FORESTRY ON THE COUNTRY 



ESTATE 



By Warren H. Mili^er, M. P. 



V. GETTING ACQUAINTED forest estates and country place wood- 

 lots are found. 



IX SPITE of the fact that we have a j^et us get a little better acquainted 



number of excellent tree books, with our oaks, our maples, birches, 



some of them localized entirely to hickories, our elms and our more com- 



the trees found east of the Missis- mon evergreens, and let the rest go, 



sippi, it is a fact that there are so many assuming that the reader already has 



species to be treated with in these one or more good identification books 



geographical limits that the author has in his library and is able from them to 



but little space to spare beyond giving recognize any tree on his place. We 



identification specifics and a brief men- will take ten oaks, three maples, two 



tion of the qualities of the wood and ashes, four birches, two elms, seven 



the geographical limitations of the miscellaneous broadleaves, six pines, 



species mentioned. Most of these iden- three spruces, two cedars, the balsam 



tification characteristics are excellent, fir and the hemlock and see what facts 



and are backed up with superb photo- of use to the forest estate owner can 



graphs showing leaves, buds, flowers, be assembled concerning them, 



bark, trunk and fruit of the tree, or else As the oaks are the most numerous 



equally splendid hand drawings ; but and interesting of the broadleaves, we 



after all has been said and done, you will begin with the ten selected, although 



have but the identification of your tree, almost any forest in any section of the 



you know what he is beyond a doubt, country can show more than ten 



and a few meager facts concerning species of oaks. The family seems to 



him — and that is all. be divided into two groups of cousins, 



For the forest owner that is not the. bristly and pointed leaved ones 



enough. He wants to know something headed by the Red Oak ; and the round- 



of its light and soil requirements, its leaved, with the fine old White Oak as 



rate of growth, when it comes in the the eldest brother. 



spring and its autumn coloration in the The family difference seems further 

 fall, whether it has any especial charac- accentuated by the fact that all the 

 teristics to warrant saving it in case a white oak tribe ripen their acorns the 

 clearing or thinning is decided upon, first season and sprout them that same 

 and finally its commercial value, either year if possible, while the red oak party 

 as lumber or as a source of other forest ripen theirs the second season after 

 wealth. Obviously, all this information flowering. Further, all the second sea- 

 cannot be crowded within the covers son oaks have coarse-grained compara- 

 of a volume identifying some three tively weak wood which rots quickly 

 hundred species of trees growing east next the ground, and the first season 

 of the Mississippi in the United States, oaks have a close-grained, strong, dur- 

 so it seemed to the writer that the only able wood, some of them like the post 

 course in the series of papers would be oak being so immune from rot that 

 to concentrate upon some forty-five they are named and chosen for fence- 

 species distributed fairly evenly over post work. As this differentiation is 

 such an area as would contain most of quite general throughout the oak fam- 

 the temperate zone United States ily, it is almost a cast-iron rule that if 

 species east of the ^^Hssissippi, as it is you come upon one of the red oak 

 within these limits that most of the group in vour forest it cannot be 

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