76 Bulletin 194 



THE WALNUTS 



Every school boy in Vermont has some acquaintance at least with 

 the butternut and its sweet, tender nuts. It occurs along the hill- 

 sides and river-valleys throughout the State. The staminate flowers 

 appear in May and hang in graceful, slender catkins five or six inches 

 long. These are generally found on the second-year shoots, while the 

 pistillate flowers are borne on the terminal shoots. Butternut trees 

 show some irregularities, however, in reference to the time and order 

 of the appearance of the two kinds of flowers so that the pollen-bearing 

 clusters may mature either some ten days earlier or later than the ovule- 

 bearing ones on the same tree. This may be the cause of the variability 

 often noticed in the crop of butternuts. The peculiarity offers an in- 

 teresting subject for further observation. 



The 'meat of the butternut needs no recommendation, but the ex- 

 cellencies of pickles made from the young mucilaginous nuts are not 

 so well known. For this purpose they should be gathered early in 

 June and the clammy pubescence removed by plunging them into boil- 

 ing water and rubbing with a coarse cloth. 



The other member of this family, the black walnut, is not known 

 so well in Vermont. It is not a native tree in Vermont, although it 

 occurs occasionally in Southern New England, becoming more abun- 

 dant southward and westward. It is planted often for ornamental 

 uses and is a much better tree for this purpose than our native walnut. 



