White Oaks 307 



Although not entirely immune, they are remarkably free from insect 

 trouble and disease. The foliage of most oaks has a long period and 

 continues to hang on in the dry condition, or, in the case of exotics, 

 green into the winter. 



The great variety of outline and of pleasing leaf shapes and leaf 

 colors, with rich tones in autumn, the sturdiness of growth and stateli- 

 ness of form, the freedom from disease, the easy adaptation to soil, 

 the wide climatic range, the rapidity and persistency of growth, and 

 the ease of repairing damage — all these qualities combine to make the 

 oaks, together with the maples, the most useful trees in landscape 

 gardening. Most of them are spreading in habit, with a bold, free, and 

 usually irregular, outline. For best effects they demand large space. 



Botanically as well as from the ornamental point of view, the oaks 

 may be divided into four groups. The "white" oaks, which mature 

 their fruit in one year, receive their name from the light gray color of 

 their bark, and have their foliage with rounded indentations or lobes. 

 The "black" oaks, which mature their fruit in two years, have a dark- 

 colored bark, and their leaves with sharp-cornered indentations or 

 lobes, or else entire and bristle-pointed, and a few with entire oblong 

 foliage. In addition to these two botanical classes we may segregate 

 the evergreen or "live" oaks, which botanically belong mostly to the 

 white oaks, although their foliage resembles more the black oaks; and 

 the " scrub " oaks, which, mostly with black oak foliage, form spread- 

 ing shrubs. These latter grow on the poorest, driest soils, and can be 

 used for covering barren, rocky ridges and hillsides. 



A. WHITE OAKS 



Q. alba Linn. (285) is the type While Oak, a noble tree, of wide 

 distribution from Maine to Texas, the finest specimen tree where full 

 space is allowed it. Nothing more impressive can be imagined than a 

 fully developed, broad-crowned specimen of this species. The bright 

 green foliage of narrow, obtusely lobed leaves is quite variable in differ- 

 ent individuals, turning violet-purple in the fall. The bark is light 

 gray and flaky. It is a fairly rapid grower, adapted to any soil, but best 

 developed in good loam. 



Foliage of similar outline, but longer (five to eight inches), and 

 more lyre-shaped, also whitish beneath, is characteristic of the follow- 

 ing three: 



