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Nuts and Honey
Article #388, September 2026
By Bill Cook

Solid wood products are essential to our economy and manifest in a wide range of products.  Yet, the values of non-timber forest products are usually under-appreciated.  They represent a multi-million dollar impact and are collected by thousands of people. 

    Michigan forests feature a host of nut trees.   Basswood, not a nut tree, has other favored features.  Walnuts and butternuts produce sweet fruits.  Basswood sports semi-showy flowers favored by bees in season.  Basswood honey is a specialty product that carries a healthy price tag.
    Non-timber forest products consist of most anything from trees and forests that are not wood or derived from wood.  Think mushrooms, birch bark, and maple syrup, for examples. 
    Marla Emery wrote a PhD dissertation in the late 1990s examining the movement of these products across the Upper Peninsula.  It’s a big thing, with most of it bartered or used at home. 
    For this article, I’ll focus on our nut trees and basswood.  Each of these trees also has a solid wood market.  Consider high value black walnut and fine furniture.  Note that most black walnut trees lack the qualities to be of high value. 
    Within this focus, black walnuts might be the most well-known.  Walnuts appear in a nearly limitless number of baked goods and in ice cream.  The wrinkled, hard shells are recognized by most people from an early age, after the nasty green, then black, husks have been removed. 
    However, my favorite use of walnuts is to make a dark liqueur that the Italians call nocino.  Aged properly, it’s ready by Thanksgiving and Christmas. 
    The North American walnut (Juglans nigra) is a different species than the European walnut (J. regia).  Ours is better, of course!
    Butternut (J. cinerea) is another sad chapter in the story of exotic species.  Much of the butternut resource has died due to an exotic fungus commonly spread, once again, by beetles.  The fungus forms a canker that interrupts the transportation system of butternuts, deforming trees, then killing them. 
    Butternuts have a buttery flavor and are milder than walnuts. 
    Both tree species can grow to a large size, two to three in diameter and over a hundred feet tall.  Both produce juglone, a toxic chemical that kills much of the nearby competing vegetation.  Don’t try to grow tomatoes anywhere near a walnut or butternut. 
    Hickories also produce delicious nuts, although they are more difficult to extract from the tough shells.  The tastiest might be the shagbark hickory (Carya ovata), although Michigan forests contain five hickory species, out the eleven that occur across North America. 
    Hickories aren’t all that common in Michigan, about one percent of forest volume.  The main range of hickory lies further south.  Solid wood products are known for their toughness, except for the wood of bitternut.  Bitternut is also peculiar in that it has bright yellow speckled buds.  The tree is sometimes called “yellowbud” hickory.  Unfortunately, it has also suffered from a deadly fungus/beetle combination. 
    Both Juglans and Carya have compound leaves.  Walnuts and butternuts have more than a dozen leaflets.  Hickories have fewer, down to five to seven for shagbark hickory. 
    Now, basswood (Tilia americana) is a common tree across Michigan and the Lake States, a frequent component of northern hardwood forest types and on rich floodplains.  It’s the twelfth most common Michigan tree species.  The volume is more than twice that of all the nut trees combined.  The wood is soft and white, a favorite among woodcarvers.  The wood is used for many specialty products, but the mills are unevenly scattered. 
    The tree grows tall, with attractive clear trunks that lead to a relatively small crown. 
    The inner bark fibers, or bast, are strong and flexible.  The bast can be used to make ropes, mats, baskets, and similar products.  The word “basswood” is a corruption of “bastwood,” named for these fibers. 
    The fragrant flowers are white to soft yellow, blooming in late spring to early summer, a time when many other nectar flowers have passed.  Honeybees are among the many species of pollinators that frequent basswood flowers, a favorite second only to clovers.  Basswood honey is a popular product, with a sweet minty flavor. 
    Basswood fruits resemble green peas suspended in a loose cluster, accompanied by a slender leaf-like bract.  Inside the hard coating, is a single dark brown seed, rarely two or three.  The large leaves are somewhat heart-shaped, with toothed margins. 
    The lindens (T. cordata et alia), European cousins, are favored street trees. 
    Michigan nut and honey trees have many uses beyond valuable, high quality wood.  For many people, they might be delightful entry points into the expansive universe of non-timber forest products. 

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Black walnut fruits are about the size of a tennis ball.	Shagbark hickory husks cracking to release the nut.	Basswood flowers, loved by honeybees.
Butternuts are more elongated than walnuts.	Characteristic bark of shagbark hickory.	Tall, sweeping bole of basswood.

TRAILER- This website was created by a consortium of forestry groups to help streamline information about forestry and coordinate forestry activities designed to benefit the family forest owner and various publics that make up our Michigan citizenry.  This website is maintained by Bill Cook, Retired Michigan State Extension Forester/Biologist.  Direct comments to cookwi@msu.edu.