July 22, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



337 



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 POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— The Red Oak. (With figure.) 337 



Squandering a Nation's Patrimony 338 



How We Renewed an Old Place.— XI V Mrs. 7. H. Robbins. 338 



Notes on North American Trees.- — XXVI Professor C. S. Sargent. 340 



New os Little-known Plants : — New Orchids R. A. Rolfe. 340 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 340 



Cultural Department: — Stray Notes from the Arnold Arboretum. — V P. C. 342 



Hardy Flower Garden - O. O. 344 



A New Water-lily J. N. Gerard. 344 



Basket-plants IV. H. Taplin. 344 



The Newer Varieties of Strawberries C. E. Hunn. 34s 



Correspondence : — The Northern Forest T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 345 



Recent Publications 346 



Notes 348 



Illustration : — The Red Oak (Quercus rubra), Fig. 58 341 



The Red Oak. 



THE Red Oak is one of the largest and most beautiful 

 of the deciduous trees of the American forest. It is 

 the largest and the most widely distributed American repre- 

 sentative of the so-called Black Oaks — that is, of the Oaks 

 distinguished by the acute bristle-pointed lobes of their 

 leaves, by the slow development of their fruit, which re- 

 quires two seasons in which to reach maturity, and by 

 their brittle and porous wood. There is no other Ameri- 

 can Oak of wide distribution which varies so little as the 

 Red Oak in the form of its leaves and in the character of 

 its fruit ; and it is in western Texas only that it occasion- 

 ally assumes an appearance which is puzzling to botanists, 

 leading them to suppose that through this extreme form it 

 may be possible to join it specifically with some of the 

 other Black Oaks. 



From Canada to Texas the Red Oak varies but little in 

 what may be called essential characters ; .individuals are 

 large when the soil is rich and moisture is abundant, and 

 they are small and stunted in barren soil unrefreshed by 

 copious rains. The leaves and the fruit are larger and 

 better developed when conditions of growth are favorable, 

 but in form they are very constant, and it is easy to distin- 

 guish the Red Oak, with a little practice, at all seasons of 

 the year. 



In habit of growth it varies considerably, but not more 

 than other trees ; for it must be remembered that the habit 

 of a tree — that is, the form of growth a particular indi- 

 vidual assumes — is dependent entirely on the local con- 

 ditions and surroundings in which the individual is 

 developed. It is exceptional when all the individuals of a 

 tree-species assume the same habit of growth. Most trees 

 form tall slender stems when other trees crowd them, as 

 in the forest, and cause their lower branches to die from 

 the insufficient supply of sunlight which reaches them. 

 An individual of the same species standing by itself will 

 send out long stout lateral branches which give to the tree 



an entirely different appearance. In the case of some trees 

 the habit of individuals is influenced by the character of 

 the soil in which they grow, and age, of course, brings 

 many changes in form and general appearance to trees. 

 It is for these reasons that the portrait of an individual 

 gives only a partial and therefore an unsatisfactory idea 

 of the general appearance or habit of the species, and why 

 a hundred portraits would be necessary to give anything 

 like a comprehensive idea of the appearance of a tree like 

 the Red Oak, for example, as it appears in different parts 

 of the country growing under the different conditions to 

 which it is subjected. 



The power to recognize trees at a glance without exam- 

 ining their leaves or flowers or fruit as they are seen, for 

 example, from the car-window during a railroad journey, 

 can only be acquired by studying them as they grow under 

 all possible conditions over wide areas of territory. Such 

 an attainment may not have much practical value, but 

 once acquired it gives to the possessor a good deal of 

 pleasure which is denied to less fortunate travelers. 



The Red Oak {Quercus rubra) grows naturally in both rich 

 land and in light porous gravel. Usually it selects a soil 

 intermediate in character, between that preferred by the 

 White Oak and the sterile soils occupied by the Black Oak. 

 It is the only Oak which reaches as far north as the north- 

 ern part of Nova Scotia, while westward it extends almost 

 to the limits of the Atlantic forest region. It is one of the 

 commonest trees in all this great territory, and grows 

 from the immediate neighborhood of the coast to higher 

 elevations on the Appalachian Mountains than any other 

 Oak tree ; it is as common west of the mountains as it is 

 on the Atlantic sea-board, and it abounds in the south as 

 well as in the north. The Red Oak cannot secure a foot- 

 hold in undrained swamps or on the inundated banks of 

 rivers, but in all other situations, from Cape Breton to the 

 Rio Colorado, it can hold its own wherever trees grow. 

 It is west of the Alleghany Mountains that the Red Oak, 

 growing on rich intervale lands along the larger streams 

 which flow into the great tributaries of the Mississippi, 

 can be seen at its best as a timber tree. Here specimens 

 can be found a hundred and fifty feet high, with stems as 

 straight as arrows, free of branches for sixty or seventy 

 feet from the ground, and five or six feet in diameter, 

 above the great swollen buttresses which are characteris- 

 tic of large individuals of this species. Such noble speci- 

 mens occur, too, in the forests which clothe the slopes of 

 the mountains of the south, but at the north, where the 

 deciduous forests which Europeans found here when they 

 discovered America have been replaced by a second 

 growth, the Red Oak assumes, usually, a different habit. 

 The trunk often separates, fifteen or twenty feet from the 

 ground, into several stout branches which grow in an up- 

 right direction, and, gradually spreading outward, form a 

 wide head in the shape of an inverted pyramid. Such a 

 form indicates that the tree has grown in good soil and 

 that it has succeeded in securing a fair amount of space 

 in which to develop its head. In poor soil, and when 

 crowded by other trees, the Red Oak makes a narrow 

 head of small branches and does not grow to a large size. 

 Sometimes it branches low, sending out at right angles 

 with the trunk great wide-spreading limbs, like a pasture 

 White Oak, making a round-headed top. Such speci- 

 mens are not common, and perhaps represent the noblest 

 type of individual beauty the species is capable of. 



The bark of the Red Oak is dark brown and deeply 

 furrowed on the trunks of old individuals ; it is smooth 

 and gray on young trunks and on the branches, unless 

 they are very old and large. The bark of the branches is 

 smoother and lighter-colored than that of the other Black 

 Oaks which are usually associated with the Red Oak, and 

 for this reason the tree can be easily recognized in winter 

 by the color of the branches alone. The leaves are oblong 

 in general outline, with five or six acuminate lobes on 

 each side, separated by rounded shallow sinuses ; they 

 are rather thin, smooth, bright shining green on the upper 



