146 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



wide, and more than twice as large as those of the h)wcst pair. Flowers: staininate 

 in hairy catkins 5'-7' long, with broad rounded bracts and Inactlets, scurfy, villous on 

 the outer surface, and 4 nearly sessile hairy anthers; })istillate oblong, i)roniinently 

 4-ribbed, coated with scurfy yellow pubescence, their bracts lanceolate, acuminate, 

 much longer than the ovate acute bractlets and the calyx-lobe. Fruit subglobose to 

 pyriform, |'-lf' long, 4-winged, more or less thickly covered with yellow scurfy 



scales, with a thin husk splitting to below the middle or nearly to the base ; nut 

 slightly angled, somewhat compressed, narrowed at the ends, pale or light brown, 

 with a thick shell; seed light brown, small, and sweet. 



A tree, usually not more than 18-20, or sometimes 40-50 high, with a short 

 trunk 12'-18' in diameter, and small branches, the upper ascending, forming a nar- 

 row oblong head, the lower pendulous, and slender branchlets coated at first with 

 pale tomentum or pubescence, mixed with silvery peltate scales, glabrous or puber- 

 ulous, bright purplish brown during their first winter, and marked by occasional 

 oblong light gray lenticels and by the small low nearly circular leaf-scars, becoming 

 rather darker colored the following year. Winter-buds : terminal sessile or stalked, 

 ovate, acute, -|' to nearly ^ long, with puberulous scales more or less covered on the 

 outer surface with yellow glands ; axillary often solitary. Bark |'-f' thick, light 

 gray or grayish brown, and irregularly divided by deep fissures into broad connected 

 ridges covered with closely appressed scales. 



Distribution. Sandy plains or sterile rocky ridges from southern New Jersey to 

 eastern Florida, and from the valley of the Maramec River, Missouri, to eastern 

 Texas; common on the sandy soil of southern Delaware and in the foothill region 

 of the southern Appalachian Mountains; very abundant and often the only Hickory- 

 tree on the dry flinty soil of low hills in southern Missouri and Arkansas. 



VI. MYRICACEiE. 



Aromatic resinous trees and shrubs, with watery juice, terete branches, and 

 small scaly buds. Leaves alternate, revolute in the bud, serrate, resinous- 

 punctate, persistent, in falling leaving elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars show- 

 ing the ends of three nearly equidistant fibro-vascular bundles. Flowers 



