274 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



6 lanceolate ciliate segments; pistillate sessile or borne in short spikes coated like 

 their involucral scales with thick white tomentum ; stign)as bright red. Fruit sessile 

 or raised on a short stout peduncle, solitary or often in pairs; acorn broadly ovate to 

 oval, narrowed and rounded at the apex, ^' to nearly 1' long, light chestnut-brown, 

 inclosed for about one half its length in a thin cup-shaped light brown cup pubescent 

 on the interior, hoary-tomentose on the exterior, and covered by small obtuse scales 



PlCq.22^ 



more or less thickened and rounded on the back toward the base of the cup, the small 

 free red-brown tips of the upper ranks forming a minute fringe-like border to its 

 margin; seed sweet and sometimes edible. 



A tree, 80^-100, occasionally 160 high, with a tall straight trunk 3-4 in diam- 

 eter above the broad and often buttressed base, comparatively small branches forming 

 a narrow shapely round-topped head, slender brauchlets, green more or less tinged 

 with red or purple and pilose when they first appear, light orange color or reddish 

 brown during their first winter, and ultimately gray or brown; east of the Alleghany 

 Mountains and on dry hills often not more than 20-30'^ tall. Winter-buds ovate, 

 acute, ^'-\' long, with chestnut-brown scales white and scarious on the margins. 

 Bark rarely l' thick, broken on the surface into thin loose silvery white scales some- 

 times slightly tinged with brown. "Wood heavy, very hard, strong, close-grained, 

 durable, with thin light-colored sap wood; largely used in cooperage, for wheels, 

 fencing, and railway-ties. 



Distribution. Gardner's Island, Lake Champlain, western Massachusetts and 

 Connecticut, and near the city of Newburg, New York, westward through southern 

 Ontario to southeastern Nebraska and eastern Kansas, southward in the Atlantic 

 states to the District of Columbia and the valley of the upper Potomac River, and 

 west of the Alleghany Mountains to central Alabama and Mississippi, through 

 Arkansas and northern Louisiana, to the eastern borders of the Indian Territory and 

 to the valley of the Nueces River and the Guadaloupe Mountains, Texas; rare and 

 comparatively local in the Atlantic states, usually on limestone soil; very abundant 

 in the Mississippi basin, growing on limestone ridges, dry flinty hills, or deep rich 

 bottom-lands and the rocky banks of streams; of its largest size on the lower 

 Wabash River and its tributaries in southern Indiana and Illinois. 



