=Fruit.=--Maturing the first season, sessile or short-peduncled: cup covering about half the nut, thin, shallow, with small, rarely much thickened scales: acorn ovoid or globose, about 3/4 inch long. =Horticultural Value.=--Hardy in New England; grows in all good dry or moist soils, in open or partly shaded situations; maintains a nearly uniform rate of growth till maturity, and is not seriously affected by insects. It forms a fine individual tree and is useful in forest plantations. Propagated from seed. [Illustration: PLATE XLII.--Quercus Muhlenbergii.] 1. Winter buds. 2. Flowering branch. 3. Sterile flower. 4. Fertile flowers. 5. Fruiting branch. =Quercus prinoides, Willd.= SCRUB WHITE OAK. SCRUB CHESTNUT OAK. More or less common throughout the states east of the Mississippi; westward apparently grading into _Q. Muhlenbergii_, within the limits of New England mostly a low shrub, rarely assuming a tree-like habit. The leaves vary from rather narrow-elliptical to broadly obovate, are rather regularly and coarsely toothed, bright green and often lustrous on the upper surface. =Quercus rubra, L.= RED OAK. =Habitat and Range.=--Growing impartially in a great variety of soils, but not on wet lands. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to divide west of Lake Superior. Maine,--common, at least south of the central portions; New Hampshire,--extending into Coos county, far north of the White mountains; Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut,--common; probably in most parts of New England the most common of the genus; found higher up the slopes of mountains than the white oak. South to Tennessee, Virginia, and along mountain ranges to Georgia; reported from Florida; west to Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas. =Habit.=--The largest of the New England oaks, 50-85 feet high, with a diameter of 2-6 feet above the swell of the roots; occasionally attaining greater dimensions; trunk usually continuous to the top of the tree, often heavily buttressed; point of branching higher than in the white oak; branches large, less contorted, and rising at a sharper angle, the lower sometimes horizontal; branchlets rather slender; head extremely variable, in old trees with ample space for growth, open, well-proportioned, and imposing; sometimes oblong in outline, wider near the top, and sometimes symmetrically rounded, not so broad, however, as the head of the white oak; conspicuous in summer by its bright green, abundant foliage, which turns to dull purplish-red in autumn. =Bark.=--Bark of trunk and lower parts of branches in old trees dark gray, firmly, coarsely, and rather regularly ridged, smooth elsewhere; in young trees greenish mottled gray, smooth throughout; season's shoots at first green, taking a reddish tinge in autumn, marked with pale, scattered dots.