POST OAK. 91 



the female very minute. The acorns, usually in pairs, have rounded 

 saucer-shaped, rough, warty cups, and brown, sweet, edible nuts. 

 The small blunt winter-buds are smooth, as are the light brown 

 or gray slender twigs. The white oak has a taproot and numer- 

 ous deeply seated lateral roots. 



The wood is strong, very heavy, hard, tough, close-grained, 

 liable to check, and very durable in contact with the soil ; brown 

 in cc4or ; the sapwood lighter. It is used for shipbuilding, con- 

 struction, cooperage, carriages, agricultural implements, railway 

 ties, fencing, interior finish, cabinet-making, baskets, fuel, etc. 

 It is altogether one of the most important timbers of the United 

 States. 



In North Carolina it is largely used for fuel, clapboards, fenc- 

 ing, ties, and staves. It has been manufactured into lumber for 

 local uses only. Large quantities of merchantable timber still 

 stand in the monntain counties and in many of the counties of 

 the Piedmont plateau. The bark is used extensively for tanning,, 

 but is less highly valued than that of the chestnut oak. 



Quercus minor, Sargent. 

 (post oak.) 



A tree, with rough hard gray bark, and numerous spreading 

 branches, reaching a height of 100 and a diameter of 5 feet ; or on 

 the Florida coast reduced to a low shrub. 



It occurs generally in poor soil from Massachusetts south to 

 northern Florida, and west through southern Ontario and Michi- 

 gan to eastern Nebraska, Kansas, and Indian Territory, and into 

 central Texas, and is very common in the GulfVstates west of the 

 Mississippi. 



In this State, where it grows to a height of 50 and a diameter of 

 4 feet, it occurs in greatest numbers and attains its largest size in 

 the Piedmont counties. Here it forms with the white oak a large 

 part of the second-growth in the forest and in old fields. It is 

 not common in the transmontane counties. In the eastern 

 section it frequently forms, on the margins of swamps, a lower 

 story beneath the willow and water oaks. (Fig. 19, p. 92.) 



The post oak bears fruit abundantly e/ery 2 or 3 years, and 



