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Trees or shrubs, belonging to the order Fagaceæ. Bark furrowed. Buds all axillary, no true terminal bud being formed, as the tip of the branchlet falls off in early summer, leaving a small circular scar close to the uppermost axillary bud, which prolongs the branchlet in the following year. Buds alternate, arranged on the long shoots in two ranks; scales numerous, two or three of which are visible externally, lowest pair lateral and each composed of two connate stipules, next pair each corre- sponding to a stipule and with or without a leaf-rudiment, following pairs of single stipules each covering a young leaf; all the single stipules accrescent and marking in their fall the base of the shoot with ring-like scars.

Leaves deciduous, alternate, simple, stalked, dentate with slender glandular teeth, penninerved, each lateral nerve ending in a tooth. Stipules ovate or lanceolate, scarious, deciduous, their scars visible in winter on each side of the leaf-scars, which show three groups of bundle-dots, and are placed on prominent pulvini, from which decurrent lines descend along the branchlet.

Flowers monœcious, strong-smelling,’ fertilised by the wind, unisexual, in slender elongated erect catkins, of which those arising in the axils of the lower leaves of the branchlet open early and are entirely composed of male flowers, while the catkins arising in the axils of the upper leaves are shorter and bear female flowers at their base and male flowers on their upper part, the latter not opening until after the female flowers have been fertilised. Staminate flowers three to seven, in a cyme in the axil of a bract, and surrounded by minute bracteoles ; calyx campanulate, deeply divided into usually six segments, stamens twice or thrice as many as the calyx lobes ; filaments filiform ; anthers two-celled, dehiscing longitudinally; ovary aborted. Pistillate flowers, sessile, solitary or two to three together, placed within an involucre of closely imbricated scales, subtended by a bract and two bracteoles; calyx-tube urn-shaped, divided above into six short lobes; ovary adnate to the calyx tube, six-celled, each cell containing two ovules, surmounted by six simple styles, which are exserted out of the involucre.

1 Cf. Kerner, Nat. Hist. Plants, Eng. trans. ii. 200 (1898), concerning the nature of the odour of the flowers.