Common Name: Red Hickory
Scientific Name: Carya ovalis
Family name: Juglandeceae

• Can grow 80 to 100 feet high and 2 to 3 feet in diameter with a cyndrical crown.
• Bark is close, ridged, and grayish but also rough and platy. The twigs are slender, reddish-brown, rather smooth, and dotted with pale, slitlike lenticels.
• Leaves are smooth, 6 to 10 inches long, with 5-7 sessile, lance-shaped leaflets; leaflets have unequally rounded bases and finely toothed margins. They are green and dark yellow-green on the top.
• Fruit is a slightly compressed, thin-walled, oblong nut about 1 inch long; enclosed in a husk which splits into 4 thin valves. The seed is sweet.

The pignut hickory is a widely distributed tree ranging from central New York west to central Iowa, south to northeastern Arkansas and northern Mississippi; in the East, south to northern Alabama and Georgia but not on the coastal plain.

It's most abundant in mixed hardwood forests in association with other upland hickories, occuring on a variety of soils and sites but obtaining maximum development on cool, moist slopes.