FAGACE^ 



249 



known in the eighteenth century from an individual growing in a field belonging to 

 John Bartram on the Schuylkill River, Philadelphia. What appears to be the same 

 form has since been discovered in a number of stations from New Jersey to Texas, 

 and it is possible that Quercus heterophylla may, as many botanists have believed, best 

 be considered a species. 



16. Quercus laurifolia, Michx. Water Oak. 



Leaves oblong-oval to oblong-obovate, sometimes falcate, gradually narrowed 

 and acute or rarely rounded at the ends, entire, with slightly thickened often undu- 

 late margins, or on vigorous branches of young trees frequently unequally lobed. 



r 



i(^.202 



with small almost triangular lobes, when they unfold green tinged with dark red 

 and slightly puberulous, at maturity thin, green, and very lustrous above, light green 

 and less lustrous below, usually 3'-4:' long and |' wide, with conspicuous yellow mid- 

 ribs, falling irregularly during the winter; their petioles stout, yellow, rarely more 

 than \' long. Flowers: staminate in red-stemmed hairy aments 2'-3' long; calyx 

 thin and scarious, pubescent on the outer surface, deeply divided into 4 ovate rounded 

 lobes; pistillate on stout glabrous peduncles, their involucral scales brown and hairy, 

 about as long as the acute calyx-lobes; stigmas dark red. Fruit sessile or subsessile, 

 generally solitary; acorn nearly ovoid to hemispherical, broad and slightly rounded 

 at the base, full and rounded at the puberulous apex, dark brown, becoming striate 

 in drying, with brown and dark olive-green stripes, about \' long, inclosed for about 

 one fourth its length in a thin saucer-shaped cup red-brown and silky-pubescent on 

 the inner surface, and covered by thin ovate light red-brown scales rounded at the 

 ends and pale-pubescent except on their darker colored margins. 



A tree, occasionally 100 high, with a tall trunk 3^ in diameter, and compara- 

 tively slender branches spreading gradually into a broad dense round-topped shapely 

 head, and slender glabrous branchlets dark red when they first appear, dark red- 

 brown during their first winter, becoming reddish brown or dark gray in their second 

 season. Winter-buds broadly ovate or oval, abruptly narrowed and acute at the 

 apex, Ye'-y long, with numerous thin closely imbricated bright red-brown scales 

 ciliate on the margins. Bark of young trees \'-V thick, dark brown more or less 

 tinged with red, roughened by small closely appressed scales, becoming at the base 



