ENGELMANN—OAKS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
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pgelmann-oa 
or refuse, often again 2-3-lobed. They bear middle sized or small 
oval acorns in more or less knobby hemispherical cups. Scattered 
copses of these broad-leaved oaks, often of a beautiful brownish^ 
purple in September, accompany us to within a few hundred 
yards of the top of the canon, but here the character of these shrubs 
changes: the bushes are lower, the leaves smaller and in outline 
narrower, the lobes narrower and mostly undivided, but still ob¬ 
tuse, Now we near the precipice itself; from the ragged, dizzy 
edge we here and there get a glimpse of the young Arkansas, 
whose clear green waters toss dnd foam, twelve or fifteen hundred 
feet under us, through the inaccessible gorge, rushing towards the 
plains. The oak bushes accompany us even here, but now they 
are only 4-6 feet high, with leaves 2 inches long, ovate-lanceolate- 
in outline, no longer lobed, but coarsely dentate, the acute teeth 
terminating in a sharp point; the acorns are scarcely different 
from those noticed before. A few steps more and we have 
reached the brink of the precipice itself: oak bushes here too, 
but only 3 or 4 feet high, with small (1 inch long), oval, firm, 
almost cartilaginous, semipersistent, spiny-toothed leaves, here 
and there with only very few teeth or quite entire; the acorns 
proportionately smaller, of the same short oval shape, or often 
elongated from an unusually small, scarcely knobby, and some¬ 
times peduricled cup. 
We feel satisfied that we might have abundant material to 
characterize several distinct species, certainly 4 or 5 well marked 
forms, and, indeed, they have been considered such. The first is 
Nuttalfs Quercus Gambelii (^. stellata , var. Utahensis , D. C. 
Prod.) ; the second is J^. alba , var. Gunnisoni of Torrey; the 
third, with acutish lobes or coarse teeth, is Torrey’s old Jg. un- 
dulata of Long’s Expedition, the first oak obtained from these 
mountains, and described about fifty years ago ; the fourth, from 
the edge of the precipice itself, is what has often been mistake^ 
for Torrey’s Q. Emoryi , or what has been named j)iingensj 
Liebm., in part; with it occur entire-leaved forms which seem 
to unite with this as a fifth form the Q. oblongifolia , of the same 
author, and grisea , Liebm. As a large and broad-leaves|t 
southeastern form somewhat allied to J^>. Gambelii I consider 
Drummondii , Liebm. In herbarium specimens they all 
appear distinct enough, but, looking around us, the very abun^ 
L material must sh 
*in the compass 
lit forms above distir 
liter the one i 
L them and clearly 
tv polymorphous t 
t oak behaves thus 
■ s lt,«hatcan guide 
8 9 10 Missou 
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