?* Plate XXXII. 



QUERCUS VENUSTULA. 



Description. Shrub three to five feet high, but compact and symmetrical, the stoutish 

 branches and very densely leafy branchlets short and ascending, the bark light brown and 

 white-dotted, young twigs wholly glabrous: leaves much firmer than in the preceding, 

 smaller, and of a lighter green, glabrate above, somewhat pubescent beneath with short 

 stellate hairs, short-petioled and about two inches long, of narrow-oblong outline and some- 

 what deeply sinuate-lobed, the lobes rather numerous, obtuse: fructification annual: young 

 acorns very numerous, more or less spicate ; cups prominently tuberculate. 



Habitat. Mountains of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico; plentiful near 

 Trinidad, and also on higher mountains further southward. 



Remarks. This, although always a small bush, is almost too neat and elegant in its 

 appearance to be called a scrub oak. It was more plentiful in its region than its small 

 associate Q. Fendleri^ and is more nearly related to Q. Gambelii. Its profuse leafiness, very 

 small leaves of peculiar outline, its singularly prolific fruitfulness the acorns always 

 appearing in longer or shorter spikes, and never solitary and the whole bearing of the 

 shrub mark it as more than a variety of Q. Gambelii. That species, although in its most 

 reduced forms it is smaller than this, always retains in its more dwarf state, its own laxity 

 of branching and its large obovate leaves. I have seen many acres of it not more than 

 three feet high; but in this condition its leaf-character remains unaltered, and instead of 

 being more prolific it is apt to be almost wholly sterile. 



I regret having been unable to procure mature fruit of Q. venustula. From the greater 

 size its growing acorns had attained by the middle of July I judge it to be either earlier 

 in its flowering, or more hasty in the development of its fruit, than either of the other two 

 species with which I found it associated in southern Colorado. 



