1885.] THE CONQUERING OAK. 43 



THE CONQUERING OAK. 



BY EGBERT DOUGLASS. 



SIR JA]\IES CAMPBELL'S exhibit at Ediuburgli was most 

 interesting in proving to the piibhc what both English and 

 American foresters and tree-growers know from experience to be a 

 fact, viz., that the tap-root of the oak is a temporary matter, and 

 that if it is transphanted after having the tap-root shortened it will 

 form a perfect root sooner than the seedling, and outstrip it in 

 rapidity of growth and symmetry of form. We have millions of 

 such " Acorn Patches " in this country, and, aside from the trees 

 blown down and uprooted in the forests (not only of one species 

 thirty years old, but of numerous species of every age up to a century 

 or so), we have seen stumps and trees dug out l)y hundreds to make 

 room for roads, buildings, and other improvements, from all of which 

 it is plain not only that the tap-root serves a temporary purpose, 

 but that the longer the tree has depended on the tap-root the more 

 inferior and misshapen it is, and that a well-balanced tree has a 

 well-balanced root. If it were not aside from my present purpose, 

 I might show that the burr oak depends longer upon its tap-root 

 than does the red oak, and that the species vary greatly in this 

 particular. There are many other equally interesting facts con- 

 nected with this root, but I wish now to call attention to the 

 advantage which it gives the young oak in its struggle for existence 

 in its native woods. Indeed it is the principal advantage which 

 makes the progress of the oak resistless, enabling it to hold every 

 foot of ground it gains, and crowd its way by approaches slow, but 

 so certainly triumphant in the end, that I believe it only needs a 

 foothold in a continent with soil and climate suited to its growth 

 to conquer and possess the whole. 



This agfrressive viraur of the oak is more remarkable when we 

 consider that the ash and maple produce 20 times as many 

 seeds, the elms 100 times as many, the conifers 500 to 1000 

 times as many seeds as do the oak, tree for tree, and in all the 

 kinds named the acorn is the only seed that has not a wing or 

 some provision for distributing it to a distance from the tree. The 

 only apparent way that acorns are carried to a distance from the 

 tree is by squirrels and other animals. Blue jays fly off with them 

 and drop them while fighting in the air. I have seen an acorn 

 sprouting through the crop of a passenger pigeon that had probably 

 been killed by a hawk. But, after all, only a few acorns are carried 

 to a distance compared with the quantities of the other tree seeds 



