THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
DECEMBER,  1897. 
THE  WILLOW  OAK. 
By  Henry  Trimbi,E. 
One  of  the  most  interesting  of  the  oaks  in  this  vicinity  is  the 
Quercus  Phellos,  L.,  or  willow  oak.  While  it  is  not  of  great  value 
from  an  economic  standpoint,  it  nevertheless  affords  the  means  of 
profitable  study  by  the  botanist.  The  casual  observer,  if  he  did  not 
notice  the  tiny  acorns,  would  pronounce  it  a  willow  tree,  and  its 
resemblance  to  the  latter,  especially  in  the  matter  of  foliage,  is  very 
striking.  It  has,  therefore,  always  been  regarded  with  curiosity,  and 
judging  from  the  correspondence  of  Peter  Collinson  and  John  Bar- 
tram,  it  is  evident,  from  the  appeals  of  the  former  for  specimens, 
that  it  was  especially  a  botanical  curiosity  in  London  over  a  century 
ago. 
About  thirty-five  years  ago  the  late  Professor  Procter  visited, 
with  S.  B.  Buckley,  a  grove  of  willow  oaks  near  Mount  Holly,  N.  J., 
for  the  purpose  of  identifying  one  among  them  which  showed  some 
variations  in  foliage.  Mr.  Buckley  contributed  a  paper  on  this  oak 
to  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences  and  published  it  with  additions 
in  the  American  Journal  of  Pharmacy,  for  March,  1862.  Evidently 
these  two  men  decided  that  the  peculiar  member  of  the  group  was 
Bartram's  oak,  Quercus  heterophylla,  Michx.,  and  that  it  was  merely 
a  variety  of  the  willow  oak  and  not  a  hybrid.  It  may  be  said  that 
this  opinion  is  held  by  many  at  the  present  day,  although,  according 
to  Sargent,  it  is  a  hybrid  of  the  willow  oak  with  Quercus  velutina, 
and  Britton  and  Brown  state  that  it  is  probably  a  hybrid  of  the 
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