JUGLANDACEA, _SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 43 
HICORIA TEXANA. 
Bitter Pecan. 
LEAFLETS 7 to 11, lanceolate, often faleate. Fruit 4-winged to the base ; nut oblong, 
compressed, thin-shelled ; seed deeply penetrated by the folds of the inner wall of the 
shell. 
Hicoria Texana, Le Conte, Proc. Phil. Acad. 1853, Carya Texana, C. de Candolle, Ann. Sci. Nat. sér. 4, xviii. 
402, £.— Britton, Budi. Torrey Bot. Club, xv. 282. 83 (1862) ; Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 145. 
A tree, on rich river-bottoms sometimes a hundred feet in height, with a tall straight trunk three 
feet in diameter and ascending branches, and on the borders of prairies in low wet woods usually from 
fifteen to twenty-five feet tall, with a short trunk eight or ten inches in diameter, and small spreading 
branches which form a narrow round-topped head. The bark of the trunk is from one half to three 
quarters of an inch in thickness, light reddish brown, and roughened. by closely appressed variously 
shaped plate-like scales. The branchlets are slender, and when they first appear are coated with thick 
hoary tomentum which is sometimes persistent until the autumn, and during their first winter they are 
bright red-brown and marked by occasional large pale lenticels, darker in their second season, and 
dark or light gray-brown in their third year. The scales of the winter-buds are valvate and covered 
with light yellow articulate hairs. The terminal buds are oblong, acute or acuminate, somewhat 
compressed, about a quarter of an inch long, and rather longer than the upper lateral buds; these are 
usually stalked and two or three times as large as the lower lateral buds, which are nearly surrounded 
by the thin membranaceous border of the large concave obcordate leaf-scars. The leaves are ten or 
twelve inches long, with from seven to eleven leaflets and slender petioles which are slightly flattened 
and grooved on the upper side toward the base, thickly coated at first with hoary tomentum, and 
more or less villose in the autumn. The leaflets are lanceolate, acuminate at the apex, and finely 
serrate, with minute straight or incurved remote teeth, except on the upper side below the middle, 
which is entire. The terminal leaflet is gradually narrowed and acute at the base and short-stalked, 
and the lateral leaflets are often falcate, rounded or sometimes broadly cuneate on one side and 
narrowly cuneate on the other at the unsymmetrical base, and subsessile or short-stalked ; when they 
unfold the leaflets are puberulous above and tomentose below, and at maturity they are thin and firm in 
texture, dark yellow-green and nearly glabrous on the upper surface, pale yellow-green and puberulous 
on the lower surface, from three to five inches long and about an inch and a half wide, with slender 
yellow midribs rounded and usually puberulous on the upper side toward the base, and numerous 
slender forked primary veins arcuate and united near the margin of the leaf, and connected by thin 
straight veinlets. The staminate flowers open about the first of May when the leaves are nearly a 
third grown, and are produced in slender villose aments from two to three inches long from buds 
formed in the axils of leaves of the previous year. The perianth is light yellow-green, and villose on 
the outer surface, with oblong-ovate rounded lobes much shorter than the ovate acuminate bract. The 
pistillate flowers are oblong, slightly four-angled, and villose, with an ovate bract, broadly ovate bractlets, 
and an ovate acute calyx-lobe. The fruit is produced in few-fruited clusters, and is oblong or oblong- 
obovate, acute at the ends, apiculate at the apex, slightly four-winged at the base, dark brown more or 
less covered with articulate hairs, and from an inch and a half to two inches long, with a thin four- 
valved husk. The nut is oblong-ovate or oblong-obovate, compressed, acute at the ends, short-pointed 
at the apex, apiculate at the base, obscurely four-angled, bright red-brown, rough and pitted, and 
