Family:
Growth Form: Medium tree up to 75 feet tall; trunk diameter up to 2 1/2 feet; crown broadly rounded and often irregular; trunk straight, columnar.
Stems: The bark is brown, thin, separating into small, platy scales or shallow ridges and fissures. It's twigs are often slender, grayish or orange-brown, smooth, susually with lenticels; leaf scars alternate, sheild-shaped, scarcely elevated with usually several bundle traces.
Leaves: Alternate, pinnately compound, with usually 7-9 leaflets; leaflets lance-shaped, usually curved, long-pointed at the tip, tapering or rounded at the base, toothed along the edges, yellow-green and smooth on the upper surface, somewhat lighter and usually hairy on the lower surface, up to 6 inches long and usually less than half as wide.
Flower Arrangement:
Flowers: Staminate and pistillate borne separately, but on the same tree, appearing after the leaves have begun to unfold, minute, without petals, the staminate in slender, drooping catkins, the pistillate in groups of 1 or 2.
Petals:
Stamens: In slender, drooping catkins and borne separately from the pistil.
Pistil: Found in groups of 1 or 2 and borne separately from the stamens.
Fruits: More or less shperical, up to 1 1/4 inches in diameter, the husk thin, yellowish, with 4 distinct ridges extending about halfway down, the nut somewhat flattened, the seed very bitter.
Habitat: Bottomland woods; dry hills; along roads.
Range: Southern Ontario across to central Minnesota, south to eastern Texas, east to north-central Florida.
N 38 degrees 34.755 minutes
W 89 degrees 04.146 minutes
Elevation 475 feet