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ABOUT THE OAKS OF THE UNITED STATES. 401 
curf very pag or sometimes entirely absent. Another extreme and somewhat aberrant subspecies I name for its 
pied Q. Palmer. It is a stout and scraggy shrub, in the mountains 80 miles east of San Diego, 8-10 feet high, 
with very rigid a ial spiny, sinuate-toothed, broadly oval leaves, less than 1 inch long, scurfy on the lower side ; anthers 
about 10, smaller than in chrysolepis, emarginate, not cuspidate ; cup obconic (} inch wide, 4 inch high) ; its scales 
almost hidden in the dense, fulvous tomentum ; nut inside densely woolly, which I find in no other white-oak ; abortive 
ovules basal. 
Q. TOMENTELLA, 7. sp., is an oak from the Island of ae ee v8 om coast of the S apiernan Paes which 
{ had ante ds lena with chrysolepis (Palmer, Flor. Guad. Nos. d 89), but which ap 
well distinguished by its tomentose young leaves and branchlets, ake rom retain this coating re pont [394 (10)] 
years. The full-grown leaves are short-pedicelled, ovate lanceolate acute, at base obtuse, undulate-crenate 
(only on young shoots spinose-dentate), glabrous above and brownish-furzy below, about 2 inches long and half as 
wide, and persist into the third year. Male aments tomentose, calyx lobes oval-obtuse, anthers about 10, cuspidate ; 
female flowers short-peduncled. Large oval acorns (16 lines long) in a shallow cup covered with dense brown wool, 
from which protrude the small triangular tips of the scales. Maturation of the fruit unknown, but from the close 
affinity to Bet, probably biennial, though the apparently nearly allied-@. tomentosa, Willd., has annual 
fructificat 
Q. ‘Son Torr. (see p. 382, where 1. 3 from below, “ Whipple” ought to read Wheeler). This form, which 
connects the white-oaks with the black-oaks, is of the greatest interest to the student, but annoying enough to the 
systematic botanist. While we have several other black-oaks with annual fructification, I know of only this one with 
basal abortive ovules, like the white-oaks ; but the black rough bark, the wood, the small number (2-5) of large anthers, 
the long, recurved styles, the membranaceous brown cup scales, and the tomentose inner coating of the shell, can leave 
no doubt about its proper position among the black-oaks. It grows from West Texas through New Mexico to Arizona, 
generally as a large bush, but Dr. Palmer and the Rev. Mr. Greene have found it also a tree up to 2 feet diameter at 
base and 30 feet high. Its leaves are persistent through winter, but fall about the flowering-time. 
Q. ruBRA, Linn., so easily recognized in its typical form, is really one of the most variable of the Atlantic species, 
especially north and northwestwardly. All the forms have a smoothish bark with ratber shallow fissures, the young 
leaves lose their early thick down (usually pale below and bright red above) at or soon after flowering-time, and the 
scales of the ordinarily very shallow, large cups are = closely appressed, and slightly downy or almost glabrous. 
The lobes of the normal leaf taper almost undivided from a broad base, bearing a few coarse or small teeth ; but other 
forms have leaves similar to those of coccinea, with divaricately pinnatifid lobes, or the leaves are stisites and more 
deeply divided, with fewer lobes, much like those of palustris; their acorns are always smaller than in the typical 
rubra and the cup rather deeper. Var. runcinata has narrow i lobe-dentate leaves, the large, regular teeth nearly 
entire. The acorns of rubra are between 6 and 12, usually 9 or 10 lines thick, ovoid, rarely elongated or sometimes 
subglobose. In ie forms the cup is apt to become more hemispherical or even turbinate, and the scales not rarely 
tumid at base after the manner of the seer a This form I take to be Q. ambiqua, Michx., which by others is 
thought to be a variety of the next species. Some oaks from northern Illinois (Bebb, Wok 4 4, 5 and 7), with rather 
larger and looser cup-scales, and except 7, with eiats pinnatifid leaves, come near to sibel and may possibly be 
hybrids of rubra and coccinea. 
ctnEA, Wang., is readily distinguished by its turbinate cups with large, loosely imbricate (when 
id inet squarrose), decade ot pubescent scales, the acorns mostly ovoid-globose, retuse, or oval and [395 (11)] 
ed. e hesitation, followed DeCandolle and Gray in uniting with this species Q. tine- 
are Bart., which has oie and more pointed buds ; broader, less lobed, and firmer leaves, paler on the under side, 
smaller and more pointed acorns, at least in the few fruiting specimens I have been able to examine, and a deep yellow- 
colored inner bark. I suspect that specific differences may yet be discovered ; for the present I venture to introduce it 
as a subspeci 
Q. Peseta M. A. Curtis, confined, as far as known, to that isolated granite rock, the Stone Mountain, east of 
Atlanta in Georgia, which is also the only locality for Gymnoloma (for merly Rudbeckia) Porteri, Gray, and for Isoétes 
melanospora.® Leaves glabrous from the first, generally lance-oval, oval or sometimes obovate, mostly coarsely sinuate- 
5 Tsoétes melanospora, n. sp. amphibia, parvula, gregaria, the mountain, where occasional rains and dews furnish tem- 
ese ae monoica ; trunco placentiformi | bilobo ; foliis paucis porary and precarious moisture, but where on weeks and even 
(5-10) distichi is Si iculi i iphericis ; months the — g sun, flashing on t pong 
velo sporangium suborbiculare totum tegente ; ‘macrosporii riis and bakes them : discovered hy Wm ot Gente in May, 1869 ; 
(0.35-0.45 mm. diam.) minutissime sub lente verruculosis revisited by Prof. Gray in April, 1875 5, and by Mr. Canby end 
obseuris (humidis i Nat microsporiis (0.028-0.031 myself in September, 1876, when nothing was perceptible but 
mm. longis papillosis obscuri: the dead, matted root-fibres attached to the — shrivelled 
In shallow depressions a sates of inches deep and a few corms. —Corm 3-4 lines in diameter, flat, only 3-1 line 
feet in diameter, on the naked granite surface near the top of thick ; leaves 2-2$ inches long, in all the puliades examined 
51 
