A tree, sometimes 100° high on the bottoms of the Brazos River, with a tall straight trunk 3° in diameter, and ascending branches, or on the borders of prairies in low wet woods usually 15°—25° tall, with a short trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, small spreading branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender branchlets coated at first with thick hoary tomentum sometimes persistent until the autumn, bright red-brown and marked by occasional large pale lenticels during their first winter and by the large concave obcordate leaf-scars nearly surrounding the lowest axillary bud, becoming darker in their second season and dark or light gray-brown in their third year. Winter-buds covered with light yellow articulate hairs; the terminal oblong, acute, or acuminate, somewhat compressed, about ¼′ long, and rather longer than the upper lateral bud. Bark ½′—¾′ thick, light reddish brown, and roughened by closely appressed variously shaped plate-like scales. Wood close-grained, tough and strong, light red-brown, with pale brown sapwood.
Distribution. Bottom-lands and low wet woods; valley of the lower Brazos River, Texas; near Lake Charles, Calcasieu Parish, and Laurel Hill, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana; near Natchez, Adams County, Mississippi; valley of the Arkansas River (Arkansas Post, Arkansas County, and Van Buren, Crawford County), Arkansas.
3. Carya cordiformis K. Koch. Pignut. Bitternut.
Leaves 6′—10′ long, with slender pubescent or hirsute petioles, and 7—9 lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate or obovate long-pointed sessile leaflets coarsely serrate except at the equally or unequally cuneate or subcordate base, thin and firm, dark yellow-green and glabrous above, lighter and pubescent below, especially along the midrib, 4′—6′ long, ¾′—1¼′ wide, or occasionally 2′—4′ wide (var. _latifolia_ Sarg.). Flowers: staminate in slightly pubescent aments, 3′—4′ long, coated with rufous hairs like its ovate acute bract; stamens 4, with yellow anthers deeply emarginate and villose at apex; pistillate in 1 or 2-flowered spikes, slightly 4-angled, covered with yellow scurfy tomentum. Fruit cylindric or slightly compressed, ¾′—1½′ long, obovoid to subglobose, or oblong and acute at apex (var. _elongata_ Ashe), 4-winged from the apex to about the middle, with a thin puberulous husk, more or less thickly coated with small yellow scales; nut ovoid or oblong, often broader than long, compressed and marked at base with dark lines along the sutures and alternate with them, depressed or obcordate, and abruptly contracted into a long or short point at apex, gray tinged with red or light reddish brown, with a thin brittle shell; seed bright reddish brown, very bitter, much compressed, deeply rugose, with irregular cross-folds.