230 



The Hickories 



The pistillate flowers are densely brown-hair}^ The fruit is subglobose or obovoid 

 to pear-shaped, rusty brown and slightly winged, the husk rather thin, sphtting 

 rather tardily into 4 valves; nut white or nearly so, laterally flattened, 4-celled 

 at the base, its shell moderately thin; seed sweet and edible. 



The species has been confused with Hicoria villosa, which it much resembles. 



7. MOCKER NUT Hicoria alba (Linnaeus) Britton 



Juglans alba Linnaeus. Jitglans tomentosa Poiret. Carya tomentosa Nuttall 



This handsome forest tree occurs in rich woods from Massachusetts and Ontario 

 to Nebraska, southward to Florida and Texas, having its greatest development in 

 numbers and size in the central states. Its maximum height is about 30 

 meters, with a trunk diameter of 1.5 m. It is also known as Mocker nut 



hickory, Butternut, White heart hickory. Black 

 hickory nut. Big bud. Red hickory. White hickory, 

 Big hickory nut, Hognut, Common hickory, and 

 Bull nut. 



The trunk is tall and straight in the forest, but 

 in the open it is often widely branched or forked. 

 The branches are stiff, upright, spreading, or often 

 drooping, forming, when not crowded, a nearly 

 cylindric tree. The bark is 12 to 20 Vmm, 

 thick, irregularly furrowed into broad, close, flat, 

 more or less scaly ridges of a dark or light 

 gray color. The twigs are stout, somewhat an- 

 gular and thickly covered with pale hairs, be- 

 coming round, nearly smooth, red-brown and 

 finally dark gray, and bearing large lenticels and 

 leaf scars. The terminal bud is ovoid, 12 to 25 

 mm. long, covered with imbricated scales, which are thick and coated with long 

 whitish hairs; the inner scales grow to about 3.5 cm. long, are silky hairy, often 

 red on the inner surface and fall off after the flowers appear. The leaves are 

 very fragrant, 2 to 3 dm. long, their leaf-stalk hairy, flattened and grooved, en- 

 larged at the base; the 5 to 9 leaflets are oblanccolate to oblong- lanceolate, 7 to 9 

 cm. long, the upper pair the largest and broadest above the middle, 8 to 20 cm. long; 

 they are tapering or rounded at the nearly equal, sessile base, taper-pointed, 

 coarsely or finely toothed on the margin; the terminal leaflet is broadest above 

 the middle and tapers to its shghtly winged stalk, which is 6 to 12 mm. long; 

 they are light green, softly hair)' when unfolding, becoming firm, dark yellow-green 

 and somewhat shining above, pale, often yellowish or brownish, softly hairy along 

 the stout, yellow midrib beneath. The staminate catkins are in stalked clusters 

 of 3, loosely hairy, 10 to 15 cm. long; bract 3 or 4 times longer than the ovate, 

 blunt lobes of the perianth; stamens 4, their anthers nearly sessile, oblong, notched, 



Fig. 188. Mocker Nut. 



