JUGLANS CALIFOKNICA CALIFORNIA WALNUT. 45 



USES. The great economic value of the Hicinus communis, and 

 for which the plant is extensively grown in warm countries, is the 

 valuable fixed oil which is expressed from its seeds. This is used 

 chiefly in medicine, but is also valuable as a lubricant and formerly 

 was used as a luminant. Some years ago the streets of Lima, Peru, it 

 is said, were lighted by it, and the machines used in the works of the 

 sugar plantations of Peru were lubricated by it. The Castor Bean is 

 very popular for ornamental gardening for which it is admirably 

 adapted, as it springs quickly from the seed and soon becomes a large 

 and beautiful plant of tropical aspect. 



MEDICINAL PROPERTIES. Castor Oil, expressed from the seed, is 

 a mild and speedy cathartic, decidedly the best and safest cathartic, as 

 a general rule, for children. 



ORDER JUGLANDACE^I : WALNUT FAMILY. 



Leaves alternate, pinnate and without stipules. Flowers monoecious and apetal- 

 ous, except in some cases in the fertile flowers. Sterile flowers in catkins with 

 an irregular calyx adnate to the scale of the catkin. Fertile flowers solitary or 

 in small clusters, with calyx regularly 3-5-lobed, adherent to the incompletely 

 2-4-celled, but 1-ovuled ovary. Fruit a sort of dry drupe (a try ma), with a fibrous 

 and more or less fleshy and coriaceous outer coat very astringent to the 

 taste, a hard, bony inner coat, 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 flowers 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; 

 style 2, very short ; stigmas 2, somewhat club-shaped and fringed. " Fruit 

 drupaceous with a fibrous and spongy, somewhat fleshy, iridehiscent epicarp 

 and a rough irregularly furrowed endocarp; 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 Jovis glaus, the 

 nut of Jove.) 



190. JUGLANS CALIFORNICA, WATSON. 

 CALIFORNIA WALNUT. 



G-er., Californische Wallnussbaum ; Fr., Noyer de Calif ornie ; 

 Sp., Nogal de California. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS -. Leaves 6-9 in. long and composed of 11 to 17 ovate- 

 lanceolate somewhat falcate acuminate serrate leaflets, 1| 3 in. in length and 

 with short stout petiolules Staminate flowers (opening in April and May after 

 the stigmas of the pistillate flowers have begun to wither) in slender puberulous 

 aments, 2-3 in. long, the 6-lpbed perianth elongated, light green and as with the 

 bract rufous-pubescent outside ; stamens 30-40 with yellow anthers and connect- 



