(no subject)

[ksmith]

<td>hickory trees

trees in my yard. the sun seen through leaves. took an hour's hunt online, but I'm reasonably sure they're hickory trees. not sure which kind.</td>

Comments

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

Take a pic or scan a leaf and twig and I can probably figure it out to whether or not it is hickory (or hickory relative). If you have a nut that helps for being more specific.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

see your email

Thanks!

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

Yup, hickory. Not having a eastern tree book, I can't take it further, although, IIRC, the ridges on the fruit are involved in the key, along with the relative size of the leaflets.

Helloooo? This isn't 1970!

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

Shagbark Hickory? Carya ovata

V=http://www.cas.vanderbilt.edu/bioimages/pages/carya-compare-shag.htm

Googling "carya" and "key" did the trick. See if you get the same answer.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the confirmation. I went bonkers trying to ID by leaves alone, and found conflicting info online. Wasn't sure if I had ash or hickory, which was an improvement over thinking I had elm--we are not a naturalist, no we're not--but ash are prone to disease, and I didn't want to have to deal with that. Finally realized that I needed to look at the nuts, stupid, which was when I realized I was probably dealing with hickory.

Not shagbark. Possibly pignut.

Re: Helloooo? This isn't 1970!

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

http://www.cas.vanderbilt.edu/bioimages/pages/carya-fruits.htm

Carya cordiformis--Bitternut hickory. Small fruit, and those four ridges set it apart.

Plus the bark was wrong for shagbark--smoothish, furrowed grey. I will confess that I have one small hickory that *might* be a shagbark, except that it's small and doesn't seem quite as shaggy as it should be.

This drove me crazy on Friday. Gee, I've only lived here 18 years...

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

ash vs hickory: you don't look at the leaves, ash has opposite leaves (leaves in pairs along the stems), and hickory is alternate.

elm vs hickory: hickories have compound leaves with an odd number of leaflets, elm leaves are simple.

Or you could shout out to your FL. :)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Alternate mixed me up, because the five-seven leaflets in a hickory leaf *are* opposite one another...but the leaves in their entirety are alternate.

And the ash I thought I might have had a very short stem. No stem with these leaflets.

And the bark was different. But the nut was the kicker. Ash, iirc, have spinnies. Samaras?? Not nuts.

Elm. Simple. yeah, we learned that lesson first.

Not a naturalist. Good thing I have an FL, or I'd be a goner in the woods.

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it gets tricky even when you mostly know the technical terms (ask me about the knock-down-drag-out over "pilose" vs. "villose".) although a well designed key will often lead you to a dead end if you take a wrong turn.

Samara, yup, your basic nude winged seed. Similar to maples.

Really, though, if you can recognize the basic local trees, you are doing pretty well.

Ash, Chestnut, Elm, Hickory, Maple, Oak, Pine, Spruce/Fir. I'm probably missing one or two for your area.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

(ask me about the knock-down-drag-out over "pilose" vs. "villose".)

Both mean "covered with long, soft hair." Do folks argue over the length of the hair, or whether it's animal or plant?

Scientists. Leave 'em alone with the beer too long, and they start arguing technicalities.

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

It was all plants, and yeah it was over which as well as if. I won. Because I keyed it down to the right plant. Hah!

That was before the beer.

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

I strongly suspect that there is a mature native American chestnut within pollinator insect range of my Chinese chestnut tree (planted two years ago from Stark's, one survived...), because the volunteer chestnuts that have sprung up around the yard have leaves that aren't shiny and waxy like Chinese chestnut trees, also, chestnuts aren't supposed to be self-fertile, and the tree bears nuts.

I'm tempted to plant some of the nuts at a pocket conservation area a mile away (went there a few days ago, and the receding water was still impressive, it's along a small river, and it quite obviously is flood plain).

Arnold Arboretum in Boston, the last time I was there years ago, had a grove of different types of nut trees--shagback and shellbark and other hickories, various types of walnuts, etc. There was a camellia [camilla sinesis or some such?] tree better know by the vernacular for its dried, often smoked or fermented some such, leaves--tea, near a large hickory with very large nuts.

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

If you have a mature American chestnut nearby, you are pretty lucky! The Chinese chestnut is apparently self fertile...we had a solo tree that produced plentiful fruit with no pollation source nearby. It is possible that the seedlings are displaying juvenile foliage and will produce more typical leaves in the future. Softer and less shiny leaves are more typical of C. americana though.

Yep. Camellia sinesis...likely a Korean clone...those being the hardiest. Arnold Arboretum is one of the places where people are breeding hardier (flowering) camellias for marinal areas like Boston.

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

Arnold Arboretum is where Harvard botanists have been planting specimens they've collected, or cultured from cuttings, etc., for decades--it's a Boston park, and one time that I went there, a mounted policeman came out of the brush as I was entering the park, and no joke, the horse saw me raise my camcorder and point it, and the horse-posed-, and held the pose until I lowered the camcorder! The police officer didn't seem to be giving the horse any direction, the horse did the posing and dropping the pose, apparently of its own volition! Harvard leases the park for use as a botanical garden for something like $1 a year, on a very long-term lease.

The young chestnut trees are at least two or three years old. Rabbits love to chomp through them in winter...

I have noticed that the leaves on the Chinese chestnut tree that are on old interior branches, don't have the waxy shiny dark greenness of the rest of the leaves on the tree. The pollination of the tree isn't high--I get maybe 100 nuts a year from it, with most of the burrs not developing actual nuts as opposed to shells that don't have nuts in them. During pollination season the stamen and pistils get covered in bees and other pollinating insects.

I know that years ago there had been a mature American chestnut tree in the center of town, which was cut down as part of a strip mall that was put in, and the center of town is about a mile and a half away.