Leaves remote at the ends of the branches and clustered on short lateral branchlets, oblong-ovate, acuminate with a long slender point, coarsely serrate with spreading or incurved triangular teeth except at the gradually narrowed generally cuneate base, when they unfold pale green and clothed on the lower surface and margins with long pale lustrous silky hairs, at maturity dull dark bluish green above, light yellow-green, very lustrous, and glabrous or rarely pilose below (f. _pubescens_ Fern. & Rehd.) with tufts of long pale hairs in the axils of the veins, 2½′—5′ long, 1′—3′ wide, with a slender yellow midrib covered above with short pale hairs, and slender primary veins running obliquely to the points of the teeth; turning bright clear yellow in the autumn; very rarely deeply laciniate; petioles hairy, ¼′—½′ length; stipules ovate-lanceolate on the lower leaves, strap-shaped to linear-lanceolate on the upper, brown or often red below the middle, membranaceous, lustrous, 1′—1½′ long. Flowers opening when the leaves are about one third grown; staminate in globose heads 1′ in diameter, on slender hairy peduncles about 2′ long; pistillate in usually 2-flowered clusters, on short clavate hoary peduncles ½′—¾′ long. Fruit: involucres ½′—¾′ in length often shorter than the nuts, on stout hairy club-shaped peduncles ¼′—¾′ long, fully grown at midsummer, and then puberulous, dark orange-green, and covered by long slender recurved prickles red above the middle, becoming at maturity in the autumn light brown and tomentose, with crowded much recurved pubescent prickles, persistent on the branch after opening late into the winter; nut about ¾′ long.