70 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



with slender stems only a few feet high. Winter-buds globose and usually about -fa' thick, 

 or ovoid-oblong, acute, and sometimes on vigorous shoots nearly \' in length, with thin 

 broadly ovate closely imbricated light chestnut-brown glabrous or pubescent scales. 

 Bark of young stems and branches thin, close, light brown or pale bluish gray, becoming on 

 old trunks 2'-3' thick, dark brown slightly tinged with red, and divided into broad rounded 

 ridges separating on the surface into small closely appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, 

 close-grained, very brittle, light brown or reddish brown, with thick darker colored sapwood; 

 valued and largely used for fuel. 



Distribution. Usually in open groves of great extent from Sonoma County, California, 

 southward over the coast ranges and islands to the San Pedro Martir Mountains, Lower 

 California; less common at the north; very abundant and of its largest size in the valleys 

 south of San Francisco Bay and their commonest and characteristic tree; frequently cover- 

 ing with semiprostrate and contorted stems the sand dunes on the coast in the central part of 

 the state; in southwestern California the largest and most generally distributed Oak-tree 

 between the mountains and the sea, often covering low hills and ascending to altitudes of 

 4500 in the canons of the San Jacinto Mountains. 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental tree in temperate western, and in southern 

 Europe. 



23. Quercus Wislizenii A. DC. Live Oak. 



Leaves narrowly lanceolate to broadly elliptic, generally oblong-lanceolate, acute or 

 rounded and generally apiculate at apex, rounded or truncate or gradually narrowed and 

 cuneate at base, entire, serrulate or serrate or sinuate-dentate with spreading rigid spines- 



Fig. 247 



cent teeth, when they unfold thin, dark red, ciliate, and covered with pale scattered fasci- 

 cled hairs, at maturity thick and coriaceous, glabrous and lustrous, dark green on the upper 

 and paler and yellow-green on the lower surface, usually l'-l|' long and about f ' wide, with 

 obscure primary veins and conspicuous reticulate veinlets, gradually deciduous during their 

 second summer and autumn; petioles coated at first with hoary tomentum, usually pu- 

 bescent or puberulous at maturity, |' to nearly 1' in length. Flowers: staminate in hairy 

 aments 3'-4' long; calyx tinged with red in the bud, divided into broadly ovate ciliate gla- 

 brous light yellow lobes shorter than the 3-6 stamens; pistillate sessile or short-stalked, 

 their involucral scales and peduncle hoary-tomentose. Fruit sessile, short-stalked or oc- 

 casionally spicate; nut slender, oblong, abruptly narrowed at base, pointed and pilose at 

 the apex, f'-H' long, about $' thick, light chestnut-brown, often striate, the shell lined 

 with a scanty coat of pale tomentum, more or less inclosed in the thin turbinate sometimes 



