United States / Grow / shellbark hickory

shellbark hickory

Carya laciniosa · Juglandaceae · all Carya records · Wikipedia

Is this one for your yard?

Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.

Carya laciniosa is on-list in the evidence table. This listing establishes the record's opening for shellbark hickory and stays specific to the cited species entry.

Two hardiness assertions have their own trails in hardiness evidence. The fire-source set is separately marked limited evidence, and its rows do not use those climate assertions as substitutes for listing support.

The related plants, range evidence, and genus collection offer distinct ways to compare this hickory. Their information remains contextual, leaving the on-list status, source depth, and two hardiness assertions at the scopes recorded above.

Form: tree
Mature height: ~50 ft
Light: Full sun
Water need: high
Rated in: eastern US

On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
Fire ecology context
Placement evidence: 1 source placement record; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: eastern US
Maintenance

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AL, AR, DC, DE, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MD, ME, MI, MO, MS, NC, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WV.
Native range: Current cited native range in AL, AR, DE, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MD, MI, MO, MS, NC, NY, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WV.
Introduced / established
USDA hardiness: Documented minimum 4b; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
Broader regional context
Federal context

How to read this page

The status above is computed from the cited rows below: independent recommendations can support a fire-resistant result, an avoid row can produce keep-away, and disagreement stays visible as conflict. Placement notes preserve each source’s own scheme rather than translating unlike rules into one scale. This is evidence about a plant, not permission to plant it in every part of the defensible space; Zone 0 remains noncombustible.

Native and introduced range evidence

These are exact U.S. botanical-area records from the cited range source. Native and introduced describe biogeographic relationship, not fire performance or planting approval. Doubtful and extinct rows stay visible but do not count as current presence.

Current native

23

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

23 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Alabama (AL)
Arkansas (AR)
Delaware (DE)
Georgia (GA)
Iowa (IA)
Illinois (IL)
Indiana (IN)
Kansas (KS)
Kentucky (KY)
Maryland (MD)
Michigan (MI)
Missouri (MO)
Mississippi (MS)
North Carolina (NC)
New York (NY)
Ohio (OH)
Oklahoma (OK)
Pennsylvania (PA)
South Carolina (SC)
Tennessee (TN)
Texas (TX)
Virginia (VA)
West Virginia (WV)

The lossless worldwide derivative is retained once in the research corpus; object pages repeat only exact U.S. areas needed by the local lens. The JSON twin carries the same page assertions.

Plant hardiness evidence

These values describe the plant source. Your ZIP zone comes from the separate 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Whole-zone values stay whole-zone, and a single unresolved value is not treated as a tolerance range. Different source boundaries stay separate: overlapping statements are compared independently, while only ranges with no shared zone are called a conflict.

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector · record carya-laciniosa · 2016-wayback · as of 2026-08-26

Source prints 6 · single-value meaning unresolved · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Carya laciniosa · exact match.

Source location: Cold Hardiness Zone field in the recovered selector record.

Not used for comparison: The recovered selector prints one Cold Hardiness Zone value but does not define it as a minimum threshold or a one-zone range.
USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record CALA21 · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 4b · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: -22°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Carya laciniosa · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 70612, Temperature, Minimum (°F).

Where its sources say to plant it

Placement rules below use each source's own distances or named zones, tied to its rating. They are not interchangeable with the directory's current Zone 0 guidance.

Eastern United States Fire Performance Plant Selector: Landscape Zone 3 — 10–30 ft from the structure; thin vegetation, remove debris, and minimize plant massing [Fire Performance Plant Selector landscape zone] (with its recommendation)

The evidence

Grouped by what each source concluded. Primary evidence rated the plant itself (a lab, field program, or original curation); corroboration compiled or republished another source's rating and resolves to its root lineage.

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · Wikipedia · ITIS

Carya laciniosa (Shellbark hickory). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/carya-laciniosa/. Last verified 2026-08-23.