I am in love with Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) and I want shout all about it throughout the late Summer, early Autumn season. They are big, beautiful, and bountiful with their tennis ball sized fruit with bright green husks and nuts snug deep inside.

Slowly colonizing the sunlit fields and edges, home to all sorts of creatures both large and small, these towering monuments tell of the abundance of the land. They are amazing allies in healing, mentors in boundaries, relative buffet in mast years, and year round marker of beauty. Who doesn’t want to sing their praises!

For this show I really tried to dig into some ecological functions, and really just lean into why I love them so much.

Maybe by the end of the show, you’ll love them a little more too?

To learn more :
Ep. 167 : Black Walnut
Ep. 228 : Walnut Husk Maggot FlyTrees of the Carolinian Forest by Gerry Waldron. Boston Mills Press, 2003.
The Book of … Forest and Thicket by John Eastman and Amelia Hansen. Stackpole Books, 1992.
Wild Urban Plants of the NorthEast (2nd ed.) by Peter Del Tredici. Cornell University Press, 2020.
Bark: A field guide to trees of the NorthEast by Micheal Wojtech. University Press of New England, 2011.
Arboretum America by Diana Beresford-Kroeger. University of Michigan Press, 2003.
Wild Plant Culture by Jared Rosenbaum. New Society Publishers, 2023.
Manual of Ornithology by Noble S. Proctor & Patrick J Lynch. Yale University Press, 1998.