Photo: Tom Nagy, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Red Hickory

Carya ovalis

Also called false shagbark, small pignut, Carya glabra var. odorata.

An upland hickory with sweet nuts, leafstalks often tinged red and gray bark that turns slightly shaggy with age.

EdibleWildlife valueFall colorStreet tree

Type: Large tree
Mature height: 60–100 ft
USDA zones: 4–8
Growth rate: Slow
Sun: Full, Part
Soil moisture: Dry, Average, Wet
Grows wild in: Dry uplands, rich moist slopes and the Appalachians
Native range: 30 states and the District of Columbia, north to Wisconsin, south to Florida and west to Oklahoma
List all 31
Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia
Also recorded in 1 other state, outside its native range. See what is native in your state

Hardiness zones Find your zone by ZIP code

Red hickory belongs to the pignut group, and it is the form more common in the north. Its rank is disputed. Some floras fold it into pignut hickory, and others keep it as a species of its own. Its husk splits promptly to the base, where pignut's opens late and only partway, and most of its leaves carry seven leaflets rather than five. The two can be told apart with certainty only in November. Red hickory can also line a city street. Plant it as a shade and nut tree for a large yard or a woodlot with oaks.

Size, growth and what to expect

Red hickory grows slowly, about a foot a year in our growth estimator. It reaches 60 to 100 feet, with a crown 60 to 80 feet wide. Trees of the pignut group bear in quantity at about 30 years, with a good crop every year or two.

It flowers in April and May, and the nuts ripen in September and October. The fruit is 1 to 1½ inches long in a thin husk, and the kernel is usually sweet. In the pignut group, usually less than half the nuts are sound. Squirrels, turkeys and black bears eat the nuts, and the leaves feed luna moth caterpillars. Fall color is golden.

It grows wild from Georgia and Arkansas north to Michigan, New York, southern New England and southeastern Canada. Its home is upland forest and woodland, up to about 6,000 feet in the southern Appalachians. NatureServe counts the trees recorded in Maine as introduced.

How to grow Red Hickory

Red hickory grows best in full sun and takes part shade. It wants a moist, well-drained soil. It is moderately drought tolerant, and it takes dry sites, wet sites and alkaline soil. It also tolerates the juglone of a nearby black walnut. Set trees 40 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. Its long taproot makes red hickory hard to move, so plant it only in early spring, while it is still dormant. Dig 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. 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 90 to 120 days.

Water every week or two through the first summer when rain is short. Rabbits gnaw young hickory bark, so guard the stem with a tube for three years. Deer browse hickory only now and then. Prune only to keep a single leader, in the dormant season.

Male and female flowers grow on the same tree, and the catkins usually open before the female flowers, so a second hickory nearby improves the crop. The hickory bark beetle, the worst insect enemy of hickories, attacks trees stressed by drought. Pecan weevils, twig girdlers, anthracnose and leaf galls turn up now and then. Fallen husks and nuts make a fall cleanup.

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

Sources (11)