-LET’S KNOW SOME TREES PA 
accessible supply has now disappeared. The leaves of this oak are 
wavy at the edges, but are not deeply incut like those of the valley 
white oak, and the acorns are blunter and thicker in proportion to 
their length. The tree is seldom over 40 feet high and 20 inches in 
diameter, although rare specimens have been found with a diameter 
of 2 feet and a height of 75 feet. 
Next in range of altitude, but overlapping the valley white and 
the California blue oaks, comes the California black oak. The hard, 
deeply furrowed bark of this tree is very dark, seeming black when 
wet and bare. After the soft pink leaves of the spring mature into 
the great, shiny, dark yellow-green ones of summer, however, little 
of the trunk is visible beyond the first few feet above the ground. 
Except that they have the bristle-tipped lobes characteristic of the 
black oak group, the leaves of this oak are rather similar in shape 
_to those of the valley white oak, but are longer (4 to 6 inches) and 
deeper green. The acorns vary in size, are pale chestnut in color, 
and downy at the top end. The cups are scaly, with the lowest scales 
much thickened. This oak occurs from central Oregon to the Mexi- 
can border, not on the plains or near the sea, but usually from 1,500 
feet up to 5,000 or 7,000 feet, where it meets and mingles with 
western yellow pine and firs. It is at its best in the Sierra at 3,000 
feet, where it is the principal oak species, furnishing many Indians 
with what was once their main dependence for food, and is even 
yet a favorite item in their diet—acorn-meal mush. It also fur- 
nishes firewood for the mountain people and mast for their hogs. 
California black oak is the principal oak in the Yosemite Valley. 
The Oregon white oak, the white oak of British Columbia and 
Washington, the largest and most abundant oak of Oregon and there 
called “ Oregon oak,” is perhaps best known here as Garry oak. It 
is commonly 25 to 55 feet high in California and is abundant in the 
Bald Hills region, inside the redwood belt of Mendocino and Hum- 
boldt Counties. It is found rather frequently as far south as the 
east side of Santa Rosa Valley, and rarely in the Santa Cruz Moun- 
tains. The 5 to 7 lobed leaves are large and of a dark, shining green. 
The trunk bark is white and cut into broad plates by shallow fissures. 
The shiny acorns of Oregon white oak differ from the acorns of the 
other large oaks of California. They are almost round (one-fourth 
to 114 inches long by two-thirds to 1 inch thick) and bulge out of 
very shallow cups. 
: LIVE OAKS 
The evergreen or live oaks form a distinct class, in which three 
or four stand out conspicuously. This indefinite number is used 
because one of them, the tan oak, is not called an oak at all by some 
botanists, but is classed with the Pasanias, of which there are over, a 
hundred species in southern Asia, though only this one grows in 
California. These Pasanias are between intermediate chestnuts and 
chinquapins and the true oaks; have chestnutlike leaves, and upright 
catkins like a chestnut instead of the drooping flowers of the oaks. . 
The fruit, however, is plainly an acorn, although the acorn cup is 
bristly and suggestive of a chestnut bur. 
The tan oak is commercially the most useful of our California oaks. 
It is a smooth-trunked tree with light-green leaves, shiny on top as a 
