Question

Which plant is described by these clues? The second half of its Latin name is the Roman word for hardness and brute strength, a word those same writers also applied to the tough heartwood this tree yields. It is {monoecious} and entirely petal-less, shedding pollen from slender drooping {catkins} while the tiny female flowers sit separately on the same new shoot. Each hard one-seeded nut ripens seated in a woody {cupule} built from many small {bracts} fused into overlapping scales that grip only its base. Its winter shoots finish not in one bud but in a crowded rosette of several overlapping scaly buds packed into the last inch (2.5 cm) of the twig. On young trees and the lower branches the dead brown foliage hangs on {marcescent} through winter, rattling in the wind until spring growth pushes it off. The alternate simple blades carry three to seven pairs of deep, blunt, rounded lobes cut partway to the {midrib}, and never a bristle at any tip. The blade is all but stalkless, its base pinched back into two small ear-shaped flaps or {auricles} that clasp a {petiole} under 0.4 inch (1 cm) long. Its fruits ripen in twos and threes swinging from a slender {peduncle} 1.5 to 3 inches (4 to 8 cm) long, hanging clear of the shoot. It ranges from the British Isles and Scandinavia south to the Mediterranean basin and east through the Caucasus to the Urals, from sea level to about 4,300 feet (1,300 m). In Britain it feeds more insect herbivores than any other plant, at least 400 species, and its buds can be hijacked by a wasp into a spongy {gall} nearly 2 inches (4.5 cm) across. Its tannin-rich timber built the ships of the Royal Navy and still makes wine and spirit casks, while medieval commoners drove pigs into the woods each autumn to fatten on its fallen nuts under a right called pannage.

Accepted Answer

Quercus robur

Name That Plant #064