A wood seldom mentioned on here so thought id post a thread. Scored some last week and split several rounds of it today. Easy splitting. Grain and texture similar to black walnut. Chambered center pith. Saw a living one at jo191145's place last week. He pointed it out. Dont know if its as "highly valuable" as its black cousin.
Butternut. Actually Brad you pointed out the one on the edgerow. We never made it over to the big Kahuna. At one time the state would tag them and keep an eye on them. Not many left in Ct. Brad also told me the tree I thought was a catalpa is a honey locust. I imagine my grandmother must have planted that. Butternut (White walnut) | Woodworking Network
Where is that one? The edgerow one was near the TOH. There is a register of record size trees in the state. Eric had given me info on it. There's a ginormous white oak ive always admired in Wallingford i took pics of and posted. Never did contact them though. I remember a butternut tree on the edge of our yard that blew down in a storm back in the 1970's. The stump was always sprouting saplings that dad would prune off and it kept coming back. It had the sticky nuts. This one had the porcupine nuts as i found one at the score.
You don't see a lot of bitternut now days. Disease killed most of them off and continues to kill them today. Burns a bit better than snowballs.
Butternut canker. There's a lot of different (fungus) cankers out there. I had to cut my plum trees down as they just got too infected one year. I was keeping up with it for a while but one year they just got so loaded by the time I trimmed it all out there would be very little tree left. I cut all but one tree down, burned it and gave up on plums. Now I'm losing my peach trees to something invisible (to me). Place is going to hell.
Many years ago a friend of mine gave me a block of plum wood from a dead tree in his grove. I made him a set of grips for his Super Blackhawk. They came out beautiful, the color was fantastic and the wood held up nicely for 22 lines per inch checkering.
Maybe I should have saved the trunk - it was about 5-6 inches dia. Oh, well. I save too much <stuff> as it is.
Planted yes. Long before my time. According to the literature I’d say this one lived way past its life expectancy. When the blight Ralphie spoke of came around it got very sick. Along with the one behind my parents house. Both made it through. The state tagged the one the one behind my parents house but we took it down around 14 years ago. Ants had hollowed it out and it was close enough to the house to do major damage. Make great shade trees except when those hand grenade sized nuts start falling. Err, hand grenade sized to little boys anyway Dear old mom saw me looking at her trees and came running. I wasn’t even holding a chainsaw,,wtf? Didn’t want a photo in her work clothes but I said it’s for Brad, into the poison ivy she goes The other one on the edgerow. I’m quite certain that’s a TOH And the Honey Locust mom told me was a catalpa. That’s certainly a hybrid. Never saw any thorns anywhere on it. But hey I don’t look at much. I’ll post a separate id thread on the one in the woods that stumped you.
That white walnut is something to see. I’ll bet it could be a CT state champion. I’ve never seen one in person. You’re right about the TOH, and that honey locust is quite large too. Looks a little sick with all those dead branches. Maybe make some good firewood at some point?
mom wants it gone. I’ll think I’ll let it go a bit. See if there’s any seed pods this year. Maybe not depending on what variety.
Thats cool Joe. Thanks for the pics and for mom being a trooper. Wish i looked that good in my work clothes.
