Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/185

 this fruit weighs more than the tree. Some dwarf forms bend over to the earth with the burden of their crop.

Some of the oaks can produce their burdens from soil of the greatest variety and great sterility. "I would like to have the opportunity to demonstrate whether the California scrub oak, quercus dumosa Nuttall, could be made to yield a return such as you have described for quercus ilex. This little oak grows in a country that has no further value. It produces acorns freely and with great variation." (Letter—Wm. E. Lawrence, Oregon Agricultural College, Corvallis, September 17, 1916.)

Loudoun. Vol. III, p. 1889. "Q. catesbaei. The barren scrub oak. Carolina and Georgia. It grows on soils too meager to sustain any other vegetation, where the light movable sand is entirely destitute of vegetable mold. Old trees only productive and only a few handfuls."

Quarterly Journal of Forestry, Vol. V. No. 2, p. 119-20, 122-23: "On getting out of the train at Holkam station, England, the first thing that attracts the eye of the visitor is an avenue of quercus ilex, stretching from the uplands through the marshes to the sand dumes, each tree standing quite isolated, exposed north and south, east and west to the bitter cold winds sweeping across the marshes and off the sea.

"It can be seen growing on the sand dunes in pure sand, exposed to the sea winds, on the marshes in strong marsh clay, and on the upland; it seems to thrive equally well on gravel, chalk, or sand; good soil or bad makes little apparent difference to its well-being.

"From its earliest stages it is not difficult to raise, but is rather slow of growth. Most years there is an abundant crop of acorns.

Loudoun, Vol. III, p. 1890. "Q. Nigra. Black Jack oak. Often called barrens oak in New Jersey and Maryland, grows in forests impoverished by fire and cattle and on sandy soil. Baltimore to North Carolina. It is the chief tree of these soils, which are too poor for cropping. Few handfuls of large acorns. It takes abandoned fields." In this connection it should be remembered that the hopeless sand barrens of Long