292 COMMON TREES AND SHRUBS 



Often the two species grow together, then hybrids between 

 them are frequent. The Oak grows to a great age and size, 

 and weather-beaten specimens, like the Cowthorpe Oak in 

 Yorkshire, may have a trunk seventy feet in girth. The 

 trunk attains a height of one hundred to one hundred and 

 fifty feet, and is much branched. A characteristic feature 

 of the tree is its gnarled and contorted branches, which end 

 in clustered twigs. The bark is rugged, with deep vertical 

 furrows ; the ridges break transversely and form oblong 

 scales (Fig. 193). 



The buds are crowded around the ends of the twigs 

 (Fig. 194). If the end bud persists, it grows into a long 

 shoot, but frequently it dies and the lower buds grow out 

 as a cluster of short, leafy twigs. Dwarf shoots, though 

 common, are not regular, as in the Beech ; and the buds in 

 the lower leaf-axils and in the axils of the bud-scales are 

 small and remain dormant (Fig. 194, 1 d.b). The buds are 

 stout, blunt, and oval, and are covered with about twenty 

 stipular scales. The twigs, with numerous small oval 

 lenticels, are somewhat angular on account of the prominent 

 leaf -cushions, and the leaf -scars have three or more groups 

 of leaf-traces. 



The leaves are alternate (Fig. 194, 2), and the small brown 

 stipules soon fall off. The base is curved, swollen, and 

 continued as two lines down the stem, and on either side of 

 it is a stipule-scar. In August and September the separa- 

 tion-layer is seen distinctly across the leaf-base. The leaf- 

 stalk is grooved above and longer in the Sessile than in the 

 Stalked Oak ; the blade is obovate, deeply and irregularly 

 lobed (sinuate), and somewhat leathery. In the Sessile Oak, 

 the base of the blade is more or less tapering, and has many 

 branched hairs on the under surface. In the Stalked Oak, 

 the base of the blade is produced into two recurved, ear-like 

 lobes (auricled), and the hairs on the under surface are few 

 and simple. 



