THE WILLOW OAK A Southern tree with slender twigs and nar row leaves like those of a willow, surprises us by bearing acorns! It is the willow oak, a beau tiful, graceful tree for shade and for avenue planting. The tree naturally chooses wet ground, but it thrives where the soil is deep and well drained. I remember a fine large willow oak in John Bartram's garden in Philadelphia, and a young tree in the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. This little one grows rapidly, but the frost nips its twigs in the winter. The species grows wild from New York southward, just back from the sea coast, to Texas. In swampy land, it is found
from Missouri southward.
Willow oak acorns are downy, yellow-brown, and set in shallow saucer-shaped cups. The ker nel is orange-yellow, and bitter. Half-grown acorns are found with the ripe ones on these trees, and the dark, rough bark agrees with others of the Black Oak Group. Though the leaves have rarely a side lobe, but are mostly narrow and plain-margined, the tip ends in a spine, as all black oak leaves should.