Leaves 15′—22′ long, with stout glabrous or pubescent petioles often persistent on the branches during the winter, and 5—9, usually 7, ovate to oblong-lanceolate or broadly obovate leaflets, the upper 5′—9′ long and 3′—5′ wide and generally two or three times as large as those of the lowest pair, usually equilateral and acuminate at apex, equally or unequally cuneate or rounded at the often oblique base, finely serrate, sessile or short-stalked, dark green and lustrous above, pale yellow-green or bronzy brown and covered with soft pubescence below. Flowers: staminate in aments 5′—8′ long, glabrous or covered with rufous scurfy tomentum, with linear-lanceolate acute bracts two or three times as long as the broad rounded calyx-lobes; anthers hirsute, yellow, more or less deeply emarginate; pistillate in 2—5-flowered spikes, oblong-ovoid, about twice as long as broad, slightly angled, clothed with pale tomentum, their linear bracts acute much longer than the nearly triangular bractlets and calyx-lobe. Fruit solitary or in pairs, ellipsoidal, ovoid or subglobose, depressed at apex, roughened with minute orange-colored lenticels, downy or glabrous, light orange-colored or dark chestnut-brown at maturity, 1¾′—2½′ long and 1¼′—2′ broad, with a hard woody husk pale and marked on the inside with dark delicate veins, and ¼′—⅓′ thick; nut ellipsoidal or slightly obovoid, longer than broad or sometimes broader than long, flattened and rounded at the ends, or gradually narrowed and rounded at base and occasionally acuminate at apex, more or less compressed, prominently 4-ridged and angled or often 6-ridged, furnished at base with a stout long point, light yellow to reddish brown, 1¼′—2½′ long and 1½′—1¾′ wide, with a hard bony shell sometimes ¼′ thick; seed light chestnut-brown, very sweet.