Hickory   John Eichholz
  Feb 23, 2005 17:37 PST 

Michele:

There is a web page that shows photos of the various hickories:

http://www.fw.vt.edu/dendro/dendrology/syllabus/

You have to know the species names to use it. The species they list are:

Carya cordiformis, bitternut hickory
Carya glabra, pignut
Carya laciniosa, shellbark
Carya ovata, shagbark
Carya pallida, sand
and Carya alba (tomentosa), mockernut

Apparently the hickories can hybridize with various other hickories and
pecan, so who really knows what you are looking at! Follow the links to
USDAFS Silvics of North America on the aforementioned website for
references to this. I don't think I could tell a shellbark from a
shagbark just by looking at a book or picture. After looking at the
pictures, I think I know of some mockernut hickories around here, which
I thought were odd looking shagbarks.

A good tree book is probably your best bet, though, unless you can get a
personal introduction to the species. This topic has been addressed
before. I like _Trees of the Eastern and Central United States and
Canada_ by William M. Harlow (Dover) for its small size, nice photos,
clear keys and descriptions and low price. Probably every schoochild
should get one, and we might end up with more "budding" forest ecologists.

John
Hickories   wad-@comcast.net
  Mar 22, 2005 06:25 PST 
Bob

As hickories go. In the past two years or so I have forced myself to learn more on these trees. I am still learning. One reason I am interested in them, is that they are not commercially available, and when we lose forest to development, the hickories are gone. The easiest to identify is the shagbark, for obvious reasons. Second would be the Bitternut. It has a very identifiable sulphur yellow lanceolate bud. Mockernut and pignut are hard to tell apart, but I use mockernut's tight diamond shape bark, and small nuts(without the thick husk) to distinguish it from pignut. Shellbark has a thick husk on the nut and a smooth appearing bark on younger trees that can sometimes look like shagbark when older. They tend to grow near water too, where other hickories prefer it dry. Shagbark and shellbark are more solitary trees here, whereas the mockernut, bitternut, and pignut are plentiful.
   I am by no means an expert on hickories, and it still takes a few looks to figure them out! Hope this helps.

Scott
  Scott:

I was interested
in the shell bark hickory. I don't think I would recognize a shell bark
in the field. Of course I can read descriptions, but they don't help in
quick IDs. Can you say a few words about which species of hickories are
the most distinguishable and which are the most easily confused. Thanks.

Bob Leverett
RE: Hickories   Darian Copiz
  Mar 22, 2005 06:49 PST 
Scott,
Good points on keeping hickories around. I am also concerned that
hickories will gradually lose their prominence in many areas. One
solution to this is for people to plant these, as well as some of the
oaks from seed whenever feasible. I expect nurseries don't carry
hickories because of taproots and difficulty in transplanting. Perhaps
with developments in the nursery industry, hickories will eventually be
available. Does anyone know if Bitternut has a taproot, as a floodplain
species I'm wondering if it differs from the other hickories in this
regard. I have often thought that it may make an excellent street tree:
often has a vase shape, nice foliage, relatively small nuts, and
floodplain provenance may indicate adaptability to soils.

Darian
RE: Hickories   wad-@comcast.net
  Mar 22, 2005 08:42 PST 
Darian

Yes, bitternut has a tap root. One of the problems with hickories is that they grow about three feet into the soil with only about 3 or 4 leaves showing. Once the have established their tap root, then they grow upwards. Bitternut is extremely versatile. We have them growing in rocky dry areas here. The deer seem to leave the saplings alone too. They don't eat them, or rub them with their antlers. We figure it is an odor issue for them, along with taste. I am experimenting with five gallon fabric bags. I have some sapling hickory planted up in them. I am hoping that the bags will cause the tap root to branch more, and maybe get a 1" caliper tree that could be marketed. If it is successful, you can be sure that everyone will know about it. I agree with you on the shape, it is very pleasing to the eye.

