Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Fwd: Protecting the Butternut Tree

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Fwd: Protecting the Butternut Tree
  • Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 12:17:23 -0500

At 11:13 AM 6/29/2005, Topgun wrote:
Does the Butternut tree require 2 varieties for pollination?

You know, I'm not sure.
I've got a number of butternut seedlings - some of which are quite likely to be hybrids, as some of the seednuts came from a friend who has quite a collection of butternut, heartnut, Carpathian, and Japanese walnut selections, in addition to black walnut in his plantings.
True butternut and Japanese walnut/heartnut cross-pollenate readily. I suppose that if bloom periods overlap/coincide, Carpathian &/or black could also cross-pollenate, but I'm only aware of a couple of butternutXblack walnut hybrids, and a single buartXblack cross, so it may be that their bloom periods are not compatible for hybridization to occur frequently without some human intervention.

One of my butternut seedlings, grown from seednuts from GA produced catkins for the first time this year, but no nutlet flowers, so no nuts yet. These 'Southern' nuts were quite different from the 'northern' butternuts I was more accustomed to seeing - a smaller, more rounded, egg-shaped nut, with less prominent external ridges/veins on the shell itself, but internal nut structure and characteristics of the seedling are undoubtedly 'butternut'.

Lucky Pittman
USDA Cold Zone 6
AHS Heat Zone 7
Hopkinsville, KY




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page