see it clearly

Walnut Tree

At the first glance we seem in the name Walnut to have an etymological solecism. Whilst, however, the Wall-flower is a flower that grows commonly on walls, the Walnut (a name practically identical with that borne by the tree in Germany) is the Welsh, foreign, or Italian nut, the Italians being to the Germans of the Continent the foreign neighbors that the Britons of Wales were to our English ancestors.

Walnut tree history

The Walnut was so valued by the Romans, both as yielding a furniture wood and as a fruit-bearing tree, that they probably introduced it both into Germany and into Britain; but it is not a native of Italy. Its original home seems to have been the north of Persia, and its Greek names, "Persicon" and "Basilicon," indicate this origin and the esteem in which it was held. From the latter name is derived its specific name of "regia" or royal. According to Pliny, the tree was also called "Caryon" (the origin of the name Carya, the Hickory), from the drowsy feeling in the head produced by the smell of its leaves; but possibly this name may be due, as Cowley suggests, to the resemblance of the kernel to the form of the brain.

The Walnut is said to have been one of the antidotes employed by Mithridates King of Pontus; and the bitter principle so abundant in the plant--especially in the leaves, the unripe husk or "pericarp" of the fruit, and the brown skin or "testa" of the seed--has rendered it universally popular as a vermifuge. Similarly, a decoction of the leaves was used by anglers to water the ground, so as to make worms come to the surface.

Introduced into Italy apparently by Vitellius, it was named Juglans, "Jove's acorn," and was looked upon as sacred to Diana, whose festivals were held beneath its shade. This seems to have been the origin of the custom of scattering walnuts at weddings.

Walnut tree genus

The Walnut belongs to the small order of trees and shrubs known as Juglandeae, comprising only five genera and about thirty species, which are mostly natives of North America. The order is characterized by its aromatic leaves, which are estipulate, alternate, and pinnately compound; by having staminate and pistillate flowers in separate catkins on the same tree; by an ovary formed from two or four carpels, but one-chambered, surmounted by the perianth, and containing a single erect and unbent ovule, and by the fleshy fruit, containing a hard "nut" or "endocarp," and a seed with oily cotyledons.

The Walnut is one of the largest trees in the order, growing rapidly so as to reach a height of twenty feet in ten years, when it begins to bear fruit; and ultimately not infrequently attaining a height of between sixty and seventy feet, with a trunk five feet or more in diameter, and large limbs spreading thirty or forty feet from the stem. When young it is liable to injury by spring frosts; but it increases in productiveness up to a great age, one at Melbury Park, Dorsetshire, being stated to be two hundred years old. It is not particular as to soil, so long as it has good drainage, sending down strong tap-roots even into clefts of rock, and so securing an exceptionally firm hold of the soil. Evelyn considered, however, that the Walnut did best upon the chalk, where, as at Carshalton, Leatherhead, and Marden Park in Surrey, there were, in his time, "considerable plantations of this tree," which, with most of those in other parts of the kingdom, were converted into gun-stocks during the war with Napoleon.

This manufacture is still one of the main uses of the wood of this and of allied species, it being found lighter in proportion to its strength and elasticity than any other timber; but it is also used for pianofortes, furniture, and turnery generally. In young trees the wood is white and liable to be worm-eaten; but as the tree becomes older it is compact, brown, and beautifully veined, though still easy to work. Though now largely replaced for such purposes by mahogany and other foreign woods, Walnut is undoubtedly the most beautiful furniture-wood of Europe. For density and beauty of marking that obtained from trees grown on poor soil is the best; but the most beautiful veinings are in the roots, which can, however, seldom be procured of a size large enough for any but small articles.

Burrs or excrescences are common on the stems of the Walnut in Italy and in the Caucasus, frequently measuring two or three feet across and twelve or fifteen inches thick, and weighing five or six hundredweight. These are often so prettily mottled as to sell for as much as fifty or sixty pounds a ton, for veneering. The Italian wood is considered the best, that of Juglans nigra, the Black American Walnut, being inferior both to it and to that from the Black Sea.

The bark is thick and deeply furrowed on the trunk, but smooth and grey on the younger branches. As the Walnut generally forms its young shoots in April and May, and does not, like the oak, remain in an actively vegetative condition all through the summer, until surprised perchance by early autumn frosts, its symmetry of outline is seldom damaged by wind or cold.

The tree generally comes into leaf and flower in April; but there are both early and late varieties in cultivation. Of these, the former is known as "Noyer de Mars," "Noyer Mesange," or "Noyer a coque tendre," in the south of France, having so thin a shell to the seed that it is commonly pierced by tom-tits (Gallice, mesange), the kernels being eaten whilst the husk is left on the tree. The late variety is known as "Noyer de Mai," "Noyer tardif," or "Noyer de la Saint-Jean," and Loudon mentions a specimen at Chiswick which, in 1835, did not burst a single bud before July 1st. 

