The oak tree - whatever we may think of the other productions of the poetaster of whom Byron wrote--
The oak tree
- whatever we may think of the other productions of the poetaster of whom Byron wrote-- "Let hoarse Fitzgerald bawl
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall,"probably every one will endorse the one line quoted from him in the parody in "Rejected Addresses"--"The tree of freedom is the British Oak."The chief ideas suggested by the beauty of the tree are apt to be those of naval warfare, sailors' pluck, and the weathering of many a storm. There are, nevertheless, suggestions of a less warlike character which occur to the contemplative man as he gazes on the monarch of the forest.The massive trunk whose noble proportions suggested to Smeaton the design of his Eddystone Lighthouse, is an emblem of majestic and sublime endurance which can hardly be better described than in the following passage by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes:--"There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of tree, which, if well marked, is probably embodied in the poetry of every language. Take the Oak, for instance, and we find it always standing as a type of strength and endurance. I wonder if you ever thought of the single mark of supremacy which distinguishes this tree from all our other forest trees? All the rest of them shirk the work of resisting gravity: the Oak alone defies it. It chooses the horizontal direction for its limbs, so that their whole weight may tell, and then stretches them out fifty or sixty feet, so that the strain may be mighty enough to be worth resisting. You will find that, in passing from the extreme downward droop of the branches of the weeping willow to the extreme upward inclination of those of the poplar, they sweep nearly half a circle. At ninety degrees the Oak stops short: to slant upward another degree would mark infirmity of purpose: to bend downwards, weakness of organisation."Beneath some noble Oak one can hardly help sinking the forester and the botanist, in the more universal feelings of the moralist, the poet, and the man. The forester may condemn as "stag-headed" the aged tree whose boughs, in Shakespeare's language, are"mossed with age,And high top bald with dry antiquity."
Oak tree characteristics
It may even be hollow, the mere shell of bark supporting a sadly-reduced tale of branches that struggle gallantly to put forth year by year leaves, dwindled in size, from their knotty twigs, and acorns whose very abundance argues an infirmity of general health. Still it will, perhaps, be found to be diligently striving to stem the advance of the inner canker of decrepitude by a slight formation of new wood beneath the bark; and we may thus witness the dying efforts of the aged monarch, or its melancholy grandeur after death. The hollow shell may be now supported by the strong clasping arms of the ivy, ever young; or the stem, bared of its bark, may lift its blackened, blasted arms in sad protest to the heavens whence fell the fatal lightning.Few trees have a wider geographical range than the Oak. Whilst the great order of broad leaved trees to which it belongs, the Cupuliferae--those, that is, that have their nut-like fruits enclosed in a more or less leafy husk, "involucre," or "cupule" (the "cup" of the acorn)--is distributed throughout the temperate regions of both hemispheres, the Oaks, of which there are nearly three hundred species, are almost confined to the northern. Many forms are well known to us in our plantations, or by their products, such as the Turkey Oak (Quercus Cerris), the evergreen Oak (Q. Ilex), the cork of Q. Suber, the galls of Q. infectoria and other Levantine species, the kermes from Q. coccifera, the cups of Q. AEgilops imported as valonia, the quercitron bark of the American Q. tinctoria, and that of many other species used in tanning.
The English Oak (Q. Robur) ranges from the Urals and the Caucasus, from Mount Taurus and Mount Atlas, almost to the Arctic Circle, growing at an altitude of 1,350 feet in the Highlands of Scotland; its limit nearly coinciding with that of successful wheat cultivation. Vast forests of Oak covered the greater part of central Europe in the early ages of history. It was the favorite timber of the Greeks and Romans; with it the Northmen built their long ships, and the Anglo-Saxons such churches as that at Greenstead, in Essex; and with it was smelted the Sussex iron which supplied the cannon of Elizabeth's navy. When in sheltered situations, or massed together in forests, it may reach a height of from sixty to one hundred feet, with a straight stem of from thirty to forty feet, and a girth which is commonly eight or ten feet, though many fine old trees are from three even to seven times that circumference. In exposed situations it is generally shorter and less straight in its growth, and then also has the hardest wood, though this may be rather a characteristic of one of the three varieties than the effect of situation.Of these varieties, the White Oak, the chene blanc of the French (Q. Robur pedunculata), is the most abundant in the southern and midland counties. Its leaves have no stalks, and are only downy on the under surface when young; while its flowers, and consequently its acorns also, are generally two or more together, on long peduncles. It reaches a less height, but is said to be less liable to the defects known as "cup-" and "star-shake" than the sessile-fruited varieties.These last are commonly united under the names Durmast Oak and Q. Robur sessiliflora, which should be applied to distinct forms. They agree in having stalked leaves and stalkless acorns; but the true Q. sessiliflora is most abundant in the north and west, its fine straight stems being seen at the best in the Forest of Dean; whilst the true Durmast Oak (Q. pubescens) is a dark-fruited variety, occurring in the New Forest, the under surfaces of the leaves of which remain downy, and stay longer on the tree, hanging in melancholy russet late into the spring. Its timber is of inferior quality, and resembles chestnut in appearance, and, it is said, in being distasteful to spiders. Parts of the roof of Westminster Abbey are said to be of this cobweb-proof material.
