112 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA, 



CUPULIFER^. 



they vary from three quarters of an inch to four inches in length and from half an inch to three inches 

 in width, with slender midribs and few primary veins often forking near the thickened strongly revo- 

 lute margins and running to the points of the teeth, and obscure reticulate veinlets ; borne on stout or 

 slender pubescent or glabrous petioles from half an inch to nearly an inch in length, they fall gradually 

 during the winter, disappearing entirely from some individuals before the appearance of the new growth 

 in the spring, or on others persisting several weeks longer. The stipules are ob ovate-oblong or linear- 

 lanceolate, brown and scarious, about half an inch long, and caducous. The flowers open early in the 

 spring and sometimes, when insects ^ have injured the early foHage or abundant autumn rains have stim- 

 ulated a second growth, again late in the season ; the staminate are borne in slender hairy aments three 

 or four inches long from the axils of bud-scales or from those of leaves of the year, and the pistillate 

 are sessile or short-pedunculate. The calyx of the staminate flower, which in the bud is bright purple- 

 red and sometimes furnished with a tuft of long pale hairs at the apex, is thin, scarious, glabrous or 

 glabrate, and divided nearly to the base into from five to seven ovate acute segments reddish above the 

 middle and shorter than the stamens, which vary from six to ten in number, and are composed of slen- 

 der filaments and oblong emarginate glabrous yellow anthers. The involucral scales of the pistillate 

 flower, like the stigmas, are bright red, and are coated with thick hoary tomentum or are sometimes 

 glabrous or puberulous. Rarely the flowers are perfect and are produced in elongated spikes.^ The 

 fruit is sessile or subsessile, solitary or in few-fruited clusters, and ripens in the autumn ; or the smaU fruit 

 of autumnal flowers sometimes remains on the branches during the winter and increases in size in the 

 spring, but falls before reaching maturity ; the nut is elongated, ovate, abruptly narrowed at the base, 

 gradually narrowed to the acute puberulous apex, light chestnut-brown, from three quarters of an inch 

 to an inch and one half long and from one quarter to three quarters of an inch wide, with a thin shell 

 lined with a thick coat of pale tomentum, abortive ovules at the apex of the seed, and yellow cotyledons ; 

 the cup, which embraces about a third or rarely only the base of the nut, is thin, turbinate, light brown 

 and coated on the inner surface with soft pale silky pubescence, and is covered by thin papery scales 

 rounded at the narrow apex and slightly puberulous, especially toward the base of the cup. 



Quercus agrifoUa, which usually forms open groves often of great extent, is distributed from Men- 

 docino County, California, southward through the coast ranges and islands to Mt. San Pedro Martir in 



Lower Cahfornia.^ Less common at the north, it is very abundant and grows to its largest size in the 

 valleys south of San Francisco Bay, and with low semiprostrate and contorted stems frequently covers 

 the sand-dunes on the coast of the central part of the state. In southwestern California it is the largest 

 and most generally distributed Oak-tree between the mountains and the sea, often covering low hiUs 

 and ascending to an elevation of twenty-eight hundred feet above the level of the ocean in the canons 

 of the San Gorgonio Pass.* 



The wood of Quei^cus agri folia is heavy, hard, and close-grained, but very brittle ; it is lio-ht brown 



reddish brown, with thick darker colored sapwood, and 



many large open ducts arranged 



several rows paraUel with the broad conspicuous medullary rays, the layers of annual o-powth beino- 

 hardly distinguishable. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.8253, a cubic foot weio-h- 



51.43 Dounds 



Valued and largely used for fuel, it is httle esteemed for other purposes. The 



,n important article of food to the Indians of Lower CaHfornia 



The first authentic reference to Quercus agrifoUa was published in 1798 in the narrative of the 



In the neighborhood of the Bay of San Francisco, trees of this » Brandegee, Zoe iv. 209. 



species are often stunted by the annual destruction of the foliage 



4 S. B. Parish, Zoe, iv. 346. 



Californica, Packard (Fifth 



Comm. 122. 

 Inhabitants, 1). 



jf Berkeley and Some of 



tntomolog. 6 The nuts of Quercus agrifoUa are considered by the Indians of 



heir Insect Lower California superior to those of all other acorns. After 



taking off the shells they grind the seeds into flour, which is 

 Oaks, 8) thoroughly washed to remove its astringency, and then boiled 

 found a tree on the island of Santa Cruz with perfect spieate flow- with water into mush or rolled into balls and baked in the ashes 

 era on erect rigid peduncles (Plate cccciv. f. 4). (Palmer Am. Nat. xii. SPB^l 



West 



