RED OAK (Ouercus rubra)

Identification and nomenclature — A single species of oak, the red oak, occurs on Prince Edward Island. In most of the records of the British period, this species is recorded simply as ’oak’, though ’red oak’ is specified by eight persons including five of the later ’botanical’ recorders (Table 1-5).480 However, oddly, two persons record the presence of a second species of oak on the island: Captain Samuel Holland in the final report on his year-long mapping of the island noted the presence of both ”red and white oak"“8‘. Though we might expect a man of Holland’s North American experience to have been able to recognize white oak, this can only have been a mis-reporting of the species due either to his own error or that of someone else in one of the three other survey parties. This is because the species long known as the white oak, Ouercus alba, does not even occur in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, its nearest natural occurrence being in the Penobscot area of Mainem. The other person who recorded white oak is John MacGregor (1828) whom we might also expect to have known the island well. The reason for these mis-reportings may or may not lie in the observation of John Stewart (1806) that the island’s red oak differed in ”appearance” in some districts compared with others; he thus suggested that there may have been ”more than one variety of the species” present.483

General distribution and abundance — ’Oak’ or ’red oak' occws in twenty-three of the thirty—seven tree lists (Table 1-5). This rather low level (62% of the lists) in comparison with the other shade—tolerant hardwoods‘m, is consistent with the fact that many of the list-makers noted that oak was either

scarce or not plentiful on the island‘“, while two

“3° Sutherland 1861; Bain 1890; McSwain & Bain 1891; Macoun 1394; [Watson?] post 1904.

“8' Holland 1765 (October). I note that much of Holland's survey would have been carried out in the winter when the leaves would not have been on the trees, so that the identification of white oak, whichever of his crew made it, may have been based on the tree shape and bark rather than on the leaves

482 Farrar 1995 — though another ‘white oak species‘, the burr oak, Ouercus macrocarpa. does occur as a minor forest component in the Grand Lake area of New Brunswick (Farrar 1995; Loucks 1961).

“3 However, Sander (1990), in his chapter on red oak in Silvics of North America, does not report any significant variation within the species.

48" i.e., beech, sugar maple and yellow birch.

485

Holland 1765 (March): “[oak] is the most scarce" [of the principal trees]; Holland 1765 (October): "not in plenty"; Patterson

209

recorders, Selkirk (1803) and Walsh (1803) had even stated that they had seen no oak, the latter making exception for some trees that he said were ”evidently planted” — if so, they may well have been a European species of oak. This indication of the scarcity of red oak overall on the island is supported by its very low score in the tree tally: outside of the lists there are only six references to oak (Table 1—1). It is however contradicted somewhat by Stewart's (1806) comment that ”in some districts, oak is found in considerable quantity", as well as almost a century later, by Bain's (1890) statement that ”red oak grows in many parts of the Island” though both statements are not incompatible with a localized distribution of the species.

Specific areas — There are only a few records of oak at specific localities (Figure 10). We have a mention of oak in one of the township descriptions appended to Captain Holland's map of the island: for Lot 24 he recorded ”The Woods & Lands are very Good with some Oak"“86. Morris (1769) recorded ”some oak” in the forests of the eastern frontage of Lot 13 (an area that includes the sites of present-day Port Hill and Tyne Valleyl‘m, while Curtis (1775), noted ”some few oaks” in the forests near Elizabethtown at New London Bay.488 In the Charlottetown area Benjamin Chappell also occasionally obtained oak to use in the many spinning wheels that he madem. The only other

1774: “the quantity is not great"; [Cambridge] 1796: “not of great plenty"; [Hill] 1819: “no considerable quantity"; MacGregor 1828: “scarce"; MacGregor 1832: “not plentiful"; Hill 1839: “not numerous"; [Bain] 1882: “we have a few oaks but they form a very inconspicuous feature of our forest". [Watson] (post 1904) also noted it as "rare" - though he added the somewhat conflicting statements that it was "at one time common" and “probably introduced".

“’5 Holland 1765 (October). The part of Lot 24 that the survey would have visited would have been coastal, comprising the land around the present North Rustico Harbour and part of Rustico Bay including the estuaries of the Hunter and Wheatley Rivers.

“’7 However, twenty-five years later Gray (1793) did not include oak in his description of the forest in the same locality. I noted (Sobey 2002, pp. 53, 56) that in 1732 Jacques de Pensens, the French commandant at Port La-Joie. had reported “/6 plus beaux bois de chéne" [the finest oak wood] at ‘Malpeck‘ - meaning, I think, the whole Malpeque Bay area.

“8 Benjamin Chappell (1775-1818) had managed to obtain some oak, presumably in the locality of Elizabethtown, for an "oak frame” that he placed over the grave of his first child in 1778, just before his permanent move to Charlottetown. Also, [Lawson] (1878- 1879) had retrospectively recorded "some oaks" in the area of New London at the time of first settlement.

“9 In 1799 Chappell (1775-1818) recorded on two different dates in his daybook that he or his son Theophilus were "in the woods after oak". Though the place of their search is not specified, it seems not to have been “over the water‘, Chappell‘s phrase for the