FAGACE^ 



301 



below and coated with soft pubescence, soon becoming silvery white and very lustrous, 

 at maturity thin, firm, glabrous, bright green and lustrous or dull above, pale or glaucous 

 below, 5'-9' long, 2'-4' wide, with a stout bright yellow midrib and conspicuous primary 

 veins; turning late in the autumn deep rich vinous red, gradually withering and sometimes re- 

 maining on the branches nearly through the winter; petioles stout, glabrous, '-!' in length. 

 Flowers: staminate in hirsute or nearly glabrous aments 2^'-3' long; calyx bright yellow 

 and pubescent, with acute lobes; pistillate bright red, their involucral scales broadly ovate, 

 hirsute, about as long as the ovate acute calyx-lobes. Fruit sessile or raised on a slender 

 peduncle lf-2' long, the two forms sometimes appearing on the same branch; nut ovoid to 

 oblong, rounded at apex, lustrous, f long, green when fully grown, becoming light chest- 

 nut-brown, inclosed for about one fourth its length in the cup-shaped cup coated with pale 



Fig. 276 



or light brown tomentum, its scales at the base much thickened, united and produced 

 into short obtuse membranaceous tips, and thinner toward the rim of the cup. 



A tree, 80-100 high, with a trunk 3-4 in diameter, tall and naked in the forest, short 

 in the open, and surmounted by a broad round-topped head of stout limbs spreading ir- 

 regularly, small rigid branches, and slender branchlets at first bright green, often tinged 

 with red, and coated with a loose mass of long pale or ferrugineous deciduous hairs, red- 

 dish brown during the summer, bright red and lustrous or covered with a glaucous bloom 

 during their first winter, becoming ultimately ashy gray. Winter-buds broadly ovoid, 

 rather obtuse, dark red-brown, about ' long. Bark light gray slightly tinged with red or 

 brown, or occasionally nearly white, broken into thin appressed scales, becoming on old 

 trunks sometimes 2' thick and divided into broad flat ridges. Wood strong, very heavy, 

 hard, tough, close-grained, durable, light brown, with thin light brown sap wood; used in 

 shipbuilding, for construction and in cooperage, the manufacture of carriages, agricultural 

 implements, baskets, the interior finish of houses, cabinet-making, for railway-ties and 

 fences, and largely as fuel. 



Distribution. Sandy plains and gravelly ridges, rich uplands, intervales, and moist 

 bottom-lands, sometimes forming nearly pure forests; southern Maine to southwestern 

 Quebec, westward through southern Ontario, the southern peninsula of Michigan, south- 

 eastern Minnesota, eastern Iowa, and southeastern Nebraska, and southward to west- 

 ern Florida, through the Gulf states to the valley of the Brazos River, Texas and through 

 Arkansas to eastern Oklahoma, eastern Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky; 

 ascending the southern Appalachian Mountains as a low bush to altitudes of 4500; 



