cupuLiFERiE. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



17 



obtuse, dark red-brown, and about an eighth of an inch in length. The leaves are condupheate in 

 the bud, obovate-oblong and gradually narrowed and wedge-shaped at the base; they are divided 

 into terminal lobes and from three to nine but usually three pairs of lateral lobes by wide sinuses, 

 which are rounded at the bottom, and are sometimes shallow and sometimes penetrate nearly to the 

 midribs; the terminal lobe is short or elongated, obovate and three-lobed, or occasionally ovate, 

 entire and acute or rounded; the lateral lobes are obhque, broad or narrow, entire or auriculate, 

 and increase in size from the base to the apex of the leaf ; or on vigorous shoots or small branches 

 developed from the trunks of old trees, the leaves are often repand or shghtly sinuately lobed or 

 occasionally entire below and three-lobed at the broad apex ; when they unfold they are bright red 

 above, pale below, and coated with soft pubescence ; the red color fades at the end of a few days, and 

 they become silvery white and very lustrous ; their covering of tomentum then gradually disappears, and 

 when fully grown the leaves are thin, firm, and glabrous, bright green and lustrous or dull on the upper 

 surface, pale or glaucous and glabrous below, and from five to nine inches in length, with stout bright 

 yellow midribs, conspicuous primary veins running to the points of the lobes, lateral veins forked and 

 united near the margins, conspicuous reticulate veinlets, and stout pale petioles flattened and grooved 

 on the upper side and enlarged toward the base. The stipules are linear, brown, scarious, and about 

 half an inch long. Late in the autumn, after the leaves of nearly all the trees with which it grows in 

 the forest have fallen, those of the White Oak turn to a deep rich vinous red, and, gradually withering, 

 drop at the beginning of winter or remain on the branches of some individuals nearly to its close. 

 The staminate flowers, which appear when the leaves are about one third grown, are produced in hir- 

 sute or nearly glabrous aments from two and a half to three inches long ; they are usually ebracteolate, 

 and before opening are furnished at the apex with tufts of rusty brown hairs ; the calyx is bright yellow 

 and pubescent, with acute lobes rather shorter than the stamens, which are composed of comparatively 

 stout filaments and emarginate glabrous anthers. The pistillate flowers are borne on abbreviated or 

 elongated peduncles, the two forms often appearing on the same tree ; they are bright red with broadly 

 ovate hirsute involucral scales and ovate acute calyx-lobes. The acorn is sessile, or is borne on a 

 slender peduncle from one to two inches in length, and is more often long-stalked on trees with deeply 

 lobed leaves than on those with slightly divided leaves, although long and short-stalked acorns can be 

 found on trees with leaves of either form, and often on the same tree and on the same branch ; the nut 

 is ovoid or oblong, rounded at the apex, lustrous, three quarters of an inch or an inch in length, green 

 when fully grown, and finally light chestnut-brown; the cup is cup-shaped and coated outside with 

 pale or light brown tomentum, and embraces about a quarter of the nut ; at the base it is tuberculate 

 by the much thickened and united scales, which are produced into short obtuse membranaceous tips ; 

 growing gradually thinner toward the top of the cup, the scales are small and scarious at the rim. 



Quercus alba is distributed from southern Maine to southwestern Quebec, westward through central 

 and southern Ontario,^ the lower peninsula of Michigan and southern Minnesota^ to southeastern 

 Nebraska^ and eastern Kansas,* and southward to northern Florida and the valley of the Brazos 

 Kiver in Texas. An inhabitant of sandy plains and gravelly ridges, of rich uplands, intervales, and 

 moist bottom-lands, the White Oak is rare in Quebec and northern New England, where it is usually 

 found mixed with the White Pine. It is abundant and grows to a large size in Ontario, frequently 

 forming a considerable part of the forest-growth. Absent from the cold elevated regions of northern 

 New England and New York, and from the highest slopes of the southern Alleghany Mountains, and 

 rare in the maritime Pine belt of the south, the White Oak is common, where the soil is not too sterile 

 to support it, in other parts of the United States from the shores of the Atlantic nearly to the western 

 and northwestern limits of its range. While sometimes forming forests almost to the exclusion of other 



1 Brunet, Cat. Veg. Lig. Can. 48. — Bell, Geolog. Rep. Can. « Bessey, Rep. Nebraska State Board Agric. 1894, 109, 



1879-80 



n, Cat. Can. PI. 440. 

 lermcB of the Minnesota 



4 Mason, Eighth Bienn. Rep. State Board Agric. Kansas, 271. 



