240 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



rounded and thickened on the back toward the base of the cup, their tips elongated 

 thin and erose on the margins, often forming a narrow fringe-like border to the rim 

 of the cup. 



A tree, occasionally 100 high, with a trunk 3-4 in diameter, stout spreading 

 brandies forming an open round-topped head, and branchlets coated at first witli 

 thick hoary caducous tomentum, bright red or brown tinged with red, and usually 

 glabrous or pubescent or puberulous during their first winter, becoming dark red- 

 brown in their second year; frequently much smaller and at high elevations a small 

 shrub. Winter-buds ovate, gradually narrowed and acute at the apex, about \' 

 long, with closely imbricated pale chestnut-brown scales ciliate on the thin scari- 

 ous margins and pubescent toward the point of the bud. Bark of young stems and 

 branches smooth, light brown, becoming on old trunks I'-l^ thick, dark brown 

 slightly tinged with red or nearly black, divided into broad ridges at the base of old 

 trees and broken above into thick irregular oblong plates covered by minute closely 

 appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, very brittle, bright red, with thin 

 lighter colored sapwood; occasionally used as fuel. 



Distribution. Valleys and mountain slopes ; basin of the Mackenzie River in 

 western Oregon, southward over the California coast ranges, and along the western 

 slopes of the Sierra Nevada up to elevations of 7000-8000 to the Cuyaraaca Moun- 

 tains near the southern boundary of California; rare in the immediate neighborhood 

 of the coast; the largest and most abundant Oak-tree of the valleys of southwestern 

 Oregon and of the Sierra Nevada, sometimes forming groves of considerable extent 

 in coniferous forests; of its largest size at elevations of about 6000 above the sea. 



9. Querous Catesbaei, Michx. Turkey Oak. 



Leaves oblong or obovate or nearly triangular, gradually narrowed and wedge- 

 shaped at the base, deeply divided by wide rounded sinuses into 3 or 5 or rarely 7 



pK^. ]94- 



lobes, the terminal lobe ovate, elongated, acute and entire or repand-dentate, or 

 obovate and coarsely equally or irregularly 3-toothed at the apex, the lateral lobes 

 spreading, usually falcate, entire and acute, tapering from their broad bases, and 

 broad, oblique, and repand-lobulate at the apex; or 3-toothed at the broad apex and 

 gradually narrowed to the base, coated when they unfold with rufous articulate 



