Comprehension Question
Directions: Read the following passage and answer the questions If tree families had family trees the oak would have one of the oldest and grandest of all. There are more than 500 different species, and over the last million years they have spread, in various shapes and forms, over most of the northern half of the earth. There are mountains oaks, swamp oaks, evergreen oaks, weeping oaks and oaks on windswept cliffs that never reach more than 2 or 3 feet in height. One kind in Spain has such a bark that it is used to make cork, so there are soft oaks, too. But for most of us, oak mean just one kind of tree: the tough, ragged giant that has played such a part in history and legend, and been so important in the woodlands of Europe and North America.
Perhaps we have been unfair to others trees, but the forest oaks deserve their fame. They are hardy, essay going, and not all fussy about whether they grow. They can reach a great age even thousands of years, though most are cut down long before this. Their squat trunks and twisted branches, looking like clenched wooden muscles, can stand up to the worst kinds of weather.
On top of all this, timber cut from oaks is as strong and remarkable as the trees themselves. It is solid and hard-wearing as good for furniture as it is for firewood. Before the days of steel and concrete it made the frames of houses and ships. If we had to invent a new kind of timber it would be hard to think up anything better.
Yet isn’t just human who find oaks the most useful of trees. Over the ages a huge number of animals and plants have learned to live off- and in-the oaks. It is tempting to say that a full-grown oak is like a house, but it is really more like a city- a whole community of creatures travelling working, eating, sleeping, singing, and bringing up young, on every part form the topmost spring buds to the dead gash blasted out by a lightening flash.
Comprehension Questions
