These are the Mountain Live Oak and the
Kellogg Oak, named in honor of the admirable botanical pioneer of
California. Kellogg's Oak (_Quercus Kelloggii_) is a firm, bright,
beautiful tree, reaching a height of sixty feet, four to seven feet in
diameter, with wide-spreading branches, and growing at an elevation of
from 3000 to 5000 feet in sunny valleys and flats among the evergreens,
and higher in a dwarfed state. In the cliff-bound parks about 4000 feet
above the sea it is so abundant and effective it might fairly be called
the Yosemite Oak. The leaves make beautiful masses of purple in the
spring, and yellow in ripe autumn; while its acorns are eagerly gathered
by Indians, squirrels, and woodpeckers. The Mountain Live Oak (_Q.
Chrysolepis_) is a tough, rugged mountaineer of a tree, growing
bravely and attaining noble dimensions on the roughest earthquake
taluses in deep canons and yosemite valleys. The trunk is usually short,
dividing near the ground into great, wide-spreading limbs, and these
again into a multitude of slender sprays, many of them cord-like and
drooping to the ground, like those of the Great White Oak of the
lowlands (_Q. lobata_).
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