JUGLANDACEJE 



141 



apex, about \' long, with glabrous bright red-brown and lustrous acute and apieulate 

 strongly keeled spreading outer scales, the inner scales becoming when fully grown 



bright yellow, long-pointed, and sometimes 2' long; axillary oblong, obtuse, not 

 more than Jg' long. Bark light gray, ^'-f thick, separating freely into thick strips 

 often a foot or more long, 3' or 4' wide, and long-persistent, giving to the trunk the 

 shaggy appearance of the northern Shagbark Hickory. "Wood hard, strong, very 

 tough, light reddish brown, with thin nearly white sapwood. 



Distribution. Dry limestone hills, and river-bottoms; central North Carolina 

 to northern Georgia, and through western North Carolina to eastern Tennessee and 

 central Alabama. 



8. Hicoria laciniosa, Sarg. Big Shellbark. Bottom Shellbark. 



Leaves lo'-22' long, with stout glabrous or pubescent petioles often persistent 

 on the branches during the winter, and 5-9, usually 7, ovate to oblong-lanceolate or 

 broadly obovate leaflets, the upper 5'-9' long and 3'-o' broad and generally two or 

 three times as large as those of the lowest pair, usually equilateral, acuminate, equally 

 or unequally wedge-shaped or rounded at the often oblique base, finely serrate, ses- 

 sile or short-stalked, dark green and lustrous above, pale yellow-green or bronzy 

 brown and covered with soft pubescence below. Flo"wers : staminate in aments 

 5'-8' long and glabrous or covered with rufous scurfy tomentum, short-pedicellate, 

 with linear-lanceolate acute bracts two or three times as long as the broader rounded 

 calyx-lobes, and hirsute yellow subsessile more or less deeply emarginate anthers; 

 pistillate in 2-o-flowered spikes, oblong-ovate, about twice as long as broad, slightly 

 angled, clothed with pale tomentum, with linear acute bracts much longer than the 

 nearly triangular bractlets and calyx-lobe. Fruit solitary or in pairs, ellipsoidal, 

 ovate or subglobose, depressed at the apex, roughened with minute orange-colored 

 lenticels, downy or glabrous, light orange-colored or dark chestnut-brown at matur- 

 ity, l|'-2y long and l^'-2' broad, with a hard woody husk pale and marked on the 

 inside with dark delicate veins, and \'-\' thick ; nut ellipsoidal or slightly obovate, 

 longer than broad or sometimes broader than long, flattened and rounded at the ends 

 or gradually narrowed and rounded at the base, and occasionally acuminate at the 

 apex, more or less compressed, prominently l-ridged and angled or often 6-ridged, 



