122 



SILVA OF NORTH A3IERICA. 



JUGLANDACEiE. 



tAventy-three leaflets, and not infrequently are equally pinnate by the suppression of the terminal leaflet 



the leaflets 



often unequal by the greater development of 



■pointed 



sharply serrate with callous appressed teeth except at their more or less rounded unequal bases, and 

 sessile or short-petiolulate ; when they unfold they are lustrous, yellow-green, glabrous on the upper 

 surface, and coated on the lower with rufous caducous tomentum ; and at maturity they are thin, bright 



yellow-green, lustrous and glabrous above, and soft-pubescent below, especially along the 

 midribs and primary veins ; they are from three to three and a half inches in length, and from a 

 to an inch and a quarter in breadth, and turn bright clear yellow in the autumn before faUing 



[ider 



The 



catkins of staminate flowers protrude during the winter from the scales of the bud, and are coated with 



three to five inches in length, and slightly puberulous 



The 



pale tomentum; at maturity they 



bract is nearly triangular, coated with rusty brown or pale tomentum, and about one quarter of an inch 



long. 



The perianth is rotund and six-lobed, the lobes being nearly orbicular, concave, and pubescent 



m many 



the outer surface. There are from twenty to thirty stamens arranged 

 sessile purple anthers surmounted by the slightly lobed truncate connect] 

 produced in two to five-flowered spikes, and do not expand until the leaves have 



with 



ly 



The female flowers 



ly to their 



full size ; they are ovate, gradually narrowed to the apex, and one quarter of an inch long. The bract 

 and bractlets are coated below with pale glandular hairs, and above are green and puberulous ; they are 



cut into a laciniate border, or the bract is often undivided, and the bractlets are 



sometimes irregularly 



sometimes reduced to an obscure ring just below the apex of the ovary 



The caly:s:-lobes are ovate, 



ht green, puberulous on the outer, glabrous or pilose on the inner surface, and a quarter of 



inch long 



The stigmas are club-shaped, yellow-green, tinged on the margins of the lobes with red 



d one half to three quarters of an inch in length, and b 



wither before the anthers shed thei 



poUe 



n. 



The fruit 



ch is solitary or sometimes produced in pairs, is globose, oblong, or slightly 



pyriform, light yellow-green, roughened with 



of short pale articulate hairs, and an inch and 



half to two inches in diameter. The nut, which is oval or oblong and slightly flattened, without sutural 

 ridges, often measures an inch and a half in its long diameter, and an inch and an eighth in its short 

 diameter, and is dark brown tinged with red. The hard wall, which is frequently a quarter of an inch 

 thick, is deeply divided on the outer surface into thin or thick often interrupted irregular ridges, and 

 contains large irregular cavities. The interior of the nut is four-celled at the base by thick dissepi- 

 ments, and slightly two-ceUed at the apex. The cotyledons are concave or sulcate on the back, deeply 

 lobed at the base and apex, and abruptly narrowed into a short broad radicle. 



Jitglans nigra is distributed from western Massachusetts to southern Ontario,^ and through 

 southern Michigan and Minnesota to central and northern Nebraska ^ and eastern Kansas, and south- 

 ward to western Florida, central Alabama and Mississippi, and the vaUey of the San Antonio River in 

 Texas. An inhabitant of rich bottom-lands and fertile hillsides, and less common in the Atlantic states, 



of the Alleghany Mountains, and was most 

 abundant and grew to its largest size on the low western slopes of the high mountains of North 

 Carolina and Tennessee and on the fertile river bottom-lands of southern Illinois and Indiana/ south- 

 western Arkansas and the Indian Territory. 



the Black Walnut once abounded in the reg:ion west 



4 



^ Brunei, Cat. Veg, Lig. Can, 46. — Bell, Geolog. Rep, Canada, and a standing tree measured six feet in diameter three feet above 



1878-80, 53^ — Macoun, Cat, Can, PL 434. 



2 Bessey, Rep, Nebraska State Board Agric, 1894, 108, 



^ Eight Black Walnut trees grown in the bottoms of Greathouse 



the ground, and was estimated to be one hundred and fifty feet 

 in height. (See Ridgway, Proc. U. S. Nat, Mus. 1882, 76.) 



* Large Black Walnut trees practically no longer exist in the 



Creek near Mount Carmel, Illinois, had an average height of one American forests. Many were cut down and burnt or split into 



hundred and six feet one and one half inches, and an average fence-rails when the rich bottom-lands of the Mississippi Basin 



trunk-diameter of three feet, while the tallest of them measured were cleared for agriculture. The sudden demand for gunstocks 



one hundred and nineteen feet six inches. A tree grown on the during the War of Secession greatly stimulated the demand, which 



river-bottoms in the same locality had a trunk diameter of five feet has always been large for this wood for domestic use and for 



six inches and a total height of one hundred and thirty-one feet ; exportation ; and during the last twenty years the agents of lum- 



