CUPULIFER^. 



SILVA OF NORTE AMERICA. 



103 



QUERCUS EMORYI 



Black Oak. 



Leaves oblong-lanceolate, acute, entire or repand-serrate, coriaceous, dark green 



Quercus Emoryi, Torrey, Emory's Eep. 151, t. 9 (excl. f. 

 2) (1848) ; Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 206 ; Pacific E. E. 



OaJcs, 45. 



(Man. PL W. Texas). 



Nat. Serb 



Eejo. iv. pt. i. 138 ; Ives' Eep. 28. — Engelmann, Trans. Quercus hastata, Liebmann, Oversigt Dansk. Vidensk 



St. Louis Acad. iii. 382, 387, 394 ; Eothrock Wheeler's 

 Eep. vi. 250. — Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. iii. 170 

 (excl. syn. Quercus pungens) . — Sargent, Forest Trees JSf. 

 Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 146. — Greene, West Am. 



Selsk. Forhandl. 1854, 171. — A. de Candolle, Prodr 



xvi. pt. ii. 36. — Orsted, 



Medd. fi 



Kjobenh 

 Wenzig, 



Liebmann Chmes Am. Trop. 22. 



A tree, usually thirty or forty feet in height, with a short trunk two or three feet in diameter and 

 b rigid rather drooping branches which form a round-topped symmetrical head ; sometimes sixty 

 iventy feet high, with a trunk-diameter of four or five feet and a head occasionally one hundred 



across ; and often at high elevations or on exposed mountain-slopes reduced to a low shrub. ^ The 

 bark of the trunk is from one to two inches in thickness, very dark brown or nearly black, and deeply 



feet 



divided into large oblong thick plates separating 



rface into small thin closely appressed 



scales. The branchlets are slender, rigid, and marked with small pale 



d when they first 



appear 



are coated with close hoary tomentum, which covers them during the summer ; in their first 

 they are rather bright red and pubescent or tomentose, and then gradually become glabrous 



an inch lone*, and 



d dark red-brown or black. The winter-buds are oval, acute, nearly a quarter of 



covered by closely imbricated thin light chestnut-b 

 point of the bud clothed with loose pale pubescence 



n scales, ciliate with pale hairs, and toward the 

 The leaves are revolute in vernation, oblong-lan- 



d mucronate at the apex, cordate or rarely rounded at the slightly narrowed base, and 



itely rep and 



with from one to five pairs of acute rigid oblique teeth j when they 



unfold they are thin, light green, more or less tinged with red and coated with silvery white tomentum, 

 which is thickest on the lower surface and on the petioles ; this rapidly disappears, with the exception 

 of two large persistent tufts of white hairs, which usually remain on the under surface at the base of 

 the midrib, and at maturity they are thick, rigid and coriaceous, dark green, very lustrous and glabrous 

 or coated with minute stellate hairs above, and below pale and glabrous, or puberulous especially along 

 the slender midribs, which are raised and rounded on the upper side, and the primary veins, which are 

 often more prominent on the upper than on the lower surface of the leaf and are arcuate and united 

 close to the thickened revolute margins ; they are obscurely reticulate-venulose, and vary from one to 

 two and a half inches in length and from half an inch to an inch in width, and, borne on stout slightly 

 pubescent petioles, fall gradually in April with the unfolding of the flowers. The stipules are obovate- 



oblong or linear-lanceolate, brown 



and scarious, ciliate on the margins, from half an inch to an inch 

 long, and caducous. The staminate flowers are produced in hoary-tomentose aments, from two to three 

 inches in length ; the calyx is light yeUow, hairy on the outer surface, and divided into from five to 

 seven ovate acute lobes ; the stamens are composed of short slender filaments and large oblong, acute, 

 or rounded yellow glabrous anthers. The pistillate flowers are sessile or borne on short peduncles, 

 clothed, like the involucral scales, with hoary tomentum. The fruit, which matures during the first sea- 

 son, ripens irregularly from June until September, and is sessile or short-stalked j the nut is oblong, oval 

 or ovate, narrowed at the base and rounded at the narrow pilose apex, from one half to three quarters 



^ Tourney, Garden and Forest, viii. 13. 



