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Trees in the genus Carya (Ancient Greek: κάρυον "nut") are commonly known as hickory, derived from the Powhatan language of Virginia. The genus includes 17–19 species of deciduous trees with pinnately compound leaves and big nuts. Five or six species are native to China, Indochina, and India (State of Assam), 11 or 12 are from the United States, two to four are from Canada and four are found in Mexico.
Another Asian species, beaked hickory, previously listed as Carya sinensis, is now treated in a separate genus, Annamocarya, as Annamocarya sinensis.
Hickory flowers are small, yellow-green catkins produced in spring. They are wind-pollinated and self-incompatible. The fruit is a globose or oval nut, 2–5 cm (0.79–2.0 in) long and 1.5–3 cm (0.59–1.2 in) diameter, enclosed in a four-valved husk, which splits open at maturity. The nut shell is thick and bony in most species, and thin in a few, notably C. illinoinensis; it is divided into two halves, which split apart when the seed germinates.
Read more about Hickory: Species and Classification, Ecology, Tryma, Uses
Famous quotes containing the word hickory:
“Lincoln, six feet one in his stocking feet,
The lank man, knotty and tough as a hickory rail,
Whose hands were always too big for white-kid gloves,
Whose wit was a coonskin sack of dry, tall tales,
Whose weathered face was homely as a plowed field.”
—Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943)