Black Walnut Wood
Black walnut or American walnut is a species of flowering tree in the hickory family that is native to eastern North America. It grows mostly in riparian zones, from southern Ontario, west to southeast South Dakota, south to Georgia, northern Florida and southwest to central Texas. Isolated wild trees in the Upper Ottawa Valley may be an isolated native population or may have derived from planted trees.
While its primary native region is the midwest and east central United States, the black walnut was introduced into Europe in 1629. It is cultivated there and in North America as a forest tree for its high quality wood. Nuts are produced more by open-grown trees. Black walnut is more resistant to frost than the Persian walnut (also known as the English walnut), but thrives best in the warmer regions of fertile, lowland soils with a high water table. It is a light-demanding species. The wood is used to make furniture, flooring, and rifle stocks, and oil is pressed from the seeds. Nuts are harvested by hand from wild trees.
Black walnut is highly prized for its dark-colored true heartwood. It is heavy and strong, yet easily split and worked. Walnut wood has historically been used for gunstocks, furniture, flooring, paddles, coffins, and a variety of other woodworking products. Top-quality logs are sliced into veneer, which then is glued to wall panels, doors, furniture, and cabinets. Standards for veneer trees vary with market demand, but veneer most often is cut from the first log on trees at least 16 inches in diameter and 8 ½ feet long with very few defects (e.g., small limbs, knots, bird peck).
Portions of this article are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Juglans nigra".
