134 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



seed sweet, red-brown, its nearly flat lobes grooved from near the base to the apex 

 by 2 deep longitudinal grooves. 



A tree, 100-170 high, with a tall massive trunk occasionally 6 in diameter above 

 its enlarged and buttressed base, stout slightly spreading branches forming in the 

 forest a narrow symmetrical and inversely pyramidal head, or with abundant room a 

 broad round-topped crown, and branchlets at first slightly tinged with red and coated 

 with loose pale tomentum, becoming glabrous or puberulous in their first winter, 

 and marked with numerous oblong orange-colored lenticels and with large oblong 

 concave leaf-scars surrounded by a broad thin membranaceous border embracing the 

 lower axillary bud. Winter-buds acute, compressed, covered with clusters of bright 

 yellow articulate hairs and pale tomentum, terminal ^' long; axillary ovate, often 

 stalked, especially the large upper one. Bark l'-l^' thick, light brown tinged with 

 red, and deeply and irregularly divided into narrow forked ridges broken on the 

 surface into thick appressed scales. "Wood heavy, hard, not strong, brittle, coarse- 

 grained, light brown tinged with red, with thin light brown sapwood; less valuable 

 than that of most Hickories, and used chiefly for fuel, and occasionally in the manu- 

 facture of wagons and agricultural implements. The nuts, whicby vary in size and 

 shape and in the thickness of their shells and in the quality of the kernels, are an 

 important article of commerce. 



Distribution. Low rich ground in the neighborhood of streams from the valley 

 of the Mississippi River in 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, Texas, reappearing on the mountains of Mexico; 

 most abundant and of its largest size in southern Arkansas, the Indian Territory, and 

 eastern Texas. 



Occasionally planted as a shade-tree, especially in the southern states, and now 

 largely for its nuts in orchards of trees raised from selected seeds or by grafts of 

 trees producing nuts of the largest size and best quality. 



2. Hicoria Texana, Le Conte. Bitter Pecan. 



Leaves 10'-12' long, with slender petioles, and 7-11 lanceolate acuminate finely 

 serrate leaflets, hoary-tomentose at first, and more or less villous in the autumn, 

 thin and firm, dark yellow-green, nearly glabrous above, pale yellow-green and 

 puberulous below, 3'-5' long, about 1^' wide, the terminal leaflet gradually narrowed 

 to the acute base and short-stalked, the lateral often falcate, unsymmetrical at the 

 base, subsessile or short-stalked. Flowers: staminate in villous aments 2'-3' long; 

 calyx light yellow-green and villous on the outer surface, with oblong-ovate rounded 

 lobes, much shorter than the ovate acuminate bract; pistillate oblong, slightly 4-an- 

 gled, villose. Fruit in few-fruited clusters, oblong or oblong-obovate, apiculate at 

 the apex, slightly 4-winged at the base, dark brown, more or less covered with artic- 

 ulate hairs, l^'-2' long, with a thin husk; nut oblong-ovate or oblong-obovate, com- 

 pressed, acute at the ends, short-pointed at the apex, apiculate at the base, obscurely 

 4-angled, bright red-brown, rough and pitted and usually l^'-l^' long, with a thin 

 brittle shell, thin papery walls, and a low basal ventral partition; seed very bitter, 

 bright red-brown, flattened, its lobes rounded and slightly divided at the apex, 

 longitudinally grooved and deeply penetrated on the outer face by the prominent 

 reticulated folds of the inner surface of the shell of the nut. 



A tree, sometimes 100 high on the bottoms of the Brazos River, with a tall straight 



