BLACK JACK OAK (_Quercus marilandica_) is one of the scrub trees of this country, and few good words are ever heard for it; yet it has redeeming qualities. Lumbermen have not paid much attention to it and never will, for only when at its best is the trunk large enough for any kind of sawlog, and there has been little inclination to use it for anything else. It attains size fitting it for fence posts, and sometimes it performs service along that line; but the small trunks are nearly all sapwood, and decay strikes them quickly. The bark is black, hence the name, and it is exceedingly rough, and is broken in squares. The leaves are large and pear-shaped, with the broad end opposite the stem. Some are slightly lobed. A vigorous black jack oak, standing in open ground, presents a fine appearance. The crown is wide and is frequently conical, the limbs small, and are set in the trunk on nearly horizontal lines. The range of this unloved species covers 600,000 or more square miles, beginning in New York, running west to central Nebraska, south through Texas nearly to the Rio Grande, and in Florida to Tampa. It is not an aggressive tree and has permitted itself to be crowded off the good land until it has formed the habit of occupying geographical left-overs in the form of sand banks and wornout fields. In the northeastern part of its range it is often associated with scrub pine (_Pinus virginiana_), because the two have similar habits and are content to live in perpetual poverty on dry gravel or thin sand. Large trunks are not possible under such circumstances, and first-class wood is unusual. Black jack oak at its best may attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of eighteen inches, but it is oftener twenty feet high and six inches through. It grows with moderate rapidity and does not live long.