Botany Archives - Dustin Bajer

Making Walnut Ink And Dye

December 10, 2020 by Dustin Bajer

Making Ink and Dye From Walnut Seeds

I play squirrel each fall by collecting nuts from local walnut trees – sometimes using a telescoping painter’s pole with an attached 2-litre pop bottle to gently knock ripe nuts free from their branches. I make for an odd-looking squirrel. However, unlike the squirrels, I’m collecting nuts to plant into my urban tree nursery.

Jess Playing Squirrel

Located West and North of the native range of walnuts, Edmonton doesn’t have many walnut trees – but you’ll spot them if you’re searching. The most common Walnut found locally is the White or Butternut Walnut (Juglans cinerea, E North America). However, I’ve seen a few Black Walnuts (Juglans nigra, E North America) and Manchurian Walnuts (Juglans mandschurica, E Asia) in smaller quantities.

When you collect a fresh walnut, it’s surrounded by a sticky green husk. To get at the seeds, I’d go through the time-consuming task of removing the husk – a process that would stain my fingers for weeks. Until recently, I discarded the flesh. Then I learnt that walnut husks could be used to make a dark brown/black ink or dye.

I jumped online a found four posts describing how to make walnut ink. While each set of directions varied, they all followed the same basic steps; soak, boil, filter, preserve. The following steps are my take on the process and an average of the four sources I found. While this process worked for me, I should emphasize that this was my first time making walnut ink. I am not an ink making expert, chemists, or ethnobotanist – so let me know if you have any advice. In no particular order, here are the instructions I came across in my research:

Insightbb – Making Walnut Ink
You Grow Girl – Make Your Own Black Walnut Ink
Luna Toronto – How to Make Black Walnut Ink
Alan Li Drawing – Hot to Make Walnut Ink

And Here’s My Walnut Ink Recipe

Remember, the seed is what I’m really after – the ink is a bonus for me, so, unlike some of the instructions above, my process emphasizes saving the seeds so that they can be planted.

Materials:

Walnuts with husks
A large pot
Water
Gloves
Strainers
Ladle
Bowl or Bucket
Jars
Essential Oils, Rubbing Alcohol or a Refrigerator
Gum Arabic (Optional)

Step 1 – Go Nuts

Collect as many husked walnuts as possible. The exact species (White, Black, Mancuriaun, etc.) doesn’t seem to matter – what you’re looking for is any plant in the genus Juglans. The flesh of Juglans seeds starts off green and will oxidize to a dark greasy-looking black. This is what’s going to give us our pigment.

The green husks will oxidize as soon as they’re exposed to air – like the browning of a cut apple – but a few of the instructions above suggested letting your walnuts turn brown/black before starting. It probably doesn’t matter, but the darker the husk, the easier it will be to remove them from the seed. So if you’re nuts are green, lay them out on a try until they start turning brown and getting soft to the touch.

How many nuts? As many or as few as you’d like. The more use, the more ink you’ll make. There’s no limit, but I probably wouldn’t do any less than a dozen as I’m not sure that the return would be worth the effort.

Step 2 – Soak

Find a pot large enough to hold the walnuts you’ve gathered and toss them in. Add enough water to cover the nuts and let them soak at room temperature. The water should start taking on colour right away. Soak them for a day or two – more if they’re green, less if they’re already black and falling apart. Stir ’em now and again.

Step 3 – Remove the Seeds (Optional… but is it?)

This is an optional step if you’re not planning on saving the seeds. Recall that I’m primarily in this to grow walnut trees. The thought of boiling a pot of walnuts that could turn into three-hundred-year-old trees is too much for me to handle.

A bonus to the ink making process is that removing the seeds (from the now solf husks) breaks everything up and exposed more oxidizing juglans to the water.

Step 4 – Boil and Reduce

Directions for boiling ranged from 1 to 24 hours, but almost everybody said to reduce the volume of liquid by half – so that’s what I did. I suspect that this step has more to do with concentrating the pigment than any chemical or extractive process brought on by boiling – but then again – not a chemist. In either case, the amount of time it takes to reduce the volume of liquid by half will depend on how much liquid you’re starting with. This step took me around 2-hours.

I would recommend doing this step outside. It turns out that I enjoy the smell of boiling walnut husks, but the added humidity and potentially sticky residue is enough to convince me to go outside.

Once the volume has reduced by half, take your inky mush of the heat. Once the pot cooled, I brought it inside and let it sit for the night.

Step 5 – Strain Out the Big Bits

Now that your inky mush is at room temperature, use a ladle to run it through some strainers. A colander, sieve, or cheesecloth is a good first pass. I used a nylon straining bag inside a pail. Then, with my gloves on, I squeezed the ink from the walnut pulp.

