Juglans 263 



tomentose, usually with four external scales visible in two valvate pairs, the scales 

 not lobed at the apex. Lateral buds, arising at an angle of 45, small, globose, 

 pubescent, with two to three scales visible externally ; there are often two buds super- 

 posed, the lower one minute and embedded in the notch of the leaf-scar. The 

 reddish-brown pubescent twigs and superposed pubescent lateral buds will distin- 

 guish this species from the common walnut. 



* 



Varieties and Hybrids 



No varieties are known. The Black Walnut forms hybrids with the common 

 walnut, which have been dealt with under the latter species. Burbank has raised 

 a hybrid, which he calls " Royal," between y. nigra andy. californica} 



Jtiglans nigra x cinerea. A tree supposed to be this hybrid grew in the 

 Botanic Garden at Marburg, and was described by Wender TiS Jtiglans cinerea-nigra 

 in Linncea, xxix. 728 (1857). (A. H.) 



Distribution 



According to Sargent the black walnut occurs in rich bottom lands and fertile 

 hillsides, from western Massachusetts to southern Ontario, southern Michigan 

 and Minnesota, central and northern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, and southward to 

 western Florida, central Alabama, and Mississippi, and the valley of the San 

 Antonio River, Texas ; most abundant in the region west of the Alleghany Mountains, 

 and of its largest size on the western slopes of the mountains of North Carolina 

 and Tennessee, and on the fertile bottom lands of southern Illinois and Indiana, 

 south-western Arkansas, and the Indian Territory. 



The black walnut is not only one of the largest deciduous trees throughout a 

 great part of the Middle States, but also one which, until it became too scarce, 

 furnished a great part of the most valuable hardwood. It reached its maximum of 

 size and abundance in the western foothills of the Southern Alleghany Mountains 

 and in the rich, fertile alluvial river bottoms through which the great rivers of Ohio, 

 Indiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky flow, and which were the first homes of the 

 settlers who crossed the mountains towards the end of the eighteenth century, and 

 for a quarter of a century carried on an unceasing warfare with the Indians. These 

 pioneers also waged war against the forest whenever they could spare time, and for 

 many years used the black walnut for fencing and for house-building, because it was 

 an easy wood to split and to work ; but they did not foresee that the trees which 

 they destroyed would become one of the most valuable products of their farms, and 

 would in a century be almost extinct as timber trees in many places where they 

 were formerly the commonest.^ 



When I was travelling in the mountains of North Carolina in 1895, I saw but 



' Garden and Forest, 1894, ? 436- 



' An interesting account of the war waged against the black walnut by pioneers in Indiana in 1834 is given in Woods 

 and Forests, 1884, p. 633. 



