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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-543
Bitternut Hickory
Carya cordiformis
Bitternut Hickory is a wide-ranging eastern North American tree whose nut, despite being the easiest hickory to crack, is too bitter and astringent to eat - squirrels mostly leave it alone too. What the seed is actually good for is oil, pressed and burned in lamps for light. The tough, heavy wood makes strong tool handles and burns hot enough for the hickory smoke that flavours smoked meat, and the tree is also used as rootstock for grafting pecan varieties. Its deep taproot means seed needs to go straight into a deep pot or its permanent spot rather than being transplanted later.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 4–9
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moist · Wet
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 6–8
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 50–80 ft
- Mature spread
- 25–40 ft
- Plant spacing
- 50 ft
- Root type
- Tap
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
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Almond
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American Basswood
Tilia americana
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American Beech
Fagus grandifolia
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American Chestnut
Castanea dentata
American chestnut once carried the sweetest nut of any chestnut species and covered more than 200 million acres of eastern forest, but an…
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American Elm
Ulmus americana
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The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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