446 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JUNE 
article on “Our native oaks.” ‘It (Q. palustris) is found in low and 
swampy ground, and in general appearance much resembles the scarlet 
oak (Q. coccinea), and perhaps may yet have to be considered a variety of 
that polymorphous species.”3 Dr. VAsEy resided for several years in 
northern Illinois, and could hardly have failed to see such forms of Q. 
ellipsoidalis as have led to its being confounded, by the common people at 
least, with the pin oak. Buta typical scarlet oak is a tree of quite a different 
aspect from Q. palustris, and from its habitat would be more easily con- 
founded with Q. ellipsoidalis. It is true that Q. palustris is commonly con- 
fined to low ground, though not always swampy, as along the margins of 
streams which have cut their beds deep down into the drift, leaving a high 
bank. Here the pin oak holds its place on ground that trends away from 
the stream and is comparatively dry. I have seen it along the Kankakee 
River move out of a swampy area to a bordering locality where the lime- 
stone was but a few inches below the surface. And although Q. ellip- 
soidalis commonly grows on dry or upland ground, it also occurs in lower, 
even wettish, localities, as by the borders of ponds and sloughs in low 
woods, becoming a near neighbor of the swamp white oak (Q. platinoides). 
Those seen in Wisconsin were on hills of till, or by the borders of lakes 
in the Kettle Range, or in soil of glacial drift. The least frequent of the 
biennial-fruited oaks associated with it seemed to be Q. velutina. Q. 
coccinea was quite common; Q. rubra the most abundant of all. In 
Illinois I have most frequently met with it in woods adjacent to streams 
not subject to overflow, the morainal hills being taken, when wooded, more 
by Q. coccinea, Q. rubra, Q. velutina, and Q. imbricaria, in prevalence some- 
what in the order given. 
It is therefore a matter of some doubt whether Q. palustris now occurs 
in Wisconsin. In Minnesota it is mentioned in UpHam’s “Catalogue of 
the plants of Minnesota” on the authority of Dr. Lapuam, the locality 
not being given; and on the authority of another collector as found in the 
region of the Upper Mississippi. I have not been able to get these state- 
ments verified. The pin oak of Minnesota may also be Q. ellipsoidalis. 
Professor SARGENT identifies this in specimens collected at the Falls of 
Minnehaha in 1878, and states that he himself first saw the species in 1882 
at Brainard on the Red River of the North and at St. Paul. In his report 
on the forest trees of North America, tenth census, volume 9, Q. palustris 
is given for Wisconsin; but in his account of the tree in the eighth volume 
of the Silva, this state is omitted from its range, as well as in his more 
recently published Manual of the trees of North America. Both Wisconsin 
3 The American Entomologist and Botanist 2: 376. 1870. 
4Silva of North America 14:50. 1902. 
