lobed. Lateral buds, directed outwards at an angle of 45°, small, ovoid, pubescent ; frequently two superposed. Pith dark brown, with narrow chambers. (A. H.)
Distribution
According to Sargent, it occurs in rich moist soil near the banks of streams and on low rocky hills from southern New Brunswick and the valley of the Saint Lawrence in Ontario to eastern Dakota, south-eastern Nebraska, central Kansas, and northern Arkansas, and on the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia and northern Alabama; most abundant and of its largest size northward. The grey walnut or butternut, as it is commonly called, is a common tree over the same region as that which produces the black walnut, but never attains the same size, and, as a rule, unless drawn up in the forest is a much more spreading and less valuable tree. It does not in New England usually exceed 30 to 50 feet in height, with a trunk 1 to 4 feet in diameter, but sometimes in the rich forests of the Wabash valley attains greater dimensions. Ridgway says, loc. cit. 76, that two trees felled in the “Timber Settlement,” Wabash county, measured 97 feet and 117 feet in length, with clear trunks 50 feet and 32 feet long, and 1 foot 10 inches in diameter. Pinchot and Ashe, loc. cit. 82, say that in North Carolina it is nowhere common, but in cool rich mountain valleys it attains 70 feet high with a diameter of 3 feet. In New England Emerson, loc. cit. 210, mentions a tree in Richmond, Mass., which was 13 feet 3 inches in girth at the smallest place below the branches. I never saw any such trees as these; and near Ottawa, where the tree is approaching its northern limit of distribution, it was a small branchy tree bearing little fruit.
Introduction
The butternut was first described by Parkinson,! and was apparently introduced into England at the same time as the black walnut, i.e. sometime before 1656, as it is probably one of the species mentioned by Tradescant? as growing in his garden. Loudon states that it was introduced into cultivation by the Duchess of Bedford in 1699 ; but the tree referred to by him was Carya alba.’
Cultivation
Though it must have been planted in many places in this country the butternut seems to be now a very scarce tree. The only one I have seen of any size grows in the grounds of Mr. C. S. Dickens at Coolhurst, near Horsham, and was in 1902 52 feet high and 4 feet 2 inches in girth. This produced fruit in 1900 from which I raised two seedlings, one of which is now growing at Colesborne. I noticed that the roots of these seedlings instead of being long, fusiform, and free from rootlets, as in J. regia and J. nigra, formed a thick, fibrous mass, which made the tree
! Theatrum Botanicum, 1414 (1640),
> Museum Tradescantianum, 146, 147 (1656).
3 Aiton, Hort. Kew, iii, 360 (1789), ex Brit. Museum Sloane MSS. 525 and 3349.
