A Walk Through Walnut Grove (Identifying Black Walnut Trees) 

This would be an excellent series to start up. Just going out and teaching us all about the different kinds of oaks, cherry, walnut, etc...

Hey Matt, awesome video. Read an article once about a guy who had a farm. Took 20 acres and planted all black walnut trees. Long story short that was his legacy to his family. In 20yrs the lumber value was in the millions.

I can't believe you were in Kenosha! I was born and raised here. Now out in the county in Twin Lakes. Nice video!

I love watching your videos. I live in Wyoming so we don't really have tree's like you get but I have learned a lot. I love working with wood myself and watching your videos is an inspiration and you make it fun. Thank you :-)

My wife thinks I am crazy pointing out trees and dreaming of the figure I know is behind that bark pattern. maybe that is why she does not like walking in the woods with me. LOL

I just planted 100 black walnuts. I'm 47 years old and a wood worker. I have little expectation of using the wood. But 10 years I outta have some walnuts. And maybe in my old age the property value can help care for my wife and I. I had two residential walnut trees salvaged, I slabbed with Alaskan sawmill stored in my basement and moved 600 miles to my new home stored now in shipping container. One slab was stolen from me with boat motor and other stuff.

"walnuts themselves are gonna be the easiest way to identify a walnut tree" My new favorite Matt Cremona quote! Great video!

thanks for sharing! Very educational.

Thank-you. We have a couple of walnut trees in the park, here, and squirrels have started seedlings in everyone’s garden, hiding the nuts and forgetting where they put them!😅

Matt great video. Very informative and educational.

I got my forestry knowledge when I was young through my local 4-H club and there are a few great tree identification pocket style books that are available. Growing up in Michigan we had pretty much the same as you do there. One of the easiest ones for me to identify was Shag Bark Hickory and of course Maple, mainly because of it's distinctive leaf shape much the same as oak leaves. Canada identifies strongly with the Maple leaf and our military uses the Oak leaf with rank. I remember seeing Osage Orange trees with their large grapefruit size fruit. Identifying Red Oak from White Oak can be tricky from some boards but if you look at a freshly cut end grain from both you will see that Red Oak has at least 3 to 4 times the open pores as White Oak and has become my go to identifying trait I look for. As always love your videos and their content.

Pinnately compound is the botanical description of the walnut leaf.

Just wanted to say hey Matt! I enjoy and learn from your videos. And I live in Kenosha.

Great video, learned a lot!

Thanks for the info Matt! 👍🌲🌳

Standing from a distance,walnuts will have a browner look to the butt,than surrounding stands.The biggest thing is the smell,even in the saplings,you cannot mistake that!!

I enjoyed your video :) Keep it up!

loved the video. I drove home looking for walnut trees. if the dark wood is dead why does the sap wood stay lighter even after slabbing? Or does it darken ever?

Great vid, really interesting to see walnuts growing on mass. I don't know about those though mate. They look quite old(?). That kind bark doesn't develop very fast. I guess in searing sun you might get fast fissuring. The bark is smooth for a long time before it fissures up though. You might be surprised if you get a core sample or pollard one of these. They look quite straight and tall too. Was anything planted with them? They grow pretty thin and tall if chaperoned. And they grow much slower without full sun. Maybe they have been struggling away there for 50 years or more(?).

nice educational video. I remember as a kid growing up in Ohio my grandparents had hundreds of walnut trees on their property. To me these days that is a gold mine of beautiful wood. They also have quite a few cherry and one massive white oak that is about 5' across at the trunk.

5:56 looks like it could be a pawpaw tree. It produces fruit.

Surrounding neighborhood: Hurry, everyone get inside. There is a strange man walking around in the woods talking to the trees.

