Carya glabra(Mill.) Sweet

pignut hickory

WFO wfo-0000588753 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Carya glabra, photographed by Claire Herzog
fig. a Claire Herzog, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 192490977
Carya glabra, photographed by Jay Pruett
fig. b Jay Pruett, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187379678
Carya glabra, photographed by Josiah Londerée
fig. c Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186381001
Carya glabra, photographed by Josiah Londerée
fig. d Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186864815
Carya glabra, photographed by Athena Philips
fig. e Athena Philips, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179744161
Carya glabra, photographed by Nonbinary-Naturalist
fig. f Nonbinary-Naturalist, CC0 1.0 / obs. 178738423
Carya glabra, photographed by Michelle Sevcovas
fig. g Michelle Sevcovas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183740736
Carya glabra, photographed by Carla Hall
fig. h Carla Hall, CC0 1.0 / obs. 179498775

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 39 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 39 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 82 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Carya alba var. ovalis (Wangenh.) K.Koch
  • Carya ashei (Sudw.) Kelsey & Dayton
  • Carya austrina (Small) Murrill
  • Carya glabra f. angulata Sarg.
  • Carya glabra subsp. megacarpa (Sarg.) A.E.Murray
  • Carya glabra subsp. odorata (Marshall) A.E.Murray
  • Carya glabra var. hirsuta (Ashe) Ashe
  • Carya leiodermis Sarg.
  • Carya leiodermis var. callicoma Sarg.
  • Carya leiodermis var. mollissima (Ashe) H.P.Kelsey & Dayton
  • Carya magnifloridana Murrill
  • Carya megacarpa Sarg.
  • Carya microcarpa Nutt.
  • Carya obcordata Sweet
  • Carya ovalis (Wangenh.) Sarg.
  • Carya ovalis f. acuta (Sarg.) Sarg.
  • Carya ovalis f. vestita Sarg.
  • Carya ovalis var. hirsuta (Ashe) Sarg.
  • Carya ovalis var. megacarpa (Sarg.) Ashe
  • Carya ovalis var. mollis (Sudw.) Ashe
  • Carya ovalis var. obcordata (Pursh) Sarg.
  • Carya ovalis var. obovalis Sarg.
  • Carya ovalis var. odorata (Marshall) Sarg.
  • Carya porcina (F.Michx.) Nutt. ex Elliott

and 58 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.