420 CUPULIFERZ. (OAK FAMILY.) 
Orver 128. CUPULIFERUE. (Oak FauirLY.) 
Trees or shrubs, with alternate entire or lobed straight-veined stipulate 
leaves, and moneecious apetalous flowers. Sterile flowers in pendulous 
slender or capitate aments. Calyx scale-like, or regular and 4 — 6-lobed. 
Stamens few. Fertile flowers single or clustered, furnished with an invo- 
lucre which encloses the fruit, or forms a cup at its base. Ovary 2-1- 
celled, with 1—2 pendulous anatropous ovules in each cell. Stigmas as 
many as the cells. Fruit 1-celled, 1-seeded. Albumen none. Cotyle- 
dons thick and fleshy. Kadicle superior. 
Synopsis. 
= * Fertile flowers single, or few in a cluster. 
1. QUERCUS. Nut solitary, with the base enclosed in a scaly involucre. 
2. CASTANEA. Nuts 1-3, enclosed in a 4-valved spiny involucre ; sterile aments elongated, 
erect. ; 
3. FAGUS. Nuts 2, 3-angled, enclosed in a somewhat spiny 4-valved involucre: sterile 
aments capitate, pendulous. P 
4. CORYLUS. Nut solitary, bony, enclosed in a leafy lacerated involucre. 
* * Fertile flowers spiked. 
5. CARPINUS. Nuts 1-2, in the axil of an open leafy inyolucre. 
6. OSTRYA. Nut solitary, enclosed in a membranaceous inflated involucre. 
1 QUERCUS, L. Oax. 
Sterile ament slender, bractless, pendulous. Calyx unequally 6 - &-parted. 
Stamens 6 — 12, slender: anthers 2-celled. Fertile flowers axillary, solitary, 0T 
few in a cluster. Calyx 6-cleft or denticulate, adnate to the 3 — 4-celled om 
Ovules 2 in each cell. Stigmas obtuse. Nut (Acorn) oblong or hemispherical, 
partly (rarely wholly) enclosed in the cup-shaped scaly involucre. Cotyledons 
Very thick, plano-convex. — Trees or shrubs, with simple entire or lobed leaves. 
Stipules caducous. 
$ 1. Fruit biennial. 
* Leaves entire, short-petioled ; those on vigorous shoots often lobed or toothed. 
1. Q. Phellos, L. (Wirrow-Oan.) Leaves (2! — 3! long) lanceolate = 
linear-lanceolate, bristle-awned, scurfy, like the branchlets, when young, becom- 
_ ing smooth on both sides; fruit small, sessile; cup flattish, enclosing the base of 
the hemispherical nut. — Margins of swamps and streams, Florida to Missis- 
sippi, and northward. — A slender tree, 40° — 50° high. udi che 
. Var laurifolia. (Q. laurifolia, Michx.) Leaves larger (3'~4' long) 
oblong-lanceolate ; cup deeper and more pointed at the base.— Light uplands, 
Florida to North Carolina. — A tree commonly larger than the preceding- is 
Var. arenaria. (Q. myrtifolia, Willd.?) Shrubby (49 - 8° high) ; inn ee 
_ small (}/-1} long), rigid, oblong or obovate, obtuse or barely pointed, wine NOM 
evolu Dry sand ridges, along the coast of Florida and Georgi®- jt 
Michx. (Surwane-Oam.) Leaves lanceolate® ig 
, mucronate, pale and downy beneath, 
