2i6 The Walnuts 



I. THE WALNUTS 



GENUS JUGLANS [TOURNEFORT] LINN^US 



HIS genus consists of about lo species of trees of the north temperate 

 zone, about 3 in the Andean region and 2 in the West Indies. They 

 are of considerable economic value; the aromatic bark of some is 

 medicinal, the husks and bark are also astringent and some are used 

 as dyes and tans. The wood is probably the most highly priced of American 

 timbers, being in great demand for furniture and gunstocks. The fruit is very 

 rich in oil, which is largely expressed and used for food and in painting; for this 

 purpose the fruit of the European walnut, Juglans regia, is the best on account 

 of its sweetness and delicate flavor; it is largely cultivated in several improved 

 forms in all the warmer countries of Europe, in our southern States, and espe- 

 cially in Cahfomia. 



They have deciduous, alternate, odd-pinnate compound leaves, with sessile 

 or but slightly stalked leaflets; the pith of the twigs is in plates separated by large 

 air-cells. The flowers are very small, the staminate in drooping cylindric 

 catkins, soUtary on the twigs of the previous season; the perianth is 3- to 6-lobed; 

 stamens 8 to 40, in 2 series or more, their anthers smooth, 2-celled and terminated 

 by a large broad connective. The pistillate flowers are solitary or in spike-like 

 clusters at the end of the new growth; their perianth is 4-lobed and adnate to the 

 incompletely 2- to 4-celled ovary; style very short or absent; stigmas spreading and 

 plumose. The fruit, which ripens the first season, is globose or oblong-cyhndric, 

 sometimes obscurely angled; its husk is fibrous, sometimes somewhat fleshy, inde- 

 hiscent; the nut is deeply sculptured or grooved, thick- walled, imperfectly 2- to 4- 

 celled and separates ultimately into 2 valves; seed large, oily, and 2-lobed. 



The name is a contraction of the Latin Jovis glans, the nut of Jupiter, the 

 type being the European /. regia Linnaeus. 



Our species are: 



Fruits usually racemed, viscid; nut 4-ribbed. i. J. cinerea. 



Fruits usually i to 3 together; nut not 4-ribbed. 



Nut irregularly ridged, 3 to 4.5 cm. in diameter; eastern tree. 2. /. nigra. 



Nut grooved, not irregularly ridged, western trees. 

 Nut less than 2 cm. in diameter, plainly grooved; Texas 3. /. rupestris 



Nut 2 to 3 cm. in dismieter 



Nut very inconspicuously grooved; California 4. J. calijomica. 



Nut distinctly grooved; New Mexico and Arizona. 5. /. major. 



I. BUTTERNUT - Juglans cinerea Linnaeus. 



A common tree in rich alluvial soils near the banks of streams and on 

 wooded hillsides from New Brunswick to Ontario, and North Dakota, southward 

 to Delaware, in the mountains to Georgia and Alabama, and to Arkansas. It 



