48 



SILVA OF NORTH AiMERICA. 



CUPULIFER^. 



in leno'tli, and before falling- in the autumn turn bright scarlet or scarlet and orange. The stipules are 



& 



linear-obovate or linear-lanceolate, brown and scarious and coated with pale hairs, those of the last leaves 



of the season often remaining on the branch during the following winter. 



The flowers appear 



during 



about a third grown. 



The stami- 



the calyx is Hght 



March and April with the unfolding o£ the leaves^ or when they are 



nate flowers are produced in slender hairy aments from four to six inches in length ; 



yellow covered on the outer surface with pale hairs and divided into acute segments ; the anthers are 



acute^ glabrous^ and yeflow. The pistillate flowers are sessile or pedunculate^ and are covered^ as are 



theu^ stalks^ with long thick pale tomentum. The acorns are sessile or are often borne on slender 



pubescent peduncles marked with pale lenticels and sometimes an inch or an inch and a half in length ; 



the nut varies in shape from subglobose to ovate or rarely to ovate-oblong, and from half an inch 

 to nearly an inch in length, and usually its breadth 



at the base is greater than its length ; 



it is 



light chestnut-brown and covered at the apex and often on the sides also with short pale pubescence ; 

 the cup is ovate or rarely deeply cup-shaped or nearly spherical, and almost or entirely incloses the nut, 

 or rarely only its lower half j it is thin and woody, bright red-brown and pubescent on the inner 

 surface and hoary-tomentose on the outer, which is covered by ovate united scales produced into free 

 acute tips ; these are usually much thickened and contorted at the base of the cup, and, gradually 

 growing thinner above, form a ragged edge to its thin and often irregularly split margin.^ 



QuercKS lyrata inhabits river-swamps or small deep depressions in rich bottom-lands often filled 

 with Avater and usually wet throughout the year, and is distributed from the valley of the Patuxent 

 River in southern Maryland ^ southward near the coast to western Florida, through the Gulf states to 

 the valley of the Trinity River in Texas, through Arkansas ^ and southwestern Missouri, where, in a 

 swamp near Allenton, there is a single specimen, the most northern known representative of the species 

 west of the Mississippi River, to central Tennessee, southern Indiana, and Jasper County, Illinois.* 

 Rare in the Atlantic and eastern Gulf states, it is most common and grows to its largest size in the 

 valley of the Red River in Louisiana and the adjacent parts of Texas and Arkansas; and in southern 

 Illinois on the swampy bottom-lands of the Fox River it is the prevailing species of the forest. 



The wood of Quercns lyrata is heavy, hard, strong, tough, and very durable in contact with 



ground, but is rather liable to check 



bands of from one to three rows of large open ducts marking the layers of annual 



dark brown, with thick li2"hter colo 



contact with the 

 It contains broad conspicuous medullary rays and 



►wth, and is rich 



ed sapwood. The specific gravity of 



absolutely dry wood 



0.8313, a cubic foot weighing 51.81 pounds. Commercially it is confounded with the wood of Quercus 

 aTba^ and is used for the same purposes. 



Although introduced into English plantations by John Fraser^ as early as 1786,^ Quercus lyrata 



It is well established, however, in the Arnold Arboretum, proving 



still little k 



in cultivation. 



perfectly hardy in the climate of eastern Massachusetts 



1 It is only from trees found by Dr. Charles Mohr In December, 



Quercus lyrata was discovered in Maryland in September, 1890 



1880, on Peyton's Creek, Matagorda Coimty, Texas, that I have by Mr. Robert Ridgway. (See Garden and Forest iii. 129.) 



seen acorns with deeply cup-shaped cups embracing only from one 

 half to one third of the oblone- ovate or oval nut TPlate ceclxxiv. 



^ Harvey, Am» Jour. Forestry^ i. 453. 



^ The most northern recorded station of Quercus lyrata in Illi- 

 f. 6). The leaves on this tree are oblong-oval, crenately or undu- nois is at Rafe's Mill on the Embarras River in the southeastern 

 lately lobed with small nearly triangular acute or rounded lobes corner of Jasper County. (See Ridgway, Proc. U, S. Nat. Mus. 

 four or five inches in length, thick and firm in texture, dark green xvii. 413.) 



on the upper surface and pale and pubescent on the lower (Plate 

 ceclxxiv. f. 8). 



6 See i. 8. 



^ Alton, HorL Kew. ed. 2, v, 295. — Loudon, Arb. Brit. iii. 1871, 

 f. 1733, 1734. 



