The Nut Culturist / A Treatise on Propogation, Planting, and Cultivation of Nut Bearing Trees and Shrubs Adapted to the Climate of the United States

by Andrew S. Fuller

[FIG. 83]. JUGLANS CALIFORNICA.

[FIG. 84]. JUGLANS RUPESTRIS, SHOWING SMALL KERNEL.

Juglans Rupestris, Engelmann. Texas Walnut. New Mexico Walnut.—Leaflets thirteen to twenty-five, smooth, bright green, small, narrow, and long-pointed; male catkins short, or about two inches long, and quite slender; fruit round or oblate; husk thin, nearly smooth; nut small, one-half to three-fourths of an inch in diameter; shell very thick, rather deeply furrowed, the narrow grooves on the greater part continuous from base to apex, the broad edges of the ridges smooth, not jagged as in the butternut and black walnut. Kernel sweet and good, but so small (Fig. 84) as not to be worth the trouble of extracting. A small and neat tree twenty to forty feet high, native of the bottom lands of the Colorado in Texas, and throughout the western part of the State, extending through southern and central New Mexico to Arizona. In New Mexico it reaches an elevation of seven or eight thousand feet, though the climate is often severe, the temperature dropping to zero and below during the winter. Seedlings raised from nuts obtained near the northern limits of this species in Texas and New Mexico would probably be hardy in most of the Northern States, but they are scarcely worth cultivating for their nuts, owing to the small size and thick shell; but as the trees are neat and graceful they are worthy of a place among other useful and ornamental kinds. An occasional bearing tree of this Texas walnut may be seen in the gardens and parks of the Eastern States, and probably in some of the Western, but I have no direct information in regard to their locations or age.

Synonyms:

Juglans rupestris, Torrey.
Juglans Californica, Watson, Bot. California.

[Oriental Walnuts.]—How few or many species of the walnut are indigenous to China, Korea, Japan and other Oriental countries it would be very difficult to determine, with our present limited knowledge of the forests of that part of the world. The few botanists who have had opportunities of studying the flora of those regions do not agree as to names or number of species of the genus. Loureiro, in his "Flora Cochinchinensis" (1788), names three species as indigenous to China, viz.: Juglans regia in the northern part, but this is now considered very doubtful; Juglans Camirium, Rhumphius, a medium-sized, heart-shaped nut, the trees found in the forests, and also under cultivation; Juglans Catappa, a large forest tree in the Cochin China mountains, with oblong, edible nuts, with husk and shell of nuts of a reddish color. Many years later Siebold describes a Japan walnut under the name of Juglans Japonica, and still later the Russian botanist, Maxiomowicz, renames this, in honor of Siebold, Juglans Sieboldiana, and describes another native of Japan as Juglans cordiformis. But prior to any of the authors named, Thunberg had described a Japan walnut under the name of Juglans nigra, probably the same as Loureiro's species, with reddish husk, but as this name had already been given to an American species it had to be dropped. Maxiomowicz also describes what he supposed to be a distinct species, found in the forests of Mandshuria under the name of J. Mandshurica (1872), but it is doubtful if it is anything more than one of the many wild forms of the species found widely distributed over eastern Asia. The red or black fruited walnut of Loureiro (J. Catappa), and Siebold's black walnut (J. nigra), are probably the same as the Ailantus-leaved (J. ailantifolia), recently described in Nicholson's "Dictionary of Gardening," London, Eng., 1884, the origin of which is said to be uncertain. It is Juglans Mandshurica, Maxim, in Alphonse Lavallée's "Catalogue of Arboretum Segrezianum." As described in this work, the young fruit is violet-red, and produced in long pendulous clusters, the latter being one of the marked characteristics of these Oriental walnuts. But whether we admit that there is but one or a dozen species of these Eastern walnuts, it cannot be of any special interest to the practical nut culturist, for to him their economic and commercial value is of more importance than scientific nomenclature.

[FIG. 85]. JUGLANS SIEBOLDIANA.

Up to the present time we have only succeeded in obtaining two species of these walnuts, or perhaps only one species and one variety; but we certainly have two distinct forms, both coming from Japan, and distributed under the names given them by Maxiomowicz, viz.: