BLACK WALNUT 



(Juglans Nigra) 



THIS tree has few names. It is called walnut, black walnut, and 

 walnut-tree. The color of the wood and bark is responsible for 

 the word black in the name, though some people use the adjective to 

 distinguish the tree from butternut which is often known as white 

 walnut. The natural range of black walnut covers 600,000 or 700,000 

 square miles, and it has been extended by planting. Its northern limit 

 stretches from New York to Minnesota, its southern from Florida to 

 Texas. It is difficult to say where the species found its highest develop- 

 ment in the primeval forests, for very large trees were reported in New 

 York, among the southern Appalachian mountains, in the Ohio valley, 

 and beyond the Mississippi in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas. 

 The wood cut in Ohio and Indiana has been of greater commercial im- 

 portance than that from any other portion of its range, but that has been 

 due, in part, to the fact that it came into market before the best of the 

 forest growth had been destroyed in those states, and instead of burning 

 it or mauling it into rails, as eastern farmers did in early times, the 

 farmers of the Ohio valley sold their walnut. Early in the history of 

 black walnut lumbering, Indiana and Ohio came to the front as the most 

 important sources of supply, and they still hold that position, not- 

 withstanding the original forests of those states were supposed to be 

 nearly exhausted long ago. The states cutting most black walnut in 

 1910, in the order named, were Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, 

 Tennessee, Missouri, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Iowa. 

 During the period from 1860 to 1880 black walnut was in much 

 demand for furniture, and the largest yearly cut was 125,000,000 feet. 

 It was during that period of twenty years that operators pushed into all 

 of the out-of-the-way places in search of the timber. Logs were hauled 

 on wagons long distances to bring them out of remote valleys and slopes 

 where no timber buyer had ever gone before. The walnut buyers made 

 such a thorough canvas of the country that it was generally supposed 

 no merchantable tree from Kansas to Virginia would escape. Many a 

 dooryard giant whose wide branches had shaded the family roof for 

 generations, fell before the ax of the contractor who was willing to pay 

 fifty dollars for a single trunk, though it might be twenty miles from the 

 nearest railroad or navigable stream. In spite of the thoroughness of 

 the search, many a walnut tree was spared. Logs have been going to 

 market ever since, and still they go. They will continue to go for years, 

 generations, and centuries ; for walnut trees grow with rapidity. 



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