BUTTERNUT

BUTTERNUTButternutButternut

ButternutButternut

Butternut

BUTTERNUT(Juglans Cinerea)This tree is known as butternut or as white walnut in all parts of its range. Butternut is in reference to the oily kernel of the nuts, and white walnut is the name given by those who would distinguish the tree from black walnut. Persons acquainted with one of the species in its native woods are usually sure to be acquainted with the other, for their ranges are practically co-extensive, except that black walnut extends farther southwest, butternut farther northeast. Butternut grows from New Brunswick to South Dakota, from Delaware to Arkansas, and along the Appalachian highlands to northern Georgia and Alabama.Butternut resembles black walnut in a good many ways and differs from it in several. They are very closely related botanically—as closely as are brothers in the same household. Black walnut is larger, stronger, better known, and has always dominated and eclipsed the other in usefulness and public esteem; yet butternut is a tree both useful and interesting. No person acquainted with both would ever mistake one for the other, winter or summer. Botanists tell how to distinguish butternut from black walnut by noting minor differences. The person who is not a botanist needs no such help. He knows them at sight, and there is no possibility of mistaking them.Butternut in the forest may attain a height of eighty or 100 feet, and a diameter of three, but few persons ever see a specimen of that size, and never in open ground. In shade, the butternut does its best to get its crown up to light and sunshine, but it is weak. It often gives up the struggle and remains in the shade of trees which overtop it. In that situation its crown is small, thin, and appears to rest lightly in the form of a small bunch of yellowish-green leaves on the top of a tall, spindling bole, which is seldom straight, but is made up of slight, undulating curves. The pale, yellowish tinge of the bark suggests a plant deprived of sunshine.When butternut grows in open ground where light falls upon its crown and on all sides, it assumes a different form and presents another figure. The trunk is nearly as short as that of an apple tree. It divides in large branches and limbs, and these spread wide; leaves are healthy, yet the crown of a butternut always looks thin compared with that of the black walnut. Tests show that butternut wood, when thoroughly dry, is somewhat stiffer than black walnut; but it is light and weak. It is about two-thirds as heavy and two-thirds as strong as black walnut. The growing tree betrays the wood’s weakness. Large limbs snap instorms. Trees become lopsided, and a symmetrical, well-proportioned butternut crown is an exception. The broken branches leave openings for the entrance of decay, and butternuts nearly always die of disease rather than of old age.Leaves are compound, and from fifteen to thirty inches in length. Few trees of this country have larger leaves. There are from eleven to seventeen leaflets. They are hairy and sticky. Hands that handle them are covered with mucilage-like substance. The nuts, which grow in clusters of three or five, are of the same color as the leaves and covered with the same sticky fuzz. The nuts are two inches or more in length, and are borne abundantly when trees stand in open ground. Size rather than age appears to determine the period when trees commence to bear. Those of extra vigor produce when ten or twelve years old. The nuts are salable in the market. They fall with the leaves, immediately after the first sharp frost, and all come down together. A single day frequently suffices to strip the last leaf from a tree, though some of the nuts may hang a little longer. The kernels are very rich, when the nuts are dry, and are apt to cloy the appetite; but they are improved by freezing where they lie on the ground among the leaves; but they must be used quickly after they thaw, or they will spoil. Nuts nearly full-grown but not yet hard are made into pickles, but the fuzz must first be washed off with hot water.Butternut bark has played a rather important role in the country’s affairs. Doctors in the Revolutionary war made much of their medicine of the roots and bark of this tree. Drugs were unattainable, and physicians were forced to betake themselves to the woods for substitutes, and their pharmacopoeias were enriched by the butternut tree. Housewives dyed cloth a brown color with this bark long before aniline dyes found their way into this country. Whole companies of Confederate soldiers from the mountain regions in the Civil war wore clothes dyed in decoctions of butternut bark, and popularly known as “butternut jeans.”The annual output of butternut lumber is placed at a little more than 1,000,000 feet a year. It is widely used, but in small amounts. In Maryland it is made into ceiling and flooring; in North Carolina into cabinet work, fixtures for stores and offices, and into furniture; in Michigan its reported uses are boat finish, interior finish for houses, molding, and screen frames. In Illinois it is used for all the purposes listed above and also for church altars and car finish. These uses are doubtless typical, and hold good in all parts of the country where any use is made of butternut.The wood has figure similar to that of black walnut, but the coloris lighter. It is nearer brown than black. The pores are diffused through the annual ring, but are more numerous and of larger size in the inner than in the outer part. The springwood blends gradually with the wood of the latter part of the season, without sharp distinction, but the ring terminates in a black line which is the chief element of contrast in the wood’s figure.The future value of butternut will be less in the lumber than in the nuts. The tendency in that direction is now apparent. When land is cleared, the trees which would formerly have gone to the sawmill, are now left to bear nuts. The averaged price paid by factories in North Carolina for butternut is $40 a thousand feet. It is cheaper in the Lake States.Mexican Walnut(Juglans rupestris) will never amount to much as a timber tree, though it is by no means useless. It is known by several names, among them being western walnut, dwarf walnut, little walnut, and California walnut. The last name is applied in Arizona through a misunderstanding of the tree’s identity. It is there confused with the California walnut which is a different species. The Mexican walnut’s range extends from central Texas, through New Mexico to Arizona, and southward into Mexico. It prefers the limestone banks of streams in Texas where it is usually shrubby, seldom attaining a height above thirty feet. It reaches its largest size in canyons among the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona where it reaches a height of sixty feet. Trunks are sometimes five feet in diameter. The wood weighs 40.85 pounds per cubic foot, is dark in color, but the tone is not as regular as that of black walnut; neither is it as strong and stiff. It polishes well, and is said to be durable in contact with the soil. It finds its way in small amounts to local mills, shops, and factories where it is made into various commodities. It is particularly liked for the lathe, and is suited better for turnery than for any other purpose. It is made into gavels, cups, spindles, parts of grills; and it is also worked into picture frames, handles, and small pieces of furniture. It does not appear that lumber sawed from this walnut ever gets into the general market, but the whole output, which is small, is consumed locally. Trees do not occur in pure stands and the whole supply consists of isolated trees or small groups, with few trunks large enough for sawlogs. The nuts are dwarfs. All are not the same size, but none are as large as a hickory nut. Many that grow on the diminutive trees along the water courses in western Texas are not as large, husks and all, as a nutmeg, and the nut itself is about half the size of a nutmeg, and not dissimilar in appearance. The kernels of such a nut are too small to have any commercial value, but they are rare morsels for the native Mexicans and Indians who pick them by pocketfuls. Trees in the stony canyon of Devil’s river, in Texas, are in full bearing when so small that a man can stand on the ground and pick walnuts from their highest branches. The Mexican walnut is occasionally cultivated in the eastern part of the United States and in Europe. It is hardy as far north as Massachusetts.California Walnut(Juglans californica) is a small tree confined to California, and pretty close to the coast, though it grows in Eldorado county. It is most abundant within twenty or thirty miles of tidewater. In the southern part of the state it ascends to an elevation of 4,000 feet. It prefers the banks of streams and the bottoms of canyons where the soil is moist, but it will grow in dry situations. Trees occur singly or in small groups. Their average size is fifteen or twenty feet high, andeight or ten inches in diameter; but trees occasionally are sixty feet high and eighteen inches through. The leaves are small, measuring from six to nine inches in length, with from nine to seventeen leaflets. Nuts are about half the size of eastern black walnuts. The kernel is edible. The wood is heavier than black walnut, and somewhat lighter in color. Otherwise the two woods are much alike, except in strength and stiffness. In these the California wood is inferior. It has not been reported for any use, but it is suitable for a number of purposes, provided logs of sufficient size could be had. The trunk, in addition to being small, is usually short. The tree is intolerant of shade, and is not often found in forests. It grows rapidly and will attain a diameter of fifteen inches in twenty years or less; but it apparently does not live long. Its principal usefulness in California is as a shade tree, and as a stock in nurseries on which to graft English walnut.Butternut branch

This tree is known as butternut or as white walnut in all parts of its range. Butternut is in reference to the oily kernel of the nuts, and white walnut is the name given by those who would distinguish the tree from black walnut. Persons acquainted with one of the species in its native woods are usually sure to be acquainted with the other, for their ranges are practically co-extensive, except that black walnut extends farther southwest, butternut farther northeast. Butternut grows from New Brunswick to South Dakota, from Delaware to Arkansas, and along the Appalachian highlands to northern Georgia and Alabama.

Butternut resembles black walnut in a good many ways and differs from it in several. They are very closely related botanically—as closely as are brothers in the same household. Black walnut is larger, stronger, better known, and has always dominated and eclipsed the other in usefulness and public esteem; yet butternut is a tree both useful and interesting. No person acquainted with both would ever mistake one for the other, winter or summer. Botanists tell how to distinguish butternut from black walnut by noting minor differences. The person who is not a botanist needs no such help. He knows them at sight, and there is no possibility of mistaking them.

Butternut in the forest may attain a height of eighty or 100 feet, and a diameter of three, but few persons ever see a specimen of that size, and never in open ground. In shade, the butternut does its best to get its crown up to light and sunshine, but it is weak. It often gives up the struggle and remains in the shade of trees which overtop it. In that situation its crown is small, thin, and appears to rest lightly in the form of a small bunch of yellowish-green leaves on the top of a tall, spindling bole, which is seldom straight, but is made up of slight, undulating curves. The pale, yellowish tinge of the bark suggests a plant deprived of sunshine.

When butternut grows in open ground where light falls upon its crown and on all sides, it assumes a different form and presents another figure. The trunk is nearly as short as that of an apple tree. It divides in large branches and limbs, and these spread wide; leaves are healthy, yet the crown of a butternut always looks thin compared with that of the black walnut. Tests show that butternut wood, when thoroughly dry, is somewhat stiffer than black walnut; but it is light and weak. It is about two-thirds as heavy and two-thirds as strong as black walnut. The growing tree betrays the wood’s weakness. Large limbs snap instorms. Trees become lopsided, and a symmetrical, well-proportioned butternut crown is an exception. The broken branches leave openings for the entrance of decay, and butternuts nearly always die of disease rather than of old age.

Leaves are compound, and from fifteen to thirty inches in length. Few trees of this country have larger leaves. There are from eleven to seventeen leaflets. They are hairy and sticky. Hands that handle them are covered with mucilage-like substance. The nuts, which grow in clusters of three or five, are of the same color as the leaves and covered with the same sticky fuzz. The nuts are two inches or more in length, and are borne abundantly when trees stand in open ground. Size rather than age appears to determine the period when trees commence to bear. Those of extra vigor produce when ten or twelve years old. The nuts are salable in the market. They fall with the leaves, immediately after the first sharp frost, and all come down together. A single day frequently suffices to strip the last leaf from a tree, though some of the nuts may hang a little longer. The kernels are very rich, when the nuts are dry, and are apt to cloy the appetite; but they are improved by freezing where they lie on the ground among the leaves; but they must be used quickly after they thaw, or they will spoil. Nuts nearly full-grown but not yet hard are made into pickles, but the fuzz must first be washed off with hot water.

