Page:Tree Crops (1953).pdf/204



The oak tree should sue poets for damages. Poets have used the oak tree as the symbol for slowness—sturdy and strong, yes, but so slow, so slow! The reiterations of poetry may be responsible for the fact that most people think of this tree as impossibly slow when one suggests it as the basis of an agricultural crop. On the contrary the facts about the oak are quite otherwise. I am sure no poet ever grew a grove of the faster growing varieties, for he would have put speed into his oak poetry.

The genus of oak trees holds possibility, one might almost say promise, of being one of the greatest of all food and forage producers in the lands of frost. Why has it not already become a great crop? That is one of the puzzles of history, in view of its remarkable qualities.

1. Some oaks are precocious in bearing nuts (acorns).

2. Some grow swiftly.

3. Some are very productive.

4. Some acorns are good to eat in the natural state, and most can be made good to eat by removing the tannin which makes some acorns bitter to the taste. However, tannin is a useful, commercial product easily removed and in steady demand.