When I sit at my desk in the nook at the top of the stairs, I look out on all of our tall trees: beeches, oaks, pines, river birches, and the straight, slim hickories, the tallest of which is in my direct line of sight. I love the trees at every season, but the cold winter weather every year offers me renewed appreciation for their strength and resilience. In the winter, I can see their bones, the branches reaching upward and outward. Here there might be a squirrel’s nest, or drey, fashioned of dry leaves; there, I might see festoons of mistletoe, too high to reach a sprig to hang in the doorway for the holidays.
Over the years, I have written about many of our trees, plus trees we don’t have on our property. Somehow, I have missed writing about hickory trees, Carya spp. Carya comes from the Greek word for walnut, and hickory and pecan trees belong to the walnut family (Juglandaceae).
About 18 species of hickories exist, 12 of them in North America. Most hickory species are native to e...