Hickory Tree

[Gale Hawkins]

Glad we could sow doubt in your made up mind.

I wish ours was in the woods due to the nuts and hulls.

 

[JakeBrake]

Well, I was all for keeping it myself, but now I'm not so sure. Everyone here local seems to think it will hold up to the wind ok - tornado all bets are off.

Tony

Unfortunately, we have huge oak trees very close to our house. We have a two story house and the trees stand well above the house. I worry every time the wind blows. however, I am not too worried about tree damage during a tornado. We were hit by a tornado in 1992. The tornado did considerable damage to our house, but it laid several oak trees down away from the house. the trunks of the downed trees were parallel to each other and pointed away from the house. My belief is that every tornado that comes that close will behave the same way. We had another close call with a tornado in 2008. We had been out and were returning home. A tornado crossed the road in front of our car and blew a huge tree down blocking the road This was very close to our house, but when we were finally able to get to our house, we had no damage.

During Hurricane Katrina in 2005 we experienced hurricane force winds for an extended period, but our oak trees did not lose a single limb.

 

[dmccarty]

With winds who knows what will happen.

I still have hundreds of trees that were brought down by Hurricane Fran. The Red Oaks are still good for firewood. Those trees are easy to see they all lay with the top of the tree going south. Depending on the path of the storm they could have gone down in any compass direction.

In my area the pines seem to hold up well. The hardwoods especially shallow rooted oaks are what falls down. There was only one pine down on our land from the hurricane but hundreds of oaks.

If the ground is saturated with water, the shallow rooted trees fall pretty easy.

We have had at least three wind gusts at our place over the last 5-6 years that have brought down some big trees. One of those gusts was either a down burst or somewhat tornadic. This one left some very big trees down that were shallow rooted. The deep tap trees were bent over so in a lower case r shape. Those trees are still bent over. Best I could tell we lost a good dozen large oaks in one ten acre section.

The last gust took snapped the dead tree that was 28 inches on the stump a good 20 feet up the trunk!

The first wind gust took out a 24ish inch diameter LIVE tree and broke the trunk about 15 feet off the ground. The stump is still in the ground. In both cases these trees fell to the east since is our prevailing wind direction is from the west. I do not think we have any trees to the west of the house that would hit the house if they fell. Yet. As they grow they we might have a problem.

Later,
Dan

 

[Maxfli]

We have one Shagbark Hickory that is close to the house. I liked the look of the house built into the woods but it makes me nervous. My experience is Hickory is a very hard and brittle tree. 4th of July 2 years ago we had what I think was a microburst come through our property. I lost 4 hickory trees (all big) with the largest 27" across. None of the oaks came down. We did not lose the one close to the house. I have no problem chain sawing a white oak tree up, but in comparison the hickory is like sawing through granite. Took all I had to get them sawed up. In hind site I wish I had removed it prior to building in 2003.

 

[SPIKER]

i've got 15~20 nice shag bark hickories in the woods Mixed woods lots of Oak, Maples Sugars ect. storms have taken out a lot of the maples & oaks, none of the hickory/s

yard trees though Maples, beech, & pines are better than the oaks/hickories due to cleanup issues.


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