Butternut

“ Botanists tell how to distinguish butternut from black walnut by noting minor differences. The person who is not a botanist needs no such help. He knows them at sight, and there is no possibility of mistaking them.
Butternut in the forest may attain a height of eighty or 100 feet, and a diameter of three, but few persons ever see a specimen of that size, and never in open ground. In shade, the butternut does its best to get its crown up to light and sunshine, but it is weak. ”

“ As a seedling tree of two or three years, the butternut is indistinguishable from the black walnut except to a very discerning and practiced eye, especially in the autumn after its leaves have fallen. ”

“ The butternut tree is one whose lumber may be put to many uses. It is light but very tough and stringy and when planed and sanded, it absorbs varnish and finishes very well. Although not as dark in natural color as black walnut, butternut resembles it in grain. When butternut has been stained to represent black walnut, it is only by their weight that they can be distinguished. ”

“ That photograph is typical of the Rush hybrid chinkapin. We take up the butternut now. So far as we know, there are no named varieties of the butternut; there cannot be until some good individual tree is found which is of sufficient merit to entitle it to propagation by budding and grafting. It is one of the best known nuts in our field, especially in New England; it is more common there than it is further south. ”

“ I found that while other butternut trees bore nuts in clusters of one to three, this butternut tree was bearing them in clusters of ten and eleven. At Lake George, right in front of the Post-Office, there was one tree twenty-four years old, two feet through, that grew butternuts in clusters of ten and you could get a barrel of nuts from it. It bore again this last summer heavily, not in clusters of ten but in clusters of seven or eight. When we have damp soil we can't grow the chestnut but the hickory nut will grow in a swamp, and so will the butternut. ”

“ As the trees grow older, the difference in their bark becomes more apparent, that of the butternut remaining smooth for many years, as contrasted to the bark on black walnut trees which begins to roughen on the main trunk early in its life. Bark on a butternut may still be smooth when the tree is ten years old. Forest seedlings of butternut, when one or two years old, are easily transplanted if the soil is congenial to their growth. Although the tree will do well on many types of soil, it prefers one having a limestone base, just as the English walnut does. ”

“ Crosses between this Japanese walnut and the butternut we may fairly expect will sometimes give us a large, thin shelled butternut of good character. The next question is, who is going to do it? The men about my place are pretty busy, and this is rather delicate work. It is going to be a most inspiring field for the young folks and the ladies, because it is nice, pretty, ladylike work, and beside that its returns may be large. ”

“ Our butternut, too, cannot be omitted, for there are few better flavored nuts than the butternut. Though hard to crack, this fault, if it may be a fault, will soon be overcome, for we will find a tree with thin-shelled nuts somewhere. They are no doubt present and when we do find such a tree we may all propagate from it. ”

“ However, we have a good deal of hardy wood, as our trees are growing bushy and we intend to use the butternut seedlings for stocks on which to graft the black walnut. By this method we will not have to wait so long to get a good supply of trees. There is no question whatever about the future success of the butternut, as we have this year the third generation of them bearing, which is ample proof that they have become entirely acclimated. The butternuts grow fully as large as in eastern Canada, as do also the black walnuts, and as far as I can see the quality is equal if not better. ”

“ Only an appraisal of the nut will establish its value.
The butternut is fairly abundant throughout its range which extends well up into Canada. In central New York there are uncounted thousands [Pg 88] of butternut trees along fence rows, in the large and small valleys and along little streams. One person with limited time can hardly hope to examine more than a small proportion of them during the period when the nuts are ripe. The scout for better nuts should lose no opportunity to tell his errand to the people that he meets. I have found the average stranger interested and cooperative. ”

“ In conclusion, let me say that in my judgment, the butternut is worthy of more attention than it has had so far received, particularly by home owners in the northern states who would like to have trees in their yards that will bear nuts under conditions that are unfavorable for most other kinds. ”

“ As evidence of what a nut tree will do, those of you who have visited Devil's Den in Gettysburg Battle Field, have perhaps noticed a butternut tree, now quite old, growing out of the top of the cleft in a huge rock, having sent its roots down to the adjoining soil for nourishment. ”

“ As a protection it does not serve against its most insidious foe, the larva of the weevil, which works not from without but from within. Nature has treated the butternut better by surrounding it with a husk, as food for the grubs, which are content to go no deeper. ”

“ Cracking the native butternut and marketing the kernels affords the rural people in many sections a fairly profitable means of employment during the winter months. Its native range extends farther north than does that of either the eastern black walnut, or that of the shagbark hickory, Hicoria ovata, and considerably beyond that of the shellbark hickory, H. laciniosa. Therefore, in view of its hardiness, and the merit of its kernels, it is well worthy of consideration for planting in the most northern parts of the country. ”

“ THE BUTTERNUT Among our native walnuts the butternut is valued highly especially for home use. On the markets, however, the rough shell and comparatively small size of the kernel have in general tended to keep prices low and the demand limited. There are now prospects for the introduction and growing of superior hybrid varieties. ”

“ This stolid old chap is a hard nut to crack.
Butternut—
Old Mr. Butternut, just from Brazil,
Is rugged and rough as the side of a hill.
But like many a countenance quite as ill-favored.
He covers a kernel deliciously flavored.
All—
Now, dearest schoolmates, I'm sure we have told
All the queer rhymes that nut-shell can hold. ”

“ The American butternut, Juglans cinerea, although commonly held to be a slow grower, a tardy and light bearer, and a producer of thick-shelled nuts hard or impossible to crack without extreme difficulty, is frequently quite the opposite in one or more, or all, of these respects. Under favorable environment the trees grow rapidly, bear early, and oftentimes the nuts may be easily cracked and the kernels extracted in perfect halves. ”

