10 TRELEASE— LARGE FRUITED AMERICAN OAKS. [April 23, 



Q. insignis^ what must be regarded as most notable in its genus be- 

 cause of the enormous height of the trees and the production of 

 acorns occasionally fully 60 mm. in diameter and thus out of com- 

 parison with those of any black oaks and even with those of such 

 Asiatic Pasanias as P. cornea. Quercus insignis, which occurs 

 along the upper flanks of Mount Orizaba in eastern Mexico, is a 

 white-oak, with the interior of the acorn shell not woolly, and with 

 deeply lateral ovules. Its short-petioled elliptical-oblanceolate 

 more or less acuminate leaves are sharply low-serrate but without 

 bristle-like tips to the teeth, and measure 5 X 10 cm. or more. The 

 fruit, which matures the first season, as seems to be true of all 

 white oaks, is typically biscuit-shaped and about one- fourth shorter 

 than thick, and the rather shallow cup, which may reach 80 mm. in 

 diameter, is covered with coarse heavy loosely ascending scales. 



Martens and Galeotti do not appear to have seen more than one 

 form in the oaks of this kind ; but the type collection of Galeotti 

 as represented in the museum at Budapest contains acorns of 

 two sorts, one depressed, and the other acuminately conical and 

 about as long as thick. At about the same time that Galeotti's col- 

 lections were made, the Danish botanist Liebmann collected in the 

 same general region materials of an oak similar to Q. insignis but 

 dififering in bearing subconical acorns about as long as broad and 

 with more turbinate cups. This was published by its discoverer 

 in 1854 under the name Q. strombocarpaJ Subsequently when a 

 series of exquisite drawings of Mexican oaks prepared under Lieb- 

 mann's direction were published by Oersted, the latter added a 

 plate of a very similar form, which he called Q. insignis stromho- 

 carpoides.^ It is hard to see how the latter can be distinguished 

 from Q. strombocarpa, and the Galeotti collection shows that, dif- 

 ferent as the fruit extremes are, the discoverer of Q. insignis did 

 not separate from its typical form the conical- fruited form to which 

 apparently both of the later names refer. 



6 Quercus insignis Martens and Galeotti, Bull. Acad. Brux. lo^ : 219. 1843. 

 — Liebmann-Oersted, I. c. pi. K, 29. 



'' Quercus strombocarpa Liebmann, Overs. Dansk. Vidensk. Selsk. For- 

 handl. 1854 : 176. — Liebmann-Oersted, /. c. 24. pi. 27. — Oersted, Bidrag Kundsk. 

 Egefamilien. 346. /. E. 



s Q. insignis strombocarpoides Liebmann-Oersted, /. c. pi. 28. 



