FIELD ID CHARACTERISTICS:
Distinctive "muscular" branches and trunk.
Description: Small, deciduous, understory tree with smooth, gray bark, up to 10 m.
Leaves: Alternate, ovate leaves, 3 to 15 cm long. Margins doubly serrated and leaves paler green and smooth on undersides. Leaf veins pronounced (particularly on leaf undersides) with straight veins running to the leaf edges.
Flowers/Fruit: Flowers in catkins: male catkin 3 to 4 cm long and female catkin about 2 cm long. Fruits are small nuts, subtended by a leafy 3-lobed bract in drooping clusters, about 10 cm long. Flowers March/April; fruits September/October.
Habit and Range: Floodplain forests and bottomlands throughout North Carolina.
COMMON CONFUSIONS:
Leaf shape of Carpinus caroliniana (ironwood) is similar to the pubescent leaves of Ostrya virginiana (hop hornbeam), but Carpinus caroliniana leaves are smooth and “muscular” looking trunks are distinctive. Leaves can be confused with Betula species (birch) and Ulmus americana (American elm). Betula species have leaves with a more triangular shape, and Ulmus americana leaves have asymmetrical leaf bases.
Click here to view Betula nigra.
Click here to view Ulmus americana.
Link to side-by-side comparisons page
