222 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



rounded at the slightly narrowed base, gradually narrowed and pointed at the apex, 

 more or less coated with silvery white pubescence, dark chestnut-brown, very lus- 

 trous, f'-l' long, ^' broad, with a thin shell lined with a coat of lustrous hoary 

 tomentum, and a sweet seed. 



A round-topped tree, rarely 50 high, with a short straight trunk 2-3 in diame- 

 ter, slender spreading branches, and brancblets coated at first with pale tomentum, 

 becoming during their first winter pubescent or remaining tomentose at the apex, 



bright red-brown, glabrous, lustrous, olive-green or orange-brown during their 

 second season and ultimately darker; usually a shrub spreading into broad thickets 

 by prolific stolons, with numerous intricately branched stems often only 4 or 5 

 tall. Winter-buds ovate, or oval, about \' long, clothed when they first appear in 

 summer with thick hoary tomentum, becoming red during the winter and scurfy- 

 pubescent. Bark '-1' thick, light brown tinged with red, slightly furrowed and 

 broken on the surface into loose plate-like scales. Wood light, hard, strong, 

 coarse-grained, dark brown, with thin hardly distinguishable sapwood of 3 or 4 

 layers of annual growth; used for fence-posts, rails, and railway-ties. The sweet 

 nuts are sold in the markets of the western and southern states. 



Distribution. Dry sandy ridges, rich hillsides and the borders of swamps; 

 southern Pennsylvania to northern Florida and the valley of the Neches River, 

 Texas; usually shrubby in the region east of the Alleghany Mountains ; arborescent 

 west of the Mississippi River; most abundant and of its largest size in southern 

 Arkansas and eastern Texas. 



3. CASTANOPSIS, Spach. 



Trees, with scaly bark, astringent wood, and winter-buds covered by numerous 

 imbricated scales. Leaves convolute in the bud, 5-ranked, coriaceous, entire or 

 dentate, penniveined, persistent; stipules obovate or lanceolate, scarious, mostly 

 caducous. Flowers in 3-flowered cymes, or the pistillate rarely solitary or in pairs, 

 in the axils of minute bracts, on slender erect aments from the axils of leaves of the 

 year; the staminate on usually elongated and panicled aments, and composed of a 

 campanulate 5 or6-lobed or parted calyx, the lobes imbricated in the bud, usually 10 

 or 12 stamens inserted on the slightly thickened torus, with elongated exserted filiform 



