The Mountain Live Oak Q

THE MOUNTAIN LIVE OAK. Q. ehrysolepis, Liebm.

The mountain

live oak cannot be seen without climbing the western slopes of the mountains from Oregon to Lower California, and eastward into New Mexico and Arizona. On levels where avalanches deposit detritus from the higher slopes, sufficient fertility and moisture are found to maintain groves of these oaks, wide-domed, with massive, horizontal branches from short, buttressed trunks—the Western counterpart of the live oak of the South, but lack ing the familiar drapery of pale green moss.

The leaves are leathery, polished, oval blades, one or two inches in length, with unbroken margins, abundant on in tricately divided, supple twigs, that droop with their bur den and respond to the lightest breeze. The leaves per

sist until the bronze-green new foliage expands to replace the old, and keep the tree-tops evergreen.

The acorns are large, and their thick, shallow saucers are covered with yellow fuzz. For this character, the tree is called the gold-cup oak. In June, the copious bloom is yellow. Even at an altitude of eight thousand feet the familiar gold-cup acorns are borne on shrubby oaks not more than a foot high! The maximum height of the species is sixty feet. The wood is the most valuable oak of the West Coast. It is used for wagons and agricultural implements.