231 



O 



seriousness of the injuries, but rather the position of such wound.-, 

 the shrapnel fragments invariably causing the greater damage 

 when they struck the tree in a slanting direction, causing n 

 long, ragged wound, thus lacerating much more of the bark and 



cambium layer than happens when the hit is direct and clean. 



Explanation of Plates. 



Plate VI. A Beech tree showing the trunk deeply pitted and 



torn by shrapnel. 



Plate VII., FlCh 1. A section of the trunk of an Oak showing a 



shrapnel wound 5 in. deep, around which a ccrk callus 

 has begun to develop. 



Pig. 2. An Ash tree. The upper part has died as a 

 result of shell fire and pollard-like shoots are springing 

 from the trunk below the dead portion. 



XIV.— ABRAHAM'S OAK. 



Quercus coccifera var. palaestina, Boissier. 



(Syns. Q. palaestina, Kotschy; Q. pseudo-coccifera, Desf.) 



W. J. Bean. 



In February last, Kew received a small box of acorns from 

 Major M. Portal, D.S.O., who was then stationed at the General 

 Head Quarters of the British Army in Palestine. These acorns 

 proved to be those of the Palestine form of Quercus coccifera, the 

 Kernies oak, whose various forms are widely spread over South 

 Europe, from Spain and Portugal eastwards to Asia Minor and 

 Syria, and south of the Mediterranean in Algeria, In an 

 accompanying letter Major Portal says : 



" I send you a box full of ' Ilex ' acorns from the only large 

 clump of trees I have seen out here. It is near Kebara, about a 

 mile on the Jerusalem side of Enab. and, according to the map, 

 situated at an elevation of 2400 ft. This clump, some 50 yards by 

 30 yards, grows near the bottom of a valley and close to the ruins 

 of an old castle reputed to date back to Crusader times. In this 

 country it is surprising that the Turk has allowed these trees to 

 grow to their present age and size, but there is a grave in tin- 

 middle of the clump which probably may account for it. The 

 largest tree in the clump has a trunk 9 ft. 5 in. in circumference 

 at 3 ft. from the ground; another has a girth of 4 ft. 11 in." 



It is now generally conceded that this Palestine oak, as well 

 as some half a dozen others to which specific names have been 

 giyea, are nothing more than local forms of the Kernies oak, 

 Q. coccifera, a species which, though never common, has long 

 been cultivated in English gardens. Sir Joseph Hooker pointed 

 this out as long ago as 1861 in a well-known paper contributed 

 to vol. xxiii. of the Transactions of the Linnean Society. He 

 had, in the autumn of the previous year, made a short tour in 

 Syria, in company with Mr. D. Hanbury. Although in tikis 



