Distribution. Dry hillsides, rocky ridges, or southward on sandy upland; southwestern Indiana (Knox County), southern Illinois, northeastern Missouri and southward through Missouri and Arkansas to eastern Oklahoma, western Louisiana and northern and eastern Texas to the valley of the Atascosa River, Atascosa County; the common Hickory of the Ozark Mountain region, Arkansas, and here abundant on dry rocky ridges at altitudes of 1200°—1800°; in Texas the common Hickory from the coast to the base of the Edwards Plateau; trees with the smallest fruit northward; those with the largest fruit with thickest husks in Louisiana, and in southern Arkansas (f. pachylemma Sarg.), a tree with slender nearly glabrous branchlets, deeply fissured pale gray bark, rusty pubescent winter-buds and fruit 2½′ long and 2′ in diameter, with a husk ½′ in thickness.
Carya Buckleyi var. villosa Sarg.
Hicoria glabra var. villosa Sarg.
Hicoria villosa Ashe.
Carya villosa Schn.
Carya glabra var. villosa Robins.
Leaves 6′—10′ long, with slender petioles and rachis pubescent with fascicled hairs early in the season, generally becoming glabrous, and 5—7, usually 7, lanceolate to oblanceolate finely serrate leaflets long-pointed and acuminate at apex, cuneate or rounded and often unsymmetrical at base, sessile or the terminal leaflet sometimes short-stalked, dark green and glabrous above, pale and pubescent below, the lower side of the midrib often covered with fascicled hairs, the upper leaflets 3′—4′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, and twice as long as those of the lowest pair. Flowers: staminate in aments pubescent with fascicled hairs, 4′—8′ long, pubescent, their bract acuminate, not much longer than the rounded calyx-lobes; pistillate in 1 or 2-flowered spikes, rusty pubescent, slightly angled. Fruit obovoid to ellipsoidal, rounded at apex, cuneate and often abruptly narrowed into a stipitate base, rusty pubescent and covered with scattered yellow scales, about 1′ long and ¾′ in diameter, with a husk 1/12′ in thickness, splitting tardily to the base by 1 or 2 sutures or indehiscent; nut ovoid, rounded at base, pointed at apex, only slightly angled, faintly tinged with red, with a shell rarely more than 1/12′ in thickness; seed small and sweet.
A tree 30°—40° high, with a trunk 12′—18′ in diameter, stout often contorted branches and slender branchlets covered at first with rusty pubescence mixed with fascicled hairs and pubescent or glabrous during their first winter. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, covered with rusty pubescence mixed with yellow scales, often furnished near the apex with tufts of white hairs, the terminal ¼′ long and about twice as large as the compressed axillary buds.
Distribution. Dry rocky hills, Allenton, Saint Louis County, Missouri. Distinct from other forms of Carya Buckleyi in the often indehiscent fruit and more numerous and longer fascicled hairs, and possibly better considered a species.
IX. BETULACEÆ.
Trees, with sweet watery juice, without terminal buds, their slender terete branchlets marked by numerous pale lenticels and lengthening by one of the upper axillary buds formed in early summer, and alternate simple penniveined usually doubly serrate deciduous stalked leaves, obliquely plicately folded along the primary veins, their petioles in falling leaving small semioval slightly oblique scars showing three equidistant fibro-vascular bundle-scars; stipules inclosing the leaf in the bud, fugacious. Flowers vernal, appearing with or before the unfolding of the leaves, or rarely autumnal, monœcious, the staminate 1—3 together in the axils of the scales of an elongated pendulous lateral ament and composed of a 2—4-parted membranaceous calyx and 2—20 stamens inserted on a receptacle, with distinct filaments and 2-celled erect extrorse anthers opening longitudinally, or without a calyx, the pistillate in short lateral or capitate aments, with or without a calyx, a 2-celled ovary, narrowed into a short style divided into two elongated branches longer than the scales of the ament and stigmatic on the inner face or at the apex, and a single anatropous pendulous ovule in each cell of the ovary. Fruit a small mostly 1-celled 1-seeded nut, the outer layer of the shell light brown, thin and membranaceous, the inner thick, hard, and bony. Seed solitary by abortion, filling the cavity of the nut, suspended, without albumen, its coat membranaceous, light chestnut-brown; cotyledons thick and fleshy, much longer than the short superior radicle turned toward the minute hilum.
Of the six genera, all confined to the northern hemisphere, five are found in North America; of these only Corylus is shrubby.