i6 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



AMERICAN FOREST TREES. 



Butternut. 

 Juglans cinerea Linn. 



Butternut thrives best iu rich moist soil, 

 along the banks of rivers and on low, rocky 

 hillsides. It is found through southern New 

 Brunswick and the valley of the St. Law- 

 rence river iu Ontario, westward to Dakota, 

 into southeastern Nebraska, central Kansas, 

 northern Arkansas and Delaware, and along 

 the Appalachian mountains to 

 northern Georgia and Alabama 

 where it grows at the headwaters 

 of Black Warrior river in Winston 

 county. 



It is known as butternut in 

 Maine. New Hampshire, Vermont, 

 Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Con- 

 necticut. New York, New Jersey, 

 Pennsylvania. Delaware, West Vir- 

 ginia. North Carolina, South Caro- 

 lina, Alabama. Arkansas, Kentucky, 

 Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, 

 .Mulligan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, 

 Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio and On- 

 tario; as w-hite walnut in Delaware, 

 Pennsylvania, Virginia,' 'West Vir- 

 ginia, North Carolina, South Caro- 

 lina, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, 

 Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, 

 Nebraska, Minnesota and South Da- 

 kota; as walnut in Minnesota; as 

 oil nut in Maine, New Hampshire 

 and South Carolina; as buttnut in 

 New Jersey, and is occasionally re- 

 ferred to as white mahogany. 



The leaves of butternut are com- 

 pound, consisting of nine to seven- 

 teen leaflets, which are unevenly 

 toothed and attached to pubescent, 

 sticky petioles; the stem of the en- 

 tire leaf is noticeably horse-hoof- 

 shaped. The leaflets are alternate, 

 and oval in shape, tapering to a 

 point, and blunt at the base. They 

 are light green above, and extreme- 

 ly fuzzy below. The butternut 

 loses Us leaves very early in the 

 fall. When the first heavy frost 

 comes, perhaps at the beginning of 

 October, its effect on the tree is 

 lasting and exceedingly destructive. 

 The next morning the leaves and 

 stems wilt and die, dropping rapid- 

 ly from the branches, so that in 

 the course of perhaps a single day, 

 it will be almost entirely stripped 

 of foliage. Before the arrival of 

 a heavy frost the leaves change 

 their summery yellowish-green color for a 

 brighter shade of autumn dress. 



The flowers of butternut are monoecious; 

 the staminate ones form catkins and grow 

 from axillary buds; they are pubescent; the 

 pistillate ones grow in terminal spikes and 

 are covered with sticky hairs. The fruit 

 ripens in October, and is a pointed, oblong 

 nut, growing in a husk from two to three 



FORTT-SEVENTH PAPER 



inches long, which when ripe, falls away 

 from the nut. The kernel is sweet and high- 

 ly-flavored and children . and squirrels are 

 great lovers of it. 



This tree attains a height of from thirty 

 to a hundred feet, and in general appear- 

 ance would frequently be a tall and impos- 

 ing figure, were it not that its beauty is 

 often marred by gaunt, dried branches 



great claim to beauty and symmetry. 



The bark of young stems and branehlets 

 is smooth and light gray, but becomes very 

 thick and brown, deeply furrowed and scaly 

 with age. The inner bark, and the husks 

 of the nuts furnish medicinal substances; 

 also a strong, yellow dye. 



The wood of butternut is light, soft, 

 coarse grained, not strong, and easily worked. 

 The sap contains sugar which is fre- 

 quent!}' used with maple sap to 

 form an adulterated "maple" 

 sugar. The heartwood is a light, 

 grayish-brown, and becomes much 

 darker with exposure. The sapwood 

 is very light in color, often nearly 

 while. A cubic foot of the wood 

 weighs approximately twenty-five 

 pounds. It takes a high polish, 

 showing an almost 'satiny luster, 

 and makes a very handsome in- 

 terior finish or furniture lumber. 

 Cabinet makers admire and value it 

 highly. The wood of Juglans cine- 

 n a has one advantage over that of 

 the more common and better ap- 

 preciated Juglans nigra or black 

 walnut, in that its soft brown tones 

 when finished in the ' ' natural ' ' are 

 more cheerful and attractive. It is 

 therefore strange that it is not more 

 frequently employed for these pur- 

 poses, instead of for coffins, posts, 

 rails, bowls, carriage panels, etc. 



The accompanying illustration, 

 showing typical forest growth of 

 butternut, is from a photograph ob- 

 tained through the courtesy of Wm. 

 H. Freeman, secretary of the In- 

 • liana State Board of Forestry. 



CYPICAL FOREST GROWTH OF BUTTERNUT, INDIANA 



which on account of their length have been 

 broken by the wind and further blemished 

 by insects. It is sometimes entirely free of 

 limbs for half its height, but usually its 

 tough, scraggy branches commence to deviate 

 horizontally at a height of about twenty 

 feet from the ground, giving the tree a 

 broad, low head; this combined with its 

 sparse foliage, robs the butternut of any 



Relative Qualities of Woods. 

 If the shellbark hickory is taken as 

 the standard of hardness — 100 — the 

 other common woods rank with it as 

 indicated in figures given after each 

 kind : Fignut hickory 96, white oak 

 St. white ash 77, dogwood 75, scrub 

 oak 73, white hazel 72, apple 72, red 

 oak 60, white beech 65, black walnut 

 65, black birch 62, yellow oak 60, hard 

 maple 5S, white elm 58, red cedar 56, 

 wild cherry 55, yellow pine 54, chest- 

 nut 52, yellow poplar 51, butternut 4o, 

 white birch 43, white pine 30. 



To determine the durability of dif- 

 ferent woods, experiments have been 

 made by driving sticks, each two feet 

 long and one and one-half inches 

 square, into the ground, leaving only 

 one-half inch projecting above the sur- 

 face. After five years it was found 

 that those made of oak, elm, ash, fir, 

 soft mahogany and nearly every variety of pine 

 were totally rotten. Larch, hard pine and teak 

 wood were decayed on the outside only. Acacia 

 was slightly attached on the outside but other- 

 wise sound. Hard mahogany and cedar of Leb- 

 anon were in fairly good condition ; but only 

 Virginia cedar was found to be in as good con- 

 dition as when put into the ground. 



When wood is kept dry its durability is 

 greater than that of some metals. Cedar, oak, 

 yellow pine and chestnut are the most durable 

 when kept dry. 



