270 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



surface, 5'-6' long, 2'-4' wide, with slender yellow midribs, primary veins running 

 to the points of the lobes, and conspicuous reticulate veinlets, turning in the autumu 

 dull yellow-brown or occasionally orange-color or red before falling ; their petioles 

 stout, pilose at first, becoming glabrous, '-' long. Flowers : staminate in hairy 

 aments 3'-4' long; calyx light yellow-green, hirsute, with pale hairs, and deeply 

 divided into 5-9 lanceolate acute segments rather shorter than the stamens; pis- 

 tillate in few-flowered spikes on elongated peduncles covered like their involucral 



scales with thick white or tawny tomentum, stigmas bright red. Fruit usually in 

 pairs on slender dark brown glabrous puberulous or pubescent stalks l^'-4' long; 

 acorn oval, with a broad base, rounded, acute, and pubescent at the apex, light chest- 

 nut-brown, f'-l^' long, ^'-f ' wide, inclosed for about one third its length in the 

 th'ick cup-shaped light brown cup pubescent on the inner surface, hoary-tomentose 

 and sometimes tuberculate or roughened toward the base on the outer surface by 

 the thickened contorted tips of the ovate acute scales, thin, free, acute, and chestnut- 

 brown higher on the cup, and often forming a short fringe-like border on its margin, 

 or sometimes in a cup entirely covered by thin scales with free acute tips. 



A tree, usually 60-70 or exceptionally 100 high, with a trunk 2-3 or occa- 

 sionally 8-9 in diameter, rather small limbs generally pendulous below and rising 

 above into a narrow round-topped open head and often furnished with short pendu- 

 lous laterals, and stout branchlets, green, lustrous, and slightly scurfy-pubescent 

 when they first appear, light orange color or reddish brown and glabrous or puberu- 

 lous during their first winter, becoming darker and often purplish and clothed with 

 a glaucous bloom. Winter-buds broadly ovate, obtuse or subglobose to ovate and 

 acute, y long, with light chestnut-brown scales usually pilose above the middle. 

 Bark of young stems and small branches smooth, reddish or purplish brown, separat- 

 ing freely into large papery persistent scales curling back and displaying the bright 

 green inner bark; becoming on old trunks l'-2' thick, and deeply and irregularly 

 divided by cohtinuous or interrupted fissures into broad flat ridges covered by small 

 appressed gray-brown scales often slightly tinged with red. Wood heavy, hard, 

 strong, tough, light brown, with thin hardly distinguishable sapwood; used in con- 

 struction, the interior finish of houses, cabinet-making, carriage and boatbuilding, 

 cooperage, railway-ties, fencing, and fuel. 



