278 



SYLVA AMERICANA. 



Pin Oak. Quercus palustris. 



PLATE LXXXIII. 

 Fig. I. A leaf. Fig. 2. The fruit. 



This species is found in 

 Massachusetts, but is less 

 common than in the vicinity 

 of New York, in New Jersey, 

 Pennsylvania and Maryland. 

 It is abundant beyond the 

 mountains, in Ohio, East 

 Tennessee and the country 

 of the Illinois. It is said not 

 to exist in Maine, Vermont 

 and the Southern States. 

 It is called Pin Oak in the 

 lower part of New York, 

 and in New Jersey, and 

 Swamp Spanish Oak, in 

 Pennsylvania, Delaware and 

 Maryland. The last of these 

 denominations is sufficiently appropriate ; but we have preferred 

 the second, because it is less liable to mistake, and is indicative 

 of a characteristic arrangement of the branches. 



The pin oak is a tall tree, which grows constantly in moist 

 places, and of preference about the swamps inclosed in the 

 forests. In these situations it is frequently more than 80 feet 

 high and 3 or 4 feet in diameter. Its secondary branches are 

 more slender and more numerous than is common in so large a 

 tree, and are intermingled so as to give it at a distance the 

 appearance of being stuffed. This singular disposition renders 

 it distinguishable at first sight in the winter. These small limbs 

 die as the tree advances, which gives the tree the appearance of 

 having pins or trunnels driven into it : whence the name of Pin 

 Oak. The leaves are smooth, of a pleasing green, supported by 

 long petioles, deeply laciniated and very similar to those of the 

 scarlet oak, from which they differ principally in their proportions. 

 This tree fructifies once in two years. The flowers put forth in 



