(_Quercus Minor_) Post oak is the most common name for this tree but various sections of its range have given it their own names which probably have local significance. The following names are in use in the localities denoted: post oak in the eastern and Gulf states, Connecticut to Texas, and in Arkansas and West Virginia; box white oak in Rhode Island; iron oak in Delaware, Mississippi and Nebraska; chêne étoile in Quebec; overcup oak in Florida; white oak in Kentucky and Indiana; box oak and brash oak in Maryland. Toward the northern portion of the range of this tree it is small, and in early times it was little used except for fence posts. Its durability fitted it for that use, and it is said the common name was due to that circumstance. The name iron oak was used by shipbuilders who sometimes bought small knees made of this wood. Baltimore oak was an early name which is not now in use. It was generally applied to white oak, but it included some post oak shipped from the Chesapeake bay region. Post oak is botanically and commercially a white oak and is seldom distinguished from the true white oak, _Quercus alba_, in commerce. It is seen at its best in the uplands of the Mississippi basin and in the Gulf states west of the Mississippi, where it attains a considerable size. In the northeastern states and in Florida it is small, becoming shrubby in some localities, and more or less of local growth. Limestone uplands or dry, sandy or gravelly soils seem to offer the best conditions for its existence, where it grows in company with black jack, red and white oak, sassafras, dogwood, gums, and red cedar. The range of growth of post oak extends from New Brunswick south through the Atlantic states into Florida; west through the Gulf states and throughout the Mississippi river system, growing west brokenly to Montana. It is the common oak of central Texas but in the North it is rather scarce, becoming more plentiful in the lower Appalachians. The broad, dense, round-topped crown of the post oak with its peculiar foliage make it very noticeable in the woods, even to the casual observer. Its dark green looks almost black at a distance. The tree has an average height of sixty or eighty feet and is about two feet in diameter, but in exceptional cases it reaches one hundred feet in height and has a diameter of three feet. It has a moderately thick, dark brown bark with a reddish tinge and deep fissures, the broad ridges being covered with thin scales. On the branches it becomes much thinner, and lighter in color, the branchlets being unfissured and glabrous in the second year, although fuzzy at first. They are rather heavy and rounded and terminate in short round buds with conspicuous scales. A noticeable feature of the tree is the peculiar branching. The limbs are heavy and crooked, separating often, with wide angles, forming knees which when big enough, have a commercial value.