Are these black walnut decent quality?

[Dobie]

Bought a propety in eastern Ohio for hunting.  About 30 acres of woods with black walnut seeming like the dominant species.  Never dealt with black walnut before so know nothing about how to judge them.  Not looking to cut but want to know if these look decent for futue management.


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[Dobie]

Also, anyone have any idea what this stone structure is?  Stone structure has a cement roof and round hole inside the building with water. Outside is what looks like a sink with a pipe running above it. About 20 - 30 yards from the creek. 

 

 

 

 

[nativewolf]

Looks like yellow poplar, or tulip poplar.  It's actually part of magnolia family (so not aspen- another tree called poplar) and if I were looking at trees in virginia I would say...30 years old or something like that.  

As to your building I don't know.  Won't be too old with cement roof, not more than 100 years.  Spring houses, root storage, gasworks (where farm made gas in a stone building set farm from the house).   I don't know what we are looking at here though.  

[Dobie]

I'll get some better pictures next time I'm over there.  There's walnuts on the ground around the trees but I wasn't paying close attention when I was scouting around so it's possible there were some smaller walnuts dropping near there and I mistook the trees in the picture for walnuts.  The woods definately have a good number of walnut trees on the western side.  

[Erik A]

Does the sink drain go to the hole in the building? If yes, outhouse!?

Drop a string with a weight and see how deep the hole is. 

Cool little building, maybe a well house?

[beenthere]

Dobie
Look at the leaves as well. 
https://www.thespruce.com/black-walnut-identification-removal-5197488

There are several leaflets on each walnut leaf. 

Split the stems to see if the pith center is a chambered pith. 

A good photo of the leaves will help us identify from other species too. 

[Dobie]

Here's a closeup of the bark until I can get back to take more pictures.



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[rusticretreater]

Certainly not walnut. The PlantNet website identifies the tree as a white ash.

Based on your description of there being a water filled hole in the building, I would say that it appears to be a spring house.  The outside structure is of interest and I surmise it was a something of a filling station.  A water bucket(possibly canvas) is set under the pipe and some type of pumping system was used to bring the water up from the bottom of the spring to the pipe.  You didn't want to put a bucket in the spring as it would stir up the muck.

It might also have doubled as a washing station for folks working hard nearby.  It probably had a pump mounted on the pipe and supported by the two vertical stones.

[Ron Wenrich]

Ash has opposite branching.  If it is opposite, then ash.  

I remember back in my dendro class, one of my classmates pointed out that ash, tulip poplar, and walnut all had the same bark description.  Diamond shape pattern in the bark.  He asked my prof how to tell the difference.  After a little bit of talking around the subject, he said "it just doesn't look like anything else".  Big help!

From a mgmt perspective, these trees are crop trees, irrespective of species.  The walnut is more valuable. Woods grown walnut usually doesn't have much growing in the understory, thanks to the phytotoxins that walnut puts into the soil.  Walnut and ash both grow on good sites.  I would think that the emerald ash borer had come through the area.  A lot of those ash would have died.  Maybe you got lucky.

Another species that might be in that area is cucumber tree.  They don't grow in my area, and I've only seen a couple that are woods grown.  They sell in the tulip poplar market.  Both are magnolias.

As for your structure, I'm leaning on a spring house.  Not too many people would go to that kind of trouble to build an outhouse.  I suspect there might be an old homesite close by.  

[YellowHammer]

I don't see a walnut in any of the pictures.

From the effort and craftsmanship in the structure, that it's pretty close to a creek, that it has a pipe plus a sink, that it had a wooden frame for a door, I would also say it is well house.

Most people did not drink from creeks in the old day, way too much chance of contamination, although it is common to hand dig a shallow well near a creek on the uphill side, to capture the clean water seeping from the water table downhill to the creek bed.  We have such well houses on our property, except they are mostly concrete block and roofing tin, to protect the health and integrity of the well, and to keep animals and plant materials (leaves) from falling in and rotting.  
 

[Ron Scott]

White ash and a well house.

