AMERICAN FOREST TREES 291 



BLACK JACK OAK (Qiierctis marilandica) is one of the scrub trees of 

 this country, and few good words are ever heard for it ; yet it has redeem- 

 ing qualities. Lumbermen have not paid much attention to it and never 

 will, for only when at its best is the trunk large enough for any kind of 

 sawlog, and there has been little inclination to use it for anything else. 

 It attains size fitting it for fence posts, and sometimes it performs 

 service along that line ; but the small trunks are nearly all sapwood, and 

 decay strikes them quickly. The bark is black, hence the name, and it 

 is exceedingly rough, and is broken in squares. The leaves are large 

 and pear-shaped, with the broad end opposite the stem. Some are 

 slightly lobed. A vigorous black jack oak, standing in open ground, 

 presents a fine appearance. The crown is wide and is frequently conical, 

 the limbs small, and are set in the trunk on nearly horizontal lines. 

 The range of this unloved species covers 600,000 or more square miles, 

 beginning in New York, running west to central Nebraska, south through 

 Texas nearly to the Rio Grande, and in Florida to Tampa. It is not an 

 aggressive tree and has permitted itself to be crowded off the good land 

 until it has formed the habit of occupying geographical left-overs in the 

 form of sand banks and wornout fields. In the northeastern part of its 

 range it is often associated with scrub pine (Pinusvirginiana), because 

 the two have similar habits and are content to live in perpetual poverty 

 on dry gravel or thin sand. Large trunks are not possible under such 

 circumstances, and first-class wood is unusual. Black jack oak at its 

 best may attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of eighteen inches, 

 but it is of tener twenty feet high and six inches through. It grows with 

 moderate rapidity and does not live long. 



The annual rings are often indistinct. The wood is hard, heavy, 

 and strong, and checks badly in seasoning. The medullary rays are 

 broad and conspicuous, the wood dark brown in color, the sapwood 

 lighter. This oak is very high in ash contents, more than one per cent 

 of the dry weight of wood going to ashes when burned. The tree reaches 

 its best development in the lower Mississippi valley, and in eastern 

 Texas. Comparatively few uses for it have been found. Cordwood 

 cutters find it valuable where it abounds in sufficient quantity, and it 

 has been burned for charcoal for iron foundries and blacksmith shops. 

 Small amounts are occasionally found in wood-using factories in Texas, 

 but only when logs with considerable heartwood can be procured. The 

 sap is characterless and seems to be utterly rejected at the factory. 

 Sometimes the rich brown of the heartwood is attractive, but more 

 frequently the wood is ringed and splotched with different colors, not 

 distributed in a way to give any artistic effect. When a satisfactory 

 stick is found, it can be worked into balusters and small spindles which 



