WATER HICKORY (_Hicoria aquatica_) is known as swamp hickory in South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana; bitter pecan in Mississippi and Louisiana, and water bitternut in Tennessee and South Carolina. The northern limit of this species is in Virginia near Mobjack bay, the southern limit in the Caloosa valley, Florida, west to the Brazos river, Texas, and north to southern Illinois. The wood is hard, heavy, strong, but rather brittle; the sapwood is thick and often is nearly white, while the heartwood is dark brown. It is the most porous of the hickories, and the pores are distributed generally through the annual rings of growth. In other hickories they are largely restricted to the inner part of each ring, though a few are dispersed through all parts. In swamp hickory there is little difference in appearance between the wood grown early in the season and that produced later. The tree is a rapid grower. It is an inhabitant of deep swamps, and if the land is inundated a considerable part of the year, the tree seems to grow all the better. At its best it may attain a height of 100 feet, and a diameter of two, but that size is unusual. The nut is small and wrinkled, and when broken open, pockets of red bitter powder are frequently found inside the shell. Usually the nuts are too bitter to be eaten, but it is said that near the western limit of the tree’s range, nuts are sometimes edible. The only reported uses for the wood are fuel and fencing. It is poor fence material, because, like other hickories, it decays in a short time when exposed to weather. The wood of this genus is rich in foods on which decay-producing fungi feed. Fungus is a low order of plant life which sends its hair-like threads into the wood cells and consumes the material found there; but numerous insects bore into wood to procure food. Few woods suffer from such attacks more than hickory. Even after it is seasoned and manufactured into commodities, it is frequently attacked by various species of powder post beetles, and much injury results. Water hickory while yet standing is often greatly damaged by the larvæ of certain moths which find their way into the soft wood just under the bark and tunnel minute galleries which subsequently fill with brown substance. According to R. B. Hough, these brown streaks in water hickory are hard enough to turn the edge of steel tools. They not only damage the structure of the wood but spoil its appearance.