WALNUTS AND HICKORIES BERRY. 323 



THE GENUS JUGLANS. 



The name Juglans is a contraction of Jovis glans^ or nut of Jupi- 

 ter, and the specific name of the species known to the ancient Greeks 

 and Romans is regia, or royal, and is fittingly applied to the mag- 

 nificent tree which has been so commonly planted throughout the 

 Old World for so many centuries. Nuts are found under the Swiss 

 lake dwellings of the Neolithic period. Our two eastern American 

 species are equally royal trees. The black walnut, Juglans nigra 

 Linne, ranges from Massachusetts to southern Ontario, Minnesota. 

 and eastern Kansas, and southward to Florida and Texas. Its rich 

 edible fruits are unsurpassed among nuts and the handsome dark 

 wood has made it a favorite wherever furniture is manufactured, 

 and in consequence the tree is becoming scarce. It makes a fine 

 growth when planted abroad, and undoubtedly was a native of 

 Europe in preglacial time, as is shown by nuts preserved in the Plio- 

 cene deposits of that country, which are indistinguishable from the 

 existing species. The butternut or white walnut, Juglans cinerea 

 Linne, yields a wood that is much inferior to the black walnut, but 

 its fruit is equally attractive. It ranges somewhat farther to the 

 northward and not so far to the southward as the black walnut, being 

 found from New Brunswick and Ontario to North Dakota and south- 

 ward to Delaw^are. In the AUeghanian region it extends southward 

 to Georgia and northeastern Mississippi and it is also found in 

 Arkansas. It is distinctly not a coastal-plain species. Like the black 

 walnut, it is very closely allied to certain preglacial European forms. 

 There are several other American species with a more limited raiige. 

 They are all trees, and include a Jamaican form and one or two 

 species found in the Andes of Bolivia. A species of northern Mex- 

 ico, Juglans rupestris Engelmann, extends into Arizona, New Mexico, 

 and the Rio Grande part of Texas, and there is a single species, Jug- 

 lans calif 07'nica Watson, along the Pacific coast in California. The 

 range of the latter is limited and its seedlings are scarce, the nuts 

 being largely consumed by rodents. There is also a species of walnut 

 on the opposite shore of the Pacific in Manchuria. 



The genus Juglans is apparently one of the earliest of the still- 

 existing dicotyledonous genera to appear in the fossil record, leaves 

 suggesting it having been found in the middle Cretaceous. It is well 

 represented in fossil flora from the base of the Upper Cretaceous to 

 the present, the former horizon furnishing at least seven species, one 

 of which, Juglans arctica Heer, ranges from Greenland to Alabama 

 along the Atlantic coast and furnishes a striking illustration of the 

 difference between Cretaceous and present-da}^ climates. 



There are about 25 Eocene species of walnut well distributed over 

 the Northern Hemisphere. They extend from the Mexican Gulf 



