Should I remove or save my black walnut?
Black Walnut isn't a habitual problem species, so a sound one is usually worth an opinion before it comes out. This is the most common removal request that has nothing to do with safety — it is about nuts, stains, and the plants that will not grow under it. Juglone in the roots, hulls, and buds kills or stunts tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, rhododendron, blueberry, and peony, and Purdue puts the typical toxic zone at 50 to 60 ft from a mature tree, with occasional injury out to 80 ft.
How to tell which one you've got
Small brown spots appearing on the underside of the leaflets in late July, followed by August defoliation, is walnut anthracnose — ugly, routine in wet Indiana summers, and not fatal. Genuine decline is branch flagging and dieback that starts in the top and outer crown, repeats the next season, and leaves gaps that never refill in spring.
The structural question
One of the more ice-resistant hardwoods on this list and rated resistant in the standard urban ice-susceptibility tables — its coarse branching simply catches less ice per unit of wood than a fine-twigged tree. Failures in central Indiana tend to be a single heavy lateral over a roof, or old topping wounds finally letting go, rather than the wholesale crown shedding you see on cherry or cottonwood.
Related
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