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You ground me, inspire me, make me feel safe, provide for me in so many ways, and my love for you continually grows each day.
Black walnut (Juglans nigra), also called eastern black walnut and American walnut, is one of the scarcest and most coveted native hardwoods. Small natural groves frequently found in mixed forests on moist alluvial soils have been heavily logged. The fine straight-grained wood made prize pieces of solid furniture and gunstocks. As the supply diminishes, the remaining quality black walnut is used primarily for veneer. The distinctive tasting nuts are in demand for baked goods and ice cream, but people must be quick to harvest them before the squirrels. The shells are ground for use in many products.
Black walnut is classed as intolerant of shade. In mixed forest stands it must be dominant or codominant to survive, although it has survived and grown in the light shade of black locust. In a mixed hardwood stand in Indiana, pole-size black walnut responded to crown release by more than doubling diameter growth over a 10-year period. Trees only partially released grew about 50 percent more than unreleased trees. Controlling understory growth had little effect on growth of the walnut trees. Following release, dominant and codominant trees continue to grow more rapidly than those in intermediate or suppressed crown cl*****, but strong intermediates often respond most to release (in terms of growth rate increase). A walnut tree should be considered for release if it is healthy, has a bole with potential to make a veneer or high quality saw log, and is small enough that it can reasonably be left for at least 10 more years.
The best known use of black walnut is for its lumber and veneer. The wood is used for fine furniture of all kinds, interior paneling, specialty products, and gunstocks.
The nuts of black walnut serve many purposes. The kernels provide food for wildlife and humans . Ground shells provide special products (12). During World War II, airplane pistons were cleaned with a "nut shell" blaster and this idea was carried into the auto industry; manufacturers used shells to deburr precision gears. Ground shell products are also used to clean jet engines, as additives to drilling mud for oil drilling operations, as filler in dynamite, as a nonslip agent in automobile tires, as an air-pressured propellant to strip paints, as a filter agent for scrubbers in smokestacks, and as a flourlike carrying agent in various insecticides. |
