60 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



For butchers' blocks, etc., where a timber is needed that will not split, 

 it is admirable. When sawn into lumber it is said to warp badly. 



A by no means unimportant use of this tree is its value as a shade-tree 

 along public walks, etc., as it seems to endure the smoke and dust of 

 cities better than most of our trees, is of rapid growth and casts a toler- 

 ably dense shade. 



MEDICINAL PROPERTIES. So far as known, none are possessed by 

 this species. 



NOTE. My father once saw, in the state of Michigan, a fine tree of 

 this species, noted in the locality as the "Crane-Tree" from the fact that 

 it was the home of a colony of Great Blue Herons (Ardea lierodias, L.) 

 or " Cranes," as they are often wrongly called. In its top he counted 

 some thirty of their nests. 



ORDER JUGLANDACE2E: WALNUT FAMILY. 



Leaves alternate, pinnate and without stipules. Flowers monoecious and apetalous, 

 except in some cases in the fertile flowers. Sterile flowers in catkins with an irregu- 

 lar calyx adnate to the scale of the catkin. Fertile flowers solitary or in small clus- 

 ters, with calyx regularly 3-5-lobed, adherent to the incompletely 2-4-celled, but 1- 

 ovuled ovary. Fruit a sort of dry drupe (a trynia), with a fibrous and more or less 

 fleshy and coriaceous outer coat (shuck) very astringent to the taste, a hard, bony 

 inner coat (shell), and a 2 4-lobed seed, which is orthotropous, with thick, oily and 

 often corrugated cotyledons and no albumen. 



All representatives of the order are trees. 



GENUS JUGLANS, L. 



Leaves odd-pinnate, with numerous serrate leaflets; leaf -buds few-scaled or nearly 

 naked. Sterile floicers in long, simple, imbricated, axillary catkins from the wood of 

 the preceding year; calyx unequally 3-6-cleft; stamens 12-40 with very short and free 

 filaments. Fertile flowers several in a cluster or solitary at the ends of the branches; 

 calyx 4-toothed and bearing in its sinuses 4 small petals; styles 2, very short; stigmas 

 2, somewhat club-shaped and fringed. Fruit drupaceous with a fibrous and spongy, 

 somewhat fleshy, indehiscent epicarp (shuck), and a rough irregularly furrowed endo- 

 carp (shell); embryo edible and wholesome. 



Trees with strong- scented resinous-aromatic bark and a pith which separates into 

 thin transverse disks. (Juglans is contracted from Latin Jovisglans, the nut of Jove.) 



14. JUGLANS CINEREA, L. 



BuTTER^tJT, WHITE WALKUT, OIL-NUT. 

 Ger., Aschc/rauer Wallnussbaum; Fr., Noyer cendr^j Sp., Nogal gris. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: Leaflets (15-17), oblong-lanceolate, pointed, rounded some- 

 what unequally at the base, pubescent especially beneath; petioles and branchlets 

 clammy pubescent. Flowers (April, May) as described above, for order and genus. 

 Fruit (Sept.) very clammy pubescent and of rather pleasant odor when fresh, 

 oblong, pointed, 2-celled at base; the nut-shell deeply and irregularly furrowed 

 leaving rough and ragged ridges; embryo very rich in oil and of delicious flavor. 



A tree not usually growing tall (except when forced to in the forests, 

 and then not to a great height), but of very wide spread, the trunk 



