CALIFORNIA WHITE OAK. 67 



of the year, whose inmost pleasantness and peace lialos at 

 once the world and all things that are therein. Hence, as 

 they serve so conspicuously to discriminate successive sea- 

 sons, their absence is a great loss to any landscape; then, 

 how much more so to us, who have so Few grand types to 

 boldly mark the change. Who can adequately count the 

 value of that precious impress of innocence suggested by 

 vernal buds and tender foliage, and all the ten thousand 

 accessories of a well-pronounced Spring? This primeval 

 state is the ever-blessed earthly emblem of the paradise of 

 the ages — the year-spring, the day-spring from on high, and 

 the Edenic origin of all worthy sentiment, the divinely 

 innocent fountain-source of all right ideas and true growth 

 of mind. 



Of all the trees of the grove, for robust and sturdy dig- 

 nity of character, nay, majestic elegance and manly pose, 

 for freshness and for variety of expression in body and 

 branch, twig and leaf, none excels the summer-green White 

 Oak of the valleys and plains of the Pacific. Main trunk 

 mostly short, five to ten feet or more in diameter; fifty to 

 one hundred feet high, or even more; huge limbs, duly bal- 

 anced and distributed, diverging at broad and varied angles 

 from massive forks ; branches with flexed elbows hither and 

 thither, or bent and contorted in all directions; the ultimate 

 twiggy sprays alike irregular, often only minuter mimics of 

 their originals, yet some of the finest types, to foil this natu- 

 ral irregularity, crown and drape themselves throughout 

 with pendulous branches, as we shall see; the deeply lyre-, 

 bayed leaves, lobes slender and blunt, openly notched, often 

 again sub-lobe-toothed, downy only beneath in age; grayish 

 green, somewhat softer and lighter hued below. The male 

 or stamined flowers in long pending tassels, each floret calyx 

 with six to eight trianguloid-lance lobes, downy and eye- 

 lashed, bearing as many round anthers. Annual fruited, or 

 setting and maturing on the new growth of the same season ; 

 the acorns very long, conical (dark color), from one and one 

 half to two and one half inches long, usually sharp pointed, 

 set in deeply hemispherical finely chased cups, more or less 

 knobby or tubercled, moderately tough, horny shell, smooth 

 within, hung from smooth, fresh green tips or twigs. The 

 great cloud-like masses of foliage are, as it were, often in first, 

 second, and third storied tumuloid groups, yet never tow- 

 ered, seldom sombre in any species, least of all in this; even 

 the most remote approach to formality suggests no monot- 

 ony, for the long, drooping branches pend archwise, like the 

 grand and eloquent American Elm, still preserving their 

 self-reliant ease, strength with grace, neither rough nor rigid. 

 These elegant sprays or wreaths are seen descending down 

 low, or lying along the ground, doubly lining the lawn, 



