The black walnut is a striking contrast to the butternut. It is tall and erect, with a broad, spacious head and vigorous, wide-spreading branches. The bark is much darker and rougher than that of the butternut, and the buds are smaller, and gray rather than yellowish in color, like those of the other species.
BLACK WALNUT
Juglans nigra
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TRUNK OF A BLACK WALNUT
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The wood is heavy, strong, and durable, and dark brown in color. It takes polish well and is much used in cabinet making, boat-building, interior house finishing, and for gunstocks and coffins. A valuable wood in many ways, but the passing of the fashion for black walnut furniture is not to be regretted. It has been cut most recklessly in our forests during the last twenty-five years, and already it has been almost exterminated in the Mississippi Basin. Individual trees are now sold where there used to be whole tracts of black walnut forests. In Tennessee last year, dealers were buying stumps of old walnut trees which had been left when the trees were first cut, in the early days of the lumber trade. Each stump brought more money than the whole tree originally sold for.
Its fruit is edible, and an oil is made from its kernels. A kind of bread has also been made from the kernels of these nuts, and the husks are used as a dye.
The black walnut is found growing wild in the Northeastern States, but it is more common west than east of the Alleghanies.