184 



8ILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. cupulifer^. 



and thin or thick primary veins running obliquely to the points of the teeth^ or in entire leaves usually 

 forked and united near the margins^ and connected by straight secondary veins and fine conspicuous 

 reticulate veinlets j they are borne on stout rigid tomentose petioles from one half to three quarters of 

 an inch in length and do not fall until the end of the third or sometimes not until the end of the fourth 

 year. The stipules vary from oblong-ob ovate to hnear-lanceolate^ and are brown and scarious^ coated 

 on the outer sm^face^ especially along the midribs^ with long pale hairs^ and caducous^ or those of the 

 last leaves are frequently persistent during the winter. The flowers usually appear in early spring and 

 frequently also irregularly during the autumn and winter^ and are borne in unisexual staminate and in 

 androgynous aments which are produced from the axils of leaves of the year or from the inner scales 

 of the terminal bud^ or sometimes from separate buds in the axils of leaves of the previous year, and 

 are erect, stout-stemmed, tomentose, and three or four inches in length. The staminate flowers are 

 borne in three-flowered clusters crowded on the aments, covered before anthesis with thick hoary 

 tomentum, and subtended by ovate rounded tomentose bracts, the two lateral flowers in the cluster 

 being furnished with similar although smaller bracts j the calyx is tomentose and divided into five 

 nearly triangular acute lobes ; there are ten stamens with slender elongated filaments, small oblong 

 emarginate anthers, minute pollen grains, and an acute hairy abortive ovary. The pistiUate flowers, 

 which are scattered at the base of the upper aments, are sohtary in the axils of acute tomentose bracts, 

 and are furnished with two acute bractlets ; the ovary is ovate-oblong, slightly contracted below the 

 six rounded calyx-lobes, coated like them with pale hairs, and inclosed in the tomentose involucral 

 scales ; at the base of each calyx-lobe is inserted a bright red stamen with a slender exserted filament 

 and a minute abortive anther ) the styles are elongated, slightly spreading, three in number, Kght green, 

 and dark and stigmatic at the apex. The fruit, which ripens at the end of the second season, is solitary 

 or often in pairs, and is borne on a stout tomentose peduncle from half an inch to nearly an inch in 

 length ; the nut is oval or ovate, full and rounded at the base, gradually narrowed and full and rounded 

 or acute at the apex, coated when fully grown with scurfy pubescence, but glabrous light yellow-brown 

 and lustrous at maturity, from three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half long and from half an 

 inch to nearly an inch broad, with a thick hard shell lined with a thick coat of fulvous tomentum, a 

 thick red-brown seed-coat, abortive ovules near the apex of the seed, and light yellow bitter cotyledons ; 

 the cup, which embraces only the base of the nut, is thin and woody, shallow and cup-shaped, tomentose 

 with lustrous red-brown hairs on the inner surface, and covered by long linear rigid spreading or 

 recurved light brown scales coated with pale stellate hairs, often tipped, especially while young, with 

 dark red glands, and often clothed near the base of the cup with thick pale or fulvous tomentum. 



Querciis densiflora is distributed from the valley of the Umpqua River in southern Oregon south- 

 ward through the coast ranges to the Santa Inez Mountains ^ east of Santa Barbara, California, and 

 along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, which it ascends to an elevation of four thousand feet 

 above the level of the sea, to Mariposa County. Exceedingly abundant in the humid Cahfornia coast 

 region north of San Francisco Bay, the Tan Bark Oak grows to its largest size in the Redwood forests 

 of Napa and Mendocino Counties ; farther north and south, and on the Sierras, it is much less abundant 

 and of smaUer size. 



The wood of Qiierciis densiflora is hard, strong, and close-grained but brittle ; it is bright reddish 

 brown, with very thick darker brown sapwood,^ and contains broad bands of small open ducts parallel 

 to the thin dark conspicuous medullary rays. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.6827, 

 a cubic foot weighing 42.55 pounds. Of little value for construction, it is largely consumed as fuel. 



The bark, which is exceedingly rich in tannin, is largely used for tanning leather,^ and is preferred 

 for this purpose to that of any other tree of the forests of Pacific North America. 



Barclay Hazard, Erythea, i. 159. 



and twenty-seven layers of annual growth, of which one hundred 



2 The log specimen in the Jesup Collection of North American and one are sapwood. 

 Woods in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, « The value of the bark has caused the destruction of most of 



is eighteen inches in diameter inside the bark, with one hundred the large specimens of Quercus densiflora in all accessible situa- 