Butternut bark has played a rather important role in the country’s affairs. Doctors in the Revolutionary war made much of their medicine of the roots and bark of this tree. Drugs were unattainable, and physicians were forced to betake themselves to the woods for substitutes, and their pharmacopoeias were enriched by the butternut tree. Housewives dyed cloth a brown color with this bark long before aniline dyes found their way into this country. Whole companies of Confederate soldiers from the mountain regions in the Civil war wore clothes dyed in decoctions of butternut bark, and popularly known as “butternut jeans.”

The annual output of butternut lumber is placed at a little more than 1,000,000 feet a year. It is widely used, but in small amounts. In Maryland it is made into ceiling and flooring; in North Carolina into cabinet work, fixtures for stores and offices, and into furniture; in Michigan its reported uses are boat finish, interior finish for houses, molding, and screen frames. In Illinois it is used for all the purposes listed above and also for church altars and car finish. These uses are doubtless typical, and hold good in all parts of the country where any use is made of butternut.

The wood has figure similar to that of black walnut, but the coloris lighter. It is nearer brown than black. The pores are diffused through the annual ring, but are more numerous and of larger size in the inner than in the outer part. The springwood blends gradually with the wood of the latter part of the season, without sharp distinction, but the ring terminates in a black line which is the chief element of contrast in the wood’s figure.

The future value of butternut will be less in the lumber than in the nuts. The tendency in that direction is now apparent. When land is cleared, the trees which would formerly have gone to the sawmill, are now left to bear nuts. The averaged price paid by factories in North Carolina for butternut is $40 a thousand feet. It is cheaper in the Lake States.

Mexican Walnut(Juglans rupestris) will never amount to much as a timber tree, though it is by no means useless. It is known by several names, among them being western walnut, dwarf walnut, little walnut, and California walnut. The last name is applied in Arizona through a misunderstanding of the tree’s identity. It is there confused with the California walnut which is a different species. The Mexican walnut’s range extends from central Texas, through New Mexico to Arizona, and southward into Mexico. It prefers the limestone banks of streams in Texas where it is usually shrubby, seldom attaining a height above thirty feet. It reaches its largest size in canyons among the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona where it reaches a height of sixty feet. Trunks are sometimes five feet in diameter. The wood weighs 40.85 pounds per cubic foot, is dark in color, but the tone is not as regular as that of black walnut; neither is it as strong and stiff. It polishes well, and is said to be durable in contact with the soil. It finds its way in small amounts to local mills, shops, and factories where it is made into various commodities. It is particularly liked for the lathe, and is suited better for turnery than for any other purpose. It is made into gavels, cups, spindles, parts of grills; and it is also worked into picture frames, handles, and small pieces of furniture. It does not appear that lumber sawed from this walnut ever gets into the general market, but the whole output, which is small, is consumed locally. Trees do not occur in pure stands and the whole supply consists of isolated trees or small groups, with few trunks large enough for sawlogs. The nuts are dwarfs. All are not the same size, but none are as large as a hickory nut. Many that grow on the diminutive trees along the water courses in western Texas are not as large, husks and all, as a nutmeg, and the nut itself is about half the size of a nutmeg, and not dissimilar in appearance. The kernels of such a nut are too small to have any commercial value, but they are rare morsels for the native Mexicans and Indians who pick them by pocketfuls. Trees in the stony canyon of Devil’s river, in Texas, are in full bearing when so small that a man can stand on the ground and pick walnuts from their highest branches. The Mexican walnut is occasionally cultivated in the eastern part of the United States and in Europe. It is hardy as far north as Massachusetts.California Walnut(Juglans californica) is a small tree confined to California, and pretty close to the coast, though it grows in Eldorado county. It is most abundant within twenty or thirty miles of tidewater. In the southern part of the state it ascends to an elevation of 4,000 feet. It prefers the banks of streams and the bottoms of canyons where the soil is moist, but it will grow in dry situations. Trees occur singly or in small groups. Their average size is fifteen or twenty feet high, andeight or ten inches in diameter; but trees occasionally are sixty feet high and eighteen inches through. The leaves are small, measuring from six to nine inches in length, with from nine to seventeen leaflets. Nuts are about half the size of eastern black walnuts. The kernel is edible. The wood is heavier than black walnut, and somewhat lighter in color. Otherwise the two woods are much alike, except in strength and stiffness. In these the California wood is inferior. It has not been reported for any use, but it is suitable for a number of purposes, provided logs of sufficient size could be had. The trunk, in addition to being small, is usually short. The tree is intolerant of shade, and is not often found in forests. It grows rapidly and will attain a diameter of fifteen inches in twenty years or less; but it apparently does not live long. Its principal usefulness in California is as a shade tree, and as a stock in nurseries on which to graft English walnut.

Mexican Walnut(Juglans rupestris) will never amount to much as a timber tree, though it is by no means useless. It is known by several names, among them being western walnut, dwarf walnut, little walnut, and California walnut. The last name is applied in Arizona through a misunderstanding of the tree’s identity. It is there confused with the California walnut which is a different species. The Mexican walnut’s range extends from central Texas, through New Mexico to Arizona, and southward into Mexico. It prefers the limestone banks of streams in Texas where it is usually shrubby, seldom attaining a height above thirty feet. It reaches its largest size in canyons among the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona where it reaches a height of sixty feet. Trunks are sometimes five feet in diameter. The wood weighs 40.85 pounds per cubic foot, is dark in color, but the tone is not as regular as that of black walnut; neither is it as strong and stiff. It polishes well, and is said to be durable in contact with the soil. It finds its way in small amounts to local mills, shops, and factories where it is made into various commodities. It is particularly liked for the lathe, and is suited better for turnery than for any other purpose. It is made into gavels, cups, spindles, parts of grills; and it is also worked into picture frames, handles, and small pieces of furniture. It does not appear that lumber sawed from this walnut ever gets into the general market, but the whole output, which is small, is consumed locally. Trees do not occur in pure stands and the whole supply consists of isolated trees or small groups, with few trunks large enough for sawlogs. The nuts are dwarfs. All are not the same size, but none are as large as a hickory nut. Many that grow on the diminutive trees along the water courses in western Texas are not as large, husks and all, as a nutmeg, and the nut itself is about half the size of a nutmeg, and not dissimilar in appearance. The kernels of such a nut are too small to have any commercial value, but they are rare morsels for the native Mexicans and Indians who pick them by pocketfuls. Trees in the stony canyon of Devil’s river, in Texas, are in full bearing when so small that a man can stand on the ground and pick walnuts from their highest branches. The Mexican walnut is occasionally cultivated in the eastern part of the United States and in Europe. It is hardy as far north as Massachusetts.

California Walnut(Juglans californica) is a small tree confined to California, and pretty close to the coast, though it grows in Eldorado county. It is most abundant within twenty or thirty miles of tidewater. In the southern part of the state it ascends to an elevation of 4,000 feet. It prefers the banks of streams and the bottoms of canyons where the soil is moist, but it will grow in dry situations. Trees occur singly or in small groups. Their average size is fifteen or twenty feet high, andeight or ten inches in diameter; but trees occasionally are sixty feet high and eighteen inches through. The leaves are small, measuring from six to nine inches in length, with from nine to seventeen leaflets. Nuts are about half the size of eastern black walnuts. The kernel is edible. The wood is heavier than black walnut, and somewhat lighter in color. Otherwise the two woods are much alike, except in strength and stiffness. In these the California wood is inferior. It has not been reported for any use, but it is suitable for a number of purposes, provided logs of sufficient size could be had. The trunk, in addition to being small, is usually short. The tree is intolerant of shade, and is not often found in forests. It grows rapidly and will attain a diameter of fifteen inches in twenty years or less; but it apparently does not live long. Its principal usefulness in California is as a shade tree, and as a stock in nurseries on which to graft English walnut.

