106 



SILVA OF NORTH AMEBIC A. 



CUPULIFERiE. 



ovate acute lobes ciliate on the margins and often tino^ed with red above the middle. The stamens are 

 composed of slender filaments and large oblong acute cuspidate glabrous yellow anthers. The broadly 

 ovate involucral scales of the pistillate flower are coated with fulvous tomentum, and the stigmas are 

 bright red. The fruit, wliich ripens in the autumn of its second year, is usually solitary, and is sessile 

 or short-stalked ; the nut is oval or ovate, acute or rounded at the full or narrow slightly puberulous 

 apex, light chestnut-brown, from half an inch to nearly two inches long and about half as wide, with a 

 thick shell covered on the inner surface, especially toward the apex, by a thin coat of loose pale tomen- 

 tiun, abortive ovules scattered irregularly over the side of the seed, and distinct or sometimes connate 

 cotyledons ; the cup is thin, hemispherical or turbinate, or thick and saucer-shaped, with a thick broad 

 rim ; it is pale green or dark reddish brown within, and covered by small triangular closely appressed 

 scales which are clothed with hoary pubescence or are often hidden in a dense coat of fulvous tomentum, 



and are produced into short free tip 



Q 



chrysolepisy although 



gregarious tree, and often grows singly 



It 



distributed from Cow Creek Valley in southern Oregon along the California coast ranges and the 

 western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, San Bernardino, San Jacinto, and Cuyamaca Mountains, and south- 



d to Mt. San Pedro Martir in Lower California 



2 



d as a low shrub or occasionally 



from 



twenty to thirty feet tall it grows on the high summits of the mountain ranges of southern Arizona 

 and New Mexico and of northern Sonora. Generally a small tree in Oregon, or often a shrub producing 

 small leaves and small fruit with thin deep cups clothed with pale tomentum, Qiiereiis chrysolejns 

 attains its greatest size with large leaves and large thick-cupped acorns on the steep rocky slopes of the 

 canons of the coast ranges of central California and on the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, which it 

 ascends to from eight to nine thousand feet above the sea, gradually decreasing in size and producing 

 smaller leaves and fruit ; ^ at its highest elevations it is reduced to a shrub,* which sometimes extends 

 over great areas in dense thickets of slender rigid or semiprostrate stems often only two or three feet 

 tall, with entire or remotely dentate oblong or oval leaves acute or rounded at the base, acute or rounded 

 at the apex, and rarely an inch in length, ovate or oval acute nuts sometimes not more than half an 

 inch long, with purple separable cotyledons, and shallow cup-shaped or turbinate cups. Near the boun- 

 dary between California and Lower California a form of this species, discovered by Dr. Edward Palmer ^ 



The cups of cliflPerent individuals of this species vary more than 



W 



those of any other North American Oak. In Oregon and often at sentatives in the Sixteenth Congress, His love of flowers could for- 



high elevations in California they are clothed with hoary pubescence tunately be gratified by several good gardens in the neighborhood 



and produced into long light red tips ; in the coast ranges and on of Cleveland, in which he passed all of his spare time. In 1853 he 



the foothills of the Sierra Nevada they are more often flat, very was appointed collector to an expedition sent by the government 



thick, sometimes fully an inch across, with broad rims, and so cov- of the United States to Paraguay. Two years later he returned 



ered with fulvous tomentum that the scales are indistinguishable ; to Cleveland and obtained some instruction in medicine. In 1861, 



aud on the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona, and on the Siski- having previously resided in Colorado, he went to San Francisco, 



you and other high mountain ranges of northern California, they and, connecting himself with the Geological Survey of California, 



are small and deeply cup-shaped and are covered with red-brown was stationed at San Diego. Anxious, however, to take some part 



slightly pubescent scales, much thickened on the back toward the in the Civil War, he returned to the East and secured the position 



base of the cup, aud towards its rim produced into short free tips. of hospital steward in a Colorado regiment, serving in the west in 



2 Brandegee, Zoi'^ iv. 209. 



8 Garden and Forest, v. 121, f. 20. 



ifolia, Ee 

 ^ Watson 



this capacity until 1865, when he was appointed one of the 

 tract surgeons of the army and stationed in Kansas, and in Arizona 

 where he remained for several years, beginning at this time his 

 real work as a collector. Since leaving the army Dr. Palmer has 



Weuzig, Jahrb. Bot, Gart. Berlin, iii. 204. 

 A^. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 146. 



ifoli 



West 



Wilton 



Sargent, Forest Trees devoted himself to collecting plants and other natural objects, prin- 

 cipally in the employ of the Smithsonian Institution and the De- 

 partment of Agriculture of the United States. He has made large 

 and important collections along the southern boundary of the United 

 States from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to those of the Pacific 



1833. 



His father was a commercial florist, and he early acquired Ocean, and in many of the Mexican states. 



knowledg 



He 



came 



In his long, laborious, and arduous career as a collector, Dr. 



to America in 1849 with a family of friends and settled in Cleve- Palmer has discovered many valuable and important plants, 

 land, Ohio, where he was first occupied as attendant and nurse to Palmerella, a genus of Californian herbs of the Mint family, was 



