Leaves ovate-lanceolate, gradually narrowed and acuminate at apex, cordate or rounded at base, or narrow-elliptic and acute or acuminate at the ends, finely crenately serrate, with slightly thickened revolute margins, coated when they unfold with the gummy secretions of the bud, glabrous, or puberulous on the under side of the midrib, becoming thin and firm in texture, deep dark green and lustrous above, pale green or glaucous and more or less rusty and conspicuously reticulate-venulose below, 3′—5′ long, 1½′—3′ wide, with thin veins running obliquely almost to the margins; petioles slender, terete, 1½′ long, glabrous or rarely puberulous. Flowers: aments long-stalked, the pistillate becoming 4′—5′ long before the fruit ripens, glabrous or pubescent; scales broadly obovate, light brown and scarious, often irregularly 3-parted at apex, cut into short thread-like brown lobes; disk of the staminate flower oblique, short-stalked; stamens 20—30, with short filaments and large light red anthers; disk of the pistillate flower cup-shaped; ovary ovoid, slightly 2-lobed, with two nearly sessile large oblique dilated crenulate stigmas. Fruit ovoid-oblong, acute and often curved at apex, 2-valved, light brown, about ¼′—⅓′ long, nearly sessile or short-stalked, ½′—⅛′ in length; seeds oblong-obovoid, pointed at apex, narrowed and truncate at base, light brown, about 1/12′ long. A tree, often 100° high, with a tall trunk 6°—7° in diameter, stout erect branches usually more or less contorted near the end, forming a comparatively narrow open head, and glabrous or occasionally pubescent branchlets marked by oblong bright orange-colored lenticels, much roughened by the thickened leaf-scars, at first red-brown and glabrous or pubescent, becoming bright and lustrous in their first winter, dark orange-colored in their second year, and finally gray tinged with yellow-green; usually much smaller toward the southern limits of its range. Winter-buds saturated with a yellow balsamic sticky exudation, ovoid, terete, long-pointed; terminal 1′ long, ⅓′ broad; axillary about ¾′ long, 1/16′ broad, with 5 oblong pointed concave closely imbricated thick chestnut-brown lustrous scales. Bark light brown tinged with red, smooth or roughened by dark excrescences, becoming on old trunks ¾′—1′ thick, gray tinged with red, and divided into broad rounded ridges covered by small closely appressed scales. Wood light brown, with thick nearly white sapwood.