Handbook of Trees of the ISToetheen States and Canada. 153 



This beautiful and stately Oak attains tlie 

 height of upwards of 100 ft. in forest-growth 

 with straight columnar trunk 4 or 5 ft. in 

 diameter. When isolated from other trees, as 

 occasionally found on river banks where it has 

 room for full development, its massive branches 

 form a wide rounded top, and its ample party- 

 colored leaves as they display successively their 

 dark-green and silvery-white surfaces, when 

 agitated by the wind, make it a beautiful ob- 

 ject. The bark of trunk is of a dark gray color 

 •fissured into rather narrow ridges of firm small 

 scales. 



It is distinctly a tree of alluvia! bottom-lands 

 and the banks of streams subject to inunda- 

 tion, reaching its greatest development in 

 northern Mississippi and eastern Arkansas 

 where it is a very valuable timber tree. 



The wood is heavy, hard, and strong and 



useful for interior finishing, furniture, agri- 



•cultural implements, etc., nearly equaling in 



value the wood of the White Oak and is really 



one of the very best of the Red Oak group. 



LfavtiS oval to obiciiii; in outline, 5-10 in. long, 

 wide-cuneate, truncate oi' rounded at base, with 

 5-7 wide-based and often falcate narrow-pointed 

 mostly entire bristle-tipped spreading lobes, at 

 maturit.v lustrous darli green above, pale tomentose 

 beneatb ; branchlets tomentose at first. Fruit 

 short-stalked with short subglobose puberulous 

 acorn about % in. in diameter and nearly half 

 invested by the flat or slightly turbinate cup of 

 small puheriilons scales. 



