Bark (botany) rope, used for example in the rigging of Viking age longships. Among the commercial products made from bark are cork, cinnamon, quinine (from the bark of Cinchona) and aspirin (from the bark of willow trees). The bark of some trees notably oak ("Quercus robur") is a source of tannic acid, which is used in tanning. Bark chips generated as a by-product of lumber production are often used in bark mulch in western North America. Bark is important to the horticultural industry since in shredded form it is used for plants that do not thrive in ordinary soil, such as epiphytes.
Mother of the Forest inserted rods into the holes to support the weight of the scaffolding and the workers while the bark was sawed off. Over 90 days, 60 tons of bark was removed in high and wide sections up to the height of . The bark was thick at the base, and on average . Gale sent samples of the tree to foresters in the east where it was discovered to be 2,520 years old. The removed sections of the bark were shipped by sea around Cape Horn to New York, where they were reassembled in 1855 in the shape of the tree