The American oaks / by William Trelease.

  • William Trelease
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The American oaks / by William Trelease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/696 page 1
    THE AMERICAN OAKS. By William Trelease. INTRODUCTION. PREFATORY. Though the oaks of the United States have been made the subject of numerous publications, and botanists are fairly well agreed as to the types and characters of existing species except for differences of opinion on the divisibility of certain forms which are sometimes regarded collectively as species, those of the region to the south of the United States have not been passed in review for a generation, and much confusion exists in herbaria which contain collec¬ tions of these tropical forms. If, as is unquestionably the case, they can be understood cor¬ rectly only by studying them comparatively in the field and with at least some cultural essays, it is equally certain that such a study must be based on a knowledge of what is meant by the names already applied to many of them; it must follow the collective study of types and original descriptions in the herbarium and library, and can be materially furthered by an account- in0, for the many other collections on which as yet nothing has been published. It was in the hope of obtaining such knowledge that in 1912 I undertook an examination of the material preserved in the larger herbaria of the world. The original plan was to confine my study to the species of the American Tropics, those of the United States, already much studied, scarcely seeming to merit the detailed attention paid to those on which less has been published. For this reason, while every specimen from the south was accounted for to the best of my ability, neither variations nor geographic details were noted for those of the north. In revising my notes for publication, however, it has seemed best to include all of the species that are known to exist in the entire American flora; and this has been done, though m a summary way but with ample references, for the oaks of the United States. HISTORICAL. The stately form, often useful galls, fruit, or bark, and very valuable wood of the oaks have caused a good deal of attention to be given them at various times. Even before the epoch-making publications of Linnaeus, in the middle of the eighteenth century, a number o North American species had been collected, figured, or commented on. About the end of that century several continental writers pictured and described others, while botanists resident in America added to their number. The pioneer publications of this period are those of h,ee, who in 1801 described something over a dozen species collected a few years earlier by hunse or his associates, among whom were Pavon 1 and Haenke, in Mexico and what is now southern California; and of the Michaux, father and son, who had an unexcelled field knowledge of the trees of the eastern United States. To the sumptuous publications of the latter, beginning with a work limited to our oaks, time has brought additions but few rectifications. With these must be included the superb work of Plumboldt and Bonpland in the account of then own travels in tropical America. , For nomenclatorial corrections rather than additional facts, the posthumous editions of Linnaeus’s Species Plantarum, especially that by Willdenow, and the Nomenclator of Endlicher, possess undisputed historic value; but it is easily to be seen that the absence of authentic , Urban (Symbol® Antiliana', 3:99) expresses the belief that West Indian and Mexican plants labeled in herbaria as from Pavon were collected probably by others than Pavon himself. ,
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