Carya ovata(Mill.) K.Koch

shagbark hickory

WFO wfo-0000588816 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Carya ovata, photographed by Eric Schmidt
fig. a Eric Schmidt, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-14 / obs. 201456836
Carya ovata, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. b Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 197641847
Carya ovata, photographed by Tom Scavo
fig. c Tom Scavo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197666148
Carya ovata, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. d Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 196622636
Carya ovata, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. e Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 193820292
Carya ovata, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. f Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 183384858
Carya ovata, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. g Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 183385360
Carya ovata, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. h Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 182478525

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 = 80 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 80 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 60 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 subsp. ovata (Mill.) Schwer.
  • Carya australis Ashe
  • Carya borealis (Ashe) C.K.Schneid.
  • Carya carolinae-septentrionalis (Ashe) Engl. & Graebn.
  • Carya mexicana Engelm. ex Hemsl.
  • Carya mexicana f. polyneura Rehder
  • Carya ovalis f. ellipsoidalis (Sarg.) Steyerm.
  • Carya ovalis f. fraxinifolia (Sarg.) Steyerm.
  • Carya ovalis f. nuttallii (Sarg.) Steyerm.
  • Carya ovalis subsp. australis (Ashe) A.E.Murray
  • Carya ovalis var. australis (Ashe) Little
  • Carya ovalis var. borealis (Ashe) Sarg.
  • Carya ovalis var. carolinae-septentrionalis (Ashe) Reveal
  • Carya ovalis var. carolinae-septentrionlis (Ashe) Reveal
  • Carya ovalis var. complanata Sarg.
  • Carya ovalis var. ellipsoidalis Sarg.
  • Carya ovalis var. fraxinifolia Sarg.
  • Carya ovalis var. grandis Ashe
  • Carya ovalis var. holmesiana (Ashe) Ashe
  • Carya ovalis var. mexicana (Engelm. ex Hemsl.) W.E.Manning
  • Carya ovalis var. nuttallii Sarg.
  • Carya ovalis var. pubescens Sarg.
  • Carya ovata f. ellipsoidalis (Sarg.) Steyerm.
  • Carya ovata f. fraxinifolia (Sarg.) Steyerm.

and 36 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.