de view.
6. Fruiting branch.
7-8. Variant leaves.

=Quercus stellata, Wang.=

_Q. obtusiloba, Michx. Q. minor, Sarg_.

POST OAK. BOX WHITE OAK.

=Habitat and Range.=

Doubtfully reported from southern Ontario.

In New England, mostly in sterile soil near the sea-coast;
Massachusetts,--southern Cape Cod from Falmouth to Brewster, the most
northern station reported, occasional; the islands of Naushon, Martha's
Vineyard where it is rather common, and Nantucket where it is rare;
Rhode Island,--along the shore of the northern arm of Wickford harbor
(L. W. Russell); Connecticut,--occasional along the shores of Long
Island sound west of New Haven.

South to Florida; west to Kansas, Indian territory, and Texas.

=Habit.=--Farther south, a tree of the first magnitude, reaching a
height of 100 feet, with a trunk diameter of 4 feet; in southern New
England occasionally attaining in woodlands a height of 50-60 feet; at
its northern limit in Massachusetts, usually 10 to 35 feet in height,
with a diameter at the ground of 6-12 inches. The trunk throws out
stout, tough, and often conspicuously crooked branches, the lower
horizontal or declining, forming a disproportionately large head, with
dark green, dense foliage. Near the shore the limbs often grow very low,
stretching along the ground as if from an underground stem.

=Bark.=--Resembling that of the white oak, but rather a darker gray,
rougher and firmer; upon old trunks furrowed and cut into oblongs; small
limbs brownish-gray, rough-dotted; season's shoots densely
tawny-tomentose.

=Winter Buds and Leaves.=--Buds small, rounded or conical, brownish,
scales minutely pubescent or scurfy. Leaves simple, alternate, 3-8
inches long, two-thirds as wide, thickish, yellowish-green and tomentose
upon both sides when young, becoming a deep, somewhat glossy green
above, lighter beneath, both sides still somewhat scurfy; general
outline of leaf and of lobes, and number and shape of the latter,
extremely variable; type-form 5-lobed, all the lobes rounded, the three
upper lobes much larger, more or less subdivided, often squarish, the
two lower tapering to an acute, rounded, or truncate base; sinuses deep,
variable, often at right angles to the midrib; leafstalk short,
tomentose; stipules linear, pubescent, occasionally persistent till
midsummer. The leaves are often arranged at the tips of the branches in
star-shaped clusters, giving rise to the specific name _st