Carya laciniosa Carya laciniosa Carya laciniosa, the shellbark hickory, in the Juglandaceae or walnut family is also called shagbark hickory, bigleaf shagbark hickory, kingnut, big, bottom, thick, or western shellbark, attesting to some of its characteristics. It is a slow-growing, long-lived tree, hard to transplant because of its long taproot, and subject to insect damage. The nuts, largest of all hickory nuts, are sweet and edible. Wildlife and people harvest most of them; those remaining produce seedling trees readily. The wood is hard, heavy, strong, and very flexible, making it a favored wood for tool handles. A specimen tree has been reported
Handles (novel) comic tale ... Jan Mark knows how young people think and talk." From the "New York Times" review: "Jan Mark stretches the range of children's books ... she provides for young people the combination of fine prose and strong realism generally reserved for adults." In Tucker's obituary view more than twenty years later, "Handles" was a "happy, optimistic work" in which the heroine found in the motorbike-repair shop "the company and interests she had always longed for". This was in marked contrast to three of Mark's earlier works, young adult science-fiction novels set in "a hopeless future", which some critics