230 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



slightly different forms. It is not surprising that there should be a 

 conflict of names and confusion in identification. The leaf resembles 

 that of the chestnut oak, and to that fact is due the belief which some 

 hold that the chief difference between the trees is that the chestnut oak 

 (Quercus prinus) grows on dry land and cow oak in damp situations. 

 Botanists make a clear distinction between cow oak and all other species, 

 though it closely resembles some of them in several particulars. 



From the northern limits of its growth in Delaware, where it is not 

 of any considerable size, it extends south through the Atlantic states 

 and into Florida, west in the Gulf states to the Trinity river in Texas, 

 and up the Mississippi valley, including in its range Arkansas, eastern 

 Missouri, southern Indiana and Illinois and western Kentucky and 

 Tennessee. It is distinctly of the South and may be considered the best 

 southern representative of the white oak group. It does best in swampy 

 localities where it is found in company with water hickory, sweet 

 magnolia, planer tree, water oak, willow oak, red maple, and red and 

 black gum. 



In general appearance the tree gives the impression of massiveness 

 and strength, offset by the delicate, silvery effect of the bark and the 

 lining of the foliage. The usual height is sixty or eighty feet, but it 

 often exceeds a hundred feet, the bole attaining a diameter of as high as 

 seven feet and showing three log lengths clear. The characteristic light 

 gray, scaly, white oak bark covers trunk and heavy limbs, which rise 

 at narrow angles, forming a rounded head and dividing into stout 

 branches and twigs. The winter buds are not characteristic of white 

 oak, being long and pointed rather than rounded. They are about 

 a half inch in length, scaly, with red hairs and usually in threes on the 

 ends of the twigs. The general texture of the leaves is thick and heavy, 

 their upper surfaces being dark, lustrous green and the lower white and 

 covered with hairs. They are from five to seven inches long with 

 petioles an inch in length and of the general outline of the chestnut 

 leaf. Their rich crimson color is conspicuous in the fall after turning. 



The wood of cow oak is hard, heavy, very tough, strong, and 

 durable. The heartwood is light brown, the sapwood darker colored. 

 It weighs 50.10 pounds per cubic foot, and is not quite up to white oak 

 in strength and elasticity. In quarter-sawing it does riot equal white 

 oak, because the medullary rays, though broad, are not regularly 

 distributed, and the surface of the quarter-sawed board has a splotchy 

 appearance, and it is not as easy to match figures as with white oak. 



Cow oak is one of the most important hardwoods of the South. Its 

 uses are much the same as those for white oak farther north. The 

 custom of calling it white oak when it goes to market renders the collec- 



