North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>]

At 12:38 PM 6/29/2005, Topgun wrote:
> You know with some pecans, such as Jackson and
> Desirable, there is some overlapping of staminate and pistillate blooms, but
> not in all by any means. It could be similar with Butternut.
Same sort of deal occurs with black walnut - you can get crops with a 
single tree, but planting two or more varieties usually results in larger 
crops, as likelihood of better overlap of pollen shed and nutlet 
receptivity is enhanced.  I would presume the same occurs with butternut.
Ran across this blurb in a UGA online publication - talking mainly about 
J.regia, but it *might* hold for other Juglans species as well:
"Walnuts are similar to pecans in that the time of pollen shedding does not 
always overlap well with the time of female flower receptivity to pollen. 
Hence, although most walnuts are self-fertile, they sometimes require 
another cultivar for pollination since the timing of the functions of male 
and female flowers is different. This condition is referred to as 
heterogamy. Two possible forms of heterogamy are protandry (meaning first 
male), where the pollen is shed before the female flower becomes receptive, 
and protogyny (first female) where the female flower becomes receptive to 
pollen before pollen is shed. Most walnuts are protandrous. "

One thing about the butternuts - and their hybrid offspring - so far as I'm 
aware, even the 'best' selections are only about 25% nut kernel - there's 
still a lot of 'wood' left over after cracking & picking them out.

Lucky