Water Hickory

Size, growth and what to expect

Water hickory grows slowly, about a foot a year in our growth estimator. Expect 80 to 100 feet, with a narrow, irregular crown 40 to 50 feet wide. Trees reach 110 feet on a good site, and the national champion stands 150 feet.

It flowers in April and May as the leaves unfold. The nuts ripen from September to November and fall by December. Trees bear from about 20 years, with heavy crops most years. The nuts are flattened and thin-shelled, up to an inch and a half long, in a thin husk with winged seams. Floods carry many of them to new ground.

It grows wild on the coastal plain from southeastern Virginia to southern Florida and eastern Texas, and up the Mississippi Valley to southern Illinois. It shares clay flats, sloughs and backwaters with overcup oak, pecan and bald cypress.

How to grow Water Hickory

Water hickory wants full sun, and though a sapling survives years of shade, it needs sun to become a tree. It grows best in moist soil that drains, from loam to heavy clay, and it takes spring floods and a summer that cracks the clay. It seldom grows where the soil stays saturated all year. 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. Plant a dormant sapling from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and deep enough for the taproot. Set the root flare at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the trunk. It moves more easily than most hickories, and on wet soils its taproot stays shallow. 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 90 days. Seedlings come up from late April to early June.

Water every week or two through the first summer when rain is short, unless the ground stays moist. 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.

Water hickory carries male and female flowers on the same tree. Like other hickories, it sheds its pollen on the wind, often before or after its own female flowers are ready, so a second hickory nearby improves the crop. The living-hickory borer tunnels in young trunks, and the forest tent caterpillar sometimes strips the leaves. Disease seldom matters, though rot can enter through wounds. Where pecans grow nearby it crosses with them, and the offspring fall between the two.