IMPORTANT FOREST SPECIES 395 



Wood Uses. — The wood of holm oak is very hard, heavy, and extremely compact. 

 It is difficult to work and its heavy wood and small size limits its use as construction 

 wood. It makes excellent fuel. 



By-Products. — The bark yields excellent tannin; better than that of oaks that shed 

 their leaves. The acorns, when they are fresh, have an agreeable taste and make excel- 

 lent food when they are properly cooked. In several departments they are collected 

 as an edible food. 



Silvicultural Characteristics. — Since it does not reach a large size, it is only 

 suitable for simple coppice. It is often foimd in mixture with aleppo pine and with 

 this species it forms an excellent understory, since it is fire-resistant. 



CORK OAK' 

 (Quercus suber L.) 



The cork oak is an oak with persistent leaves like the holm oak. . . . Both belong 

 to the southern part of France where the first forms high forests, the second coppice. 

 The economic importance of cork oak is considerable in the south of France, in Corsica, 

 and especially in Algeria. Spain and Portugal also furnish cork which competes with 

 our own in the markets. The botanists distinguish cork oak, properly called Quercus 

 suber, and the western cork oak, Quercus suber var. occidentalis; the former being found 

 in the Mediterranean (Algeria, Corsica, Provence, Pyr6n6es-Orientales), and the second 

 belonging to the Atlantic flora (Gascogne, where towards the north it is of especial im- 

 portance, beginning with the point of L6on). From our point of view it does not appear 

 to be necessary to make this distinction, the two forms having the same requirements, 

 furnishing the same product — cork — and being treated the same way. Both of them 

 avoid calcareous soils and are confined to sandy soil. The length of their tap roots 

 makes it necessary to have deep soils if they are to develop properly. The cork oak, 

 although an xerophytic species, without doubt requires more moisture than does the 

 holm oak. In Algeria it is infinitely more common in the province of Constantine, 

 where the climate is quite rainy, than in Oran where it is very dry; in France it is foimd 

 at the Maures and Esterel hills, which have a sufficient altitude to produce enough rain- 

 fall, and in Gascogne where the climate is very hot but also quite humid. 



Regeneration. — When the cork oak forms pure stands they are always very open 

 and usually even incomplete. (These pure stands, while common in Algeria, are rarely 

 met with in the Maures and Esterel and do not exist at all, naturally at least, in the 

 Gascogne.) On the other hand, the fohage of the tree is quite light. It therefore 

 results that everywhere in the forest the soil is sufficiently open to permit the seed to 

 germinate and develop, since the species is light demanding first of all. When cork oak 

 is found in mixture with another species the stand becomes denser, but, since this other 

 species, in France at least, is almost always maritime pine, whose cover is extremely 

 light, the situation remains about the same from the point of view of regeneration. While 

 this species exists in every part of the forest, without regeneration fellings it has to be 

 favored and assisted. Systematic fellings are not made in cork-oak stands, but the fell- 

 ings tend to realize old cork oak whose production of cork has ceased to be remunerative. 



Freeing the Young. — One cannot say that the regeneration of cork oak can be 

 left to itself. On the contrary it is necessary to give it cultural aid. In those forests 

 in reality where the soil is sandy and quite open, there exist thickets of evergreen shrubs 

 in which tree heather often dominates and which is called maquis (similar to the term 

 chaparral). Numerous species of small heather increase the density still more near the 

 soil and make it so thick that it is not easy to penetrate. The acorns fall here and there 



' Traite Pratique de Sylviculture, par A. Jolyet. Paris, J. B. Baillere et Fils, 1916. 



