The Forestry Forum

I've got a few nice butternut trees on our 40 acre wood lot, and in recent years I have harvested a few for trim for my own home and for some other projects (I have a cabinetmaking business). It seems I might have what I have been told is butternut canker affecting at least some of my remaining trees. The bark near the ground just starts to loosen up and fall off the trunk, and eventually the tree dies. Does this sound like canker and if it is, how long from the first sign of it does a tree generally live? I'm debating about cutting more trees this year but if they'll last a few more years I'd let them stay for now. I don't plan on selling them as I'd rather have the wood myself for cabinetry. I may be able to post some pictures if that helps, just don't have any right now.

I have 3 Butternut left in my 65 acre woodlot. mine have had the symptoms you describe for the past 10 yrs and are still alive.
Had several more in the past and just logged and sawed them when they died.
In my work as a consultant forester I used to see quite a few Butternut, but they have been slowly dying off over the past 30 yrs.
The lumber from  dead trees is OK and one huge tree that was on the ground for about 8 yrs yielded some nice wormy lumber

My favorite tree. They might live another 30 years or longer. Or just a few. Some of them have a little resistance to the fungus and the cankers will callus over and the tree keeps living for now. The cankers kill butternuts by girdling the stem. Usually the crown gets infected first. There's sort of a two-fold threat to butternut right now: the canker and a lack of regeneration. They are very intolerant of shade. Most of the butternuts I see at home and here in Maine are mature and probably approaching the end of their lifespan with or without the canker. Personally, I'd keep those butternuts until they die before cutting them, and when they produce some seed do some planting along edges or in gaps so there's butternut there in the future. There's actually a bit of a mystery around a lot of "butternuts" because there are hybrids with the Japanese walnut, and backcrosses back to butternut, and telling them apart is difficult. The Japanese walnut is resistant to the fungus.

Are the butternuts in a riparian or upland site? Just curious, since I've been doing some research on butternut and I seem to find healthier trees on upland, well-drained sites, but my sample size is small.

Pete,
  You're right over the hill from me I see. I'm lucky to have quite a few butternuts on the property still. My side hill has a large amount of butternut on all the adjacent properties too. I took one out a few years back that measured 44' to the first limb and was about 30" d. at base and still close to 20" at the 44' mark. That got used for all my interior doors for my house. You must know Tim Roberson over your way. Tim did my cutting for years until finally I just had to get a mill too.
  CJennings, most of my property is ravines and creek bottomlands actually but as I said above, there's quite a bit of butternut nearby too, both in steep hillside forest and pasture hedgerows. My Dad's place down the road had an old hedgerow that was made up of some giant butternuts, nearly 4' diameter, but they're all dead now and on someone else's property.