[4] It is a moderately long-lived[4] hardwood[4] with a light-colored wood, yellowish gray to light brown with yellow streaks.

It produces small fruits that turn orange-red to dark purple in the autumn, often staying on the trees for several months.

[4] The bark is light brown or silvery gray, broken on the surface into thick appressed scales and sometimes roughened with excrescences; the pattern is very distinctive.

[6] The remarkable bark pattern is even more pronounced in younger trees, with the irregularly-spaced ridges resembling long geologic palisades of sedimentary [layered] rock formations when viewed edge-wise [cross-section].

Coins as large as U.S. quarters can easily be laid flat against the valleys, which may be as deep as an adult human finger.

The branchlets are slender, and their color transitions from light green to red brown and finally to dark red-brown.

The winter buds are axillary, ovate, acute, somewhat flattened, one-fourth of an inch long, light brown.

[6] The calyx is light yellow green, five-lobed, divided nearly to the base; lobes linear, acute, more or less cut at the apex, often tipped with hairs, imbricate in bud.

[6] There are five stamens, which are hypogynous; the filaments are white, smooth, slightly flattened and gradually narrowed from base to apex; in the bud incurved, bringing the anthers face to face, as flower opens they abruptly straighten; anthers extrorse, oblong, two-celled; cells opening longitudinally.

The fruit is a fleshy, oblong drupe, 1⁄4 to 3⁄8 in (0.64 to 0.95 cm) long, tipped with the remnants of style, dark purple when ripe.

The small berries, hackberries, are eaten by a number of birds,[11] including robins and cedar waxwings,[12] and mammals.

Sombor in Serbia and Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, are known for the extensive use of hackberry (in the latter case along with closely related but Eurasian Celtis australis) as a street tree.

[15] Omaha Native Americans ate the berries casually, while the Dakota used them as a flavor for meat, pounding them fine, seeds and all.