CUPU LIFERS. 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA, 



lo: 



} 



QUERCUS CHRYSOLEPIS 



Live Oak. Maul Oak. 



Leaves oblong, acute or cuspidate, entire, dentate or sinuate-toothed, fulvous- 

 tomentose and ultimately pale below, persistent. 



Quercus chrysolepis, Liebmann, Overs ir/t DansJc. Vidensk. 

 Selsk. Forhandl. 1854, 173. — Bentham, PI. Hartweg. 



• « 



336 



Torrey, Bot. Ilex. Bound. Surv. 207 ; Bot. Wilkes 

 ExploT. Exped. 459. — Kellogg, Proc. CaL Acad. ii. 

 45 ; Forest Trees of California^ 73. — A. de Candolle, 

 Prodr. xvL pt. ii. 37. — Bolander, Proc. Cal. Acad. iii. 



11. 



97. 



Wenzig, Jahrh. Bot Gart. Berlin^ iii. 204. 



Sargent, Forest Trees N. 



U. S. ix. 



146. 



Wi 



Bay Region^ 302. — Coville, Contrlb. U. S. Nat. Herb. 

 iv. 196 {Bot. Death Valley Fxped.).~S. B. Parish, Zoe^ 

 iv. 346. 



231. 



Orsted, Vidensk. Medd. fra nat. For. KjobenJu Quercus fulvescens, Kellogg, Proc. Cal. Acad. i. 67 



1866, 69 ; Liebmann Chenes Am. Trop. 23, t. 47. 



(1855). — Newberry, Pacific E. B. Rep. vi. 27, f. 5 ; 89. 



Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis Acad. iii. 383, 393 ; Roth- Quercus crassipocula, Torrey, Pacific R. R. Rep. iv. pt. 



W. 



i. 137 (1856) ; V. 365, t. 9. 



This California Live Oak is usually not more than forty or fifty feet in height^ with a short trunk 



from three to five feet in diameter dividing into great horizontal hmhs^ sometimes 



space 



hundred and fifty feet across, and often sweeping the ground with 

 occasionally at 



slender often pendulous branches ; 

 low elevations in sheltered canons it produces trunks eight or nine feet in diameter ; 

 on exposed mountain-sides it forms dense thickets fifteen or twenty feet high ; and on high subalpine 

 slopes it is a low prostrate shrub. The bark of the trunk varies from three quarters of an inch to an 

 inch and a half in thickness, and is hght or dark gray-brown slightly tinged with red, the generally 

 smooth surface separating into small appressed scales. The branchlets are slender and rigid or flexible, 



and are marked with occasional elevated lenticels ; when they first appear they are coated with thick 

 fulvous tomentum, and during their first winter are dark brown somewhat tinged with red, and 

 tomentose, pubescent or glabrous, ultimately becoming light brown or ashy gray. The winter-buds are 

 broadly ovate or oval, acute, about an eighth of an inch long, and covered by closely imbricated light 

 chestnut-brown and usually puberulous scales pale and scarious on the margins. The leaves are involute 

 in the bud, oblong-ovate to elhptical, cordate, rounded or wedge-shaped at the base, acute or cuspidate 

 at the apex, mostly entire on old trees and on young ones often dentate or sinuate-dentate, with one or 

 two or many spinescent teeth, or on vigorous shoots the two forms frequently appear together 3 when 

 they unfold they are clothed with a thick tomentum of fulvous articulated hairs which soon disappears 

 from the upper and more gradually from the lower surface, and when fully grown they are thick and 



coriaceous, bright yellow-green 



and glabrous on the 



upper surface, and on the lower more or less 



f ulvous-tomentose during the first year, ultimately becoming glabrate and bluish white ; they are from 

 one to four inches long and from half an inch to two inches wide, with slender yellow midribs sHghtly 



impressed above, obscure primary veins running to 



the teeth or forked near the thickened revolute 



margins, and slender inconspicuous reticulate veinlets; they are borne on slender yellow grooved 

 petioles rarely half an inch in length, and do not fall until the third or fourth year. The stipules are 

 oblong-obovate or linear-lanceolate, clothed with fulvous tomentum, hairy at the apex, from one half to 

 three quarters of an inch long, and caducous. The flowers open in May and June, the staminate in 

 the axils of linear-lanceolate acute bracts on slender tomentose aments from two to four inches in 

 length, the pistillate sessile or subsessile or rarely borne in short few-flowered spikes. The calyx of the 



staminate flower is hght yellow and pubescent, and is divided usually into from five 



broadly 



