Hickory is a common name for trees composing the genus Carya, which includes 19 species accepted by Plants of the World Online.

[4] The genus name Carya is Ancient Greek: κάρυον, káryon, meaning "nut".

Hickories are temperate to subtropical forest trees with pinnately compound leaves and large nuts.

The nut shell is thick and bony in most species, but thin in a few, notably the pecan (C. illinoinensis); it is divided into two halves, which split apart when the seed germinates.

[10][11] Fossils of early hickory nuts show simpler, thinner shells than modern species with the exception of pecans, suggesting that the trees gradually developed defenses to rodent seed predation.

[citation needed] During this time, the genus had a distribution across the Northern Hemisphere, but the Pleistocene Ice Age beginning 2 million years ago obliterated it from Europe.

[13] The distribution of Carya in North America also contracted and it completely disappeared from the continent west of the Rocky Mountains.

Apocarya – pecans Seven species are native to southeast Asia in China, Indochina, and northeastern India (Assam), and twelve are native to North America, of which eleven occur in the United States, four in Mexico (of which one, C. palmeri, endemic there), and five extending into southern Canada.

The ashes of burnt hickory wood were traditionally used to produce a strong lye (potash) fit for soapmaking.

Hickory nuts were a significant food source for indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands of North America since the middle Archaic period.

They were used by the Cherokee in Kanuchi soup, but more often edible oil would be extracted through crushing the nuts and then either straining or boiling the remains.

[24] Hickory is therefore used in a number of items requiring these properties, such as tool handles, bows, wheel spokes, walking sticks, drumsticks and wood flooring.

Due to its grain structure, hickory is more susceptible to moisture absorption than other species of wood, and is therefore more prone to shrinkage, warping or swelling with changes in humidity.