cupuLiFER^. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



2 



i 



QUERCUS BREWERI 



Shiu Oak. 



Leaves oblong, mostly acutely lobed, stellate-j)iibescent at maturity on the upper 



surface. 



Quercus Breweri, Engelmann, Breiver & Watson Bot. Cal. Quercus lobata, var. Breweri, Wenzig, Jahrb. Bot. Gart. 

 ii. 96 (1880). — Coville, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. iv. 196 Berlin, iii. 188 (1885). 



(Bot. Death Valley Ex^yeJ.). 



? Quercus CErstediana, Greene, TTest Am. Oaks, 19, t. 10 



Quercus lobata, subspec. fruticosa, Engelmann, Trans. (in part) (probably not of R. Brown Campst.) (1889) 



St. Louis Acad. iii. 389 (1877). 



A shrub, with slender stems and ashy gray bark, usually five or six, or occasionally fifteen or 

 twenty feet high, spreading into broad compact thickets by stoloniferous roots. The branchlets are 



slender and marked with pale 



they first appear they are light green and clothed with 



loose pale tomentum, and during their first winter are light reddish brown or rather bright orange- 

 color and coated with fine pubescence, which does not entirely wear off until their second or third 

 year. The winter-buds are ovate, rather obtuse, and an eighth of an inch long, and are covered with 

 chestnut-brown scales coated with pale pubescence. The leaves are convolute in the bud, oblong, 

 abruptly or gradually narrowed and wedge-shaped, rounded or cordate at the base, rounded or acute 

 at the apex, and mostly seven or occasionally nine-lobed, with broad acute or rounded and usually 

 apiculate lobes j when they unfold they are clothed, especially below, with thick pale pubescence, and 

 at maturity are thick and firm, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, which is roughened with 

 scattered stellate hairs, paler and pubescent on the lower surface, from one to four inches long and 

 from half an inch to an inch and a quarter broad, with stout pale hirsute midribs and primary veins, 

 obscure veinlets, and hairy terete petioles gradually enlarged toward the base and from a quarter to 

 a half of an inch in length. The stipules are brown and scarious, covered with long pale hairs, and 

 nearly an inch long. In October the leaves turn a bright clear yellow before falling. The flowers 

 appear toward the middle of May, usually when the leaves are about one fourth grown, and are borne 

 the males in short hirsute aments, the females sessile or on short stalks. The calyx of the staminate 

 flower is clothed with pale hairs, and is deeply divided into from five to seven acute lobes shorter than 

 the stamens, which are composed of slender filaments, and ovate, slightly emarginate, yeUow glabrous 

 anthers. The involucral scales and the calyx-lobes of the pistillate flower are coated with pale tomentum, 

 and the stigmas are bright red. The fruit, which ripens in the autumn, is sessile or subsessile and 

 usually solitary ; the nut is ovate or oval, from an inch to an inch and a quarter in length and from 

 three quarters of an inch to nearly an inch in breadth, and is inclosed only at the base by the shallow 

 cup ; this is cup-shaped or turbinate, pubescent on the inner surface, coated on the outer with pale or 

 ferrugineous tomentum, and covered by broadly ovate scales which are gradually narrowed into long 

 lanceolate acute membranaceous tips, and at the base of the cup are slightly thickened on the back, 

 gradually decreasing in size toward the rim. 



Quercus Breiveri inhabits the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada in California, and ranges from 

 the northern borders of the state to the valley of the upper Kaweah River in Tulare County, forming 

 on the upper San Joaquin, at an elevation of about six thousand feet above the sea, vast, almost 

 impenetrable thickets, with slender stems from twelve to eighteen feet in height, and, for miles, standing 

 as regular as the plants in an evenly sown field of wheat. 



