270 SYLVA AMERICANA. 



Bartram Oak. Quercus heterojihylla. 



Every botanist who has visited the different regions of the 

 globe must have* remarked certain species of vegetables which 

 are so little multiplied that they seem likely at no distant period 

 to disappear from the earth. To this class belongs the Bartram 

 oak. Several foreign and American naturalists have spent years 

 in exploring the United States, and have found no traces of this 

 species except a single stock in a field belonging to M. 

 Bartram, on the banks of the Schuylkill, four miles from 

 Philadelphia. This is a flourishing tree upwards of 30 feet in 

 height and a foot in diameter, and seems formed to attain a 

 much greater developement. Its leaves are of an elongated, 

 oval form, coarsely and irregularly toothed, smooth above, and 

 of a dark green beneath. The acorns are round, of a middling 

 size, and contained in shallow cups slightly covered with scales. 

 This tree bears a great affinity to the laurel oak ; but the leaves 

 of that species are never -indented, like those of the Bartram oak. 

 Several young plants have been generated from the original stock 

 which are now growing in the gardens of Europe and this 

 country which will insure the preservation of the species. 



