CUPULIFER.E. (oak FAMILY.) 443 



Order 128. CUPULIFER.S:. (Oak Family.) 



Trees or shrubs, with alternate entire or lobed straight-veined stipu- 

 late leaves, and monoecious apetalous flowers. Sterile flowers in pen- 

 dulous slender or capitate aments. Calyx scale-like, or regular and 

 4-G-lobed. Stamens few. Fertile flowers single or clustered, fur- 

 nished with an involucre which encloses the fruit, or forms a cup at 

 its base. Ovary 2-7-celled, with 1-2 pendulous anatropous ovules 

 in each cell. Stigmas as many as the cells. Fruit 1 -celled, 1-seeded. 

 Albumen none. Cotyledons thick and flesliy. lladicle 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 i-valved spiny involucre ; sterile ameuts elon- 



gated, erect. 



3. FAGUS. Nuts 2, 3-angled, eucloaed in a somewhat spiny 4-valved involucre : sterile 



aments capitate, pendulous. 

 ■1. CORYLUS. Nut solitaiy, bony, enclosed in a leafy lacerated involucre. 



* * Fertile flowers spiked. 

 5. CARPINUS. Nuts 1-2, in the axil of an open leafy involucre. 

 G. OSTRYA. Nut solitary, enclosed in a membranaceous inflated involucre. 



1. QUERCUS, L. Oak. • 



Sterile ament slender, bractless, peudulous. Cal\ x unequally 6 - 8-parted. 

 Stamens 6 - 12, slender : anthers 2-celled. Fertile tiowers axillary, solitary, 

 or few in a cluster. Calyx 6-cIeft or denticulate, adnata to the 3-4-celled 

 ovary. Ovules 2 in each cell. Stigmas obtuse. Nut (acoin) oblong or 

 hemispherical, partly (rarely wholly) enclosed in the cup-shaped scaly in- 

 volucre. Cotyledons very thick, plano-convex. — Trees or shrubs, with simple 

 entire or lobed leaves. Stipules caducous. 



§ 1. Melanobalanus. (Black Oaks). Bark dark and furrowed : wood 

 porous and brittle: leaves, and their lobes or teeth, bristle-pointed : nuts silki/- 

 tomentose within : stamens 4 - 6 : sti/les lonrj and spreading ; abortive ovules 

 near the top of the seed. 



* Fruit biennial. 



+■ Leaves deciduous. 



++ Leaves entire ; those on vigorous shoots often lobed or toothed. 



1. Q. Phellos, L. (Willow Oak.) Leaves (2'-3' long) lanceolate or 

 linear-lanceolate, bristle-awned, scurfy, like the branchlets, when young, be- 

 coming smooth on both sides; fruit small, sessile; cup flatti.sh, enclosing the 

 base of the hemispherical nut. — Margins of swamps and streams. — A tree, 

 40°- 50° high. 



Var. laurifolia. (Q. laurifolia, Michx.) Leases larger (.3' -4' long), 

 oblong lanf-eolatp ; cup deeper aiul more pointed at the base. — Light uplands, 

 Florida to North Carolina. — A tree commonly larger than the preceding. 