The leaves consist of from five to nine leaflets, that is, of two, three, or four pairs and one terminal one; the whole often exceeding a foot in length. The apical leaflets are generally the larger, and they have all an oval outline with a somewhat produced point, and a very slightly notched or serrate margin. There is also what is termed a Fern-leaved Walnut, in which the leaflets are deeply divided. The leaves are perfectly smooth, though not possessing the lustrous gloss of those of the Spanish Chestnut. They are of a peculiar shade of green with a good deal of yellow in it, which makes a pleasingly cheerful contrast with the foliage of most other trees. In hot weather, or when bruised, they give out a powerful aromatic smell which is said to produce drowsiness or even nausea. Like the roots, the young bark, and the unripe husk of the fruit, the leaves contain astringent matter producing a dark brown dye, which does not require mordents. 

The pendulous male, or staminate, catkins are produced singly from the apex of leafless shoots of the previous year, this being one of the main points of distinction between the genus Juglans and the Hickories (Corya), in which three catkins are produced from a shoot, formed during the same year, that also bears female flowers and leaves. The cylindrical catkin of the Walnut, which is about three inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter, bears a great number of closely-packed and minute flowers of a simple structure. They each have a short stalk, an adherent bract, two lateral bracteoles, and a perianth of six leaves, enclosing an indefinite number of nearly sessile stamens.

The female flowers are borne in a cluster of four to eight at the apex of the leafy shoots of the same year. They each have an adherent perianth of four leaves in two pairs, besides their bracteoles, and the two-fold nature of the fruit is indicated by the relatively large, fleshy stigmas.

Walnut Tree fruit

The fruit of the Walnuts and Hickories is unlike that of any other group. It has a fleshy green outer husk or "epicarp," which in the former bursts, when ripe, irregularly, and within this is a woody, two-valved stone or "endocarp," which is produced internally into a membranous partition, deeply dividing and crumpling the fleshy cotyledons of the kernel or seed. This seed is enveloped in a bitter brown testa, and a more delicate cream-coloured inner coat, and its primary root and shoot can be detected near its centre. The variety known in Warwickshire as the "Bannut" and in France as "Noix de Jauge" has a fruit nearly double the size of that of the wild tree, being sometimes as large as a goose's egg; but the kernel shrinks in drying.

Walnuts have long been preserved, either whole, when unripe, or the kernels only, as sweetmeats; but with us the young fruits are more used as a pickle, whilst the ripe nuts, which are not indigestible so long as they will peel, are largely eaten as an autumn and winter dessert fruit. In the south of Europe the oil is largely expressed from the kernels and used by artists for mixing with delicate colors, for lamps, as a substitute for olive oil, and apparently as a hair-wash, whilst the residual oil-cake is a valuable food for sheep, pigs, or poultry. A bushel of walnuts will yield fifteen pounds of kernels, and these give up half their weight as oil.

To collect the fruit, the ends of the branches are commonly thrashed with long poles. This breaks off many of their points, and so causes the production of new spurs, which will probably bear female, i.e., fruit-bearing, flowers. This thrashing, the improving effect of which is also applied in the proverb to wives and dogs, is therefore also practiced in the case of barren trees to make them bear.

As grass and other plants will not grow well under Walnut-trees, they are commonly banished to hedgerows, road-sides, and odd corners; and though, as the tree does not possess any very distinctive beauties, it has not received much notice from the poets, this fact, with its other wrongs and many virtues, is fully recorded by Cowley in the following verses:-

"The Walnut then approached, more large and tall
Her fruit which we a nut, the gods an acorn call:
Jove's acorn, which does no small praise confess,
T've called it man's ambrosia had been less;
Nor can this head-like nut, shaped like the brain
Within, be said that form by chance to gain,
Or Caryon called by learned Greeks in vain;
For membranes soft as silk her kernel bind,
Whereof the inmost is of tenderest kind,
Like those which on the brain of man we find.
All which are in a seam-joined shell enclosed,
Which of this brain the skull may be supposed.
This very skull enveloped is again
In a green coat, her pericranium.
Lastly, that no objection may remain
To thwart her near alliance with the brain,
She nourishes the hair, remembering how
Herself deform'd without her leaves does show;
On barren scalps she makes fresh honours grow.
Her timber is for various uses good;
The carver she supplies with useful wood,
She makes the painter's fading colours last,
A table she affords us, and repast;
E'en while we feast, her oil our lamp supplies;
The rankest poison by her virtues dies,
The mad dog's foam, and taint of raging skies.
The Pontic king, who lived where poisons grew,
Skilful in antidotes, her virtue knew.
Yet envious fates, that still with merit strive,
And man, ungrateful, from the orchard drive
This sovereign plant; excluded from the field,
Unless some useless nook a station yield,
Defenceless in the common road she stands,
Exposed to restless war of vulgar hands;
By neighbouring clowns and passing rabble torn,
Batter'd with stones by boys, and left forlorn."