150 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
measurements of a great number of trees recently felled, show 
that, for the first thirty-five years, this tree increases at the 
rate of about two inches in diameter, every eleven years. 
Next to the red oak the younger Michaux placed the gray 
oak, which, however, after a vast deal of examination, I am 
obliged to consider as only that form of the red oak, which most 
usually occurs throughout the New England States. The leaf 
which he has figured for that of the gray oak, is by far the 
most common form of the leaf of the red oak, on all young and 
srowing trees. The fruit is such as is often found on the red 
oak, the cup varying on different trees, by imperceptible grada- 
tions, from a shape shallower and broader than that he has fig- 
ured for the red oak, to one narrower than that he has given to 
the gray oak. 
Sp. 11. Tue Bear Oax. Quercus ilicifolia. Willdenow. 
Figured in Michaux; Sylva, I, Plate 21; and in Plate 11 of this volume. 
This little oak is found on poor soils in every part of Massa- 
chusetts. It is commonly known by the name of the scrub 
oak, or dwarf red oak, and sometimes bear oak, from the fond- 
ness of bears for its fruit. It is usually not more than six or 
eight feet high, and an inch or two in diameter, but sometimes 
attains the height of fifteen or eighteen feet, and the diameter of 
eight ornine inches. It is covered with numerous large, scraggy 
branches, with small branchlets. 
The recent branchlets are of a light ashen gray, greenish, or 
of a clouded brown, with a velvet-downy surface. Older ones, 
greenish, dotted with gray. Stem, a rich green, with numerous 
dots, and occasionally light clouds, and a transparent, pearly, 
shining epidermis, growing darker when old, covered in patches, 
and often completely covered, like other smooth-barked trees, 
with lichens of various colors, usually dark, or nearly white. 
From the axil of the lower leaves on the newly formed shoots, 
rise, on short footstalks, next year’s fruits, two or three together, 
crowned with their three stigmas. 
The leaves are on short petioles, wedge-shaped at base, obo- 
vate, somewhat lyre-shaped, with two or three obtuse sinuses 
