Hickory
genus of plants
Hickory is a common name for trees composing the genus Carya, which includes 19 species accepted by Plants of the World Online.
Seven species are native to Southeast Asia in China, Indochina, and northeastern India (Assam), and twelve are native to North America. A number of hickory species are used for their edible nuts or for their wood.
Etymology
The name "hickory" derives from clipping of the native Algonquian (perhaps Powhatan) word pockerchicory, pocohicora, or something else similar which may be the name for the hickory tree's nut, or may be a milky drink made from such nuts. The genus name Carya is Ancient Greek: κάρυον, káryon, meaning "nut".
Description
Hickories are temperate to subtropical forest trees with pinnately compound leaves and large nuts. Most are deciduous, but one species (C. sinensis, syn. Annamocarya sinensis) in southeast Asia is evergreen.
Hickory flowers are small, yellow-green catkins produced in spring. They are wind-pollinated and self-incompatible.
The public source identifies “Hickory” as genus of plants. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hickory, genus and plants.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q142788. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hickory” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.