A tree, rarely 100° high, usually much smaller, with a tall trunk occasionally 3° in diameter, comparatively small spreading branches forming a narrow or often a broad round-topped head of upright rigid or of gracefully pendulous branches, and stout branchlets clothed at first with pale fascicled hairs, rather bright brown, nearly glabrous or more or less pubescent, and marked by conspicuous pale lenticels during their first season, becoming light or dark gray, with pale emarginate leaf-scars almost equally lobed, or elongated with the lowest lobe two or three times as long as the others. Winter-buds: terminal broadly ovoid, acute or obtuse, ½′—¾′ long, two or three times as large as the axillary buds, the three or four outer bud-scales ovate, acute, often keeled and apiculate, thick and firm, dark reddish brown and pilose, usually deciduous late in the autumn, the inner scales ovate, rounded or acute and short-pointed at apex, light green covered with soft silky pubescence on the outer, and often bright red and pilose on the inner surface, becoming 1′—1½′ long and ½′ broad. Bark ½′—¾′ thick, close, slightly ridged by shallow irregular interrupted fissures and covered by dark gray closely appressed scales. Wood very heavy, hard, tough, strong, close-grained, flexible, rich dark brown, with thick nearly white sapwood; used for the same purposes as that of the Shellbark Hickory.
Distribution. Eastern Massachusetts southward to Lake County, Florida, and eastern Texas, and through Ohio, southwestern Ontario, southern Michigan, Illinois and Indiana to southeastern Iowa, and through Missouri to eastern Oklahoma; comparatively rare at the north, growing on dry slopes and ridges and less commonly on alluvial bottom-lands; absent from eastern Canada, northern and western New England, and New York except in the neighborhood of the coast; the most abundant and generally distributed Hickory-tree of the southern states, growing to its largest size in the basin of the lower Ohio River and in Missouri and Arkansas; commonly in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas, and occasionally in other southern states represented by var. _subcoriacea_ Sarg., differing in its larger, thicker, more pubescent leaflets, more prominently angled fruit with a thicker husk, larger nuts, and in its longer winter-buds often ⅘′ long and ¾′ in diameter.