132 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



Sp. 2. The Overcup White Oak. Q. macrocarpa. Michaux. 



Leaf and fruit figured in Michaux ; Sylva, I, Plate 4. Leaf and fruit in Plate 



2, of this volume. 



This oak, as it occurs in Massachusetts, is a fine, erect tree, 

 of medium height, much and irregularly branched, and clad 

 with a most luxuriant foliage. The lower branches are shoi^, 

 horizontal, and bushy; the upper ones tending upwards, but 

 often bending, at sudden angles, in various directions. The 

 aspect of the tree is much like that of the swamp white oak, 

 but the branches are free from the loose bark which often de- 

 forms that species. The bark on the trunk is of an ashen color, 

 intermediate between that of the white oak, and of the swamp 

 white oak, less broken than either, with long, superficial ridges 

 or scales. The recent shoots are covered with a yellowish 

 brown, somewhat downy, dotted bark, turning gray the second 

 year, and soon after becoming rough. 



The leaves are on short footstalks, pear-shaped in their gen- 

 eral outline, very deeply and irregularly sinuate-lobed, with 

 three, four, or five bays near or below the middle, which ex- 

 tend very nearly to the mid-rib ; wedge-shaped or rounded 

 below, usually much broader and more entire towards the 

 extremity. They are smooth and of a dark green above, much 

 lighter, cinereous or glaucous, at first downy, finally nearly 

 smooth beneath, six or seven inches long and three or four 



wide. 



The buds are small, compressed and conical. The acorns 

 are very large, and enclosed for more than half their length, in 

 a cup covered with very prominent scales, and bordered by a 

 conspicuous fringe of long, flexible threads. Michaux says 

 that these threads do not appear when the tree is in the midst 

 of a forest, or when the summers are not very warm. 



This tree is found in Stockbridge, and the towns below it in 

 Berkshire County, and in the neighboring county of Dutchess, 

 in New York, particularly in Dover, on Ten Mile Creek, a trib- 

 utary of the Housatonic. As Mr. Oakes has also found it in 

 Vermont, it probably occurs in some of the intermediate towns. 