[Dobie]

Here are some quick pictures I was able to take today when at the property with family showing leaves.

[Southside]

Well, those ain't Poplar balls growing on them. 

[KEC]

Black Walnut.

[YellowHammer]

Those look like walnut, but that looks like different pictures of different trees.  Post #7 shows a different, light colored, raised bark, with fungus growing blotchy on the bark, while the latest pics look like classic walnut, darker, flatter bark and no or little bark fungus.

[Dobie]

Those look like walnut, but that's different pictures of different trees.  

Yes that is correct.  These latest pictures were near the field edge close to the house as I didn't have time today to go down in the woods because we had family with us.  The first pictures were of what we had on hand from an intial walkthru of the property and apparently confused some of these for walnut.  I believe 90% of the trees on the edge of the field are probably walnut as it's easy to see their leaves up in the canopy.  I believe there are more in the woods but will have to actually pay attention when doing a walkthru next time we're there.

[Ron Scott]

These pictures are of black walnut.

[Dobie]

Ok, went out today with my wife for a little walk and this time took binoculars to verify trees.  Here's a few pictures we grabbed today.  Only took pictures of trees we could verify had walnuts.



 

 

 

 

[Dobie]

A few more.



 

 

 

 

 

[nativewolf]

Yep those are walnuts.  So, you have an old home site with some nice rich moist soils and a walnut grove.  You also have some yellow poplar and ash, likely dead by now or dying (emerald ash borer).  Walnuts are a bit poisonous to other plants so they often end up in little pure groves.  

The walnuts are moving up the fence/gield line as animals distribute them.  They are not browsed by deer or cattle so they slowly but surely get planted and move around field boundaries and such.  They need some sun to germinate but with that huge nut they have a big headstart vs many trees, they can get a couple of feet tall in year 1 in the right conditions.  

Like anything else value in hardwoods is about clear stems.  The walnuts in your pics have some clear stems and some not.  The second thing is diameter, hard to say but they look like decent sized trees.  Walnut values vary wildly depending upon quality.  Anything from $0.50/bdft to $10 is possible to the landowner and with that range it is really hard to say anything other than you have some walnuts and some are better than others.  

Hope you enjoy the property!

[Dobie]

Nativewolf, thank you so much for the generous explanation.  That was exactly what I was looking for!

I like to manage my woodlot for wildlife first (mainly deer) and timber value a close second but have never had walnut before and admit it's sort of exciting just from everything you hear about it.  I figured these walnuts were more likely on the the mid to lower end of the scale with a few nicer ones mixed in but really wasn't sure given our limited experience with them.  I'll always give preferantial treatment to my favorite tree of all time, the traditional red oak which we may have a couple dozen here on the smaller 12" - 18" size.  It might not be the most valuable hardwood in the forest or be the most preferred browse of deer but to me there's nothing more beautiful in the woods than a nice smooth red oak in the middle of the woods.  I now have to figure out how to manage these walnuts and find a balance between our objective of habitat for deer and future timber value.  The field edges are dominated by very young walnut just like you explained happens and this is where I normally like to plant disease resistant apple trees.  So now we have some head scratching to do to figure out how to balance between managing these walnuts which we definately want to do and habitat for deer which is very important to us.

[bluegrasspicker]

Hi Dobie,

I don't have much to offer, as I'm still in the steep part of the learning curve with woodlot management.  

But as far as management of your walnuts, I see some vines climbing up them.  That's never good.  My first priority would be to stroll out there with a handsaw and send those demons back to hell.

My old farm in WV has some giant old dead walnuts that were clearly choked out by vines before I bought the place. 

Also, if you're planting apple trees, make sure you protect the trunk well into adolescence.  Some that I planted ~10 years ago just got girdled this last winter.  I noticed that a couple of cats moved into the field.  They were probably after the offending field mice since it was a relatively warm winter.  Just when I thought my trees had made it!

Stuff like that is good practice in maintaining a healthy sense of humor.

Best of luck with your endeavors!