118
CUPULIFEK-®.
llUrULU! AiWJ*
_vy^X.
and pubescent on the inner surface, and covered by thin broadly ovate light chestnut-brown scales
rounded at the apex and clothed, especially toward the base of the cup, with soft silvery pubescence.
Quercus hypoleuca is distributed from the Limpio Mountains in western Texas over the mountain
ranges of New Mexico and Arizona south of the Colorado plateau , and on those of northern Chihuahua
and Sonora . Nowhere very abundant, it is scattered through the Pine forests on the slopes of canons
and high ridges usually between six and seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, but sometimesin shrubby forms descending a thousand feet lower.
The wood of Quercus hypoleuca is heavy, very strong, hard, and close-grained; it is dark brown,with thick lighter colored sapwood, and contains broad conspicuous medullary rays, the layers of annual
growth being marked by narrow bands of small open ducts. The specific gravity of the absolutely drywood is 0.8009, a cubic foot weighing 49.91 pounds.
This tree, one of the most distinct and beautiful of the small Oaks of North America , '' vaS
discovered on the mountains of southern New Mexico by Charles Wright, 1 one of the botanists oiUnited States and Mexican Boundary Survey, in 1851.
1 See i. 94.
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE.
Plate CCCCV. Quercus hypoleuca.
1. A flowering branch, natural size.
2. A staminate flower, enlarged.
3. A pistillate flower, enlarged.
4. A fruiting branch, natural size.
5. End of a vigorous shoot, natural size.
6. A leaf, natural size.