Yorkshire and the county of Durham have all been Q. sessiliflora, which is very scarce in the south. There are some trees of it at Kenwood, the Earl of Mans- field’s, near Highgate, which I believe to be one of the oldest woods near London, and a greater part of the Q. sessiliflora appears to be trees from old stools.” To this the Secretary, Mr. G. Bentham, adds a note, as follows:—"Mr. Atkinson’s opinion on this subject is confirmed in a remarkable manner by the discovery that the oak in an extensive submarine forest near Hastings is Q. sessiliflora.”
Brown Oak
In a paper on British timber which I read before the Surveyors’ Institution in February 1904,’ I called attention to a form of oak timber, known as “brown oak,” which does not appear to have been much noticed by any previous writer.* Though after very careful investigation I have failed to ascertain with certainty the causes which produce it, I am inclined to believe that it is not, as some have thought, caused by a fungus; though spores of some fungoid mycelium are often found running through it; but that the change of colour is produced, especially on certain soils and in certain localities, by age. And though I have evidence that in exceptional cases the heartwood of quite young oaks is brown,’ the majority of the trees which produce this beautiful and valuable wood are in an incipient stage of decay, and often hollow, leaving only a shell of more or less sound wood. The change of colour in some trees commences at the ground and extends upwards, or less commonly begins in the upper part and extends downwards. No one can be certain, without boring or felling the tree, whether the wood is brown or how far the colour may extend ; but if the tree is allowed to stand too long after it has become brown it loses its “nature,” to use a carpenter’s expression, and is often so shaky and full of cracks that it is of little use. The sapwood always remains of the normal colour. But when a brown oak of good rich colour contains sound and solid timber it is superior to any wood I know for the interior decoration of houses, and for the making of sideboards and other heavy furniture.
Until about fifty years ago this wood was little valued in England, and I am told that on the Duke of Bedford’s estate its use was prohibited in building contracts because it was supposed to be unsound. Even now it is hardly known or recognised as valuable except in certain parts of England, and is often sold far below its real value by inexperienced persons. But the Americans have created such a demand
1 Trans. Surveyors' Institution, vol. xxxvi. pt. vii.
2 Laslett, ed. 2, p. 96, only says of it, "and even when in a state of decay or in its worst stage of ‘foxiness,’ the cabinetmaker prizes it for its deep red colour, and works it up in a variety of ways.”
3 Mr. Alexander Howard tells me that he has seen a group of young oaks felled in Essex, which were not more than 12 to 18 inches in diameter, all perfectly sound, in which the wood was of a rich brown all through the trunk up to and beyond the first main branch. He purchased near Chelmsford a very fine oak which had no less than five secondary trunks growing out of the butt, all of a very rich brown colour, and a number of younger trees growing near it in the same park also proved to be of the same colour. Thus it seems that though the conditions of the soil have some influence, yet the colour may in some cases be inherited. Mr. Howard has inquired for many years but never heard of a brown oak on the continent, and believes it to be only found in this country. Some woodmen in Essex have thought that the trees which carry their leaves longest in winter produced "red oak,” which is the local term for brown oak, but I could get no definite proof of the truth of this idea.
