Plant Features: Pecan

Pecan (Carya Illinoensis) is the best know of all the Hickories. Pecan can be recognized by thier alternate, pinnately compound leaves with 9 to 15 finely serrate leaflets, 12 to 18 inches long.

The nuts from a Pecan trees are large oblong, brown, splotched with black, thin shelled nuts, 1 1/2 to 2 inches long. Nuts are in clusters on trees. Pecans mature in September and October.

The bark of Pecan trees is smooth when young but becoming narrowly fissured into thin broken strips, sometimes scaly.

Pecan breaks bud later than most other trees. Pecan trees are large trees that can reach heights of over 100 feet.