QUERCUS PEDUNCULATA. THE OAK. 
Class XXI. MONCECIA.— Order VII. POLYANDRIA. 
Natural Order, CUPULIFERiE. THE OAK TRIBE. 
Fig. a. represents a sprig with the male catkins; b. the same, with the female flowers; r. a male flower, magnified. 
d. a female flower, magnified. 
Of this genus, so valuable for its economical uses, there are only fourteen species described by Linnaeus. The 
discoveries of Thunberg, Humboldt, and other distinguished travellers, have so greatly enriched the subject, 
during the last fifty years, that Willdenow, who wrote in 1805, describes seventy-six, and Persoon, about 
the same period, enumerates eighty-two species. Twenty-six species were discovered in North America, by 
two indefatigable naturalists, father and son, named Michaux ; and Humboldt and Bonpland have men- 
tioned twenty-four others, which they found in the course of their travels in South America. Of the one 
hundred and forty species known at the present day, more than one half belong to America. The various 
species of oak are mostly large trees ; some are evergreens, and others are deciduous, or lose their leaves 
during the winter. In this country we have two distinct species of oak, the Quercus pedunculata (or Robur) 
and the Quercus sessiliflora; the former of which affords the best timber, and is by far the most common in 
the woods and hedges of Britain ; flowering in April. 
The British Oak, it is well known, is a majestic forest tree, distinguished above all others for the slow- 
ness of its growth, its great size, longevity, and use. In woods, as Professor Martyn justly observes, it rises 
to a considerable height ; but singly, it is rather a spreading tree, sending off horizontally immense branches, 
which are much divided, more or less wavy, and covered with a rough brown bark. The leaves are deci- 
duous, alternate, nearly sessile, or on very short footstalks, obovate, oblong, smooth, irregularly sinuated, 
with obtuse, rounded, entire marginal lobes ; their upper surface of a rich shining green, paler, and slightly 
glaucous underneath. The male or barren flowers are in numerous, pendulous, stalked, yellowish, downy 
catkins, two inches long, from scaly buds ; the female on axillary, simple stalks, few, scattered, sessile, small, 
and greenish tinged with brown. The calyx of the male flower is a scale of one leaf, bell-shaped, and 
generally five-cleft ; that of the female is double; the outer one coriaceous, entire, becoming subsequently 
enlarged, and constituting the hard, tubercled, woody cup of the nut or acorn ; the inner of one leaf and 
divided into six pointed, downy segments, closely surrounding the base of the germen. The filaments are 
about ten, longer than the calyx, and supporting roundish 2-lobed anthers. The germen is ovate, crowned 
with a short conical style, and three obtuse recurved stigmas. The fruit is an oval, coriaceous, smooth nut, 
fixed to the inside of the outer calyx, as in a shallow cup, and dropping from it when the nut ripens in 
autumn. 
With respect to age, the Oak exceeds any other tree, except perhaps the yew ; even the timber is use- 
less for purposes of art till it has grown from fifty to seventy years. The age to which it can continue to 
vegetate has commonly been estimated at three hundred years ; but tradition carries some trees which have 
escaped the axe to a period much more remote. In the New Forest, Evelyn counted, in the sections of 
some trees, three or four hundred concentric rings or layers of wood, each of which is supposed to record a 
year’s growth. Not many years ago, the oak in Torwood Forest, in Stirlingshire, supposed to be the largest 
tree in Scotland, under the shadow of which Sir William Wallace used to assemble his army to oppose the 
tyranny of Edward, is said to have been still standing. Mr. Gilpin, in his work on Forest Scenery, speaks 
of a “few venerable oaks in the New Forest, that chronicle upon their furrowed trunks ages before the 
Conquest.” 
The story of Erisichthon in Ovid is one of many proofs of the reverence entertained for oaks by the 
ancients. 
As fame reports, his hand an axe sustained, 
Which Ceres’ consecrated grove profaned ; 
Which durst the venerable gloom invade, 
And violate with light the awful shade. • 
An ancient oak in the dark centre stood, 
The covert’s glory, and itself a wood ; 
Garlands embraced its shaft, and from the houghs, 
Hung tablets, monuments of prosperous vows. 
In the cool dusk its unpierced verdure spread, 
The Dryads oft their hallowed dances led ; 
And oft, when round their gauging arms they cast, 
Full fifteen ells it measured in the waist ; 
Its height all under standards did surpass, 
As they aspired above the humbler grass. 
These motives, which would gentler minds restrain, 
Could not make Triope’s bold son abstain ; 
He sternly charged his slaves with strict decree, 
To fell with gashing steel the sacred tree. 
But whilst they, lingering, his commands delayed, 
He snatched an axe, and thus blaspheming said ; 
Was this no oak, nor Ceres’ favourite care, 
But Ceres’ self, this arm, unawed, should dare 
Its leafy honours in the dust to spread, 
And level with the earth its airy head. 
