THE WALNUTS AND HICKORIES 73 



THE WALNUTS 



Walnuts belong to the genus Juglans, a contraction of Jovis 

 glans or nut of Jupiter, and the specific name of the species known 

 to the Greeks and Romans is regia, or royal, and is fittingly applied 

 to the magnificent tree which has been so commonly planted 

 throughout the old world for so many centuries. Its nuts have 

 been found around the Swiss lake dwellings of the NeoHthic age, 

 about 7000 B.C. Our two eastern American species are equally 

 royal trees. The black walnut {Juglans nigra) ranges from 

 Massachusetts to southern Ontario, Minnesota and eastern Kansas, 

 and southward to Florida and Texas. Its rich edible fruits and 

 handsome dark wood have made it a favorite wherever furniture 

 is used, and in consequence the tree is becoming scarce. It makes 

 a fine growth when planted abroad where it is perfectly at home, 

 perhaps because it was a native of Europe in preglacial time, as 

 is shown by the nuts preserved in the Pliocene deposits of that 

 continent. 



The white walnut or butternut {Juglans cinerea) yields a wood 

 that is much inferior to that of the Black Walnut, but its fruit is 

 equally or more 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 southward to Delaware. In the Alleghanian 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 

 Eurasian fossil forms. 



There are several other American species with a more Hmited 

 range. All are trees, and they include a Jamaican form, and one 

 or two species found in eastern Brazil and in the Andes of Peru and 

 Bolivia. A species of northern Mexico {Juglans rupestris) ex- 

 tends into Arizona, New Mexico and the Rio Grande part of Texas, 

 and there is a single species {Juglans calif ornica) along the Pacific 

 coast in Cahfornia. The range of the latter is limited and its 

 seedlings are scarce — the nuts being largely consumed by rodents. 



