A Fall Field Guide Nuts

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Fortunately, the two most desirable nut hickories display a distinctive trait belied by their names: The shellbark hickory (Carya laciniosa) has rough, loose bark that separates in narrow strips; the shagbark hickory (C. ovata) has an even more distinctly fringed trunk, with long, loose strips of bark that often shed and accumulate at the foot of the tree. Both types bear a nut encased in a thick, green husk that, when ripe, separates to the base in four parts. The shagbark hickory usually has five leaflets per leaf and produces relatively thin-shelled nuts; the shellbark generally sports seven leaflets per leaf and yields thick-shelled (but nonetheless meaty and tasty) nuts. Another common thick-husked variety, the mockernut hickory (C. tomentosa), yields sweet but small (some would say minuscule) nutmeats within a thick shell; the mockernut's seven or nine leaflets per leaf give off a characteristically pungent odor when crushed.

The pignut hickory (C. glabra), like the shagbark, has five leaflets per leaf, but each nut is encased in a thin husk that seldom separates all the way to the base. Depending on the individual tree, the nuts may taste sweet or bitter. One of the most widely distributed hickories, and the least desirable for nuts, is the bitternut (C. cordiformis). Luckily, it's easy to identify. The bitternut hickory has the smallest leaves in the family-seven to nine leaflets on a relatively short stem-and the buds at the ends of its twigs are bright yellow. The nut husks are thin and flecked with yellow.

Like walnuts, hickories keep well in the shell once husked and dried. They're easier to crack than walnuts or butternuts, but the job still calls for a hammer or some other tool of brute force.

Pecans

Actually a hickory, the pecan (Carya illinoensis) is our most important native nut tree and has earned a special niche in our culture and cuisine. The pecan is the ideal nut: easy to harvest, thin-shelled, meaty and delicious. Little wonder that many Indian tribes prized the pecan above all others. Native Americans are believed to have extended the range of the pecan by planting the nut as they traveled the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Spaniards exploring the New World, and, later, settlers venturing west of the Appalachians, encountered the huge spreading trees, some more than 120 feet tall and four feet in diameter, along the entire Mississippi River Valley and through much of eastern Texas and Oklahoma.

The trees were so numerous that it was common practice among our forebears to harvest pecans each year by selecting the largest, heaviest-bearing trees and cutting them down. This waste is particularly puzzling because the pecan, which bears its oval, green-husked fruit in clusters of three to 10, readily drops its nuts. Usually by mid-autumn, the husks split into four crescent-shaped pieces and the ripe, pale brown nuts fall to the ground.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print