186 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



short small branches forming a narrow oblong head, or on dry hillsides usually not more 

 than 20-30 tall, with a trunk generally not exceeding a foot in diameter, and slender 

 red-brown branchlets marked by numerous small pale lenticels and by the small low 

 truncate or slightly obcordate leaf-scars, becoming ultimately dull gray-brown. Winter- 

 buds: terminal ovoid, gradually narrowed to the obtuse apex, about ' long, with glabrous 

 bright red-brown and lustrous acute and apiculate strongly keeled spreading outer scales, 

 the inner scales becoming when fully grown bright yellow, long-pointed, and sometimes 2' 



Fig. 176 



long; axillary buds oblong, obtuse, not more than T y long. Bark light gray, |'-f ' thick, 

 separating freely into thick plates often a foot or more long, 3' or 4' wide, and long-persist- 

 ent, giving to the trunk the shaggy appearance pf the northern Shagbark Hickory. Wood 

 hard, strong, very tough, light reddish brown, with thin nearly white sapwood. 



Distribution. Dry limestone hills, river-bottoms and low flat often inundated woods, 

 frequently in clay soil; central North Carolina to northern Georgia, and through western 

 North Carolina to eastern Tennessee, eastern Mississippi, and in Cullman and Dallas 

 Counties, Alabama. 



8. Carya laciniosa Schn. Big Shellbark. King Nut. 



Leaves 15'-22' long, with stout glabrous or pubescent petioles often persistent on the 

 branches during the winter, and 5-9, usually 7, ovate to oblong-lanceolate or broadly 

 obovate leaflets, the upper 5'-9' long and 3'-5' wide and generally two or three times as 

 large as those of the lowest pair, usually equilateral and acuminate at apex, equally or un- 

 equally cuneate or rounded at the often oblique base, finely serrate, sessile or short-stalked, 

 dark green and lustrous above, pale yellow-green or bronzy brown and covered with soft 

 pubescence below. Flowers: staminate in aments 5 '-8' long, glabrous or covered with 

 rufous scurfy tomentum, with linear-lanceolate acute bracts two or three times as long 

 as the broad rounded calyx-lobes; anthers hirsute, yellow, more or less deeply emarginate; 

 pistillate in 2-5-flowered spikes, oblong-ovoid, about twice as long as broad, slightly 

 angled, clothed with pale tomentum, their linear bracts acute much longer than the nearly 

 triangular bractlets and calyx-lobe. Fruit solitary or in pah's, ellipsoidal, ovoid or sub- 

 globose, depressed at apex, roughened with minute orange-colored lenticels, downy or 

 glabrous, light orange-colored or dark chestnut-brown at maturity, If '-2^' long and If '-2' 

 broad, with a hard woody husk pale and marked on the inside with dark delicate veins, and 

 \'-\' thick; nut ellipsoidal or slightly obovoid, longer than broad or sometimes broader 

 than long, flattened and rounded at the ends, or gradually narrowed and rounded at base 



