Dwarf oak

“ In the midst of these gigantic blocks, growing among them, or starting, as it were, from their interstices, arises wildly, and here and there widely scattered, a grove of dwarf oak-trees.... They spread far and wide at their tops, and their branches twist and bend in the most tortuous manner ”

“ On sunny sheets of crystal soil along the slopes of the Hoffman Mountains, I saw extensive patches of ivesia and purple gilia with scarce a green leaf, making fine clouds of color. Ribes bushes, vaccinium, and kalmia, now in flower, make beautiful rugs and borders along the [Pg 161] banks of the streams. Shaggy beds of dwarf oak (Quercus chrysolepis, var. vaccinifolia) over which one may walk are common on rocky moraines, yet this is the same species as the large live oak seen near Brown’s Flat. ”

“ The whole country is covered with dwarf oak, and other low shrubs and bushes and some thinly scattered black oaks of stunted growth. This scarcity of timber is partly owing to the poverty of the soil, and partly to the effect of fire, which must have gone through this whole district of six or seven miles, and that at no very distant period back, from many evident marks still remaining. What a grand yet awful scene must have been such a tract of woods in flames! ”

“ They may be considered as the 'fringe' of the great prairies, being a continuous brushy strip, composed of various kinds of undergrowth; such as black-jacks, post-oaks, and in some places hickory, elm, etc., intermixed with a very diminutive dwarf oak, called by the hunters 'shin-oak.' Most of the timber appears to be kept small by the continual inroads of the 'burning prairies;' for, being killed almost annually, it is constantly replaced by scions of undergrowth; so that it becomes more and more dense every reproduction. ”

“ The sand ridge containing the osseous relics has been preserved from the wasting effects of the winds by the thickets of dwarf oak and sweet bay with which it is overgrown. Some of the live oaks at its eastern base are of sufficient girth to indicate an age of two centuries. ”

“ The hill became steeper as the robber and his pursuers approached the summit, and they had to grasp the boughs of dwarf oaks to assist them in the ascent, and sometimes to drag themselves over the smooth faces of bare brown rocks, polished by atmospheric influences, clinging to roots of trees which appeared above the soil, and inserting their toes into crevices, or setting them upon projecting points. ”

“ These, with a few venturesome Dwarf Pines and Spruces, lean out over fissured ribs and tablets, or stand erect back in shadowy niches, in an indescribably wild and fearless manner. Moreover, the white-flowered Douglas spiraea and dwarf evergreen oak form graceful fringes along the narrower seams, wherever the slightest hold can be effected. Rock-ferns, too, are here, such as allosorus, pellaea, and cheilanthes, making handsome rosettes on the drier fissures ”

“ Fallen timber at the mountain's foot covered with thick brush swallowed us up and plucked us back. Beyond, on the steeper slopes, grew dwarf evergreens, five or six feet high—the same fir that towers a hundred feet with a diameter of three or four on the river banks, but here stunted by icy mountain winds. The curious blasting of the branches on the side next to the mountain gave them the appearance of long-armed, humpbacked, hairy gnomes, bristling with anger, stretching forbidding arms downwards to bar our passage to their sacred heights. ”

“ One may fancy the clouds themselves are plants, springing up in the sky-fields at the call of the sun, growing in beauty until they reach their prime, scattering rain and hail like berries and seeds, then wilting and dying.
The mountain live oak, common here and a thousand feet or so higher, is like the live oak of Florida, not only in general appearance, foliage, bark, and wide-branching habit, but in its tough, knotty, unwedgeable wood. ”

“ It supports a great weight of thick limbs, irregular and crooked. Clear up to the knotted twigs, and tough brown leaves that often hang on all winter, the oak has a stubborn look. It dares the winter winds to do their worst. And it looks so old, so wise, such a scarred hero of a thousand fights. The old Norse sea kings and the brave English once worshiped the oak tree. It gave them ship timbers that could stand the strain of wind and waves. Many ancient peoples thought dryads, or wood spirits, lived in oak trees. ”

