154 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. juglandace^. 



before the appearance of the leaves in the spring : within these seven or eight scales protect the bud ; 

 the lowest and outermost of these are coated on their exterior surface with thick pale tomentum, and 

 are lustrous and puberulous on the inner surface; the upper and inner side is puberulous, lustrous, 

 covered with resinous glands, yellow-green, often tinged with red, especially above the middle, oblong- 

 obovate, pointed at the apex, reflexed, and from two and one half to three inches long and half an 

 inch broad at maturity, and usually persistent until after the aments of male flowers have fallen. The 

 axillary buds appear with the leaves, and are coated at first with thick white tomentum, and when fully 

 grown are from one third to one half of an inch in length. The leaves are composed of five or rarely 

 of seven leaflets and of stout green glabrous or pubescent petioles slightly grooved and abruptly 

 enlarged at the base, and are from eight to fourteen inches in length ; the leaflets are ovate to ovate- 

 lanceolate, or those at the end of the leaf are sometimes obovate, equilateral, and acuminate or rarely 

 rounded at the apex and sessile or short-petiolulate ; they are more or less thickly ciliate on the mar- 

 gins with soft white hairs, and serrate with minute incurved callous teeth except toward the base, 

 which is equally or sometimes unequally wedge-shaped or occasionally rounded on both edges ; when 

 they unfold they are thin, light yellow-green and lustrous above, and coated below with pale pubes- 

 cence, which is thickest along the under side of the midribs and on the petioles, and at maturity they 

 are thin and firm, dark yellow-green and glabrous on the upper surface, and paler and glabrous and 

 lustrous or puberulous on the lower surface. The terminal leaflet, which is decurrent at the base on a 

 slender stalk from half an inch to an inch in length, is from five to seven inches long, from two to three 

 inches broad, rather larger than the upper leaflets, and twice or often three times as large as those of 

 the lowest pair. The catkins of staminate flowers are slender, light green, glandular-hirsute, and four 

 or five inches long, with peduncles often an inch in length, and elongated linear-lanceolate scarious 

 caducous lateral bracts ; the flowers open late in the spring after the leaves have grown nearly to their 

 full size ; they are glandular-hirsute on the outer surface, and pedicellate with short slender pedicels 

 about one eighth of an inch in length ; the bract is elongated, acute, ovate-lanceolate, or often narrowed 

 and wedge-shaped from near the middle to the base, and two or three times as long as the ovate concave 

 lobes of the calyx, which are rounded or acute at the apex ; there are four stamens with nearly sessile 

 yellow anthers, tinged with red, and slightly hirsute above the middle, the lobes slightly spreading at 

 the apex. The pistillate flowers, which are usually borne in two to five-flowered spikes, are one third 

 of an inch long, and clothed with rusty tomentum ; the bract is linear-lanceolate, elongated, much 

 longer than the broader acute bractlets, and like them green above, and covered on both surfaces with 

 pale scurfy pubescence and long scattered white hairs ; the stigmatic lobes are pale green, and do not 

 mature until most of the anthers have shed their pollen. The fruit, which is usuaUy sohtary or in 

 pairs, is subglobose, rather longer than it is broad, or slightly obovate, depressed at the apex, from 

 which the blackened remnants of the stigmas protrude, dark reddish brown or nearly black at maturity, 

 roughened with smaU pale lenticels, glabrous or pilose, and from an inch to two and a half inches long ; 

 the husk, which sphts freely nearly to the base, varies from one eighth to one half of an inch in 

 thickness, and is hard and woody and pale on the inner surface. The nut is oblong, nearly twice as 

 long as it is broad, or obovate and broader than it is long, compressed, prominently or obscurely four- 

 ridged and angled, and sometimes furnished with two additional narrower ridges at the two sutures, 

 more or less compressed, acute and gradually or abruptly narrowed or rounded or nearly truncate at 

 the apex, which is tipped with a stout point equahng in length the valves of the fruit, graduaUy 

 narrowed and rounded at the base, which is furnished with a dark bony point, longitudinally and 

 irregularly rugose between the ridges, nearly white, reticulate-veined, and thick or rarely thin-waUed, 

 from half an inch to nearly two inches in length, and from three quarters of an inch to an inch in 

 breadth, the waUs and thin partitions being penetrated by smaU lacunae.* The seed is two-lobed from 



known 



of those nnts good quality. The tree that produces it is growing on bottom- 

 of this species which are distinguished for thinness of shell and lands near the Saddle River, on the farm of Mr. Henry Hales, a 



