All Resolutions
Small chestnut oak.
Artist
- Name:
- Bessa, Pancrace
- Dates:
- 1772-1846
- Country:
- France
Illustration
- Subject:
- Plants
- Technique:
- Metal engraving
- Engraver:
- Bessin
- Format:
- Portrait (taller)
- Source:
- University of Pittsburgh Library System, The Internet Archive
Book
- Title:
- Histoire des arbres forestiers de l'Amérique septentrionale, vol. 2
- Author(s):
- Michaux, François-André
- Publisher:
- Paris: Imprimerie de L. Haussmann, 1812
- Open Library:
- View record
Description
Stipple engraving showing leaves, acorns, and tip of a branch of the dwarf chinkapin oak (Quercus prinoides), a tree in the family Fagaceae native to North America. This tree is described as follows by the author:
The leaves of the small chesnut oak are oval-acuminate, regularly but not deeply denticulated, of a light green above and whitish beneath. The acorns are enclosed for one third of their length in scaly sessile cups; they are of a middle size, somewhat elongated, similarly rounded at both ends, and very sweet.
Nature seems to have sought a compensation for the diminutive size of this shrub in the abundance of its fruit: the stem, which is sometimes no bigger than a quill, is stretched at full length upon the ground by the weight of the thickly clustering acorns.
Translation by Augustus Lucas Hillhouse.
Keywords: 1810s, 19th century, color, Fagaceae, leaves, reference book, shrub
