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Juglandaceae family

Sand Hickory Carya pallida

Native
Drought-tough — Rated High for drought tolerance — a water-wise pick once it's established.

Sand Hickory is a perennial tree native to the lower 48 states. It grows to 95 ft and blooms Jul. A keystone plant for native insects and the food web.

More about this plant

Carya pallida, sand hickory, or pale hickory is a species of hickory native to the southeastern United States. It is a perennial, dicotyledonous plant which prefers rocky or sandy habitats. The sand hickory can reach heights of up to 30m, but its typical height is between 9-24m. In an open area, Carya crowns are usually towering and slim. The sand hickory nut is edible and consumed by various organisms. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Niinemets & Valladares 2006 (CC0) — Drought tolerance · Shade tolerance · Wet-soil tolerance
Hardiness
≥ zone 7 derived from its U.S. range
Drought tolerance
High
Shade tolerance
Low
Wet-soil tolerance
Low waterlogging
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
95 ft
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Deciduous broadleaf
In the garden
Canopy layer — Sits in the canopy of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · Jul — 10 obs · Herbarium specimens — Park et al. 2023 (CC BY 4.0)
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~235 caterpillar species

Carya supports ~235 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is an exceptional genus.

Recorded feeding on Carya in North America, including:

Acrobasis caryae · Hickory Shoot Borer Moth ✦ Acrobasis stigmella · snout moth ✦ Catocala consors · Consort Underwing ✦ Catocala vidua · Widow Underwing ✦ Abagrotis alternata · Greater Red Dart Acrobasis alyi · snout moth
+ 8 more species →
Acrobasis angusella · Hickory Leafstem Borer Acrobasis caryalbella · snout moth Acrobasis caryivorella · Hickory Shoot Moth Acrobasis caulivorella · snout moth Acrobasis cunulae · snout moth Acrobasis elyi · snout moth Acrobasis evanescentella · snout moth Acrobasis exsulella · Cordovan Pyralid
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0). ✦ = recorded on this exact species.
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Frequently grows with

Across 190 U.S. vegetation-survey plots that recorded Sand Hickory, these catalog species turned up most often in the same plot — a real field co-occurrence signal, not a planting prescription.

Cat Greenbrier · 71% Blackgum · 67% Muscadine · 67% Common Persimmon · 63% Red Maple · 62% Flowering Dogwood · 60% White Oak · 53% Black Cherry · 51%
By region — what it grows with near you
"%" = share of this plant's plots that also held the species. From sPlotOpen → (Sabatini et al. 2021, CC BY 4.0) — open vegetation plots: wild community composition, not garden design.
How we know this (2) Methods & honest limits
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (21) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[10] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[13] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[14] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)
[15] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[17] Stress tolerance — Niinemets & Valladares 2006 (CC0)
[18] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[19] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[20] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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