Bumper Butternut Bounty

Jeff Green | Aug 23, 2017

Butternut trees have been on the endangered species list in Ontario ever since the Endangered Species Act was enacted in 2008 and the list was created. Butternut’s are a medium sized deciduous tree that thrives in full sun. They can be found the limestone substrate regions of Frontenac and Lennox and Addington, and particularly in the borderline areas where the Limestone meets the Canadian Shield, roughly north of Tamworth and Verona and south of Hwy. 7.

They have been hit by a canker, and the population throughout the US and Canada have been devastated. A Butternut recovery program, which has been mainly volunteer driven, has been responsible for planting seeds of trees that have shown resistance to the canker in order to re-establish a population of healthy trees as infected trees die off.
Even with the canker damaging trees, many trees in the local region have been able to survive, although not thriving, for a number of years.
Doug Lee, currently of Enterprise, has been a fan of the Butternut for a quarter of a century, ever since the canker first began to have an impact on trees in Ontario. It was identified in the United States decades earlier but did not venture north until later. He has identified Butternuts throughout the Verona-Godfrey-Tamworth region over the years and regularly checks on the progress of the trees, paying particular attention to trees that appear to have few or no symptoms of canker infestation.

At the end of the summer, he visits different locations where he has seen Butternuts over the years to see how they are doing and to find out if they have put out any seed this year, in the form of Butternuts.
“I’ve never seen this many butternuts in one year in the 25 years I’ve been collecting them,” he said earlier this week. I have collected about 3,000 butternuts over the last week, including 195 pounds of nuts off one tree, over 2,000 butternuts,” he said, in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
To put this year’s haul in context, back in 2010, working with the Butternut recovery program, the News did a story with Doug Lee. At a property in South Frontenac, about 200 butternuts, one and a half buckets full, were collected and it was considered a very good haul.

While Lee is preparing all of the Butternuts he has harvested for planting, most of them are not viable for the Butternut recovery program, which only collects seed from trees that are considered canker free.
“I think there are about 3 or 4 trees that I have seen this year that are of that calibre,” said Lee.
He will be reporting those to the recovery program for them to evaluate later in the fall.
Meanwhile he still intends to plant all the seed that he has collected, and is making them available for others who would like to try their luck. He does use bleach on his seed to try and kill any of the canker that is carried by the seed, but the chances of success for seed from infected trees is less than ideal.
“I have had some success,” said Lee, “and I keep trying.”

For information about the Butternut Recover Program, how to identify Butternut Trees by their distinctive leaf structure, and how to identify infected and uninfected trees, you can contact Rose Fleguel, Butternut Recovery Technician with Rideau Valley conservation at 613-858-3678 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or Steve Pitt at 613-532-0701. Anyone who is interested in contacting Doug Lee to receive some of his record haul of nuts can call 613-328-9599