FAGACE^E 



231 



brous above, pale yellow-green, glabrous or rarely puberulous and sometimes fur- 

 nished with small tufts of rusty hairs in the axils of the veins below, 5'-9' long, 4'-6" 

 broad, falling early in the autumn after turning dull or sometimes bright orange- 

 color or brown; their petioles stout, yellow or red, l'-2' long. Flowers: staminate in 

 pubescent ameuts 4'-5' long; calyx deeply divided into 4 or 5 narrow ovate rounded 



lobes shorter than the stamens; pistillate on short glabrous peduncles, their invo- 

 lucral scales broadly ovate, dark reddish brown, shorter than the conspicuous linear 

 acute bract of the flower and as long as the lanceolate acute calyx-lobes; stigmas 

 bright green. Fruit solitary or in pairs, sessile or stalked; acorn ovate or oval, with 

 a broafl base, gradually narrowed and rounded at the apex, f '-1^' long, ^'-1' wide, 

 usually inclosed only at the base in the thick shallow sancer-shnped cup reddish 

 brown and puberulous within, and covered by thin closely appressed ovate acute 

 bright red-brown pnberulous scales. 



A tree, usually 70-80 or occasionally 150 high, with a trunk 3-4 in diameter, 

 and stout branches spreading gradually and usually forming a comparatively narrow 

 round-topped head, or growing at right angles to the stem into a broad round-topped 

 crown, and slender lustrous branchlets bright green and covered when they first 

 appear with pale scurfy caducous pubescence, dark red during their first winter, be- 

 coming more or less tinged with orange-green in their second and third years and 

 ultimately dark brown. Winter-buds ovate, gradually narrowed at the acute apex, 

 about Y long, with thin ovate acute light chestnut-brown scales. Bark on young 

 stems and on the upper part of the limbs of large trees smooth, light gray, becoming 

 on older trunks l'-l' thick, dark brown tinged with red, and divided into small thick 

 appressed plates scaly on the surface. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, 

 light reddish brown, with thin darker colored sapwood; used in construction, for the 

 interior finish of houses, and in furniture. 



Distribution. Nova Scotia and southern New Brunswick through Quebec to the 

 northern shores of Lake Huron and to Lake Namekagon, southward to middle Ten- 

 nessee and Virginia, and along the high Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia, 

 and westward to eastern Nebraska and central Kansas; rare and of small size toward 

 the northern limits of its range; abundant in southern Nova Scotia, Quebec, and 

 Ontario; one of the largest and most common trees of the forests of the northern 



