Common Hackberry

Size, growth and what to expect

Common hackberry put on 1.3 feet of height a year over its first 6 years in Great Plains shelterbelts. That is a little under the foot and a half a year our growth estimator assumes for a medium tree. Under a dense canopy a hackberry may add barely an inch a year. In a yard expect 40 to 60 feet with a trunk 18 to 24 inches through, and it has reached 130 feet on the best sites. Growth is fastest between the ages of 20 and 40. Trees typically live 150 to 200 years. The oldest in one Kentucky woodland was a little over 200 years old.

The first fruit comes at about 15 years, and there is a good crop most years with a light one between. Each berry is a quarter to a third of an inch across and ripens dark red to purple.

It grows wild from southern New England and New York west through southern Ontario to North and South Dakota, and south to Texas, Arkansas, the Carolinas and north Florida. It has survived extreme drought.

How to grow Common Hackberry

Common hackberry takes full sun to fairly deep shade. It grows fastest on deep, moist, neutral to limy loam, accepts clay and gravel, and is slow on poor dry ground. It stands periodic flooding, but not saturated ground as a seedling. Keep it 25 feet from the house, clear of wires and off the patio, where fruit drops for months. Set trees 40 to 60 feet apart.

Plant a dormant sapling, bare-root or potted, between leaf fall and bud swell, in a hole twice the width of the roots and no deeper. Set the root flare at grade, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch ring off the bark. It moves easily, with no strong taproot. Seed keeps for years dry and cold. In fall, clean the pulp off and sow half an inch deep in a screened bed. For spring, hold the cleaned seed damp in the refrigerator for 60 to 90 days first.

Water deeply once a week through the first summer. Deer browse young hackberry where they are thick, and rabbits and mice chew young stems, so cage or tube it for three years and keep mulch thin at the trunk against voles. Prune only in winter, to keep one leader and remove crossing limbs; the branch tips droop with age, which is natural.

Growth is medium: a foot or more a year on good ground at first, slow on a dry bank. One tree carries both male and female flowers, so it fruits alone and bears most years. Expect nipple galls on the leaves and sometimes witches' brooms, dense twig clusters at the branch tips raised by a mite and a mildew; neither harms the tree. It is not for salt spray or seaside ground.