When the walnuts (green golf balls) have just fallen, you should really open one up and rub the black stuff from the inside on your hands. It'll be tons of fun. :-)

There is an app called leaf snap. If you take a leaf from a tree a take a photo of it with a white background the app will identify the tree for you

This was as interesting to me as any of your build videos, definitely keep them coming if you're so inclined! My dad lives in Kenosha and I'm not far from there myself, will be on the lookout for walnut trees in my neighborhood from now on. :-)

Thank you for sharing your knowledge about trees, I love walnut trees, they are very beautiful

Definitely agree with your closing remark, it's fun to see the trees you love working in the shop; just a couple of weeks ago I started to learn tree ID here in the uk. I love working with ash, but thought I'd be lucky to see it with all the talk of ash die back. The first beautiful tree I looked at with my guide book in hand turned out to be ash. Now I see them everywhere :)

That looks to be a Buckeye (horse chestnut) at 5:44.

I would love to know these things, know what bark, leaf, wood, etc. I loved this, please do more. I would like to know what wood is what too. I tend to know only about 4 types of wood by looking at a board. it's embarrassing.

Youshould consider changing your name to the "Wood Whisper"...never mind I just checked some other guy is using it.

Great video, Matt! Looking forward to more in the tree identification series. Up here in Maine, we of course have tons of pines (hence the state nickname), and my property has plenty of sugar maples, some oaks, lots of birch, a hybridized American chestnut, and one lonely ash in the front yard (at least until the ash borer gets here...).

The 4H clubs used to have a very good program in tree identification. Black walnut are seriously delicious but a real pain to crack out. Wild cherry is very delicious and is used to cure a variety of ills. Wild cherry makes the best jelly that ever was. Now the question is how to distinguish between english walnut and black walnut? I don't think I have ever seen an english walnut tree.

It's a little hard to tell because of the low resolution, but your mystery tree looks like a hickory. A few guys said buckeye, but the 5 lobes radiate from a central point on a buckeye. Your tree looks to be a compound leaf (like a walnut or ash, or hickory).

Thanks Matt, this has inspired me to buy a field guide and get into the woods to identify trees. I would love to see you do a series on identifying several different species of trees. Thanks for all the great videos

I became fascinated with trees when I identified and read about the history of the Santa Lucia Fir and also Purchased some rare Sapodilla slabs from a tree blown down in Hurricane Wilma. Some trees seem to have an interesting background history.

I understand that Walnut is valuable as far as Lumber..but as far as looks go I like Lumber like elm, Beech or Sycamore better then walnut. I get $0.80 a board foot for Walnut logs at The Sawmill..and if I need lumber I can buy their miss cuts or boards that didn't make grade for $0.08 a board foot. they come in a bundle of a thousand board feet for $80..no Sycamore Beech or elm,mostly oak.

Matt's like.. man all these trees are only 14" wide. Little twigs not even worth bothering with.

Nice video Matt. Thanks for the info. Looking forward to seeing more. Great job.

Thanks Matt. I really enjoy the diversity in your videos. Project videos, milling videos, videos like this walk in the woods. It makes this woodworking hobby so much more fulfilling to know where the wood starts, how it gets to my shop in usable form and then how to turn that into useful and beautiful pieces. Great work!

When I was a teenager , a friend and me were at a park watching soccer game. I was leaning up against a Walnut tree with my left hand. The next day we went to the park we noticed that Walnut tree I was leaning up against was now shriveled up and completely dead. A couple of days later it was announced in the local paper that park maintenance workers were going to cut that Walnut tree down. I think that maybe while leaning up against that Walnut tree I drained it of its life force ( Chi ), and now I might live as long as a Walnut tree would.

Ah so you hail form the same town as Weezer doesn't really hail from, but is claimed to in the music video for Buddy Holly.

@5:50 -- is that a beech tree? Or possibly a chinese/horse chestnut. I didn't get a close enough look.

Great stuff Matt, would love to see more of this!

Matt!!!!!! Bring back this series 😊😊😊😊😊 please do other North American Hardwoods!!!!

