Let's Know Some Trees 



9 



chestnut instead of the drooping 



• flowers of the oaks. The fruit, how- 

 ever, is plainly an acorn, although 

 the acorn cup is bristly and suggestive 

 of a chestnut burr. 



The Tanbark Oak is commercially 

 the most useful of our California oaks. 

 It is a smooth-trunked tree with light- 

 green leaves, shiny on top as a rule 

 but woolly on the underside. While it 

 occurs in the Coast Ranges from 

 southern Oregon to Lower California, 

 it is commonest and best in Humboldt, 

 Mendocino, Sonoma, Santa Cruz, and 

 Monterey Counties, where the Red- 

 wood grows best. There it is cut for 

 its bark, which is of great value to the 

 leather industry. The wood is left on 

 the ground to decay or is hauled off 

 for firewood. Although it is the hard- 

 est and most beautiful of our oak 

 woods, really suitable for furniture, 

 it has not been so used except as an 

 experiment. 



The California Live Oak — the oak 

 that named Oakland and is the glory 

 of the Berkeley campus — is a low, 

 broad tree, usually with a trunk 1 to 

 2 feet in diameter and a height of 50 

 feet, though occasionally trees 60 to 

 70 and even 80 feet in height and 3 

 feet through are found in favorable 

 locations. The largest recorded speci- 

 men, over 100 feet high and more than 

 6 feet through, is in the Ojai Valley. 



This oak occurs in the Coast Ranges 

 from Sonoma County to Lower Cali- 

 fornia. The leaves are similar to 

 holly leaves and when mature curl 

 over, partially hiding the under sur- 

 face. The bark on young trees is 

 light, but old trees have the dark, 

 heavily ridged bark we all know. The 

 acorns are not large, and the edges of 

 their scaly cups turn in. 

 t The Interior Live Oak, when 



young, is similar to the California 

 Live Oak, except that its leaves do 

 not have a tendency to curl. It is a 

 > vigorous, round-headed tree, 30 to 75 



feet high, with a trunk 1 to 3 feet in 

 diameter, and leaves either smooth- 

 edged or spiny-toothed. One finds it 

 on the trails climbing the sides of the 

 Yosemite Valley, where it gives a good 

 excuse for stopping for breath while 

 one notes its slender acorns, some- 

 times more than half covered by the 

 dark brown, scaly cups. At higher 

 elevations this tree degenerates into 

 very tough chaparral. It is found 

 throughout the State, in the foothills 



• and valleys, usually away from the 

 coast. 



The Canyon Live Oak is a glorious 

 tree, with scaly, whitish bark. It is 



sometimes called the Maul Oak be- 

 cause it makes such superb mauls or 

 mallets for use in driving the frow 

 when making split shakes. At an ele- 

 vation of 2,000 to 3,000 feet in the 

 canyons of the Sierras it is abundant 

 and attains a good growth, with a 

 height of 60 feet and a girth of 9 to 

 12 feet ; in less favorable places it is 

 20 to 30 feet high and 1 to 2 feet 

 through ; but in the bottom lands of 

 valleys in Mendocino and Humboldt 

 counties it is a noble tree, 80 to 95 

 feet high and from 4 to 6 feet in 

 diameter. Large trees have an odd 

 habit of forming buttresses at their 

 bases, which sometimes grow out from 

 the trunk with sufficient abruptness to 

 form seats. The leaves vary greatly, 

 being sometimes entire at the edge, 

 sometimes toothed ; but like the rest 

 of the evergreen oaks they are never 

 incised, as are the Valley, the Cali- 

 fornia Black, and other deciduous 

 oaks. The acorns are very unusual 

 because of the yellow fuzz that covers 

 the cups, hiding their scales and giv- 

 ing the oak still another common 

 name — that of " Golden Cup Oak." 



One of the most interesting and use- 

 ful groups of trees is that which goes 

 under the name of " Scrub Oaks." 

 They are really not trees at all, but 

 bushes from 4 to 12 feet high. They 

 are great soil makers and soil holders, 

 often growing in dense thickets on 

 open, dry ridges, slowly breaking into 

 the rock that lies so near the surface 

 and holding the soil they make by the 

 network of their roots. Over thou- 

 sands of acres they are all that keep 

 the winter rains from sluicing the sur- 

 face soil off the rocks, thus filling up 

 the artificial lakes with sand or break- 

 ing the dams with a sudden rush of 

 water. One hears the uninformed man 

 laugh at some of the southern Cali- 

 fornia " forests," and ask if there is a 

 tree in them. But it is the protection 

 afforded by these very scrub oaks, so 

 absurdly unforestlike in appearance, 

 which is really responsible for some 

 of Mother Nature's most effective for- 

 estry in California. 



The principal species in the north- 

 ern part of the State, from the Oregon 

 border to the Kaweah Basin in Tulare 

 County, is the Brewer Oak, a beauti- 

 ful little thicket-forming shrub, some- 

 times a lovely round-headed miniature 

 tree, with good-sized acorns. The 

 leaves of Brewer Oak are lobed like 

 Garry Oak, but are much smaller — 

 1% to 3% inches long — while the stems 

 or trunks are 2 to 4 inches in diameter, 

 gray in color. After the leaves drop 



