THE ROMANCE OF OUR TREES— 
VIII. THE NUT BEARERS OF THE NORTH 
ERNEST H. WILSON 
Assistant Director, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University 
Furnishing Man With a Rich and Substantial Wild Food Since His Very Beginning, this 
Group of Trees Has Nevertheless Been Almost Completely Neglected, and Is Only Now 
Beginning to Receive the Attention Which Its Tremendous Economic Potentialities Merit 
[Since this resume is to deal with the nut-bearing trees that 
grow in north temperate lands, it must disregard the most 
valuable and most used nut in the world — the Cocoanut, which 
is the product of a maritime Palm (Cocos nucifera) probably of 
South American origin, but nowcosmopolitanwithinthetropicsof 
both hemispheres — asw r ell as many 
other nut trees that grow within 
the tropics, of which the fruits find 
their way into our markets. The 
Brazil-nut for example (Bertholetia 
excelsa) is familiar to all; and in 
recent years the Pili-nut (Cana- 
rium commune) from the Philip- 
pines has been not uncommon in 
city stores in this country. But 
these are tropical products, while 
we are concerned with altogether 
different material.] 
The Most Useful Walnut Group 
IHE most important of the 
northern nut-bearingtrees 
fell It ’ s t ^ le Walnut, of which 
— if we include Butter- 
nuts — there are about a dozen 
species (some of them doubtful), 
one natural variety, and several 
hybrids. Mexico and South Amer- 
ica have several others but they 
are little known. The European 
Walnut (Juglans regia), the class- 
ical “Jovis glans” and the Nuxof 
Greek poets, stands first. It grows 
wild in Greece, Bosnia and the 
Balkan peninsula, eastward through Asia Minor, the Caucasus, 
Persia to Afghanistan and the Himalayas of Kashmir, 
and northward to near Bokhara and Ladak. From western 
Asia it was long, long ago carried to China, where it is abun- 
dantly cultivated throughout the cooler parts of that land; and 
here and there naturalized. From China it has been taken to 
south Manchuria and Korea, where it is abundant, and to Japan 
where it is sparingly cultivated only. Also it is much cultivated 
throughout the temperate region of the Himalayas. It is 
grown in quantity in all but the coldest countries of Europe and 
likewise in this country, and especially in California. In the 
temperate regions of the southern Hemisphere it is also grown. 
No other northern nut tree has been so widely planted and 
no other nut is so much appreciated as an article of food in 
temperate lands. It is one of the very few exotic economic 
trees cultivated in the Orient, where its fruit is vastly esteemed. 
An important desideratum is a type of this Walnut which would 
be perfectly hardy in northern New England. A few trees are 
known around Boston, Mass., and a few miles to the northward, 
but properly speaking the tree is not hardy here. From the 
colder parts of western China I sent seeds in the hope of securing 
a hardy type, but I am not sanguine. The trees have grown 
fairly well but have suffered slightly almost every winter. 
T HE European Walnut is one of the noblest of northern trees, 
at its best a hundred feet tall, with a broad, rounded crown 
of massive branches and a bold often gnarled trunk full 20 feet 
in girth. 1 hrough long and wide cultivation many varieties 
have developed and the nuts vary much in size, shape, sculptur- 
ing and thickness of shell. The 
most superior kinds have a thin 
shell and are fully 2 \ inches in 
diameter. By careful selection it 
is possible that even greater im- 
provement will result. 
A very interesting variety and 
one that deserves to be better 
known is praeparturiens, which 
originated in the nursery of Louis 
Chatenay at Doue-la-Fontaine, 
France, about 1830. Monsieur 
Chatenay found among a batch of 
three-year-old seedlings of J. regia 
an individual plant which bore 
fruit. This variety was propa- 
gated and put on the market by 
M. Janin of Paris. The nuts are 
generally thin-shelled and though 
small, of good flavor. This variety 
requires to be propagated vegeta- 
tively since it does not breed true 
from seeds. In the garden of Pro- 
fessor Sargent, Brookline, Mass., 
there is a supposed plant of it, a 
tree 40 feet tall; this tree fruits 
freely and is quite hardy. It is not 
necessary to speak of other varie- 
ties, but of the hybrids I shall have 
something to say later. 1 n passing 
1 may say that I believe that in this country the best results will 
be obtained by hybridizing with the Japanese J. Sieboldiana and 
its variety, cordiformis, which are hardier than others. 1 he 
importance of this fact cannot be over-estimated. We need a 
hardier race of thin-shelled Walnuts. 
F ROM the viewpoint of nut fruits the next important Walnut 
is the Japanese (J. Sieboldiana) which is quite a recent 
introduction to the west. It was first introduced into Leyden, 
Holland, about 1864 by von Siebold and taken from there to 
France in 1866. There is good reason to believe that it w'as in- 
troduced to this country by Dr. G. R. Hall in 1862, but the larg- 
est tree I know is in the Arnold Arboretum, where it was raised 
from seeds received from France in 1879. In Japan this Walnut 
is known as Kurume, and is distributed from the south to the 
bitterly cold regions of central Hokkaido. I he Kurume grows 
in moist forests and is a much smaller tree than its European 
relative. The fruit is borne in long racemes and the nuts are 
ovoid or globose, rounded at the base and pointed at the apex, 
very slightly wrinkled and pitted, not ribbed and rather thick- 
shelled. 
Much cultivated in central Japan is the variety cordiformis, 
characterized by its heart-shaped, much flattened, sharply 
s the disappearing Chestnut but 
one of the evidences of the evo- 
lution of life? Other types have 
come and gone in ages past 
'94 
