Leaves semiorbicular to broad-ovate, short-pointed at apex, rounded, abruptly cuneate or rarely truncate at the broad entire base, coarsely repand-dentate above with few stout incurved teeth, covered like the petioles early in the season with white tomentum, soon glabrous, thin and firm in texture, dark green above, paler on the lower surface, 2′—3′ long, 2′—2½′ wide, with a prominent yellow midrib, conspicuously forked veins, and reticulate veinlets; petioles slender, laterally compressed, 1½′—2½′ long. Flowers: aments pubescent, 1½′—2½′ long, the pistillate becoming 4′—5′ long at maturity; scales pale and scarious below, divided above into 5 or 6 small irregular acute lobes covered with soft pale hairs; disk shallow, oblique, the staminate entire, the pistillate slightly crenate; stamens 6—12, with short slender filaments and light red anthers; ovary oblong-conic, bright green, puberulous, with a short style, and spreading stigmas divided nearly to the base into elongated filiform lobes. Fruit ripening before the leaves are fully grown, often more or less curved above the middle, light green and puberulous, thin-walled, 2-valved, about ⅛′ long; pedicel slender, pubescent, about 1/12′ in length; seeds minute dark brown. A tree, often 60°—70° high, with a trunk occasionally 2° in diameter, slender rather rigid branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and stout branchlets marked by scattered oblong orange-colored lenticels, coated when they first appear with thick hoary deciduous tomentum, becoming during their first year dark red-brown or dark orange-colored, glabrous, lustrous, or covered with a delicate gray pubescence, and in their second year dark gray sometimes slightly tinged with green and much roughened by the elevated 3-lobed leaf-scars; generally smaller, and usually not more than 30°—40° tall. Winter-buds terete, broadly ovoid, acute, with light bright chestnut-brown scales, pubescent during the winter especially on their thin scarious margins, about ⅛′ long and not more than half the size of the flower-buds. Bark thin, smooth, light gray tinged with green, becoming near the base of old trunks ¾′—1′ thick, dark brown tinged with red, irregularly fissured and divided into broad flat ridges roughened on the surface by small thick closely appressed scales. Wood light brown, with thin nearly white sapwood of 20—30 layers of annual growth.