ILLINOIS TREES: SELECTION, PLANTING, AND CARE 119 



covered, hard-shelled fruit (commonly called "nut") measures 

 lV-2-2 inches in diameter and is prized highly for its sweet, oily, 

 nutritious seed. The deeply furrowed bark is brown. 



Butternut usually grows to a height of 30-50 feet but may 

 reach 100 feet. Its trunk is usually short and the round-topped 

 crown is open and scraggly. The stout, lustrous twigs are green- 

 ish at first but become reddish- or orange-brown with age. The 

 gray bark is deeply furrowed. The compound leaves are 15-30 

 inches long and made up of three to nine pairs of short-stalked 

 leaflets and one long-stalked leaflet at the end. The leaflets are 

 3-4 inches long and 1^/2-2 inches wide. Male and female flowers 

 are borne separately on the same branchlet and usually near each 

 other. The male flowers are in pendulous, cylindrical catkins, 

 2-3 inches long, that grow from lateral buds on year-old twigs, 

 and the Va-inch-long female flowers are in spikes of six to eight 

 flowers at the tip of new twig growth. The large, elliptical- 

 shaped, four-ridged, roughly corrugated, pointed fruit (com- 

 monly called "nut") is 11/2-2^2 inches long and contains a sweet, 

 edible seed. 



In some years, premature defoliation of black walnut is 

 caused by a fungus disease called leaf blight or anthracnose. 

 However, greater injury from defoliation is caused more fre- 

 quently by the walnut caterpillar. Some trees may be attacked 

 annually by this insect. The heavy, hard, coarse-grained, rich 

 brown wood of black walnut is used extensively in the manufac- 

 ture of furniture, gun stocks, and veneer. The light, coarse- 

 grained wood of butternut has only limited commercial value. It 

 is used to some extent for the interior finishing of houses and the 

 lining of furniture drawers and cabinets. 



Willow 



Black willow (Salix nigra) and peach or almond willow {S. 

 amijgdaloides), both native to Illinois, have only limited use in 

 ornamental plantings. Several introduced willows — including 

 Babylon weeping {S. habijlonica) (Fig. 106), bay or laurel-leaved 

 {S. pentandra) , white {S. alba), Wisconsin weeping (S. hlanda) , 

 and yellowstem white (S. alba var. vitellina) willow — are used 

 for landscape purposes. The willows are fast-growing trees 

 which reach heights of 30-50 feet, with a branch spread of 15-50 

 feet. They prefer moist, rich soil and frequently are planted near 

 water. However, they will thrive in dryer sites. 



The leaves (Fig. 106 inset) of most willows are long and 



