Leaves 6′—10′ long, with slender petioles often scurfy-pubescent early in the season, soon glabrous, and 7 or rarely 5 lanceolate to oblanceolate, or occasionally obovate finely serrate leaflets, long-pointed and acuminate or rarely rounded at apex, cuneate and unsymmetrical at base, early in the season often scurfy-pubescent and furnished below with small axillary tufts of pale hairs, soon glabrous, the upper 6′ or 7′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, and raised on a stalk ¼′—½′ in length, the lateral sessile, those of the upper pairs as large or slightly smaller than the terminal leaflet. Flowers: staminate in puberulous aments 6′—7′ long, pubescent, their bracts twice longer than the ovate acute calyx-lobes; stamens 4, anthers yellow, thickly covered with pale hairs; pistillate in 1 or 2-flowered spikes, obovoid, more or less thickly covered with yellow scales. Fruit ellipsoidal, acute or rounded at apex, rounded at base, puberulous, 1′—1¼′ long, about ¾′ in diameter, with a husk 1/12′—1/10′ in thickness, splitting freely to the base; nut pale, oblong, slightly flattened, rounded at base, acute or acuminate and 4-angled at apex, the ridges extending for one-third or rarely for one-half of its length, with a shell rarely more than ⅕′ in thickness; seed small and sweet. A tree sometimes 100° high, with a tall trunk occasionally 3° in diameter, small spreading branches forming a narrow often pyramidal head, and slender lustrous red-brown branchlets marked by pale lenticels, often slightly pubescent when they first appear, soon glabrous. Winter-buds ovoid, obtuse, acute or acuminate; the terminal often ½′ long and twice as large as the lateral, the outer scales red-brown, lustrous and glabrous, the inner covered with close pale tomentum. Bark slightly ridged, pale gray, usually separating freely into small plate-like scales, or occasionally close. Wood heavy, hard and tough, flexible, light or dark brown, with thick lighter-colored sapwood; used for the handles of tools, in the manufacture of wagons and agricultural implements, and largely for fuel. Distribution. Hillsides and rich woods; western New York, eastern Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia to southern Illinois and central Iowa (Ames, Story County), and southward to the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, and to central Georgia and Alabama; usually rare and local; most abundant and generally distributed in Indiana. With its varieties usually but incorrectly called “Pignut.” The following varieties differing in the shape of their fruit are distinguished: Carya ovalis var. obcordata Sarg. _Carya microcarpa_ Darling. in part. _Hicoria microcarpa_ Britt. in part. [Illustration: Fig. 184]