Butternut - Another Tree in Trouble

Article by Barb Boysen, Coordinator
Forest Gene Conservation Association

Originally printed in the Forestry Forum
Volume III Issue 57
May-June 2005

Butternut Tree

We are lucky in eastern Ontario. We have a rich forest heritage that is largely intact. Sure, there are some areas that could use more forests, more windbreaks. There are forests that could be better managed – not grazed, not highgraded. And there are areas increasingly pressured by development. But our forests are largely appreciated for their environmental and social benefits. They are also used, if sometimes overused, for economic benefit—for recreation, maple products, wood products, and so on. And most of the forest species that were here 300 years ago are still here, and with wise management we can keep them here. Even the elm tree, that was hit so hard by the Dutch Elm Disease, is still on our eastern Ontario landscape – and there is reason to hope that it will always be, if to a lesser degree than before.

However, there is a tree that we may not always have around – one that is severely threatened and will need a concerted effort to save. And that’s butternut. Butternut is dying all across its range in the U.S. and Canada from butternut canker – a virulent fungal disease. It is currently being assessed by Environment Canada for endangered status under the Species at Risk Act.

While the canker is the threat to the species; the threat to its recovery is early removal – the mindset that “every tree is doomed, so cut it now”. This same attitude saw too many elm removed from our landscape. Many may have had the resistance researchers have since found. And butternut is even more vulnerable than elm. The ‘cut it now’ attitude could greatly limit its chances for recovery. These vulnerabilities include naturally low numbers, short life span, shade intolerance, highly predated seed, wood that is valued for specialty products and all ages vulnerable to the canker.

However, there is hope. Butternut researchers expect that some butternut will demonstrate canker tolerance or resistance. U.S. conservation efforts have located about 200 possibly resistant trees, although true resistance remains to be demonstrated. It is therefore critical that we keep what live butternut we have to allow tolerance or resistance to be found.

If Environment Canada decides to list butternut as a nationally endangered species, a National Team will develop a National Recovery Strategy. In the meantime an Ontario Team is creating an Ontario Butternut Recovery Strategy, building on the work initiated by the Forest Gene Conservation Association (FGCA) over the last 12 years. Our long term goal is to restore butternut and its functions in our forests. A key strategy will likely be to re-introduce disease tolerant, climate-adapted butternut across southern Ontario. In support of this our activities will include:

• encouraging people to retain butternut, especially vigorously surviving trees
• encouraging people to report butternut canker
• establishing a butternut database
• educating landowners on how to increase butternut vigour and regeneration
• studying butternut’s genetic diversity for a potential resistance breeding program and to set seed transfer guidelines for planting
• studying butternut’s link to forest species such as ginseng
• working with seed collectors and growers to propagate butternut from vigorously surviving trees, and
• clonally propagating surviving trees in protected archives and assessing for genetic tolerance.

In this program we will also help people understand how a single species helps support the web of life in a forest. And hopefully this understanding will extend to how important healthy forests are to our quality of life. This understanding will help us maintain and improve our eastern Ontario forests.

The Forest Gene Conservation Association has been working on butternut for over 12 years. We work with partners all across butternut’s range in southcentral Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and the U.S. But somehow butternut always means eastern Ontario to me.

Butternut Leaves

Partly it’s because my family is from eastern Ontario – my mother reminisces about cracking butternuts with her dad on the back porch of the farmhouse. And Eric and I have several butternut trees on our property in Lanark County. We’ve enjoyed it from many angles – nutmeats in buttertarts, beautiful wood cabinets and a butternut decoy carving from a dead, cankered tree. Butternut is also a marker that leads us to wild ginger in the spring woods. Richard David rounded out my butternut experience this spring with a taste of sweet, sweet butternut syrup from Mohawk Community of Akwesasne.

But it is also because of the sincere interest and help the FGCA has received from partners and landowners in eastern Ontario. The Eastern Chapter of the Society of Ontario Nut Growers first alerted us to the threat of the canker. Landowners sent in butternut reports by the hundreds. The Ferguson Forest Centre grew a small seed source trial for us that taught us to be especially careful of seed source in our recovery efforts. And finally the Eastern Ontario Model Forest from the start has provided much support that helped us undertake a literature review, landowner surveys, and a colour brochure. And just recently EOMF Web Developer Greg Moffatt, along with volunteer Algonquin College student Crispin Wood, put a new butternut web page on our FGCA website.

The EOMF is also helping us build capacity for future butternut conservation efforts. With its charitable status we now have a mechanism to establish a butternut fund to support long term recovery efforts. If you are interested in donating to the efforts to save butternut, please call 613 258-8241 or visit the EOMF website at www.eomf.on.ca. Sponsors will receive tax receipts for their donations.

Making connections to landowners and strong partnerships with other conservation, forest management and research groups are the keys to butternut recovery. If you have questions, or want to help with this program, please contact Barb Boysen, FGCA Coordinator at 705-755-3284, barb.boysen@mnr.gov.on.ca, or visit www.fgca.net.

Related Information

Documents

• Forestry Forum - May-June 2005 (PDF, 233 KB)
• Distribution of Butternut Canker - CFS Frontline Express Bulletin (PDF, 336 KB)
• Cosewic Status Report - Butternut (PDF, 1 MB)
• Butternut Extension Note - MNR (PDF, 224 KB)
• A Landowners Guide to Butternut Canker in Ontario (PDF, 1.4 MB)
• Landowner Butternut Survey Form (PDF, 26 KB)

Websites

• Forest Gene Conservation Association
• Eastern Ontario Model Forest
• Butternut Canker Information
• Butternut Canker in Ontario - CFS (Web)

References

• Boysen, B., 2005. Butternut - Another Tree in Trouble. Forestry Forum Vol III, Issue 57 (May-June 2005) p. 1-2.