Step 6 – Filter Out the Small Bits

The ink seemed fairly clean and probably usable, but I decided to run it through a large coffee filter for a final polish. It was obviously filtering something because I kept having to change the filter – I probably went through 6 or 7 of them.

Step 7 – Preserve or Refrigerate

At this point, we’re basically done, but walnut ink has a shelf-life and will mould (or so I’m told). To prevent spoilage, keep your ink in the fridge or add a few drops of antimicrobial essential oil like wintergreen. A second suggestion is to add rubbing alcohol – up to 20% of the volume – to your ink. This will dilute the ink, but alcohol’s lower evaporation point may aid it drying.

I opted to store mine in the fridge.

Step 8 – Thicken (Optional)

Walnut ink is less viscous than modern commercial inks. If it’s too runny for your liking, add gum arabic to preference. Gum arabic is the hardened sap from the acacia tree.

I opted to leave mine unthickened. Partially because I’m giving my ink away to some local artists and members of the Forest City Plants propagation class – I’ll let them decide how thick they want their ink – but mostly because I don’t have gum arabic or acacia trees on hand.

Step 9 – Jar

Almost any airtight container will work for holding your finished walnut ink. I used a few mason jars I had lying around and some honey jars for smaller samples. I like the honey jars because they’re reminiscent of old-timey inkwells.

And that it! You’ve made ink from walnuts! It’s worth noting that your ink can also be used to dye textiles. If you end up following this recipe, let me know how it turns out! Please send me a picture of your project!

Making Walnut Ink the Movie

If you’d like a closer look at the ink and dye-making process, I’ve put together this short video or each of the steps outlined above.

Slow Landscaping: A Case For Planting Ancient Trees

June 22, 2017 by Dustin Bajer

Urban Sentinels

Almost by definition, cities are active, busy, bustling, ever-changing places where short-lived beings go about their busy days. Fast fashion, quick commerce, short election cycles – the world around us takes on various pace layers.

What better way to slow to slow things down than to seed cities with beings capable of living centuries or millennia? In what ways might a walk beneath ancient giants and twisted ancestors place us in a bigger here? A longer now?

The Long Now

Artist and musician Brian Eno once said that he wants to live in a “big here” and a “long now”. How long is your now? That is to say – what’s the timeframe in which you view our day to day? What timescale informs your decisions? Days? Months? Centuries?

In 01996, the LongNow Foundation (named by Eno) formed to “provide a counterpoint to today’s accelerating culture and [to] help make long-term thinking more common”. They define they now – the longnow – as the last 10 000 years and the next 10 000 years.

How differently would we act if we lived in a longer now? In what ways would our decisions change and in what ways might out priorities shift?

Slow Landscaping

The point of slow landscaping is to provide continuity in a fast paced environment – to provide pause and contemplation – to remind us that we are the result of circumstances that extends way before (and after) us – that we’re living in the LongNow. Slow landscaping asks us to act in ways – and is an act in and of itself – that leaves future generations with more options than we inherited.

One strategy may be to plant long-lived trees on sites unlikely to be disturbed. A second more devious strategy might be to plant long-lived trees to protect existing and vulnerable sites from future disturbances or development.

Living longer than most buildings, slow landscapes would dictate the shape of the built environment – as opposed to the other way around. Cities and buildings would bend and shift to fit slow landscapes like geological features. Each tree would shape the fabric of the spaces it occupies. Poor architects and planners will hate them, but good ones will incorporate them into their designs.

Long-Lived Species

There are many long-living species to choose from – a quick google search yields a list of the world’s oldest individual trees – many of which are slow growing conifers living in high alpine environments. I’ve selected a handful suitable for growing in my local (Edmonton) environment. I encourage you to see what will grow where you live.

Bristlecone Pine (Pinus aristata) – 500 to 2500 years

One of three bristlecone pine species, P. aristata, can be found at local nurseries here in Edmonton and is a small to medium sized tree (20 feet tall and 25 feet wide) native to the Blackhills of Colorado.

I know of at least one bristlecone pine growing at the Goerge Pegg Botanic Garden near Glenenis, Alberta (an hour West of Edmonton). Read more about this bristlecone pine at conifers.org.

Korean Pinenut (Pinus koraiensis) – 500 years

Koren Pinenut is a slow-growing giant that produces edible nuts. Reportedly hardy to USDA zone 3, the Korean Pinenut is native to parts of Korea, Manchuria, Eastern Russia, and Japan. The tree can reportedly reach 100 feet, though, 30 to 50 feet is more typical for trees under cultivation. Plant one now and you’ll be harvesting pine nuts in 15 to 45 years – expect a yield of 10 to 20 pounds per tree. Bring a ladder.

