{"id":21462,"date":"2023-03-08T15:30:43","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T19:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/fnr\/extension\/?p=21462"},"modified":"2025-07-30T16:25:51","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T20:25:51","slug":"intro-to-trees-of-indiana-butternut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/fnr\/extension\/intro-to-trees-of-indiana-butternut\/","title":{"rendered":"Intro to Trees of Indiana: Butternut"},"content":{"rendered":"

The classic and trusted book “Fifty Common Trees of Indiana” by T.E. Shaw was\u00a0published in 1956 as a user-friendly guide to local species.\u00a0\u00a0Nearly 70 years later, the publication has\u00a0been updated through a joint effort by the Purdue Department of Forestry and Natural Resources,\u00a0Indiana 4-H<\/a>, and\u00a0the\u00a0Indiana Department of Natural Resources<\/a>, and reintroduced as “An Introduction to Trees of Indiana.”<\/p>\n

The\u00a0full publication<\/a>\u00a0is available for download for $7 in the Purdue Extension Education Store. The field guide helps identify common Indiana woodlot trees. \"Drawing<\/a><\/p>\n

Each week, the Intro to Trees of Indiana web series will offer a sneak peek at one species from the book,\u00a0paired with an\u00a0ID That Tree video from Purdue Extension forester\u00a0Lenny Farlee<\/a>\u00a0to help visualize each\u00a0species as it stands in the woods.\u00a0Threats to species\u00a0health\u00a0as well as\u00a0also\u00a0insight into the wood provided by the species, will be provided\u00a0through additional resources as well as the\u00a0Hardwoods of the Central Midwest<\/a>\u00a0exhibit of the Purdue Arboretum, if available.<\/p>\n

This week, we meet Butternut or\u00a0Juglans cinerea<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Also known as white walnut, this species has slowly disappeared from the landscape due to a fungal disease. Butternut canker can cause large dead spots on the tree and can even girdle the tree and kill it before it can produce fruit.<\/p>\n

Butternut has alternately held compound leaves that can be between one and two feet long, resembling a black walnut leaf with pairs of leaflets, but butternut often has a terminal leaflet. The toothed leaflets are green in the summer and yellow in the fall.<\/p>\n

The bark is light gray and relatively smooth, but it may become furrowed with age, silver on top and darker\u00a0between the fissures. Butternut twigs are light tan in color and have an elongated terminal bud. The leaf\u00a0scar resembles the face of a monkey and it has a \u201chairy eyebrow\u201d above the leaf scar\/below the bud.<\/p>\n

The fruit is a lemon-shaped edible nut approximately two inches in diameter with sharp ridges on the nut inside the husk. When they are green, the husk is sticky and clammy to the touch, unlike the smooth, thick skin of its cousin black walnut.<\/p>\n

Butternuts, which grow 40 to 60 feet tall, prefer moist, well-drained, loamy soils, found in ravines and coves, but it can also grow on drier, rocky soil, especially that of limestone origin. It is usually scattered in the forest and associated with other species that prefer upland sites.<\/p>\n