"PE-can" vs. "pe-CON," that age-old pronunciation issue that just won't seem to go away. I'm an adherent to the former pronunciation, although there are those in my family who like it the other way, which is OK. (After all, there are more important and divisive issues. Like how to eat grits.)

This mysterious plant looks an awful lot like a pecan – however you want to say it – tree, but there are a number of features that distinguish the two. (Of course, both pecan and our curious mystery tree are special kinds of hickories, and thus are also related to walnuts; all of these plants, thus, belonging to the large family called the "Juglandaceae.")

This is a tree, and a potentially large one, up to nearly 100 feet tall, and big around at the bottom. Large trees have rather prominently shaggy bark. It likes to grow in wet places, and, in particular, within the deepest, wettest portions of many of our swamps, often overhanging riverbanks. Long-standing flooding periods are no problem for this tree. It's a natural resident from the lower end of the Ohio River Valley (as in southern Illinois), down the Mississippi to the Gulf, and over to north-central Florida, then strictly along the coastal plain of Georgia and the Carolinas up to eastern Virginia. Its leaves are compound, like a pecan's, but without quite as many leaflets. The leaflets tend to be dark, shiny green, a bit curved (we botanists like to use the term "falcate" for this), and finely toothy along the margins. Of course, the leaves are deciduous, so that in the middle of the winter, there won't be a leaf to be seen.

A given tree will produce both male and female flowers. The male flowers are tiny, put together into greenish-yellow, wiggly spikes that dangle from the branches. Female flowers aren't much bigger but are produced in small clusters. This species is a member of a broad class of plants that is wind-pollinated, and it makes sense, when you look at the flowers, which are not very attractive to flying insects, scarcely offering a reward for a visit. After pollination, the ovary of the female flower swells dramatically, ultimately producing a thin-shelled, greenish-yellow fruit. A single kernel lies within the relatively thin husk, or fruit wall, that develops. Botanists like to think that these fruits aren't true nuts but are technically put together more or less like a "drupe," thus resembling the situation with an avocado or peach. This husk splits along four lines, nearly down to the base. (Of course, with pecans, the husk divisions split ALL the way down and fall off, and that's how come you'll usually see the bare pecan down there on the ground.) Additionally, the fruit produced by this tree is quite a bit more flattened than a real pecan. Finally, its fruits are rather bitter, and not very good to eat, at least by humans. (Photo by John Nelson.)

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John Nelson is the curator of the Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, in the department of biological sciences. As a public service, the herbarium offers free plant identifications. For more information, visit www.herbarium.org or call 803-777-8196.