The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
State’s hickory trees having a fall bonanza
It’s like a crate of Legos crashed in the toy section of Walmart.
“Clean-up in aisle five,” said Cathy Hagadorn, executive director of the Deer Pond Farm nature sanctuary in Sherman, owned by the Connecticut Audubon Society.
Only it’s the green-brown husks of hickory nuts littering Deer Pond Farm’s hiking trails.
By most accounts, the state’s hickories are having a fall bonanza — a mast year, when they produce nuts by the bushel.
“It’s a bumper crop,” said Sean McNamara, owner of the Redding Nursery. “It’s good news.”
However, mast years are not always uniform. Bruce Bartlett, Kent’s tree warden, said the hickory nut clutter he’s seen is noticeable, but not as thick as other years.
“I’d say it’s moderate,” said Bartlett, who lives in Cornwall. “But it’s there.”
Nut masts years are what keep the natural world alive in Connecticut.
Rodents depend on them to help them make it through the winter. Squirrels, blue Jays and red-bellied woodpeckers cache them, hiding them away for midwinter rations. Wild turkey, deer and black bear all graze on what’s fallen on the ground.
In turn, the animals that eat mice and voles and chipmunks profit. If the rodents are fat and happy and multiplying, foxes, bobcats and coyotes, hawks and owls will have easy pickings.
Because oak trees are one of the predominant trees in the state forest, their acorns, in mast years, are an ecological Thanksgiving. There’s food for everyone.
This year, it’s spottier. J.P. Barsky, a research technician with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, is monitoring 12 sites in the state for the acorn crops. In some places, like the Northwest Corner, it’s on the spare side. In Southbury, there are a lot of acorns.
Barskey said the oaks in eastern Connecticut — hit hard by drought and Gypsy moth defoliation in past years — are recovering nicely, with a good acorn crop.
As for hickory nuts, no one’s studying them.
“But anecdotally, I’m seeing them,” Barsky said. “I’m a weekend warrior and I go out on my bicycle and they’re on the road.”
There are four native species of hickory trees in the — shagbark, pignut, mockernut and bitternut.
Hickory trees don’t grow in groves. Instead, they usually stand out amidst the surrounding hardwoods.
McNamara, of Redding Nursery, said that in the 19th century, farmers clearing their land for fields would spare hickories and oaks, then feed their nuts to their pigs — hence pignuts.
“That’s why you’ll see big hickories and oaks standing next to old stone walls,” he said. “The farmers left them there for nut production.”
Wildlife hurries to harvest the nuts as well. Hagadorn, of Deer Pond Farm, said that along with the hickory nuts on the sanctuary trails, there are a lot of scurriers carrying away the bounty.
“It’s like Mardi Gras for the animals out there,” she said.
Shagbark hickory trees are common in the state in northern Fairfield and southern Litchfield counties. They get their name from their distinctive barkshedding look — as they grow bigger, the outer layer of bark hardens and sheds.
They look like a tree in need of a trim.
Shagbark and pignut — which are more common in the southern half of the state — are the most common hickory trees in the state, and they’re nuts are the most edible, even for humans equipped with a hammer, a nutpick and some patience.
The nuts fall off the tree encased in thick green husks. Their husks dry and split into four quarters, exposing the nut inside.
Hickory wood is hard — good for tool handles, firewood, furniture and hardwood floors. Andrew Jackson was known as Old Hickory because of his toughness — the only president with an arboricultural nickname.
Because trees grow and stay in place for decades, a shift in forest species can take a long time.
Climate change may make that happen in Connecticut.
The state’s Northwest Corner has a northern hardwood forest, dominated by maples, beech and birch.
The southern half of the state has a southern, oakhickory forest. In time, as climate change makes things warmer, that oakhickory forest may slowly supplant the northern maple and birch.
Shagbark hickories — while a bit unkempt — should be welcomed. Along with nuts, their slags of dried bark shelter overwintering insects that treeclambering birds like nuthatches can feed on as well.
“It’s the epitome of the Giving Tree,” Hagadorn said. “It’s definitely a good tree to hug.”