Part 24
The uses to which pin oak is put must be considered in a general way because of the absence of exact statistics. The wood is not listed by the lumber trade under its own name, but goes along with others of the black oak group. Its uses, however, are known along a number of lines. Lumbermen cut it wherever it is found mixed with other hardwoods. Sometimes vehicle manufacturers make a point of securing a supply of this wood. That occurs oftener with small concerns than large. It is made into felloes, reaches, and bolsters. Furniture makers use it, and well selected, quarter-sawed stock is occasionally reduced to veneer. The articles produced pass for red oak, and it would be very difficult to detect the difference between pin oak and true red oak when finished as veneer. Some highly attractive mission furniture is said to be of pin oak.
More goes to chair stock mills than to factories which produce higher classes of furniture. Chairs utilize very small pieces, and that gives the stock cutter a chance to trim out the knots and produce the maximum amount of clear stuff. Chair makers in Michigan reported the use of 60,000 feet of pin oak in 1910. Slack coopers work in much the same way as chair mills, and pin oak is acceptable material for many classes of barrels and other containers. Small tight knots are frequently not defects sufficient to cause the rejection of staves. Tight coopers do not find pin oak suitable, because the wood is too porous to hold liquids, particularly liquors containing alcohol. The wood is mixed at mills with red oak and other similar species and is manufactured into picture frames, boxes, crates, interior finish for houses, and many other commodities requiring strength or handsome finish. In early years when the people manufactured by hand what they needed, and obtained their timber from the nearest forest or woodlot, they split fence rails, pickets, clapboards, and shingles of pin oak.
Oak-apples or galls are the round excrescences formed on the limbs by gallflies and their eggs. They seem particularly fond of this species and specimens are often seen which are literally covered with them. The worms which live inside seem to flourish particularly well on the food they imbibe from pin oak. The primitive school teachers three or four generations ago turned these oak galls to account. They are rich in tannin, and were employed in manufacturing the local ink supply. The teachers were the ink makers as well as the pen cutters when the pens were whittled from quills. The process of making the ink was simple. The galls were soaked in a kettle of water and nails. The iron acted on the tannin and produced the desired blackness, but if special luster was desired, it was furnished by adding the fruit of the wild greenbrier (_Smilax rotundifolia_), which grew abundantly in the woods. It was well that steel pens were not then in use, for the schoolmaster’s oak ink would have eaten up such a pen in a single day.
CALIFORNIA LIVE OAK
CALIFORNIA LIVE OAK
(_Quercus Agrifolia_)
This fine western tree belongs to the black oak group, yet its acorns mature in one year, like those of white oaks. It is the only known black oak with that habit. It is properly classed with canyon live oak which has many characteristics of white oak, yet matures its acorns the second year. The two oaks with freakish fruit belong in California, and to some extent occupy the same range. California live oak is apparently making an effort to conform to the habit of other black oaks by producing two year acorns. It has not yet succeeded in doing so, but flowers occasionally appear in the fall, and young acorns set on the twigs. They drop during the winter, and it is not believed that any of them hang till the second season.
The range of this tree covers most of the California coast region but does not reach the great interior valleys. The tree is very common in the southwestern part of the state. It is called an evergreen, and some individuals deserve that reputation, but the leaves never remain long after the new crop appears. Frequently the old leaves do not wait for the new, and when they drop, the branches remain bare for a few weeks. The form of the leaf is not constant. Some have smooth margins, but the typical leaf is toothed like holly. One of the early names by which the tree was known was holly-leaved oak. The bark looks much like the bark of chestnut oak. It is bought for tanning purposes, but its principal use is to adulterate the bark of another oak (_Quercus densiflora_). Trees range in height from twenty-five to seventy-five feet, and from one foot to four in diameter. The trunks are very short, and seldom afford clear lengths exceeding eight feet, and often not more than four. Trees generally grow in the open, but when in thickets, the boles lengthen somewhat. They are of slow growth and live to old age.
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.
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.