FAGACE^E 91 



3'-6' wide, with a stout pale midrib sometimes pilose on the upper side and pubescent on 

 the lower, large primary veins running to the points of the lobes, and conspicuous reticulate 

 veinlets; turning dull yellow or yellowish brown in the autumn; petioles stout, |'-1' in 

 length. Flowers: staminate in slender aments 4'-6' long,, their yellow-green peduncles 

 coated with loosely matted pale hairs; calyx yellow-green, pubescent, deeply divided into 

 4-6 acute segments ending in tufts of long pale hairs; pistillate sessile or stalked, their 

 involucral scales broadly ovate, often somewhat tinged with red toward the margins and 

 coated, like the peduncles, with thick pale tomentum; stigmas bright red. Fruit usually soli- 

 tary, sessile or long-stalked, exceedingly variable in size and shape; nut ellipsoidal or broad- 

 ovoid, broad at the base and rounded at the obtuse or depressed apex covered by soft pale 

 pubescence, f' long and f ' thick at the north, sometimes 2' long and 1^' thick in the south, 

 its cup thick or thin, light brown and pubescent on the inner surface, hoary-tomentose 

 and covered on the outer surface by large irregularly imbricated ovate pointed scales, at 

 the base of the cup thin and free or sometimes much thickened and tuberculate, and near 

 its rim generally developed into long slender pale awns forming on northern trees a short 

 inconspicuous and at the south a long conspicuous matted fringe-like border, inclosing 

 only the base or nearly the entire nut. 



A tree, sometimes 170 high, with a trunk 6-7 in diameter, clear of limbs for 70-80 

 above the ground, a broad head of great spreading branches, and stout branchlets coated 

 at first with thick soft pale deciduous pubescence, light orange color, usually glabrous or 

 occasionally puberulous during their first winter, becoming ashy gray or light brown and 

 ultimately dark brown, sometimes developing corky wings often I'-lj' wide; usually not 

 more than 80 high, with a trunk 3-4 in diameter ; toward the northwestern limits of its 

 range sometimes a low shrub. Winter-buds broadly ovoid, acute or obtuse, f'-j' long, 

 with light red-brown scales coated with soft pale pubescence. Bark l'-2' thick, deeply 

 furrowed and broken on the surface into irregular plate-like brown scales often slightly 

 tinged with red. Wood heavy, strong, hard, tough, close-grained, very durable, dark or 

 rich light brown, with thin much lighter colored sapw r ood; used in ship and boatbuilding, for 

 construction of all sorts, cabinet-making, cooperage, the manufacture of carriages, agricul- 

 tural implements, baskets, railway-ties, fencing, and fuel. 



Distribution. Low rich bottom-lands and intervales, or rarely in the northwest on low 

 dry hills; Nova Scotia and New Brunswick southward to the valley of the Penobscot River, 

 Maine, the shore of Lake Champlain, Vermont, western Massachusetts, central, southern 

 and western Pennsylvania, northern Delaware, northern West Virginia (Hardy and Grant 

 Counties), prairies of Caswell County, North Carolina, and middle Tennessee, and west- 

 ward through the valley of the Saint Lawrence River and along the northern shores of 

 Lake Huron to southern Manitoba, through western New York and Ohio, northern Michi- 

 gan, to Minnesota (except in the northeastern counties), eastern and northwestern Ne- 

 braska, the Black Hills of South Dakota, the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota, and 

 northeastern Wyoming, and to central Kansas, the valley of the north Fork of the Cana- 

 dian River (Canton, Blaine County, and Seiling, Dewey County), Oklahoma, and the 

 valley of the San Saba River, (Menard County and Callahan County), Texas; attaining 

 its largest size in southern Indiana and Illinois; the common Oak of the " oak openings " 

 of western Minnesota, and in all the basin of the Red River of the North, ranging farther 

 to the northwest than the other Oaks of eastern America; common and generally distrib- 

 uted in eastern Nebraska, and of a large size in canons or on river bottoms in the extreme 

 northwestern part of the state; the most generally distributed Oak in southern Wisconsin, 

 and in Kansas growing to a large size in all the eastern part of the state. 



Occasionally planted as an ornamental tree in the eastern United States and in South 

 Africa. 



X Quercus Andrewsii Sarg., believed to be a hybrid of Quercus macrocarpa and Q. undu- 

 lata Torr., in habit and characters intermediate between those of its supposed 'parents 

 with which it grows, occurs at Seiling, Dewey County, western Oklahoma. 



X Quercus guadalupensis Sarg., with characters intermediate between those of Quercus 



