THE MIGHTY OAK 127 



bears two kinds of flowers on the same tree. 

 The staminate flowers grow in catkins. The 

 pistillate flowers are like tiny pink balls. The 

 pistil becomes the nut of the acorn. It is some- 

 times diflScult to tell the type of an oak. But 

 there are only two natural divisions. These are 

 the annuals, which mature their acorns iii a sin- 

 gle season; and the biennials, which require 

 two seasons. They are known as the White 

 Oak and Black Oak groups. 



Ah, here is a great white oak right beside us. 

 It is the most common, as well as the most noble 

 of its group. Note its pale gray, scaly, shallow- 

 fissured bark. The twigs are dark, ending in 

 tufts of leaves, and each twig gives rise to sev- 

 eral new shoots each year. In springtime the 

 leaves cover the tree with a beautiful veil of 

 rose and silver. As the summer advances they 

 turn to a bright green, with a paler lining, and 

 grow to a rather large oval shape, being divided 

 by hollows into from seven to nine fingers or 

 lobes. The slender, pointed sweet-flavored 

 acorns, in their scaly, shallow cups, ripen and 

 fall late in the summer. 



Over here is a stocky, rough-looking, under- 

 sized tree, called the post oak. Its gnarled and 

 twiggy limbs seem to say that life has been one 

 long struggle. It belongs to the white oak f am- 



