FAGACE^S 263 



about halfway between the midrib arid margins; turning pale yellow in the autumn; petioles 

 stout, about ' in length. Flowers: staminate in slender-stemmed aments 2'-3' long; calyx- 

 yellow, hirsute, with 4 or 5 acute segments; pistillate on slender glabrous peduncles, their 

 involucral scales brown covered by pale hairs, about as long as the acute calyx-lobes; 

 stigmas bright red. Fruit short-stalked or nearly sessile, solitary or in pairs; nut hemi- 

 spheric, light, yellow-brown, coated with pale pubescence, inclosed only at the very base 

 in the thin pale reddish brown saucer-shaped cup silky-pubescent on the inner surface, and 

 covered by thin ovate hoary-pubescent closely appressed scales rounded at apex. 



A tree, often 70-90 high, with a trunk 2 or rarely 4 in diameter, small branches 

 spreading into a comparatively narrow open or conical round-topped head, and slender 

 glabrous reddish brown branchlets roughened by dark lenticels, becoming in then* second 

 year dark brown tinged with red or grayish brown; usually much smaller. Winter-buds 

 ovoid, acute, about f long, with dark chestnut-brown scales pale and scarious on the mar- 

 gins. Bark --'-' thick, light red-brown slightly tinged with red, generally smooth but on 

 old trees broken by shallow narrow fissures into irregular plates covered by small closely 

 appressed scales. Wood heavy, strong, not hard, rather coarse-grained, light brown tinged 

 with red, with thin lighter colored sap wood; occasionally used in construction, for clap- 

 boards and the fellies of wheels. 



Distribution. Low wet borders of swamps and streams and rich sandy uplands; Staten 

 Island, New York, southern New Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania and southward 

 to northeastern Florida, through the Gulf states to the valley of the Navasota River, 

 Brazos County, Texas, and through Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma and southeastern Mis- 

 souri to central Tennessee and northwestern Kentucky (Ballard County), and in south- 

 western Illinois (Massac and Pope Counties) ; in the Atlantic states usually confined to the 

 maritime plain; less common in the middle districts, rarely extending to the Appalachian 

 foothills. 



Occasionally planted as a shade-tree in the streets of southern towns, and rarely in 

 western Europe; hardy in eastern Massachusetts. 



Quercus heterophylla Michx. f. 



This has usually been considered a hybrid between Quercus Phellos and Quercus velutina 

 or Quercus borealis var. maxima; first known in the eighteenth century from an individ- 



Fig. 241 



ual growing in a field belonging to John Bartram on the Schuylkill River, Philadelphia. 

 What appears to be the same form has since been discovered in a number of stations 



