The foliage season in North Carolina was about a week late in 2021, and so my visit on a mid-October weekend coincided with only the beginning of the color change. Basically several of the Sourwoods, and an occasional Red Maple or Blackgum were showing pinks, oranges, and reds. The remainder of the trees were mostly green with a tinge of yellow. It was nevertheless a beautiful sight, especially from the drone, and the autumn aroma of decaying leaves was in the air. Hickories Identified by their Nuts I certainly arrived at the right time for Hickory nuts. I found three types of nuts. I think they belonged to Mockernut Hickory, Pignut Hickory, and Red Hickory. Mockernut Hickory (Carya tomentosa) There are at least five of these trees of a decent size on Lot A, the second one pictured below being 6 feet 4 inches circumference. The thick husks in combination with the tight, non-flaky bark, sometimes with an interwoven appearance, are unmistakable.
Pignut Hickory (Carya glabra) I have only found one Hickory so far that is clearly a Pignut Hickory in that the nut is very pear-shaped, smooth husked, and very difficult to split, and even when forced to split, it only splits halfway down. This tree is just above the top of the road on Lot A where I park my car and was raining down hundreds of nuts (one painfully on my shoulder) while I was there. The flaky bark is similar to that of Red Hickory which I will describe next.
Red Hickory (Carya ovalis) Closely related to Pignut Hickory, and indistinguishable via the bark in my opinion. The nuts of the Red Hickory are distinctively different. The husks have a rough surface and split open much more easily. Some have a pear shape, and some not. The first picture below is from just below where I park my car at the top of the road. The second picture is of one of my biggest trees at the head of a cleared area to the west of where I park my car. This tree has a circumference at chest-height of 9 feet, 8.5 inches. The third and fourth pictures below are of a very large specimen up the hill near the western border of my first lot - I forgot my tape measure, so could not measure the circumference. Judging by the fact it had mostly seven leaflets per leaf, it is likely a Red Hickory (as opposed to a Pignut Hickory which has mostly five leaflets per leaf).
Unfortunately one of my biggest hickories (one with the hole at the base which passed through to the other side) had snapped in half and lay in pieces on the ground. I measured its circumference at 9 feet 11 inches at chest height. I believe this was a Red Hickory (judging by the partially developed nuts on the branches) and if so, it had a slightly larger circumference than the official world champion (in Virginia, 9 feet 10 inches)!
A side-by-side comparison of the hickory nuts I found in my forest is shown below. The nuts on the left are from the Pignut Hickory tree. The nuts at the bottom are from one of the Mockernut Hickory trees. The nuts at the top and on the right are from two different Red Hickory trees - there was a slight difference in the form of the nuts from these two trees.
Scarlet Oak confirmed Towards the NW corner of Lot A, I have one Scarlet Oak tree (Quercus coccinea). The leaves are more deeply divided versus typical Northern Red Oaks, and the acorns are distinctive by being smaller and having deeper cups that cover more of the acorn.
In the picture below, the acorns of Northern Red Oak (top), Scarlet Oak (lower left), and Black Oak (lower right) are compared side-by-side. Note the Black Oak acorns were not from my forest but collected from underneath a magnificent Black Oak tree on the Looking Glass Rock trail.
Two New Species: Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), and Black Oak (Quercus velutina) As I walked along the abandoned logging road along the eastern edge of Lot B, I came across a small Eastern Hemlock sapling growing in the middle of the road. This is the first Hemlock I have seen anywhere near my forest, but its positioning makes it vulnerable to a walker's machete, although I doubt many people come this way. I am wondering whether it is worth the risk to transplant it to a safer location.
On my last day, as I was about to leave, I was pushing my way through some particularly thorny undergrowth and as I pushed away a twig of what I thought was a Northern Red Oak, I noticed the leaf looked different. More leathery, a blunt terminal lobe, yellowish veins, lots of orange fuzz around the veins, and fuzzy petioles. Then I saw the trunk of this small tree was a lot rougher and more blocky than that of a typical Northern Red Oak. I thought at first it might be a Blackjack Oak, but the leaves seemed to have too many lobes (a bit difficult to tell as there was a lot of insect damage), so I think it must be a Black Oak. So I do have a confirmed Black Oak, albeit a small one. Due to its small size, all the leaves are shade leaves and thus have shallow sinuses.
There is another tree that is perhaps a Black Oak, this one much bigger, which I found on the southwestern slope of Lot A. It was quite near a definite Northern Red Oak which allowed for side-by-side comparison. The potential Black Oak (first picture) has much more blocky bark, (at least lower down on the trunk), than the definite Northern Red Oak (second picture) which has vertical striations, but the leaves were too high in the canopy and there were no acorns on the ground to allow definitive identification. I could at least see that the lobes of the leaves were too shallow to be a Scarlet Oak, so it is either an unusual Northern Red Oak or a Black Oak.
When I went for a hike on the Looking Glass Rock trail (about an hour's drive away), I found an outstanding specimen of a Black Oak which has blocky bark all the way up the trunk, and plenty of acorns on the ground that were quite distinctive with velvety cups. I collected several of these acorns and planted them in my forest near the broken Hickory. It will be interesting to see whether any of them germinate or whether the squirrels will get there first. Update from summer 2022 - none of them germinated.
Splashes of Color from Above Autumn came late in 2021, and walking through the forest, the predominant color by far was green. A few glimpses of red were visible up in the canopy from Sourwood and occasionally Red Maple trees. However, on sending the drone up, it was much more picturesque with one patch of particularly beautiful color in Lot B.
The next picture shows a Sourwood with its seeds, from above.
Other Interesting Pictures On the ridge of Lot B there are a couple of interesting Blackgums. This one has a weird abrupt transition from moss-covered small checkers to large checkers, a few feet up the trunk.
Also on the ridge of Lot B, looking north, some colorful Sourwood canopies.
A Sourwood and a Northern Red Oak growing side-by-side.
Two very large Chestnut Oaks. The first one is in the NW corner of Lot A, and the second one is in the SE corner of Lot B.
A few of the Red Maple trees had red leaves.
The trunk of a medium sized Sweet Birch.
Some of the Northern Red Oaks had started to turn, with patches of yellowy orange.
Could this also be a Black Oak? Blocky bark at the base, leaves in the canopy similar to Northern Red Oak.
A large Tulip Tree.
When I was at the northern boundary of Lot B at a point where my two northern streams almost intersect, I took a picture of this tree as I thought the bark was a little different (kind if scaly, a bit like the upper branches of a White Oak, but all the way down to the base). The tree was almost completely bare, but a few remnant leaves clung to the branches which I took a picture of with my zoom lens. On later inspection, it looks like this may be a large Yellow Buckeye. Will have to go back in spring and find out.