Butternut branch

SHAGBARK HICKORYShagbark hickoryShagbark Hickory

Shagbark hickoryShagbark Hickory

Shagbark Hickory

SHAGBARK HICKORY(Hicoria Ovata)Twelve species of hickory grow in the United States, all east of the Rocky Mountains. None grow anywhere else in the world, as far as known. They were widely dispersed over the northern hemisphere in prehistoric times. The records of geology, written by leaf prints in the rocks, tell of forests of hickory in Europe, and even in Greenland, probably a hundred thousand or more years ago, and certainly not in times that can be called recent. No records there later than the ice age have been found. This leads to the presumption that the sheet of ice which pushed down from the North and covered the larger portions of Europe and North America, overwhelmed the hickory forests, and all others, as far as the southern limit of the ice’s advance.In Europe the hickory was utterly destroyed, and it never returned after the close of the reign of ice; but America was more fortunate. The ice sheet pushed little farther in its southward course than the Ohio and Missouri rivers, and forests south of there held their ground, and they slowly worked their way back north as the ice withdrew. Hickory recovered part but not all of its lost ground in America, for it is now found no farther north than southern Canada, which is more than a thousand miles from its old range in Greenland.The early settlers in New England and in the South at once came into contact with hickory. It was one of the first woods named in this country, and the name is of Indian origin, and is spelled in no fewer than seventeen ways in early literature relating to the settlements. It is probable that John Smith, a prominent man in early Virginia and New England, was the first man who ever wrote the name. He spelled it as the Indians pronounced it, “powcohiscora,” and it has been trimmed down to our word hickory. The Indian word was the name of a salad or soup made of pounded hickory nuts and water, and was only indirectly applied to the tree itself.The first settlers along the Atlantic coast nearly always called this tree a walnut, and the name white walnut was common. They were unacquainted with any similar nut-bearing tree in Europe, except the walnut, and most people preferred applying a name with which they were already familiar. Hickories and walnuts belong to the same family, and have many points in common.Although there are twelve hickories in the United States, and in many respects they are similar, all are not of equal value. Some are very scarce, and the wood of others is not up to standard. From acommercial standpoint, four surpass the others. These are shagbark (Hicoria ovata), shellbark (Hicoria laciniosa), pignut (Hicoria glabra), and mockernut (Hicoria alba). The wood of some of the others is as good, but is scarce; and still others, particularly the pecans, are abundant enough, but the wood is inferior. It is impossible in business to separate the hickories. Lumbermen do not do it; manufacturers cannot do it. In some regions one is more abundant than the others, and consequently is used in larger quantities, but in some other region a different species may predominate in the forest and in the factory. It cannot be truthfully asserted that one hickory is always as good as another, or even that a certain species in one region is as good as the same species in another region. All parts of the same tree do not produce wood of equal value.Along certain general lines, hickories have many properties in common. The wood is ring-porous, that is, the inner edge of the yearly growth ring has a row of large pores. Others are scattered toward the outer part of the ring, generally decreasing in number and size outward. There is no distinct division between spring and summerwood. The medullary rays are thin and obscure. The unaided eye seldom notices them. The sapwood is white in all species of hickory, and is usually very thick. The heartwood is reddish. Common opinion has long held that sapwood is tougher and more elastic than heartwood, and therefore to be preferred for most purposes. Tests made a few years ago by the United States Forest Service ran counter to the long-established opinion of users, by showing that in most respects the redwood of the heart was as good as the white sapwood. However, where resiliency is the chief requisite, as in slender handles, many manufacturers still prefer sapwood.Hickory is very strong, probably the strongest wood in common use in this country. The statement that one wood is stronger than all others is hardly justified because averages of strength should be taken, and not isolated instances. Satisfactory averages have not yet been worked out for a large number of our woods; but, as far as existing figures may be accepted, hickory is at the head of the list for strength, toughness, and resiliency. Choice samples of certain woods may exceed the average of hickory in some of these particulars. Sugar maple, hornbeam, and locust occasionally show greater strength than hickory, but they lack in toughness and resiliency—the very properties which give hickory its chief value for many purposes.Considerable misunderstanding exists as to second growth hickory. Some suppose it consists of trees of commercial size developed from sprouts where old trees have been cut. That is not generally correct.When small hickory trees are cut, the stumps often sprout, but hoop poles are about the only commodity made from that kind of hickory. If sprouts are left to grow large, the trees produced are generally defective. Good hickory grows from the nut. The term “second growth” means little, unless it is explained in each instance just what conditions are included. In one sense, all young, vigorous trees are second growth, and that is often the idea in the mind of the speaker. Some would restrict it to trees which have come up in old fields or partial clearings, where they have plenty of light, and have grown rapidly. Their trunks are short, the wood is tough, and there is little red heartwood. The larger a pine, oak, or poplar, provided it is sound, the better the wood; but not so with hickory. Great age and large size add no desirable qualities to this wood.Shagbark is largest of the true hickories. The pecans are not usually regarded as true hickories from the wood-user’s viewpoint. Some shagbarks are 120 feet high and four feet in diameter, but the average size is about seventy-five tall, two in diameter. There is confusion of names among all the hickories, and shagbark is misnamed and over-named as often as any of the others. Many persons do not know shagbark and shellbark apart, though the ranges of the two species lie only partly in the same territory. Shagbark is known as shellbark hickory, shagbark hickory, shellbark, upland hickory, hickory, scaly bark hickory, white walnut, walnut, white hickory, and red heart hickory. Most of the names refer to the bark, which separates into thin strips, often a foot or more long, and six inches or more wide; and this remains more or less closely attached to the trunk by the middle, giving the shaggy appearance to which the tree owes its common name.The leaf-buds are large and ovate, with yellowish-green and brown scales. The leaves are compound and alternate; they have rough stalks containing five or seven leaflets; they are sessile, tapering to a point and having a rounded base. The lower pair of leaflets is markedly different from the rest in shape; sharply serrate and thin; dark green and glabrous above; lighter below. The flowers do not appear until the leaves have fully matured. They grow in catkins; the staminate ones are light green, slender, and grow in groups of three on long peduncles; the pistillate ones grow in spikes of from two to five flowers. The fruit grows within a dense, green husk, shiny and smooth on the outside, opening in four parts. The nut is nearly white, four-angled, and flattened at the sides. The kernel is sweet and of a strong flavor.This tree’s range is not much short of 1,000,000 square miles, but it is not equally abundant in all parts. It grows from southern Maine to western Florida; is found in Minnesota and Nebraska, and southwardbeyond the Mississippi. It is most common and of largest size on the western slopes of the southern Appalachian mountains and in the basin of the lower Ohio river. Its favorite habitat is on low hills, or near streams and swamps, in rich and moderately well drained soil.The hickories have long tap roots, and they do best in soils which the tap roots can penetrate, going down like a radish. The root system makes most hickories difficult trees to transplant. Early in life they do a large part of their growing under ground, and when that growth is interrupted, as it must be in transplanting, the young tree seldom recovers. Those who would grow hickories for timber, nuts, or as ornaments, should plant the seed where the tree is expected to remain. Most of the planting of hickory in the forest is done by squirrels which bury nuts, with the apparent expectation of digging them up later. Occasionally one is missed, and a young tree starts.The uses of this wood are typical of all the other hickories. Handles and light vehicles consume most of it. The markets are in all parts of this country, and in manufacturing centers in many foreign lands.Shagbark hickory branch

Twelve species of hickory grow in the United States, all east of the Rocky Mountains. None grow anywhere else in the world, as far as known. They were widely dispersed over the northern hemisphere in prehistoric times. The records of geology, written by leaf prints in the rocks, tell of forests of hickory in Europe, and even in Greenland, probably a hundred thousand or more years ago, and certainly not in times that can be called recent. No records there later than the ice age have been found. This leads to the presumption that the sheet of ice which pushed down from the North and covered the larger portions of Europe and North America, overwhelmed the hickory forests, and all others, as far as the southern limit of the ice’s advance.

In Europe the hickory was utterly destroyed, and it never returned after the close of the reign of ice; but America was more fortunate. The ice sheet pushed little farther in its southward course than the Ohio and Missouri rivers, and forests south of there held their ground, and they slowly worked their way back north as the ice withdrew. Hickory recovered part but not all of its lost ground in America, for it is now found no farther north than southern Canada, which is more than a thousand miles from its old range in Greenland.

The early settlers in New England and in the South at once came into contact with hickory. It was one of the first woods named in this country, and the name is of Indian origin, and is spelled in no fewer than seventeen ways in early literature relating to the settlements. It is probable that John Smith, a prominent man in early Virginia and New England, was the first man who ever wrote the name. He spelled it as the Indians pronounced it, “powcohiscora,” and it has been trimmed down to our word hickory. The Indian word was the name of a salad or soup made of pounded hickory nuts and water, and was only indirectly applied to the tree itself.

The first settlers along the Atlantic coast nearly always called this tree a walnut, and the name white walnut was common. They were unacquainted with any similar nut-bearing tree in Europe, except the walnut, and most people preferred applying a name with which they were already familiar. Hickories and walnuts belong to the same family, and have many points in common.

Although there are twelve hickories in the United States, and in many respects they are similar, all are not of equal value. Some are very scarce, and the wood of others is not up to standard. From acommercial standpoint, four surpass the others. These are shagbark (Hicoria ovata), shellbark (Hicoria laciniosa), pignut (Hicoria glabra), and mockernut (Hicoria alba). The wood of some of the others is as good, but is scarce; and still others, particularly the pecans, are abundant enough, but the wood is inferior. It is impossible in business to separate the hickories. Lumbermen do not do it; manufacturers cannot do it. In some regions one is more abundant than the others, and consequently is used in larger quantities, but in some other region a different species may predominate in the forest and in the factory. It cannot be truthfully asserted that one hickory is always as good as another, or even that a certain species in one region is as good as the same species in another region. All parts of the same tree do not produce wood of equal value.

Along certain general lines, hickories have many properties in common. The wood is ring-porous, that is, the inner edge of the yearly growth ring has a row of large pores. Others are scattered toward the outer part of the ring, generally decreasing in number and size outward. There is no distinct division between spring and summerwood. The medullary rays are thin and obscure. The unaided eye seldom notices them. The sapwood is white in all species of hickory, and is usually very thick. The heartwood is reddish. Common opinion has long held that sapwood is tougher and more elastic than heartwood, and therefore to be preferred for most purposes. Tests made a few years ago by the United States Forest Service ran counter to the long-established opinion of users, by showing that in most respects the redwood of the heart was as good as the white sapwood. However, where resiliency is the chief requisite, as in slender handles, many manufacturers still prefer sapwood.

Hickory is very strong, probably the strongest wood in common use in this country. The statement that one wood is stronger than all others is hardly justified because averages of strength should be taken, and not isolated instances. Satisfactory averages have not yet been worked out for a large number of our woods; but, as far as existing figures may be accepted, hickory is at the head of the list for strength, toughness, and resiliency. Choice samples of certain woods may exceed the average of hickory in some of these particulars. Sugar maple, hornbeam, and locust occasionally show greater strength than hickory, but they lack in toughness and resiliency—the very properties which give hickory its chief value for many purposes.

Considerable misunderstanding exists as to second growth hickory. Some suppose it consists of trees of commercial size developed from sprouts where old trees have been cut. That is not generally correct.When small hickory trees are cut, the stumps often sprout, but hoop poles are about the only commodity made from that kind of hickory. If sprouts are left to grow large, the trees produced are generally defective. Good hickory grows from the nut. The term “second growth” means little, unless it is explained in each instance just what conditions are included. In one sense, all young, vigorous trees are second growth, and that is often the idea in the mind of the speaker. Some would restrict it to trees which have come up in old fields or partial clearings, where they have plenty of light, and have grown rapidly. Their trunks are short, the wood is tough, and there is little red heartwood. The larger a pine, oak, or poplar, provided it is sound, the better the wood; but not so with hickory. Great age and large size add no desirable qualities to this wood.

Shagbark is largest of the true hickories. The pecans are not usually regarded as true hickories from the wood-user’s viewpoint. Some shagbarks are 120 feet high and four feet in diameter, but the average size is about seventy-five tall, two in diameter. There is confusion of names among all the hickories, and shagbark is misnamed and over-named as often as any of the others. Many persons do not know shagbark and shellbark apart, though the ranges of the two species lie only partly in the same territory. Shagbark is known as shellbark hickory, shagbark hickory, shellbark, upland hickory, hickory, scaly bark hickory, white walnut, walnut, white hickory, and red heart hickory. Most of the names refer to the bark, which separates into thin strips, often a foot or more long, and six inches or more wide; and this remains more or less closely attached to the trunk by the middle, giving the shaggy appearance to which the tree owes its common name.

The leaf-buds are large and ovate, with yellowish-green and brown scales. The leaves are compound and alternate; they have rough stalks containing five or seven leaflets; they are sessile, tapering to a point and having a rounded base. The lower pair of leaflets is markedly different from the rest in shape; sharply serrate and thin; dark green and glabrous above; lighter below. The flowers do not appear until the leaves have fully matured. They grow in catkins; the staminate ones are light green, slender, and grow in groups of three on long peduncles; the pistillate ones grow in spikes of from two to five flowers. The fruit grows within a dense, green husk, shiny and smooth on the outside, opening in four parts. The nut is nearly white, four-angled, and flattened at the sides. The kernel is sweet and of a strong flavor.

