JUGLANDACE^. SILVA OF NORTH AMEPtlGA. 



129 



JUGLANS CALIFORNIOA. 



Walnut • 



Leaflets 11 to 17, oyate-lanceolate. Fruit globose ; nut obscurely and remotely 

 sulcate, 4-celled at the base. 



Juglans Calif ornica, Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. x. 349 sits U. S. ix. 131 (in part). — Greene, Man. Bot. Bay 



(excl. syn.) (1875). — Brewer & Watson, Bot. Cal. ii. 93 Region^ 301- 



(excl. syn.). — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. lO^A Gen- 



A tree, occasionally forty to sixty feet in height, with a trunk eighteen to twenty inches in 

 diameter, and stout pendulous branches which form a symmetrical graceful round-topped head ; or 

 often much smaller, and sometimes shrubby in habit. The bark of the trunk is one third to one half 

 of an inch in thickness, dark brown or nearly black, and deeply divided into broad irregular ridges, 

 separating on the surface into thin appressed scales ; that of young stems and the branches is smooth 

 and pale or nearly white- The branchlets are covered when young with rufous scurfy tomentum, which 

 soon disappears, and in their first winter are puberulous, dark reddish brown, and marked with pale 

 scattered lenticels ; becoming darker, and gradually glabrous in their second season, they begin to grow 

 pale during their third year, and ultimately are nearly white. The terminal buds are acute, compressed, 

 more or less oblique at the apex, coated with pale tomentum, and about a quarter of an inch long. 

 The axillary buds, which are often solitary, are nearly globose, one sixteenth of an inch in length, and 

 covered with thick pale or rufous tomentum. The leaves are composed of eleven to seventeen leaflets 

 and of slender puberulous petioles, and are six to nine inches long ; the leaflets are ovate-lanceolate, 

 often somewhat falcate, long-pointed, coarsely crenulate-serrate except at the equally or unequally 

 rounded or subcordate or wedge-shaped bases ; when they unfold they are bronzy green and pilose, or 

 covered with scurfy pubescence, and at maturity are thin, light green, glabrous, or sometimes furnished 

 on the under surface with tufts of pale hairs in the axils of the primary veins, an inch and a half to 

 three inches in length and one half to three quarters of an inch in width, with pale midribs and short 

 stout petiolules grooved on the upper side. The staminate flowers, which open in April and May, 

 when the leaves are nearly fully grown and after the stigmas of the female flowers have begun to 

 wither, are produced in slender puberulous aments two to three inches long. The perianth is elongated, 

 light green, coated Uke its bract on the outer surface with rufous pubescence, divided into five or six 

 ovate acute lobes, and raised on a short slender stalk. There are from thirty to forty stamens with 

 yellow anthers, surmounted by short connectives bifid at the apex. The pistillate flowers are broadly 

 ovate or subglobose, glabrate or puberulous, and an eighth of an inch long. The free border of the 

 bract and bractlets is ring-like and nearly entire, and much shorter than the broad ovate pubescent 

 calyx-lobes. The stigmas are club-shaped, half an inch in length, and yellow. The fruit is globose, 

 and three quarters of an inch to an inch and a quarter in diameter, with a thin dark-colored husk 

 coated with short soft pubescence. The nut is nearly globose, without sutural ridges, slightly com- 

 pressed, and sometimes flattened at both ends. It is dark brown, and obscurely sulcate with remote 

 shallow grooves, and thin waUs, and is four-celled at the base, with low basal medial partitions, a 

 slightly divided apical cavity, and a large sweet kernel, which retains its sweetness and flavor for 



several months. 



Juglans Californica is an inhabitant of the California coast region, where it grows along the 

 banks of streams and on their bottom-lands, usually twenty or thirty miles from the sea, from the vaUey 



