36 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



more or less undulate or crenate-dentate and broad at apex, stellate-pubescent 

 above, paler and pubescent beneath; petioles - in. long, also pubescent; branch- 

 lets slender, pubescent at first but finally glabrous and marked with scattered 

 lenticels; winter- buds ^ in. or less in length with puberulous scarious scales often 

 ciliate-margined. Flowers appear when the leaves are about half grown, the 

 staminate in pendent catkins from 2-3 in. long, pubescent; calyx light yellow 

 with six or eight acute lobes ; stamens of the same number as the calyx-lobes 

 and with yellow emarginate anthers. Pistillate flowers solitary and sessile or 

 exceptionally in few flowered spikes, scales of involucre broad-ovate pointed and 

 pale tomentose outside; calyx-lobes narrow and about as long as the involucral 

 scales. Acorns maturing the first year, solitary or sometimes in pairs, sessile or 

 nearly so, the nut elongated, narrow-conical, often 2 in. or slightly more in length, 

 tapering to an acute or rounded mucronate apex, clothed with a whitish persist- 

 ent pubescence; cup deeply hemispherical, pale-tomentose and with scales thick 

 tubercled and strongly appressed below but smaller and with elongated free tips 

 nearer the margin. 



(The specific name, lobata, is from the Greek Aofict, a lobe, alluding to the 

 lobed leaves.) 



One of the most majestic oaks of the Pacific slope, as well as one of 

 the largest and most graceful of its genus, the Q. lobata occasionally 

 attains 100 ft (30 m.) or more in height, with sturdy trunk 8 or 10 ft. 

 (3 m.) in diameter, clothed with a light brownish-gray bark, rough 

 with loose, scaly ridges. The trunk usually divides twenty or thirty 

 feet above the ground into great far-reaching branches, and finally 

 into long, drooping branchlets which sometimes nearly sweep the 

 ground, the whole forming a well-rounded head, perhaps a hun- 

 dred and fifty feet in diameter. Its resemblance in habit of growth to 

 the best type of the favorite Elm of the New England states is very 

 marked, and it lends that same peculiar charm of aspect to many a Cali- 

 fornia valley. 



HABITAT. California, west of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, from 

 the upper Sacramento valley southward to the vicinity of Los Angeles, 

 confined to the bottom-lands, where it forms groves primarily of vast 

 extent. Being entirely free from under-brush and carpeted with 

 grass between and beneath the trees, as it were, one vast lawn, these 

 natural parks defy competition in landscape gardening, and were early 

 noted among the charms of Californian scenery. 



PHYSICAL PROPERTIES. The wood of the Yalley Oak is of mod- 

 erate strength and hardness, rather fine-grained and brittle, abundantly 

 supplied with large open ducts which mark the rings of growth and 

 more abundantly than most oaks with the fine intervening ducts. It 

 is of a light chocolate -brown color, with abundant lighter sap-wood. 

 Specific Gravity ', 0.7409; Percentage of Ash, 0.30; Relative 

 Approximate Fuel Value, 0.7387; Coefficient of Elasticity, 71664; 

 Modulus of Rupture, 864; Resistance to Longitudinal Pressure, 

 424; Resistance to Indentation, 188; Weight of a Cubic Foot in 

 Pounds, 46.17. 



