CORK, the bark of a species of oak (Quercus Suber), common in the southern parts of Spain, France, and Italy. When the tree is fifteen years old, it may be barked for eight years successively; and the quality of the bark improves with the age of the tree. When stripped from the tree, it is piled up in water and loaded with heavy stones to flatten it. It is then dried and put up in bales for carriage. If care be not taken to strip the bark, another bark formed underneath will cause the outer one to split and peel off.
The cork tree, and the uses to which the bark may be applied, were known to the Greeks and Romans. Pliny mentions that the Romans employed it to stop all kinds of vessels; but the use of it for this purpose does not appear to have been common till glass bottles came into general use, which, according to Beckmann, was not till the fifteenth century.
Other vegetable productions have been sometimes employed instead of cork; as, for instance, the spondias lutea, a tree which grows in South America, particularly in moist places, and which is there called monbin or monbain. The roots of liquorice are applied to the same use, and on this account the plant is cultivated in Slavonia, and exported. A tree called nyssa, which grows in North America, has been found also to afford a substitute for cork.