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I found something delightful at a late-summer yard sale in an Ohio River Valley town. Green-hulled nuts littered the ground under a magnificent, towering tree on one side of the home. At first glance I assumed them to be black walnuts, and in fact there were round, green-hulled black walnuts under another tree, but these green-hulled fruits were oblong, not round.
"Are those butternuts?" I asked the residents, covetous excitement leaking through my innocent question.
"Yes, they are," came the answer, followed quickly by an unsolicited invitation to take as many as I wanted. Take them all. Please.
I filled two little containers we had in the car, regretting I had nothing bigger, but reminding myself that, after all, I had never eaten butternuts and might not even like them.
Fat chance. Any cousin of a black walnut is a nut for me.
To the residents of that home, they were an annual nuisance. To me, they were a new experience, new knowledge. As an amateur naturalist, I take pride in familiarity with the natural world outside my door, and can't understand how so many people don't mind not knowing what that bird or tree or animal is.
"Wild Bill" Harper was my earth science teacher at Chester Junior High. When a student's only answer to a question was a look of stupefaction, Mr. Harper would say, "You have a hole in your education." Butternuts were a hole in my naturalist education.
Any student of the Civil War can tell you what "butternut" is: it's the light yellowish-brown color of the Confederate soldier's uniform, made with a natural dye.
That's half right. "Butternut" was a dye for homespun cloth, commonly used by folk along the Ohio River. Applied to those people, it was a regional slur which antedates the more political "copperhead." (We locals all know that Lisbon in Columbiana County was the home of the most famous copperhead, Clement Vallandigham, who, campaigning from exile in Canada, almost won the Ohio governorship in 1864. Right?)
The butternut tree, properly called the white walnut, is native to the eastern U.S., from Tennessee, Kentucky and the Virginias north to southern Canada. It is not found in the Deep South, where the black walnut is widespread.
According to one source, "As numerous Southerners moved to southern Illinois and southern Indiana in the mid-nineteenth century, the native Northerners called them 'butternuts' for the butternut-dyed, rough homespun cloth they wore."
(You of course recall that Abraham Lincoln's father moved his poor family from Kentucky to Indiana and then Illinois. They might have been termed butternuts had they not been anti-slavery and anti-secession.)
Though light gray was the official color of Rebel uniforms (with many variations for rank and unit), the term "butternut" came to be applied whether it was homespun cloth, or any brown or gray fabric that had faded to light brown after being worn for months in the field. Because the South was short on cloth, as on so much else, blockade runners smuggled varied cloth and uniforms from England and France. The Rebs even took captured Union uniforms, which were dark blue, and boiled them in a solution with walnut hulls, acorns and lye, turning them brown-gray. Even black walnut-stained cloth would eventually fade to light brown from lack of an effective mordant, the term for an oxide added to "fix" the color.
The butternuts I brought home proved easier to hull and crack than black walnuts. The nut inside is football-shaped, rougher, and cracks more easily with a hammer. The nutmeat comes out in two flattish halves, somewhat like a pecan. Butternuts have a mild, savory flavor that does not require weeks of seasoning like black walnuts. They may be eaten raw, roasted or baked in cakes and cookies, as early settlers would have done.
An internet search quickly yielded no less than three "foraging chefs" proclaiming the joy of using butternuts in the obscure and creative dishes they make. One such chef, Alan Bergo, reported sadly on "butternut canker," an imported disease which is killing the butternut trees and may eventually cause extinction, as happened with the American chestnut blight and is happening with American ash from the emerald ash borer. Many states have declared the butternut an endangered species. In Wisconsin, it is illegal to possess, plant, or do anything at all with butternut trees or nuts.
"Is there nutting we can do?" the "Forage Chef" punningly lamented.
I went back to the Ohio River Valley home with the butternut tree and collected 10 gallons of nuts, still hardly making a dent in the supply. The residents weren't home, so I left a note of thanks and a dozen ears of my sweet corn on their doorstep.
Those nuts are hulled, cleaned and drying in the barn, ready for me to crack and enjoy over the months ahead. I will share them and my butternut lore with the grandsons, whom I taught to crack black walnuts when they were old enough to hold a hammer.
You'll notice I have been less than specific about the location of this butternut tree. I could say it's because I wish to protect the residents' privacy. The truth is, I want all the butternuts for myself next year. I know that's selfish. I don't care.
I dibbled-in a couple dozen butternuts here and there on the farm and marked them with surveyor's flags so I can protect them if they sprout next spring.
One must, after all, hope for the future, butternut canker be damned.
And now the butternut hole in your education has been filled.