275 



**Leaves often dentate or spinescent. 



^-Leaves blue-green, deciduous in their first autumn or winter. 



37. Quercus breviloba, Sarg. White Oak. 



Leaves obovate or oblong, broad and rounded or rarely acute at the apex, usually 

 gradually narrowed and acute, or rarely broad and equally or unequally rounded at 

 the base, undulate-lobed, with 47 broad lobes, or obscurely 3-lobed at the broad apex 

 and entire below, or undulate or coarsely and remotely dentate, with acute spinescent 

 teeth, or often entire, on vigorous shoots frequently oblong-obovate and more or less 

 deeply divided by wide sinuses into broad lobes, when they unfold thin, covered with 

 scattered stellate pale hairs on the upper surface and pale pubescent on the lower, 

 at maturity thin in the eastern Gulf states, thicker and often subcoriaceous in the 

 drier climate of Texas, light blue or yellow-green, usually lustrous above, pubescent 



and paler and often silvery white below, usually l^'-3' long, f'-l' wide, or east of 

 the Mississippi River and on young and vigorous branches sometimes 4'-6' long and 

 2' broad, with slender yellow midribs and veins and reticulate veinlets, turning pale 

 yellow and falling in the autumn, or in western Texas sometimes irregularly during 

 the winter and early spring; their petioles stout, rarely more than \' long. Flowers : 

 staminate in hairy aments l^'-2' long; calyx pale yellow, divided into nearly tri- 

 angular segments much shorter than the stamens; pistillate on short peduncles 

 coated like their involucral scales with thick hoary tomentum; stigmas dull red. 

 Fruit sessile or subsessile, usually solitary; acorn, ovate, obovate, or oval, acute or 

 rounded and sometimes depressed at the broad apex usually furnished with a narrow 

 ring of pale pubescence, \'-V long, f'-f ' wide, inclosed only at the base in the thin 

 saucer-shaped cup, bright reddish brown and pubescent on the inner surface, covered 

 on the outer by closely imbricated ovate bright red scales hoary-pubescent except at 

 their acute or rounded appressed tips. 



A tree, east of the Mississippi River 80-90 high, with a tall straight trunk 2-3 

 in diameter, in Texas much smaller and rarely more than 20-30 high, with a 

 short trunk usually divided at the ground into 2 or 3 spreading limbs and rarely 

 more than 12'-15' in diameter, and slender branchlets coated at first with hoary 

 tomentum, gray faintly tinged with red or ashy gray during their first winter, 



