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Trees with smooth gray, tough bark in young trees, becoming roughened with age; twigs mainly stout, tough, flexible, broken with difficulty, dark, sharply outlined against the sky; buds more or less naked to evidently scaly, frequently superposed, the lateral sometimes enclosed in a sac (soon splitting at the top) and often stalked; leaf-scars alternate, more than 2-ranked, large, conspicuous, more or less 3-lobed inversely triangular; bundle-scars conspicuous, more than 3 in an arrangement, irregularly scattered or collected in 3 more or less regular groups, rarely in a straight line; pith not chambered except at nodes, sometimes somewhat star-shaped in cross section; lenticels oblong, conspicuous; fruit an unsculptured nut, enclosed in a husk which splits into four valves (at least at the apex). |
| 101. | Buds conspicuously bright yellow with minute glandular dots; terminal buds elongated, flattened; bud-scales 4-6, valvate in pairs. | Carya
cordiformis, Bitternut Hickory |
| 101. | Buds not conspicuously bright yellow-dotted; terminal buds ovate; bud-scales 10 or more, overlapping or the outermost on lateral buds usually forming a closed sac that soon splits from the top; inner scales hairy. | 102 |
| 102. | Buds small, terminal buds 5 to 10 mm. long, outer darker scales generally somewhat glandular dotted (but not conspicuously yellow); outer scales often falling and exposing downy scales beneath; twigs smooth, comparatively slender; bark not at all or only slightly shaggy. | Carya
glabra, Pignut Hickory |
| 102. | Buds large, the terminal buds 8 to 15 mm. long, ovate, nearly or quite glandless; twigs stout, often downy toward tip. | 103 |
| 103. | Bark not shaggy; terminal buds broadly ovate to spherical, outer scales soon falling off entirely to expose pale yellowish-gray silky scales beneath. | Carya
tomentosa, Mockernut Hickory |
| 103. | Bark distinctly shaggy (peeling in prominent vertical strips); terminal buds elongated ovate, outer scales persisting through winter but shagging off in pieces from their apex downward. | Carya
ovata, Shagbark Hickory |