FAGACEJE 



237 



A tree, 70-80 high, with a trunk 2-3 in diameter, comparatively small branches 

 spreading gradually and forming a rather narrow open head, and slender branchlets 

 coated at first witli loose scurfy pubescence, soon pale green and lustrous, light red 



or orange-red in their first winter and light or dark brown the following year; usu- 

 ally much smaller. Winter-buds oval or ovate, gradually narrowed at the acute 

 apex, ft-\ f long, dark reddish brown, and pale-pubescent above the middle. Bark 

 of young stems and branches smooth, light brown, becoming on old trunks '-!' 

 thick and divided by shallow fissures into irregular ridges covered by small light 

 brown scales slightly tinged with red. Wood heavy, hard, strong, coarse-grained, 

 light or reddish brown, with thicker darker colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Light dry usually sandy soil; valley of the Androscoggin River, 

 Maine, through southern New Hampshire and Vermont and central New York to 

 southern Ontario, westward through central Michigan and Minnesota to southeastern 

 Nebraska, and southward to the District of Columbia and northern Illinois, and 

 along the Alleghany Mountains to North Carolina; very abundant in the coast 

 region from Massachusetts Bay to southern New Jersey; less common in the inte- 

 rior, growing on dry gravelly uplands, and on the prairies skirting the western mar- 

 gins of the eastern forest. 



Occasionally planted in the northeastern states and in Europe as an ornamental 

 tree valued chiefly for the brilliant autumn color of the foliage. 



7. Quercus velutina, Lam. Black Oak. Yellow-bark Oak. 

 Leaves ovate or oblong, rounded, wedge-shaped or truncate at the base, mostly 

 7-lobed and sometimes divided nearly to the middle by wide rounded sinuses into 

 narrow obovate more or less repand-dentate lobes, or into elongated nearly entire 

 mucronate lobes tapering gradually from a broad base, the terminal lobe oblong, 

 elongated, acute, furnished with small lateral teeth, or broad, rounded, and coarsely 

 repand-dentate, or slightly divided into broad dentate lobes or sinuate-dentate, 

 bright crimson when they unfold, and covered above by long loose scattered white 

 hairs and below with thick pale or silvery white tomentum, hoary-pubescent when 

 half grown, and at maturity thick and firm or subcoriaceous, dark green and lustrous 

 above, below yellow-green, brown or dull copper color and more or less pubescent 

 or glabrous with the exception of tufts of rusty hairs in the axils of the principal 