“ The butternut too often blooms so early that its blossoms are caught by frost. The filbert has the same fault and so, to a less extent, has the Persian walnut. Late blooming varieties of each have already been selected. It does not seem too much to hope that late blooming varieties of butternut may also be found. I know of one butternut that has had good crops every year but one for the last ten years but have never visited it at the right time to observe its blooming habit. President Weschcke reports that butternuts on black walnut stocks have their blooming retarded for a few days. ”

“ Other instances have also demonstrated to me this deleterious power of butternut trees over evergreens. For years, I watched a struggle between a small butternut tree and a large Mugho pine. Gradually the Mugho pine was succumbing. At last, when the pine had lost over half its branches on the side near the butternut, I decided to take an active part in the fight. I cut off the trunk of the butternut and pruned off all of its sprouts. The butternut surrendered and died. The Mugho pine took new heart, lived and again flourished. ”

“ I have four big trees of Stabler, and hardly a nut grows on them. Down there they behave themselves and have big crops. How do they have such big crops? I like them. I don't believe there is a tastier nut in the world. Even my hybrid Asiatic butternut cross. I have got quite a lot of them here to show you and the biggest filberts in the world and they are all seedlings.
Not a hickory nut, butternut or black walnut. I had a ton of black walnuts. There is a good crop of hybrids, filberts, English walnuts, and there are some other nuts. I am north of Lake Ontario. ”

“ This butternut was fully twice as large as the Weschcke and had eight prominent ridges. The nut proved to be even better than the older variety and we intend to test it further by grafting it on butternuts and black walnut stocks. Although hand-operated nutcrackers have been devised to crack these and other wild nuts, they are not as fast as a hammer. If one protects the hand by wearing a glove and stands the butternut on a solid iron base, hitting the pointed end with a hammer, [Pg 63] it is quite possible to accumulate a pint of clean nut meats in half an hour. ”

“ Tree is in a poor location on the edge of wild timber competing for soil space. The nut is a big step in the elimination of the central division, so pronounced in most heartnuts. This is the outstanding feature of this nut. Cracking and other features are still undetermined but promising. I have a number of others that are promising. One is the Flavo Heart, a heartnut and butternut cross. This is a seedling of Callender heart and butternut. The outstanding features are the shape of nut, flavor of kernel and ease of extraction. This is its first crop. ”

“ We can picture the day when our dooryards, our roadsides, our fields and hills shall be shaded by grand nut trees, showering sustenance and wealth on our descendants, and all people, and bearing the names of their originators; when the housewife of the future shall send her wireless call to the grocer for a kilo of Hales' Papershells, the Rush, the Jones, the Pomeroy Persian walnuts, the Black Ben Deming butternut, the Craig Corean chestnut, the Morris Hybrid hickory, the Close black-walnut or the Littlepage pecan. ”

“ A leaf having fifteen leaflets, then, might belong to either tree if there were no other way to distinguish them. The teeth on the black-walnut leaflet are larger and sharper than on the butternut, and the fuzzy stem is lacking. The green nuts, too, are different, the black walnuts being just about the size and shape of green lemons, the butternuts longer and thinner; but the unmistakable feature is the odor. Having once smelled the crushed leaves of a butternut and a black walnut, a person will thereafter need no other test. ”

“ Mulching and supplying nitrogenous fertilizer is good practice.
The butternut has the reputation of being susceptible to disease and hence being short lived as a tree. Whether or not this is actually the case is perhaps questionable. Many butternut trees, particularly those in favorable situations of soil and moisture, live to be of large size and old age. Trees on poorer, thinner soils apparently die off earlier than those under better conditions. ”

“ I have several very large new varieties of seedling filberts. I like to grow seedling filberts, they show wonderful variations in fruiting. The same with heartnuts. I never lose a seedling heartnut for if the tree yields an unsatisfactory nut I promptly bud it to a Stranger which is the most regular and heaviest cropping heartnut I know of. Yes, every year a monster crop of nuts whose meats come out whole.
Our hybrid Jap heartnut × native butternut crosses are of three types and all excellent and will hold their own with any nut that grows. No nut can beat our butternut for eating. ”

“ We have a problem which I wish to bring before the members of the Association. It is that of controlling the butternut curculio. This insect is very bad on butternut, heartnut and Persian walnuts, with us it does not attack black walnuts or hickories. I fear that it is going to prove hard to control, as the larva is of the boring type, being found inside the green nuts, inside the new growth of the terminals and in the fleshy part of the leaf stems. In these places it cannot be reached by poisons. It appears that we will have to work entirely on the adult beetles. ”

“ Not only good things can be said of the butternut tree and it would be wrong to avoid mentioning the deleterious effect that a butternut tree may have on other trees planted within the radius of its root system. I have had several experiences of this kind. One butternut tree on my farm, having a trunk six inches in diameter, killed every Mugho pine within the radius of its root system. ”

“ Rapid growth, marked beauty of form and foliage, early bearing, productiveness, and more than average hardiness to winter cold. The nuts from superior trees are easier to crack than the butternut, hickory and black walnut, but not so easy as the pecan and Persian walnut. [Pg 44] These superior varieties yield nuts with a mild flavor which appeals to the taste of many people, but others think the flavor is not quite pronounced enough. ”

“ A butternut seedling usually requires several more years of growth than a black walnut does before it comes into bearing, although this varies with climate and soil. It is impossible to be exact, but I think I may safely say that it requires at least ten years of growing before a seedling butternut tree will bear any nuts. ”