cupuLiFEK^. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



83 



QUERCUS ENGELMANNI. 



Evergreen White Oak. 



Leaves oblong or obovate, usually obtuse and rounded at the apex, entire or 

 remotely dentate, dark blue-green. 



Quercus Engelmanni, Greene, West Am. Oaks, 32, t. 15, Sitgreaves' Rep.) (1861). — Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis 



f. 2, 3 ; t. 17 (1889). — Sargent, Garden and Forest, Acad. iii. 393 (in part) ; Brewer & Watson Bot. Cal. ii. 96 



ii. 471. — S. B. Parish, Zee, iv. 345. (in part). — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. IQth Census 



Quercus oblongifolia, Torrey, Ives' Rep. pt. iv. 28 (not U. S. ix. 143 (in part). 



A tree, fifty or sixty feet in height, with a trunk two or three feet in diameter, and stout branches 

 spreading nearly at right angles and forming a broad rather irregular handsome head. The bark of 

 the trunk is from an inch and a half to two inches in thickness, light gray tinged with brown and 

 deeply divided by narrow fissures into broad flat ridges separating on the surface into small thin 

 appressed scales. The branchlets are stout, rigid, and marked with pale lenticels, and at first are coated 

 with hoary tomentum which soon begins to disappear ; during their first winter they are light or dark 

 brown tinged with red and clothed with short fine pubescence, and become glabrous and light brown 



or gray during their second or third years. The winter-buds are oval or ovate, about an eighth of an 



inch long, and covered by thin hght red puberulous scales. The leaves are revolute in the bud, oblong 

 or obovate, gradually or abruptly wedge-shaped or rounded or cordate at the base, and usually obtuse 

 and rounded but sometimes acute at the apex ; they are entire and often undulate, or sinuate- 

 toothed with occasional minute rigid teeth ; or near the ends of sterile branches they are frequently 

 coarsely and crenately serrate with incurved callous-tipped teeth or rarely lobed with acute oblique 

 or broad rounded lobes ; when they unfold they are Hght red and coated, Hke the petioles, with thick 

 pale rufous tomentum, which is soon replaced by scurfy pubescence ; and at maturity they are thick 

 and firm in texture, dark blue-green and glabrous or covered with scattered stellate hairs on the upper 

 surface, and pale and usually yellow-green on the lower surface, which is clothed with hght brown 

 pubescence or is puberulous or frequently glabrous ; they vary from one to three inches in length and 

 from half an inch to two inches in width, but are usually about two inches long and an inch wide, 

 with stout midribs raised and rounded on the upper side, obscure primary veins arcuate and united near 

 the margins, and slender reticulate veinlets ; and, borne on slender pubescent petioles varying from one 

 quarter to one half of an inch in length, they fall in the spring with the appearance of the new growth. 

 The stipules are oblong-obovate or linear-lanceolate, thin, scarious, Hght brown, puberulous, from one 

 haH to three quarters of an inch long and caducous. The flowers appear early in April, the staminate 

 borne in slender hairy aments two or three inches in length, the pistillate usually on slender peduncles 

 clothed, like their involucral scales, with dense pale tomentum. The calyx of the staminate flower is 

 light yellow, pilose, and divided into lanceolate acute segments rather shorter than the stamens, which 



are composed of slender filaments and oblong slightly emarginate glabrous yellow anthers. The fruit 

 is sometimes sessile, but more frequently is borne on a slender pubescent stem sometimes three quarters 

 of an inch in length ; the nut is oblong, oval, gradually narrowed and acute, or broad, full and rounded 

 at the obtuse apex, broad or narrowed at the base, dark chestnut-brown and more or less conspicuously 

 marked with darker longitudinal stripes, which soon disappear, but turning a Hght chestnut-brown as 

 it dries, from three quarters of an inch to an inch lonof and about half an inch broad ; the cup, which 



'loses about a third of the nut, is deep saucer-shaped, broad and flat on the bottom, or is cup-shaped 

 turbinate ; it is light brown and pubescent within and covered on the outer surface by ovate bright 



