44 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. JUGLANDACEZ. 
usually from an inch and a quarter to an inch and a half long, with a thin brittle shell, thin papery 
walls, and a low basal ventral partition. The seed is bitter, bright red-brown, flattened, two-lobed at 
the apex, with lobes about as long as the short point of their connective, rounded and slightly divided 
at the base, obscurely grooved on the inner face, lobed by two longitudinal grooves on the outer face, 
and deeply penetrated by the prominent reticulated folds of the inner surface of the wall of the nut. 
Hicoria Texana grows on the bottom-lands of the streams and in the low wet woods bordering 
the prairies of eastern Texas, where it is common in the Gulf region for a distance of from one hundred 
to one hundred and fifty miles from the coast. 
The wood is close-grained, tough and strong, and light red-brown, with pale brown sapwood.! The 
nuts are not eaten even by hogs, and remain on the ground through the winter. 
First made known by Le Conte* from a tree cultivated in Georgia, and afterwards collected by 
Charles Wright * in Texas in 1848 or 1849, Hicoria Texana was confounded by American botanists 
with the allied Hicoria Pecan until Mr. B. F. Bush rediscovered it at Columbia on the Brazos River in 
1899, and, attracted by the peculiar flattened nuts, pointed out its true characters. 
1 The specimen cut by Mr. Bush for the Jesup Collection of 
North American Woods in the American Museum of Natural His- 
tory, New York, is twenty-six inches in diameter inside the bark 
and one hundred and twenty-three years old. The sapwood is four 
and five eighths inches in thickness, with fifty-three layers of 
annual growth. 
2 John Eatton Le Conte (February 22, 1784-N. ber 21, 
Florida, he visited Paris in 1827, and five years later, resigning 
his commission in the army, settled in New York, where he re- 
mained until 1852, and then moved to Philadelphia, where he died. 
Le Conte published a number of papers on botany and zodlogy, 
principally in the Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History of New 
York and in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 
1860) was born near Shrewsbury, New Jersey, of a Huguenot 
family, his ancestor William, who left N 
dy on the 
of the edict of Nantes, having settled in New Jersey about the 
year 1692. John Le Conte and his brother Louis became interested 
in the study of natural history, and as young men spent several 
years in Georgia, where they had charge of a plantation belonging 
to their father and where they established a botanical garden. In 
1817 John Le Conte entered the United States army as a captain 
of topographical engineers, and at the end of ten years received 
the brevet rank of major. His health having become seriously 
impaired during a military expedition to the St. John’s River in 
Philadelnhi, 
as = 
Of his botanical papers the most important are on 
The Species of Paspalum of the United States, published in 1820, on 
Utricularia, Gratiola, and Ruellia, published in 1824, on Tillandsia 
and Viola, published in 1826, on Pancratium, published in 1828, on 
The Vines of North America, published in 1852-53, on Magnolia 
pyramidata, published in 1854-55, and on Nicotiana, published in 
1859. His large herb was p ted to the Philadelphi: 
Academy of Sciences in 1852. 
Lecontea, a genus of Madag Rubi was dedicated by 
Achille Richard to this refined, scholarly, and liberal man. (See 
Asa Gray, Bot. Gazette, viii. 197.) 
® See i. 94. , 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE. 
Puate DCCXTX. Hicorra Texana. 
A flowering branch, natural size. 
A staminate flower, rear view, enlarged. 
A staminate flower, front view, enlarged. 
An anther, enlarged. 
End of a fruiting branch, natural size. 
A nut, natural size. 
Cross section of a nut, natural size. 
Ale 
2. 
3. 
4, 
5. A pistillate flower, enlarged. 
6. 
te 
8. 
eh 
A young leaf, natural size. 
10. A winter branchlet, natural size. 
