Trees, with astringent properties, pubescence of fascicled hairs, deeply furrowed scaly bark, hard close-grained brittle wood, stout branchlets, and winter-buds covered by few erect or spreading foliaceous scales. Leaves convolute in the bud, petiolate, persistent, entire or dentate, with a stout midrib, primary veins running obliquely to the points of the teeth, or on entire leaves forked and united near the margins, and reticulate veinlets; stipules oblong-obovate to linear-lanceolate, those of the upper leaves persistent and surrounding the buds during the winter. Flowers in erect unisexual and in bisexual tomentose aments from the axils of leaves of the year, from the inner scales of the terminal bud or from separate buds in the axils of leaves of the previous year; staminate in 3-flowered clusters in the axils of ovate rounded bracts, the lateral flowers subtended by similar but smaller bracts, each flower composed of a 5-lobed tomentose calyx, with nearly triangular acute lobes, 10 stamens, with slender elongated filaments and small oblong or emarginate anthers, and an acute abortive hairy ovary; pistillate scattered at the base of the upper aments below the staminate flowers, solitary in the axils of acute bracts, furnished with minute lateral bractlets, and composed of a 6-lobed ovoid calyx, with rounded lobes, inclosed in the tomentose involucral scales, 6 stamens, with abortive anthers, an ovoid-oblong 3-celled ovary, 3 elongated spreading light green styles thickened and stigmatic at apex, and 2 anatropous ovules in each cell. Fruit an oval or ovoid nut maturing at the end of the second season, 1-seeded by abortion, surrounded at base by the accrescent woody cupular involucre of the flower, marked by a large pale circular basal scar, the thick shell tomentose on the inner surface. Seed red-brown, filling the cavity of the nut, bearing at apex the abortive ovules; cotyledons thick and fleshy, yellow and bitter. Lithocarpus is intermediate between the Oaks and the Chestnuts, and, with the exception of one California species, is confined to southeastern Asia, where it is distributed with many species from southern Japan and southern China through the Malay Peninsula to the Indian Archipelago. _Lithocarpus_ from λίθος and καρπός, in allusion to the character of the fruit. 1. Lithocarpus densiflora Rehd. Tan Bark Oak. Chestnut Oak. _Quercus densiflora_ Hook. & Arn. _Pasania densiflora_ Örst. [Illustration: Fig. 220]