Leaves ovate-lanceolate or rarely obovate-lanceolate, often somewhat falcate, gradually narrowed and acute at the ends, and entire with slightly undulate margins, when they fold light yellow-green and lustrous on the upper surface, coated on the lower with pale caducous pubescence, at maturity glabrous, light green and rather lustrous above, dull and paler or rarely hoary-pubescent below, conspicuously reticulate-venulose, 2½′—5′ long, ¼′—1′ wide, with a slender yellow midrib and obscure primary veins forked and united about halfway between the midrib and margins; turning pale yellow in the autumn; petioles stout, about ⅛′ in length. Flowers: staminate in slender-stemmed aments 2′—3′ long; calyx yellow, hirsute, with 4 or 5 acute segments; pistillate on slender glabrous peduncles, their involucral scales brown covered by pale hairs, about as long as the acute calyx-lobes; stigmas bright red. Fruit short-stalked or nearly sessile, solitary or in pairs; nut hemispheric, light, yellow-brown, coated with pale pubescence, inclosed only at the very base in the thin pale reddish brown saucer-shaped cup silky-pubescent on the inner surface, and covered by thin ovate hoary-pubescent closely appressed scales rounded at apex.
A tree, often 70°—90° high, with a trunk 2° or rarely 4° in diameter, small branches spreading into a comparatively narrow open or conical round-topped head, and slender glabrous reddish brown branchlets roughened by dark lenticels, becoming in their second year dark brown tinged with red or grayish brown; usually much smaller. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, about ⅛′ long, with dark chestnut-brown scales pale and scarious on the margins. Bark ½′—¾′ thick, light red-brown slightly tinged with red, generally smooth but on old trees broken by shallow narrow fissures into irregular plates covered by small closely appressed scales. Wood heavy, strong, not hard, rather coarse-grained, light brown tinged with red, with thin lighter colored sapwood; occasionally used in construction, for clapboards and the fellies of wheels.
Distribution. Low wet borders of swamps and streams and rich sandy uplands; Staten Island, New York, southern New Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania and southward to northeastern Florida, through the Gulf states to the valley of the Navasota River, Brazos County, Texas, and through Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma and southeastern Missouri to central Tennessee and northwestern Kentucky (Ballard County), and in southwestern Illinois (Massac and Pope Counties); in the Atlantic states usually confined to the maritime plain; less common in the middle districts, rarely extending to the Appalachian foothills.
Occasionally planted as a shade-tree in the streets of southern towns, and rarely in western Europe; hardy in eastern Massachusetts.
Quercus heterophylla Michx. f.
This has usually been considered a hybrid between Quercus Phellos and Quercus velutina or Quercus borealis var. maxima; first known in the eighteenth century from an individual growing in a field belonging to John Bartram on the Schuylkill River, Philadelphia. What appears to be the same form has since been discovered in a number of stations from New Jersey to Texas, and it is possible that Quercus heterophylla may, as many botanists have believed, best be considered a species.
× Quercus subfalcata Trel., believed to be a hybrid of Quercus Phellos and Q. rubra has been found at Wickliffe, Ballard County, Illinois, at Campbell, Lawrence County, Mississippi, Fulton, Hempstead County, Arkansas, and Houston, Harris County, Texas; its var. microcarpa Sarg., probably of the same parentage, originated in a Dutch nursery.
× Quercus ludoviciana Sarg., believed to be a hybrid of Quercus Phellos and Q. rubra var. pagodæfolia grows in low wet woods ten miles west of Opelousas, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana.