OAKS AT ALDENHAM. 



165 



rigid, and lustrous, having a paler colouring on the under side, which 

 is glabrous, except for tufts of rusty hairs in the axils of the veins. In 

 autumn they take on a brown or dull yellow colour before falling. 



Perhaps as easy a way as any of distinguishing this oak from 

 allied species, such as Kelloggii, coccinea, velutina, &c, is provided 

 by its very short leaf-stalks, which seem never to exceed | in., and are 

 often only \ in. The acorns are usually solitary, oval, with full rounded 

 ends and short stalks, and are about 1 in. long by § in. broad. In 

 its wild state this oak is often little more than scrub. My own plant, 

 for which I am indebted to Mr. Gerald Loder, is but a tiny one, 

 a few inches high, and was raised from acorns gathered by Mr. F. R. S. 

 Balfour at the splendid oak collection of Mile. Ivoy, at Chateau de 

 Geneste, near Bordeaux, in Oct. 1917 ; consequently I have had to 

 depend upon my friends at Kew rather than upon my own powers 

 of observation for most of the above account. 



According to Nicholson's " Dictionary of Gardening," Q. Catesbaei 

 was first introduced into England in 1825, but it did not reach Kew 

 until 1905, and I cannot learn that any trees of older date than this 

 are now in existence in the British Isles. 



Although they print an excellent plate of the leaf, yet in the letter- 

 press Messrs. Elwes and Henry only give a very perfunctory account 

 of this oak, disposing of it in three lines, one of which to the effect that 

 it is not in cultivation in England, is now no longer true. I presume 

 that its worthlessness from a timber point of view explains the scanty 

 attention which they pay to it. Indeed, it is a grave question whether 

 this oak is sufficiently distinct in general appearance from, say, 

 Kelloggii or coccinea to be worth growing on this side of the Atlantic 

 by anyone who is not a botanist or does not, like the writer of these 

 lines, suffer acutely from the collecting mania. 



It is all very well, even where climate and soil are not specially 

 congenial, to make an effort to grow oaks with distinct and extremely 

 handsome foliage such as Q. marylandica and Q. semecarftifolia, but 

 in the case of Q. Catesbaei, which to the casual eye does not differ 

 materially from half a dozen other North American oaks, and which is 

 not likely in the end to make so fine a tree as any one of them, the 

 only inducement for an ordinary man to grow it is that he will have 

 a tree which is most unlikely to be possessed by any of his neighbours, 

 not the highest or finest ambition of which poor humanity is capable. 

 In the U.S.A. its popular name is the 1 Turkey Oak,' but it has no 

 resemblance to our Turkey Oak, Q. Cerris. 



Q. Cerris (Linnaeus). — I have quite as many as I want of this 

 common and quick-growing tree, which is too well known to need 

 description, and which is no great favourite of mine. The wood 

 is almost worthless, and even for firing is woolly and inferior. 

 I have heard it said in its disparagement that even pigs won't 

 eat the acorns, but this, I can answer for it, is a false charge, 

 at any rate in the case of pigs who have to live on war rations. It 

 is certainly a fast and generally a regular and symmetrical grower, 