“ The only pine forests where oaks are not intermixed are either in land so sandy that oaks cannot be made to grow on them at all, or so far north that they are beyond their northern limit. In the Green Mountains and in the New England forests, in the pine forests in Pennsylvania, in the Adirondacks, in Wisconsin and Michigan—except in sand—I have found oaks mixed with the pines and spruces. In northwestern Minnesota and in northern Dakota the oaks are near their northern limit, but even there the burr oak drags on a bare existence among the pines and spruces. ”

“ The ash is even rarer than the rest. In their places are put more laurels, cedar deodaras, various evergreens, rhododendrons, planes. How tame and insignificant are these compared with the oak! Thrice a year the oaks become beautiful in a different way.
In spring the opening buds give the tree a ruddy hue; in summer the great head of green is not to be surpassed; in autumn, with the falling leaf and acorn, they appear buff and brown. The nobility of the oak casts the pitiful laurel into utter insignificance. With elms it is the same ”

“ Those who have observed how dwarf plants grow on the tops of mountains, or on elevated stony ground, must have seen in what unpromising positions many flourish in perfect health—fine tufts sometimes springing from an [90] almost imperceptible chink in an arid rock or boulder. They are often stunted and diminutive in such places, but always more long–lived than when grown vigorously upon the ground. Now, numbers of alpine plants perish if planted in the ordinary soil of our gardens, and many do so where much pains is taken to attend to their wants. ”

“ Although, as I have already said, there are eight different kinds of oak-trees growing in our valley and mountains, two of these kinds, the live-oaks and the white oaks, are by far the most common and numerous. As one stands upon the mountain tops or foothills and looks down and over the broad valley, all still and drowsy under the warm afternoon sun, it seems as if you were looking at a single great orchard with the trees in it in close-set regular lines and plots in some places, and irregularly scattered and farther apart in other places. ”

“ And yet the splendor both of individual clusters and of whole scenes is unsurpassable. The oaks are now far advanced in their change of hue; and, in certain positions relatively to the sun, they light up and gleam with a most magnificent deep gold, varying according as portions of the foliage are in shadow or sunlight. On the sides which receive the direct rays, the effect is altogether rich; and in other points of view it is equally beautiful, if less brilliant. This color of the oak is more superb than the lighter yellow of the maples and walnuts. ”

“ The forester usually gets over these difficulties by planting beech, or silver fir, or some other species among the oaks, but in such a way that the oaks are never completely shaded by the other trees—that is to say, he keeps the trees at different ages, the beach, hornbeam, silver fir, spruce, etc., only being allowed to just close in the forest, leaving the leaf-crowns of the oaks to be fully exposed to the light above. ”

“ The mountain pine is closely related to the sugar pine, though the cones are only about four to six inches long. The largest trees are from five to six feet in diameter at four feet above the ground, the bark rich brown. Only a few storm-beaten adventurers approach the summit of the mountain. The dwarf or white-bark pine is the species that forms the timber-line, where it is so completely dwarfed that one may walk over the top of a bed of it as over snow-pressed chaparral. ”

“ So they would venture down the hill only as far as the dry ground lasts, and those who tried to grow any lower would die. But the oaks are hardy, and do not care much where they grow. So they would fight their way down into the wet ground among the alders and willows, till they came to where their enemies were so thick and tall, that the acorns as they fell could not sprout in the darkness. And so you would have at last, along the hill-side, a forest of beech and oak, lower down a forest of oak and alder, and along the stream-side alders and willows only. ”

“ When treated in this way they at once lose the only peculiarity which might be considered as a consequence of the desert-life of their ancestors, their dwarf stature. They behave exactly like the alpine plants in Bonnier's experiments, and with even more striking differences. In the desert they attain a height of a few centimeters, but in the garden they attain half a meter and more in height. Nothing in the way of stability has resulted from the action of the dry soil, not even in such a minor point as the height of the stems. ”

