Article September 4, 1902 Issue

The Great Cork Forests of Spain

The Boston Herald

The cork forests of Spain cover an area of 620,000 square miles, producing the finest cork in the world. These forests exist in groups and cover wide belts of territory, those in the region of Catalonia and part of Barcelona being considered the first in importance. Although the cork forests of Estremadura and Andalusia yield cork of a much quicker growth and possessing some excellent qualities, its consistency is less rigid, and on this account it does not enjoy the high reputation which the cork of Catalonia does.

In Spain and Portugal, where the cork-tree or Quercus suber, is indigenous, it attains to a height varying from thirty-five to sixty feet and the trunk to a diameter of thirty to thirty-six inches. This species of the evergreen oak is often heavily caparisoned with wide-spreading branches clothed with ovate oblong evergreen leaves, downy underneath, and the leaves slightly serrated. Annually, between April and May, it produces a flower of yellowish color, succeeded by acorns. Over thirty thousand square miles in Portugal are devoted to the cultivation of cork-trees, though the tree actually abounds in every part of the country.

The methods in vogue in barking and harvesting the cork in Spain and Portugal are virtually the same. The barking operation is effected when the tree has acquired sufficient strength to withstand the rough handling it receives during the operation, which takes place when it has attained the fifteenth year of its growth. After the first stripping the tree is left in this juvenescent state to regenerate, subsequent strippings being effected at intervals of not less than three years; and under this process the tree will continue to thrive and bear for upward of one hundred and fifty years.

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