FAGACE^E 



307 



maturity thick and firm, light yellow-green on the upper surface, pale often silvery white 

 and covered with short fine pubescence on the lower surface, 4 '-7' long, l'-5' wide, with 

 a stout yellow midrib and conspicuous primary veins running to the points of the teeth; 

 turning in the autumn orange color and scarlet; petioles slender f'-lf ' in length. Flowers : 

 staminate in pilose aments 3'-4' long; calyx light yellow, hairy, deeply divided into 5 or 

 6 lanceolate ciliate segments; pistillate sessile or in short spikes coated like their involucral 

 scales with thick white tomentum; stigmas bright red. Fruit sessile or raised on a short 

 stout peduncle, solitary or often in pairs; nut broadly ovoid, narrowed and rounded at 

 apex, I' to nearly 1' long, light chestnut-brown, inclosed for about half its length in a 

 thin cup-shaped light brown cup pubescent on the inner, hoary-tomentose on the outer 

 surface, and covered by small obtuse scales more or less thickened and rounded on the 

 back toward the base of the cup, the small free red-brown tips of the upper ranks form- 

 ing a minute fringe-like border to its rim; seed sweet and sometimes edible. 



Fig. 281 



A tree, 80-100, occasionally 160 high, with a tall straight trunk 3-4 in diameter above 

 the broad and often buttressed base, comparatively small branches forming a narrow 

 shapely round-topped head, and slender branchlets, green more or less tinged with red or 

 purple, pilose when they first appear, light orange color or reddish brown during their first 

 whiter, and ultimately gray or brown; east of the Alleghany Mountains and on dry hills 

 often not more than 20-30 tall. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, f'-J' long, with chestnut- 

 brown scales white and scarious on the margins. Bark rarely \' thick, broken on the sur- 

 face into thin loose silvery white scales sometimes slightly tinged with brown. Wood 

 heavy, very hard, strong, close-grained, durable, with thin light-colored sapwood; largely 

 used in cooperage, for wheels, fencing, and railway-ties. 



Distribution. Gardner's Island, Lake Champlain, Vermont, western Massachusetts 

 and Connecticut, near Newberg, Orange County, New York, westward through New York, 

 southern Ontario and southern Michigan to northern Iowa, southeastern Nebraska, east- 

 ern Kansas, and Oklahoma to the valley of the Washita River (Garvin County) and to 

 the Devil's Canon near Hinton (Caddo County), and southward in the Atlantic states 

 to the District of Columbia, eastern Virginia; sparingly on the eastern foothills of the 

 Blue Ridge in North and South Carolina at altitudes between 1000 and 2000; in central 

 Tennessee and Kentucky, central and northeastern Georgia, western Florida, and through 

 the Gulf states to the valley of the Guadalupe River, Texas; on the Guadalupe Mountains, 

 Texas, and on the Capitan Mountains, New Mexico (Lincoln County); rare and com- 

 paratively local in the Atlantic states, usually on limestone soil; very abundant in the 

 Mississippi basin, growing on ridges, dry flinty hills, deep rich bottom-lands and the 



