304 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



thick, and deeply and irregularly divided by continuous or interrupted fissures into broad 

 flat ridges covered by small appressed gray-brown scales often slightly tinged with red. 

 Wood heavy, hard, strong, tough, light brown, with thin hardly distinguishable sap wood; 

 used in construction, the interior finish of houses, cabinet-making, carriage and boat- 

 building, cooperage, and railway-ties, and for fencing and fuel. 



Distribution. Borders of streams and swamps in moist fertile soil; southern Maine 

 to northern Vermont and southwestern Quebec, through Ontario and the southern pen- 

 insula of Michigan to southeastern Minnesota, eastern and southern Iowa, southeastern 

 Nebraska and western Missouri, and to the District of Columbia, northern Kentucky 

 and northeastern Oklahoma, and along the Appalachian Mountains to West Virginia; 

 widely scattered, usually in small groves but nowhere very abundant; most common and 

 of its largest size in western New York and northern Ohio. 



X Quercus Schuettii Trel., with characters intermediate between those of Quercus bi- 

 color and Q. macrocarpa, and probably a hybrid of these species, occurs at Fort Howard, 

 Brown County, Wisconsin, near Rockfield and Chateaugay, Quebec, and near Rochester 

 and Golah, Munroe County, New York. 



52. Quercus Prinus L. Basket Oak. Cow Oak. 



Quercus Michauxii Nutt. 



Leaves broadly obovate to oblong-obovate, acute or acuminate at apex with a short 

 broad point, cuneate or rounded at the broad or narrow entire base, regularly crenately 

 lobed with oblique rounded entire lobes sometimes furnished with glandular tips, or 



Fig. 279 



rarely entire with undulate margins, when they unfold bright yellow-green, lustrous and 

 pubescent above, coated below with thick silvery white or ferrugineous tomentum, at 

 maturity thick and firm or sometimes membranaceous, especially on young and vigorous 

 branches, dark green, lustrous, glabrous or occasionally roughened by scattered fascicled 

 hairs on the upper surface, more or less densely pubescent on the pale green or silvery white 

 lower surface, 6'-8' long, 3 '-5' wide; turning in the autumn dark rich crimson; petioles 

 stout, i'-l?' in length. Flowers: staminate in slender hairy aments, 3'-4' long; calyx light 

 yellow-green, pilose with long pale hairs, and divided into 4-7 acute lobes; pistillate in few- 

 flowered spikes on short peduncles coated like the involucral scales with dense pale ru- 

 fous tomentum; stigmas dark red. Fruit solitary or in pairs, sessile or subsessile, or borne 

 on short stout puberulous stalks rarely %' in length ; nut ovoid to ellipsoidal, with a broad 



