200. LIFE STORIES OF PLANTS 
some very shallow, others deep and long. The Turkey 
oak is a handsome tree with acorn-cups covered with 
blunt hairs or scales which give it the name of the 
mossy oak. Here is q the leaf of the red oak, so 
called because its leaves 




4 turn red in 
“== autumn. 
The winter condi- 
tion of the oak. The 
fallmg of the leaves 
from trees and shrubs 
on the approach of 
winter 1s a constant 
habit. We are accus- 
tomed, perhaps, to look 
upon it merely as one 
of the signs of autumn. 
It is always interesting 
to watch the leaves falling from 
the tree and to observe how 
the movement of the air aids 
in freeing them from the limb. 
A gust of wind knocks off troops of them, and sends 
them scurrying over the field or rolls them in oreat 
drifts. 
Did you ever think what this shedding of the leaves 
in the autumn means to the leaf and to the tree? It is 
the death of the leaf. But we know that the tree 1S 
FIG. 243. Leaf of red oak. 