Notes for growing Oak trees
In a growing Oak notice will be taken of the outward spreading of the stem at its base; of the rugged bark; of the curiously tortuous branchlets, twisting in zigzag fashion almost rectangularly towards every point of the compass, owing to the central shoots becoming abortive; and of the uniquely waving outline of the yellowish-green leaves. The leaves generally make their first appearance in the south of England towards the end of April, when the young shoots blush with a ruddiness almost autumnal; and, if at all sheltered from the glare of July and August, from the time when the ashy bark is first draped in foliage, a constant succession of the pink and bronze-tinted glories of the young leafage is kept up in our moist summers till late in autumn, when the first formed leaves are beginning to change. Then the green loses its olive-yellow tints for clear gold, mottled with clear grass green, fading to the sober pallid russet which lasts through the winter. This indescribable hue has none of the coppery richness of the dead leaves of beech, nor the warm umber of the horse-chestnut; it is the gray ghost of a brown that has been.The catkins appear shortly after the leaves: the male ones pendulous, the female erect. The former are two or three inches long, bearing at intervals stalkless clusters of inconspicuous flowers, each consisting of a six or seven-lobed calyx and ten stamens. The female flowers, on the other hand, are solitary, each being surrounded by the numerous overlapping scales, or "bracts," which afterwards form the cup. The flower itself is but the ovary enclosed by the adherent calyx, divided internally into three chambers, and surmounted by a triple style--the miniature fleur-de-lys on the scepter of the forest king. In each chamber there are two ovules; and it is a noteworthy fact that from these six only one is matured into the single seed that every acorn contains. A similar circumstance occurring in the case of palms, and of other trees, suggests the explanation that perennial plants, trees more especially, require to produce fewer seeds in order to ensure the permanence of the species than do annuals, whose individual existence is so many times shorter.What country boy has not a love of acorns equal to that of the squirrel? Possibly he may not eat them, preferring the chestnuts or beech-masts in the park, or the blackberries in the hedgerow; but there is a joy in knocking down the glossy green fruit, destined perchance to be converted, with the addition of some cotton-wool, into reverend seigneurs, with flowing beards and locks rivalling those of the Druid, who cut in bygone ages the sacred mistletoe with golden knife from the Oaks of Avalon. Before English commerce had extended the leather trade beyond the needs of home consumers, and English naval enterprise had caused a drain upon our Oak forests for ship-building, these same acorns, now despised by the advanced agriculturist, constituted the chief value of the Oak. Thus in the Domesday Survey the woodlands are estimated at the number of swine for which their acorns and masts afforded "pannage." Gurth had not then been replaced by the axe-armed woodman, or by the gamekeeper with dogs and gun.Whatever may be the extension of the use of iron, Oak timber will always be of peculiar value for many purposes, though that important bye-product, the bark, is of sufficient consequence to considerably influence the English forester's treatment of his woods. There is more tannin in the bark in spring, when the sap is rising, than at any other season, and it is, therefore, the common practice to fell the trees at that season instead of in winter, though for timber only it is admittedly preferable to adopt the latter period.The best judges cannot separate the woods of the two best varieties. Few woods are so durable under all circumstances, few so generally useful. Even the crooked branches are valuable in ship-building; but the familiar inky stains round the nails of many a park-fence show that the tannic acid in the wood is detrimental to iron, converting it, in fact, into ink, as it does in the manufacture of that commodity from oak-galls and green vitriol, or in its union with the bog-iron of peat-mosses that yield the well-known black bog-oak.Not to speak of cockchafers, the destructive oak-leaf-roller moth (Tortrix viridana), and other insect foes, the Oak is said to be attacked by upwards of forty kinds of gall-fly. Of the galls produced by these, the commonest are the marble-gall, whose brown spheres, clustered together especially on the branches of pollards, form quite a feature among the russet leaves of autumn; the oak-apple, those soft, rosy-cheeked excrescences, whose appearance among the young leaves towards the end of May is popularly associated with the miraculous escape of King Charles; the oak-spangles that stud the under surfaces of the leaves, at first with crimson and then with amber-brown; and the artichoke-gall, which makes the overlapping scales of the diseased bud closely simulate the bracts of the vegetable from which it is named
