Subject: Black Walnut trees

From: jim faliszek <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Aug 1995 03:50:01 GMT

I recently moved into a new house (actually 2 yrs ago) with a black 
walnut tree.  (Identified by the local tree service and myself).  The 
tree is young, (10 inch diameter trunk, >20 feet tall) and I have yet to 
see any nuts. (although 2 yrs ago I found two walnuts on the ground with 
no other trees in the vicinity)  Why won't my tree give nuts?  Are black 
walnut trees "sexed"?  Thanks in advance for any help. 

                                        Jim Faliszek
                                        [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (K. R. Robertson)
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 16:45:23 -0600

> walnut trees "sexed"?  Thanks in advance for any help. 

Be patient, it takes a number of years for walnut trees to become
established and produce fruit.  Black walnut trees have separate male and
female flowers on the SAME plant, and there are not separate male and
female trees.  The plants are wind pollinated, and I don't know if they
require pollination from another tree, but the pollen can be carried a long
ways by the wind.  Black walnut trees do occur wild in woods in the Chicago
area.

By the way, when you do get mature fruits, don't try to peel off the green
skin without using gloves, otherwise your hands will be stained by the
pigments in the fruits, and the stain will just have to wear off! The
actual nut is very hard.  I grew up in the Missouri Ozarks, and we used to
put the whole black walnut fruits on our gravel driveway for a few weeks to
remove the husks.  Cracking the nuts to get to the meat is also difficult
as the shells are MUCH harder than English walnuts.  I use vice-grips.

Ken Robertson
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Gwenne F Lally)
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 12:55:41 -0400

In article <[email-masked]>, jim faliszek <[email-masked]>
 wrote:

> Why won't my [black walnut] tree give nuts?  

 Ken Robertson
<[email-masked]> responded:

> Be patient.

Jim  

Warning! We have several mature black walnut trees on our property. The
nuts are a real nuisance! They stain everything they touch with an
indelible greasy brown-black dye. (This includes cars, lawn furniture,
clothing, dogs etc.) They're terribly difficult to rake up, but _rake you
must_. Otherwise, you'll have seedling black walnuts with their deep,
hard-to-pull tap roots _everywhere_ come spring. That's due, in part, to
the squirrels. They leave a nasty mess of dye-laden "crumbs" when they eat
the nuts in fall. They also bury and then forget them, "planting" a crop
of seedlings. The nuts are also downright dangerous  easy to slip on
underfoot and enough to give you a bump when they fall on your head.

I've never succeeded in cracking one.

In addition, black walnut trees are allelopathic, limiting the kind of
plants you can grown beneath them.

So why don't I just cut them down?  Because they're large, handsome trees
and it would take decades for replacements to reach their size. However,
if yours is still young, you might seriously consider replacing it with a
more congenial garden citizen.

Good luck,

Gwenne Lally
[email-masked]