CUPULIEEK^. 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA, 



115 



QUERCUS PUMILA. 



Running Oak. 



Leaves oblong or elliptical, lanceolate or oblong-obovate, usually entire, glabrous or 

 coated with pale pubescence on the lower surface. 



Quercus pumila, Walter, Fl. Car. 234 (1788). — Michaux 

 f. Hist. Arh. Am. ii. 84, t. 15. — Persoon, Syn.ii. 567. 

 Nuttall, Gen. ii. 214. — Elliott, Sk. ii. 594. — Engelmann, 

 Trans. St. Louis Acad. iii. 384. 



Quercus Phellos (pumila), Michaux, Hist. Chenes Am. 

 No. 7, t. 13, f. 1 (1801). — Spach, Hist. V6g. xi. 161. 



syn, Aiton). — Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. ii. 626 (excl. syn. 

 Alton). — Nouveau Duhamel, vii. 150. — Sprengel, Syst. 

 ill. 858. — Dietrich, Syn. v. 307 (excl. habitat). 

 Quercus cinerea, var. pumila, Curtis. Rep. Geolorj. Surv. 

 N. Cor. 1860, iii. 37. — Chapman, Fl. 421. — A. de Can- 

 dolle, Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 74. 



Dippel, Handh. Laubholzk. ii. 107. — Koehne, Deutsche Quercus Phellos, e nana, A. de CandoUe, Prodr. xvi. pt. ii 



Dendr. 131. 

 Quercus sericea, Willdenow, Spec. iv. pt. i. 424 (excl. syn 



Aiton) (1805). — Poiret, iam. Diet. Suppl. ii. 212 (excl 



74 (1864). 



Quercus pumila, var. sericea, Engelmann, Tran^. St. 



Louis Acad. iii. 384 (1876). 



A shrub, spreading by underground stolons into broad thickets sometimes several acres in extent 

 and occasionally rising to the height of ten or twelve feet, with many slender intricately branched stems 

 one or two inches in diameter ; usually smaller and often producing flowers and fruit when only a few 

 inches high. The slender rigid branchlets are coated at first with hoary tomentum or are covered with 

 scattered caducous stellate hairs, but soon become glabrous and during their first winter are bright or 

 dark reddish brown or ashy gray. The winter-buds are acute, from a sixteenth to an eighth of an inch 

 in length, and covered by numerous thin bright chestnut-brown closely imbricated scales. The leaves 

 are revolute in the bud, oblong, elliptical, lanceolate, or obovate-oblong, wedge-shaped or rounded at 

 the narrow base, and acute or rarely rounded and apiculate at the apex ; or on vigorous young shoots 

 they are sometimes ovate or oblong and deeply and very irregularly lobed with acute spreading apiculate 

 lobes, or are sometimes broadly obovate and entire or slightly sinuate-dentate toward the rounded 

 apex ; when they unfold they are coated with hoary tomentum which is thickest on the lower surface or 

 with scattered stellate hairs, and at maturity they are thick and firm, dark green and rather lustrous 

 above, yellow-green and glabrous or coated with pale lustrous pubescence below, from one to four inches 

 long and from one half to three quarters of an inch wide, with stout yellow midribs slightly rounded on 

 the upper side, obscure primary veins arcuate and united near the margins, and fine reticulate veinlets ; 

 they are borne on stout yellow grooved petioles rarely a quarter of an inch in length and fall gradually 

 in the spring with or after the appearance of the new growth. The stipules are obovate-oblong, brown 

 and scarious, from one half to three quarters of an inch long, and caducous. The flowers appear in 

 April with the first unfolding of the leaves, the staminate borne in villous aments two or three inches 

 in length, the pistillate sessile or raised on short peduncles. The calyx of the staminate flower is light 

 yellow, thin and scarious, and divided into broadly ovate slightly ciliate segments shorter than the 

 stamens, which are usually four in number, with slender filaments and ovate emarginate glabrous yellow 

 anthers. The involucral scales of the pistillate flower are coated, like its peduncles, with hoary 

 tomentum, and the styles are long and recurved. The fruit, which ripens in the autumn of the first 

 season, is sessile or subsessile and usually solitary ; the nut is subglobose, generally rather longer than 

 broad, full and rounded at the apex, which is covered with pale pubescence, about half an inch long 

 and dark chestnut-brown, lustrous, and sometimes striate at maturity, but becoming light brown in 

 drying, with a thick shell lined with pale tomentum and bright orange-colored cotyledons ; the cup is 



