Conservation and management of butternut trees

Lenny Farlee; Keith Woeste; Michael Ostry; James McKenna; Sally Weeks

Conservation and management of butternut trees

Informally Refereed

Authors:

Lenny Farlee, Keith Woeste, Michael Ostry, James McKenna, Sally Weeks

Year:

2010

Type:

Other

Station:

Northern Research Station

Source:

FNR-421-W. West Lafayette, IN. Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service. 10 p.

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Abstract

Butternut (Juglans cinerea), also known as white walnut, is a native hardwood related to black walnut (Juglans nigra) and other members of the walnut family. Butternut is a medium-sized tree with alternate, pinnately compound leaves, that bears large, sharply ridged, cylindrical nuts inside sticky green hulls that earned it the nickname lemon-nut (Rink, 1990). The nuts, a preferred food of squirrels and other wildlife, were collected and eaten by Native Americans (Waugh, 1916; Hamel and Chiltoskey, 1975) and early settlers, who also valued butternut for its workable, medium brown-colored heartwood (Kellogg, 1919), and as a source of medicine (Johnson, 1884; Lawrence, 1998), dyes (Hamel and Chiltoskey, 1975), and sap sugar.

Citation

Farlee, Lenny; Woeste, Keith; Ostry, Michael; McKenna, James; Weeks, Sally. 2010. Conservation and management of butternut trees. FNR-421-W. West Lafayette, IN. Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service. 10 p.