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About Butternut
Butternut (Juglans cinerea), also called white walnut, oilnut, or lemon nut, is a native deciduous tree in the walnut family. It has a broad, open crown, grayish bark, large compound leaves, and oblong nuts wrapped in sticky green husks. Compared with black walnut, butternut often has a softer, lighter look, with fewer leaflets, paler bark, and elongated fruits.
The leaves are large and alternate, usually with many toothed leaflets arranged along a central stalk. In spring, butternut produces dangling yellow-green male catkins and smaller female flower spikes near the tips of branches. By fall, the tree may carry clusters of oval nuts with ridged shells and fuzzy green husks.
Butternut has a long history as a food and useful woodland tree. The nuts are sweet, oily, and edible, and the husks can produce yellow to orange-brown dyes. Today, butternut is also an important conservation species because many trees have been lost to butternut canker disease. In a coloring page, it offers big leafy sprays, dangling catkins, textured bark, and chunky green fruits that look like little forest lanterns.
Where Butternut Grows
Butternut is native to eastern Canada and the eastern to north-central United States. It is often found in rich woods, stream valleys, moist slopes, ravines, bottomlands, limestone outcrops, forest edges, and well-drained upland sites. It tends to grow best in deep, fertile, moist soil with good drainage.
This tree usually prefers full sun to light shade. It can grow in mixed hardwood forests with sugar maple, basswood, black cherry, oaks, hickories, white ash, elms, and other native trees. In the wild, it is often scattered rather than abundant, appearing as individual trees or small groups.
Because butternut has become much less common in many parts of its range, healthy wild trees are valuable. Gardeners and restoration projects should be careful to use locally appropriate, disease-resistant, or conservation-sourced material when available. Butternut also produces juglone, a natural compound that can affect sensitive nearby plants such as tomatoes, peppers, rhododendrons, azaleas, and some ornamentals.
Pollinators It Supports
Butternut is primarily wind-pollinated, so its flowers are not designed as nectar stops for bees or butterflies. The male catkins release pollen into the air, and the female flowers develop into nuts after pollination. Its wildlife value comes mainly from its leaves, nuts, bark, and structure rather than showy blooms.
Butternut is a host plant for several moths and butterflies. Specific examples include the luna moth (Actias luna), regal moth or hickory horndevil (Citheronia regalis), walnut sphinx moth (Amorpha juglandis), banded tussock moth (Halysidota tessellaris), bride underwing (Catocala neogama), penitent underwing (Catocala piatrix), and banded hairstreak (Satyrium calanus). Their caterpillars feed on the leaves, making butternut part of the caterpillar-to-songbird food chain.
The nuts are also important for wildlife. Gray squirrels, fox squirrels, chipmunks, mice, white-tailed deer, and birds may eat the rich oily seeds. Cavities and branches can provide shelter or nesting spaces as the tree ages. For a coloring page, butternut pairs well with a luna moth, hickory horndevil caterpillar, walnut sphinx moth, banded hairstreak butterfly, gray squirrel, chipmunk, or a bird investigating the nut clusters.
Coloring Tips
Color the leaves medium to dark green, with paler green undersides. Since each leaf is made of many leaflets, use slightly different green tones along the leaflet row to show depth and movement. The toothed edges can be outlined with a darker green, and the central leaf stalk can be yellow-green or olive.
The bark can be gray, gray-brown, or light brown, with shallow furrows and narrow ridges on older trees. Use darker gray in the grooves and lighter gray on the raised ridges. Young twigs and buds may look brown, olive-brown, or softly fuzzy.
The nuts are especially fun to color. Young husks can be bright green or yellow-green, while mature husks may turn olive, tan, or brownish-green. Add darker lines for the ridges and small dots or short strokes for the sticky hairs. For the background, place butternut in a rich woodland, stream valley, ravine, or forest edge. Add fallen leaves, mossy rocks, a squirrel with a nut, or a luna moth resting on one of the compound leaves.