FAGACE^ 



naceous, lustrous, I'-l^' long. Flowers opening when the leaves are about one third 

 grown; staminate in globose heads 1' in diameter, on slender hairy peduncles about 2' 

 long; pistillate in usually 2-flowered clusters, on short clavate hoary peduncles '- f' long. 

 Fruit: involucres |'-f in length often shorter than the nuts, on stout hairy club-shaped 

 peduncles '-f ' long, fully grown at midsummer, and then puberulous, dark orange-green, 

 and covered by long slender recurved prickles red above the middle, becoming at maturity 

 in the autumn light brown and tomentose, with crowded much recurved pubescent prickles, 

 persistent on the branch after opening late into the winter; nut about f ' long. 



A tree, usually 70-80 but exceptionally 120 high, sending up from the roots numerous 

 small stems sometimes extending into broad thickets round the parent tree, in the forest 

 with a long comparatively slender stem free of branches for more than half its length, and 

 short branches forming a narrow head, in open situations short-stemmed, with a trunk 

 often 3-4 in diameter, and numerous limbs spreading gradually and forming a broad corn- 



Fig. 215 



pact round-topped head of slender slightly drooping branches clothed with short leafy 

 laterals, and branchlets pale green and coated with long soft caducous hairs when they 

 first appear, olive-green or orange-colored during their first summer, and conspicuously 

 marked by oblong bright orange lenticels, gradually growing red, bright reddish brown 

 during their first winter, darker brown in their second season and ultimately ashy gray. 

 Winter-buds puberulous, especially toward the apex, f ' to nearly 1' long, about ' broad, 

 the inner scales hirsute on the inner surface and along the margins and when fully grown 

 often 1' long, lustrous, brown above the middle, and reddish below. Bark \'-% thick, with 

 a smooth light steel-gray surface. Wood hard, strong, tough, very close-grained, not dur- 

 able, difficult to season, dark or often light red, with thin nearly white sapwood of 20-30 

 layers of annual growth; largely used in the manufacture of chairs, shoe-lasts, plane-stocks, 

 the handles of tools, and for fuel. The sweet nuts are gathered and sold in the markets of 

 Canada and of some of the western and middle states. 



Distribution. Rich uplands and mountain slopes, often forming nearly pure forests, and 

 southward on the bottom-lands of streams and the margins of swamps; valley of the Resti- 

 gouche River, New Brunswick, to the northern shores of Lake Huron and the southern 

 shores of Lake Superior, and southward to Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, the ravines of Rock 

 River near Oregon, Ogle County, Illinois, Minnesota and northern Missouri; southward 

 passing into the var. caroliniana Fern. & Rehd., differing in its ovate to short-ovate 

 thieker leaves, usually rounded or subcordate at base, and often less coarsely serrate or 



