Photo: Kathy McAleese, CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Black Hickory

Carya texana

Also called Ozark pignut hickory, Carya buckleyi, Carya arkansana.

A hickory of dry, rocky hills, with near-black, deeply furrowed bark, rusty-scaled buds and small, sweet nuts.

Type: Medium tree
Mature height: 30–80 ft
USDA zones: 5–9
Growth rate: Slow
Sun: Full, Part
Soil moisture: Dry, Average
Grows wild in: Dry uplands, rocky ground and sandy barrens
Native range: 13 states, north to Illinois, south to Louisiana and west to Texas
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Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas
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Black hickory is the western counterpart of sand hickory, growing mostly west of the Mississippi River, and the two blend where their ranges meet. In Missouri it grows on poor, rocky, acid soils and is taken as a sign of them. Its thick shells make the kernels hard to pick out, but hogs crack them, which gave it the name Ozark pignut hickory. It is infrequent in cultivation. Give it a dry, rocky slope or a thin-soiled ridge, the ground it favors in the wild.

Size, growth and what to expect

Our growth estimator treats black hickory as a slow grower, about a foot a year, since no source rates its speed. It is usually a small hillside tree, and it grows taller in rich valley bottoms. It stays about 30 feet on shallow, rocky soil and reaches up to 80 feet with a narrow crown on better ground.

It flowers in April and May, and the nuts ripen in September and October. The nuts are round to pear-shaped, 1¼ to 2 inches long, in a thin husk covered with yellow scales. Squirrels and mice eat them, and its leaves feed the caterpillars of the luna and regal moths.

It grows wild from southwestern Indiana and central Illinois through Missouri and southeastern Kansas, and south to central Oklahoma, Louisiana and central Texas. Its home is rocky hillsides and rolling hills on well-drained sandy soil, and now and then low, flat ground.

How to grow Black Hickory

Black hickory wants full sun or light shade and a soil that drains well, from sand or rocky loam to clay. Dry to average ground suits it, and thin, poor soil too. Set trees 30 feet apart, and keep each one 30 feet from a wall and more than 50 feet from overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant a dormant sapling from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole deep enough for the taproot to hang straight. Set the root flare at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the trunk. Plant it where it will stay, since its large taproot makes it hard to move. Sow nuts in fall an inch deep under hardware cloth, or squirrels dig them up. For spring, soak them two to four days, then chill them damp in the refrigerator for 30 to 150 days.

Water every week or two through the first summer in dry spells. Rabbits gnaw young hickory bark and deer browse the tips, so guard the tree with a tube or cage for three years. Prune only to keep a single leader, in the dormant season.

Male and female flowers grow on the same tree. Hickories are mostly cross-pollinated, and a tree's own pollen sets fewer and poorer nuts, so plant two or set it near other hickories. Hickory nut weevils can ruin much of a crop.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

Sources (9)