156 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



CUPULIFERiE. 



an inch and a half to three inches and a half wide^ with stout yellow midribs, slender primary veins 

 rmming obliquely to the points of the lobes, and obscure secondary veins arcuate and united near the 

 margins and connected by conspicuous primary reticulate veinlets ; they are borne on slender nearly 

 terete glabrous or pubescent petioles from an inch to an inch and a half in length, and in the autumn 

 turn dull scarlet or yellow before falhng. The stipules are linear-ob ovate to linear-lanceolate, brown 

 and scarious, pubescent on the outer surface, ciliate on the margins, and caducous. The flowers appear 

 in April and May when the leaves are about half grown 3 the staminate in the axils of linear-lanceolate 

 bright red caducous bracts furnished at the ends with tufts of long pale hairs are borne on hairy- 

 stemmed aments four or five inches in length and often persistent until midsummer 3 the pistillate are 

 raised on stout tomentose peduncles. The bud of the staminate flower is bright red and coated with 

 matted soft white hairs ^ the calyx after opening is red or green tinged with red, and irregularly divided 

 into from three to five ovate rounded lobes shorter than the stamens ; these are from three to five in 

 number, with oblong sometimes apiculate anthers at first bright red but gradually becoming yellow. 



The involucral scales of the pistillate flower are ovate, about as long as the 

 covered with tomentum, and the stigmas are darker red. 



acute calyx-lobes, red and 

 The acorns, which are produced in great 

 profusion and ripen during the autumn of the second season, are sessile or borne on stout peduncles 

 sometimes half an inch long, and are in pairs or rarely solitary ; the nut is ovoid, broad, flat or rounded 

 at the base, gradually narrowed and acute or rounded at the apex, about half an inch in length, and 

 somewhat less in breadth, light brown, lustrous and usually faintly striate, with a thin shell lined with 

 a thick coat of pale tomentum and light yellow astringent cotyledons ; the cup, which embraces about 

 half the nut, is cup-shaped or saucer-shaped and often abruptly enlarged above the stalk-like base ; it is 

 thick, light reddish brown and puberulous within, and covered by thin ovate closely imbricated reddish 

 brown puberulous scales darker on the margins and acute or truncate at the apex, the minute free tips 

 of the upper scales forming a fringe-like border to the cup.^ 



Querciis nana inhabits dry sandy barrens and rocky hillsides, and is distributed from the island 

 of Mt. Desert, off the coast of Maine,^ southward through eastern and southern New England, where it 



it occurs on the shores of Lake George ^ and in the valley of the Hudson River in New 

 York, and is abundant in the Pine barrens of New Jersey and in eastern Pennsylvania, and ranges 

 along the Alleghany Mountains to southwestern Virginia.'* 



Discovered in Virginia by the English missionary John Banister,^ Qiierctis nana was included in 

 his catalogue of American plants published by Ray in 1688,^ and was first described by Clayton in 

 Flora VirginicaJ 



IS common 



the 



1 A tree, forty feet high, found by Dr. J. W. Robbins in 1855 in ance of being a hybrid between Quercus nana and Quercus velutina. 



a wood half a mile southwest of Whitinsville in IS^orthbridge, The leaves are oblong, sinuate-lobed with five acute nearly trian- 



Worcester County, Massachusetts, is believed to have been a hybrid gular bristle-pointed lobes which are entire or furnished with oeca- 



between Quercus nana and Quercus coccinea {Quercus coccinea X sional small teeth, from five to seven inches long and from three to 



iliclfoliay Gray, Man. ed. .5, 454. — Quercus ilicifolia X coccineay four inches wide, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface and 



Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis Acad. iii. 542). The leaves are ob- brown and pubescent on the lower. The winter-buds are ovate, 



long or oblong-obovate, sinuate-lobed with five acute bristle-pointed pilose with pale hairs, and intermediate in size between those of 



lobes, conspicuously reticulate-venulose, coated below with rusty the supposed parents. This plant is a shrub, with three or four 



pubescence, four or five inches in length and about three and a stems rising to a height of twelve feet. 



2 Rand & Eedfield, FL ML Desert Island, 145. 



^ Teste Herb. Engelmann, 



half inches in breadth. The nut is oval, narrowed and rounded at 

 the apex, from one half to three quarters of an inch long, and in- 

 closed to the middle in the turbinate cup, which is covered by thin ^ In 1894 Quercus nana was found by Mr. J. K. Small on King 

 closely imbricated light chestnut-brown scales. The pubescence and Crowder's Mountains on the northern boundary of North Car- 

 which clothes the branchlets during the first season and the lower olina, the most southern recorded stations for this species, which 

 surface of the leaves resembles that of Quercus nana» The leaves, apparently does not reach central New York, nor cross the AUe- 

 as Dr. Engelmann pointed out, are more like those of Quercus rubra ghany Mountains into the Mississippi Basin, 



than of Quercus coccinea in shape. The fruit, although the cups 

 are a little deeper, is otherwise hardly distinguishable from that of 

 some forms of Quercus nana. ' 



At Ocean Grove, New Jersey, in 1892, Mr. J, K. Hayward 189. 

 found in a small wood a plant without fruit which has the appear- 



5 See i. 6. 



® Quercus pumilaj Hist, PL ii. 1927- 



Quercus pumila hipedalis, foUis ohlongis sinuatis subtus tomentosis, 



