FORESTRY ON THE COUNTRY 



ESTATE 



B\ WARREN H. MILLER, M. F. 



V. GETTING ACQUAINTED 



IN SPITE of the fact that we have a 

 number of excellent ' tree books, 

 some of them localized entirely to 

 the trees found east of the Missis- 

 sippi, it is a fact that there are so many 

 species to be treated with in these 

 geographical limits that the author has 

 but little space to spare beyond giving 

 identification specifics and a brief men- 

 tion of the qualities of the wood and 

 the geographical limitations of the 

 species mentioned. Most of these iden- 

 tification characteristics are excellent, 

 and are backed up with superb photo- 

 graphs showing leaves, buds, flowers, 

 bark, trunk and fruit of the tree, or else 

 equally splendid hand drawings ; but 

 after all has been said and done, you 

 have but the identification of your tree, 

 you know what he is beyond a doubt, 

 and a few meager facts concerning 

 him and that is all. 



For the forest owner that is not 

 enough. He wants to know something 

 of its light and soil requirements, its 

 rate of growth, when it comes in the 

 spring and its autumn coloration in the 

 fall, whether it has any especial charac- 

 teristics to warrant saving it in case a 

 clearing or thinning is decided upon, 

 and finally its commercial value, either 

 as lumber or as a source of other forest 

 wealth. Obviously, all this information 

 cannot be crowded within the covers 

 of a volume identifying some three 

 hundred species of trees growing east 

 of the Mississippi in the United States, 

 so it seemed to the writer that the only 

 course in the series of papers would be 

 to concentrate upon some forty-five 

 species distributed fairly evenly over 

 such an area as would contain most of 

 the temperate zone United States 

 species east of the Mississippi, as it is 

 within these limits that most of the 

 448 



forest estates and country place wood- 

 lots are found. 



J_et us get a little better acquainted 

 with our oaks, our maples, birches, 

 hickories, our elms and our more com- 

 mon evergreens, and let the rest go, 

 assuming that the reader already has 

 one or more good identification books 

 in his library and is able from them to 

 recognize any tree on his place. We 

 will take ten oaks, three maples, two 

 ashes, four birches, two elms, seven 

 miscellaneous broadleaves, six pines, 

 three spruces, two cedars, the balsam 

 fir and the hemlock and see what facts 

 of use to the forest estate owner can 

 be assembled concerning them. 



As the oaks are the most numerous 

 and interesting of the broadleaves, we 

 will begin with the ten selected, although 

 almost any forest in any section of the 

 country can show more than ten 

 species of oaks. The family seems to 

 be divided into two groups of cousins, 

 the bristly and pointed leaved ones 

 headed by the Red Oak ; and the round- 

 leaved, with the fine old White Oak as 

 the eldest brother. 



The family difference seems further 

 accentuated by the fact that all the 

 white oak tribe ripen their acorns the 

 first season and sprout them that same 

 year if possible, while the red oak party 

 ripen theirs the second season after 

 flowering. Further, all the second sea- 

 son oaks have coarse-grained compara- 

 tively weak wood which rots quickly 

 next the ground, and the first season 

 oaks have a close-grained, strong, dur- 

 able wood, some of them like the post 

 oak being so immune from rot that 

 they are named and chosen for fence- 

 post work. As this differentiation is 

 quite general throughout the oak fam- 

 ily, it is almost a cast-iron rule that if 

 you come upon one of the red oak 

 group in your forest it cannot be 



