Plant · P-537

Little Walnut

Juglans microcarpa

Little walnut is the smallest walnut native to North America, a shrub or small tree whose real value is underground: its roots make some of the best rootstock available for grafting Persian walnut onto alkaline soil, thriving where standard black-walnut rootstocks barely grow. Its own nut is rich and good-tasting but mostly shell, so it is worth eating rather than planting for tonnage, and squirrels and other wildlife take much of the crop before anyone picks it. It also stabilises the stream banks and ravines it naturally grows on, and serves as the larval host plant for the banded hairstreak butterfly.