''Carya ovata'', the shagbark hickory, is a common

hickory Hickory is a common name for trees composing the genus ''Carya'', which includes around 18 species. Five or six species are native to China, Indochina, and India (Assam), as many as twelve are native to the United States, four are found in Mexi ...

in the Eastern United States and southeast Canada. It is a large, deciduous tree, growing well over tall, and can live more than 350 years. The tallest measured shagbark, located in Savage Gulf, Tennessee, is over tall . Mature shagbarks are easy to recognize because, as their name implies, they have shaggy bark. This characteristic is, however, only found on mature trees; young specimens have smooth bark. The shagbark hickory's nut is edible and has a very sweet taste. The

leaves A leaf (plural, : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant plant stem, stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", wh ...

are long, pinnate, with five (rarely three or seven) leaflets, the terminal three leaflets much larger than the basal pair. The shagbark hickory is

monoecious Monoecy (; adj. monoecious ) is a sexual system in seed plants where separate male and female cones or flowers are present on the same plant. It is a monomorphic sexual system alongside gynomonoecy, andromonoecy and trimonoecy. Monoecy is conne ...

. Staminate flowers are borne on long-stalked catkins at the tip of old wood or in the axils of the previous season's leaves. Pistillate flowers occur in short terminal spikes. The fruit is a

drupe In botany, a drupe (or stone fruit) is an indehiscent fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin, and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a single shell (the ''pit'', ''stone'', or '' pyrena'') of hardened endocarp with a seed (''kernel'') ...

long, an edible nut with a hard, bony shell, contained in a thick, green four-sectioned husk which turns dark and splits off at maturity in the fall. Hilton Pond Center: Shaggybark Tree
Retrieved 2013-08-10. The terminal buds on the shagbark hickory are large and covered with loose scales. Shagbark hickory nuts were a significant food source for the Algonquins. Red squirrels, gray squirrels, raccoons, chipmunks, and

mice A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

are consumers of hickory nuts. Other consumers include black bears, gray and red foxes, rabbits, and bird species such as mallards, wood ducks, bobwhites, and wild turkey. The two varieties are: *''Carya ovata'' var. ''ovata'' (northern shagbark hickory) has its largest leaflets over long and nuts long. *''Carya ovata'' var. ''australis'' (southern shagbark hickory or Carolina hickory) has its largest leaflets under long and nuts long. Some sources regard southern shagbark hickory as the separate species ''Carya carolinae-septentrionalis''.

Name

The word ''hickory'' is an aphetic form from earlier ''pohickory'', short for even earlier ''pokahickory'', borrowed from the Virginia Algonquian word ''pawcohiccora'', hickory-nut meat or a nut milk drink made from it. Other names for this tree are Carolina Hickory, Scalybark Hickory, Upland Hickory, and Shellbark Hickory, with older binomial names of ''Carya ovata var. fraxinifolia'', ''Carya ovata var. nuttallii'', ''Carya ovata var. pubescens'', ''Hicoria alba'', ''Hicoria borealis'', and ''Hicoria ovata''.

Distribution

Shagbark hickory is found throughout most of the eastern United States, but it is largely absent from the southeastern and Gulf coastal plains and lower

Mississippi Delta The Mississippi Delta, also known as the Yazoo–Mississippi Delta, or simply the Delta, is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi (and portions of Arkansas and Louisiana) that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo ...

areas. An isolated population grows in eastern Canada as far north as Lavant Township, Canadian zone 4b. Scattered locations of shagbark hickory occur in the

Sierra Madre Oriental The Sierra Madre Oriental () is a mountain range in northeastern Mexico. The Sierra Madre Oriental is part of the American Cordillera, a chain of mountain ranges (cordillera) that consists of an almost continuous sequence of mountain ranges that f ...

of eastern Mexico. Shagbark hickory was introduced in Europe in the 17th century. It can still be found in Central Europe as a non-native species.

Uses

The nuts are edible with an excellent flavor, and are a popular food among people and squirrels alike. They are unsuitable to commercial or orchard production due to the long time it takes for a tree to produce sizable crops and unpredictable output from year to year. Shagbark hickories can grow to enormous sizes but are unreliable bearers. The nuts can be used as a substitute for the pecan in colder climates and have nearly the same culinary function. ''C. ovata'' begins producing seeds at about 10 years of age, but large quantities are not produced until 40 years and will continue for at least 100. Nut production is erratic, with good crops every 3 to 5 years, in between which few or none appear and the entire crop may be lost to animal predation. Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, was popularly nicknamed Old Hickory, a play on the toughness of hickory wood. In 1830, he began planning the construction of his tomb at The Hermitage, his plantation in Tennessee. The grave site was surrounded by a variety of trees, including six shagbark hickories. They stood there for 168 years until a storm in 1998 demolished over 1,200 trees at the site. Work on replanting them remains an ongoing project. In modern times, shagbark hickory is rarely used as an ornamental due to its large size, slow growth, difficulty of transplanting (all Juglandaceae species have large taproots) and nut litter. Hickory nuts were a food source for Native Americans, who used the kernel milk to make corn cakes, kanuchi and

hominy Hominy (Spanish: maíz molido; literally meaning "milled corn") is a food produced from dried maize (corn) kernels that have been treated with an alkali, in a process called nixtamalization ( is the Nahuatl word for "hominy"). "Lye hominy" is a ...

. Shagbark hickory wood is used for

smoking Smoking is a practice in which a substance is burned and the resulting smoke is typically breathed in to be tasted and absorbed into the bloodstream. Most commonly, the substance used is the dried leaves of the tobacco plant, which have bee ...

meat Meat is animal flesh that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted, farmed, and scavenged animals for meat since prehistoric times. The establishment of settlements in the Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of animals such as chic ...

and for making the bows of Native Americans of the northern area. The lumber is heavy, hard, and tough, weighing 63 lb/ cu ft when air-dried, and has been employed for implements and tools that require strength. These include axles, axe handles, ploughs, skis, and drum sticks. The bark of the shagbark hickory is also used to flavor a maple-style syrup.

Genetics

Shagbark hickory hybridizes with pecan, ''Carya illinoensis'', and shellbark hickory, ''C. laciniosa'' (''C. ''x'' dunbarii'' Sarg.). Shagbark hickory has 32 chromosomes. In general, species within the genus with the same chromosome number are able to cross. Numerous hybrids among the ''Carya'' species with 32 chromosomes (pecan, bitternut, shellbark, and shagbark) have been described, though most are unproductive or have other flaws. A few hican varieties are commercially propagated.

Gallery

File:Hickory07103.jpg, Tree in forest File:Carya ovata bud.jpg, Bud File:Carya ovata female flowers.jpg, Female flowers File:Carya ovata leaf 2.jpg, Leaf File:Carya ovata immature fruit.jpg, Maturing fruit

References

External links

''Carya ovata'' images at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University Plant Image Database
*Schoonderwoerd, Kristel
"Spotlight on seasonal shifts in trees."
''Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University'' website, 8 April 2019. Accessed 21 May 2020.
''Carya ovata''
at Flora of North America

at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu

at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu

at Virginia Dept of Forest Resources (photos of leaves, bark, nut and twig)
''Carya ovata''
- information, genetic conservation units and related resources. European Forest Genetic Resources Programme (EUFORGEN) {{Authority control ovata Edible nuts and seeds Trees of the Southeastern United States Trees of Eastern Canada Trees of humid continental climate Trees of the North-Central United States Trees of the Eastern United States Trees of the United States Trees of Ontario Trees of the Northeastern United States Trees of the Great Lakes region (North America) Trees of Mexico Plant dyes Flora of the Sierra Madre Oriental