220 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



to man, though it is the salvation of some of the small mammals of the bleak Texas 

 and New Mexico hills where there is little to eat and few places for concealment from 

 hawks and other enemies. The tree is also called scrub oak and shin oak. It grows 

 in Colorado, New Mexico, western Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. At its best 

 it rarely exceeds thirty feet high and a foot in diameter, and it often forms a jungle of 

 shrubs through which the traveler must wade waist deep or go miles out of his way to 

 pass round it. Its leaf is one of the smallest of the oaks, and is notched much like 

 the chestnut leaf. 



ALVORD OAK (Quercus alvordiana) is little known and will probably never be of 

 much importance. It grows in the region of Tehachapi mountains, the northern 

 border of the Mojave desert, in California, and was named for William Alvord of that 

 state. The leaf is toothed, and the acorn smooth. No record has been found of any 

 use of the wood, and when Sudworth compiled his book, "Forest Trees of the Pacific 

 Slope," he was unable to procure enough leaves, flowers, and fruit to enable him to 

 give a botanical description. It may therefore be regarded as one of the scarcest oaks 

 in the United States, which fact gives it a certain interest. 



SADLER OAK (Quercus sadleriana) is one of the minor oaks of the Pacific coast, 

 and is popularly and properly called scrub oak by those who encounter it on high, 

 dry slopes of northern California and southern Oregon mountains, from 4,000 to 

 9,000 feet above the sea. It forms dense thickets, and passes for an evergreen. Its 

 leaves remain on the branches only thirteen months. The leaves are toothed like 

 those of chestnut. The acorns are matured in one season. The name Sadler oak 

 was given it in honor of a Scottish botanist. Trees are too scarce and too small to 

 have much value, except as a ground cover. 



BREWER OAK (Quercus breweri) grows on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada 

 mountains in California, from Kaweah river northward to Trinity mountains. It is 

 often little more than a shrub, and its 'usefulness to man lies less in the quantity of 

 wood it produces than in the protection the dense thickets, with their network of 

 roots, afford steep hillsides. Gullying in time of heavy rain cannot take place where 

 this oak's matted masses of roots bind the soil. Sprouts rise freely from the roots, and 

 thickets are reproduced in that way rather than from acorns, although in certain 

 years crops of acorns are bountiful. The trunks are too small to make any kind of 

 lumber, but are capable of supplying considerable quantities of fuel. 



