OAKS OF PACIFIC SLOPE. 159 



OAKS OF CALIFORNIA. 



ALSO OREGON AND WASHINGTON. 



1. Quercus lobata. Nee, 1801. VALLEY OAK. 



Monarch of the Pacific tribe, the largest and most conspicuous of the 

 West-American oaks, is 60 to 80, often over 100 feet high, with a trunk 

 5 to 8, often 15 to 20 feet in diameter. Dividing often near the base, 

 the large branches radiate to form a broad head, often 100 to 200 feet 

 across. Peculiar for its large, oblong, deeply-lobed, shining leaves, its 

 long, slender, often drooping, sterile branchlets, resembling a weeping 

 willow, and for its very long, narrow acorns, 1^ to 2 inches long. Hook- 

 er's Oak, on General Bidwell's farm near Chico, Cal. (named in honor 

 of Sir Joseph Hooker, who visited the tree, with Dr. Asa Gray, in 1877), 

 was then 150 feet in spread of branches, and the trunk was 6^ feet in. 

 diameter. In Napa and Capay Valleys are some oaks over 20 feet in 

 diameter, and with a spread of branches that might shelter a regiment 

 of soldiers.* 



Found in the valleys of western California, between the Sierras and 

 the ocean from Redding to Tejon Pass. Seldom forms a grove by itself, 

 but often with the coast Live Oak and the foot-hills Blue Oak, it forms 

 large, orchard-like parks. Small, slender trees, with never a drooping 

 limb, line the banks, in places, of the low coast and valley rivers. This 

 oak is the "Roble" of the Spanish Californians and Mexicans. 



2. Quercus Garryana. Hook., 1839: PACIFIC POST OAK. 

 Noble trees of the northwest, 60 to 70 feet high, with erect branches, 



forming a compact head. Noted for its unusually large dark green 

 leaves and stately trunks not concealed by drooping branchlets, as in 



*The first voyager that has given us his impressions of this noble tree is Van- 

 couver, who entered the Bay of San Francisco 1792, and, casting anchor, prepared to 

 visit the Mission at Santa Clara. "We had not proceeded far," he writes, "when we 

 entered a country I little expected to find. For about twenty miles it could only he 

 compared to a park which had been originally closely planted with the true old 

 English oak. The underwood if ever there were any had been cleared away, 

 leaving the stately lords of the forest in complete possession of the soil, which was 

 covered with luxuriant herbage and beautifully diversified with pleasing eminences 

 and valleys, which, with the range of lofty, rugged mountains that bounded the 

 prospect, required only to be adorned with the neat habitations of an industrious 

 people to produce a scene not inferior to the most studied eftects of taste in the 

 disposal of park grounds." 



A year earlier the Spanish expedition, under Malaspina, had visited the coast, 

 and his accompanying naturalist, Prof. Louis Nee, collected specimens of this and 

 other trees, publishing, at Madrid, 1801, a description of this and of the Field Oak, 

 giving each their appropriate names. 



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