I suspect momma Walnut was taken by the developer and sold for lumber. That's their usual MO.

Looks like a Lead Bullet in your sample board at 8:25. We saw a lot of Lead and Nails.

Hickory, and Chestnut Oak I believe. LOL

Already as a kid i would go out with a determination table to identify plants including trees. I continued that during my education at the agricultural university in wageningen. There was a course on wood identification too. Of course aimed mostly at stuff we have here. We identified wood with microscopes looking at the cell structure. Maybe nerdy, but so much fun. And its helpful for a woodworker to pick up branches and logs and to immediately know what it is. I really loved this video. Makes me relate to your experience even more! Thanks Matt!

Great idea for a series! You should do more like this!

Interesting video for a guy from the west coasts rainforests. Other than the dominant evergreens, {Red &Yellow Cedars, Hemlock and many species of Fir), I have little in the way of native hardwoods to harvest. Red Alder, Maple, wild Cherry are about it. I should include Yew wood to as it is a very sturdy and good looking wood, but it is not commonly used by many woodworkers other than carvers and bow makers. We have plenty of Arbutus growing along the shorelines here but its not a useful wood other than carving and burning, though it is an excellent heat source.

I got one walnut tree out of 30. All small trees. One to two feet high. One grows yellow. Instead of green. Any idea’s?

Take a Dendrology class. You only have 2 test at the end of the semester (last 2 days of class). You will be required to identify 200 native species of trees. 100 trees on each test but they don't tell you which 100 will be on what day. Give common name, Latin name, family name. I made 197/200. Missed sassafras, and two pine trees that I still have no idea what they are.

Black Walnut trees give off a chemical compound (juglone) which inhibits the growth of many other species of plants. For example, most Gardners know that tomatoes won't grow near black Walnut trees. Black Walnut trees change their immediate environment to increase the odds of black Walnut reproduction, so it's not uncommon to have stands of mostly walnut trees. I live near Madison, and I have mostly walnuts, with ash and hickory around the edges.

It's probably like that for anyone... certain things you don't give a crap about as a teenager become important to you later. My grandfather really knew trees. He was a farmer, a carpenter and a woodworker. Was I interested in any of that when I was younger? Nope! I could have learned so much from him. Bad timing and missed opportunity.

The compound leaves on walnut trees almost look tropical. That's how I quickly identify them.

I'm from Burlington Wi now living in New Mexico I really miss the green and hiking through the woods. The Fox, White river and Honey creek all converge in town but before and after that there are great trails.

That tree was a hickory... maybe shagbark hickory

You should mention the smell of the walnut leaves is stinky. And the smell of the wood is lovely... At least it is in GA.

Fun fact, you will not see black walnuts west of the Rockies. The Walnut Twig Beetle native to that area spreads thousand canker disease which is fatal to Black Walnut. Because of the Rockies and Great Plains the beetle never was able to migrate to the eastern United States, because of campers that like to move firewood we now have these beetles on the east coast. Keep an eye out for your walnuts dying!

I worked as a forester for some time, I had to know types of trees by their bark and tree shape (limbs and branches, overall shape of tree). Most trees are the same where ever you go, they might be a shade different in color. Not sure on your tree at 5:55, almost looks like some kind of nut tree. The black walnut meat of the nut is delicious, they are very expensive when purchased shelled. They are worth the effort.

Walnut Grove is where Little House on the Orairie took place. Where Michael Landon worked in a… are you ready??? A saw mill!

We have a huge black Walnut tree on our back property line and I hate picking up walnuts in late summer and fall. Worse is getting hit in the head with a falling walnut. Ask me how I know that.

Faskinating, thanks Matt. From Aus. we don't have those species, but ya still gotta know what ya lookin' at

The Walnut that started it's probably on your furniture or somebody's furniture

Very similar bark to Hickory trees here in MS. Leaves are unique though.

how would be able to get to the nuts in all that weeds and trash that is a gold mine of black walnut trees very high value$$$$$$$$$$$$

Walnut tree is in middle Europe very valuable species because of walnuts. It is a treasure to have a walnut tree on a property.

