FAGACE.E 267 



veinlets; late in the autumn turning dark red on the upper surface; petioles stout, pubes- 

 cent, rarely more than \' in length. Flowers : staminate in hoary-tomentose arnents, 2'-3' 

 long; calyx light yellow, pubescent, and divided into 4 acute segments; pistillate on slender 

 tomentose peduncles, their involucral scales covered with pale pubescence and about as 

 long as the acute calyx-lobes; stigmas greenish yellow. Fruit solitary or in pairs, on stout 

 peduncles often nearly \' in length; nut nearly as broad as long, full and rounded at the 

 ends, dark chestnut-brown, often obscurely striate, |'-f long, inclosed for one third to 

 one half its length in a thin cup-shaped or turbinate cup bright red-brown and lustrous 

 on the inner surface, and covered by thin ovate light red-ljrown scales rounded or acute at 

 the apex and pubescent except on their darker colored margins. 



A tree, usually 50-60 high, with a trunk rarely exceeding 3 in diameter, or rarely 

 100 high, with a long naked stem 3-4 in diameter, slender tough horizontal or somewhat 

 pendulous branches forming a narrow round-topped picturesque head, and slender branch- 



Fig. 244 



lets dark green, lustrous, and often suffused with red when they first appear, soon gla- 

 brous, light reddish brown or light brown during their first winter and dark brown in their 

 second year. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, about \' long, obscurely angled, and covered by 

 closely imbricated light chestnut-brown lustrous scales erose and often ciliate on the mar- 

 gins. Bark on young stems and branches thin, light brown, smooth, and lustrous, becom- 

 ing on old trunks i'-l|' thick, and slightly, divided by irregular shallow fissures into broad 

 ridges covered by close slightly appressed light brown scales somewhat tinged with red. 

 Wood heavy, hard, rather coarse-grained, light brown tinged with red, with thin lighter 

 colored sap wood; occasionally used in construction, and for clapboards and shingles. 



Distribution. Rich hillsides and the fertile bottom-lands of streams; Lehigh County 

 (Allenton to Dorney's Park), Bedford, Huntington, Franklin and Union Counties, Penn- 

 sylvania, westward through Ohio to southern Michigan, southern Wisconsin and southeast- 

 ern and southern Iowa (Muscatine to Taylor County), and southward to the District of 

 Columbia, along the Appalachian Mountains and their foothills, up to altitudes of 2200, 

 to the valley of the Little Tennessee River, North Carolina, and to northern Georgia 

 (Wilkes County), and middle Tennessee; through Missouri to northeastern Kansas and 

 southeastern Nebraska, and in northern and southern Arkansas (Fulton, Hempstead 

 County); comparatively rare in the east; one of the most abundant Oaks of the lower 

 Ohio basin; probably growing to its largest size in southern Indiana and Illinois. 



Occasionally planted as an ornamental tree in the northern states, and hardy as far 

 north as Massachusetts. 



