BUTTERNUT 



(Juglans Cinerea) 



THIS tree is known as butternut or as white walnut in all parts of its 

 range. Butternut is in reference to the oily kernel of the nuts, and 

 white walnut is the name given by those who would distinguish the tree 

 from black walnut. Persons acquainted with one of the species in its 

 native woods are usually sure to be acquainted with the other, for their 

 ranges are practically co-extensive, except that black walnut extends 

 farther southwest, butternut farther northeast. Butternut grows from 

 New Brunswick to South Dakota, from Delaware to Arkansas, and along 

 the Appalachian highlands to northern Georgia and Alabama. 



Butternut resembles black walnut in a good many ways and differs 

 from it in several. They are very closely related botanically as closely 

 as are brothers in the same household. Black walnut is larger, stronger, 

 better known, and has always dominated and eclipsed the other in use- 

 fulness and public esteem; yet butternut is a tree both useful and 

 interesting. No person acquainted with both would ever mistake one 

 for the other, winter or summer. 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. It often gives up the 

 struggle and remains in the shade of trees which overtop it. In that 

 situation its crown is small, thin, and appears to rest lightly in the form 

 of a small bunch of yellowish-green leaves on the top of a tall, spindling 

 bole, which is seldom straight, but is made up of slight, undulating 

 curves. The pale, yellowish tinge of the bark suggests a plant deprived 

 of sunshine. 



When butternut grows in open ground where light falls upon its 

 crown and on all sides, it assumes a different form and presents another 

 figure. The trunk is nearly as short as that of an apple tree. It divides 

 in large branches and limbs, and these spread wide ; leaves are healthy, 

 yet the crown of a butternut always looks thin compared with that of the 

 black walnut. Tests show that butternut wood, when thoroughly dry, 

 is somewhat stiller than black walnut; but it is light and weak. It is 

 about two-thirds as heavy and two-thirds as strong as black walnut. 

 The growing tree betrays the wood's weakness. Large limbs snap in 



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