OAKS OF PACIFIC SLOPE. 163 



6. Quercus agrifolia. Nee, 1801. FIELD OAK, "ENCENA." 

 This well-known, dark-barked, prickly-leaved, low-browed oak is com- 

 mon in the coast region of central California, especially about the Bay 

 of San Francisco, where it attains its largest size, 20 to 40 feet in 

 height, if sheltered from the ocean gales; but in exposed localities the 

 saplings are early assaulted by the winds, and as the tree divides near 

 the base into diverging branches, they are overborne, those on the lea 

 side often resting their elbows on the ground, while the branchlets 

 are prolonged year after year, in the direction of least resistance 

 away from the sea. Trees are known to creep in this manner fifty 

 feet or more. Owing to its nearness to Monterey Bay, one of the first 

 harbors on the coast to be visited by European explorers, this was the 

 first oak discovered, 1791, by Prof. Louis Nee, a French botanist with 

 the Spanish expedition of Malaspina. Aside from the publication at 

 Madrid, 1801, of this oak with the Valley Oak and other plants collected 

 on this expedition, little is known of this, the first naturalist to make 

 known to the reading world in technical language the vegetable wealth 

 of the Pacific slope. 



Prof. Sargent, in his Sylva, writes of this oak: "The valleys and 

 low hills of the California coast owe their greatest charm to this oak 

 tree, which, dotting their covering of vernal green or their brown sum- 

 mer surface with its low, broad heads of pale, contorted branches, and 

 dense, dark foliage, gives them the appearance of incomparably beauti- 

 ful parks." The classic oaks of Berkeley belong to this species. 



7. Quercus Wislizeni. A. de Candolle, 1864. LIVE OAK. 



A fine black oak, often 50 to 80 feet high, trunk short but frequently 

 thick, 4 to 6 feet in diameter, branches spreading, forming a rounded 

 top; bark thick, 2 to 3 inches. Headquarters in middle California, 

 extending from the lower slopes of Mt. Shasta southward through the 

 Coast Ranges to Santa Lucia Mountains, shrubby forms continuing 

 on the southern mountains to the peninsula of California, also on a 

 few of the Channel Islands. On the western slope of the Sierra Nevada 

 it mingles with the Douglas Oak, in sharp contrast of color; and, lower 

 down, with the Valley Oak, from which its small, oblong, entire, dark 

 green leaves readily distinguish it. At flowering-time, as Prof. Jepson 

 writes, "The aments from a terminal bud or a cluster of buds a're often 

 so numerous and large as to transform the appearance of the tree, in 

 April or May, imparting to the crown a singularly soft and billowy 

 yellow-green appearance." First discovered by Fremont in the Sierra 



plains; by the handsomest of the spruce trees of the Kocky Mountains; by a conspic- 

 uous cactus of the deserts of the southwest, and by hosts of smaller plants; and also 

 it will be held in honored remembrance so long as the trees of the New World remain 

 a subject of interest to students. 



