No one could fairly call the shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) beautiful. It is a little on the rough-diamond side, with strong, often ungainly limbs that seem to have a variety of individual ideas on where or how to grow. coupled with a determination to carry them out.
If shagbarks were human they would probably wear farm overalls and cowhide boots, and be perfectly at home in them. And when the weather got rough they would keep plugging right along with all the hardiness that is built into their tough, enduring bodies.
Mood of Loveliness
There are surprising tones of subtle color when bright sunlight strikes across the curved, pale brown-gray slabs of loosened bark that give the tree its popular name.
And a quite different note of quiet expectancy is struck as spring starts the bully green coats of the twig-tip buds to swell larger and larger until, suddenly, they pop open under the pressure of baby leaves often accompanied by pendant catkins of surprising delicacy and charm.
Within a week or two this phase vanishes under the rising tide of the tree’s life cycle, but you are sure to recall it months later as you notice the ripening nuts that are one of the shagbark’s major achievements.
As you may have guessed. shagbarks become big trees—often 60 to 80 feet tall. They are adaptable fellows, too, provided you give them an abundance of rich, well-drained soil and an open location only moderately sloping.
No hickory species are easy to transplant when of any size, for its first major step in life is to send a sturdy taproot as far and straight down into the ground as possible. A nut-tree specialist can sell you one of a selected strain.
Finding wild seedings is difficult; they’re hard to identify. Planting a few top-quality nuts, screened to keep hungry mice and squirrels away, will work if you’re patient.
44659 by Robert S. Lemmon