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AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



from young trees. An age of about 150 years is necessary. Most 

 good white oak lumber today is cut from trees 200 or more years old. 

 When the present supply of venerable oaks has been exhausted, prime 

 oak lumber will be largely a thing of the past. Fortunately, that time 

 has not yet arrived. About eighty years are required to grow a white 

 oak of crosstie size. Those who will grow oak for market in the future 

 will probably not wait much longer than eighty years to cut their trees, 

 and the result will be a scarcity of mature trunks for lumber and veneer. 



DURAND OAK (Quercus breviloba). In some parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and 

 Louisiana this tree goes to the lumber yard as white oak, and no one is injured by the 

 substitution, for it is heavy, hard, and strong, and is of good color. The wood weighs 

 59.25 pounds per cubic foot, which places it above the average weight of white oak. 

 It is said to be less tough than white oak. The tree varies greatly in different parts 

 of its range which extends from central Alabama across Texas and into Mexico. It is 

 known as white oak, Texas white oak, shin oak, pin oak, and basket oak. Its best 

 development is in the eastern part of its range where trees eighty or ninety feet high 

 are common; but in Texas the average is scarcely thirty feet high and one in diameter. 

 Westward in Texas it becomes shrubby, and forms extensive thickets of brush. 



CHAPMAN OAK (Quercus chapmani) is put to little use, because trunks are too 

 small. They are seldom more than a foot in diameter, and are often little more than 

 shrubs. The tree grows in the pine barrens near the coast from South Carolina to 

 Florida, and it is found also in great abundance, but generally of small size, on the 

 west coast of Florida from Tampa to the Apalachicola river. 



