Shagbark is largest of the true hickories. The pecans are not usually regarded as true hickories from the wood-user’s viewpoint. Some shagbarks are 120 feet high and four feet in diameter, but the average size is about seventy-five tall, two in diameter. There is confusion of names among all the hickories, and shagbark is misnamed and over-named as often as any of the others. Many persons do not know shagbark and shellbark apart, though the ranges of the two species lie only partly in the same territory. Shagbark is known as shellbark hickory, shagbark hickory, shellbark, upland hickory, hickory, scaly bark hickory, white walnut, walnut, white hickory, and red heart hickory. Most of the names refer to the bark, which separates into thin strips, often a foot or more long, and six inches or more wide; and this remains more or less closely attached to the trunk by the middle, giving the shaggy appearance to which the tree owes its common name. The leaf-buds are large and ovate, with yellowish-green and brown scales. The leaves are compound and alternate; they have rough stalks containing five or seven leaflets; they are sessile, tapering to a point and having a rounded base. The lower pair of leaflets is markedly different from the rest in shape; sharply serrate and thin; dark green and glabrous above; lighter below. The flowers do not appear until the leaves have fully matured. They grow in catkins; the staminate ones are light green, slender, and grow in groups of three on long peduncles; the pistillate ones grow in spikes of from two to five flowers. The fruit grows within a dense, green husk, shiny and smooth on the outside, opening in four parts. The nut is nearly white, four-angled, and flattened at the sides. The kernel is sweet and of a strong flavor. This tree’s range is not much short of 1,000,000 square miles, but it is not equally abundant in all parts. It grows from southern Maine to western Florida; is found in Minnesota and Nebraska, and southward beyond the Mississippi. It is most common and of largest size on the western slopes of the southern Appalachian mountains and in the basin of the lower Ohio river. Its favorite habitat is on low hills, or near streams and swamps, in rich and moderately well drained soil. The hickories have long tap roots, and they do best in soils which the tap roots can penetrate, going down like a radish. The root system makes most hickories difficult trees to transplant. Early in life they do a large part of their growing under ground, and when that growth is interrupted, as it must be in transplanting, the young tree seldom recovers. Those who would grow hickories for timber, nuts, or as ornaments, should plant the seed where the tree is expected to remain. Most of the planting of hickory in the forest is done by squirrels which bury nuts, with the apparent expectation of digging them up later. Occasionally one is missed, and a young tree starts.