32 Nebraskaland • December 2025
Black Walnuts
The Value Of
Story and photos by Gerry Steinauer, Botanist
y earliest memory of black walnuts is the sharp
crack of a hammer striking their shells.
My dad loved black walnut (Juglans nigra)
nutmeats in his brownies, a taste he likely
developed during his childhood in Pawnee County, where
this native tree is common. As a kid, sitting on the driveway,
I would crack the nuts' tough shells with a hammer and dig
out the kernels from their tangled chambers to fulfill my
job in brownie making. Not all the kernels made it into the
brownies; I ate plenty right out of the shell, savoring their
sweet, earthy flavor.
In college, I lived with friends in Vermillion, South Dakota,
where tall walnut trees shaded the backyard. On autumn
weekends, while grilling on the porch, we gathered fallen
walnuts in their green husks and hurled them at a metal
garbage can 30 yards away, scoring points for landing a
walnut in the can or hitting the outside. It was great fun.
Later in life, as a botanist, I came to know black walnuts in a
more professional light. During plant surveys and prescribed
burns at Indian Cave State Park, I was awed by the occasional
giant growing in deep, moist, never-logged ravines along the
Missouri River bluffs. Their massive, branchless trunks, the
envy of loggers, filled my mind with thoughts of primeval
forest.
The morning sun highlights black walnuts in Walnut Grove Park in Millard. The grove was planted in the late 1800s and used as
a picnic spot by the early 1900s.
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