This tree’s range is not much short of 1,000,000 square miles, but it is not equally abundant in all parts. It grows from southern Maine to western Florida; is found in Minnesota and Nebraska, and southwardbeyond the Mississippi. It is most common and of largest size on the western slopes of the southern Appalachian mountains and in the basin of the lower Ohio river. Its favorite habitat is on low hills, or near streams and swamps, in rich and moderately well drained soil.

The hickories have long tap roots, and they do best in soils which the tap roots can penetrate, going down like a radish. The root system makes most hickories difficult trees to transplant. Early in life they do a large part of their growing under ground, and when that growth is interrupted, as it must be in transplanting, the young tree seldom recovers. Those who would grow hickories for timber, nuts, or as ornaments, should plant the seed where the tree is expected to remain. Most of the planting of hickory in the forest is done by squirrels which bury nuts, with the apparent expectation of digging them up later. Occasionally one is missed, and a young tree starts.

The uses of this wood are typical of all the other hickories. Handles and light vehicles consume most of it. The markets are in all parts of this country, and in manufacturing centers in many foreign lands.

Shagbark hickory branch

BITTERNUT HICKORYBitternut hickoryBitternut Hickory

Bitternut hickoryBitternut Hickory

Bitternut Hickory

BITTERNUT HICKORY(Hicoria Minima)The tannin in the thin shelled nuts which grow abundantly on this tree gives the name bitternut. The name is truly descriptive. Gall itself scarcely exceeds the intense bitterness of the kernel, when crushed between the teeth. The sense of taste does not immediately detect the bitterness in its full intensity. A little time seems to be necessary to dissolve the astringent principal and distribute it to the nerves of taste. When this has been accomplished, the bitterness remains a long time, seeming to persist after the last vestige of the cause has been removed. In that respect it may be likened to the resin of the incense cedar of California which is among tastes what musk is among odors, nearly everlasting. The bitterness of this hickory nut has much to do with the perpetuation of the species. No wild or tame animal will eat the fruit unless forced by famine. Consequently, the nuts are left to grow, provided they can get themselves planted. That is not always easy, for small quadrupeds which bury edible nuts for food, and then occasionally forget them, show no interest whatever in the unpalatable bitternut. It is left where it falls, unless running water, or some other method of locomotion, transports it to another locality. This happens with sufficient frequency to plant the nuts as widely as those of any other hickory. It is believed that this is the most abundant of the hickories.The tree bears names other than bitternut. It is called swamp hickory, though that name is more applicable to a different species, the water hickory. Pig hickory or pignut are names used in several states, but without good reason. Hogs may sometimes eat the nuts, but never when anything better can be found. Besides, pignut is the accepted name of another species (Hicoria glabra). In Louisiana they call it the bitter pecan tree. Bitter hickory is a common name in many localities. In New Hampshire it is known as pig walnut, in Vermont as bitter walnut, and in Texas as white hickory. The names are so many, and so often apply as well to other hickories as to this, that the name alone is seldom a safe guide to identification. It has two or three characters which will help to pick it out from among others. Its leaves and bark bear considerable resemblance to ash. The leaves are the smallest among the hickories, and the bark is never shaggy. The small branches always carry yellow buds, no matter what the season of the year. The compound leaves are from six to ten inches long, and consist of from five to nine leaflets, always an odd number.Bitternut hickory’s range covers pretty generally the eastern partof the United States. It is one of the largest and commonest hickories of New England, and is likewise the common hickory of Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. It grows from Maine through southern Canada to Minnesota, follows down the western side of the Mississippi valley to Texas, and extends into western Florida.Hickory is often lumbered in ways not common with other hardwoods. It is not generally found in ordinary lumber yards, and is not cut into lumber as most other woods are. It is in a class by itself. The person who would consult statistics of lumber cut in the United States to ascertain the quantity of hickory going to market, would utterly fail to obtain the desired information. The statistics of lumber cut in the United States for the year 1910 listed the total for hickory at 272,252,000 feet, distributed among 33 states, and cut by 6,349 mills. Reports by users of this wood in a number of states show that probably twice as much goes to factories to be manufactured into finished commodities, as all the sawmills cut. This means that much hickory goes to factories without having passed through sawmills to be first converted into lumber. It goes as bolts and billets, and as logs of various lengths. Some sawmills in the hickory region cut dimension stock and sell it to factories to be further worked up; but that is a comparatively small part of the hickory that finds its way to factories of various kinds. Many sawmills refuse to cut hickory, claiming that it does not pay them to specialize on a scarce wood. Scattered trees occur among other timber, but these are left when the other logging is done. Special operators go after the hickory, and distribute it among various industries which are in the market for it. That method often results in much waste, because the man who is specializing in one commodity, such as wagon poles, ax handles, sucker-rods, wheel stock, or the like, is apt to cut out only what meets his requirements, and abandon the rest. Some of the hickory camps where such stock is roughed out are spectacles of carelessness and waste, with heaps of rejected hickory which, though not meeting requirements for the special articles in view, are valuable for many other things. Few woods contribute to the trash heap more in proportion to the total cut than hickory; but the waste nearly all occurs before the factories which finally work up the products are reached. These factories are often hundreds of miles from the forests where the hickory grows.Hickory was not a useful farm timber in early times, as oak and chestnut were. It decayed quickly when exposed to weather, and was not suitable for fence rails, posts, house logs, or general lumber. It was sometimes used for barn floors, but when seasoned it was so hard to nail that it was not well liked. The pioneers were not able to use this wood to advantage, because it is a manufacturer’s material, not a farmer’s ora villager’s standby. It can be said to the credit of the pioneers, however, that they knew its value for certain purposes, and employed as much of it as they needed.Fuel was the most important place for hickory on the farm. All things considered, it is probably the best firewood of the American forest. The yawning fireplaces called for cords of wood every month of winter in the northern states. Enough to make a modern buggy would go up the chimney in a rich red blaze in an hour, and no one thought that it was waste; and it was not waste then, because farms had to be cleared, and firewood was the best use possible for the hickory at that time. Every cord burned in the chimney was that much less to be rolled into logheaps and consumed in the clearing for the new cornfield.Hickory has always been considered the best material for smoking meat. More than 30,000 cords a year are now used that way. It was so used in early times, when every farmer smoked and packed his own meat. Hickory smoke was supposed to give bacon a flavor equalled by no other wood; and in addition to that it was believed to keep the skippers out.The nuts were made into oil which was thought to be efficacious as a liniment employed as a remedy against rheumatism to which pioneers were susceptible because their moccasins were porous and their feet were often wet. The oil was used also for illuminating purposes. It fed the flame of a crude lamp.No other wood equalled hickory for “split brooms,” the kind that swept the cabins before broom corn was known or carpet sweepers and vacuum cleaners were invented. The toughness, smoothness, and strength of hickory made it the best oxbow wood, and the same property fitted it for barrel hoops. Thousands of fish casks in New England and tobacco hogsheads in Maryland and Virginia were hooped with hickory before George Washington was born. The wood’s value for ax handles was learned early. The Indians used it for the long, slender handles of their stone hammers with which they barked trees in their clearings, and broke the skulls of enemies in war.Bitternut hickory has about ninety-two per cent of the strength of shagbark, and seventy-three per cent of its stiffness. It yields considerably more ash when burned, and is rated a little lower in fuel value.Mocker Nut Hickory(Hicoria alba) has many names. It is called mocker nut in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas; white heart hickory, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, Texas, Illinois, Ontario, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska; black hickory, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri; big bud and red hickory, Florida; hardback hickory, Illinois; white hickory, Pennsylvania, South Carolina; big hickory nut, West Virginia; hognut, Delaware. The name mocker nut is supposed to refer to the thick shell anddisappointingly small kernel within. The range is not as extensive as some of the other hickories. Beginning in southern Ontario, it extends westward and southward to eastern Kansas and the eastern half of Texas. The region of its most abundant growth is in the basin of the lower Ohio and in Arkansas, the best specimens appearing in fertile uplands. This is said to be the only hickory that invades the southern maritime pinebelt, growing on the low country along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in abundance. The leaves are fragrant with a powerful, resinous odor; they have five or seven leaflets with hairy petioles or stems. The bark resembles that of bitternut, and is not scaly like that of shagbark. The wood weighs 51.21 pounds per cubic foot. It is hard, strong, tough, flexible. It has about ninety-four per cent of the strength of shagbark, and eighty per cent of its stiffness. Certain selected specimens of this species are probably as strong as any hickory; but, as is the case with all woods, there is great difference between specimens, and general averages only are to be relied upon. G. W. Letterman, who collected woods for Sargent’s tests, procured a sample of this hickory near Allenton, Missouri, which showed strength sufficient to sustain 20,000 pounds per square inch, and its measure of stiffness was the enormous figure of 2,208,000 pounds per square inch.The uses of mocker nut hickory do not differ from those of other hickories. The tree is frequently nearly all sapwood, to which the name white hickory is due. Some persons suppose that the heartwood is white, but that misconception is due to the fact that some pretty large trees have no heartwood, but are sap clear through.The term “black hickory” is sometimes applied to three species with dark-colored bark which bears some resemblance to the bark of ash. They are bitternut (Hicoria minima), pignut (Hicoria glabra), and mocker nut (Hicoria alba). When the word black is thus used, it refers to the bark and the general outward appearance of the tree, and not to the wood, which is as white as that of any other hickory.Bitternut hickory branch

The tannin in the thin shelled nuts which grow abundantly on this tree gives the name bitternut. The name is truly descriptive. Gall itself scarcely exceeds the intense bitterness of the kernel, when crushed between the teeth. The sense of taste does not immediately detect the bitterness in its full intensity. A little time seems to be necessary to dissolve the astringent principal and distribute it to the nerves of taste. When this has been accomplished, the bitterness remains a long time, seeming to persist after the last vestige of the cause has been removed. In that respect it may be likened to the resin of the incense cedar of California which is among tastes what musk is among odors, nearly everlasting. The bitterness of this hickory nut has much to do with the perpetuation of the species. No wild or tame animal will eat the fruit unless forced by famine. Consequently, the nuts are left to grow, provided they can get themselves planted. That is not always easy, for small quadrupeds which bury edible nuts for food, and then occasionally forget them, show no interest whatever in the unpalatable bitternut. It is left where it falls, unless running water, or some other method of locomotion, transports it to another locality. This happens with sufficient frequency to plant the nuts as widely as those of any other hickory. It is believed that this is the most abundant of the hickories.

