usually thin shell; seed light brown, lustrous, sweet, with an aromatic flavor. A tree, 70°—90° and occasionally 120° high, with a tall straight trunk 3°—4° in diameter, in the forest often free of branches for 50°—60° above the ground and then divided into a few small limbs forming a narrow head, or with more space sometimes dividing near the ground or at half the height of the tree into stout slightly spreading limbs, forming a narrow inversely conic round-topped head of more or less pendulous branches, and stout branchlets marked with oblong pale lenticels, covered at first with caducous brown scurf and coated with pale glandular pubescence, soon bright reddish brown, and lustrous, glabrous or pubescent, growing dark gray in their second year and ultimately light gray, and marked by pale and slightly elevated ovate semiorbicular or obscurely 3-lobed leaf-scars. Winter-buds: terminal broadly ovoid, rather obtuse, ½′—¾′ long, ⅓′—½′ broad, the 3 or 4 outer scales nearly triangular, acute, dark brown, pubescent and hirsute on the outer surface, the exterior scales often abruptly narrowed into long rigid points and deciduous before the unfolding of the leaves, the inner scales lustrous, covered with resinous glands, yellow-green often tinged with red, oblong-obovate, pointed, becoming 2½′—3′ long and ½′ broad, usually persistent until after the fall of the staminate aments; axillary buds coated at first with thick white tomentum, becoming ⅓′—½′ long when fully grown. Bark light gray, ¾′—1′ thick, separating in thick plates often a foot or more long and 6′—8′ wide, and more or less closely attached to the trunk by the middle, giving it the shaggy appearance to which this tree owes its common name. Wood heavy, very hard and strong, tough, close-grained, flexible, light brown, with thin nearly white sapwood; largely used in the manufacture of agricultural implements, carriages, wagons, and for axe-handles, baskets, and fuel. The nut is the common Hickory nut of commerce.