Description
Quercus pubescens is a medium-sized deciduous tree growing up to 20 m. Forest-grown trees grow tall, while open-growing trees develop a very broad and irregular crown. They are long-lived, to several hundred years, and eventually grow into very stout trees with trunks up to 2 m in diameter. Open-grown trees frequently develop several trunks. The bark very rough, light grey and divided into small flakes. Large trees develop very thick whitish bark cracked into deep furrows, similar to the Penduculate oak but lighter in colour.
The twigs are light purple or whitish, tomentose. The buds are small (3-6 mm) and blunt, light brown. The leaves are leathery usually 4-10 cm long (rarely to 13 cm) and 3-6 cm wide, usually widest beyond the middle. The leaves group at the ends of twigs. The upper leaf surface is dark green and rough, the lower light green. Both leaf surfaces are covered with minute pubescence which is sometimes lost in older leaves by late summer. The young expanding leaves are whitish or pinkish with very soft tomentum. The leaf shape is very variable, divided into 3-7 pairs of deep or shallow lobes, which are usually divided into a few sublobes. The lobes are usually blunt, rarely sharp. The apex is usually wide and round. The base of the leaf is heart shaped, widely rounded or sometimes pointed. The petioles are 4-15 mm (rarely to 22 mm) long, stout and pubescent. The leaves are persistent late into the autumn, remaining green up to early winter. They eventually turn russet or brown and fall off.
The Quercus pubescens acorns are light brown to yellow, 8-20 mm long, usually thin and pointed. The acorn cups are light grey to almost white, with pointed, overlapping scales, covered with tomentum. The acorn stalks are thick and pubescent, up to 2 cm long. The acorns usually occur in groups of 2-5 on the same stalk.
Read more about this topic: Quercus Pubescens
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)
“God damnit, why must all those journalists be such sticklers for detail? Why, they’d hold you to an accurate description of the first time you ever made love, expecting you to remember the color of the room and the shape of the windows.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)