176 



SILVA OF NOETH AMERICA. 



CUPULLFERJE. 



acute, scarious; from one half to two thirds of an inch long, and caducous. The flowers open in April 

 and May when the leaves are about one third grown, the staminate borne in the axils of linear lanceo- 

 late scarious caducous bracts on hoary tomentose aments two or three inches in length, and the pistillate 

 on slender tomentose peduncles.^ The calyx of the staminate flower is light yellow, pubescent and 

 divided into four acute segments j the stamens number four or five, with oblong emarginate and shghtly 

 apiculate glabrous yellow anthers. The involucral scales of the pistillate flower are about as long as the 

 acute calyx-lobes and are coated with pale pubescence ; the stigmas are short, reflexed, and usually 

 greenish yellow. The fruit, which ripens during the autumn of the second year, is solitary or in pairs 

 and is borne on a stout peduncle sometimes nearly half an inch long; the nut is nearly as broad as it is 

 long, full and rounded at the base, gradually narrowed but full and rounded at the apex, dark chestnut- 

 brown, often obscurely striate, and from one half to two thirds of an inch in lei 



& 



th, with a thin shell 



lined with rusty tomentum,and dark orange-brown cotyledons; the cup, which embraces from one third 

 to one half of the nut, is thin, cup-shaped or turbinate, bright red-brown and lustrous on the inner 

 surface, and covered by thin ovate light red-brown scales rounded or acute at the apex and coated with 

 pale pubescence except on their darker colored margins. 



Quevcus imhricaria is distributed from Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, westward through southern 

 Michigan and Wisconsin to northern Missouri ^ and northeastern Kansas,^ and southward to the District 

 of Columbia,^ along the Alleghany Mountains, which it ascends to elevations of about four thousand 

 feet, to northern Georgia and Alabama and to middle Tennessee and northern Arkansas.^ It inhabits 

 rich uplands and occasionally the fertile bottom-lands of rivers, and, comparatively rare in the east, is 

 one of the most abundant Oaks of the basin of the lower Ohio, growing probably to its largest size in 

 southern Indiana and Illmois.^ Trees which are believed to be hybrids between Quercus imhricaria 

 and Quercus Marilandica^ Quercus velutina^^ and Quercus palustris ^ have been observed. 



1 On a young tree in the Arnold Arboretum the pistillate flow- 

 ers are occasionally scattered at the base of the staminate aments. 



2 Broadhead, BoL Gazette^ iii. 60. 



3 Mason, Eighth Bienn. Rep, State Board Agric. Kansas, 272. 



4 L. F. Ward, Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 22, 113 (FL Washing- 

 ton). 



^ Harvey, Am. Jour. Forestry, i. 454. 

 6 Ridgway, Proc. U. S. Nat. Herb. v. 80. 

 ' Quercus imiricaria X Marilandica. 



Quercus Leanay Nuttall, Sylva, i. 13*, t. 6 bis (1842). — Lea, 

 Cat. PL Cincinnati, 30. — A. de CandoUe, L v. 62. — L. F. Ward, 

 Field and Forest, i. 41: Bot. Gazette, v. 123: Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. 



Washing t 



Sargent, Garden and Forest, ii. 471. 



gelm 



ccccxxxiv 



nati, Ohio, sixty or seventy years ago by Mr. Thomas G. Lea, and 

 has since been found, usually in solitary specimens, in widely sep- 

 arated localities from the District of Columbia and the banks of 

 Quercus nigra, P tridentata, A. de Candolle, Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 64 the Tuckasegee and of the Tennessee in western North Carolina 



(1864). 



to southern Michigan, central and northern Illinois and southeast- 



Quercus imhricaria X nigra, Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis Acad. ern Missouri. The winter-buds are acute, puberulous, and about 



iii. 539 (1877). 



half an inch long. The leaves are convolute in the bud, from ob- 



A small tree (Plate ccccxxxiii.) found by Dr. Engelmann eight long-obovate to lanceolate, entire, sinuate-dentate or dentate-lobed 



miles west of St. Louis in the autumn of 1849, and soon afterwards with acute or rounded bristle-tipped lobes acute or rounded or 



destroyed, was believed by him to be a hybrid between the Shingle broad and slightly three-lobed at the apex and gradually narrowed 



Oak and the Black Jack. The leaves were elliptical to obovate in and wedge-shaped or rounded at the base ; when they unfold they 



outline, entire or three-toothed or lobed at the apex and occasion- are scurfy-pubescent on the upper surface, and coated on the lower 



ally furnished with lateral teeth, rounded or acute at the base, with thick pale tomentum, and at maturity are thick and firm, dark 



dark green and lustrous above, pale and glabrate below, from four green and lustrous above and rusty brown and puberulous below, 



from four to six inches long and from two to three inches wide, 



to seven inches long and from two to three inches broad. The fruit 

 was sessile with a p'lobose nut inclosed to the middle in a hemi- 



with 



spherical turbinate cup covered by thin rather closely imbricated one to two inches in length. The fruit is subsessile or is borne on 



a stout peduncle rarely half an inch long and is usually solitary; 



with 



with 



W 



Letterman the nut is oblong, full and rounded at both ends or subglobose, and 



near AUenton, Missouri ; shoots of Quercus imhricaria with large is inclosed nearly to the middle in the turbinate hemispherical cup 



obovate three-toothed leaves were collected at Lancaster, Penn- covered by ovate loosely imbricated pubescent light red-brown 



sylvania, by Mr. John K. Small, in August, 1890; and it is not scales. Some individual leaves of this tree are not distinguishable 



improbable that all these individuals are extreme forms of Quercus from those of Quercus imhricaria, which it resembles in habit and 



imhricaria rather than hybrids, as this species shows a strong ten- g 



dency to leaf and cup variation. 

 ^ Quercus imhricaria x velutina. 



velutina 



® Quercus imhricaria x palustris, Engelmann, Z. c. 



A single small tree noticed by Dr. Engelmann near St. Louis in 



