Part 24 (1/2)
The fruit of pin oak is a small acorn which grows either sessile or on a very short stem; sometimes in cl.u.s.ters, and sometimes singly. In shape the acorns are nearly hemispherical, and measure about a half inch in diameter; they are enclosed only at the base, in a thin, saucer-shaped cup, dark brown, and scaly.
The bark of a mature tree is dark gray or brownish-green; it is rough, being full of small furrows, and frequently cracks open and shows the reddish inner layer of bark. On small branches and young trunks, it is smoother, lighter, and more l.u.s.trous.
Pin oak is smaller than red oak. Average trees are seventy or eighty feet high and two or three in diameter. Specimens 120 feet high and four feet in diameter are heard of but are seldom seen. Near the northern limit of pin oak's range large trees are not found, nor are small trees plentiful. This holds true in all parts of New England and northern New York where the species is found growing naturally. South of Pennsylvania, along the flood plains of rivers which flow to Chesapeake bay, a better cla.s.s of timber is found. The best development of the species is in the lower Ohio valley.
It grows rapidly, but falls a little short of the red oak. When young growth is cut, sprouts will rise from the stumps and flourish for a time, but merchantable trees are seldom or never produced that way. The acorn must be depended on. It has been remarked that pin oak does not prune itself well, but it does better in dense stands than in open ground. In the latter case the limbs are late in dying and falling.
Pin oak has proved to be a valuable street and park tree. It possesses several characteristics which recommend it for that use. It grows rapidly, and it quickly attains a size which lessens its liability to injury by accidents. Its shade is tolerably dense; the crown is shapely and attractive; the leaves fall late; and it seems to stand the smoke and dust of cities better than many other trees. It is easily and successfully transplanted if taken when small. Many towns and cities from Long Island to Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., have planted the pin oak along streets, avenues, and in parks. Several thoroughfares in Was.h.i.+ngton are shaded by them.
Considerable planting of pin oak has been done by railroads which expect to grow ties. Trees of this species when cut in forests and made into crossties do not all show similar resistance to decay. Some ties are perishable in a short time, while others give satisfactory service. The best endure well without preservative treatment, but all are benefited by it. If the experimental plantings turn out well, it may be expected that pin oak will fill an important place in the crosstie business.
Because of numerous limbs, lumber cut from pin oak is apt to be knotty, and the percentage of good grades small. The annual rings are wide, and are about evenly divided between spring and summerwood, though the latter often exceeds the former. Its general appearance suggests red oak, but it is more porous in trunks of thrifty growth. The springwood is largely made up of pores. The medullary rays are hardly as prominent as those of red oak, but in other ways resemble them. The wood weighs 43.24 pounds per cubic foot, which is a little above red oak. It is hard and strong, dark brown with thin sapwood of darker color. The lumber checks and warps badly in seasoning.
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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+ngles 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 l.u.s.ter 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CALIFORNIA LIVE OAK
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 cla.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al 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.