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December 1998
I love trees, but I am especially fond of oak. In Maine, the most common species is northern red oak, which occurs statewide and does best on rich upland soils. Scarlet oak grows only as far north as York, Cumberland and Androscoggin Counties, usually on dry ridges and uplands. In the fall, its deep scarlet leaves catch the eye as other landscape hues fade. Black oak is found on dry ridges and gravel uplands. The underside of its leaf is hairy while those of northern red and scarlet oaks are smooth. Swamp white oak grows in Androscoggin and York Counties in scattered groves in moist fertile soils near swamps and streams. Other oak varieties in central and southern Maine are bear oak, white oak, and bur oak. Chestnut oak grows only in very southern Maine.
Wildlife use oak in many ways. Crow, robin, northern oriole, scarlet tanager and rose-breasted grosbeak find cover and nesting sites in oak trees. The rose-breasted grosbeak eats oak flowers. Oak buds are food for turkey, ruffed grouse and bob white. Deer, northern flying squirrel, chipmunk, gray fox, and black bear eat acorns. Scarlet oak acorns are preferred by turkey, blue jay and common grackle. White oak acorns are a choice food of blue jay, brown thrasher and ruffed grouse. Acorns of northern red oak are food for many birds such as the rufous-sided towhee, cardinal, hermit thrush, and several species of woodpecker. Acorns are a rich food and extremely important for the survival of many species of wildlife. Lots of oak trees we see have grown from acorns cached, but not retrieved, by a squirrel or a blue jay.
People have long held oak in special regard as the foremost of trees. Its physical qualities recommend it as such. After the glaciers receded from Europe in the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, oak colonized the newly exposed soil. Oak forests spread across the landscape and tribes moving north with the softening climate saw the oaks as providers of life. The game they hunted such as red deer, bear and wild pig ate acorns. People collected acorns and, like native Americans, made an acorn flour that was a staple in their diet. Their fires, used for heat and cooking, were made from oak logs. When banked properly, the coals from an oak wood fire lasted through the night.
The oak was so important to human survival that many early European cultures held it sacred. With midsummer bonfires of oak wood, they observed the cycles of the natural world and wished for an abundant harvest. The oaken Yule log burning at midwinter promised the return of a strong sun, longer days, warmer weather and green vegetation. Need-fires, lit for special reasons such as protecting livestock from disease, were started by friction of pieces of oak and fed with oak logs. Ashes from these fires were mixed with seed and planted in fields to ensure a good harvest. The earliest image of Jupiter in Rome was a living oak tree. At Dodona, an ancient Greek sanctuary, Zeus was believed to be in an oak and his voice was the rustling of its leaves in the wind.
We still recognize the magnificence of the oak in our lives. It is the quintessential wood for doors. “Duir,” the Celtic name for “oak,” means “door” in many languages, including Latin, Greek, German and Hebrew. From colonial times, American shipbuilders have used American white oak exclusively. The keels of our mine sweepers and patrol boats in World War II were of white oak, some taken from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s estate in the Hudson Valley. Oak in Maine is made into many products. Northern red oak is used in shipbuilding as well as for furniture, interior trim and lobster traps. Scarlet oak, coarser grained than either white or red, to a limited extent serves these same uses. The bark of black oak is used in tanning leather and its wood is used in the same ways as scarlet oak.
While out walking this fall along a stone wall, I heard the crunch of acorns underfoot and looked up to see the leafless spreading crown of a northern red oak. Its dark gray bark was slightly ridged and between the plates I could see the characteristic reddish colour. This oak was older than the surrounding woods, because without competition from other trees it had had the space and sunlight to grow the oak’s characteristic symmetrical crown. Perhaps cattle or horses once found shade beneath it. A farmer might have sat on the stone wall in the refreshing coolness, pausing from hot work in the fields.
I could tell trees had been harvested here because of the coppice oaks growing nearby. A coppice tree has several trunks growing in a clump from one set of roots. Oak, like hickory and red maple, is a hardwood able to send up sprouts from cut or burned stumps. In many local forest stands, oak was harvested about seventy years ago and these coppice sprouts are large trunks now. Why was the old oak spared in that harvest? Perhaps it was left as a seed tree or for the shade it offered to livestock. Perhaps its short trunk with many branches made it useless for finer products. Maybe the tree had found a special place in the farmer’s heart.
As we become acquainted with individual trees or particular species, appreciation grows. It is a form of intimacy with and also connection to the world around us. With oaks, the interests of wildlife and human life converge.
By Nancy Coverstone (ncstone@umext.maine.edu), University of Maine Extension Educator in Androscoggin and Sagadahoc Counties
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