FAGACE^E 



279 



lenta Small); sandy barrens near the coast, South Carolina to Miami, Dade County, 

 Florida: var. pygmaea Sarg., with oblong-obovate leaves, cuneate at base, 3-5 lobed at 

 apex with small acute lobes, or rarely elliptic and entire, and nearly sessile fruit, the nut 

 inclosed nearly to the apex; a shrub rarely 3 high; Pine- woods in sandy soil; widely 

 distributed in Florida. 



30. Quercus reticulata H. B. K. 



Leaves broadly obovate, obtuse and rounded or rarely acute at apex, usually cordate or 

 occasionally rounded at the narrow base, repandly spinose-dentate above the middle or 

 only toward the apex with slender teeth, and entire below, when they unfold coated with 

 dense fulvous tomentum, at maturity thick, firm, and rigid, dark blue and covered with 

 scattered fascicled hairs above, paler and coated with thick fulvous pubescence below, 

 l'-5' long, f'-4' broad, with a thick midrib, and primary veins running to the points of the 



Fig. 255 



teeth or arcuate and united within the slightly revolute margins, and very conspicuous 

 reticulate veinlets; petioles stout about \' in length. Flowers: staminate in short tomen- 

 tose aments in the axils of leaves of the year; calyx light yellow, hirsute, with pale hairs, 

 divided into 5-7 ovate acute segments; pistillate in spikes on elongated peduncles, clothed 

 like their involucral scales with hoary tomentum; stigmas dark red. Fruit usually in many- 

 fruited spikes or occasionally in pairs or rarely solitary, on slender hirsute or glabrous 

 peduncles 2'-5' long; nut oblong, rounded or acute at the pilose apex, broad at base, about 

 ' long, inclosed for about one fourth its length in a shallow cup-shaped cup dark brown 

 and pubescent within, hoary tomentose without and covered by small ovate acute scales, 

 with thin free scarious tips, slightly thickened and rounded on the back at the bottom of 

 the cup. 



A tree, rarely more than 40 high, with a trunk 1 in diameter, and stout branchlets 

 coated at first with thick fulvous tomentum, light orange color and more or less thickly 

 clothed with pubescence during their first winter, becoming ashy gray or light brown; in 

 the United States usually shrubby in habit and sometimes only a few feet tall; becoming on 

 the Sierra Madre of Mexico a large tree. Winter-buds ovoid to oval, often surrounded by 

 the persistent stipules of the upper leaves, about \' long, with thin loosely imbricated 

 light red scales ciliate on the margins. Bark about \' thick, dark or light brown, and cov- 

 ered by small thin closely appressed scales. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, dark 

 brown, with thick lighter colored sapvvood. 



Distribution. Near the summits of the mountain ranges of southeastern New Mexico 

 (Mogollon Mountains) and southeastern Arizona, and southward in Mexico. 