Scott
Hickory...problems related to tree seedlings, roots and planting   GSRT-@aol.com
  Mar 24, 2005 07:21 PST 
Scott:

I recently inspected an established peach orchard that was not very thrifty.
They had several hundred bare root seedlings healed-in and about ready to be
planted. After hearing of their planting procedure using an auger, it became
apparent as to why ALL of the established trees were planted too deeply, and not
strong growers... read this to mean = root flares are buried, along with
insufficient lateral root systems.

The bare root seedling have nicely bundled root masses and are easy to insert
into an augered planting hole and backfill. Root flares of woody plants
should NOT be buried.

Splaying out this bare root mass, into a shallow/wider pit, will then enable
the trees to be set with the root flares at or slightly above the soil grade.

Improper planting depth is pervasive in the orchard and nursery industry
whether in container-grown trees/shrubs or B&B stock. This is then further
compounded during the planting process, by settling or setting too deeply.

I would be very attentive, with growing seedling stock, to be concerned with
the need for greater container WIDTH so that there is adequate room for
lateral root growth, and, moving the trees to larger containers JUST BEFORE lateral
roots hit the container wall.

Diagnostics of tree health problems frequently reveal kinked roots,
stem-girdling roots, buried root flares, and, often, several rings of roots where
they had hit and circled the walls of the various sizes of containers. These
trees may grow, but not as fast nor as healthy as trees without these
problems. Trees with these root problems often fall over in later years, or simply
decline.

I believe that the most important part of the tree is what we do not see...
roots.

Dr. Carl Whitcomb, in Oklahoma, developed the concept of bottomless seedling
containers for air-pruning of roots. I do not know if his container is on the
market. If you are interested, I could probably locate contact infor for Carl.
He is a very interesting fella.

G. Sandy Rose, RCA
Registered Consulting Arborist
Shade Masters, Inc.
Arlington, Texas
...................


In a message dated 3/24/2005 6:03:12 AM Central Standard Time,

Sandy

Thanks for the info on Pecans. I am also thinking that with the advent of
sudden oak death, bacterial leaf scortch, and other issues, that hickory may
find a place. Bitternut is a fast grower, and would make a nice substitute for
the ailing oaks. Sure they don't flower and their fall color is yellow, but I
think if they could be grown and transplanted easily, they would sell. Native
plants seem to be having another popularity spell these days. If this
rootmaker pot works out, I may ask the company to fabricate a taller bag to give
the hickory root system some additional room. Alot of landscapers are using
augers to plant trees, so going a little deeper won't be too much trouble.

Scott
  Hickory ID's  
  

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Hickory ID question
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/3b95301bd02ad60e?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Jun 11 2008 9:09 am
From: "Jess Riddle"

Randy,

Separating red hickory from pignut hickory has been the biggest
challenge for me in identifying trees in the eastern US. Depending on
which author you follow, red hickory is a either a separate species, a
variety of pignut hickory (C. glabra var. odorata), or just a bunch of
pignut hickories that look a little different. I think the most
definitive characteristic is supposed to be the dehiscence of the
fruit; the husk stays attached to the nut in pignut but in red the
sutures split freely to the base and sections of the husk may fall
off. Then there's a host of other characters that are often mentioned
but don't seem consistent: pignut usually has five leaflets and red
usually has seven, red hickory leaves are spicy-aromatic when crushed,
the petiole (leaf stem) is reddish on red hickory, and the bark may be
scaly on red hickory. Trees that I suspect of being red hickory also
tend to grow in fairly rich sites and the fruits are slightly
flattened spheres rather than the pear shaped nuts of pignuts. I only
occasionally see reds with strips of bark peeling of the trunk, but
the bark ridges do consistently have sharp rather than rounded edges.
Getting back to your trees, based on the appearance of the bark and
the associated species I would lean towards call them red hickory, but
like I said, I find the taxon generally confusing. I curious to hear
others' opinions.

Jess