Red oak grows rapidly. It will produce small sawlogs in the lifetime of a man. It is a favorite tree for crossties, and railroads have made large plantings for that purpose. The ties do not last well in their natural state, but they are easy to treat with preservatives by which several years are added to their period of service. It has been a favorite tree with European planters for the past two hundred years; but the most of the plantings beyond the sea have been for ornament in parks and private grounds.
The principal interest in red oak in this country is due to its value for lumber. That interest is of comparatively recent date. Some red oak has always been used for rails, clapboards, slack cooperage, and rough lumber; but while white oak was cheap and plentiful, sawmill men usually let red oak alone. It had a poor reputation, which is now known to have been undeserved.
Red oak is lighter than white oak, and it is generally regarded as possessing less strength and stiffness. The wide rings of annual growth, and the distinct layers of springwood and summerwood, give the basis for good figure. To this may be added broad and regular medullary rays which are nicely brought out by quarter-sawing. The tone of the wood is red, to which fact the name red oak is due. It has large, open pores. A magnifying glass is not required to see them in the end of a stick. It is said that smoke may be blown through a piece of red oak a foot in length. These open pores disqualify the wood for use in tight cooperage. Liquids will leak through the pores. Statistics of sawmill output in this country do not separate the white and black oaks, and the quantity of lumber sawed from any one species is not known. Manufacturers are disposed to separate them. Some furniture makers use red oak exclusively for certain purposes, and the same rule is followed by makers of other commodities.
The line between red oak (_Quercus rubra_) and Texan red oak is closely drawn by botanists, but lumbermen do not recognize much difference except toward the extreme ranges of each. Some call one simply red oak and the other southern red oak, but that leaves doubtful the timber on a large area occupied by both species. Their ranges overlap two or three hundred miles in the Ohio valley and on the southern tributaries of the Ohio river in Kentucky and Tennessee. A large amount of red oak from that region goes to market, and no one knows, and few care, whether it is of the northern or southern species. It is usually a mixture of both. But outside of the common zone where both trees grow, the woods of the two are kept fairly well separate. Thirty years ago Texan red oak received slight recognition from botanists. When Charles S. Sargent compiled in 1880 a volume of over 600 pages, “Forest Trees of North America,” for the United States government, and which was published as volume 9 of the Tenth Census, he did not so much as accord this tree the dignity of a species, but called it a variety of the common red oak. Its range and its great importance were little understood at that time. Sargent thus described its range: “Western Texas, valley of the Colorado river with the species and replacing it south and west, extending to the valley of the Neuces river and the Limpia mountains.”