Guest Contributor: Alec Phoenix, Butternut Tree Enthusiast
Tucked away between a red oak and a black cherry on a sloping five-acre tract in Arcadia, New York, the lone butternut had been there the whole time but I had somehow missed it. I had mowed under the tree a couple of times every season over the course of five years. I assumed the sticky, oval-shaped nuts I discovered in the grass were aberrations created by a distressed black walnut tree, and that the black marks on its bark were some kind of fungus. I thought I should probably cut the tree down sometime soon.
Then one day a friend who was knowledgeable about permaculture remarked, “Wow, that butternut is in better condition than most I’ve seen.” To which I replied: “Butternut? Isn’t that a squash…?”
As a means of forgiving myself for this tree misidentification I began reading everything I could about the butternut. To my horror, I found that Juglans cinerea is being attacked by canker disease. The species might even eventually be wiped out by it – yet another tree going the way of the chestnut, the elm, the ash. I thought, Dear God, how can this be?
It was at this time that my mowing skills began to deteriorate. When I came upon that very distinct, pinnately compound leaf structure poking up through the grass, I would simply refuse to mow the seedling down.
I began to mulch the young trees. I erected chicken wire cages to protect them from deer browse. My neighbors would watch in shock as I made serpentine trails on my lawn tractor to avoid the places where squirrels had planted these seedlings. When I refused to mow down the milkweed and the oak seedlings as well, I may have been placed on Lawn Culture’s Most Wanted list.
Then one serendipitous day in August 2022, as I was enjoying a walk along the Erie Canal Pathway, I came upon a seemingly healthy stand of butternut trees. The nuts were scattered all over the path, getting in the way of bikers and pedestrians. My view of the bark was obstructed by poison ivy and wild grape vines, but what I could see did not present evidence of canker. I collected nuts from this location over the course of the next two months. I left plenty for the squirrels, which were busy stashing them in a huge pile underneath the vines.
After stratifying and germinating these nuts in a caged air-prune bed, I am looking at hundreds of healthy butternut seedlings. They stand four feet tall as of early August 2023. My plan is to get them planted and share them.
My lone, forked butternut split in half after the heavy July rains and it is unclear how many seasons it has left. But I hope that at least one of the new seedlings might have a gene that resists the canker. Perhaps my project might buy us some time as the researchers at Cornell race to find a cure.