Whitebark Pine (Pinus albicaulis) – 500 to 1200 years

Native to the high elevations of Alberta’s mountains, the whitebark pine is a long living Alberta tree with significant ecological value for wildlife (having coevolved with the local Clark’s nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) who bury and inadvertently propagate seeds. Like the Korean Pinenut, the seeds are edible, though, smaller.

The Whitebark pine is slow growing and can take on various forms depending on the harshness of its location. At high elevations, it sometimes grows as a multi-stemmed shrub but has the potential to get as large as 70 feet tall and 45 feet wide in more favourable conditions. The oldest recorded tree is 1200 years old.

The Whitebark Pine is currently a species under threat due to white pine blister rust, mountain pine beetle, and the ill effect of fire suppression. The most comprehensive sources of information on Whitebark pine that I could find is an Alberta Conservation Association report from 2007 and a profile on conifers.org.

Alpine Larch (Larix lyallii) – 500 to 1500 years

A native Alberta tree found at high altitudes in the Rocky Mountains. Alpine Larch can grow anywhere from 30 to 80 feet tall depending on elevation – growing shorter at higher elevations. Soft green needles turn golden and fall off each year.

The oldest Alpine Larch is in Kananaskis and reported to be over 1900 years old. More information at conifers.org.

Honourable Mention: Trembling Aspin (Populus tremuloides) – 80 000+ years

The trembling or quaking aspen grows locally in Alberta is has the potential to live for tens of thousands of years due to its massive underground root system that perpetually sends up new trunks. Though individual trunks – that present as individual trees – are short-lived, the plant as a whole can grow to be ancient.

The oldest know trembling aspen is named Pando growing in Utah’s Fishlake National Forest. Pando is a single male aspen tree estimated to be over 80 000 years old. Pando covers a staggering 106 acres, has over 4000 trunks, and has a mass around 6 600 metric tonnes.

Death Grip. How Decorative Lighting Kills Trees

June 20, 2017 by Dustin Bajer

Decorative tree lights biting into an elm tree on Whyte Avenue, Edmonton.

The Dark Side of Decorative Tree Lighting

Edmonton has embraced year-round decorative tree lighting, and it’s hard not to love it! An Edmonton Journal article from 2015 (Tiny white lights to adorn city tree year-round) states that the City’s forestry department “installed lights on 1000 city-owned trees in six business revitalization zones: Alberta Avenue, Beverly, Downtown, North Edge (107th Avenue), Old Strathcona, and 124th Street).” Walking Whyte, Churchill, or Giovanni Caboto amongst twinkling giant elms is magical, but it also has a potential dark side. If left unchecked, decorative tree lighting can cut into and even kill growing trees.

Death By Girdling

Beneath the bark of a tree lies a network of tissues that channel sugars, minerals, and water throughout the plant. When this flow of nutrients is interrupted by a cut or object wrapped tightly around the truck – a process called girdling – the tree can weaken or die. The danger of decorative lighting is that it can’t expand as the tree grows.

The same Edmonton Journal article goes on to state the “the lights are secured to the trees with zip-ties, and as the tree grows the zip ties will be loosened.” Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Though I’ve seen zip ties used to secure extension cords running vertically up the trees, the decorative lights are secured by continuously wrapping the tree’s trunk and branches. As such, the only way to loosen the lights would be to remove and reinstall them.

It’s a Matter of Time

But don’t trees grow super slow? Won’t it take years for decorative tree lighting to causes any damage? Let’s take a closer look – since most of Edmonton’s light wrapped trees are American elms, I thought I’d look into their rate of growth. Fair warning, the following segment contains math.

According to the City’s OpenTree data, (and some help from pi), the elms between 104th and 105th Street on Whyte have an average circumference of 51 inches. Though OpenTree doesn’t say their age, an Edmonton Journal article about the removal of diseased elms (between 99th street to 96th street) claims that they were planted sometime in the 40s. Let’s assume that the 104/105 elms are of a similar age.

Whyte Avenue Elms
Average Circumference = 4 feet 3 inches (51″)
Estimate of Age = 72 years
Growth rate of Circumference = 0.71″ per year

Since my Edmonton data is spotty, let’s turn to some old elms from our Southern neighbours. These trees may or may not be representative of an elm growing in Edmonton.

