_A large tree, 60 to 150 feet high. The bark is fissured in long clefts, with broad, smooth places between, giving the trunk a fluted column effect. Large, sharp-pointed buds, with close scales. The red oak buds resemble to some extent those of the chestnut oak, but there is a fine hair on the scales of the red oak buds, while the scales of the chestnut oak buds are bleached and have no hair. Where the base of the bud joins the stem the buds of the red oak are more constricted than those of the chestnut oak, and the chestnut oak buds seem more sessile. Alternate leaf-scars. Acorn set in a shallow cup of fine scales._ The red oak is a lofty, wide-spreading tree of great beauty. “No other oak,” Emerson says, “flourishes so readily in every situation, no other is of so rapid growth, no other surpasses it in beauty of foliage and of trunk; no oak attains, in this climate, to more magnificent dimensions; no tree, except the white oak, gives us so noble an idea of strength.” It is perhaps, of all the black oak group, the easiest to distinguish in winter on account of the smooth spaces between the fissures of the bark on its trunk, and its pointed buds, which are much less downy than those of the black oak. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, but it is not particularly valuable. It is used in the construction and interior finish of houses and for making cheap furniture. [Illustration: RED OAK _Quercus rubra_ Page 94 ] The specific name, _rubra_, was given to it on account of the rich, red midrib and veins of the leaves. It is the oak which is found farthest north, and it grows in all kinds of soil from Nova Scotia southward to Northern Georgia. The red oak was one of the earliest American trees introduced into Europe. [Sidenote: Scarlet Oak _Quercus coccinea_] _A large tree, 60 to 80 feet high. The bark is grayish and not deeply furrowed. Slender twigs, with small, alternate leaf-scars. Small buds, the tips being half as hairy as those of the black oak, while the bases are smooth. The acorn is one-half or more enclosed in a coarsely scaled cup. Its kernel is bitter._ The scarlet oak is the most brilliant member of the oak family. In summer its leaves are a shining green, in autumn they turn more glowingly red than those of any other oak, and in winter its buds and stems are smooth, and show more color than those of the other members of the genus. Its outline is less spreading in shape than those of oaks generally, and the bark of the trunk is not so coarsely furrowed as the black oak’s, nor so smooth as that of the red oak. The wood is heavy and hard, and is used for the same purposes as red oak. The specific name, _coccinea_ (of a scarlet color), refers to the hue of the foliage in the autumn. The scarlet oak is found growing throughout the Northeastern States and also in the South and West. [Sidenote: Pin Oak _Quercus palustris_]