@northwoodswis4 Found this looking for something else. Thought you might find it interesting.
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It is difficult to order from Canada and that is an expensive tree for just an experiment. Especially at my age. But thanks for that info.
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Was not meant as a place to buy from. Way to expensive. Just wanted to answer your question on where in Canada.
Thanks
another option…
https://www.grimonut.com/index.php?p=Products&category=heartnut
I finally had a chance to try Siberian Walnuts aka Manchurian Walnuts, and in terms of flavor they are less bitter than English Carpathian Walnuts, and perhaps more like hickory, but the flavor is something like hazelnuts but none of those hints of rancidity like in hazelnuts.
The nuts are small, but not really hard to break out, if you hit it on the seam it splits open pretty easily, as you can see the nuts come out differently and break differently, but these are the first ones I opened.
I think black walnuts are bigger,but I assume these are more cold Hardy, and the trees are massive they can make not only a tall tree but an incredibly wide canopy.
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Grafted trees will bear quicker. 2 grafted butternut trees from Grimo bloom every year since planting. Still not old enough to carry nuts. Maybe next year. My experience with heartnut is they get frosted in bloom. Black walnut is hardier than listed. I have 2 growing on property in zone 3b MN.
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That’s interesting. I always thought they were just a cold hardy version of english walnut. They actually look more like a heartnut. Any idea how long it takes them to start fruiting?
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I believe that they are closely related to walnuts; do walnuts grow where you are? I live in zone 4/5 and mine (heartnuts) are growing well. I planted them out back because of protection and to keep far enough away from other fruiting things other than those that are fine with juglone, even though they have less than a straight-up walnut. They are south-facing with a stockade fence and then evergreens behind them. They are going into their third year and growing well. They came through a pretty severe drought and have had some cold weather thrown their way, as well. I bought the two of them from Grimo’s up in Canada, figuring that the stock would be hardy!
So I looked online, in Russian, and the typical answer seems to be 7-8 years after transplanting a 4 year old tree, likely a seedling. The nuts are good, but disappointingly small.
But Manchurian Walnut trees grow huge and live 250 years! They have a beautiful broad canopy, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a tree with such a large round full canopy.
Heartnuts are extremely sensitive to frost in the north. I have tried hardy seedlings here, and none of them have lasted the first year. I have heard reports that someone was able to grow one around here very close to Lake Superior. So maybe if you had a very protected microclimate. My Dad tried heartnuts years ago in Central Illinois. He said an early frost came in late September and straight out killed the heartnuts. I grow quite a few buartnuts. They are very resistant to frost, a few degrees more resistant than black walnut. My black walnuts usually get burnt at about 30°. The buartnuts are good to about 28°.
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A friend of mine brought me two ‘pawpaws’ he found yesterday because i ask everyone i know to locate local ones.
Turns out he brought two huge butternuts.
I need to find that tree… they were huge nuts.
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You should for sure. The must have been exceptionally large.
Well they do kind of look like pawpaws in a way… this photo is about the size and looks of the ones he brought. Not sure if thats normal or uncommon myself.
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My knowledge of butternuts is limited, but from what I know and remember, those are a tad on the small side. I found some in Fulks Run Virginia about 40 years ago that were about 1/2 inch longer and a tad larger diameter. When cracked, the nutmeats were over 1.5 inches long, nearly 2 inches.
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This past spring i bought a couple of “butternut” seedlings from the Amish in my area. They look like really fuzzy walnut trees, and they’re both growing very well. I wonder if they’re actually hybrids.
Try them out. White walnuts taste great. I planted a few bare root ones, but they didn’t survive.
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Since heartnut/Japanese walnut was introduced to the USA in the 1860s, hybridization has been going on for over 150 years. Many of the ‘butternut’ cultivars which have been propagated for decades have been shown to actually be hybrids of J.cinerea with J.ailantifolia, and these hybrids exhibit varying degrees of resistance to the butternut blight canker fungus. That said, even the best selections produce nuts that are less than 25% kernel, so there’s a lot of ‘wood’ left over after you crack them out.
I have two seedling ‘butternut’ trees, grown from seed sent nearly 30 years ago, by a GardenWeb forum member in north Georgia (USA). Those nuts - and those produced by my seedling trees, are smaller, rounder(yet still egg-shaped), than most photos of butternut nuts I’d seen, so I suspected that they were probably buartnuts. Lenticel pattern on one of the trees does pretty well indicate that it is a hybrid, but the other is less convincing in lenticel appearance.
https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/fnr/fnr-420-w.pdf
In 2024, I received a batch of butternut seednuts from a friend in the Leiper’s Fork area, south of Franklin TN, from a large, surviving native butternut on their farm. The seedlings will be going in the ground here this fall.
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It’s really a shame no one has developed a well cracking butternut. They are a great tasting nut that I think a lot of people would like. All this new conversation has me ready to try growing them again. My first attempt struggled for years and eventually died.
I have an open-pollenated seedling of ‘Bountiful’(which has been shown by genetic analysis to be a hybrid), grown from a nut I brought home from KyNGA meeting in 1998. It is a big, well-grown tree, but has only ever produced ONE nut. It is located 40 ft from one of the north GA ‘butternuts’ and a ‘Late Rhodes’ heartnut, and has a seedling Japanese walnut and a seedling of Fodermaier hearnut located with 50 yards, so I would anticipate that pollenation should not be a major issue, but it’s either really slow to mature, or is just going to be singularly unproductive.