The Treaty Elm – Philadelphia, PE
Circumference = 24 feet (288″)
Age = 280 years
Growth rate of Circumference = 1.03″ per year

The Johnstown Elm – Johnstown, NY
Circumference = 16 feet (196″)
Age = 200 years
Growth rate of Circumference = 0.96″ per year

The math shows us that an elm can increase its circumference somewhere between 0.71 and 1.03-inches per year – which at first glance doesn’t seem like a lot. But consider that each strand of light wraps around the circumference of the tree 30 to 40 times! To prevent strangulation, a string of lights would have to increase its length by 30 to 40 times the annual growth of the tree’s circumference. That’s between 1.5 and 3.5 feet per year!

Though most trees can handle a few years covered in decorative lighting, lights can’t accommodate 1 to 4 feet of annual growth it’s a matter of time before they tighten, bite into the bark, and interfere with the flow of sap. The only way to prevent this is to remove and rewrap the tree at regular intervals or to run the lights vertically – a technique called tracing.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Edmonton’s decorative tree lighting – it seriously adds something to the city – especially during long, dark winters. But I also love trees, and the math doesn’t lie – a string of lights can go from loose to snug, to deadly in a few short years.

Protecting Edmonton’s Trees

In the grand scheme of things, Edmonton’s elms are juveniles and could live for another two centuries. Considering that elms are already under threat from Dutch Elm disease and Elm Scale, it seems cruel to add strangulation into the mix. That being said, Edmonton’s not the fist municipality to use decorative lighting on trees. So in the interest of preserving our lights AND our urban forest, let’s see what other cities are doing.

The following decorative tree lighting guidelines are hand-picked from the City of Portland’s Department of Parks and Recreations and Cincinnati’s Department of Urban Forestry:

Non-seasonal lighting can not exceed three years.
Lighting can not interfere with the routine pruning of trees.
“The preferred method of installation is ‘draping’ or ‘tracing’. These methods have been found to be the least harmful to trees.”
- “The draping method may be used throughout the canopy” on branches one inch in diameter or larger.
- The “tracing” method involves running lights vertically and attaching them with an expanding tape such as nursery tape or poly-chain-lock.
Cincinnati requires that lights are attached using the tracing method and fixed to the trees with eyelet screws rather than tape. “While it may be more time consuming to install the screw eyes and lights the first year, it is much faster to remove them and reinstall them the following years.”
“All work on the lighting shall be performed while the trees are dormant.”

Reporting A Tree (Update)

If it sounds like I’m being tough on the City of Edmonton I must apologise – the work they do it beyond exceptional as demonstrated by the fact that they’re caring for and maintaining an inventory of over 267000+ urban trees, 7400 hectares of River Valley, city-wide naturalization, and running Roots for Trees and numerous other community beautification projects! When it comes to nature and urban forestry, you’d be hard-pressed to find a city as ambitious as Edmonton. They wrapped 1000 trees in stunning decorative lighting! 100 trees! How cool is that?! Seriously! But there are many more of us then there are of them and we can help! So if you see a tree that has outgrown its lights, contact the City by calling 311 and they’ll send someone to check it out.

John Walter Museum’s Edmonton Tree Walking Tours

June 14, 2017 by Dustin Bajer

Interesting and Historic Trees of Edmonton

On July 25th and August 8th, the John Walter Museum will be hosting a walking tour of interesting and historic trees of Edmonton.

Both tours will begin at the museum at 6 pm with stops in the river valley and Legislature grounds before heading towards Jasper Avenue. This walking tour will cover approximately 5km (2.5 hours) with a break at the halfway point.

Reserve Your Place

You can register a spot on either tour by visiting the City of Edmonton’s Online eReg or by calling 311 with the respective course codes below:

(Sold Out/Finished)

July 25, 2017, pm – 9 pm
Register Online or Call 311 with Course Code 605478

August 8, 2017, 6pm – 9pm
Register Online or Call 311 with Course Code 605479

Eating Clones

June 9, 2017 by Dustin Bajer

A Good Portion of What You Eat is Cloned

In 1868, Maria Ann Smith noticed an interesting apple seedling growing by a creek on her property. She grew the plant out and it eventually produced apples with green skin and sweet, tart flesh. She liked the apple so much that she took cuttings – a propagation technique that involves starting new plants using pieces of root, stem, or leave from the parent plant. Others liked the fruit as well and they too took cuttings. Almost 150 years later, Maria Smith’s Apple has been propagated thousands of times and is one of the most popular apple varieties on the planet – you know it as the Granny Smith.

Notice that I said the Granny Smith and not a Granny Smith. The difference is small but important because every Granny Smith apple you have ever eaten is an exact copy – a genetic clone – of the seedling Maria identified in 1868. Ever time you bite into a Granny Smith – regardless of where it was grown – you are biting into the same apple. [Read more…]