29 November 2023

The Nutty Series: Shagbark hickory

Last month shagbark hickories (Carya ovata) put on a show in Pittsburgh’s parks with bright yellow leaves and fallen nuts.

The thick green husks began to turn brown immediately and peel off in quarter-moon sections. This piece of husk sat indoors for more than a month before I took a photo of its interior. The dark brown exterior is visible at the bottom edge.

If a nut lasts through the winter its husk looks quite worn out by March. This one was probably uneaten for a good reason.

Shagbark nutshells are slightly oval with a remnant stem and four ribs. When I cracked open the nut I collected, it was a dud. Maybe an insect got to it. This Wikimedia photo of a sawed nut shows the meat.

Though shagbark hickory nuts taste good and can substitute for pecans, shagbarks are not cultivated because …

They are unsuitable to commercial or orchard production due to the long time it takes for a tree to produce sizable crops and unpredictable output from year to year. Shagbark hickories can grow to enormous sizes but are unreliable bearers.

C. ovata begins producing seeds at about 10 years of age, but large quantities are not produced until 40 years and will continue for at least 100. Nut production is erratic, with good crops every 3 to 5 years, in between which few or none appear and the entire crop may be lost to animal predation.

— Wikipedia Shagbark Hickory account

Interestingly, shagbarks (Carya ovata) and pecans (Carya illinoensis) can hybridize in the wild though the hybrids usually don’t produce nuts.

Shagbark hickories are easy to identify by their shaggy bark. Just look up and you’ll see it peeling from the trunk. Young trees can fool you, though, because they have smooth bark (click here to see young bark).

Shagbarks are one of the first native trees to leaf out so their sap runs early in the spring. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers (Sphyrapicus varius) take advantage of this and drill the trees as they migrate north. The birds move sideways around the trunk as they drill in a ring around the tree. The trees heal the wounds by producing callus tissue that grows outward, almost like lips. These attract the the sapsuckers who then drill the same rings year after year.

(credits are in the captions)

22 November 2023

The Nutty Series: Black walnut

Black walnut trees (Julgans nigra) are common in the Pittsburgh area. Their nuts are always ready to eat in time for the holidays.

In September the fruit was still on the trees while we searched for fall warblers among the leaves.

By the end of October the fruit had fallen and started to look bruised. Eventually the husks turned black.

But most black walnuts aren’t abandoned that long. Squirrels gather them for winter food and eat a few along the way.

Squirrels know that they have to open the shell on both sides to get all of the nut meat.

The meat does not come out easily! It usually breaks into small pieces on the way out and is never the perfect shape of grocery store walnuts.

The ones we buy in the grocery store that are grown in California are English walnuts (Juglans regia) which would not be possible without the life-giving participation of black walnut trees (Julgans nigra).

Non-native English walnuts are susceptible to root diseases in California so walnut farmers plant native black walnut trees to start the orchard. When the black walnuts are a year old with strong roots and vigorous base they are chopped off and an English walnut shoot is grafted to the stump.

All the trees in the orchard below show the wider stump base (highlighted in yellow) that ends at the graft point. Above the graft English walnuts produce their own delicious nuts which are harvested after they fall by sweeping and vacuuming from the ground. FLORY harvesting equipment is pictured below.

Black walnut trees can be identified in winter as a bare tree standing alone with twigs that have alternate (not opposite) small buds above large leaf scars.

Black walnut trees stand alone because …

Like other walnuts, the roots, inner bark, nut husks, and leaves [of Julgans nigra] contain a nontoxic chemical called hydrojuglone; when exposed to air or soil compounds it is oxidized into juglone that is biologically active and acts as a respiratory inhibitor to some plants. Juglone is poorly soluble in water and does not move far in the soil and will stay most concentrated in the soil directly beneath the tree.

Symptoms of juglone poisoning include foliar yellowing and wilting. A number of plants are particularly sensitive. Apples, tomatoes, pines, and birch are poisoned by juglone, and as a precaution, should not be planted in proximity to a black walnut.

— quote from Wikipedia

(credits are in the captions)

15 November 2023

The Nutty Series: Pignut hickory

Different species of hickory nuts look the same … but not quite. This one, partially in its husk, was a puzzle so I brought it home. Husks and shells together provide the clues so I had three nuts to work with in various stages of undress, plus a table of southwestern PA hickory husk and shell characteristics.

Characteristics of Southwestern PA Hickory Husks and Shells

The Verdict: The photo was taken after the nuts sat indoors for three weeks. The husk is still pear shaped but has turned brown and splits completely. Hmmm. The nut, however, has no ribs so I’d say this is a pignut.

Sliced open it would look like this. I lack the tools to make such a clean cut.

Pignuts were too bitter for European settlers so they fed them to their pigs, hence the pignut name. However pignuts are prized by wildlife including chipmunks, squirrels, mice, blue jays, red-bellied woodpeckers and wild turkeys. If deer eat them they will soon disappear from the ground in Pittsburgh’s parks.

