Juglans cinerea

Unpaired feathery foliage Journal of butternut ( Juglans cinerea).

Called The Butternut ( Juglans cinerea), also gray walnut, walnut gray or white walnut, is a species of the genus of walnuts ( Juglans ) in the family of the walnut family ( Juglandaceae ). It is native to North America and is used in some areas as ornamental tree.

Description

Appearance, bark and leaf

The butternut grows as a deciduous tree, the plant height 12-18 meters and trunk diameter of 30 to 60 cm reached. The large canopy is irregular rounded with almost horizontally wide-spreading branches. The trees grow fast, but rarely live more than 75 years. The bark is ash-gray to gray- brown.

The 3.5 and 12 cm long stalked leaves are 30-60 cm long and unpaired pinnate, with seven rare, usually eleven to 17 leaflets. The stalkless leaflets are oblong lanceolate with different hairy upper and lower sides. They are usually 5 to 11 ( 2.5 to 17.5 ) cm long and 1.5 to 6.5 cm wide. The edge of the leaflets serrate sharp. Young twigs and petioles are covered with sticky hairs.

Inflorescence, flower and fruit

The flowering period extends from April to May The butternut is monoecious getrenntgeschlechtig ( monoecious ). The male flowers are in thick, rolled union 6 to 14 cm long catkins. The male flowers contain 7 to 15 stamens. The pollen sacs are 0.8 to 1.2 mm in size. The female flowers have red scars.

Also covered are sticky and hairy their elongated, pointed, very rough and grubigen nuts that are about 4 to 8 cm in size (ie in about a protracted peach kernel equal). They contain a small, walnut -tasting and slightly oily core. The core shell is very hard with about eight main irregular furrows.

Dissemination

The home of the butternut is located in eastern North America; it extends from north to south of New Brunswick in Canada through the eastern United States right down to Georgia.

In Central Europe it is practically found only in botanical gardens. Because of their hardiness, their large and well-shaped leaves and their beautiful autumn colors the butternut has, however, brought it to a very popular park and garden tree in Estonia, as it is too cold for the purely externally similar tree of heaven even in the cities.

Use

Butternut wood has a bright red-brown core. It is relatively soft and not very robust. We used it for like veneers, furniture and interior panels. Also in the cabinet making the wood is appreciated.

The rather small nuts are baked into cakes and biscuits. The flavor of the butternut is slightly sweeter in comparison with the real walnut, but not as sweet as the even smaller Texas walnut ( Juglans microcarpa ). Butter nuts are easier to crack than Texas walnuts. The edible meat core, however, can not easily detach from the shell. The nuts ripen in September, so already relatively early. As with all the walnuts you should never pick nuts from the trees because they are hollow. If you want to store the nuts, one must perforce they peel and dry. The peeling the butternut is almost as tedious as to crack and herauszupulen their flesh, because their shell is tough, sticky and rooted in the rough surface almost nut. It is also impregnated with brown dye of clothes and human skin badly removable.

In Massachusetts, we drilled 120 years ago to the strains of butternut trees and processed the effluent juice to sugar production. The bark was used as a laxative agent. In your own garden but it is better to be careful with the tapping of the tribe or the cutting off of branches, because, like all walnuts also tends butternut for bleeding to death during the spring; the best time to trim the tree is mid-August.

Also like all walnuts also produces the butternut a harmful especially for apple trees herbicide, and unlike other types of walnut roots of butternut grow in width. So be careful, although the ground is covered with butter nuts with grass, as opposed to Manchurian walnut ( Juglans mandshurica ), for example.

One obstacle for the economic use of wood is that the trees bear no shadow from above. Grow them in competition, they can be up to 10 meters higher.

The transplantation of butternut trees is difficult because they quickly form a taproot from which injury they do not survive.

Swell

• Alan T. Whittemore & Donald E. Stone: Juglans in Flora of North America, Volume 3, 1997: Juglans cinerea - Online. ( section for description)