Description
Carya – Hickory – Pecan –
There are about 25 species of fast growing, deciduous, medium to large trees, in this genus. They occur in woodland in Eastern Asia and Eastern and Central North America with one extending down to Mexico. Hickories are grown for their foliage, which is pinnate and alternate, with 3 terminal serrated leaflets, which often colors to yellows, orange, or rich golden in autumn and for their sometimes ornamental roughly textured gray to brown bark. Flowers of both sexes are borne separately on the same plant in late spring and early summer: the male are produced on new years growths in branched, pendent, yellow-green catkins, the females in small, terminal green clusters at branch tips with up to 20 individual flowers. The autumn fruits are enclosed in hard shelled leathery husked nuts, which in some species contain edible kernels. Use hickories and pecans as specimen trees for a lawn or woodland garden, or for attracting wildlife. Hickory wood is a hard wood, used for tools and sport equipment.
Grow in deep, fertile moist but well drained, humus rich soil in sun or partial shade. Seedlings quickly develop a deep taproot and resent transplanting.
Prone to a wide variety of fungal leaf spots, nursery blight, powdery mildew, crown gall, and catkin blight.
C. ovata – Shagbark Hickory – Little Shellbark Hickory – This broadly conical, deciduous tree from valley forest in Eastern North America grows 80′ feet tall and 50′ feet wide. It has ornamental, peeling gray to brown bark. The pinnate, mid green leaves, 8-14″ long, have usually 5 leaflets, the upper 3 obovate and the lower 2 ovate-lance shaped to ovate, the leaves turn golden yellow in autumn. Thick shelled nuts, to 2 ½” long, are edible when it splits at the base. The wood chips are used commercially in smoking processes to flavor ham and bacon.
Zones 4-8
