BUDS: Surrounded by leaf scars and covered with a single cap-like scale; second scale is gummy and green; innermost scale is covered with long hairs; false end buds.

TWIGS: Slender; smooth yellowish-brown to greenish; ringed by stipule scars and swollen at nodes; upper branches look whitewashed.

BARK: Younger trees have mottled brown bark peeling to reveal yellowish, whitish, or pale greenish underbark, like camouflage; older trees have dark brown trunks with deeply furrowed ridges.

HABITAT: Wet soils--streambanks and floodplains; pioneers on exposed upland sites like old fields and strip mines.

RANGE: Maine south to northwest Florida, west to south central Texas, north to eastern Nebraska. Also Northeast Mexico.

USES: Wood is commercially used for crates, butcher's blocks, furniture, and pulpwood. It is a common ornamental street tree that can root from broken-off branches (ie. deposited on riverbanks).