My 2nd installment of the Trees of Henderson series comes during autumn, a time of year that beckons even the most reluctant to shake of the cobwebs and get outside for some crisp fall air, pick apples at an orchard, enjoy the harvest of field and garden, and spend time around a bonfire with a hooded sweatshirt to defy the chill.

Autumn is also the time when the trees are reaching seasonal maturity, and the seeds, nuts, and fruits that bear their progeny are ripe. I’m going to describe a family of trees native to the Henderson area that produce a good quantity of nuts during the growing season, enabling them to feed both animals and humans. Such trees were highly important in the history of the people on this land, be they Native Americans or later European settlers. There was a time when grocery stores did not exist and the garden wasn’t quite enough for year-round sustenance, so people had to turn to the woods to find food.

Besides acorns, the tree nuts native to Henderson belong to the family Juglandaceae, the Walnut family. Three species can be found wild around Henderson: the Black Walnut (Juglans nigra), the Butternut (Juglans cinerea), and the Bitternut Hickory (Carya cordiformis). All of these have edible nuts inside a hard shell, which is covered with a green husk up until they fall on the ground and dry out. They are also characterized by compound leaves, where many small leaflets branch off of a stem to form a single leaf.


A Mature Black Walnut tree in front of the Ney Nature Center

The Black Walnut is an impressive tree. It grows large, is quite prolific, has edible nuts, and is prized for its lumber. As you can see from the close-up, the leaves have at least 15 leaflets, and the nuts on the tree are very round and covered by a green husk. With the husk removed, they are about the size of a golf ball. Black Walnuts are very edible and have a rich flavor, but are more difficult to process and crack, which is why other types like the Persian or English walnut are the ones you see in grocery stores. The husks need to be removed; the nuts washed well, and allowed to try for 2 weeks before eating.


Close-up of a Black Walnut tree showing nuts and leaves

Some people do not like Black Walnuts for landscaping due to the volume of seeds that end up on the ground and mess with rakes and lawnmowers, or the fact that they produce a chemical called juglone that prevents many other plants from growing under a walnut tree (you wouldn’t be able to plant a garden under a walnut).

The Butternut tree (Juglans cinerea) is also known as the White Walnut. It really is a type of Walnut, with the nut being oblong, sort of football-shaped. The butternut is oily and has a milder taste than the Black Walnut. Many people prefer the taste of Butternuts to that of other Walnuts, and they are easier to crack.


Bark of an uncommonly tall Butternut tree

There are fewer leaflets on a butternut tree, usually 9-13. The bark has a lighter appearance, and they do not grow as large. In fact, mature butternut trees are rare to find these days due to a disease called Butternut Canker that has decimated native populations. Like the Black Walnut, Butternuts also produce juglone, presumably to get rid of the other plants that may compete for its nutrients. The picture you see with my hand used for scale is the largest butternut tree I’ve seen in my neighborhood, and is so tall it grows from the bottom of a ravine and its leaves reach as high as the trees up the hill. Here is a picture of the leaves I took with a telephoto lens from below.


Butternut leaves - fewer leaflets than Black Walnut

I haven’t found a good crop of butternuts this year, in fact I haven’t even see a single nut on a tree, which speaks to the increasing rarity of the formerly common edible butternut. I remember quite well going out as a child to the back 40 and collecting butternuts in ice cream buckets. Another common use of butternuts in the past was for dying clothes, as the bark and nut rinds can produce a tan-colored dye. It is sad that such a useful tree is not around to provide for us as it did our ancestors. I hope the butternuts recover someday and return to our hills in their previous numbers!

Both Black Walnut and Butternut are prized for their lumber, and some of the most expensive furniture is made with walnut. The wood of Black Walnut is a purplish-brown unfinished, and a beautiful rich brown when stained and sealed. It is lighter than oak, but more difficult to work and machine. Butternut, on the other hand, is a light-brown lumber and its most common use today is as a carving wood. Butternut wood finishes beautifully, and has a tendency to show worm holes which are desirable among some woodworkers and carvers who want a unique look. Without the wormholes, Butternut wood can be made into a stunning tabletop or cabinet doors.

The other tree around here (besides the oaks I wrote about last time) that has a sizeable nut is the Bitternut Hickory (Carya cordiformis). Like the name says, they are awfully bitter and basically inedible. The more well-known and delicious hickory is the Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata) and can be found south and east of here, but I know of no shagbark hickories native to Henderson (maybe someone out there can prove me otherwise?) Another edible hickory tree is the Pecan, which maybe some of you have a north-hardy variety planted in your orchard or yard.


Bitternut Hickory nuts

The hickory has small green husks that peel away easily, and the shell inside is whitish and smooth. It has compound leaves, 5 or 7 leaflets, and is distinguished from the walnuts by the fact that its leaflets are much larger at the end of the leaf. It has smooth, gray bark, but so do many other trees. Hickories are spread far and wide by squirrels (if you hunt squirrels, just find a hickory tree and your prize awaits) and they grow on the forest floor not as a tree but as saplings ready to spring up when an old tree falls letting light through the forest canopy. The absolute give-away when trying to identify a hickory tree is the presence of a large, bright yellow bud at the end of each branch. This makes is one of the easiest trees to identify in the winter, because that yellow bud is completely distinct and shows year-round.


Yellow terminal bud of Bitternut Hickory


Bitternut Hickory sapling

Hickory is also a valuable lumber tree, most notably for tool handles, primitive implement parts (like the pitman stick on a hay mower), golf clubs shafts, and baseball bats. It is strong and tough but springy, making it ideal for hammer, maul, and axe handles because of its natural “anti-vibe” quality. I’ve tried hammers that sport fancy padding, steel shanks, fiberglass handles, but the most natural feeling and low-vibration hammers are those that have handles of select hickory. It’s also satisfying to re-handle old tools with good hickory rather than throwing the heads away and calling them junk. Hickory trees generally do not grow large enough to produce larger boards, but there are plenty of hardwood flooring manufacturers using hickory these days. Hickory is also used for barbecuing and smoking meats, and its firewood has more heat per pound than nearly any other wood around here. What a useful tree!

The walnut family could certainly lay claim to being the most useful trees around here, being valuable to humans not only for its lumber, but as a food crop, landscape tree, and its many other uses by people of yesterday and today. That’s all for the nuts, and look forward to my next article about the fruits. I think you’d be surprised at how many trees around here have goods you can eat fresh off the branch!