FAGACE^E 



251 



ing a narrow irregular head, and thick rigid branchlets coated at first with a dense 

 fulvous hoary touieutum of articulate and stellate hairs, soon becoming glabrous or 

 puberulous, dark brown sometimes tinged with red during their first winter and 

 darker in their second year; or occasionally 50 high, with a trunk 18'-20' in diame- 

 ter, and a broad round-topped shapely head. Winter-buds ovate, acute, with numer- 

 ous rather loosely imbricated bright chestnut-brown scales ciliate on the margins, 

 often \' long on vigorous branches, frequently obtuse and occasionally much smaller. 

 Bark f'-l^' thick, and divided into thick nearly square plates l'-2' long, and cov- 

 ered by small dark brown or nearly black scales slightly tinged with red. Wood 

 hard, strong, close-grained, light brown tinged with red, with thick darker colored 

 sapwood; probably used only as fuel. 



Distribution. Sandy barrens and upland ridges; North Carolina south to Cape 

 Malabar and the shores of Peace Creek, Florida, and westward along the Gulf coast 

 to the valley of the Brazos River, Texas; in the Atlantic and middle Gulf states 

 usually confined to a maritime belt 40-50 miles wide; extending across the Florida 

 peninsula, and in Texas ranging inland to the neighborhood of Dallas in about lati- 

 tude 33. 



18. Quercua imbricaria, Michx. Shingle Oak. Laurel Oak. 



Leaves oblong-lanceolate to oblong-obovate, apiculate and acute or rounded at 

 the apex, gradually narrowed and wedge-shaped or rounded at the base, entire, with 



slightly thickened revolute often undulate margins, or sometimes more or less 3- 

 lobed, or on sterile branches occasionally repand-lobulate, when they unfold bright 

 red, soon becoming yellow-green, covered with scurfy rusty pubescence on the upper 

 surface and hoary-tomentose on the lower, at maturity thin, glabrous, dark green, 

 and very lustrous above, pale green or light brown and pubescent below, 4'-6' long, 

 f-2' wide, with stout yellow midribs, numerous slender yellow veins arcuate and 

 united at some distance from the margins, and reticulate veinlets, late in the autumn 

 before falling turning dark red on the upper surface; their petioles stout, pubescent, 

 rarely more than ' long. Flowers: staminate in hoary-tomentose aments 2'-3' 

 long; calyx light yellow, pubescent, and divided into 4 acute segments; pistillate on 

 slender tomentose peduncles, their iiivolucral scales covered with pale pubescence 



