Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses

MOCKERNUT HICKORY

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Carya tomentosa (Poir. ) Nutt.

Cherokee County, Kansas

Height: Trees to 65 feet

Family: Juglandaceae - Walnut Family

Flowering Period: April, May

Trunks:

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

Twigs:

Reddish brown to grayish brown, rigid, appressed-pubescent to tomentose; leaf scars cordate; pith brown, solid; buds reddish brown, ovoid.24 to .6 inch, apex obtuse to acute, scales rusty-tomentose.

Leaves:

Deciduous, alternate, odd-pinnately compound, 8 to 14 inches; petiole 2 to 2.8 inches, tomentose; leaflets (5)7-9, obovate to ovate or elliptic, not sickle-shaped, 1.6 to 8 inches long, .8 to 3.2 inches wide, base more or less equally wedge-shaped or rounded, margins serrate, glabrescent or with tufts of hairs more or less uniformly spaced, apex acute to acuminate, lower surfaces light green, hirsute with tufts of hairs and scattered scales, veins sometimes tomentose, upper surfaces green, hirsute primarily along veins; petiolule of terminal leaflet .08 to .5 inch.

Flowers:

Inflorescences staminate catkins 3, on wood of the previous or current year, pendent, cylindric, 100-200-flowered, 3.2 to 5.2 inches; peduncles .2 to .6 inch, pedicels more or less absent; pistillate spikes terminating new growth, 1-2-flowered; peduncles 0 to .12 inch; pedicels absent. Flowers unisexual, more or less radially symmetric; staminate: sepals 0 or 4, connate proximally; petals absent; stamens 2-10; pistillate: sepals 0 or 4, connate proximally; petals absent; pistil 1, ovary inferior, 1-locular; styles 2; stigmas yellowish green.

Fruit:

September-October; nuts enclosed in dehiscent husk, 1-2, globose to ellipsoid, 1.2 to 1.8 inches long, 1.2 to 2 inches wide, husk reddish brown to brown, splitting to middle or nearly to base, smooth or sometimes barely 4-ridged, with scattered scales; nuts tan, spherical to ellipsoid, compressed, 1.3 to 1.6 inches long, 1 to 1.3 inches wide, 4-angled; seed 1.

Habitat:

Well-drained soils in mesic to dry upland forests and woodlands, rocky slopes, ridges, infrequently floodplain forests.

Distribution:

Scattered in east 1/3

Origin:

Native

Comments:

The leaf petioles of Carya tomentosa are usually conspicuously hairier than the leaf petioles of our other hickories.

Mockernut hickory pistillate inflorescence