150 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



measurements of a great number of trees recently felled, show 

 that, for the first thirty-five years, this tree increases at the 

 rate of about two inches in diameter, every eleven years. 



Next to the red oak the younger Michaux placed the gray 

 oak, which, however, after a vast deal of examination, I am 

 obliged to consider as only that form of the red oak, which most 

 usually occurs throughout the New England States. The leaf 

 which he has figured for that of the gray oak, is by far the 

 most common form of the leaf of the red oak, on all young and 

 growing trees. The fruit is such as is often found on the red 

 oak, the cup varying on different trees, by imperceptible grada- 

 tions, from a shape shallower and broader than that he has fig- 

 ured for the red oak, to one narrower than that he has given to 

 the. gray oak. 



Sp. 11. The Bear Oak. Querciis ilicifolia. Willdenow. 



Figured in Michaux ; Sylva, I, Plate 21 ; and in Plate 11 of this volume. 



This little oak is found on poor soils in every part of Massa- 

 chusetts. It is commonly known by the name of the scrub 

 oak, or dwarf red oak, and sometimes bear oak, from the fond- 

 ness of bears for its fruit. It is usually not more than six or 

 eight feet high, and an inch or two in diameter, but sometimes 

 attains the height of fifteen or eighteen feet, and the diameter of 

 eight or nine inches. It is covered with numerous large, scraggy 

 branches, with small branchlets. 



The recent branchlets are of a light ashen gray, greenish, or 

 of a clouded brown, with a velvet-downy surface. Older ones, 

 greenish, dotted with gray. Stem, a rich green, with numerous 

 dots, and occasionally light clouds, and a transparent, pearly, 

 shining epidermis, growing darker when old, covered in patches, 

 and often completely covered, like other smooth-barked trees, 

 with lichens of various colors, usually dark, or nearly white. 



Prom the axil of the lower leaves on the newly formed shoots, 

 rise, on short footstalks, next year's fruits, two or three together, 

 crowned with their three stigmas. 



The leaves are on short petioles, wedge-shaped at base, obo- 

 vate, somewhat lyre-shaped, with two or three obtuse sinuses 



