For me, one of the pleasures of growing up in the country was attending a small country church. My friends and I amused ourselves there by such activities as playing games, picking plums, looking for tadpoles, and collecting hickory nuts. Many hickory nuts fell in the fall from a large scraggly-looking tree where the cars were parked. We worked hard to smash the nuts with rocks to get tidbits of the delicious nut kernel. Such are the memories of county life, and I cherish them.
Hickory trees are common throughout the United States, and in Georgia the mockernut is the most common. The tree is also known as white hickory due to the light color
of the wood. The tree’s common name refers to how the nut seems to mock you when you find, after great effort to break the nut out of its shell, that the kernel is so small. However, most find the effort worthwhile. In the trees’ scientific name, Carya tomentosa, Carya is a greek word for nut and tomentosa is a Latin word for hairy (referring to the stems and leaves). Hickory trees are easily identified as hickory, but deciding the kind of hickory can sometimes be difficult due to variable characteristics.
It is not so easy to identify hickory trees. When sources say the mockernut hickory should have 7 to 9 leaflets a
nd sometimes 5 on a leafstalk, the information sounds too general to be very useful. However, there may in fact be 5, 7 or 9 leaflets on the same tree. One has to look for the most common number. In addition, one picture of a mockernut may clearly show teeth on leaflet margins while another picture shows fine teeth or no teeth. One picture may show big, ovate leaves and another may show more slender leaves. It is important to be careful examining hickory trees and to carefully weigh features for a correct identification. For great pictures on this and other hickories, I recommend Jeffrey S. Pippen’s site “North Carolina Wildflowers, Shrubs, and Trees.”
Mockernut hickory trees grow more commonly in upland areas that include rocky hills and wooded slopes than lowland areas. It flourishes in full or partial sun, moist or dry conditions, and fertile, sandy, or clay soil. Trees grow slowly and live a long time. Nuts are produced after 25 years, and may continue to be produced for 200 years or more. Trees have been known to live 500 years.
The mockernut hickory has a well-developed taproot and spreading lateral roots. This gives it the ability to live in dry conditions and be stable in high winds. Trees can be 90 or more feet in height and 3 feet in diameter. 
The crown in the forest is narrowly oblong, with spreading branches. The lower half of the trunk has no branches, but limbs from the crown droop down. In the open, the crown is broad and open but rather ragged. Trunk bark is dark gray and coarse with forking and irregular ridges divided by furrows. Bark is 1/2 to 3/4 inches thick. Bark on branches is not so coarse. Twigs are gray to gray-brown, hairy, and relatively stout. Stout, hairy leafstalks called rachis are 8 to 12 inches long and are attached alternately to branches. These leafstalks have 7 to 9 leaflets (rarely 5) attached to them in a pinnately compound arrangement. Leaflets are ovate and up to 8 inches long. They are almost half as wide,
and the widest point is just over half the length to the tip. The margins of leaflets usually have fine teeth, and the tips are acute. Leaflets are dark green or yellow-green on top, and more pale and hairy on the lower surfaces. They turn bright yellow in the autumn. The leaflets are gradually larger as you go towards the end of the leafstalk, and the terminal leaflet gradually narrows into a stalk. When crushed, the leaflets are very fragrant.
Separate male and female flowers are produced on the same tree, in early spring just when leaves begin to appear. Male flowers are drooping catkins, produced in clusters of 3. These catkins are 4 to 5 inches long, and their central stalks are hairy. Each male flower has several short stamens that are partially covered by a hairy 3-lobed bract. Female flowers are produced in short spikes at the end of twigs. Each spike has 2 to 5 flowers. Each flower has a round green calyx with 4 teeth along its upper rim. Flowers are pollinated by the wind. Fruit including husks are 1½ to 2 inches long. Husks are 1/8 to 1/4 inches thick, and turn from light green to dark brown before splitting into 4 segments releasing the nut. Nut shells are hard and thick, light brown, slightly flattened, and somewhat 4-angled. Kernels are small and slightly sweet and edible.
Everyone should learn to recognize the mockernut hickory, because it is as useful as it is common. The nuts are tasty, if you have the perseverance to crack them open. Hickory chips and charcoal are used to impart a hickory smoke flavor to meat and other foods. The bark can be used to make a hickory flavored syrup called hickory syrup. The wood is denser, stiffer and harder than either white oak or hard maple, and about 80% of all harvested hickory wood is used to manufacture tool handles. It is also valuable in making baseball bats, ladder rungs, tool handles, flooring, and furniture. North American Indians used the tree for medical purposes. Kids play with hickory nuts. Where there has been a need for the mockernut’s particular characteristics, it has been very much appreciated.