TEXAN RED OAK 



(Quercus Texana) 



THE line between red oak (Quercus rubrd) and Texan red oak is 

 closely drawn by botanists, but lumbermen do not recognize 

 much difference except toward the extreme ranges of each. Some call 

 one simply red oak and the other southern re4 oak, but that leaves 

 doubtful the timber on a large area occupied by both species. Their 

 ranges overlap two or three hundred miles in the Ohio valley and on the 

 southern tributaries of the Ohio river in Kentucky and Tennessee. A 

 large amount of red oak from that region goes to market, and no one 

 knows, and few care, whether it is of the northern or southern species. 

 It is usually a mixture of both. * But outside of the common zone where 

 both. trees grow, the woods of the two are kept fairly well separate. 

 Thirty years ago Texan red oak received slight recognition from 

 botanists. When Charles S. Sargent compiled in 1880 a volume of over 

 600 pages, "Forest Trees of North America," for the United States 

 government, and which was published as volume 9 of the Tenth Census, 

 he did not so much as accord this tree the dignity of a species, but 

 called it a variety of the common red oak. Its range and its great 

 importance were little understood at that time. Sargent thus described 

 its range: "Western Texas, valley of the Colorado river with the species 

 and replacing it south and west, extending to the valley of the Neuces 

 river and the Limpia mountains." 



Compare that restricted range with that given by the same 

 author twenty-five years later in his "Manual of the Trees of North 

 America." He gives it thus: "Northeastern Iowa and central Illinois, 

 through southern Illinois and Indiana and western Kentucky and 

 Tennessee, to the valley of the Apalachicola river, Florida, northern 

 Georgia, central South Carolina, and the coast plains of North Carolina, 

 and through southern Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana fo the moun- 

 tains of western Texas; most abundant and of its largest size on the 

 low bottom lands of the Mississippi basin, often forming a considerable 

 part of lowland forests; less abundant in the eastern Gulf states; in 

 western Texas on low limestone hills and on bottom lands in the neigh- 

 borhood of streams." 



This quotation is given in full because it shows how scientific men 

 change then- opinions to conform to new evidence. The range of that 

 particular species was as wide in 1880 as in 1905, but botanists had not 

 yet worked it out. Thus knowledge increases constantly, and year by 

 year the resources of American forests are better understood. In this 



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