Leaves lanceolate, long-acuminate, often falcate, gradually cuneate or rounded at base, finely serrate, thin bright light green, rather lustrous, with obscure reticulate veins, glabrous or often pubescent on the under side of the midribs and veins and on the short slender petioles, 3′—6′ long, ⅛′—¾′ wide; at the north turning light yellow before falling in the autumn; stipules semicordate, acuminate, foliaceous, persistent, or ovoid, minute, and deciduous. Flowers: aments terminal on leafy pubescent branches, narrowly cylindric, 1′—3′ long; scales yellow, elliptic to obovate, rounded at apex and coated on the inner surface with pale hairs; stamens 3—5, with filaments hairy toward the base; ovary ovoid, short-stalked, glabrous, gradually narrowed above the middle to the apex, with nearly sessile slightly divided stigmatic lobes. Fruit ovoid-conic, short-stalked, glabrous, about ⅛′ long, light reddish brown.
A tree, usually 30°—40° high, with usually several clustered stout stems, thick spreading upright branches forming a broad somewhat irregular open head, and reddish brown or gray-brown branchlets pubescent when they first appear, soon glabrous, and easily separated at the joints. Winter-buds acute, about ⅛′ long. Bark 1′—1¼′ thick, dark brown or nearly black and deeply divided into broad flat connected ridges separating freely into thick plate-like scales and becoming shaggy on old trunks. Wood light, soft, weak, light reddish brown, with thin nearly white sapwood; now sawed into lumber in the valley of the lower Mississippi River and largely used for packing cases, cellar and barn floors, in furniture, and in the manufacture of toys and other purposes where strength is not important as it does not warp, check or splinter.
Distribution. Low moist alluvial banks of streams and lakes; southern New Brunswick through southern Quebec and Ontario to the region north of Lake Superior, southward to northern and western North Carolina, through the Piedmont region of South Carolina and Georgia to eastern and central Alabama, and westward to southeastern North Dakota, eastern South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, the valley of Wichita River, Oklahoma, and central and western Texas to Valverde County.