Chapter 8

BUTTERNUT


Like the hickory tree, the butternut shares in the childhood
reminiscences of those who have lived on farms or in the country where
butternuts are a treat to look forward to each fall. The nuts, which
mature early, have a rich, tender kernel of mild flavor. Only the
disadvantage of their heavy, corrugated shells prevents them from
holding the highest place in popularity, although a good variety cracks
easily into whole half-kernels.

Butternuts grow over an extended range which makes them the most
northern of all our native wild nut trees, although their nuts do not
mature as far north as hazelnuts do. Butternut trees blossom so early
that in northern latitudes the blossoms are frequently killed in late
spring frosts. Only when the trees are growing near the summit of a
steep hillside will they be likely to escape such frosts and bear crops
regularly. I have found that really heavy crops appear in cycles in
natural groves of butternut trees. My observation of them over a period
of thirty-two years in their natural habitat in west-central Wisconsin
has led me to conclude that one may expect butternut trees to bear, on
an average, an enormous crop of nuts once in five years, a fairly large
crop once in three years, with little or no crop the remaining years.

As a seedling tree of two or three years, the butternut is
indistinguishable from the black walnut except to a very discerning and
practiced eye, especially in the autumn after its leaves have fallen. As
the trees grow older, the difference in their bark becomes more