island of trees: Calling all butternuts

Coming treewalks: Mount Royal Cemetery, Sunday, September 18, 10h à 12h. Début: L'entrée du cimetière, Chemin de la forêt. The following Sunday, same in English. Free. 

1. This old butternut at the top of the loop, where Steynor Ave. turns around, may date from the time of the Ferme sous les noyers, also known as the Priest's Farm, land farmed by the Sulpician fathers and which clearly boasted many butternut trees, the only "noyer," (French for walnut) then in Quebec. The other noyer, the black walnut, was introduced from southwestern Ontario, only at the end of the 19th century. While both have long compound leaves, the two are easily distinguished by the difference in colour of bark - the butternut being a soft grey while the black walnut is dark- the size and shape of the nut, and the fact that the butternut has a terminal leaflet while the black walnut does not. Illustrations: Charles L'Heuruex

If you are fortunate enough to have a butternut tree and that tree is full of nuts, please collect them. Or, if you haven’t the time, contact Les noix du Québec (noixduquebec.org) and they’ll do the job for you. Why? Because the butternut, Juglans cinera, is an endangered species and the organization wants to see it survive.

As more of the trees fall victim to the butternut cancer, an ugly black sore caused by an exotic fungus, there are fewer trees left to produce the nuts. No nuts, no more butternut and fewer chances for planting the nuts in places where the tree has the least chance of being struck by the odious Sirococcus clavigignenti-juglandacearu.

Bernard Contré, member of Les noix du Québec, who will put your sticky, lemon-shaped, pale green butternuts to good use, growing young trees. Owner of La Pepinière Bellefeuille, which specializes in nut trees, Contré continues to sell young butternuts even though they may not make it the full 15 – 20 years till sexual maturity (ability to bear fruit). “I inform my customers that their trees may be struck by the canker,” said Contré on the phone from his nursery just outside Joliette.

He also informs them of the planting site which gives the tree the best chance at avoiding the fungus. “I recommend ‘clean,’ sites, such as open lawns where the tree had full sun, is relatively far from other trees – thereby reducing contact with insects, and is exposed to light winds,” he says, adding that insects may, or may not, be responsible for spreading the fungus from tree to tree.

As the fungus has only been in Quebec since 1990, it is not fully understood. Contré notes, however, that butternuts in the open fare better than those in the forest.

That is certainly true of the magnificent butternut beside the east entrance to the Japanese pavilion at the Montreal Botanical Gardens. With its black and ash-grey – hence its name in French, Noyer cendré, as in cinders – bark and the light green, thick parasol of all those compound leaves, this tree is a site to behold. Should you visit this butternut, be sure to touch the bark in order to appreciate the smooth-topped raised dark ridges about the rougher texture of the pale grey in the troughs.

Beneath the unique bark of the butternut lies a pale, fine grained softwood, prized by woodworkers for its colour and malleability. The wood may serve for low-traffic uses such as table tops and carvings.

The tree you see in this illustration, however, grows in a lesser know spot than the MBG. Does Steyning Avenue ring a bell? Probably not, unless you work in psychiatry at the Montreal General Hospital, are a teacher at the Académie Michel Prévost, or happen to be a Benedictine monk. That’s because this deadend street snakes up the east side of the private school,  running from Pine Ave, just after the Cedar Avenue fork, passes by the 1910 Jeffrey Hale-Burland mansion, whose most recent vocation was a Benedictine centre, and circles back on itself at the hospital's Psychiatric Rehabilitation Centre.

Just to the right of this centre, you’ll find a stately, roughly 150-year old butternut on the edge of the ravine angling up a wildwood to Cedar.

Look up into the canopy and you’ll see the multi-leaflet compound leaves with the well-defined terminal leaflet. This is one of the traits distinguishing the butternut, also know as white walnut, from its cousin black walnut, which originates in southwestern Ontario and the Appalachians but has naturalized here since the late 19^th century when it became a prestigious tree for institutions and the homes of the well-to-do.

The butternut, on the other hand, smaller and with a sweeter and more easily cracked nut, was more closely associated with farms. And I am wondering, in fact, if this old butternut, which predates all the surrounding buildings, bears any relation to La ferme sous les noyers, or the Priest’s Farm, as it was later known, from which the Sulpician brothers farmed, forested and mined (limestone) in this vicinity, and up Atwater Street, until the mid 20^th century.

Now, there is no obligation to collect nuts here as there aren’t any. Butternuts produce bumper crops every three years and while, according to Conté, this is a bumper year, this old tree is not complying. You'll find plenty of fruit, however, on other trees 


As a final anecote, I found on-line, a laxative under the brandname Butternut Bark made by Benedictine Healing Products. As far as I know, the Benedictines, who were the last occupants of the mansion on Steyning, are not related to this product but perhaps they passed on some nuts to their Californian brethren.