Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol02B.djvu/129

Rh

A tree attaining in America occasionally 100 feet in height, with a girth of 9 feet, but usually smaller in size, dividing at 20 or 30 feet above the ground into many stout horizontal limbs, and forming a broad, low, round-topped head. Bark of young trees smooth and light grey, becoming in older trees deeply fissured, with broad scaly ridges.

Leaves with eleven to seventeen leaflets, which are sub-opposite, sessile, oblong, unequal-sided, rounded, and slightly unequal at the base, acuminate at the apex; margin finely serrate, the tips of the serrations being directed outwards, ciliate; upper surface finely pubescent with stellate and long simple hairs; lower surface pale, with numerous fine stellate hairs, there being some glandular hairs on the midrib towards its base. Rachis with numerous short glandular hairs. Young shoots with white sessile glands and numerous short white glandular hairs; old shoots pubescent. The leaf-scars are semicircular or triangular, with the upper edge a straight line, and furnished with a transverse band of pubescence.

Flowers: staminate catkins 2 to 3 inches long; scales with six puberulous lobes; bract rusty-pubescent with acute apex; stamens eight to twelve. Pistillate flowers in six- to eight-flowered spikes; involucre with viscid glandular hairs, and slightly shorter than the linear-lanceolate perianth lobes.

Fruit: in drooping clusters of three to five, ovate oblong with two or rarely four obscure ridges, coated with rusty clammy hairs, 1½ to 2½ inches in diameter. Nut ovate, abruptly acuminate and contracted at the apex, with eight ribs, internally two-celled at the base and one-celled above the middle with a narrow pointed apical cavity.

No varieties are known. A hybrid between it and Juglans nigra has been observed. See Juglans nigra.

The best mark of distinction of this species at all seasons is the leaf-scar, which has a transverse raised band of pubescence above its upper margin, which is never notched, and is straight or slightly convex. In winter the following characters are observable in the twigs and buds. Twigs stout, reddish brown, covered with dense glandular pubescence. Leaf-scars, as described above, obovate, on prominent pulvini, with three groups of bundle-dots. Terminal buds oblong, greyish, densely pubescent, the two outer scales conspicuously lobed at the apex, the two inner scales scarcely