The tree bears names other than bitternut. It is called swamp hickory, though that name is more applicable to a different species, the water hickory. Pig hickory or pignut are names used in several states, but without good reason. Hogs may sometimes eat the nuts, but never when anything better can be found. Besides, pignut is the accepted name of another species (Hicoria glabra). In Louisiana they call it the bitter pecan tree. Bitter hickory is a common name in many localities. In New Hampshire it is known as pig walnut, in Vermont as bitter walnut, and in Texas as white hickory. The names are so many, and so often apply as well to other hickories as to this, that the name alone is seldom a safe guide to identification. It has two or three characters which will help to pick it out from among others. Its leaves and bark bear considerable resemblance to ash. The leaves are the smallest among the hickories, and the bark is never shaggy. The small branches always carry yellow buds, no matter what the season of the year. The compound leaves are from six to ten inches long, and consist of from five to nine leaflets, always an odd number.

Bitternut hickory’s range covers pretty generally the eastern partof the United States. It is one of the largest and commonest hickories of New England, and is likewise the common hickory of Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. It grows from Maine through southern Canada to Minnesota, follows down the western side of the Mississippi valley to Texas, and extends into western Florida.

Hickory is often lumbered in ways not common with other hardwoods. It is not generally found in ordinary lumber yards, and is not cut into lumber as most other woods are. It is in a class by itself. The person who would consult statistics of lumber cut in the United States to ascertain the quantity of hickory going to market, would utterly fail to obtain the desired information. The statistics of lumber cut in the United States for the year 1910 listed the total for hickory at 272,252,000 feet, distributed among 33 states, and cut by 6,349 mills. Reports by users of this wood in a number of states show that probably twice as much goes to factories to be manufactured into finished commodities, as all the sawmills cut. This means that much hickory goes to factories without having passed through sawmills to be first converted into lumber. It goes as bolts and billets, and as logs of various lengths. Some sawmills in the hickory region cut dimension stock and sell it to factories to be further worked up; but that is a comparatively small part of the hickory that finds its way to factories of various kinds. Many sawmills refuse to cut hickory, claiming that it does not pay them to specialize on a scarce wood. Scattered trees occur among other timber, but these are left when the other logging is done. Special operators go after the hickory, and distribute it among various industries which are in the market for it. That method often results in much waste, because the man who is specializing in one commodity, such as wagon poles, ax handles, sucker-rods, wheel stock, or the like, is apt to cut out only what meets his requirements, and abandon the rest. Some of the hickory camps where such stock is roughed out are spectacles of carelessness and waste, with heaps of rejected hickory which, though not meeting requirements for the special articles in view, are valuable for many other things. Few woods contribute to the trash heap more in proportion to the total cut than hickory; but the waste nearly all occurs before the factories which finally work up the products are reached. These factories are often hundreds of miles from the forests where the hickory grows.

Hickory was not a useful farm timber in early times, as oak and chestnut were. It decayed quickly when exposed to weather, and was not suitable for fence rails, posts, house logs, or general lumber. It was sometimes used for barn floors, but when seasoned it was so hard to nail that it was not well liked. The pioneers were not able to use this wood to advantage, because it is a manufacturer’s material, not a farmer’s ora villager’s standby. It can be said to the credit of the pioneers, however, that they knew its value for certain purposes, and employed as much of it as they needed.

Fuel was the most important place for hickory on the farm. All things considered, it is probably the best firewood of the American forest. The yawning fireplaces called for cords of wood every month of winter in the northern states. Enough to make a modern buggy would go up the chimney in a rich red blaze in an hour, and no one thought that it was waste; and it was not waste then, because farms had to be cleared, and firewood was the best use possible for the hickory at that time. Every cord burned in the chimney was that much less to be rolled into logheaps and consumed in the clearing for the new cornfield.

Hickory has always been considered the best material for smoking meat. More than 30,000 cords a year are now used that way. It was so used in early times, when every farmer smoked and packed his own meat. Hickory smoke was supposed to give bacon a flavor equalled by no other wood; and in addition to that it was believed to keep the skippers out.

The nuts were made into oil which was thought to be efficacious as a liniment employed as a remedy against rheumatism to which pioneers were susceptible because their moccasins were porous and their feet were often wet. The oil was used also for illuminating purposes. It fed the flame of a crude lamp.

No other wood equalled hickory for “split brooms,” the kind that swept the cabins before broom corn was known or carpet sweepers and vacuum cleaners were invented. The toughness, smoothness, and strength of hickory made it the best oxbow wood, and the same property fitted it for barrel hoops. Thousands of fish casks in New England and tobacco hogsheads in Maryland and Virginia were hooped with hickory before George Washington was born. The wood’s value for ax handles was learned early. The Indians used it for the long, slender handles of their stone hammers with which they barked trees in their clearings, and broke the skulls of enemies in war.

Bitternut hickory has about ninety-two per cent of the strength of shagbark, and seventy-three per cent of its stiffness. It yields considerably more ash when burned, and is rated a little lower in fuel value.

Mocker Nut Hickory(Hicoria alba) has many names. It is called mocker nut in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas; white heart hickory, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, Texas, Illinois, Ontario, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska; black hickory, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri; big bud and red hickory, Florida; hardback hickory, Illinois; white hickory, Pennsylvania, South Carolina; big hickory nut, West Virginia; hognut, Delaware. The name mocker nut is supposed to refer to the thick shell anddisappointingly small kernel within. The range is not as extensive as some of the other hickories. Beginning in southern Ontario, it extends westward and southward to eastern Kansas and the eastern half of Texas. The region of its most abundant growth is in the basin of the lower Ohio and in Arkansas, the best specimens appearing in fertile uplands. This is said to be the only hickory that invades the southern maritime pinebelt, growing on the low country along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in abundance. The leaves are fragrant with a powerful, resinous odor; they have five or seven leaflets with hairy petioles or stems. The bark resembles that of bitternut, and is not scaly like that of shagbark. The wood weighs 51.21 pounds per cubic foot. It is hard, strong, tough, flexible. It has about ninety-four per cent of the strength of shagbark, and eighty per cent of its stiffness. Certain selected specimens of this species are probably as strong as any hickory; but, as is the case with all woods, there is great difference between specimens, and general averages only are to be relied upon. G. W. Letterman, who collected woods for Sargent’s tests, procured a sample of this hickory near Allenton, Missouri, which showed strength sufficient to sustain 20,000 pounds per square inch, and its measure of stiffness was the enormous figure of 2,208,000 pounds per square inch.The uses of mocker nut hickory do not differ from those of other hickories. The tree is frequently nearly all sapwood, to which the name white hickory is due. Some persons suppose that the heartwood is white, but that misconception is due to the fact that some pretty large trees have no heartwood, but are sap clear through.The term “black hickory” is sometimes applied to three species with dark-colored bark which bears some resemblance to the bark of ash. They are bitternut (Hicoria minima), pignut (Hicoria glabra), and mocker nut (Hicoria alba). When the word black is thus used, it refers to the bark and the general outward appearance of the tree, and not to the wood, which is as white as that of any other hickory.

Mocker Nut Hickory(Hicoria alba) has many names. It is called mocker nut in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas; white heart hickory, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, Texas, Illinois, Ontario, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska; black hickory, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri; big bud and red hickory, Florida; hardback hickory, Illinois; white hickory, Pennsylvania, South Carolina; big hickory nut, West Virginia; hognut, Delaware. The name mocker nut is supposed to refer to the thick shell anddisappointingly small kernel within. The range is not as extensive as some of the other hickories. Beginning in southern Ontario, it extends westward and southward to eastern Kansas and the eastern half of Texas. The region of its most abundant growth is in the basin of the lower Ohio and in Arkansas, the best specimens appearing in fertile uplands. This is said to be the only hickory that invades the southern maritime pinebelt, growing on the low country along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in abundance. The leaves are fragrant with a powerful, resinous odor; they have five or seven leaflets with hairy petioles or stems. The bark resembles that of bitternut, and is not scaly like that of shagbark. The wood weighs 51.21 pounds per cubic foot. It is hard, strong, tough, flexible. It has about ninety-four per cent of the strength of shagbark, and eighty per cent of its stiffness. Certain selected specimens of this species are probably as strong as any hickory; but, as is the case with all woods, there is great difference between specimens, and general averages only are to be relied upon. G. W. Letterman, who collected woods for Sargent’s tests, procured a sample of this hickory near Allenton, Missouri, which showed strength sufficient to sustain 20,000 pounds per square inch, and its measure of stiffness was the enormous figure of 2,208,000 pounds per square inch.

The uses of mocker nut hickory do not differ from those of other hickories. The tree is frequently nearly all sapwood, to which the name white hickory is due. Some persons suppose that the heartwood is white, but that misconception is due to the fact that some pretty large trees have no heartwood, but are sap clear through.

The term “black hickory” is sometimes applied to three species with dark-colored bark which bears some resemblance to the bark of ash. They are bitternut (Hicoria minima), pignut (Hicoria glabra), and mocker nut (Hicoria alba). When the word black is thus used, it refers to the bark and the general outward appearance of the tree, and not to the wood, which is as white as that of any other hickory.

