246 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



in diameter, short stout spreading often contorted branches forming a narrow com- 

 pact round-topped or sometimes an open irregular head, and stout branchlets coated 

 at first with a thick pale tomentum of articulate and stellate hairs, light brown and 

 scurfy-pubescent during their first summer, becoming reddish brown and glabrous or 

 puberulous in the winter, and ultimately brown or ashy gray. Winter-buds ovate 

 or oval, prominently angled, light red-brown, coated with rusty brown hairs, about \' 

 long. Bark I'-l^' thick, and deeply divided into nearly square plates 1/-3' long 

 covered by small closely appressed dark brown or nearly black scales. Wood heavy, 

 hard, strong, dark rich brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood; largely used as 

 fuel and in the manufacture of charcoal. 



Distribution. Dry sandy or clay barrens; Long Island, New York, through 

 northern Ohio and Indiana to southeastern Nebraska, central Kansas, and the Indian 

 Territory, and southward to the shores of Matauzas Inlet and Tampa Bay, Florida, 

 and to the valley of the Nueces River, Texas; rare in the north; very abundant 

 southward; west of the Mississippi River often forming on sterile soils a great part 

 of the forest growth ; of its largest size in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. 



14. Quercus nigra, L. Water Oak. 



Leaves usually oblong-obovate, gradually narrowed and wedge-shaped at the base, 

 enlarged sometimes abruptly at the broad generally rounded or sometimes pointed 

 entire or slightly or deeply 3-lobed apex, or often acute .at the ends, and on upper 



branchlets sometimes linear-lanceolate to linear-obovate, acute or rounded at the 

 apex, divided above the middle by deep wide rounded sinuses into elongated lanceo- 

 late acute entire lobes, or pinnatifid above the middle, when they unfold thin, light 

 green more or less tinged with red, and covered bv fine caducous pubescence, with 

 conspicuous tufts of pale hairs in the axils of the veins below, at maturity thin dull 

 bluish green, paler below than above, glabrous or with axillary tufts of rusty hairs, 

 usually about 2^' long and 1^' wide, or on fertile branches sometimes 6' long and 

 2' wide, falling gradually during the winter; their petioles stout, flattened, \'-^' 

 long. Flowers : staminate in red hairy-stemmed aments 2'-3' long; calyx thin and 

 scarious, covered on the outer surface with short hairs, deeply divided into 4 or 5 

 ovate rounded segments; pistillate on short tomentose peduncles, their involucral 

 scales a little shorter than the acute calyx-lobes and coated with rusty hairs; stigmas 

 deep red. Fruit usually solitary, sessile or short-stalked; acorn ovoid, broad and flat 



