162 PACIFIC STATES FLORAL CONGRESS. 



5. Quercus Engelmanni. Greene, 1889. ENGELMANN OAK. 



This evergreen oak is but little known, owing to its limited home 

 a narrow belt about 50 miles wide in southwestern California, from 

 Sierra Madre to within 15 or 20 miles from the coast. It is a hand- 

 some tree, becoming 40 to 60 feet high, with a diameter of 2 to 3 

 feet. The branches are stout and spreading, bark light gray and deeply 

 fissured, the leaves blue-green and oblong, 2 to 3 inches long. Trees of 

 this species were seen by Dr. C. C. Parry as early as 1850. Others collect- 

 ing specimens of it since have referred the species to a similar tree 

 in Arizona, Q. oblongifolia, but our tree has darker bark, thicker leaves, 

 larger acorns, and the seeds are conspicuously yellow. A fine California 

 oak, recently described (1889) and figured in West- American oaks, by 

 Prof. Greene, and dedicated to that most profound student of Ameri- 

 can oaks Dr. Engelmann.* 



later returned to Cleveland and obtained some instruction in medicine. In 1864 he 

 came to California, connecting himself with the Geological Survey of California, and 

 was stationed at San Diego. Wishing to take some part in the Civil War, he went 

 back east and was appointed hospital steward in a Colorado regiment, and served with 

 it for a year, when he was appointed contract surgeon and stationed in Kansas, where 

 he began the real work of his life as a collector of objects in natural history. Leav- 

 ing the army, he engaged in extensive exploration. Employed by the Smithsonian 

 Institute and the Agricultural Department for many years, he collected several 

 important and valuable plants from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and many 

 interior Mexican states, as well as in the southern portion of the United States. 

 Dr. Palmer's arduous labors and privations have been recognized by the dedication of 

 a genus Palmerella, growing near Santa Barbara, and by species of plants in many 

 other genera, including this of the Oaks. 



*Dr. George Engelmann, born 1809, at Prankfort-on-the-Main, early became a 

 teacher, entered Heidelberg, took a degree in medicine at Wurzburg, studied natural 

 history with Agassiz and Braun, came to America, and soon established himself in 

 St. Louis, where he became a very successful physician, from which absorbing profes- 

 sion he snatched a few hours from time to time for the study of botany, choosing the 

 most difficult groups of plants, such as Cactacea, Cuscuta, Yucca, Agave, and the 

 Conifers generally. Nearly all his life a closet botanist, but visiting Europe several 

 times to consult specialists and examine herbaria, it was only toward the end of his 

 career that he was able to see with his own eyes living individuals of the many western 

 plants he had first made known to science. He visited California 1878, with Professor 

 Sargent and Dr. Parry, to study our trees; their size and number filling him with 

 amazement. Dr. Engelmann was a many-sided man; he kept a careful record of 

 meteorological data for forty-eight years practically a half century in the hope that 

 he could discover some periods of hot or cold, of wet or dry seasons, but was com- 

 pelled to state that he "had learned nothing of the laws of nature in regard to 

 weather." After a long life of almost matchless activity and research, the end came 

 1884. 



Dr. Engelmann's writings, collected and published by his son, make a thick 

 volume on subjects that left but little to learn by others. His name will be 

 preserved by the genus Engdmannia, a large, handsome yellow flower of the western 