Bitternut hickory branch

PIGNUT HICKORYPignut hickoryPignut Hickory

Pignut hickoryPignut Hickory

Pignut Hickory

PIGNUT HICKORY(Hicoria Glabra)The name of this tree is unfortunate, although so far as the nuts are concerned, no injustice is done. It is one of the best hickories in the quality of its wood, and also as an ornamental tree. It is likewise abundant in many parts of its range, which extends from Maine to Kansas, Texas, Florida, and throughout most of the territory enclosed by the boundary lines thus delimited.The name pignut is common in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota; bitternut in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin; black hickory in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Indiana; broom hickory in Missouri; brown hickory in Mississippi, Delaware, Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota; hardshell in West Virginia; red hickory in Delaware; switch bud hickory in Alabama; and white hickory in New Hampshire and Iowa.The nuts are generally bitter, but some trees bear fruit which is not very offensive to the taste. The avidity with which swine feed upon it gives the common name. This tree is doubtless confused many times with bitternut, though their differences are enough to distinguish them readily if they grow side by side. As far as the woods of the two species are concerned, there is little occasion to keep them separate. The pignut is a forked tree more frequently than any other species of hickory; and the nuts vary in shape and size more than those of any other. The tree is more remarkable for its variations than for its regularity. In one thing, however, it is pretty constant: the limbs and branches are smooth and clean, hence the botanical nameglabra. As a name for this tree, smooth hickory would be preferable to pignut. Trunks attain a height of eighty or ninety feet and a diameter of three or four, but the extreme sizes are rare. The largest specimens are found in the lower Ohio valley, and the species is most common in Missouri and Arkansas. It grows farther south and farther west than any other hickory except pecan. Its southern limit is in Florida and its western in Texas.The uses of hickory fall into general classes. More is manufactured into vehicles than into any other single class of commodities, but not more than into all other articles combined. The second largest users of hickory are the manufacturers of handles. The third largest demand comes from makers of agricultural implements and farm tools. Largeamounts are required for athletic goods, meat smoking, and various miscellaneous purposes. The total amount used yearly in this country, and exported to foreign countries, is not accurately known, but it probably exceeds 500,000,000 feet, board measure. About half of this passes through sawmills in the usual manner, and the other half goes directly from the forest to the factory or to the consumer.The superiority of American buggies, sulkies, and other light vehicles is due to the hickory in their construction. No other wood equals this in combination of desirable physical properties. Though heavy, it is so strong, tough, and resilient that small amounts suffice, and the weight of the vehicle can be reduced to a lower point, without sacrificing efficiency, than when any other wood is employed. It is preëminently a wood for light vehicles. Oak, ash, maple, and elm answer well enough for heavy wagons where strength is more essential than toughness and elasticity. Hickory is suitable for practically all wooden parts of light vehicles except the body. The slender spokes look like frail dowels, and seem unable to maintain the load, but appearances are deceptive. The bent rims are likewise very slender, but they last better than steel. The shafts and poles with which carriages and carts are equipped will stand severe strains and twists without starting a splinter. The manufacturing of the stock is little less than a fine art. In scarcely any other wood-using industry—probably excepting the making of handles—is the grain so closely watched. Hickory users generally speak of the annual growth rings as the grain. The grain must run straight in spokes, rims, shafts, and poles. If the grain crosses the stick, a break may occur by the simple process of splitting, and the hickory in that case is no more dependable than many other woods.Handle makers observe the same rule, and must have straight grain. The more slender the handle, the more strictly the rule must be followed. A cross grained golf club handle would fail at the first stroke. An ax handle, if it has cross grain, will last a little longer, but it will speedily split. Many of the best slender handles are of split hickory. The line of cleavage follows the grain, but a saw does not always do so. Heavy handles, like those for picks and sledges, are not so strictly straight grained, because they are made strong enough to stand much more strain than is ever likely to be put on them. Red heartwood is frequently used in handles of that kind. Peavey and canthook handles are generally split from billets, because the grain must be straight. Though they are among the largest and heaviest of handles, breakage must be guarded against with extra care, for the snap of a peavey handle at a critical moment might cost the operator his life by precipitating a skidway of logs upon him.The hickory which goes into agricultural implements fills many places, among the most important being connecting rods. It is often made into springs to take up or check oscillation. It is used for that purpose as picker sticks in textile mills.Furniture makers could get along without hickory, and they do not need much. It is oftenest seen in dowels, slender spindles, and the rungs of chairs. The makers of sporting and athletic goods bend it for rackets, hoops, and rims, or make vaulting poles, bats, or trapezes.Shellbark Hickory(Hicoria laciniosa) is often mistaken for shagbark. The ranges of the two species coincide in part only. Shagbark grows farther east, north and south than shellbark. The latter occupies an island, as it were, inside the shagbark’s range. Shellbark is found from central New York and eastern Pennsylvania, westward to Kansas, and southward to North Carolina and middle Tennessee. The species is at its best in the lower Ohio valley and in Missouri. The largest trees are 120 feet high and three in diameter, and are often free from branches half or two-thirds of the length. The species prefers rich, deep bottom lands, and does not suffer from occasional inundation from overflowing rivers. The average tree is not quite as large as shagbark. The leaves are larger than those of any other hickory, ranging in length from fifteen to twenty-two inches. There are from five to nine leaflets, usually seven. The upper ones are largest, and may be eight or nine inches long and four or five wide. In the autumn the leaflets drop from the petioles which adhere to the branches and furnish means of identifying the tree in winter. The nuts including the hulls are as large as small apples. When ripe, the hulls open and the nuts fall out; but the hulls fall also. The nuts are as large as shagbark nuts, but the two are seldom distinguished in market, though the shagbark’s are a little richer in flavor. The bark’s roughness gives the tree its name. Strips three or four feet long and five or six inches wide curl up at the lower ends—sometimes at both ends—and adhere to the trunk several years. The species has other names. It is known as big shellbark in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas; bottom shellbark in Illinois; western shellbark or simply shellbark in Rhode Island and Kentucky; thick shellbark in South Carolina, Indiana, and Tennessee; kingnut in Tennessee.The wood weighs 50.53 pounds per cubic foot, and is very hard, strong, tough, and flexible. The heartwood is dark brown, the sapwood nearly white. This hickory usually has less sapwood in proportion to heart than other members of the species; but the wood is not kept separate from the others when it goes to market, and its uses are as extensive as the other hickories’. It is believed by some foresters thatshellbark hickory is worth cultivating for its nuts, as it is a vigorous bearer; but little planting has been done. East of the Alleghanies, particularly in Virginia, some planting has been carried out on old plantations for ornamental purposes. On account of its long taproot, the tree is difficult to transplant, and the nuts should be planted where the trees are expected to remain.Pignut hickory branch

The name of this tree is unfortunate, although so far as the nuts are concerned, no injustice is done. It is one of the best hickories in the quality of its wood, and also as an ornamental tree. It is likewise abundant in many parts of its range, which extends from Maine to Kansas, Texas, Florida, and throughout most of the territory enclosed by the boundary lines thus delimited.

The name pignut is common in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota; bitternut in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin; black hickory in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Indiana; broom hickory in Missouri; brown hickory in Mississippi, Delaware, Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota; hardshell in West Virginia; red hickory in Delaware; switch bud hickory in Alabama; and white hickory in New Hampshire and Iowa.

The nuts are generally bitter, but some trees bear fruit which is not very offensive to the taste. The avidity with which swine feed upon it gives the common name. This tree is doubtless confused many times with bitternut, though their differences are enough to distinguish them readily if they grow side by side. As far as the woods of the two species are concerned, there is little occasion to keep them separate. The pignut is a forked tree more frequently than any other species of hickory; and the nuts vary in shape and size more than those of any other. The tree is more remarkable for its variations than for its regularity. In one thing, however, it is pretty constant: the limbs and branches are smooth and clean, hence the botanical nameglabra. As a name for this tree, smooth hickory would be preferable to pignut. Trunks attain a height of eighty or ninety feet and a diameter of three or four, but the extreme sizes are rare. The largest specimens are found in the lower Ohio valley, and the species is most common in Missouri and Arkansas. It grows farther south and farther west than any other hickory except pecan. Its southern limit is in Florida and its western in Texas.

The uses of hickory fall into general classes. More is manufactured into vehicles than into any other single class of commodities, but not more than into all other articles combined. The second largest users of hickory are the manufacturers of handles. The third largest demand comes from makers of agricultural implements and farm tools. Largeamounts are required for athletic goods, meat smoking, and various miscellaneous purposes. The total amount used yearly in this country, and exported to foreign countries, is not accurately known, but it probably exceeds 500,000,000 feet, board measure. About half of this passes through sawmills in the usual manner, and the other half goes directly from the forest to the factory or to the consumer.

The superiority of American buggies, sulkies, and other light vehicles is due to the hickory in their construction. No other wood equals this in combination of desirable physical properties. Though heavy, it is so strong, tough, and resilient that small amounts suffice, and the weight of the vehicle can be reduced to a lower point, without sacrificing efficiency, than when any other wood is employed. It is preëminently a wood for light vehicles. Oak, ash, maple, and elm answer well enough for heavy wagons where strength is more essential than toughness and elasticity. Hickory is suitable for practically all wooden parts of light vehicles except the body. The slender spokes look like frail dowels, and seem unable to maintain the load, but appearances are deceptive. The bent rims are likewise very slender, but they last better than steel. The shafts and poles with which carriages and carts are equipped will stand severe strains and twists without starting a splinter. The manufacturing of the stock is little less than a fine art. In scarcely any other wood-using industry—probably excepting the making of handles—is the grain so closely watched. Hickory users generally speak of the annual growth rings as the grain. The grain must run straight in spokes, rims, shafts, and poles. If the grain crosses the stick, a break may occur by the simple process of splitting, and the hickory in that case is no more dependable than many other woods.

Handle makers observe the same rule, and must have straight grain. The more slender the handle, the more strictly the rule must be followed. A cross grained golf club handle would fail at the first stroke. An ax handle, if it has cross grain, will last a little longer, but it will speedily split. Many of the best slender handles are of split hickory. The line of cleavage follows the grain, but a saw does not always do so. Heavy handles, like those for picks and sledges, are not so strictly straight grained, because they are made strong enough to stand much more strain than is ever likely to be put on them. Red heartwood is frequently used in handles of that kind. Peavey and canthook handles are generally split from billets, because the grain must be straight. Though they are among the largest and heaviest of handles, breakage must be guarded against with extra care, for the snap of a peavey handle at a critical moment might cost the operator his life by precipitating a skidway of logs upon him.

The hickory which goes into agricultural implements fills many places, among the most important being connecting rods. It is often made into springs to take up or check oscillation. It is used for that purpose as picker sticks in textile mills.

Furniture makers could get along without hickory, and they do not need much. It is oftenest seen in dowels, slender spindles, and the rungs of chairs. The makers of sporting and athletic goods bend it for rackets, hoops, and rims, or make vaulting poles, bats, or trapezes.

Shellbark Hickory(Hicoria laciniosa) is often mistaken for shagbark. The ranges of the two species coincide in part only. Shagbark grows farther east, north and south than shellbark. The latter occupies an island, as it were, inside the shagbark’s range. Shellbark is found from central New York and eastern Pennsylvania, westward to Kansas, and southward to North Carolina and middle Tennessee. The species is at its best in the lower Ohio valley and in Missouri. The largest trees are 120 feet high and three in diameter, and are often free from branches half or two-thirds of the length. The species prefers rich, deep bottom lands, and does not suffer from occasional inundation from overflowing rivers. The average tree is not quite as large as shagbark. The leaves are larger than those of any other hickory, ranging in length from fifteen to twenty-two inches. There are from five to nine leaflets, usually seven. The upper ones are largest, and may be eight or nine inches long and four or five wide. In the autumn the leaflets drop from the petioles which adhere to the branches and furnish means of identifying the tree in winter. The nuts including the hulls are as large as small apples. When ripe, the hulls open and the nuts fall out; but the hulls fall also. The nuts are as large as shagbark nuts, but the two are seldom distinguished in market, though the shagbark’s are a little richer in flavor. The bark’s roughness gives the tree its name. Strips three or four feet long and five or six inches wide curl up at the lower ends—sometimes at both ends—and adhere to the trunk several years. The species has other names. It is known as big shellbark in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas; bottom shellbark in Illinois; western shellbark or simply shellbark in Rhode Island and Kentucky; thick shellbark in South Carolina, Indiana, and Tennessee; kingnut in Tennessee.

The wood weighs 50.53 pounds per cubic foot, and is very hard, strong, tough, and flexible. The heartwood is dark brown, the sapwood nearly white. This hickory usually has less sapwood in proportion to heart than other members of the species; but the wood is not kept separate from the others when it goes to market, and its uses are as extensive as the other hickories’. It is believed by some foresters thatshellbark hickory is worth cultivating for its nuts, as it is a vigorous bearer; but little planting has been done. East of the Alleghanies, particularly in Virginia, some planting has been carried out on old plantations for ornamental purposes. On account of its long taproot, the tree is difficult to transplant, and the nuts should be planted where the trees are expected to remain.

