Growth Form: Small to medium tree to 60 feet tall; trunk diameter up to 2 feet; crown widely but irregularly spreading; trunk short and stout.
Bark: Dark gray or dark brown, shallowly furrowed.
Twigs: Slender, gray or brown, smooth, usually with unbranched thorns; leaf scars alternate, more or less 3-lobed, with 3 bundle traces.
Buds: Rounded, nearly hidden beneath the leaf scars, dark brown, smooth, up to ⅛ inch long.
Leaves: Alternate, both singly and doubly pinnately compound on the same tree, with many leaflets; leaflets oblong to oblong-ovate, rounded or slightly pointed at the tip, rounded at the slightly asymmetrical base, toothless or minutely toothed along the edges, smooth except for some hairs along the veins, up to 1 inch long, about half as wide.
Flowers: Some flowers with both stamens and pistils, others with only one or the other, in elongated clusters up to 4 inches long, greenish, small, appearing in May and June.
Fruit: Short, pointed legumes up to 2 inches long and 1 inch broad, borne several in a drooping cluster, chestnut-brown, smooth, with 1 or 2 seeds and no pulp.
Wood: Hard, heavy, coarse-grained, reddish-brown.
Uses: Fence posts, coarse construction.
Habitat: Swampy woods.