CHAPTER XIII
A CORN TREE—THE OAK AS A FORAGE CROP
THE SURPRISING AND NEGLECTED AGRICULTURAL POSSIBILITIES OF THE OAKS
The oak tree should sue poets for damages. Poets have symbolized the oak tree as sturdy and strong, but 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.
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 (a useful product, easily removed), which makes some acorns bitter to the taste.
(5) The acorn has been used as a standard food for ages.
(6) The food value of the acorn (pages 151, 304) shows that it stands well in the class of nutrients. Historically it has been a food for ages of the squirrel, opossum, raccoon, and bear. Among the four-footed brethren the hog above all might almost be called an acorn animal. For untold ages he has lived in the forests from Korea to Spain. In the autumns he has larded himself up with a layer of fat to carry him through
