APETALOUS EXOGENOUS PLANTS. 501 



lanceolate, pubescent beneath, acuminate, slightly cordate 

 at the base, or oblique ; fruit globose, rough-dotted ; nut 

 furrowed. March and April.— A tree, 30°-50° high. 



120. OAK FAMILY. Order, Cupulifer^. 



Trees or shrubs, with alternate entire or lobed straight- 

 veined stipulate leaves, and monoecious apeialous flowers ; 

 sterile floiuers in pendulous slender or capitate aments ; 

 calyx scale-like, or regular and 4-6-lobed ; stamens few ; 

 fertile floiuers single or clustered, furnished with an in- 

 volucre which incloses the fruit, or forms a cup at its base ; 

 ovary 2-7-celled, with 1-2 pendulous anatropous ovules in 

 each cell ; stigmas as many as the cells ; fruit 1-celled, 

 1-seeded; albumen none; cotyledons thick and fleshy; 

 radicle superior. 



SYNOPSIS. 



* Fertile flowers single, oi'few in a cluster. 



Nut solitary, with the base inclosed in a scaly involucre Quekcus. 



1-3, inclosed in a A-valved spiny involucre; sterile aments elongated, erect. 



Castanea. 



2-:i-angled, inclosed in a somewhat spiny i-valved involucre; sterile aments 



capitate, pendulous Fagus. 



solitary, bony, inclosed in a leafy lacerated involucre Corylus. 



** Fertile flowers spiked. 



Ifuls 1-2, in the axil of an open leafy involucre Carpinus. 



solitary, inclosed in a membranaceous inflated involucre Ostrya. 



QUERCUS, L. Oak. 



Sterile ament slender, bractless, pendulous; calyx un- 

 equally 6-8 parted; stamens 6-12, slender; arithers 

 2-celled; fertile floiuers axillary, solitary, or few in a clus- 

 ter; calyx 6-cleft or denticulate, adnate to the 3-4-celled 

 ovary; ovules 2 in each cell; stigmas obtuse; nut {acorn) 

 oblong or hemispherical, partly (rarely wholly) inclosed in 

 the cup-shaped scaly inYolucre; cotyledons very thick, 



