A tree 60°—90° high, with a trunk 2°—2½° in diameter, with small spreading often drooping branches forming a tall narrow head, and slender glabrous reddish branchlets marked by pale lenticels. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, light brown, glabrous, ⅓′—½′ long and ⅕′—¼′ in diameter, the inner scales covered with close pubescence. Bark close, ridged, light gray. Wood heavy, hard, strong and tough, flexible, light or dark brown, with thick lighter-colored sapwood; used for the handles of tools and in the manufacture of wagons and agricultural implements, and largely for fuel.
Distribution. Hillsides and dry ridges; southwestern Vermont to western New York, southeastern Ontario, southern Indiana and southwestern Illinois, and southward to Delaware, the District of Columbia and eastern Virginia, and along the Appalachian Mountains to North Carolina; in northern, central and eastern Georgia, northern Alabama and eastern Mississippi.
The name “Pignut” usually applied to this tree and to the forms of _C. ovalis_ Sarg., especially in the north, properly belongs to _C. cordiformis_ Schn.
Leaves 12′—14′ long, with slender glabrous petioles and 5—7 lanceolate to oblanceolate leaflets long-pointed and acuminate at apex, gradually narrowed and unsymmetrical at base, finely serrate, glabrous or very rarely pubescent, often furnished below with small clusters of axillary hairs, the three upper 8′—10′ long and 1½′—2½′ wide and about twice as large as those of the lowest pair. Flowers: staminate in slightly villose aments 2½′—3′ in length, villose, their bract long-pointed, acuminate, villose, twice longer than the calyx-lobes, stamens 4—6, anthers yellow, villose above the middle; pistillate in short-stalked spikes, their involucre only slightly angled, covered with pale yellow hairs, the bract acuminate, twice longer than the bractlets and calyx-lobes. Fruit oblong-obovoid with a stipe-like base to short-obovate and rounded or abruptly cuneate at base, rarely depressed at apex, slightly flattened, often covered with bright yellow scales, 1′—2′ long, 1′—1½′ in diameter, with a husk ⅛′—⅕′ in thickness, opening tardily to the middle usually by one or by two sutures, or often remaining closed; nut broadest toward the rounded apex or oblong and occasionally acute at apex, gradually narrowed and acute at base, often compressed, slightly or rarely prominently angled (f. _angulata_ Sarg.), with a shell ⅛′—⅙′ in thickness; seed small and sweet.