BUDS--terminal buds usually 3/8 to 3/4 of an inch long, subglobose to narrowly ovate, with 8-10 imbricate scales, the outermost of which are a blackish brown with dark brown tomentum, and a short mucronate or attenuate apex, inner scales light brown with longer lanate pubescence and apex acute to obtuse; lateral buds smaller, about 1/4 of an inch with tightly appressed scales.
TWIGS--angled or rounded, reddish brown to yellowish brown, or gray, turning more or less gray with age; pubescent the first year.
LEAVES--compound--ranging from 3-7 ovate to oblong lanceolate leaflets, usually 5, terminal leaflet as large or larger than the first two laterals, usually 4-8" long, generally glabrous on both surfaces but with a finely serrate, ciliate margin; total leaf size ranging from 8-15" for mature leaves.
FLOWERS--(a) _female_--occurring in 2 to several flowered spikes, with a one-celled ovary, about 1/4 to 1/3 inch long covered with tomentum; flowers rusty to yellowish green in color; stigma with two stigmatic lobes; bracts much longer than the lateral bractlets. (b) _male_--in three parted or branched aments, each flower usually containing 4 stamens with a 2 or a 3 lobed calyx; aments 3-4" long with glandular hairs.
FRUIT--oval, globose or pear shaped, consisting of a woody husk 1/4 to 1/2" thick breaking usually along 4 lines of suture exposing a flattened nut generally 4 ridged, smooth or slightly roughened; usually white or cream in color, seed sweet with 2 cotyledons.
BARK--Most of the shagbark hickory trees observed were found to have a smoke-gray, shaggy bark from 20 years of age to maturity. However, among the 158 individual hickory trees observed, there were found 7 trees which had a bark much more blackish than the normal shagbark type and with closely furrowed bark consisting of inter-lacing scaly ridges more similar in character to that of _Carya ovalis_ (Wangenh.) Sarg.
The trees found growing under timberland conditions rather than as open field or hedgerow trees did not have the characteristic shaggy bark except for the upper trunk which had been exposed to the weather conditions of the forest canopy. Where the trunks of the trees were somewhat protected from direct rays of the sun and force of the wind, the bark was smooth, gray and but slightly plated with none of the shagginess typical of open field grown shagbark.