Flora of North America species comparison

greenish, reddish, or orangish brown, retaining color or turning black on drying, stout or slender, hirsute or glabrous.

3-6 dm;

petiole 4-13 cm, petiole and rachis hirsute or mainly glabrous.

(3-)5(-7), lateral petiolules 0-1 mm, terminal petiolules 3-17 mm;

blades ovate, obovate, or elliptic, not falcate, 4-26 × 1-14 cm, margins finely to coarsely serrate, with tufts of hairs in axils of proximal veins of serrations, often weathering to only a few in fall, apex acute to acuminate;

surfaces abaxially hirsute with unicellular and 2-4-rayed fasciculate hairs, occasionally restricted to midrib and major veins or essentially without hairs, with few to many large peltate scales and small round, irregular, and 4-lobed peltate scales.

brown to reddish brown, spheric to depressed-spheric, not compressed, 2.5-4 × 2.5-4 cm;

husks rough, 4-15 mm thick, dehiscing to base, sutures smooth;

nuts tan, ovoid, obovoid, or ellipsoid, compressed, 4-angled, rugulose;

shells thick.

sweet.

buds tan to dark brown to black, ovoid, 6-18 mm, tomentose or nearly glabrous;

bud scales imbricate;

axillary buds protected by bracteoles fused into hood.

catkins pedunculate, to 13 cm, stalks and bracts without hairs;

anthers hirsute.