216 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



braiichlets, light green and hairy at first, pale yellow-green, very lustrous, slightly 

 puberulous, marked with occasional small orange-colored lenticels, and glandular, 

 with minute dark glandular dots during their first summer, becoming dull light 

 orange or reddish brown in the winter, and ashy gray often slightly tinged with red 

 the following season; more often shrubby, with numerous slender spreading stems 

 15-20 tall. "Winter-buds acute, dark red, coated with pale lustrous scurfy pubes- 

 cence, about ^' long. Bark ^' thick, smooth, light brown or brown tinged with 

 gray. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light brown, with thick hardly distinguish- 

 able sapwood. 



Distribution. Banks of streams and ponds in southern Delaware and Maryland, 

 and on the banks of the Red River in the Indian Territory. 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental tree in the eastern states and hardy as 

 far north as Massachusetts. 



X. FAGACEiE. 



Trees, with watery juice, slender terete branchlets marked by numerous usu- 

 ally pale lenticels, alternate stalked penni veined leaves, and narrow mostly 

 deciduous stipules. Flowers monoecious, the staminate in unisexual heads or 

 aments, composed of a 4 8-lobed calyx, and 4 or 8 stamens, with free simple 

 filaments and introrse 2-celled anthers, the cells parallel and contiguous, open- 

 ing longitudinally ; the pistillate solitary or clustered, in terminal unisexual or 

 bisexual spikes or heads, subtended by an involucre of more or less united 

 imbricated bracts becoming woody and partly or entirely inclosing the fruit, and 

 composed of a 4 8-lobed calyx adnate to the 3-7-celled ovary with as many 

 styles as its cells and 1 or 2 pendulous anatropous ovules in each cell. Fruit a 

 nut 1-seeded by abortion, the outer coat cartilaginous, the inner membrana- 

 ceous or bony. Seed filling the cavity of the nut, without albumen ; seed-coat 

 membranaceous ; cotyledons fleshy, including the minute superior radicle ; 

 hilum basal, minute. 



The six genera of this widely distributed family are represented in the North 

 American silva with the exception of Nothofagus, separated from Fagus to 

 receive the Beech-trees of the southern hemisphere. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN GENERA. 



Staminate flowers fascicled in g-lobose-stalked heads ; the pistillate in 2-4-flowered clusters. 

 Nut triangular. 1. FagUS. 



Staminate flowers in slender aments. 



Pistillate flowers in 2-5-flowered clusters below the staminate, in bisexual aments. 

 Fruit inclosed in a prickly burr. 



Leaves deciduous ; ovary 6-eelled ; fruit maturing in one season ; branchlets length- 

 ening by an upper axillary bud ; bud-scales 4. 2. Castanea. 

 Leaves persistent ; ovary 3-celled ; fruit maturing at the end of the second season ; 

 branchlets lengthening by a terminal bud ; bud-scales numerous. 



8. Castanopsis. 

 Fruit inclosed only partly in a shallow cup covered by slender recurved scales united 

 only at the base, free above. 4. Pasania. 



Pistillate flowers solitary, in few-flowered unisexual spikes. 



Fruit more or less inclosed in a cup covered by thin or thickened scales, closely ap- 

 pressed or often free toward its rim. 5. Quercus. 



