A food unique to the Tianmu Mountains that you will never forget after one taste in Jixi, beyond Hu Shi, Hu Xueyan and Longchuan

People who have never been to Jixi County, Anhui Province, China, most likely do not recognize it. What is it?

This is a Jixi specialty - the male flower of the hickory (pecan). The hickory is a specialty of the Tianmu Mountains.

From Lin'an in Zhejiang to Jixi, Shexian and Ningguo in Anhui Province, China, these counties and cities around the Tianmu Mountains mostly rely on hickory as the main source of rural income.

The nutritional value of the hickory has been reported in various online sources and newspapers.

This is the female flower of the hickory. The female flowers open about ten days later than the male flowers. When the female flowers are in full bloom, the pollen of the male flowers is at its peak. Nature's design is just that exquisite.

The hickory was originally a wild tree, so in the early days most hickories grew wild in the mountains, living and dying on their own. Only later, after people discovered their health benefits, were they introduced down from the mountains for large-scale cultivation.

Hickory trees like sun and fear waterlogging. They cannot be grown where the soil accumulates water, because they originally grow on hillsides, so when planting them artificially, slopes are best. The soil should be sandy loam, and they are tolerant of fertilizer and drought.

The sap of the hickory itself has a certain insect resistance, so there are not many insect pests on hickories. In recent years, with the increase in artificial planting, hickory diseases have actually become somewhat more common, mainly root rot and canker disease. At present, the results of dealing with these two diseases are still not very good.

Hickories are harvested every year on September 8 (White Dew). At this time the hickories have the best ripeness; any later and they will sprout on the tree and affect their edibility. So when buying hickories online, be sure to pay attention: those who advertise with the banner of the latest hickories of a certain year, if they sell that year's hickories before September 15, are absolutely fake - those are all stock left over from the previous year that was not sold out.

After the hickories are brought down from the mountains, they still have to go through several processes: removing the husk, sun-drying and roasting. The specific time also depends on the weather, and it takes at least more than a week. So those who tell you in August every year that these are the freshest hickories of that year are brainless swindlers.

The hickory is a model of Jixi's original-ecology cuisine. Every friend who comes to Jixi for tourism likes to take some hickories home from here to give to relatives and friends. With such a delicacy waiting for you in Jixi, why not come quickly?