Quercus r 33 



evidence that this species attains so great an age. It is said that during ioo years 

 no seedling white oaks have come up in the reservation. 



Prof. Sargent took me to see a fine white oak at Ponkapoug pond, near 

 Boston, which was also very like an English park oak in habit, and measured about 

 60 ft. by 15 ft., with a spread of 40 paces. What was to my mind even more 

 striking was the inhabited house of a settler dating from 1 704, the white oak timbers 

 and part of the weather-boarding of which was still quite sound, though unpainted 

 for 200 years. 



This oak has been repeatedly tried ' in this country since its introduction in 

 1724, but has never thriven in our climate, the only specimens, except nursery plants 

 at Kew, which we have seen 2 being a stunted tree at Tortworth, scarcely 20 ft. high, 

 which was planted many years ago ; and some plants at Aldenham, with sickly 

 yellow foliage, planted eight years ago and reputed to be twenty years old from seed. 



It seems to do rather better in France, where there are three trees at Les Barres 

 in the old nursery, and some smaller ones which are not thriving. The best of them 

 measure from 40 to 45 ft. high, and some produce acorns. At Verrieres le Buisson, 

 near Paris, in M. Philippe de Vilmorin's garden, there is a fairly healthy and well- 

 grown tree, which, when I saw it last in 1905, measured 58 ft. by 4 ft. 2 in. 



(H. j. E.) 



QUERCUS LYRATA, Overcup Oak 



Quercus lyrata, Walter, Fl. Car. 235 (1788); Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. iii. 187 1 (1838); Sargent, 

 Silva N. Amer. viii. 47, t. 374 (1895), and Trees N. Amer. 268 (1905). 



A tree, attaining in America 100 ft. in height and 9 ft. in girth, but usually 

 smaller. Bark broken into scaly plates. Young branchlets glabrous. Leaves 

 (Plate 336, Fig. 31) deciduous and turning scarlet in autumn, 6 to 8 in. long, 2 to 3 

 in. wide, obovate, cuneate at the base, obtuse or acute at the apex, with five to nine 

 lobes, the upper two lateral lobes broad, emarginate, and much larger than the middle 

 and basal triangular lobes ; upper surface dull green, with quickly deciduous minute 

 scattered pubescence ; lower surface pale, covered throughout with a minute 

 pubescence ; petiole \ to | in. long, glabrous or with a few hairs. 



Fruit ripening in the first year, sessile or on slender pubescent stalks ; acorn 

 pubescent in its upper half, almost or entirely enclosed in a nearly spherical thin 

 cupule, pubescent within and covered with ovate tomentose scales, thick and twisted 

 in the basal ranks, thinner and forming a ragged edge at the margin of the cupule. 



This species is a native of river swamps and wet alluvial land, from Maryland 



1 Loudon, in Gard. Mag. xix. 124 (1843), states that hundreds, even thousands of pounds, had been spent fruitlessly in 

 the importation of acorns from America. In 1843, 30,000 plants which had been sent from New York, packed with moss in 

 barrels, were said to have been thriving in a favourable soil in Surrey, but doubtless these soon perished. 



2 Loudon's account in Arb. et Frut. Brit. iii. 1868 (1838), of white oaks of large size in England is erroneous. In Gard. 

 Mag. xviii. 656 (1842), he admits that there was only one tree known to him in England, growing in Loddiges' nursery. This 

 was probably a young specimen. A supposed Q. alba at Muswell Hill was cut down in 1839, and a tree bearing that name at 

 York House, Twickenham, was ascertained to be Q. Prinus by Loudon. Henry visited York House in 1904, and found no 

 trace of this American oak. 



