Fall 1999

[TEXT ARCHIVE WEB-PUBLISHED MARCH 2002.
ORIGINAL PRINT PUBLICATION DATE: FALL 1999.]

A Shaggy Bark Story:
Hickory Nuts and Nuttier

By Patti Peltier

If I had to pick just one tree as a symbol of the early days of Chicago Wilderness, I'd pick shagbark hickory (Carya ovata).

"The shagbark seems like a symbol of the pioneer age, with its hard sinewy limbs and rude, shaggy coat, like the pioneer himself in fringed deerskin hunting shirt," wrote Donald Culross Peattie in his Natural History of Trees of Eastern & Central North America. Pioneers and Native Americans alike made daily use of the shagbark hickory's many virtues. First, there was its value for food. Hickory nuts are not only edible, they're delicious. Many people who grew up in Chicago Wilderness remember fondly the old tradition of gathering and eating these nuts each fall.

Some people still gather them, but others claim it's harder to experience the pleasure of hickory nuts today. "People who want to gather hickory nuts to eat are the losers," says Dick Young, environmental consultant for the Kane County Forest Preserve District. "Squirrels and ground squirrels and all other sorts of creepy, crawly critters delight in the nuts, and they get them first. Somehow they just seem to know which ones are the best."

Andrew Jackson, the battle-hardened seventh president of the United States, was dubbed "Old Hickory" by his troops as a testament to his toughness. Pioneers took advantage of the hickory's toughness, using its wood to make axe handles, wagon wheel spokes, and other tools that had to withstand hard use.

Hickory wood's density causes it to generate great heat. According to Peattie, "a cord of hickory is almost the equivalent in thermal units of a ton of anthracite." Pioneers burned it night and day to keep their cabins warm. Green hickory wood is still prized for the flavor its smoke gives to meat.

"You can see a shagbark hickory at a great distance," according to the Morton Arboretum's Craig Johnson. "It announces itself by its famous exfoliating bark and remarkable silhouette." True to its name, this hickory's smoke-gray bark warps away from the trunk in strips six to eight inches wide and a foot or more in length. Sometimes, in an amazing bit of natural engineering, the bark strips are loose and curling at both ends, attached to the trunk in the middle. Around older trees, the ground may be littered with the cast-off scales.

The shagbark has an impressive stature, sometimes growing 120 feet tall. (The biggest shagbark hickory identified so far in the Chicago Wilderness region through the Treemendous Trees program of the Openlands Project is in Bemis Woods, one of Cook County's forest preserves. The tree is 5.8 feet in circumference, 89.75 feet tall, and has a crown spread of 50 feet.) The hickory's leaves, too, are large. Made of five (and sometimes seven) leaflets, the overall leaf is 8 to 14 inches long. Early in the fall, the leaves briefly burst into a mustard yellow show. "It's a color that's unduplicated by any other tree I know," Johnson said. "The shagbark hickory is a fall color virtuoso, performing in a stellar manner but never overstating its presence."

Due to its great usefulness, much of the old-growth shagbark hickory was cleared during the 1800s. Sadly, it is not being reintroduced in today's home landscapes. "It's a challenging plant to grow in a nursery field because it has a taproot that makes it difficult to transplant," Johnson noted. "It's not readily available, so it is seldom planted."

If you're willing to wait a little longer, Young notes that you can have a hickory in your yard by planting the nuts — or letting the squirrels help plant them. That's what happens in the woods, where shagbark — and its cousins bitternut (Carya cordiformis) and king nut (Carya laciniosa) — reproduces easily. "In the new parcels we're buying in Kane County," says Young, "we plant hickory nuts and encourage their regeneration. They come back readily."

Although the proliferation of non-native trees and shrubs such as Eastern sugar maple and European buckthorn are compromising the growth of hickories and oaks alike, Wayne Schennum, Natural Resource Manager for McHenry County Conservation District, says hickories have an effective survival strategy. "Hickories can survive in shade longer than oaks," he explains. "As a sapling, shagbark will persist and persist and persist — waiting for an opening (in the canopy) so it can grow to size."

Those who want to witness this great friend of the pioneers can visit a majestic open-grown specimen at the Morton Arboretum, where it stands sentinel in Parking lot 25 at the entrance to the Schulenberg Prairie. Smaller specimens are easy to find in most any forest preserve that still has some original oak woods. Say hello to one this fall. You can admire its shaggy coat and ponder for a moment those people of long ago who collected its nuts for food, burned its branches for fuel, and paused for a moment, just like you, to enjoy its shade.

The Treemendous Trees program is an annual contest to determine the biggest trees of every species (both native and non-native) in the region. Winners are also submitted to state and national contests. Openlands is focusing its 1999 effort on native North American trees. Winners will be announced in December. To receive an entry form with measuring instructions, contact Glenda Daniel, (312) 427-4256, x228, email to her attention, openlands@aol.com, or fax your name and address to (312) 427-6251.