FAGACE.E 269 



light chestnut-brown scales. Bark f'-l' thick, nearly black, deeply divided into broad 

 ridges broken on the surface into thick plate-like scales. Wood heavy, very strong, hard, 

 close-grained, dark brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Scattered but nowhere abundant through Pine-forests on the slopes 

 of canons and on high ridges usually at altitudes between 6000-7000 above the sea on 

 the mountains of western Texas, and of southern New Mexico and Arizona; in northern 

 Chihuahua and Sonora. 



22. Quercus agrifolia Nee. Live Oak. Encina. 



Leaves oval, orbicular or oblong, rounded or acute and apiculate at apex, rounded 

 or cordate at base, entire or sinuate-dentate with slender rigid spinose teeth, when they 

 unfold tinged with red and coated with caducous hoary tomentum, at maturity subcoria- 

 ceous, convex, dark or pale green, dull and obscurely reticulate above, paler, rather lus- 





Fig. 246 



trous, glabrous or pubescent below, with tufts of rusty hairs in the axils of the principal 

 veins, or sometimes covered above with fascicled hairs and coated below with thick 

 hoary pubescence, f'-4' long and ^'-3' wide, with thickened strongly revolute margins; 

 falling gradually during the winter and early spring; petioles stout or slender, pubes- 

 cent or glabrous, '-!' in length. Flowers: staminate in slender hairy aments 3' -4' long; 

 calyx bright purple-red in the bud, sometimes furnished with a tuft of long pale hairs at 

 the apex, glabrous or glabrate, divided nearly to the base into 5-7 ovate acute segments 

 reddish above the middle; pistillate sessile or short-stalked, their involucral scales bright 

 red and covered with thick hoary tomentum, or glabrous or puberulous; stigmas bright 

 red. Fruit sessile or nearly so, solitary or in few-fruited clusters; nut elongated, ovate, 

 abruptly narrowed at base, gradually narrowed to the acute puberulous apex, light chest- 

 nut-brown, f'-l!' long, i'-f thick, the shell lined with a thick coat of pale tomentum, 

 inclosed for one third its length or only at the base in a thin turbinate light brown cup 

 coated on the inner surface with soft pale silky pubescence, and covered by thin papery 

 scales rounded at the narrow apex, and slightly puberulous, especially toward the base 

 of the cup. 



A tree, occasionally 80-90 high, with a short trunk 3-4 or rarely 6-7 in diameter, 

 dividing a few feet above the base into numerous great limbs often resting on the ground 

 and forming a low round-topped head frequently 150 across, and slender dark gray or 

 brown branchlets tinged with red, coated at first with hoary tomentum persistent until 

 the second or third year; or with a trunk, rising to the height of 30 or 40, and crowned 

 by a narrow head of small branches; often much smaller; frequently shrubby in habit, 



