The wood is heavy, hard, tough, and close-grained, and it is used for agricultural implements, axe handles, wagon stock, walking sticks, and baskets. In tensile strength and in the weight of compression, a block of hickory is as strong as wrought iron of the same length and weight. No other American wood burns with such brilliancy or gives out so much heat as the shagbark. The fruit of this tree is edible and sweet, and the nuts have greater commercial value than those of any other hickory.
The generic name, hicoria, is of Indian origin and comes from powcohicora, the name of an oily emulsion made from the pounded kernels of mockernuts by the Virginian Algonkins. Ovata (egg-shaped) refers to the shape of the leaves.
The shagbark is found from Southern Maine to Florida and westward to Central Kansas. The forests of Indiana, once the centre of the hickory trade, are now exhausted. The hickories are confined to Eastern North America alone, and are a genus of rare and very valuable trees.
Mockernut; or Whiteheart Hickory Hicoria alba
A tall tree 60 to 100 feet high, with a lofty head. Bark smooth, with close, wavy furrows,—a distinctive characteristic of the tree. Large, hard, round buds, without the dark outer scales peculiar to the shagbark, but with downy, yellowish brown scales. Coarse twigs; alternate leaf-scars. Nut somewhat hexagonal, with a very thick shell, and a hard, thick husk.
The mockernut is one of the most interesting of the hickories in winter. Its bark has a peculiar wavy appearance, entirely unlike any other member of the family. The hollows are close together in sinuous, shallow furrows, and the bark is so smooth over these fissures that it looks as if the ridges were trying to grow over and close up the hollows,—the effect is that of a thin, silk veil drawn over the trunk. The twigs are large and heavily moulded, with large oval buds, but they produce a pleasing effect of strength, instead of seeming ugly and coarse, like those of the horsechestnut. The curves and irregularities the stem takes in growing, and the general alternate plan of branching save the mockernut from being rigid and upright like the horsechestnut.
The mockernut is easily distinguished from every other hickory by its peculiar bark, its smooth, large buds, and coarse stems.
MOCKERNUT HICKORY
Hicoria alba
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