136 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA, 



A tree, often 100 high, with a tall straight trunk 2-3 in diameter, stout 

 spreading branches forming a broad handsome head, and slender branchlets marked 

 with oblong pale lenticels, bright green and covered more or less thickly with rusty 

 hairs at first, reddish brown and glabrous or puberulous during their first summer, 

 reddish brown and lustrous during the winter and ultimately light gray, with small 

 elevated obscurely 3-lobed obcordate leaf-scars. Winter-buds compressed, bright 

 yellow, terminal '-f long, oblique at the apex, covered with 2 pairs of scales; lat- 

 eral slightly 4-angled, often stalked, |'-^' long, with ovate pointed slightly accres- 

 cent scales keeled on the back. Bark '-' thick, light brown tinged with red, and 

 broken into thin plate-like scales separating on the surface into small thin flakes. 

 "Wood heavy, very hard, strong, tough, close-grained, dark brown, with thick light 

 brown or often nearly white sap wood; largely used for hoops and ox-yokes, and for 

 fuel. 



Distribution. Low wet woods near the borders of streams and swamps or high 

 rolling uplands often remote from streams, southern Maine to Ontario, central 



pic, 116 



Michigan and Minnesota, southeastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas and the Indian 

 Territory, and southward to northwestern Florida, northern Alabama, and eastern 

 Texas; one of the largest and commonest Hickory-trees of southern New England, 

 and abundant in all the central states east and west of the Appalachian Mountains; 

 growing to its largest size on the bottom-lands of the lower Ohio basin; the common 

 Hickory of Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. 



4. Hicoria myristicaeformis, Britt. Nutmeg Hickory. 



Leaves 7'-14' long, with slender terete scurfy-pubescent petioles, and 5-11 ovate- 

 lanceolate to broadly obovate acute leaflets usually equally or sometimes unequally 

 wedge-shaped or rounded at the narrow base, coarsely serrate, short-stalked or 

 nearly sessile, thin and firm, dark green above, more or less pubescent or nearly 

 glabrous and silvery white and very lustrous below, 4'-5' long, I'-l^' wide, with 

 pale scurfy pubescent midribs, changing late in the season to bright bronzy brown. 

 Flowers: staminate in aments 3'-4' long and coated like the ovate-oblong acute 

 bract and calyx of the flower with dark brown scurfy pubescence; stamens 6, with 

 oblong emarginate anthers; pistillate oblong, narrowed at the ends, slightly 4-angled, 



