CALIFORNIA BLACK OAK. 83 



CALIFORNIA BLACK OAK. 



(Quereus Kelloggii.) 



"There is a beautiful spirit breathing now 

 Its mellow richness ou the clustered trees." 



— Longfellow. 



f I ^HE finest typical Black Oak of this coast ! It most 

 reminds you of the Yellow Dyer's Quercitron, Black 

 Oak of the East (old Q. tinctoria), altogether in growth 

 of body, branch, spray, and leaf. The tree is forty to seventy- 

 five feet high, seldom over one hundred; two to four feet 

 in diameter, rarely over eight, only a few of them furnish- 

 ing two or three saw-logs of clear lumber; in general they 

 are too short, because when the lower limbs die — these limbs 

 are usually short and small — they are apt to leave their dead 

 pin-knots in, spoiling the timber, for they do not, as usual, 

 trim themselves by a natural law, cutting off within, and by 

 growth pushing the dead pins out, and thence righting into 

 line the errant grain; such loose knots are apt to fall out, 

 leaving holes in boards, etc. While speaking of the timber, 

 it should be noted, that, like the Red Oak (Q. rubra), it 

 abounds in sour sap, of which it is very retentive, and dries 

 slowly, but if this is abstracted by soaking, or even by season- 

 ing well, it makes excellent axles for truck wagons, buffers for 

 cars, and for a vast number of useful purposes. Some of 

 these trees in the higher inter- vales of the mountains, between 

 three and four thousand feet of the most prosperous belt for 

 this State, it often towers much like the Scarlet Oak (Q. 

 Coccinca.) and the Red Oak, spreading their branches from 

 near the middle and above, not counting the short hori- 

 zontal pin-knot branches below, giving the tree an oblong 

 outline, regularly enlarging towards the top, sweeping up- 

 wards and outwards, remotely like the elm. Many smaller 

 forms on the exposed hills and highlands, highest and 

 lowest are less handsome. The bark is very rough, and the 

 blackest of all the Black Oaks. The leaves are rather a little 

 deeply bayed by the three principal lobes on either side — a 

 pair of lesser ones at the base — this and that side single, and 

 end lobe, and the side lobes terminate in several sharp 

 points weakly bristle-tipped, about four by six inches, 

 smooth above and below; leaf-stalk one quarter to one 

 third the length. The foliage of a cheerful middle-green, 

 the broad candid span of the leaf has also sufficient length 

 of slender stem for freedom of motion, which gives vivacity 



