January 7, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by . . Professor C. 



S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE TOST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



i 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— The V/hite Oak. (With figures.)— Military Protection 



for Government Forests i 



Old Methods of Preserving Seeds for Transportation . George B. Sudworth. 2 



Cranberries in Wisconsin 3 



Notes on North American Trees.— XXI Professor C. 5. Sargent. 4 



New or Little Known Plants :— New Orchids R. A. Rolfe. 4 



Cultural Department : — Notes on Some Hardy Wild Roses.— I J. G. Jack. 4 



Pomological Candidates for Promotion T.H. Hoskins, M.D. 5 



ThePompone Lily E. O. Orpet. 6 



Dracaena Lindeni 7 



The Hardv Hydrangea as a Decorative Plant G. 7 



Clematis pamculata T. D. Hatfield. 8 



Peaches for Forcing John Thorpe. 8 



The Best Peaches IV. 8 



The Forest :— Forest-policy Abroad.— I Gifford Pinchot. 8 



Correspondence : — The Holiday Flower Trade in Philadelphia... IV. H. Taplin. 9 



AVinter in Los Angeles ..£. D. Sturtevant. 10 



Cypripedium spectabile from Seed F. J. Le Moyne. 10 



Periodical Literature 10 



Meetings of Societies :— The American Forestry Association 11 



Notes 12 



Illustrations :— The White Oak (Quercus alba) in Winter, Fig. 1 6 



The White Oak (Quercus alba) in Summer, Fig. 2 7 



The White Oak. 



OF the Oaks which inhabit the New World, the White 

 Oak {Quercus alba) is most akin to the common and 

 familiar tree of all European countries — the Oak of myths 

 and of poetry, of Dodona and Hercynia, the tree which 

 Celt and Briton worshiped, which [shaded the Druids' 

 sacred fire, and has in all times been the emblem of strength 

 and longevity. And here in America, when we think 

 or speak in a general way of an Oak-tree, it is the White 

 Oak which naturally most often presents itself to the mind, 

 as the leaves and fruit of this tree resemble more nearly 

 than those of any of our other species the conventional 

 Oak-leaves and acorns with which we have become famil- 

 iar from childhood. 



The American White Oak is a noble tree. In girth of 

 stem and stoutness of branches it is not second to its Old 

 World relative ; and there are very few American Oaks 

 which grow over such a wide stretch of country, or are so 

 generally multiplied. The Burr Oak, perhaps, when it-has 

 grown under the most favorable conditions, produces tim- 

 ber which is stronger and more solid than that of the 

 White Oak, but there is no American Oak which furnishes 

 universally and over such large areas such a high quality 

 of timber. 



As it grows in the dense forests of the Alleghany Moun- 

 tains, or of the valley of the lower Ohio, the White Oak 

 sends up a tall and massive stem destitute of branches to 

 a height sometimes of sixty or eighty feet, and crowned 

 with a narrow head of comparatively small branches. In 

 less favorable climates or on thinner soil it is a smaller 

 tree, with a shorter trunk and larger branches, which ex- 

 tend laterally in proportion as the individual has found 

 room for their development. 



The White Oak owes its name to the color of the bark, 

 which is light gray or sometimes nearly white on vigor- 

 ous trees, with a surface broken into long, narrow, rather 

 thin scales. The character of the surface is the same on 

 young and on old trees, and only varies slightly in color 



on different individuals, and, as it is unlike the bark of any 

 other Oak-tree of eastern America, it furnishes the most 

 ready means for distinguishing this tree at a glance at all 

 seasons of the year. The inner bark, as is the case with 

 that of many other Oaks, possesses astringent properties, 

 and has found a place in our materia medica in the form 

 of decoctions. 



The wood of the White Oak is very heavy, a cubic foot 

 of dry wood of average quality weighing rather more than 

 forty-six pounds ; it is strong, hard, tough and close 

 grained. The annual layers of growth are marked by nu- 

 merous rows of the open ducts present more or less in all 

 Oak-wood. The broad and prominent medullary rays are 

 silvery white, and make a handsome contrast with the 

 light brown color of the body of the wood. 



The leaves of the White Oak when they first unfold are 

 tinged with red and coated with silvery white tomentum. 

 At this time, when the tree is covered also with its catkins 

 of yellow flowers, the White Oak presents a beautiful ap- 

 pearance in the forest, and is perhaps more distinct and 

 attractive than at any other season of the year. As the 

 leaves grow they lose their hairy covering, and at maturity 

 are quite smooth ; they are obovate-oblong in general out- 

 line, and obliquely cut into three to nine obtuse, mostly 

 entire lobes, which vary considerably on different trees in 

 number and breadth and in the depth of the sinuses which 

 separate them. These sometimes penetrate nearly to the 

 midrib, making the leaf appear almost pinnatifid. The 

 leaves when fully grown are six or eight inches long by two 

 or three broad, and are borne on stout petioles. Late in 

 the autumn, after the leaves of many of the trees with 

 which the White Oak grows have begun to fall, they turn 

 gradually first yellow and orange and then deep vinous 

 red or sometimes bright scarlet. The brilliancy of their 

 autumn coloring is retained for a long time, and, as the 

 leaves die, they turn gradually brown and fall slowly, many 

 remaining on the branches through the winter and until 

 the buds of another year begin to open. 



The sterile flowers, like those of our other Oaks, are pro- 

 duced in slender, naked, hanging catkins, which are single, 

 or often several together from the same lateral scaly bud. 

 The male flower consists of a lobed yellow calyx and six to 

 eight stamens with conspicuous yellow anthers. The female 

 flowers, Avhich are composed of a three-lobed sessile 

 stigma and a three-celled ovary enclosed by a scaly bud- 

 like involucre which grows into the cup of the acorn, are 

 solitary or clustered near the base of the shoots of the year. 

 The fruit, like that of all the so-called White Oaks, ripens 

 at the end of the first season. This character best distin- 

 guishes these trees from the so-called Black Oaks, which 

 require two summers for the maturity of their fruit.' The 

 acorn when fully grown is sometimes an inch long, or 

 often smaller at the north ; it is slender, ovoid or oblong, 

 chestnut brown, and enclosed for about one-third of its 

 length in a pale, hemispherical, saucer-shaped cup, which 

 is covered with tubercles at maturity. The fruit is sessile, 

 or sometimes produced on slender stalks an inch or more 

 long, the two forms appearing occasionally on the same 

 tree — a peculiarity also of the Old World Oak. 



The White Oak grows from northern Maine, Ontario and 

 the lower peninsula of Michigan to the shores of Tampa 

 Bay, in Florida. It ranges west to western Missouri and 

 Arkansas, and to the valley of the Brazos River, in Texas. 

 In some parts of this great region it forms more than half 

 of the forest-growth. It is especially abundant in the 

 group of states which contain the ranges of the southern 

 Appalachian Mountains and in the valley of the middle por- , 

 tion of the Mississippi River. The White Oak grows on 

 nearly all soils except those saturated with stagnant water. 

 It attains its greatest size on the rich lands of river-bottoms, 

 and produces in such situations its most valuable timber. 

 Mr. Robert Ridgway, whose excellent observations upon 

 the trees of the Lower Wabash and White River valleys, in 

 Indiana, are published in the Proceedings of the United 

 States National Museum, records the measurement of a 