Pignut hickories (Carya glabra) range along the east coast (the original colonies) all the way to the Mississippi Valley and down to the Gulf of Mexico but don’t normally grow in northern Pennsylvania.

In winter they are best identified by their buds. As with all hickories, the end bud is larger than the side buds but on the pignut it is relatively small and the side buds are almost at right angles to the twig. This one is about to burst into spring leaves.

Young trees have smooth bark. Mature ones have these ridges.

The tree’s compound leaves have 5-7 serrated leaflets …

… which turn a beautiful golden color in the fall.

But now the trees are bare.

Bonus! Did you notice the clean hole in the center nut in my three-nut photo? It was probably made by a pecan weevil (Curculio caryae). The weevil drills a hole to lay its eggs inside developing hickory nuts, including pecans.

How does she drill into the nuts? Check out this video of acorn weevils drilling and mating.

Read more about pignuts at the Glen Arboretum.

(credits are in the captions)

8 November 2023

The Nutty Series: Bitternut Hickory & Butternut

Though their names differ by only one letter bitternuts and butternuts are not the same at all.

Bitternut hickory (Carya cordiformis) is one of the most common hickories in southwestern Pennsylvania and easy to identify by its slender sulfur-yellow buds.

Bitternuts are closely related to pecans and also share the hickory genus with shagbark hickories, pignuts and mockernuts. Unlike the pecan the bitternut tree is rarely cultivated.

The fruit is a very bitter nut, 2–3 cm (0.75 – 1.25 in) long with a green four-valved cover which splits off at maturity in the fall, and a hard, bony shell.

— Wikipedia: Bitternut hickory

The “green four-valved cover” turns brown after the nut lies around for a while (see middle nut at top) and indeed the shell is hard and bony. I had to use a hammer to open this one and damaged the perfect nutmeat in the process. You’ll have to imagine it was shaped like a short squat pecan.

I can tell you from taste-testing that the nut is bitter and astringent. Squirrels avoid these nuts though Wikipedia says that rabbits eat them.

Butternuts (Juglans cinerea), on the other hand, are prized because the nuts taste good.

Butternuts are in the same genus as black walnuts and sometimes called “white walnuts.” The leaf arrangement is so similar that I didn’t realize that I was looking up at a butternut tree — to see warblers — until I saw the nuts on the ground.

Notice how similar the husks are: butternut on the left, black walnut on the right below. The butternut husk is oblong and fuzzy.

As the husk deteriorates (at left) the lumpy nutshell is revealed.

A cross section of the nut shows the rough exterior and nutmeat inside.

The butternut’s natural range runs from Maine and southern Ontario to southeastern Missouri and is smaller than the bitternut hickory’s. While the bitternut thrives, the butternut is declining and listed as threatened in some U.S. states and endangered in Canada. Its biggest threat is a fatal disease, butternut canker, caused by a fungus imported with the Japanese walnut. Ironically butternuts are partly threatened by too-easy hybridization with Japanese walnut trees.

Like black walnuts, butternuts are shade intolerant and thrive only when they’re at the top of the canopy or in an open space. Now that I know what a butternut looks like, I’ll pay more attention.

(credits are in the captions)

1 November 2023

The Nutty Series: American beech

If you find a small spiny capsule on the forest floor that opens to reveal two to three nuts (in this case two are nicely packed together) you’ve found beechnuts. Without even looking up you can be sure you’re near an American beech (Fagus grandifolia).

The fruit [of Fagus grandifolia] is a triangle-shaped shell containing 2–3 nuts inside, but many of them do not fill in, especially on solitary trees. Beech nuts are sweet and nutritious, can be eaten raw by wildlife and humans, or can be cooked. They can also be roasted and ground into a coffee substitute.

— Wikipedia account: American beech, Fagus grandifolia

Beechnuts can be eaten raw? Well, it’s complicated. Foraging Beech Nuts explains that it’s best to let the capsules dry out for 2-3 weeks and then cook the nuts because some people get throat irritation from the raw seed coating.

In Pittsburgh’s parks beechnuts can be hard to find because they are so popular with deer and squirrels. Looking for a beech without looking up? Here’s another clue.

Beech drops (Epifagus virginiana) are parasitic on beech tree roots so if you see these well camouflaged plants you are definitely near an American beech. Read about them at On The Beech.

Looking up at American beech trees this month you’ll see brown beech leaves clinging to the branches.

Its buds are distinctive: long, pointed and golden brown like its fall leaves.

The trunk has smooth gray bark.

And at the end of winter, small American beeches have pale, rattling leaves that make them stand out in the forest.

All the beechnuts will be eaten or hidden by the end of winter.

p.s. If you’re my age you probably remember Beech-Nut chewing gum. Were there beech nuts in it? No, that was the name of the company. The gum’s claim to fame was its peppery peppermint zing.

Whatever happened to the candy? The candy division of Beech-Nut went defunct in 1976. Read about the Beech-Nut company here.

(photos by Kate St. John except for the beech drops photo by Scott Zona via Flickr Creative Commons license)