YELLOW OAK
(Quercus Velutina)

This tree is known as black oak in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario; quercitron oak in Delaware, South Carolina, Louisiana, Kansas and Minnesota; yellow oak in Rhode Island, New York, Illinois, Texas, Kansas and Minnesota; tanbark oak in Illinois; yellow-bark oak in Minnesota and Rhode Island; spotted oak in Missouri; dyer’s oak in Texas; and yellow butt oak in Mississippi.

Those who call this tree black oak have in mind the bark which is usually quite dark, though all members of this species do not present the same appearance in that respect. Some trunks are gray, and in color do not greatly differ from white oaks, but would hardly be mistaken for them. Tanbark oak, a name occasionally given to this tree, is not applied in the region where chestnut oak grows, because it is much inferior to chestnut oak as tanning material. It is not only poorer in tannin, but the coloring matter associated with the inner bark is troublesome to the tanner who is compelled to remove it or neutralize it unless he wants his leather given a yellow tone. Dyer’s oak is a name which refers to the value of the bark for coloring purposes. The botanical name velutina refers to the velvety texture of the inner bark.

This oak is one of the easiest to identify. The inner layer of the bark is yellow. The point of a knife easily reaches it; cutting through a deep crack in the bark, and no mistake is possible, for no other oak has the yellow layer of bark. The tree may be identified by leaves, flowers, and fruit, but the process is not always easy, for other members of the black oak group bear more or less resemblance to this one.

The yellow oak’s range extends over nearly or quite a million square miles. It exceeds the limits of most oaks in its geographical extension. It endures severe winters and hot summers. The northern limit of its range lies in Maine; it grows westward across southern Canada to Minnesota; it extends two hundred miles west of the Mississippi into eastern Nebraska and Kansas, and follows that meridian south into Texas. It reaches the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi, and is found in many localities in all the southern states, and along the foothills of the Appalachian ranges. It attains its largest size in the lower Ohio valley. The average height is seventy or eighty feet, and its diameter two or three feet. In some localities the trees are scrubby and produce little merchantable timber.

The growth rings are only moderately wide in the typical yellow oak; the ring is divided nearly evenly between springwood and summerwood. The former contains two or three rows of large, open pores. The medullary rays are fewer and smaller than those commonly found in oaks. A general average of the properties of the wood is somewhat difficult to give, because of remarkable variation in trees which grow under different conditions. In some instances, where the soil is fertile and climate favorable, the yellow oak produces a large, clear trunk, with sound wood, of good color, and equal to that of red oak; but the reverse is often the case—trunks are small and rough, wood hard and brittle, color not satisfactory, and strength not up to standard. Sometimes first class yellow oak passes without question as good red oak in the finish and furniture business, but that is not its usual course. Well developed wood is heavy, hard, strong, bright brown, tinged with red, with thin, lighter colored sapwood. Its weight is 43.9 pounds per cubic foot.

The uses of yellow oak follow red oak pretty closely, but are not so extensive. Figures cannot be given to show the total annual cut of yellow oak, but the output is likely much below red oak, though it is found over a wider area, and some of it gets into the lumber yards in all regions where it grows. It is made into furniture from Maine to Louisiana. In cheaper grades of furniture, it may be the outside material, but its place is usually as frame stock, to give strength, but is not visible in the finished article. An exception to this is found in chairs where yellow oak is one of several species which go regularly to the sawmills which cut chair stock. Massachusetts snow plow makers use it, but of course it fills no such place in the South. In Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas it is bought by manufacturers of agricultural machinery. It is worked into cotton gins in Mississippi. Some extra fine stands of this oak occur in the Delta region of Mississippi. Frames of freight cars are made of it in Louisiana and Texas, and warehouse and depot floors are occasionally laid of this lumber. It is floor material in Michigan also, but that is of a better class than is required for warehouses. It is not infrequently sold as red oak for flooring and interior finish. Throughout the whole extent of yellow oak’s range it finds its way to wagon shops. It is less tough than white oak, but in many places, such as bolsters, sandboards, and hounds, it serves as well. Warehouse trucks and push cars are of this wood in many instances.

Slack coopers convert this wood into their wares in many regions. The pores are too open to permit its use as tight cooperage, where liquids are to be contained, but for barrels and kegs of many kinds, as well as for boxes, baskets, and crates, it meets all requirements. It is good fuel. Many burners of brick and pottery show it preference, and charcoal burners make a clean sweep of it when it occurs in the course of their operations; though when it is desirable to save the by-products of charcoal kilns or retorts, yellow oak is considered less valuable than birch, beech, and maple.

The bark of this tree is employed less now than formerly for dyeing purposes. Aniline dyes have taken its place. In pioneer times the bark was one of the best coloring materials the people had, and every family looked after its own supply as carefully as it provided sassafras bark for tea, slippery elm bark for poultices, and witch hazel for gargles. The oak bark was peeled, dried, and pounded to a powder. The mass was sifted, and the yellow particles, being finer than the black bark, passed through the screen, and were set apart for the dye kettle, while the screenings were rejected. Various arts and sciences were called into requisition to add to or take from the natural color which the bark gave the cloth. Salts of iron were commonly employed to modify the deepness of the yellow.

The acorns of this oak are bitter, and escape the mast hunters. Old stumps have little need to send up sprouts, for acorns keep the species alive. Yellow oaks are in no immediate danger of extermination. Nature plants generously, and the tree can get along on poor soil where the farm hunter is not apt to molest it. It has a fairly thick bark, and is able to take care of itself in a moderate fire, except when the seedlings are quite small. The young tree’s tap root is much developed, and goes deep for moisture, and the growing sapling flourishes on ground where some other species would suffer for water.