THE 



Canadian Horticulturist. 



Vol. XXI. 



Toronto, 18 9 8 



THE WALNUT TREE. 



" On barren scalps she makes fresh honors grow. 



Her timber is for various uses good ; 



The carver she supplies with useful wood ; 



She makes the painters fading colors last. 



A table she affords us, and repast. 



E'en while we feast, her oil our lamp supplies, 



The rankest poison bv her virtues dies." 



—Cowley. 



'^HEN black currants hang 

 ripe on the bushes of an 

 English market garden of 

 which we have read, the 

 berry-laden branches are cut off and 

 carried away to be stripped of their fruit 

 in the cool. shade. A comfortable way 

 on a hot day, and a beneficial operation 

 for the bushes too, which thus severely 

 pruned give a plentiful crop next season. 

 This may serve to illustrate the rationale 

 of the old English fashion of knocking 

 the walnuts from the trees by beating 

 with long poles the ends of the branches 

 (on which alone the fruit is produced) 

 and breaking many of them off. The 

 broken ends would then be stripped of 

 their nuts and the boughs thus "shorten- 

 ed in " throw out more bearing spurs, in- 

 creasing the tree's future fruitfulness. So 



37 



it was " Merrie England " that gave rise 

 to the not very chivalrous couplet : — 



" A woman, a spaniel, and a walnut tree. 

 The more you beat them the better they be." 



Walnut-beating, however, is nowadays 

 as much in disrepute as wife-beating, 

 the former practice though right in 

 theory being too rough and violent in 

 execution. The walnut figures again in 

 English Folklore in the riddle : — 



"As high as a wall. 

 As bitter as gall. 

 And • et it is man's meat." 



Man's meat ! or as an old writer more 

 quaintly puts it " A most pleasant and 

 delicate meat, comforting to the stomach 

 and expelling poison." At Glastonbury, 

 in the churchyard of St. Joseph's Chapel 

 (Joseph of Jlramathca, toho trabition 

 says Unliclt here, ober-atoing the 

 hostile nattbcs by rausing his etaff 

 to blossom forth as a thornc tree.) 

 there used to stand a walnut tree re- 

 garded with awe and reverence by the 

 people, as possessing the weird and 

 mystic power of deferring the putting 

 forth of its buds till after the festival 



