Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses

BLACK HICKORY

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Carya texana Buckley

Schermerhorn Park, Cherokee County, Kansas

Height: Trees, to 50+ feet

Family: Juglandaceae - Walnut Family

Flowering Period: April, May

Trunks:

Erect; bark dark gray, fissures shallow to deep, splitting into non-exfoliating strips or plates; wood reddish brown, hard.

Twigs:

Reddish brown to grayish brown, rigid, glabrate or rusty-tomentose; leaf scars obtriangular to cordate; buds yellowish brown to reddish brown, ovoid, .2 to .35 inch, apex obtuse to acute, scales appressed-pubescent to tomentose, often with abundant yellow scales.

Leaves:

Deciduous, alternate, odd-pinnately compound, 8 to 11.2 inches; petiole .16 to .2 inch, glabrous, glabrate, or pubescent; leaflets (5-)7(-9), obovate to ovate or elliptic, not falcate, 1.2 to 6 inches long, .8 to 3.2 inches wide, base unequally cuneate or rounded, margins serrate, glabrous or with tufts of hairs more or less uniformly spaced, apex acuminate, lower surface light green, hirsute with tufts of hairs primarily on and near veins and scattered yellow scales, upper surface green, glabrous or glabrate; petiolule of terminal leaflet .04 to .16 inch.

Flowers:

Inflorescences staminate catkins 3, on wood of the previous or current year, pendent, cylindric, 75-200-flowered, 3.2 to 5.2 inches; peduncles ca. .04 inch, pedicels more or less absent; pistillate spikes terminating new growth, 1-2-flowered; peduncles 0 to .2 inch; pedicels absent. Flowers unisexual, more or less radially symmetric; staminate flowers: sepals 0 or 4, connate proximally; petals absent; stamens 4-6; pistillate flowers: sepals 0 or 4, connate proximally; petals absent; pistil 1, styles 2; stigmas yellow to red.

Fruit:

September-October; nuts enclosed in dehiscent husk, 1-2, globose to ovoid, .1.2 to 1.4 inch long, 1 to 1.4 inch wide inch, husk orangish brown to reddish brown, splitting to base or nearly so, slightly winged, sparsely hairy and with scattered scales, .08 to .16 inch thick; nuts tan, nearly globose to ovoid, slightly compressed, ca. 1 to .11 inch, not angled or 2-4-angled; seed 1.

Habitat:

Well-drained soils in dry upland forests and woodlands, rocky slopes.

Distribution:

East 1/5 of Kansas

Origin:

Native

Comments:

In Kansas, Carya texana is scattered and not abundant. Young trees are sometimes mistaken for Carya tomentose, but the deeply furrowed and blocky bark of older trees is distinctive (Stephens 1973).

Black hickory staminate inflorescence