Butternuts

 We walked through the woods south of Stone Mountain after a storm. The Wise Woman communed with the mountain, while I searched the ground to see what the blow had knocked down.

Sweetgum balls fall year-round. (The spiky seed pods are always called “balls.”) After a storm, you see last year’s balls, which are black, next to green balls, which always come down with twigs and leaves. The fall beneath sweetgum trees is impressive, but I think the tulip trees are the champion shedders, a title held by pecan trees in Texas. Tulip trees are spectacular but brittle. After every blow, I find limbs, twigs and leaves on the ground.

The surprise was a scattering of butternuts. They were green and thus inedible, a shame since the nuts of Juglans cinerea are said to be best of the Southeastern forests.

I’d never noticed these trees, which look like black walnuts, J. nigra.

It’s a sad story. J. cinerea is imperiled in Georgia because of a fungus called butternut canker. It appeared in the 1960s and has killed more than 75 percent of the butternut trees in the Southeast.

• Source: The Georgia Biodiversity Portal has information on the butternut here:

https://georgiabiodiversity.org/portal/profile?group=plants&es_id=20809