One of the county’s nicer Black Walnuts, with a trunk circumference at breast height of 11 feet in 2018.
Calculating this tree’s age by formula (see Special Topics) gives an estimate of up to 190 years. President James Buchanan purchased Wheatland in 1828, 192 years ago. Buchanan lived at Wheatland for two decades, so even if the formula age is an overestimate (which it probably is), this tree still might have been planted by the President.
This amazing species excretes chemicals into the soil that inhibit growth by other plants. Some 1,950 years ago, Pliny the Elder observed that “the shadow of walnut trees is poison to all plants within its compass.”