Friends of Belfast Botanic Gardens

Tree of the month series - this series of short articles about trees in the Belfast Botanic Gardens is compiled by members of the Friends group and Gardens staff. We aim to build up to a comprehensive archive of trees in Belfast Botanic Gardens. Each article will illustrate a tree growing in Belfast Botanic Gardens together with information from a range of sources. Click here to view the tree archive

Tree of the Month, August 2010

Wing Nut

Pterocarya fraxinifolia (?)

The wingnut in the Belfast Botanic Gardens is in the process of re-growing from a stump and is not flowering at present. It may be the Caucasian wingnut, Pterocarya fraxinifolia or the hybrid wing nut, Pterocarya x rehderana. When it flowers again this will be resolved!

The wing nuts are very vigorous trees, mostly from China with one species from Japan and one from the south of the Caspian Sea. The leaves are compound like those of the ash (Fraxinus) and the walnut (Juglans) which is in the same family as the wingnut. A feature of the wingnuts, shared with the walnuts, is that the pith in the young stems is segmented as shown in the photo below.They are prolific sucker producers and a single tree can quickly spread to a clump many metres across as the splendid example near the lake in Rowallane Garden shows. The suckers can be controlled if the trees are grown in grass which is kept mown as can be seen in Edinburgh Botanic Garden.

Jon Pilcher

Wingnut in Belfast Botanic Gardens	Flowering wingnut in Rowallane Garden
Flower of hybrid wingnut (Edinburgh Botanic Gardens)	Segmented pith inside young stem of Wingnut tree

Photos taken in 2010 in Belfast Botanic Gardens, Rowallane Garden and Edinburgh Botanic Garden. Copyright Jon Pilcher