Pignut hickory branch

PECANPecanPecan

PecanPecan

Pecan

PECAN(Hicoria Pecan)The name is pecan in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Kansas; pecan nut and pecan tree in Louisiana. The name is of Indian origin, and means walnut. The tree’s natural range is smaller than the present area in which the tree is found, for it has been extensively planted in recent years. It is found as far north as Iowa, south to Texas, and east to Alabama and Kentucky. The highest development of the wild tree is in the lower Ohio valley. Forest trees were once found there which were said to be six feet in diameter and 170 high. Specimens that large would be hard to find now.The pecan is a hickory. As to wood, it is the poorest of the hickories, and as to nuts it is the best. Its compound leaves are from twelve to twenty inches long with from nine to seventeen leaflets. The latter are from four to eight inches in length, and from one to three wide. The first pairs on the petiole are smallest. The fruit grows in clusters of from three to eleven, the number exceeding any other hickory. The nuts are four-angled, and long for their width.The wood of pecan has disappointed those who have attempted to use it like other hickories. It does not differ much from them in appearance, but it falls low in mechanical tests. In strength, toughness, and stiffness it is inferior to the poorest of the other hickories. It has less than half the strength and half the stiffness of shagbark hickory. It is a fairly good fuel, but is high in ash.The inferior quality of the wood has saved many a pecan tree from the sawmill and the wagon shop. Fine trunks stand near public highways, along river banks, and in fields, while all merchantable hickories of other species have been sent to market. The uses of the wood are few. If some of it goes to wagon shops or to factories where agricultural vehicles are made, it is employed for parts which are not required to endure strain or sustain sudden jars.Fortunately it is a tree with a value of another kind. It is the most important nut tree of the United States at this time, and it promises to remain so. The forest-grown pecans were an article of food for Indians who once lived in the region, and though white settlers who succeeded the Indians as occupants of the land, depended less upon forest fruits than the red men had done, yet the pecan was often of supreme importance in the early years of settlement. The nuts have constituted an article of commerce ever since the region had markets.Nurserymen were not slow to recognize the value of the pecan tree for planting purposes, and nursery grown stock has been on the market many years. Extensive orchards have been planted in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and other southern states, and some of the earliest of these orchards are now in bearing. However, by far the largest part of pecans on the market is wild fruit from the forests. Many are shipped in from Mexico, but most grow in the rich woods of southern states. They are gathered like chestnuts in northern woods. The people who pick them sell to local stores at low prices, often taking pay in merchandise. Buyers collect the stock from country and village merchants, and put it on the general market, often at three or four times the price paid to the gatherers of the nuts.One of the most important matters connected with pecan is the large number of horticultural varieties which have been produced by cultivation and selection. More than seventy have been listed in nursery catalogues and special reports. Some of the nuts are twice the size of those of the forest, and shells have been reduced in thinness until some of them are really thinner than they should be to stand the rough usage which comes to them in reaching markets.Dealers occasionally polish pecans to impart the rich, brown color which is supposed to give them the appearance of being fresh and of high grade. The polishing is produced by friction, when the nuts in bulk are shaken violently. Last year’s stock takes on as bright a polish as fresh stock, and the color and smoothness alone are not sufficient to prove that pecans are fresh from the trees.The planted pecan tree grows rapidly and is as easily raised as fruit trees. The wild tree is long-lived, and the cultivated varieties will probably be like it.Nutmeg Hickory(Hicoria myristicæformis) is so named because the nut has the size and the wrinkled surface of a nutmeg, though the shape is different. The husk enclosing the nut is almost as thin as paper. The only other name by which it is known is bitter waternut, in Louisiana. The name scarcely applies, for the kernel is said not to be bitter. The range of nutmeg hickory extends from the coast of South Carolina to Arkansas. It is rather abundant in Arkansas, but scarce in most other parts of its range. The tree has several interesting features. It was partly discovered a long time before the discovery was complete. In 1802 Andre F. Michaux saw the nut and to that extent the species was discovered, but many years passed before a full description was given to the world by a competent botanist. The wood rates among the strongest and stiffest of all the hickories, according to present information; but the calculations were based on too few tests to be considered final. Two samples of wood procured near Bonneau’s depot, South Carolina, by W. H. Revenel, showed the remarkable breaking strength of 19,822 pounds per square inch, and the measure of stiffness exceeded 2,000,000 pounds to the square inch. That strength is sixteen per cent above shagbark. The weight of nutmeg hickory is 46.96 pounds to the cubic foot. The wood is hard, tough, and compact. The structure, including pores,medullary rays, annual rings, springwood and summerwood, is similar to the wood of other hickories. Trees grow best in sandy soil but near swamps and rivers where there is plenty of water. The largest trunks are eighty or one hundred feet in height and two in diameter. When use is made of this hickory it serves the same purposes as the wood of other trees of the group. It is never reported separately in statistics of wood utilization. It is too scarce to be important as a timber tree. It apparently has a future as an ornament, though it has not yet been widely planted. It has proved a success in the Carolinas and it thrives in the climate of Washington, D. C. The luster of its foliage makes it the most beautiful of the hickories. In common with other members of the genus, its long taproot renders the transplanting of nursery stock difficult.Water Hickory(Hicoria aquatica) is known as swamp hickory in South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana; bitter pecan in Mississippi and Louisiana, and water bitternut in Tennessee and South Carolina. The northern limit of this species is in Virginia near Mobjack bay, the southern limit in the Caloosa valley, Florida, west to the Brazos river, Texas, and north to southern Illinois. The wood is hard, heavy, strong, but rather brittle; the sapwood is thick and often is nearly white, while the heartwood is dark brown. It is the most porous of the hickories, and the pores are distributed generally through the annual rings of growth. In other hickories they are largely restricted to the inner part of each ring, though a few are dispersed through all parts. In swamp hickory there is little difference in appearance between the wood grown early in the season and that produced later. The tree is a rapid grower. It is an inhabitant of deep swamps, and if the land is inundated a considerable part of the year, the tree seems to grow all the better. At its best it may attain a height of 100 feet, and a diameter of two, but that size is unusual. The nut is small and wrinkled, and when broken open, pockets of red bitter powder are frequently found inside the shell. Usually the nuts are too bitter to be eaten, but it is said that near the western limit of the tree’s range, nuts are sometimes edible.The only reported uses for the wood are fuel and fencing. It is poor fence material, because, like other hickories, it decays in a short time when exposed to weather. The wood of this genus is rich in foods on which decay-producing fungi feed. Fungus is a low order of plant life which sends its hair-like threads into the wood cells and consumes the material found there; but numerous insects bore into wood to procure food. Few woods suffer from such attacks more than hickory. Even after it is seasoned and manufactured into commodities, it is frequently attacked by various species of powder post beetles, and much injury results. Water hickory while yet standing is often greatly damaged by the larvæ of certain moths which find their way into the soft wood just under the bark and tunnel minute galleries which subsequently fill with brown substance. According to R. B. Hough, these brown streaks in water hickory are hard enough to turn the edge of steel tools. They not only damage the structure of the wood but spoil its appearance.Bitter Pecan(Hicoria texana) is a Texas species which has not been reported elsewhere. The average size of the tree is from fifteen to twenty-five feet in height and eight to ten inches in diameter; but in rich bottom land, particularly along the Brazos river, specimens sometimes attain a diameter of three feet and a height of 100. The leaves are from ten to twelve inches in length, with from seven to eleven leaflets. The nuts are very bitter, but are of approximately the same size and shape as edible pecans. The shells are thin and very brittle. The tree’s range extends inland 100 or 150 miles from the Texas coast.North Carolina Shagbark Hickory(Hicoria carolinæ-septentrionalis) is found in the neighboring parts of the four states: North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. In the best land this tree is occasionally eighty feet high and two or three in diameter, but when it occurs on dry hillsides its average height is twenty or thirty feet, and its diameter about a foot. The compound leaves are from four to eight inches long, with usually three, but occasionally five leaflets. The sweet nuts are small and brown. The bark separates into thick strips a foot or more in length and three or four inches wide. The rough trunk resembles the northern shagbark hickory. The wood is very tough, strong, and hard, the heart light reddish-brown, the thin sapwood nearly white. It is not distinguished from the other hickories in commerce, and it has the same uses when any use is made of it.Pecan branch

The name is pecan in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Kansas; pecan nut and pecan tree in Louisiana. The name is of Indian origin, and means walnut. The tree’s natural range is smaller than the present area in which the tree is found, for it has been extensively planted in recent years. It is found as far north as Iowa, south to Texas, and east to Alabama and Kentucky. The highest development of the wild tree is in the lower Ohio valley. Forest trees were once found there which were said to be six feet in diameter and 170 high. Specimens that large would be hard to find now.

The pecan is a hickory. As to wood, it is the poorest of the hickories, and as to nuts it is the best. Its compound leaves are from twelve to twenty inches long with from nine to seventeen leaflets. The latter are from four to eight inches in length, and from one to three wide. The first pairs on the petiole are smallest. The fruit grows in clusters of from three to eleven, the number exceeding any other hickory. The nuts are four-angled, and long for their width.

The wood of pecan has disappointed those who have attempted to use it like other hickories. It does not differ much from them in appearance, but it falls low in mechanical tests. In strength, toughness, and stiffness it is inferior to the poorest of the other hickories. It has less than half the strength and half the stiffness of shagbark hickory. It is a fairly good fuel, but is high in ash.

The inferior quality of the wood has saved many a pecan tree from the sawmill and the wagon shop. Fine trunks stand near public highways, along river banks, and in fields, while all merchantable hickories of other species have been sent to market. The uses of the wood are few. If some of it goes to wagon shops or to factories where agricultural vehicles are made, it is employed for parts which are not required to endure strain or sustain sudden jars.

Fortunately it is a tree with a value of another kind. It is the most important nut tree of the United States at this time, and it promises to remain so. The forest-grown pecans were an article of food for Indians who once lived in the region, and though white settlers who succeeded the Indians as occupants of the land, depended less upon forest fruits than the red men had done, yet the pecan was often of supreme importance in the early years of settlement. The nuts have constituted an article of commerce ever since the region had markets.

Nurserymen were not slow to recognize the value of the pecan tree for planting purposes, and nursery grown stock has been on the market many years. Extensive orchards have been planted in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and other southern states, and some of the earliest of these orchards are now in bearing. However, by far the largest part of pecans on the market is wild fruit from the forests. Many are shipped in from Mexico, but most grow in the rich woods of southern states. They are gathered like chestnuts in northern woods. The people who pick them sell to local stores at low prices, often taking pay in merchandise. Buyers collect the stock from country and village merchants, and put it on the general market, often at three or four times the price paid to the gatherers of the nuts.

