Protologue Description: Quercus Rolfsii sp. nov.
A rigid shrub, or small tree becoming 7 m. tall, with ascending branches, the twigs light brown: leaf-blades cuneate in outline, leathery, 2.5-6cm. long, mostly 3-lobed at the apex, or sometimes 5-lobed, bright green, glabrous and finely reticulated above, pale and thinly stellate-pubescent beneath, the lobes mostly blunt and not bristle-tipped: acorns usually in pairs at the end of short peduncles: cup hemispheric above a stout base, 1.5-1.8 cm. high, about 1.5 cm. broad, the scales appressed, densely with whitish pubescent except at the tip: nuts oblong, or slightly broadest below the middle, 2-2.5 cm. long, about ½ included in the cup.
A very characteristic species especially on account of the deep and peculiarly shaped cup of the acorn. In the arrngement of the oaks adopted in my Flora of the Southeastern United States this plant would come next to Quercus undulata, from which it differs in the blunt lobes or teeth of the leaf-blades and the deep cup of the acorn. The type specimens were collected in the pinelands near ft. Lauderdale, Florida, by Prof. P.H. Rolfs, Mr. J.J. Carter and the writer in November, 1903 (no. 1044).