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall,"probably every one will endorse the one line quoted from him in the parody in "Rejected Addresses"--"The tree of freedom is the British Oak."The chief ideas suggested by the beauty of the tree are apt to be those of naval warfare, sailors' pluck, and the weathering of many a storm. There are, nevertheless, suggestions of a less warlike character which occur to the contemplative man as he gazes on the monarch of the forest.The massive trunk whose noble proportions suggested to Smeaton the design of his Eddystone Lighthouse, is an emblem of majestic and sublime endurance which can hardly be better described than in the following passage by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes:--"There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of tree, which, if well marked, is probably embodied in the poetry of every language. Take the Oak, for instance, and we find it always standing as a type of strength and endurance. I wonder if you ever thought of the single mark of supremacy which distinguishes this tree from all our other forest trees? All the rest of them shirk the work of resisting gravity: the Oak alone defies it. It chooses the horizontal direction for its limbs, so that their whole weight may tell, and then stretches them out fifty or sixty feet, so that the strain may be mighty enough to be worth resisting. You will find that, in passing from the extreme downward droop of the branches of the weeping willow to the extreme upward inclination of those of the poplar, they sweep nearly half a circle. At ninety degrees the Oak stops short: to slant upward another degree would mark infirmity of purpose: to bend downwards, weakness of organisation."Beneath some noble Oak one can hardly help sinking the forester and the botanist, in the more universal feelings of the moralist, the poet, and the man. The forester may condemn as "stag-headed" the aged tree whose boughs, in Shakespeare's language, are"mossed with age,And high top bald with dry antiquity."
Oak tree characteristics
It may even be hollow, the mere shell of bark supporting a sadly-reduced tale of branches that struggle gallantly to put forth year by year leaves, dwindled in size, from their knotty twigs, and acorns whose very abundance argues an infirmity of general health. Still it will, perhaps, be found to be diligently striving to stem the advance of the inner canker of decrepitude by a slight formation of new wood beneath the bark; and we may thus witness the dying efforts of the aged monarch, or its melancholy grandeur after death. The hollow shell may be now supported by the strong clasping arms of the ivy, ever young; or the stem, bared of its bark, may lift its blackened, blasted arms in sad protest to the heavens whence fell the fatal lightning.Few trees have a wider geographical range than the Oak. Whilst the great order of broad leaved trees to which it belongs, the Cupuliferae--those, that is, that have their nut-like fruits enclosed in a more or less leafy husk, "involucre," or "cupule" (the "cup" of the acorn)--is distributed throughout the temperate regions of both hemispheres, the Oaks, of which there are nearly three hundred species, are almost confined to the northern. Many forms are well known to us in our plantations, or by their products, such as the Turkey Oak (Quercus Cerris), the evergreen Oak (Q. Ilex), the cork of Q. Suber, the galls of Q. infectoria and other Levantine species, the kermes from Q. coccifera, the cups of Q. AEgilops imported as valonia, the quercitron bark of the American Q. tinctoria, and that of many other species used in tanning.
The English Oak (Q. Robur) ranges from the Urals and the Caucasus, from Mount Taurus and Mount Atlas, almost to the Arctic Circle, growing at an altitude of 1,350 feet in the Highlands of Scotland; its limit nearly coinciding with that of successful wheat cultivation. Vast forests of Oak covered the greater part of central Europe in the early ages of history. It was the favorite timber of the Greeks and Romans; with it the Northmen built their long ships, and the Anglo-Saxons such churches as that at Greenstead, in Essex; and with it was smelted the Sussex iron which supplied the cannon of Elizabeth's navy. When in sheltered situations, or massed together in forests, it may reach a height of from sixty to one hundred feet, with a straight stem of from thirty to forty feet, and a girth which is commonly eight or ten feet, though many fine old trees are from three even to seven times that circumference. In exposed situations it is generally shorter and less straight in its growth, and then also has the hardest wood, though this may be rather a characteristic of one of the three varieties than the effect of situation.Of these varieties, the White Oak, the chene blanc of the French (Q. Robur pedunculata), is the most abundant in the southern and midland counties. Its leaves have no stalks, and are only downy on the under surface when young; while its flowers, and consequently its acorns also, are generally two or more together, on long peduncles. It reaches a less height, but is said to be less liable to the defects known as "cup-" and "star-shake" than the sessile-fruited varieties.These last are commonly united under the names Durmast Oak and Q. Robur sessiliflora, which should be applied to distinct forms. They agree in having stalked leaves and stalkless acorns; but the true Q. sessiliflora is most abundant in the north and west, its fine straight stems being seen at the best in the Forest of Dean; whilst the true Durmast Oak (Q. pubescens) is a dark-fruited variety, occurring in the New Forest, the under surfaces of the leaves of which remain downy, and stay longer on the tree, hanging in melancholy russet late into the spring. Its timber is of inferior quality, and resembles chestnut in appearance, and, it is said, in being distasteful to spiders. Parts of the roof of Westminster Abbey are said to be of this cobweb-proof material.
