238 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



veins, 3'-12' long and 2'-10' wide, but usually 5'-6' long and 3'^' wide, with stout 

 midribs and primary veins, late in the autumn turning dull red, dark orange color, 

 or brown, and falling gradually during the winter; their petioles stout, yellow, gla- 

 brous or puberulous, 3'-G' long. Flowers: staminate on tomentose or pubescent 

 aments 4'-6' long; calyx coated with pale hairs, with ovate acute lobes; pistillate 

 on short tomentose peduncles, their involucral scales ovate, shorter than the acute 

 calyx-lobes; stigmas bright red. Fruit sessile or short-stalked, solitary or in pairs; 

 nut ovate-oblong, obovate, oval or hemispherical, broad and rounded at the base, 

 full and rounded at the apex, light red-brown, often striate, frequently coated with 

 soft rufous pubescence, ^'-|' long, inclosed for about one half its length in the thin 

 deeply cut-shaped turbinate cup dark red-brown and puberulous on the inner surface. 



covered by thin light chestnut-brown acute hoary scales closely appressed at the base 

 of the cup, loosely imbricated above the middle, with free scarious tips forming a 

 fringe-like border to its rim. 



A tree, often 70-80 and occasionally 150 high, with a trunk 3^ in diameter, 

 slender branches spreading gradually into a narrow open head, stout branchlets 

 coated at first with pale or fulvous scurfy tomentum, becoming in their first winter 

 glabrous, dull red or reddish brown, growing dark brown in their second year or 

 brown slightly tinged with red. Winter-buds ovate, strongly angled, gradually 

 narrowed and obtuse at the apex, hoary-tomentose, \'-^' long. Bark of young stems 

 and branches smooth, dark brown, deep orange color internally, becoming f -1^' 

 thick on old trunks, and deeply divided into broad rounded ridges broken on the 

 surface into thick dark brown or nearly black closely appressed plate-like scales. 

 Wood heavy, hard, strong, coarse-grained, bright brown tinged with red, with thin 

 lighter colored sapwood; of little value except as fuel. The bark abounds in tannic 

 acid and is largely used in tanning, as a yellow dye, and in medicine. 



Distribution. Dry gravelly uplands and ridges; coast of southern Maine to 

 northern Vermont, southern and western Ontario and central Minnesota, and south- 

 ward to northern Florida, southern Alabama and Mississippi, southeastern Nebraska, 

 eastern Kansas, the Indian Territory and eastern Texas; one of the commonest Oaks 

 on the gravelly drift of southern New England and the middle states; often forming 

 a large part of the forest growth in the foothill regions of the southern Appalachian 



