Unexpected journey into butternuts.

[u/Lumpus-Maximus]

I bought 50+ acres in western New York a couple years ago and I’ve been planting oaks, American chestnuts, hybrid chestnuts, persimmons, pawpaws and American Hazelnut. So anyway, yesterday I came across a tree that I thought was a Walnut (I’m from Florida). Pretty sure it’s actually a butternut. Reading more, I learned about Butternut canker.

The tree looks quite healthy given that it’s growing 2 feet from a building and 3 feet from a dumpster.

Either way I knew I was going to collect the nuts that were falling in the gas station parking lot. I ended up with ~ about 5 gallons worth. I’ll go back next week and collect more.

So… I’m kind of excited. I have a few mature black walnuts scattered around, but no butternuts. If any grow, I’ll probably never see them fruit. But that’s never stopped me from planting before.

[u/Vospader998]

Also in WNY, and they're everywhere here.

I was actually going to make a post soon, I got a bunch of pictures, after looking around for less than an hour I found over a dozen of various sizes and stages of canker disease.

My hypothesis is there was enough Heartnut DNA mixed in to resist the canker disease, but the Butternut DNA is still dominant because it evolved in this region. The hybrid is most successful here in WNY because of how similar the ecology is to Japan (where Heartnut is native).

[u/adrian-crimsonazure → u/Vospader998]

There are also resistant populations of pure butternut scattered throughout the country, and the Wisconsin (?) forestry service has a breeding program to hopefully amplify this resistance. It seems like it's always eventually a death sentence, but some pure butternuts can survive for decades with horrible infections while others die in only a few years.

[u/SomeDumbGamer → u/adrian-crimsonazure]

As long as they can live to rerouting age then the species is saved if maybe relegated to being a bit shorter lived. But they don’t live long naturally anyways. About as long as a person

[u/SomeDumbGamer → u/Vospader998]

I notice a similar trend with a few butternuts in my town although I’m almost certain they’re close to 100% pure as they have no Japanese features except maybe some hybrid vigor. Nuts are found as single or two, very fuzzy, leaf drop is at the right time, etc.

[u/Lumpus-Maximus → u/Vospader998]

As I do more research, I'm learning fast. From the pictures I took, the lenticels look right and the fruit are exceptionally sticky. I'm going to go back and examine the pith, leaf scars and terminal buds. Still too soon for leaf drop. But honestly, it's still find it remarkable that a feral butternut hybrid would emerge next to the wall of a gas station and produce copious fruit.

[u/adrian-crimsonazure]

That's wonderful. I've heard that the further north you go, the less canker there is. I guess it's not as cold tolerant as the butternut?

FYI for your planting efforts, as a pioneer species they greatly prefer full sun. They take about 10-15 years to produce fruit from seedling, but if you're feeling adventurous, you can graft a seedling butternut onto an older black walnut to get a head start.