Notes for growing Oak trees
In a growing Oak notice will be taken of the outward spreading of the stem at its base; of the rugged bark; of the curiously tortuous branchlets, twisting in zigzag fashion almost rectangularly towards every point of the compass, owing to the central shoots becoming abortive; and of the uniquely waving outline of the yellowish-green leaves. The leaves generally make their first appearance in the south of England towards the end of April, when the young shoots blush with a ruddiness almost autumnal; and, if at all sheltered from the glare of July and August, from the time when the ashy bark is first draped in foliage, a constant succession of the pink and bronze-tinted glories of the young leafage is kept up in our moist summers till late in autumn, when the first formed leaves are beginning to change. Then the green loses its olive-yellow tints for clear gold, mottled with clear grass green, fading to the sober pallid russet which lasts through the winter. This indescribable hue has none of the coppery richness of the dead leaves of beech, nor the warm umber of the horse-chestnut; it is the gray ghost of a brown that has been.The catkins appear shortly after the leaves: the male ones pendulous, the female erect. The former are two or three inches long, bearing at intervals stalkless clusters of inconspicuous flowers, each consisting of a six or seven-lobed calyx and ten stamens. The female flowers, on the other hand, are solitary, each being surrounded by the numerous overlapping scales, or "bracts," which afterwards form the cup. The flower itself is but the ovary enclosed by the adherent calyx, divided internally into three chambers, and surmounted by a triple style--the miniature fleur-de-lys on the scepter of the forest king. In each chamber there are two ovules; and it is a noteworthy fact that from these six only one is matured into the single seed that every acorn contains. A similar circumstance occurring in the case of palms, and of other trees, suggests the explanation that perennial plants, trees more especially, require to produce fewer seeds in order to ensure the permanence of the species than do annuals, whose individual existence is so many times shorter.What country boy has not a love of acorns equal to that of the squirrel? Possibly he may not eat them, preferring the chestnuts or beech-masts in the park, or the blackberries in the hedgerow; but there is a joy in knocking down the glossy green fruit, destined perchance to be converted, with the addition of some cotton-wool, into reverend seigneurs, with flowing beards and locks rivalling those of the Druid, who cut in bygone ages the sacred mistletoe with golden knife from the Oaks of Avalon. Before English commerce had extended the leather trade beyond the needs of home consumers, and English naval enterprise had caused a drain upon our Oak forests for ship-building, these same acorns, now despised by the advanced agriculturist, constituted the chief value of the Oak. Thus in the Domesday Survey the woodlands are estimated at the number of swine for which their acorns and masts afforded "pannage." Gurth had not then been replaced by the axe-armed woodman, or by the gamekeeper with dogs and gun.Whatever may be the extension of the use of iron, Oak timber will always be of peculiar value for many purposes, though that important bye-product, the bark, is of sufficient consequence to considerably influence the English forester's treatment of his woods. There is more tannin in the bark in spring, when the sap is rising, than at any other season, and it is, therefore, the common practice to fell the trees at that season instead of in winter, though for timber only it is admittedly preferable to adopt the latter period.The best judges cannot separate the woods of the two best varieties. Few woods are so durable under all circumstances, few so generally useful. Even the crooked branches are valuable in ship-building; but the familiar inky stains round the nails of many a park-fence show that the tannic acid in the wood is detrimental to iron, converting it, in fact, into ink, as it does in the manufacture of that commodity from oak-galls and green vitriol, or in its union with the bog-iron of peat-mosses that yield the well-known black bog-oak.Not to speak of cockchafers, the destructive oak-leaf-roller moth (Tortrix viridana), and other insect foes, the Oak is said to be attacked by upwards of forty kinds of gall-fly. Of the galls produced by these, the commonest are the marble-gall, whose brown spheres, clustered together especially on the branches of pollards, form quite a feature among the russet leaves of autumn; the oak-apple, those soft, rosy-cheeked excrescences, whose appearance among the young leaves towards the end of May is popularly associated with the miraculous escape of King Charles; the oak-spangles that stud the under surfaces of the leaves, at first with crimson and then with amber-brown; and the artichoke-gall, which makes the overlapping scales of the diseased bud closely simulate the bracts of the vegetable from which it is named
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