138 



8ILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



JUGLAI^DACE^. 



or pubescent petioles flattened and slightly grooved along the upper side toward the base ; the leaflets 

 are lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate and more or less falcate, and increase in size from the lowest to the 

 uppermost j they are long-pointed, and coarsely and often doubly serrate with incurved cartilaginous 

 teeth, rounded or sometimes wedge-shaped on one side and shorter and wedge-shaped on the other at 

 the base, and are borne on stout petiolules often a quarter of an inch long, or are sometimes sessile with 

 the exception of the terminal leaflet, which is symmetrical and wedge-shaped at the base and raised on 

 a slender stalk an inch or an inch and a half in length ; when they unfold the leaflets are bright green 

 and glandular, and, like the petioles, are coated with thick pale tomentum which soon disappears ; at 

 maturity they are thin and firm, dark yeUow-green and glabrous or pilose on the upper, and pale and 

 glabrous or pubescent on the lower surface, from four to eight inches in length and from an inch to 

 three inches in width, with narrow yellow midribs rounded on the upper side, and thin conspicuous 

 veins. The staminate flowers appear in late spring in slender puberulous clustered aments three to five 

 inches long, usually produced from buds formed in the axils of leaves of the previous year, or occasion- 

 ally on shoots of the year, and sessile or short-pedunculate ; the perianth is light yeUow-green and 

 hirsute on the outer surface, with broadly ovate acute lobes rather shorter than the oblong or obovate 

 bract, which is narrowed at both ends and twice as long as the nearly sessile yellow stamens. The 

 pistiUate flowers are oblong, narrowed at both ends, slightly four-angled and coated with yellow scurfy 

 pubescence, with an ovate more or less elongated bract, broadly ovate bractlets, and an ovate acute 

 calyx-lobe. The fruit, which is produced in clusters of from three to eleven, is oblong, pointed, four- 

 winged and angled, one to two and a half inches long, half an inch to an inch broad, dark brown and 

 more or less thickly coated with clusters of yellow articulate hairs ; the husk is about a sixteenth of an 

 inch thick, hard and brittle, and splits at maturity nearly to the base, discharging the nut and often 



The nut is ovoid to ellipsoidal, nearly cylindrical or 

 slightly four-angled toward the acute or acuminate apex, rounded and usually apiculate at the base, 

 bright reddish brown with irregular black marks, and one to two inches in length, with thin brittle 

 walls, thin papery partitions, the basal ventral partition being often not more than an eighth of an 

 inch high, and large irregular lacunae filled with a dark astringent powder. 



remaining on the branch during the winter. 



The seed is sweet, 



ovate-oblong, divided from the base to above the middle, and covered with a red-brown coat ; the lobes 

 are rounded and slightly divided at the base, nearly flat and slightly grooved on the inner face, and 

 rounded on the outer, which is marked from near the base to the apex by two deep longitudinal 

 grooves caused by ridges on the wall of the nut, and rounded and two-lobed at the apex, with lobes as 

 long as the short flattened point of their connective. 



Hicoria Pecan is distributed from the valley of the Mississippi Kiver, where it probably finds its 

 most northern home in the neighborhood of Sabula, Iowa, through southern Illinois and Indiana, 

 western Kentucky and Tennessee, to central Mississippi and Alabama,* and through Missouri and 

 Arkansas to southeastern Kansas, the Indian Territory, western Louisiana, and the valley of the Concho 

 River in Texas, reappearing on the mountain ranges of Mexico. The largest of the Hickory-trees, the 

 Pecan inhabits low rich ground in the neighborhood of streams, growing to its greatest size on the 

 fertile bottom-lands of southern Arkansas and the Indian Territory, and in western Texas surpassing 

 aU other trees in size and value.'^ 



1 Mohr, Garden and Forest, vi. 372. 



A remarkable Hickory-tree, evidently a hybrid between Hicoria 



2 A Hickory-tree that sprung up twenty-five or thirty years ago Pecan and one of the true Hickories, probably Hicoria laciniosa or 



near a planted Pecan-tree in Hamilton County, Ohio, with pubescent Hicoria alba, growing in Wabash County, Illinois, was made known 



winter branchlets, small bright yellow buds, leaves composed of by Dr. Jacob Schneck of Mount Carmel in the autumn of 1894. 



four or five pairs of narrow falcate leaflets, oblong thin-husked fruit This tree has stout pubescent branchlets, the larffi 



terminal 



prominently ridged from base to apex, an obloug-obovate compressed the true Hickories, solitary axillary buds covered with valvate or, 

 and slightly angled nut with a somewhat bitter kernel, is perhaps in one specimen, 



with 



a hybrid between Hicoria Pecan and Hicoria minima. (See S. J. fruit nearly two and a half inches in length ; the husk, which is 



Galloway, Gardening, ii, 226, f.) 



third 



