CUPULIFER &, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 49 
QUERCUS ELLIPSOIDALIS. 
Leaves oval to obovate-orbicular, 5 to 7-lobed, dark green and lustrous on the 
upper surface. 
Quercus ellipsoidalis, E. J. Hill, Bot. Gazette, xxvii. 204, Quercus coccinea, Sargent, Silva N. Am. viii. 133 (in 
t. 2, 3 (1899). — Britton, Man. 334. part) (not Muenchhausen), t. 413, £. 2 (1895). 
A tree, sixty or seventy feet in height, with a short trunk rarely three feet in diameter, and much 
forked branches which are ascending above and often pendulous low on the stem, and form a narrow 
oblong head. The bark of the trunk is comparatively thin, internally light yellow, close, rather 
smooth, divided by shallow connected fissures into thin narrow plates, dark brown near the base, dull 
gray above, and on the large branches gray-brown and only slightly furrowed. The branchlets are 
slender, covered with matted pale hairs when they first appear, bright reddish brown, and marked 
by small dark lenticels during their first year, and dark gray-brown or reddish brown in their 
second season. The winter-buds are ovate, obtuse, or acute, sometimes slightly angled, and about an 
eighth of an inch long, with ovate or oval red-brown lustrous slightly puberulous outer scales ciliate 
on the margins. The leaves vary from oval to obovate-orbicular in outline, and are truncate or 
broadly cuneate at the base, and deeply divided by wide sinuses rounded at the bottom into five or 
seven oblong lobes repandly dentate at the apex, with slender bristle-pointed teeth, or often, particularly 
those of the upper lateral pair, repandly lobulate; when they unfold they are slightly tinged with red 
and coated with thick hoary tomentum, and soon becoming glabrous with the exception of small tufts 
of pale hairs in the axils of the principal veins, at maturity they are thin and firm, bright green and 
lustrous on the upper surface, paler and sometimes entirely glabrous on the lower surface, from three 
to five inches long and from two inches and a half to four inches wide, with stout midribs and primary 
veins rounded on the upper side, and slender lateral veins connected by prominent reticulate veinlets ; 
they are borne on slender grooved glabrous or rarely puberulous petioles from an inch and a half to 
nearly two inches long, and late in the autumn before falling turn yellow or pale brown more or less 
blotched with red or purple. The flowers open when the leaves are about one quarter grown, the 
staminate in puberulous aments from an inch and a half to two inches long, and the pistillate on stout 
tomentose one to three-flowered peduncles. The calyx of the staminate flower is membranaceous, 
campanulate, usually tinged with red, from two to five-lobed or parted into oblong-ovate or rounded 
segments which are smooth or slightly villose, fringed at the apex with long twisted hairs, and about 
as long as the stamens. These are composed of short filaments and oblong anthers cordate at the base 
and blunt or emarginate and sometimes apiculate at the apex. The pistillate flower is red, with broad 
hairy oblong acute involucral scales, a four to seven-lobed tubular campanulate calyx ciliate on the 
margins, three spreading or recurved styles hairy near the base, and enlarged dark slightly two-lobed 
stigmas. The acorn, which ripens in the autumn of its second year, is short-stalked or nearly sessile, 
and. solitary or in pairs, and from three quarters of an inch to an inch long; the nut is ellipsoidal, 
varying from cylindrical to subglobose, chestnut-brown, often striate, and puberulous, with a thin shell 
lined with a thick coat of pale tomentum ; the cup, which incloses from one third to rather more than 
one half of the nut, is turbinate or cup-shaped, gradually narrowed at the base, thin, light red-brown 
and puberulous on the inner surface, and covered on the outer surface with narrow ovate obtuse or 
truncate brown pubescent closely appressed scales, and a thin hyaline deeply lobed margin. 
Mo. Eot. Garden 
1203. 
