Remember the red tree in the now-pasture I mentioned in the Weeds to Pasture post on Wednesday? The quest to identify it (as, I hope, a Black Walnut) has a new development, so I thought I’d tell you the story from the beginning.

I’ve been trying to identify some of the trees and plants at The Wallow. It’s fun to know what’s out there, to know what’s edible, and to give things a name. When I realized there was a tree amidst the brambles in the field, I wanted to save it from the bush hog. There are no other trees in the main part of the field, and it would be nice to give the pigs some outside shade. Of course, I tried to identify the tree based on its leaves.

I used my favorite online dichotomous key for tree identification. I determined that the tree was either a Black or White Ash or a Black Walnut. I started to get really excited at that point – it would be fabulous to have a walnut tree here at The Wallow, especially one that I got to see grow up. I went elsewhere on the internet to help me answer which it was.

Since the tree is very young and not yet producing nuts, it’s a little hard to identify.  I found one site that said to help identify a young walnut, you should cut a twig to look at the inside. A walnut should have a chambered pith that looks like honeycomb. I sliced a twig from my mystery tree, and it didn’t look chambered to me. Oh well, I decided, Ash trees are perfectly nice.

Then, yesterday, Joshua was near the front of out property, near the road, and found walnuts on the ground!

We looked online to be sure they’re walnuts, and they seem to be consistent. We peeled off a hull and cracked one open. It was very hard to crack – Joshua eventually used a hammer – which is consistent with Black Walnut. The nut inside was kind of mushy and tasteless. I’m not sure if that’s because these have sat on the ground in the hulls too long, or because we need to “cure” the nuts.

Joshua and I went ahead and gathered up a bucket’s worth, and we’ll see what curing does to them. We’ll keep the green and blackish hulled ones separate to see if there’s a difference. Curing basically just involves removing the hulls and then leaving the shelled nuts alone for a couple of weeks. I’m skeptical that this will do much for the nutmeat, but we’ll see!

Black walnut trees are not super-common. Having found another one (and 2 across the street) on our property seems to increase the chance that the baby in the field is also a walnut.  I decided to go back to the ID key and look into the matter some more.

My original doubt came in at the 2nd step, where you must pick between opposite branching and alternate branching. At first, I wasn’t sure how to pick, because my tree in question has leaves that line up with one another but branches that alternate. Going one way takes you to Ash and the other way takes you to Hickory and Walnut (and the leaves do not look like Hickory leaves). As I re-examined the key this time, though, I realized that this step much refer to the branches, because the next step asks about leaves. Going with alternate branching, which describes the branches coming off the trunk of my tree, you end up at Black Walnut.

My conclusion (at least for now!) is that the tree is indeed a Black Walnut. I don’t know about the chambered pith thing. Perhaps this tree is too young to even have that yet? I don’t know.

If that tree is a walnut, it will be 15 or so years before it actually produces walnuts. Either way, it’s very exciting that The Wallow turns out to already have walnuts falling on our ground!