Studies of trees in winter

by Annie Oakes Huntington

BUTTERNUT
Juglans cinerea

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TRUNK OF A BUTTERNUT

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Among all the native trees, the butternut is perhaps the most interesting for winter study. The naked buds, the irregular leaf-scars, with horseshoe bundle-scars, the superposed buds containing the lateral branches and the queerly marked buds of the staminate flowers, the chambered pith, and the little fringes of down on the stems, every structural detail of this tree is interesting and unusual. The butternut is one of the few trees among the Juglandaceæ which is not tall and beautiful in outline. It is a low tree, with wide-spreading, rather straggling branches, frequently ill shapen and uncouth in appearance. It is usually associated in our minds with country lanes, and growing by the walls and fences bordering open pastures and farm lands, and in these surroundings it seems pleasing and appropriate; but when we find it planted in parks and cultivated grounds it seems commonplace and insignificant. It is found in all the New England States, in New York, and in Pennsylvania. Very large specimens grow in the valley of the Connecticut River.

The wood of the butternut is light brown in color, it is light, soft, and easily worked, and is much used for furniture, gunstocks, and for the interior finish of houses. The inner bark is used medicinally, and a dye is made from the bark and nutshells. An excellent pickle is made from the young nuts, and the kernels are sweet and edible, although rather rich and oily. Professor Gray tried the experiment of making sugar from the sap of the butternut. He found that it took four trees to yield nine quarts of sap (one and a quarter pounds of sugar), the amount that one sugar maple yields.

The generic name, Juglans, comes from Jovis glans, the nut of Jove, in reference to the excellence of the fruit, and the specific name, cinerea (ash-colored), probably alludes to the color of the bark.

Black Walnut Juglans nigra

A large tree, 50 to 120 feet high, with spreading branches and rough bark, darker in color than that of the butternut. The buds are gray instead of light brown like those of the butternut, and they are shorter. The twigs are smooth in winter, without hair, and the pith is chambered. Alternate, conspicuous leaf-scars. Characteristic difference between the two trees is that the fringe of hair over the leaf-scar in the butternut is absent in the black walnut.