250 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



of old trees V-2' thick, nearly black, and divided by deep fissures into broad flat 

 ridges. Wood heavy, very strong and hard, coarse-grained, liable to check badly 

 in drying', dark brown tinged with red, with thick lighter colored sapwood; probably 

 used only as fuel. 



Distribution. Sandy banks of streams and swamps and rich hummocks in the 

 neighborhood of the coast; Dismal Swamp, Virginia, southward to the shores of 

 Mosquito Inlet and Cape Romano, Florida, and along the Gulf coast to Louisiana; 

 nowhere abundant, but most common and of its largest size in eastern Florida. 



17. Quercus brevifolia, Sarg. Blue Jack. 



Leaves oblong-lanceolate to oblong-obovate, gradually narrowed and wedge- 

 shaped or sometimes rounded at the base, acute or rounded and apiculate at the 

 apex, entire, with slightly thickened undulate margins, or at the ends of vigorous 

 sterile branches occasionally 3-lobed at the apex and variously lobed on the margins, 

 when they unfold bright pink and pubescent on the upper surface, coated on the 

 lower with thick silvery white tomentum, at maturity firm in texture, blue-green, 

 lustrous, conspicuously reticulate-venulose above, pale-tomentose below, 2'-5' long, 

 |'-1^' wide, with stout yellow midribs and remote obscure primary veins forked and 

 united within the margins, deciduous late in the autumn or in early winter; their 

 petioles stout, \'-^' long. Flovrers : staminate in hoary-tomentose aments 2'-3' 

 long; calyx pubescent, bright red, furnished at the apex with a thick tuft of silvery 

 white hairs before opening, divided into 4 or 5 ovate acute segments, becoming yel- 

 low as it unfolds; stamens 4 or 5; anthers apiculate, dark red in the bud, becoming 

 yellow; pistillate on short stout tomentose peduncles, their involucral scales about 



as long as the acute calyx-lobes and coated with pale tomentum; stigmas dark red. 

 Fruit produced in great profusion, sessile or raised on a short stem rarely ^' long; 

 acorn ovate, full and rounded at the ends, subglobose, about y long, often striate, and 

 hoary-pubescent at the apex, inclosed only at the bottom or for one half its length 

 in a thin saucer-shaped or cup-shaped cup bright red-brown and coated with lustrous 

 pale pubescence on the inner surface, and covered by thin closely imbricated ovate- 

 oblong scales hoary-tomentose except on the dark red-brown margins. 



A tree, usually 15-20 high, with a trunk 5'-6' in diameter, stout branches form- 



