Shagbark Hickory?

A shaggy-barked tree along our bike route and my middle son showing the nuts we found on the ground nearby.

It's not often one can go cross-country skiing and bike riding in the same week on the same trail, but this week it was possible. We got out the cross-country skis for the first time this winter after our only real snowfall of the season hit us on Thursday last week. Today, the boys and I took advantage of the sunny, 64-degree weather and took out our bikes. Only a spot or two of snow was left in the path.

Because I had to make frequent stops to help my middle son get back on his bike – his steering isn't so good yet, and he kept braking to avoid hitting various obstacles or careening off the path – I noticed that a number of trees by the side of the trail had unusually shaggy bark. That bark seemed slightly familiar, like something I had read about in one of my plant books, so I took some pictures for future reference. Then I noticed some old, cracked nuts beneath one of the trees. And beneath another. The nuts looked just like some my eldest son had found on a recent walk in the woods near our local playground (he'd pocketed those nuts for future identification, but we hadn't identified them yet). Ah ha! A nut tree with shaggy bark: the shagbark hickory (or the shellbark hickory, perhaps).

Now, back at home, I've looked up the hickory tree in a couple of my books, and the details seem promising. The shape of the nut (oval) seems right, and the size of the tree and bark description (light to dark gray) seem right, too. We'll have to go back in the spring to see whether the leaves also fit the description; if my guess is right, we'll have to wait until the fall to collect the fallen nuts.

We won't mind taking this trail again to check up on our trees, though. We saw a couple of horses out for a walk (we crossed paths at a narrow bridge and dismounted our bikes so that the boys' unpredictable steering wouldn't spook the horses, which the riders greatly appreciated), sped through lots of mud puddles (and didn't fall into any of them!), and even found several plank or log bridges crossing the little stream at the side of the path. Any outing with that many bridges automatically counts as a success in this family – but the nut trees are a nice bonus!