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Rh shortly ciliate on the margin. The bud-scales are stipules, which fall off as soon as the leaves expand.

Leaves deciduous, sessile or with very short stalks, extremely variable in shape and size, but never symmetrical, generally with four to five pairs of entire, irregular, rounded lobes; obovate-oblong, diminishing in size to the base, which has always two small emarginate auricles; slightly silky pubescent when young, quite glabrous when adult; coriaceous in texture; dark green above, bluish green beneath. Some of the lateral nerves run to the sinuses between the lobes. The leaves from suckers which are very rare are usually entire or only slightly lobed, and are not auricled at the base. The fall of the leaves is very slow, often continuing for weeks, and frequently a part of the leaves remain on the tree till the close of winter.

Flowers appearing with the leaves; the male catkins being pendulous spikes (each bearing about a dozen flowers) arising from the preceding year's shoot and the lower part of the current year's shoot; the female inflorescences being long, obliquely erect spikes (each bearing one to five flowers at the upper end) arising in the axils of the two or three uppermost leaves. Male flower: calyx five- to seven-lobed, enclosing five to twelve stamens. Female flower: calyx six-partite, surrounded by a scaly cupule and enclosing an inferior ovary, surmounted by a cylindrical style terminating in a trifid stigma. Ovary three-celled, each cell containing two pendulous ovules.

Fruits: one to five, sessile on an elongated glabrous peduncle (1 to 6 inches long). Cup hemispheric, composed of many appressed, triangular, obtuse, glabrous or slightly tomentose imbricating scales. Acorn: variable in size and shape, flattened at the base where attached to the cup, and bearing the remains of the style at the apex, smooth and shining, containing one seed in one cell, five ovules and two cells being aborted and only visible as shrivelled remains at the base.

The cotyledons remain enclosed in the coats of the acorn, and are not lifted above ground. The caulicle, stout and dark-coloured, gives off a long woody primary root. The plumule arises between the petioles of the two cotyledons, and develops into the young shoot, which at first bears only a few scattered scales, the first green leaf, small and obovate-oblong, coming afterwards; those succeeding are larger, obovate, and lobed. By the end of the first season the seedling has a long primary root with spreading lateral rootlets and a glabrous stem, averaging 6 to 8 inches high, bearing five or six sub-sessile glabrous leaves spirally arranged and ending in an ovoid glabrous bud. Each of these leaves has a minute stalk, with a pair of tiny linear stipules.

Seedlings, according to Brenner, who made many observations, vary considerably in appearance, according to the soil in which they are grown, those in dry ground having leaves with deeper lobes, ending in sharp points; those in moist earth having shallow undulating round lobes.