COW OAK 



(Quercus Michauxii) 



THIS oak's acorns are remarkably free from the bitterness due to 

 tannin and are therefore pleasant to the taste. Herbivorous 

 animals eat them when they are to be had, and the eagerness with which 

 cattle gather them in the fall is doubtless the reason for calling the tree 

 cow oak. Hogs and sheep are as eager hunters for the acorns as cattle 

 are, and the half-wild swine in the southern forests become marketable 

 during the two months of the acorn season. Children know the excel- 

 lency of the cow oak acorns, and gather them in large quantities during 

 the early weeks of autumn in the South. The tree is widely known as 

 basket oak, and the name refers to a prevailing use for the wood in early 

 times, and a rather common use yet. Long before anyone had made a 

 study of the structure of this wood, it was learned that it splits nicely 

 into long, slender bands, and these were employed by basket weavers 

 for all sorts of wares in that line. Tens of thousands of baskets were in 

 use before the war in the southern cottonfields, and they have not gone 

 out of use there yet. It is safe to say that millions of dollars worth of 

 cotton has been picked and "toted" in baskets made of this oak. It was 

 natural, therefore, that the name basket oak should be given it. Large, 

 coarse baskets are still made of splits of this wood, and china and 

 other merchandise are packed in them; while baskets of finer pattern 

 and workmanship are doing service about the farms and homes of 

 thousands of people. 



When the structure of wood became a subject of study among 

 dendrologists, the secret of the cow oak's adaptability to basket making 

 was discovered. The annual rings of growth are broad, and the bands of 

 springwood and summerwood are distinct. The springwood is so 

 perforated with large pores that it contains comparatively little real 

 wood substance. The early basket maker did not notice that but he 

 found by experimenting that the wood split along the rings of growth 

 into fine ribbons. The splitting occurs along the springwood. Ribbons 

 may be pulled off as thin as the rings of annual growth, that is, from an 

 eighth to a sixteenth of an inch thick. These are the "splits" of which 

 baskets are made. When subjected to rough usage, such as being 

 dragged and hauled about cornfields and cotton plantations, such a 

 basket will outlast two or three of willow. 



The tree is sometimes called swamp white oak, and swamp chestnut 

 oak. It bears some resemblance to the swamp white oak (Quercus 

 platanoides) and some people believe that both are of one species, but of 



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