FAGACE^E 



277 



its scales thin, ovate, acute, slightly keeled on the back, covered by dense lustrous hoary 

 tomentum and ending in small closely appressed reddish tips; seed sweet, with light yel- 

 low connate cotyledons. 



A tree, 40-50 high, with a trunk 3-4 in diameter above its swollen buttressed base, 

 usually dividing a few feet from the ground into 3 or 4 horizontal wide-spreading limbs 

 forming a low dense round-topped head sometimes 130 across, and slender rigid branch- 

 lets coated at first with hoary tomentum, becoming ashy gray or light brown and pubescent 

 or puberulous during their first winter and darker and glabrous the following season; occa- 

 sionally 60-70 tall, with a trunk 6-7 in diameter; often shrubby and occasionally not 

 more than a foot high. Winter-buds globose or slightly obovoid, about ' long, with thin 

 light chestnut-brown scales white and scarious on the margins. Bark of the trunk and 

 large branches %'-l' thick, dark brown tinged with red, slightly furrowed, separating on 





Fig. 253 



the surface into small closely appressed scales. Wood very heavy, hard, strong, tough, 

 close-grained, light brown or yellow, with thin nearly white sapwood; formerly largely and 

 still occasionally used in shipbuilding. 



Distribution. Shores of Mobjack Bay, Virginia, southward along the coast and islands 

 to southern Florida, and along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to northeastern Mexico, 

 spreading inland through Texas to the valley of the Red River and to the mountains in 

 the extreme western part of the state; on the mountains of Cuba, southern Mexico, and 

 Central America; most abundant and of its largest size on the Atlantic and east Gulf 

 coasts on rich hummocks and ridges a few feet above the level of the sea; abundant in 

 Texas in the coast region, near the banks of streams, and westward toward the valley 

 of the Rio Grande often forming the principal part of the shrubby growth on low moist 

 soil; in sandy barren soil in the immediate vicinity of the seacoast or on the shores of 

 salt water estuaries and bays often a shrub, sometimes bearing fruit on stems not more 

 than a foot high (var. maritima, Sarg., and var. dentata Sarg.). 



Occasionally planted as a shade and ornamental tree in the southern United States. 



Variable in habit and in the size and thickness of the leaves the different forms of Quercus 

 virqiniana show little variation in their fruit. The most important of these varieties is 



Quercus virginiana var. geminata Sarg. 



Quercus geminata Small. 

 Leaves oblong-obovate to elliptic, rounded or acute at apex, cuneate or narrowed and 

 rounded at base, occasionally slightly and irregularly dentate above the middle on vigor- 

 ous shoots, conspicuously reticulate-venulose, hoary tomentose below, l^'-3' long, f'-l' 



