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B. S. Walters

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Usually in upland, often sandy, forests, associated with oaks. The pignuts are here treated in a broad sense. Some maintain as distinct the red hickory or sweet pignut, C. ovalis (Wang.) Sarg. The distinction can be made with certainty only in the late fall, with fully mature fruit present. The husks split all the way to the base in C. ovalis and only halfway in C. glabra. Unfortunately, even this character, like others, is not fully reliable, for intermediates occur. Carya ovalis, when older, characteristically has “shaggy” or scaly bark, while in C. glabra the bark remains tight and not scaly. There seems to be little correlation among the other characteristics used by various authors. The distribution of the two “species” is essentially the same, but the "ovalis" type is the usual one in Michigan and "glabra" appears to be relatively rare, although many specimens cannot be positively referred to either, in the absence of mature or unambiguous fruit.

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