One of the most important matters connected with pecan is the large number of horticultural varieties which have been produced by cultivation and selection. More than seventy have been listed in nursery catalogues and special reports. Some of the nuts are twice the size of those of the forest, and shells have been reduced in thinness until some of them are really thinner than they should be to stand the rough usage which comes to them in reaching markets.

Dealers occasionally polish pecans to impart the rich, brown color which is supposed to give them the appearance of being fresh and of high grade. The polishing is produced by friction, when the nuts in bulk are shaken violently. Last year’s stock takes on as bright a polish as fresh stock, and the color and smoothness alone are not sufficient to prove that pecans are fresh from the trees.

The planted pecan tree grows rapidly and is as easily raised as fruit trees. The wild tree is long-lived, and the cultivated varieties will probably be like it.

Nutmeg Hickory(Hicoria myristicæformis) is so named because the nut has the size and the wrinkled surface of a nutmeg, though the shape is different. The husk enclosing the nut is almost as thin as paper. The only other name by which it is known is bitter waternut, in Louisiana. The name scarcely applies, for the kernel is said not to be bitter. The range of nutmeg hickory extends from the coast of South Carolina to Arkansas. It is rather abundant in Arkansas, but scarce in most other parts of its range. The tree has several interesting features. It was partly discovered a long time before the discovery was complete. In 1802 Andre F. Michaux saw the nut and to that extent the species was discovered, but many years passed before a full description was given to the world by a competent botanist. The wood rates among the strongest and stiffest of all the hickories, according to present information; but the calculations were based on too few tests to be considered final. Two samples of wood procured near Bonneau’s depot, South Carolina, by W. H. Revenel, showed the remarkable breaking strength of 19,822 pounds per square inch, and the measure of stiffness exceeded 2,000,000 pounds to the square inch. That strength is sixteen per cent above shagbark. The weight of nutmeg hickory is 46.96 pounds to the cubic foot. The wood is hard, tough, and compact. The structure, including pores,medullary rays, annual rings, springwood and summerwood, is similar to the wood of other hickories. Trees grow best in sandy soil but near swamps and rivers where there is plenty of water. The largest trunks are eighty or one hundred feet in height and two in diameter. When use is made of this hickory it serves the same purposes as the wood of other trees of the group. It is never reported separately in statistics of wood utilization. It is too scarce to be important as a timber tree. It apparently has a future as an ornament, though it has not yet been widely planted. It has proved a success in the Carolinas and it thrives in the climate of Washington, D. C. The luster of its foliage makes it the most beautiful of the hickories. In common with other members of the genus, its long taproot renders the transplanting of nursery stock difficult.Water Hickory(Hicoria aquatica) is known as swamp hickory in South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana; bitter pecan in Mississippi and Louisiana, and water bitternut in Tennessee and South Carolina. The northern limit of this species is in Virginia near Mobjack bay, the southern limit in the Caloosa valley, Florida, west to the Brazos river, Texas, and north to southern Illinois. The wood is hard, heavy, strong, but rather brittle; the sapwood is thick and often is nearly white, while the heartwood is dark brown. It is the most porous of the hickories, and the pores are distributed generally through the annual rings of growth. In other hickories they are largely restricted to the inner part of each ring, though a few are dispersed through all parts. In swamp hickory there is little difference in appearance between the wood grown early in the season and that produced later. The tree is a rapid grower. It is an inhabitant of deep swamps, and if the land is inundated a considerable part of the year, the tree seems to grow all the better. At its best it may attain a height of 100 feet, and a diameter of two, but that size is unusual. The nut is small and wrinkled, and when broken open, pockets of red bitter powder are frequently found inside the shell. Usually the nuts are too bitter to be eaten, but it is said that near the western limit of the tree’s range, nuts are sometimes edible.The only reported uses for the wood are fuel and fencing. It is poor fence material, because, like other hickories, it decays in a short time when exposed to weather. The wood of this genus is rich in foods on which decay-producing fungi feed. Fungus is a low order of plant life which sends its hair-like threads into the wood cells and consumes the material found there; but numerous insects bore into wood to procure food. Few woods suffer from such attacks more than hickory. Even after it is seasoned and manufactured into commodities, it is frequently attacked by various species of powder post beetles, and much injury results. Water hickory while yet standing is often greatly damaged by the larvæ of certain moths which find their way into the soft wood just under the bark and tunnel minute galleries which subsequently fill with brown substance. According to R. B. Hough, these brown streaks in water hickory are hard enough to turn the edge of steel tools. They not only damage the structure of the wood but spoil its appearance.Bitter Pecan(Hicoria texana) is a Texas species which has not been reported elsewhere. The average size of the tree is from fifteen to twenty-five feet in height and eight to ten inches in diameter; but in rich bottom land, particularly along the Brazos river, specimens sometimes attain a diameter of three feet and a height of 100. The leaves are from ten to twelve inches in length, with from seven to eleven leaflets. The nuts are very bitter, but are of approximately the same size and shape as edible pecans. The shells are thin and very brittle. The tree’s range extends inland 100 or 150 miles from the Texas coast.North Carolina Shagbark Hickory(Hicoria carolinæ-septentrionalis) is found in the neighboring parts of the four states: North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. In the best land this tree is occasionally eighty feet high and two or three in diameter, but when it occurs on dry hillsides its average height is twenty or thirty feet, and its diameter about a foot. The compound leaves are from four to eight inches long, with usually three, but occasionally five leaflets. The sweet nuts are small and brown. The bark separates into thick strips a foot or more in length and three or four inches wide. The rough trunk resembles the northern shagbark hickory. The wood is very tough, strong, and hard, the heart light reddish-brown, the thin sapwood nearly white. It is not distinguished from the other hickories in commerce, and it has the same uses when any use is made of it.

Nutmeg Hickory(Hicoria myristicæformis) is so named because the nut has the size and the wrinkled surface of a nutmeg, though the shape is different. The husk enclosing the nut is almost as thin as paper. The only other name by which it is known is bitter waternut, in Louisiana. The name scarcely applies, for the kernel is said not to be bitter. The range of nutmeg hickory extends from the coast of South Carolina to Arkansas. It is rather abundant in Arkansas, but scarce in most other parts of its range. The tree has several interesting features. It was partly discovered a long time before the discovery was complete. In 1802 Andre F. Michaux saw the nut and to that extent the species was discovered, but many years passed before a full description was given to the world by a competent botanist. The wood rates among the strongest and stiffest of all the hickories, according to present information; but the calculations were based on too few tests to be considered final. Two samples of wood procured near Bonneau’s depot, South Carolina, by W. H. Revenel, showed the remarkable breaking strength of 19,822 pounds per square inch, and the measure of stiffness exceeded 2,000,000 pounds to the square inch. That strength is sixteen per cent above shagbark. The weight of nutmeg hickory is 46.96 pounds to the cubic foot. The wood is hard, tough, and compact. The structure, including pores,medullary rays, annual rings, springwood and summerwood, is similar to the wood of other hickories. Trees grow best in sandy soil but near swamps and rivers where there is plenty of water. The largest trunks are eighty or one hundred feet in height and two in diameter. When use is made of this hickory it serves the same purposes as the wood of other trees of the group. It is never reported separately in statistics of wood utilization. It is too scarce to be important as a timber tree. It apparently has a future as an ornament, though it has not yet been widely planted. It has proved a success in the Carolinas and it thrives in the climate of Washington, D. C. The luster of its foliage makes it the most beautiful of the hickories. In common with other members of the genus, its long taproot renders the transplanting of nursery stock difficult.

Water Hickory(Hicoria aquatica) is known as swamp hickory in South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana; bitter pecan in Mississippi and Louisiana, and water bitternut in Tennessee and South Carolina. The northern limit of this species is in Virginia near Mobjack bay, the southern limit in the Caloosa valley, Florida, west to the Brazos river, Texas, and north to southern Illinois. The wood is hard, heavy, strong, but rather brittle; the sapwood is thick and often is nearly white, while the heartwood is dark brown. It is the most porous of the hickories, and the pores are distributed generally through the annual rings of growth. In other hickories they are largely restricted to the inner part of each ring, though a few are dispersed through all parts. In swamp hickory there is little difference in appearance between the wood grown early in the season and that produced later. The tree is a rapid grower. It is an inhabitant of deep swamps, and if the land is inundated a considerable part of the year, the tree seems to grow all the better. At its best it may attain a height of 100 feet, and a diameter of two, but that size is unusual. The nut is small and wrinkled, and when broken open, pockets of red bitter powder are frequently found inside the shell. Usually the nuts are too bitter to be eaten, but it is said that near the western limit of the tree’s range, nuts are sometimes edible.

The only reported uses for the wood are fuel and fencing. It is poor fence material, because, like other hickories, it decays in a short time when exposed to weather. The wood of this genus is rich in foods on which decay-producing fungi feed. Fungus is a low order of plant life which sends its hair-like threads into the wood cells and consumes the material found there; but numerous insects bore into wood to procure food. Few woods suffer from such attacks more than hickory. Even after it is seasoned and manufactured into commodities, it is frequently attacked by various species of powder post beetles, and much injury results. Water hickory while yet standing is often greatly damaged by the larvæ of certain moths which find their way into the soft wood just under the bark and tunnel minute galleries which subsequently fill with brown substance. According to R. B. Hough, these brown streaks in water hickory are hard enough to turn the edge of steel tools. They not only damage the structure of the wood but spoil its appearance.

Bitter Pecan(Hicoria texana) is a Texas species which has not been reported elsewhere. The average size of the tree is from fifteen to twenty-five feet in height and eight to ten inches in diameter; but in rich bottom land, particularly along the Brazos river, specimens sometimes attain a diameter of three feet and a height of 100. The leaves are from ten to twelve inches in length, with from seven to eleven leaflets. The nuts are very bitter, but are of approximately the same size and shape as edible pecans. The shells are thin and very brittle. The tree’s range extends inland 100 or 150 miles from the Texas coast.

North Carolina Shagbark Hickory(Hicoria carolinæ-septentrionalis) is found in the neighboring parts of the four states: North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. In the best land this tree is occasionally eighty feet high and two or three in diameter, but when it occurs on dry hillsides its average height is twenty or thirty feet, and its diameter about a foot. The compound leaves are from four to eight inches long, with usually three, but occasionally five leaflets. The sweet nuts are small and brown. The bark separates into thick strips a foot or more in length and three or four inches wide. The rough trunk resembles the northern shagbark hickory. The wood is very tough, strong, and hard, the heart light reddish-brown, the thin sapwood nearly white. It is not distinguished from the other hickories in commerce, and it has the same uses when any use is made of it.

Pecan branch

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