream in Monterey county. That locality on the coast of California appears to be the starting place or principal abiding place of several tree species, among which are Monterey cypress and Monterey pine. The Price oak attains a height of twenty-five or thirty feet, and a diameter of twelve inches or less; consequently it is too small to be of value to lumbermen, even if it were abundant. The leaves resemble those of California live oak, and are believed to remain two summers on the tree. The acorns mature the second season.
[Illustration]
SHINGLE OAK
[Illustration: SHINGLE OAK]
SHINGLE OAK
(_Quercus Imbricaria_)
The origin of this tree’s name has been the subject of considerable controversy. According to one account the name was first used by the French colonists at Kaskaskia, Illinois, nearly 150 years ago. They found that the wood rived well and it was abundant in the vicinity of their settlement. They split it for shingles and covered their cabins. It was the best wood obtainable for the purpose in that region, and they designated the tree shingle oak, a name translated into Latin by the botanist Michaux and still retained as the tree’s botanical name. The story of the name appears to be well authenticated, but the fact cannot be denied that as much reason exists for another theory. A person who sees a shingle oak tree in full leaf, particularly if it stands in open ground where its foliage has had opportunity to develop along natural lines, will at once notice the peculiar and characteristic overlapping of the leaves. They suggest the courses of shingles nailed on a roof. No other oak has that arrangement. The similitude is so striking that it would be surprising if the name shingle oak were not applied.
It is not a one-name tree, but following the fashion, it carries several names. It is called laurel oak in some regions. The form and appearance of the leaf give the name. The oak looks like a mammoth laurel tree more than like its own species. The shingle oak is known as jack oak in some parts of Illinois. That is a name liable to be applied to any tree when its real name is not known. In North Carolina they call the tree water oak, which name, like jack oak, is often used to conceal ignorance of the true name. Another southern species (_Quercus nigra_) is properly named water oak.
Shingle oak requires good soil for growth but is not partial either to uplands or bottoms. It is found at its best in the lower Ohio river basin and in Missouri, but is comparatively rare in the East. From middle Pennsylvania its range extends southward along the Alleghanies to northern Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and west Arkansas. It is found in Michigan, Wisconsin, and westward to Kansas.
It manifests a strong tendency to hybridize with other oaks, and it readily crosses with black jack oak, pin oak, and yellow oak. It is believed that a cross between yellow oak and shingle oak produced the species known as lea oak.
A mature tree may be one hundred feet high and three or four feet in diameter. It has a round or pyramidal attractive crown composed of many slender branches and twigs. The foliage is distinctively grouped at the ends of the twigs in star-like clusters. The leaves are four or six inches long, with wedge-shaped or rounded bases, and are deep green and shiny on the upper side, but lighter below. The acorns are short, stubby, and rounded, covered one-third of the way with thin shallow cups.
Shingle oak grows rapidly, and it is often sold by nurseries which deal in ornamental forest trees. It is hardy as far north as Massachusetts. Although it bears great abundance of leaves, they are so arranged that the crown seems open. One may see through the branches of a large shingle oak, and it suggests an airiness not common with oaks.