Photo: Te Chang — CC BY 4.0 · source
Survives zone 6 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Black hickory nut quality is inconsistently documented — some sources describe the kernel as sweet, others as bitter, and the nuts are notably hard to crack given their thick shell relative to a small kernel, with little historical record of the species being cultivated or gathered for food the way shagbark or shellbark hickory are. It is best regarded as a marginal, unpredictable hickory for eating rather than a reliable food source.
- Hardiness
- Zone 6–9
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Nut
- Ripens
- Sept–Oct
- Mature size
- Tree 15–25 m — not containerable
- Light
- Full sun
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.5 (near-neutral; lime-tolerant)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- South-central and southeastern United States — centered on Texas and extending into Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Kansas, and southern Illinois and Indiana, typically on dry, sandy or rocky upland woods, though it also occurs in bottomlands and low wet woods.
- Status
- Wild
- Years to fruit
- 6–10 yrs
- Growth speed
- Slow-growing and generally a smaller tree than most other hickories, typically reaching around 15 m at maturity.
- Spacing
- 900 cm (354 in) apart — about 81 m² (872 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Pinnately compound, with usually 7 (sometimes 5) lanceolate leaflets, finely serrate and rusty-scaly when young, becoming shiny dark green above and pale below as the yellow peltate scales wear off.
- Root system
- Deep taproot typical of the genus, well suited to the dry, rocky or sandy upland sites the species favors, but a significant obstacle to transplanting older stock.
- Fruit description
- A small, thick-shelled, roundish red-brown nut up to about 4 cm long in a comparatively thin husk; kernel flavor is inconsistently reported as sweet or bitter depending on the source, and the shell is notably hard to crack.
- Propagation
- Propagated from seed, which requires cold stratification and is best sown in a cold frame as soon as ripe or stored moist and stratified for spring sowing. As with the rest of the genus, the taproot develops early and strongly, so seed is best sown in deep pots and seedlings moved to their permanent position as soon as they can be handled.
- Pollination
- DICHOGAMOUS — needs Type I + Type II cultivars (pecan); hickories benefit from a 2nd tree
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Tolerates sandy, loamy and clay soils across a mildly acid to mildly alkaline range and, true to its dry-upland native habitat, tolerates drier and poorer sites than many other hickories; routine fertilizing is not documented as necessary.
How it spreads. A single-trunked, non-suckering tree that reproduces only by seed.
Growing tips. Retains the genus-wide deep taproot and is correspondingly difficult to establish once past the seedling stage; young trees benefit from winter protection in their first year or two. It is monoecious and self-fertile, though cross-pollination with a second tree generally improves seed set. Carya species hybridize where their ranges overlap, and black hickory is known to intergrade with mockernut hickory (C. tomentosa) in parts of its range, which historically caused taxonomic confusion between the two.
Grow journal
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