FAGACEJS 



263 



diameter, stout ascending or spreading branches forming a broad compact head, 

 and stout branchlets coated at first with thick pale rufous pubescence, pubescent or 

 tomentose and light or dark orange color during their first winter, becoming gla- 

 brous and rather bright reddish brown in their second year and ultimately gray; 

 or frequently at high elevations, or when exposed to the winds from the ocean, 

 reduced to a low shrub. Winter-buds ovate, acute, ^'-^' long, densely clothed with 

 light ferrugineous tomentum. Bark ^'-V thick, divided by shallow fissures into 

 broad ridges separating on the surface into light brown or gray scales sometimes 

 slightly tinged with orange color. Wood strong, hard, close-grained, frequently 

 exceedingly tough and valuable, light brown or yellow, with thin nearly white sap- 

 wood ; in Oregon and Washington used in the manufacture of carriages and wagons, 

 in cabinet-making, shipbuilding, and cooperage, and largely as fuel. 



Distribution. Valleys and the dry gravelly slopes of low hills; Vancouver Island 

 and the valley of the lower Fraser E,iver southward through western Washington 

 and Oregon and the California coast-valleys to the Santa Cruz Mountains; rare and 

 local and the only Oak-tree in British Columbia; abundant and of its largest size 

 in the valleys of western Washington and Oregon, and ascending in its shrubby 

 forms to considerable elevations on the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains; 

 abundant in northwestern California; less common and of smaller size southward. 



28. Quercus Gambelii, Nutt. White Oak. Shin Oak. 



Leaves broadly obovate to oblong-lanceolate, rounded at the narrow apex, wedge- 

 shaped or sometimes narrowed and rounded or broad and cordate at the base, 

 variously lobed or pinnatifid, the lobes entire, emarginate, or lobed, when they unfold 

 coated below with thick white tomentum and above with scattered stellate pubes- 

 cence, at maturity thick and firm, glabrous and rarely stellate-pubescent, lustrous 

 and dark yellow-green or dull yellow-green above, and paler and soft-pubescent 



h(q.2.ia- 



below, 3'-5' long, l'-5' wide, with prominent pale midribs hirsute below and occa- 

 sionally above, primary veins running to the points of the lobes, secondary veins 

 arcuate and united near the margins, and conspicuous veinlets, turning scarlet or 

 orange-colored in the autumn; their petioles stout, glabrous, \'-^' long. Flowers: 

 staminate in slender hirsute aments ; calyx yellow, divided into 5 or 6 acute lobes; 



