I found some great little shagbark nuts this afternoon beneath a streetside tree in town. I don’t see a graft scar on the tree but it could be below the soil line. Nuts are medium size and crack out fairly easily and have a strong “maple” aroma and a light and nutty hickory flavor. Squirrels are well into this tree - I plan to stop by later to see if I can score a few more. Look like a variety anyone is familiar with?
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Those look great.
We’ve had no rain since some time at end of June. My pecans have mostly all aborted. Jury is still out on hickories… they’re holding, but idk if they’re going to have filled.
I have 8 or 10 pecans on trees planted over the last 5 years here at my home. I’m looking forward to trying Avalon. Barring incident, next year should see a small but significant crop. The trees grew very well this year after giving them some fertilizer and a bit of chicken manure hauled out of the chicken barn.
I checked a dozen seedling pecan trees growing in a park yesterday. Only one of them is large enough to be interesting. Most of the trees have a heavy crop this year. Squirrels are already pulling some but not yet eating them.
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We’ve had the opposite here. Consistent rains since spring right up to early August. Corn here is the tallest I’ve seen in years. NOTHING like last year (bone dry). It’s only recently gotten drier, so hopefully the nuts are well-filled this year. Hickories are dropping now; pecans should start to drop in a week or two.
I went fishing last week… and on the bank of this small wild river… there are a couple of huge shagbark hickories. They were not dropping nuts yet. I have harvested from them in the past a few times.
I am in southern TN… few more weeks…
TNHunter
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I have a nice sized shagbark tree that’s dropping green nuts. Squirrels are going to town on them. Nuts have a nice flavor that just begs to be put into banana bread. If only cracking them was not so tedious!
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I’d love to find a big shagbark hickory to collect bark to make extract with.
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With a knife and hammer… you can split them perfectly in two in about 3 seconds.
With compound diagonal cutting pliers you can get out nice quarters of nut meat easily and pertty quick too.
TNHunter
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Think I found me a Major nut in a grove with lots of historical grafts and multi-grafted trees. Unfortunately, I don’t yet know exactly which section of which tree it came from…
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Pretty sure this is a Niblack. The tree is huge, with an obvious (if you know what to look for) graft scar at ground level.
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Here’s a nice wild shagbark my friend Bob found a few years ago and showed me. 41% kernel, weighing 3g. Cracks out perfect halves almost every time (even before curing), sometimes they are still connected cracking wholes. Delicious, very flavorful, and quite productive. I haven’t grafted this one yet, but might call it something like Bob’s Big Boy lol.
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Here’s another one… my friend Chris B showed me this years ago. It’s a bitshag hybrid. 47% kernel at 3g. Cracks well when cured. Very thin shell, taking after the bitternut. Very productive tree but nut tastes somewhat bland, typical of some bitshags. Calling it “Homeville.”
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Wow, what a neat looking nut! Was going to ask “Any bitterness?” because the bit is so obvious in the those ridges in the kernel. Shame it’s bland! How’s the oil content? Maybe a good oil nut?
I just ate a few and take back what i said about it being bland! That’s good news. It’s not wuite as flavorful as a regular maple-overtone shag though, but it’s good and you’ll want to eat it.
Also, no f1 bitshag is ever bitter. The bitter trait is clearly recessive. Theoretically an f1 backcrossed to bitternut could be bitter, but even then I’m blanking on examples of that.
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Very interesting about the bitter trait being recessive. Now I’m curious about Pleas, which isn’t fully bitter, but very definitely expresses some bitterness, especially as the nuts overcure. And some people don’t like them just because there’s a hint of bitterness even when they’re fresh.
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High probability the bitterness genetics are not quite standard dominant/recessive. Pleas might be a more advanced generation than F1, say F2 or F3 in which case it could have turned on the bitterness genes via segregation.
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