Trees: A Woodland Notebook / Containing Observations on Certain British and Exotic Trees

by Sir Herbert Maxwell

In Kyre Park, Worcestershire, there still stood in 1907 an oak 113 feet high, with a straight trunk of 90 feet, for which the owner had declined an offer of £100 a few years previously.

In certain parts of England, chiefly in the eastern counties, the timber of some oaks is found to have assumed a rich brown hue, instead of the normal pale fawn. The cause of this is obscure; some botanists consider it to be produced by a fungoid growth; others, that it is the combined effect of age and soil; but, whatever be the agent, the result is to enhance enormously the market value of such trees. American cabinetmakers first created a demand for it, as much as 10s. a cubic foot being readily obtained for the best quality. Unfortunately, brown oak has not yet been recognised as occurring north of the Trent.

Botanists are not agreed whether the oaks of Great Britain consist of a single species or of two. There are certainly two distinct races, as was recognised by Linnæus 150 years ago, when he classified them, probably correctly, as sub-species-the durmast or sessile-flowered oak (Quercus robur sessiliflora) and the pedunculate oak (Q. robur pedunculata). Roughly speaking, the native oaks of the eastern and southern parts of Great Britain are of the pedunculate race; those of the western parts and of Ireland are of the sessile-flowered type; but I have examined the old oaks in the Forest of Arden, Warwickshire, and found them to be durmast, while young trees, planted to replace blown ones, were all of the pedunculate kind. In the beautiful park of Knole, near Sevenoaks, there are hundreds of fine indigenous oaks, all pedunculate; but a splendid avenue, planted apparently 180 or 200 years ago, has been laid through them, and these trees are all durmast. I do not know of any place where the contrast between the two species may be so easily studied.

When grown in moderate shelter, the two kinds may be readily distinguished from each other by their habit of growth. Owing to the terminal bud on every shoot of the durmast oak being the strongest, the stem and branches are much straighter than those of the pedunculate oak, which puts its strength into lateral buds, giving the boughs that twisted, gnarled appearance so characteristic of much English woodland. In exposed situations, however, this distinction cannot be relied on, and one must examine the leaves and fruit as tests.

The durmast oak bears sessile flowers—that is, without foot stalks; the acorns, therefore, sit close to the shoot on which they are borne. On the other hand, the leaves are carried on footstalks clear of the twig. In the pedunculate oak these features are reversed, the flowers and acorns being stalked and the leaves stalkless. The leaves, also, which are more irregular in shape than those of the durmast, clasp the twig more or less closely with auricles or lobes. The durmast never has these auricles, but the other features mentioned are liable to be modified, when recourse must be had to a less uncertain detail, easily distinguished through an ordinary lens. The back of a mature leaf of the pedunculate oak is perfectly smooth, without a trace of down or pubescence; that of the durmast invariably carries some fine down, at least in the angles of the leaf-nerves.

It may seem that these differences are of no more than botanical interest; but they carry an important significance to the forester. The timber of the two species being of equal quality, it is of course desirable to plant that kind which produces the straightest timber. Undoubtedly in this respect the durmast far surpasses the other. Unfortunately, owing to the durmast oak bearing acorns far less frequently than the pedunculate oak, British nurserymen have stocked the latter almost to the exclusion of the durmast, seed of which can only be obtained in favourable seasons, often at an interval of several years. Nevertheless, the superiority of the durmast, especially for Scotland and the north of England, is so great, that it is worth taking pains to secure it.

SESSILE OAK

The native oaks of the English lake district and of the shores of Loch Lomond are all of the durmast variety; when opportunity occurs of obtaining seed from these it should not be allowed to slip. Even in the south, durmast oak has proved its superiority to the other. Besides being far the handsomer tree, with richer foliage, it is generally immune from the attacks of that curse of English woodland, the caterpillar of the little moth, Tortrix viridana. "I have seen," says the Hon. Gerald Lascelles, Deputy Surveyor of the New Forest, "I have seen a sessile oak standing out in brilliant foliage when every other oak in the wood around was as bare of leaf as in winter."

Most writers on forestry follow one another in describing durmast oak as suiting dry soils and pedunculate oak as preferring rich and moist soil. That is quite at variance with my observation. If the soil of Surrey, where the native oak is pedunculate, be compared with that of the English lake district and the west generally, where the durmast is indigenous, there can be little question which is the moister. The fact is the durmast, being the more vigorous tree, is able to thrive in a soil too dry and poor to support the pedunculate oak.