BITTER PECAN; WATER HICKORY (Mania aquatica, Blitt). ;•0 to 60 feet, rarely 100 feet. Slender tree, with narrow head of dark-red branches ending in ashy-gray, fuzzy, and glandular twigs, and dark, small buds, coated with yellow glands. Bark reddish, thin, shedding iriplates. Wood dark, brittle, close, with wide, pale sapwood, used for fuel. Leaves 9 to 15 inches long, of 7 to 13 narrow, saw-toothed leaflets, thin, dark green, with brownish linings, smooth or fuzzy.
Flowers smaller but of same type as preceding species; hairy. Fruit often 4 or 5 in a cluster, flattened, narrowed to base, yellow, fuzzy, thin-winged valves of husk slow to part, then only to middle; shell thin, dark, 4-ridged, wrinkled, with red, bitter powder covering the dark kernel. Dist.: Coast swamps Virginia to Texas; Mississippi bayous and lowlands. Illinois to the Gulf.