I have some free butternuts for planting if anyone wants to pick up a few near the intersection of Merivale Road and Meadowlands Drive in the west end. Please reply by email. If mailing from outside the NCF be sure tp put "notpsam" in the subject line to get past my spam filtre.
These are tree seeds of a nothern variety of walnut which is being killed off by an asian tree virus. It's on some government endangered species list. You can read about it by doing a search on "butternut tree" in the Internet.
I gathered these nuts to plant along waterways when I go out boating. They prefer the moist air near water. They also have to be in the sun to grow and produce nuts. After 5-6 years they start producing nuts and then the squirrels scatter the nuts and more trees grow. (Some Internet websites erroneously claim it take 20 years to start producing nuts. The trees from which I gathered these nuts are less than 10 years old.) They have to be planted in the fall because the seeds have to go through a cold phase to germinate.
I've started planting some around the west end of Ottawa on public property but I am hoping to get some planted in isolated areas along waterways outside of Ottawa where they might escape the tree virus and the species may survive. Apparently the tree has disappeared from the southern limits of it range in the Carolinas, and 80% are said to have gone from one northern US state. The Ottawa Valley is about the northern limit of it's range.
Of the 8 trees in the group where I gathered these nuts, one is infected and is dying. There is also a big old butternut behind the KW Neatbly building on Carling Ave at the headquarters of Agriculture Canada where I gathered some nuts in the early 1980's. If anyone want's to see what a dying butternut looks like, that tree is one.
PS: I also have some dried black cherries, elderberries, and juneberries for planting if anyone wants a few.
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