Carya

Trees, rarely shrubs, 3-52 m. Bark gray or brownish, smooth with fissures in younger trees, becoming ridged and sometimes deeply furrowed or exfoliating with small platelike scales or long strips or broad plates. Twigs greenish, orangish, reddish, or rusty brown, or bronze, terete, slender or stout, pubescent and scaly or glabrous; leaf scars shield-shaped or 3-lobed, large; pith solid and homogeneous. Bud scales valvate or imbricate, glabrous or variously pubescent; axillary buds protected by pair of valvate bracteoles (i.e., prophylls) or bracteoles fused into hood. Leaves odd-pinnate; petiole pubescent and/or scaly or glabrous. Leaflets 3-17(-21), petiolulate, distal leaflets largest, 2-26 × 1-14 cm; surfaces abaxially with nonglandular hairs (unicellular common to all species, fasciculate with 2-8 rays in 1 rank, multiradiate with 8-17 rays in 2 ranks) and glandular scales (capitate-glandular and large peltate scales common to all species; small peltate scales round, irregular, or 2- or 4-lobed), adaxially with scattered hairs and scattered to abundant scales in spring or concentrated along midrib and secondary veins to essentially glabrous in the fall. Staminate catkins in fascicles of 3 (except sect. Rhamphocarya of se Asia) from 1st-, sometimes 2d-year twigs, sessile or pedunculate; stamens 3-10(-15) per flower, with or without hairs. Pistillate flowers in terminal few-flowered spikes. Fruits nuts enclosed in husks, compressed or not compressed, husks completely or partially dehiscing, sutures smooth or winged; nuts brown, reddish brown, or tan, sometimes mottled with black or tan, compressed or not compressed, angled or not angled, smooth, rugulose, or verrucose; shells thin or thick. Seeds sweet or bitter. x = 16.

Carya

Carya

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