BLACK WALNUT TREES

BLACK WALNUT TREES ON CORNER OF SIXTHE ST AND MANYPENNY AVE....

...WITH LARGE, PINNATELY COMPOUND LEAVES AND ALTERNATE BRANCHING...

TENNIS-BALL SIZED FRUIT, THE HUSK ENCLOSING...

YOU'VE GOT TO GET THERE BEFORE THE SQUIRRELS  

...A SHELL WITH NUT INSIDE (google photo)

Wednesday,  9:00 AM.  50 degrees F at the ferry dock, 46 on the back porch.  Wind SW, calm with light gusts.  The sky is mostly overcast and cloudy, the humidity 84%.  The barometer is still trending down, now at 29.91", predicting rain on Friday.

   As we stated yesterday, it has been a good year for nut production, and the remnant trees of a walnut grove on the corner of Sixth Street and Manypenny Ave. have dropped a lot of walnuts on the ground. Most folks are familiar with the walnut shell and nut, but many may never have seen the nut still enclosed in the tennis-ball sized husk in which it grows on the tree.  

   The husk will ripen after it falls from the tree and split open, revealing the nut still in its shell.  The ripened walnut husk will stain anything it touches, so gloves must be worn when handling it, or fingers and and hands will be stained brown.

   Walnut trees grow very large, up to 150 feet in hight.   The roots emit a toxin which kills many other plants, and is particularly  poisonous to tomatoes and many other garden plants. The dark brown, highly grained wood is very valuable for furniture, gunstocks and veneer, so mature, straight trees are prone to theft by rogue woodsmen.
   The native range of the black walnut is the east-central US, mostly east of the Mississippi River and excluding the farthest northern and southern states.  Since it is not a far northern species, the Bayfield trees were probably planted.  It seldom forms colonies, and is mostly present in nature as an individual or small grove in a mixed forest environment.  It prefers deep, well-drained limestone soils but will tolerate many different soil types.

   The leaf of the walnut is pinnately compound, with seven to eleven leaflets, and is very long. The fall leaf color is a clear golden yellow.  The tree has opposite leaves and branches.

   Walnut trees, Juglans nigra, in the Walnut Family (Juglandaceae) are valuable trees for both fruit and wood, but are difficult to use in the landscape.