CUPULIFER^. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA, 



71 



QUERCUS BREVILOBA. 



White Oak. 



Leaves obovate or oblong, undulate, lobecl with short broad lobes or entire, pale 

 often silvery white and pubescent on the lower surface. 



Quercus breviloba, Sargent, Garden and Forest, viii. Nordam 



93 (1895). (Man. I 



Nat. Herh 



W. 



Bound 



)btusifolia, var. ? breviloba, Torrey, Bot. Mex. Quercus annulata, Buckley, Proc. Phil Acad. 1860, 

 Surv. 206 (1859). 445. 



Quercus Durandii, Buckley, Proc. Phil. Acad. 1860, Quercus San-Sabeana, Young, Bot. Texas, 507 (1873). 



445. — Young, Bot. Texas, 507. — Sargent, Forest Trees Quercus undulata, Engelniann, Trans. St. Louis Acad. 

 JSr. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 145. — Mayr, Wald. iii. 392 (in part) (not Torrey) (1877). 



A tree, sometimes eighty or ninety feet in height when growing east of the Mississippi River, with 

 a tall straight trunk frequently from two to three feet in diameter ; in Texas much smaller, rarely more 

 than twenty or thirty feet in height, Avith a short trunk usually dividing near the ground into two or 

 three spreading limbs and seldom more than twelve or fifteen inches in diameter ; and frequently, 

 especially toward the western limits of its range, small and shrubby, often forming extensive thickets. 

 The bark of the trunk is from one quarter to one half of an inch in thickness and separates into long 

 narrow plate-like scales about a sixteenth of an inch thick ; it is silvery white and tinged with reddish 

 brown on the surface, and thus trunks seen from a little distance produce the effect of being reddish in 

 general color. The branchlets are slender and marked with pale lenticels, and when they first appear 

 are coated with hoary tomentum ; during the following winter they are gray, faintly tinged with red, 

 or ashy gray and grow darker during the second and third years. The winter-buds are broadly ovate or 

 oval, acuminate, and from a sixteenth to an eighth of an inch long, and are covered with light chestnut- 



brown closely and regularly imbricated puberulous scales pale and scarious on the margins. The leaves 

 are convolute in the bud, obovate or oblong, usually gradually narrowed and acute or rarely broader 

 and equally or unequally rounded at the base, and broad and rounded and often emarginate or narrowed 

 and rounded or rarely acute at the apex ; they are undulate-lob ed with from four to seven broad lobes, 

 or are obscurely three-lobed at the broad apex and entire below, or are undulate or coarsely and 

 remotely dentate with acute spinescent teeth, or are often entire, and on vigorous shoots are frequently 

 oblong-obovate and more or less deeply divided by wide sinuses rounded at the bottom into broad lobes 

 which increase in size from the base to the apex of the leaf ; when they unfold they are thin, covered 

 with scattered pale stellate hairs on the upper surface and coated with thick pale pubescence on the 

 lower, and at maturity they are thin on trees grown in the eastern GuK states and thicker and often 

 subcoriaceous on those grown in the drier climate of Texas, light blue or yellow-green and usually 

 lustrous above, and pubescent and paler and often silvery white below ; they are usually from an inch 

 and a half to three inches long and from three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half wide, although 

 on trees east of the Mississippi River and on young vigorous branches they are sometimes from four to 

 six inches in length and two and a haH inches broad j they are obscurely reticulate-venulose and furnished 

 with narrow pale yellow midi-ibs raised and rounded on the upper side, and slender veins running to the 

 slightly thickened and revolute margins of the leaf or forked within them ; borne on stout grooved 

 petioles rarely more than a quarter of an inch in length, they turn pale yellow and fall in the autumn, 

 or in western Texas sometimes irregularly during the winter or in the early spring. The flowers appear 

 with the first unfolding of the leaves from March to the end of April, the stamiuate borne on hairy 