“ Not a tree or a shrub grew near, but grand mountains rose up on every side. Glen Darragh means the vale of oaks, but not an oak could be seen. The singular destruction of trees in this be-battled, be-conquered island is unaccountable. Why invaders should uproot such innocent adorners of the earth is a mystery. It is said that the Druids found a great many pine woods there, and that they up-rooted them and planted their favorite oaks. But pines, oaks, Druids, temples, and all are gone now, except these few stones. ”

“ The growth of the oak, on the other hand, so gnarled and irregular, is quite equally characteristic; while the disposition of the buds soon reveals the fact that this very irregularity itself owes its origin in the last resort to a survival of the fittest among many abortive branches. For the oak tries, as it were, to grow symmetrically like a conifer; but frost and wind play such havoc with its delicate young shoots that it never succeeds in realizing its ideal, but grows habitually distorted against its will by external agencies. ”

“ It is not to these latter alone that our few existing ancient oaks are so attractive, however, and a slight acquaintance with the oaken roofs and carvings of some of our historical edifices affords ample proof that the indefinable charm exercised on us by what has proved so lasting, is a real one and deep-seated in the Saxon nature. In fact, everything about the oak is suggestive of durability and sturdy hardiness, and, like so many objects of human worship in the earlier days of man's emergence from a savage state, the oak instinctively attracts us. ”

“ The cold dwarfs them, and for nine months in the year the snow tries to twist and crush the life out of them. Many have limbs and bark on one side only; others are completely stripped of bark. They seldom grow over eight feet high, and numbers grow along the ground like vines. In the drier places at timber-line the limber pine has sole possession, while in the moister places the Engelmann spruce predominates, and is sometimes accompanied by dwarfed aspen, birch, subalpine fir, and willow. Above the timber-line are crags, snow-piles, and alpine-flower meadows. ”

“ Kenneth Henke and Bobby Snow between them explained that the grain of the red oak is hard, strong and coarse but warps and has little value for weather or ground work. Its acorns require two seasons to ripen, whereas those of the white oak mature in one season. The latter is called white because of the pale color of its bark and wood. This kind is fine-grained, heavy, strong, very durable and of great value. When we speak of “hearts of oak” it is always the white variety we have in mind. You know how important it is for ship building and other enterprises. ”

“ Several of the black oaks have leaves with sharp pointed lobes, ending in bristles. This helps to separate them from the white oaks, but not from one another, for the true red oak, the scarlet oak, the yellow oak, the pin oak, and others, have the sharp-pointed lobes on their leaves; while the willow oaks have no lobes or bristles on theirs, yet are as truly in the black oak group as any of the others. The identification of tree species, particularly when they are as much alike as some of the oaks are, is too difficult for the layman if he undertakes to carry it along the whole line ”

“ The new owner spared it, and later when it became my property I did likewise, for I should have considered it sacrilege to destroy the finest oak in the neighbourhood. Some years after I had sold the farm I heard that the tree was blown down in a gale, its enormous head and widespread branches must have offered immense resistance to the wind, and the fall of it must have been great.
The most celebrated, if not the biggest oak in the New Forest is the Knightwood oak, not far from Lyndhurst; it is 17 feet in circumference, which would make it not less than 450 years old by the above rule. ”

“ The fifty kinds of oak trees that are native to America are about evenly divided on the two sides of the Rocky Mountains. No Western [34] oaks are found in the Eastern states, and none of our Eastern kinds grows wild on the other side of the mountains. The backbone of the continent is a bar that neither group has been able to pass.
To know fifty different kinds of oaks by sight, so as to call each one by its right name, is not an easy task; and yet it is not so difficult as it at first might seem. To begin with, any tree we meet, which bears acorns, we at once recognise as an oak. ”