Black Walnut

Around this time of year, we always get tennis-ball-sized green things falling onto lawns, driveways, paths, and parks. These are black walnuts, and they are not only edible but delicious and nutritious!

Let’s dive into the plant profile:

Plant Profile:

Scientific Name: Juglans nigra

Preferred Habitat: Forests, open fields, near parking lots, roadsides, and even areas with poor or sandy soil.

Edible Parts: Nuts (the seed of the fruit)

Distribution:

Harvest Season: Late summer, early fall.

Key Identifiers: Frond-like compound leaves in an opposite arrangement, large green tennis-ball-like fruits. The smell is pungent and aromatic. In the fall, the leaves will turn a bright yellow that is hard to miss!

Toxic Look-Alikes: No toxic look-alikes, although the leaves can be mistaken for staghorn sumac (also edible) at a glance. They can also look like butternuts (the white walnut, also edible) but with rounder fruit.

Nutrition (per oz)

• Calories: 170

• Protein: 7 grams

• Fat: 17 grams

• Carbs: 3 grams

• Fiber: 2 grams

• Magnesium: 14% of the daily value (DV)

• Phosphorus: 14% of DV

• Potassium: 4% of DV

• Iron: 5% of DV

• Zinc: 6% of DV

• Copper: 19% of DV

• Manganese: 55% of DV

• Selenium: 7% of DV

Black walnuts are low in carbs and the ones they do have come from fiber. They are also higher in protein than some other walnuts, both facts which contribute to weight loss and blood sugar control.

Black walnuts also have many antioxidants and can help protect you from free radicals in the body, and contain alpha-linolenic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid that the body doesn’t produce itself but needs to get via diet).

So like most wild foods I write about, black walnuts are full of incredible nutrition.

Now where can you get them?

Black walnuts can be found all over the place. Here in Michigan, it’s very easy to find a neighbor who likely needs them removed from the lawn and would be happy for you to take as much as you can!

To peel them, you can wait until they’re just ripe enough and the green outer layer should peel off somewhat easily. If they are underripe, the peel will cling to the inner shell of the nut and be a pain to remove. Definitely remove the husk as soon as you can after harvesting, otherwise, it will leak bitter compounds into the shell of the nut and make it taste pretty unpalatable.

To process them, you can hit them open with a hammer gently, or I’ve seen (but have yet to try) people using a bench vice to gently crack them open.

Otherwise, if you want to do large batches at once and plan on regularly taking advantage of this wild food, I suggest investing in a proper walnut cracker. It will go MUCH faster than any other method.

Black walnuts taste mostly like regular walnuts but with a slightly more bitter note.

There are other walnuts that have differing flavors, but I will only briefly touch on one: Juglans cinerea, the “Butternut” or “White walnut”.

This tree fascinates me because the flavor is superb and well…buttery but it also has an interesting history.

Butternuts used to be much more common in the Midwest, but due to the butternut canker (an infection that is the result of a fungal attack), they are now threatened. Most butternuts eventually succumb to the canker eventually, and it is nearly unavoidable.

I asked a specialist from Michigan State University a while back (I cannot recall their name; it’s been too long) about the canker and she told me that the best guess as to the origin of the canker is that it came from Japan along with some walnut nursery stock.

The hope, however, is that by hybridizing the white walnut with some related Japanese walnuts, it can become resistant to the canker. I will also list some white walnut varieties and hybrids below with the black walnuts.

Now for everyone’s favorite section: Cultivated varieties!

There are a few cultivated varieties out there that I recommend (of various species):

• Stark® Kwik-Krop®: A fast-producing walnut, known for easy-to-process nuts.

• Stark® Black Gem®: An early-ripening nut with a high meat-to-shell ratio and rich flavor. Also easier to process.

• Pedro: An heirloom walnut from the 1950s, a shorter tree with exceptional quality. (English walnut, NOT a black walnut)

• Chandler: Another mid-century English walnut, with exceptional quality and flavor, heavy yields, and good pest/disease resistance.

• Stark® Bountiful™: A White walnut or “butternut” cultivar known for its heavy yields and prolific growth habits. (Linked separately below)

NOTE: The walnut cracker can be found on Stark Brothers, or at my Amazon link below. The Amazon link earns me some commission, so if you appreciate what I do, use my link to support me!

Walnut Cracking Tool

Stark Brother’s

Trees of Antiquity

Stark® Bountiful™