Handbook of Trees of the Northern States and Canada. 153 



This beautiful and stately Oak attains the 

 height of upwards of 100 ft. in forest-growth 

 with straight columnar trunk 4 or 5 ft. in 

 diameter. When isolati'il from other trees, as 

 occasionally found on river banks where it has 

 room for full development, its massive branches 

 form a wide rounded toj), and its ample party- 

 colored leaves as they display successively their 

 dark-green and silvery-white surfaces, when 

 agitated by the wind, make it a beautiful ob- 

 ject. The bark of trunk is of a dark gray color 

 fissured into rather narrow ridges of firm small 

 scales. 



It is distinctly a tree of alluvial bottom-lands 

 and the banks of streams subject to inunda- 

 tion, reaching its greatest development in 

 northern Mississippi and eastern Arkansas 

 where it is a very valuable timber tree. 



The wood is heavy, hard, and strong and 

 useful for interior finishing, furniture, agri- 

 cultural implements, etc., nearly equaling in 

 value the wood of tlie White Oak and is really 

 one of the very best of tlie Red Oak group. 



Leaves oval to oblong in outline, 5-10 in. long, 

 wide-cuneate, truncate or rounded at base, with 

 5-7 wide-based and often fakate narrow-pointed 

 mostly entire bristle-tipped si)ieading lobes, at 

 maturity lustrous dark green above, pale tomentose 

 beneath ; branchlets tomentcse at first. Fniit 

 short-stalked with short subglobose puberuious 

 acorn about % in. in diameter and nearly half 

 Invested by the flat or slightly turbinate cup of 

 small puberuious scales. 



