Not all hickory nuts are created equally The Shell Bark Hickory IMO is the only hickory nut worth picking up and picking out. At least if you have them growing in your woods. I have 4 Hickory Tree Species Shell Bark, Shag Bark, Pig Nut and Bitter Nut. The Shell Bark nuts are the biggest ones in the picture and the Shag Barks are the smaller of the two and second biggest of the 4. The Trees themselves Shag Bark and Shell Bark are very similar. The Shell barks are more of web like bark and not as shaggy. The Shel Bark Wood tents to be more straight grained and less knotty. The Shell Bark nut have much thinner hulls and shells and easily 2x to 2.5X bigger than the Shag Bark Nuts. Can gently crack the Shell Bark Nuts with a hammer and pull out halves almost as easy as pulling pecan halves out. The Flavor of the Shell Bark Nut is identical to that of the Shag Bark. Personally Hickory nut are tied with Black Walnuts for my favorite ice cream making and baking fetishes. LOL Someone asked me this morning why my nuts are so huge........... After laugh my backside off session....... I explained why I have such HUGE nuts and felt the need to make a couple post here there about the differences between my nuts and why one is bigger than the other.
Nice write up. I picked up some hickory nuts on the side of the road, with the hopes of germinating them and growing a few. Looked they were all shag bark from the trees near by.
I have been all around the world, so many countries I have lost count, war zones, hazardous areas and been shot at, spat at and shat at but I have never seen a Hickory tree. Strange. Maybe I saw one and didn't know what I was looking at? Most of the stateside time has been in the West and Alaska so maybe that's the reason but I honestly don't know what one even looks like.
