Scientific Name
Other Names
Life Form
Family
Fruits are edible.
Central & latin America
Common on well-drained loamy soils not subjected to prolonged flooding.
A staple in indigenous diets for centuries. Trees can live and produce nuts for over 300 years.
It is a deciduous trees grow up to 50 m tall.
Bark light gray or brownish, ridged with appressed scales or exfoliating with small platelike scales. Twigs tan to reddish brown, slender, hirsute, conspicuously scaly, sometimes becoming glabrous.
Leaves are large and compound, reaching 4-7 cm long on a 4-8 cm stalk. Each leaf boasts 7-17 oval leaflets with pointed tips and serrated edges, resembling a saw. The leaf undersides are often hairy or scaly, while the tops are mostly smooth.
Staminate catkins essentially sessile, to 18 cm, stalks with small capitate-glandular trichomes; anthers sparsely pilose.
Fruits dark brown, ovoid-ellipsoid, not compressed, 2.5-6 × 1.5-3 cm; husks rough, 3-4 mm thick, dehiscing to base or nearly so, sutures winged; nuts tan to brown and mottled with black patches, ovoid-ellipsoid, not compressed, not angled, smooth; shells thin.
Flowering: April-May