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Celtis occidentalis
Also called Hackberry, Northern Hackberry, American Hackberry, Mississippi Hackberry, Nettletree, Sugarberry, Nettle Tree
Common hackberry is a large, fast-growing deciduous tree native to North America, valued for its tolerance of urban conditions and its distinctive corky, warty bark. It grows best in rich, moist soil but adapts to gravelly or rocky slopes.
Celtis occidentalis, commonly known as the common hackberry, is a large deciduous tree native to North America. It is also known as the nettletree, beaverwood, northern hackberry, and American hackberry. It is a moderately long-lived hardwood, with a light-colored wood that is yellowish gray to light brown with yellow streaks.
The common hackberry is easily distinguished from elms and some other hackberries by its cork-like bark with wart-like protuberances. The leaves are distinctly asymmetrical and coarse-textured. It produces small fruits that turn orange-red to dark purple in the autumn, often staying on the trees for several months. The common hackberry is easily confused with the sugarberry (Celtis laevigata); these two are most easily distinguished by their range and habitat. The common hackberry also has wider leaves that are coarser above than the sugarberry.
Hackberry's wood is light yellow; heavy, soft, coarse-grained, not strong. It rots easily, making the wood undesirable commercially, although it is occasionally used for fencing and cheap furniture.
Hackberry is only occasionally used as a street or landscape tree, although its tolerance for urban conditions makes it well suited to this role. Sombor in Serbia and Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, are known for the extensive use of hackberry (in the latter case along with closely related but Eurasian Celtis australis) as a street tree. In Canada, the city of Montreal has over 10,000 Celtis occidentalis trees among its street trees.
The common hackberry is native to North America from southern Ontario and Quebec, through parts of New England, south to North Carolina-(Appalachia), west to northern Oklahoma, and north to North Dakota. There is a small isolated pocket at the southern end of Lake Manitoba. Hackberry's range overlaps with the sugarberry (Celtis laevigata), making it difficult to establish the exact range of either species in the South. Although there is little actual overlap, in the western part of its range the common hackberry is sometimes confused with the smaller netleaf hackberry (Celtis reticulata), which has a similar bark. Hackberry grows in many different habitats, although it prefers bottomlands and soils high in limestone. Its shade tolerance is greatly dependent on conditions. In favorable conditions its seedlings will persist under a closed canopy, but in less favorable conditions it can be considered shade intolerant.
Nettle Tree · Caucasian hackberry · Julian Hackberry · Sugarberry · Netleaf hackberry · Tala · Nilgiri Elm · Hackberry
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Celtis occidentalis by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
