Usually a shrub, with numerous slender stems, occasionally arborescent and 18°—20° high, with a straight trunk 6°—8° tall and 2′—3′ in diameter, and stout branchlets roughened by small scattered lenticels, coated at first with dense pale tomentum, soon becoming bright red-brown, scurfy, and glabrous or pubescent. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, nearly ⅛′ long, with numerous loosely imbricated lanceolate acute red-brown scurfy-pubescent scales. Bark thin, smooth, nearly white.
Distribution. Deep swamps, Round Lake, Jackson County, and Appalachicola, and Saint Andrews Bay, Florida; near Mobile and Stockton, Alabama; near Poplarville, Pearl County, Mississippi, and Bogalusa, Washington Parish, Louisiana.
Leaves oblanceolate to oblong-lanceolate, acute at apex, remotely serrate except at the gradually narrowed base with small incurved teeth, decurrent on a short stout petiole, thin and firm, dark green and lustrous above, yellow-green, glabrous or puberulous and marked by minute black glandular dots below, 2′—4′ long, ½′—¾′ wide, with a narrow yellow midrib and numerous obscure primary veins arcuate near the thickened and revolute margins, slightly fragrant, gradually deciduous after the end of their first year. Flowers subtended by conspicuous bractlets, those of the two sexes on the same plant; staminate in oblong simple aments often 1′ long, pistillate in shorter aments in the axils of upper leaves, androgynous aments occurring between the two with staminate flowers at their base and pistillate flowers above, or with staminate flowers also mixed with the pistillate at their apex; scales of the aments ovate, acute, coated with pale tomentum; stamens numerous, with oblong slightly emarginate dark red-purple anthers soon becoming yellow; ovary ovoid, with bright red exserted styles. Fruit in short crowded spikes ripening in the early autumn and usually falling during the winter, globose, papillose, dark purple, covered with a thin coat of grayish white wax; seed pale reddish brown, minute.
A tree, occasionally 40° high, with a trunk 14′—15′ in diameter, short slender branches forming a narrow compact round-topped head, and stout branchlets coated at first with loose tomentum, dark green or light or dark red-brown, glabrous or pubescent during their first season, becoming in their second year much roughened by the elevated leaf-scars, darker and ultimately ashy gray; usually smaller at the north and toward the northern and southern limits of its range reduced to a low shrub often only 3°—4° tall. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, about ⅓′ thick, with loosely imbricated ovate acute dark red-brown tomentose scales nearly ½′ long when fully grown and long-persistent on the branch. Bark smooth, compact, 1/16′—⅛′ thick, dark gray or light brown on the surface and dark red-brown internally. Wood heavy, very hard and strong, brittle, close-grained, light rose color, with thick lighter colored sapwood.