24 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA, 



CUPULIFER^T::. 



leaves are undulately or crenately toothed ; they are thin but firm in texture, deciduous, from two and a 



half to three inches or rarely four inches long, from an inch to two inches broad, dark green and 



stellate-pubescent on the upper surface, and pale and pubescent on the lower, with stout pale midi'ibs, 



obscure lateral 



conspicuous yellow veins running to the slightly thickened and revolute 



margins 



veins and veinlets, and broad hirsute flattened petioles varying from a quarter to a half of an inch 



The aments of staminate flowers, which appear when the leaves are about half grown, 



in length. 



from February at the south to the end of April at the north, are hirsute and from two to three inches 

 in length ; the calyx is light yellow and divided into six or eight acute lobes which are pubescent on the 

 outer surface and cihate on the margins ; the stamens equal the calyx-lobes in number, and the yellow 

 anthers are emarginate and glabrous. The pistillate flowers are solitary and sessile, or rarely are borne 

 in elongated few-flowered spikes ; the scales of the involucre are broadly ovate, acute, coated with 

 dense pale tomentum, and about as long as the narrow calyx-lobes. The acorns are solitary or often 

 in pairs, and sessile or subsessile ; the nut is conical, elongated, and rounded or pointed at the apex, 

 which is covered with persistent fine white pubescence and tipped with a short thick umbo ; it varies 

 from an inch and a quarter to two inches and a quarter in length, and is bright green and lustrous 

 when fully grown, ultimately turning bright chestnut brown ; the cup, which varies from a quarter of 

 an inch to nearly an inch in depth, is cup-shaped or rarely saucer-shaped, coated within and without 



with pale tomentum, and usually irregularly tuberculate below 



the large thickened scales; these 



decrease upward in size and thickness, and, with the exception of those at the base of the cup, are 

 elongated into acute ciliate chestnut-brown free tips which are longest on the uppermost scales, forming 

 a short fringe-like border to the edge of the cup. 



Quercus lohata inhabits the valleys of western California between the Sierra Nevada and the 

 ocean, from that of the upper Sacramento to the Tejon Pass, where it crosses the coast ranges into 



Antelope Valley, and to Santa Monica 



Never forming a dense forest, the California 



White Oak, either alone or with the Blue Oak, covers with open groves free of all shrubby undergrowth 

 the central valleys of the state. Since the eyes of the white man first looked upon these natural parks, 

 which surpassed in grandeur of broad effect and in the dignity of their graceful trees all the creations 

 of the landscape gardener's art, fields of wheat have rejDlaced the wild grasses which covered their open 

 glades, and many of their noblest trees have been sacrificed to satisfy the demands of civilization. No 

 other region in North America, however, presents to-day anything that compares with their park-like 

 beauty, the nobility of their individual trees, or the charm of the long vistas stretching beneath them. 



The wood of Quercus lohata is moderately hard, fine-grained, brittle, and difficult to season. 



It 



contains bands of large open ducts marking the layers of annual growth, and smaller ducts arranged in 

 lines parallel with the broad conspicuous medullary rays, and is light brown, with thin lighter colored 

 sapwood. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.7409, a cubic foot weighing 46.17 

 pounds. Of little economic value, it is used only for fuel. 



The nuts, which Quercus lohata produces in great profusion, were gathered and stored for winter 

 use by the California Indians, who pounded them into coarse flour, which they mixed with water and 

 baked or steamed in rude ovens dug in the sand." 



In March, 1792, Vancouver anchored in the Bay of San Francisco, and visited the Spanish Mission 

 of Santa Clara situated in a beautiful valley which reminded him of England : ai 



of the California White Oak appears in his narrative of this journey 



3 



d the earliest 



A year 



the Spanish 



1 Merriam, North American Fauna, No. 7, pt. ii. 333 {Death Val- origiually been closely planted with the true old Euglisli Oak ; the 



ley Exped. ii.). — S. B. Parish, Zoe, iv. 345. 



underwood, that had probably attended its early growth, had the 



2 Newberry, Popular Science Monthly, xxxii. 37 {Food and Fibre appearance of having been cleared away, and had left the stately 



Plants of the North American Indians). 



lords of the forest in complete possession of the soil, which was 



^ " We had not proceeded far from this delightful spot, when we covered with luxuriant herbage, and beautifully diversified with 

 entered a country I little expected to find in these regions. For pleasing eminences and vallies ; which, with the range of lofty 

 about twenty miles it could only be compared to a park, which had rugged mountains that bounded the prospect, required only to be 



