Green Horizons

Buyers tend to avoid even "good-looking" backyard walnut trees for fear of embedded metal in the wood.

You cannot imagine how many calls that come into my office begin with, "I have this walnut tree in my yard..." Reports of black walnut trees being sold for hundreds or even thousands of dollars often cause landowners to dream of huge profits from selling their backyard walnut trees.

Unfortunately, most urban walnut trees do not display the characteristics of high-quality marketable trees. Urban walnuts often grow in open areas without surrounding trees. This results in trees with short trunks and numerous branches, i.e. little or no merchantable height.

Even urban walnut trees that appear suitable as lumber or veneer trees (like the one above) usually are avoided by buyers because of the risk that they may contain objects such as nails, wire, insulators, clothes hooks, and more that would damage saw blades or veneer knives. While most mills have electronic equipment or other procedures to avoid striking embedded objects, there is usually no way a buyer can determine the presence of such objects when examining the standing tree. Most buyers simply do not want to assume the risk that all or part of the value of the tree will be lost because it contains foreign objects.

The cost and difficulty of harvesting urban trees also discourages the purchase of urban walnuts. It is rarely economical for a buyer to invest crew and equipment time in traveling to harvest one or two trees. In addition, many urban trees are close to house power lines, or other facilities, making them more difficult, time consuming, and expensive to harvest. But, don’t be discouraged. While your urban black walnut tree might not be a "big money" tree in direct economic terms, its value in providing shade, beauty, and wildlife habitat is money in the real-estate bank.