Large tree. Twigs 1.5 to 3 mm. thick, fluted, from fulvous-stellate-tomentose becoming glabrate or sparsely floccose, reddish-brown with rather prominent pale lenticels, becoming gray. Buds about 2 mm. long, round to narrowly ovate, obtuse, straw-colored, glabrous or the scales minutely ciliate, the ligulate stipules early caducous. Leaves deciduous (?), thin but firm and coriaceous, 8 to usually 18 or even 25 cm. long, 2 to usually 5 or sometimes 7 cm. broad, narrowly or broadly lanceolate to oblanceolate, apex narrowly acute to long-acuminate, not strikingly aristate-tipped, base cuneate to very narrowly rounded, entire, margins minutely revolute and very finely crisped, upper surface glabrous and shiny, lower surface glabrous or usually sparsely stellate-pubescent along the midrib toward the base, somewhat shining; veins about 15 to 18 or 20 on each side with evanescent intermediates, repeatedly branching and inconspicuously anastomosing near the margin, very slightly impressed above but somewhat raised within the grooves, rather prominent beneath, the fine reticulum somewhat raised on both surfaces; petioles 2 to 4 mm. long, as much as 2 mm. thick, winged, glabrate or pubescent like the twigs, dark reddish-brown at the swollen base. Catkins? Fruit probably annual, solitary or paired or several scattered on a peduncle 1 to 2 or 4 cm. long, 1.5 to 3 mm. thick, often irregularly bent in a zigzag at the points of attachment of the cups, glabrate, reddish-brown with conspicuous lenticels; cups 13 to 18 mm. broad, 5 to 10 mm. high, deeply saucer-shaped to goblet-shaped, often some-what constricted at the base, the scales broadly triangular-ovate, rounded at apex, thin and very closely appressed, the base sometimes appearing thickened but merely protruded by the bud in its axil, finely buff-sericeous but the apices and margins glabrate; acorns 7 to 15 mm. long, 11 to 15 mm. broad, hemispheric to broadly ovate, apex nearly flat or rounded, from minutely sericeous-puberulent tardily glabrate, one-fifth included to completely covered (in equally mature material, varying with the form of the acorn); abortive ovules basal.
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