WALNUT FAMILY 
son. The objection to the trvz is that the leaves are late in 
coming out in the spring and fall early in the autumn so that 
it often stands naked when its neighbors are apparently in 
full leaf ; moreover, it is the host of many caterpillars. 
The bark of the trunk is very dark and the branches seen 
in contrast with the light foliage look positively black. The 
walnut grows more rapidly than is generally supposed, and 
had there been reasonable care in cutting only the large trees 
and protecting the small ones, it need never have become as 
rare as it now is, The nut cannot compare in flavor and 
sweetness with that of the European species, but the wood is 
far superior. 
During the tertiary period many species of walnut were 
abundant in Europe ; now the genus is native only in America 
and Asia. 
The European Walnut, /wg/ans regia, is a native of Persia, 
the home of the peach and the apricot. It was known to the 
Greeks whose names for it were Persicon and Basilicon, the 
Persian and royal nut. Curiously enough, it was the fruit of 
the walnut and not of the oak that the Romans called the 
acorn. When Ovid tells us that the people of the golden 
age lived upon 
Acorns that had fallen 
From the towering tree of Jove, 
he had in mind not Quercus, the oak, but Juglans, the wal- 
nut. 
Cowley, in his poem on Plants, says : 
The walnut then approached, more large and tall 
Her fruit which we a nut, the gods an acorn call; 
Jove's acorn, which does no small praise confess, 
To have called it man’s ambrosia had been less. 
By the Greeks it was highly esteemed and dedicated to 
Diana whose festivals were held beneath its shade. The 
Greeks and Romans strewed walnuts at their weddings, and 
Horace, Virgil, and Catullus allude to the custom. Spenser 
mentions walnuts as employed in Christmas games. 
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