HICKORY NUTS. 157 



kernel large, sweet and excellent. One of the most 

 common and popular of the indigenous edible nuts, col- 

 lected in large quantities as they ripen in autumn, for 

 home use and for sale, as the demand for this excellent 

 nut is almost unlimited. A large tree, fifty to eighty 

 feet high, and stem one to three feet in diameter, with 

 a shaggy or scaly bark, which on old trees may be read- 

 ily pulled off in long, shell-like plates. Tiniber well 

 known as valuable for many purposes. This species has 

 a Tery wide range, or from Maine to Florida in the East- 

 ern States, and westward to Minnesota, thence south- 

 ward through eastern Kansas, Missouri, Indian Territory 

 and eastern Texas. 



Synonyms : 



Jitglans alba, Clayton, Flora Virginica, 1739. 



Juglans alba ovata, Miller, Gard. Diet., 1754. 



Juglans alba, Linn., Spec, pi., 1754. 



Juglans alba ovata, Marshall, 1785. 



Juglans compressa {?), Willdenow, 1809. 



Juglans exaltata (f), Bartram, 1791. 



Juglans alba, Nuttall, 1818. 



Juglans var. microcarpa, Nuttall. 



Juglans squamosa {?), Lamarck. 



Juglans ovalis (f), Wangenheim. 



Although Clayton, as with most of the earlier bota- 

 nists, fails to give any description of the foliage of the 

 hickories he mentions, and all ha?e the affix alba (white), 

 yet his reference to the form of the nut and the scaly 

 bark of the tree is sufficient to enable us to identify the 

 species as that of our common shellbark hickory of the 

 Atlantic States, which extends through the regions 

 where he gathered his botanical specimens. 



Big shellbakk, thick ob Westeeis" shellbaek, 

 ETC. [Hicoria laciniosa. Michaux). — Leaflets seren to 

 nine, obovate-oblong, finely serrate, roughish-downy or 

 pubescent beneath. Buds large, composed of rather 