Nice tour Matt. A forrester recently told me that the walnut has a blight that will eventually kill them all much like the American Chestnut.

We cut up and milled a black walnut tree here in PA that had fallen over. At first we were not sure what it was. The smell it put off while limbing it was the deciding factor that it was indeed a walnut.

why are walnuts common in private gardens?

Do you have a book you recommend to learn different trees?

Thanks for sharing the knowledge Matt. Thumbs up

If they're all the same age isn't it likely/possible that someone planted them all?

I never thought about there being a "mother tree". Fascinating stuff!

use a knife and slice a shallow slice of the bark and it will be dark brown near black.

How do you tell the difference between walnut trees and sumac?

Well, hello from Milwaukee, cool to know you visited WI :)

What's the difference between a Walnut and Butternut tree? :)

I live up in menomonee falls, where there are also a lot of walnut trees.

This is a really interesting video. I was wondering if you had an idea of how old the 14" walnut tree might be? I understand that a lot of factors go into a tree's growth so just a general idea would be great. The trees also seem to all be very straight. With no really old trees would you think that at some point the area might have been clear cut and used as farm land before it re-forested? Thanks for sharing.

So where are you? I'm in Connecticut I'm trying to identify the start finding.the beginning of the harvest of.trees from.the 1800s

I was good at this in MICHIGAN but not so good now in COLORADO just not enough variety here , it just pine & Aspen ash, and a few maple in the city . oh yeah and those dam Cottonwoods.

That tree you couldn't identify resembles either a PawPaw tree, or a Buckeye. If it grows fruit this summer, it's a PawPaw.

Matt, the unknown tree looks like a buckeye.

I was on my FFA forestry judging team and learned to identify most trees on the eastern side of Texas. We moved to the southern end of the Hill Country north west of San Antonio and all the trees are totally different. I think we would all enjoy the series on the subject but think you should buy yourself a good book on tree identification for the area you live in, the species change dramatically in just a few hundred miles.

this tree is an aspen... you can tell by the way it is. neat

How did you go from zero to walnut in just a few years? Surely it's not just looking at the arbor day website. Do you have formal education?

Matt, The previous comment is spot on. I have a couple of books on identifying trees in southern MN. I know what is immediately around me and what species are common but it takes more than what I see in the books to identify what is sitting in the compost site which our town has. I'll be checking out the arbor day site. Thanks!

Maybe this name has already been given to you but I just thought of it. Since you are the woodwhisperer's buddy you should be called the tree whisperer.

Seems walnut has about 50% sapwood at that age. Wonder if other hardwoods have as much sapwood as walnut during their growth?

Have big plans to get up to my parents land in Minocqua this summer and see what we can find to mill up. I know there is a bunch of white oak but who knows what we will find.

The bark of the walnut and the cerry tree look very different from the the ones we´ve got here in Germany. The bark here is much smother even when the trees get older.

I grew up in Kenosha. Your Instagram story at the park had me wondering why you were there. Makes sense now. It's a small world.

Nice vid, I live in Walnut country and yes woodworkers become more interested in tree types when they start woodworking.

I believe you were looking at a Hickory tree. I live in Milwaukee, and am very familiar with hickory trees The bark is a dead give away.

Are you still a WI guy? I am over here in Walworth county.

The tree at 6:00 is a Shag Bark Hickory.

I really hope you will do more of these, while I know how to identify a walnut, some of the other info was new, and I am sure as you show us other trees and how to ID them it would really spread the knowledge ! awesome content!

Walnut Grove was also the name of the town in the 1980s TV series "Little House On The Prairie".

Hi Matt very informative video. you are dead right we humans do not take notice of our surroundings and what is growing there