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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-540
Shellbark Hickory
Carya laciniosa
Shellbark hickory is a large bottomland tree that produces the biggest nut of any hickory - sweet and fine-flavoured, though the shell is thick and hard enough that a selected thin-shelled variety is worth seeking out over a wild seedling. Unlike most hickories it actually wants wet feet, thriving on moist to occasionally flooded floodplain ground rather than being limited by it, and it needs hot summers to set a good crop. Bearing is slow to start, but once established the tree also yields a maple-like syrup from its spring sap and a tough, flexible wood used for tool handles and furniture.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 5–8
- Soil
- Silt · Loam
- Moisture
- Moderate · Moist · Wet
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 6–8
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 60–80 ft
- Mature spread
- 40–60 ft
- Plant spacing
- 60 ft
- Root type
- Tap
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
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American Basswood
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American Beech
Fagus grandifolia
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American Chestnut
Castanea dentata
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American Elm
Ulmus americana
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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