Sterile flowers of numerous stamens, with club-shaped little scales intermixed, filaments very short. Fertile flowers in separate catkins, consisting of inversely pyramidal ovaries mixed with little scales. Style rather lateral, awl-shaped or thread-like, simple. Nutlets coriaceous, small, tawny-hairy below, containing a single orthotropous pendulous seed. Embryo in the axis of thin albumen.—Large trees, with the bark deciduous in broad thin brittle plates; dilated base of the petiole enclosing the bud of the next season. (The ancient name, from πλατύς, broad.)
1. P. occidentàlis, L. Leaves mostly truncate at base, angularly sinuate-lobed or toothed, the short lobes sharp-pointed; fertile heads solitary, hanging on a long peduncle.—Alluvial banks, S. Maine to N. Vt., Ont., S. E. Minn., E. Kan., and southward. Our largest tree, often 90–130° high, with a trunk 6–14° in diameter.
Order 101. JUGLANDÀCEÆ. (Walnut Family.)
Trees, with alternate pinnate leaves, and no stipules; flowers monœcious, the sterile in catkins (aments) with an irregular calyx adnate to the bract; the fertile solitary or in a small cluster or spike, with a regular 3–5-lobed calyx adherent to the incompletely 2–4-celled but only 1-ovuled ovary. Fruit a kind of dry drupe, with a crustaceous or bony nut-shell, containing a large 4-lobed orthotropous seed. Albumen none. Cotyledons fleshy and oily, sinuous or corrugated, 2-lobed; radicle short, superior. Petals sometimes present in the fertile flowers.—A small family of important trees, consisting chiefly of the two following genera.
1. JÙGLANS, L. Walnut.
Sterile flowers in long and simple lateral catkins from the wood of the preceding year; the calyx adherent to the entire bracts or scales, unequally 3–6-cleft. Stamens 12–40; filaments free, very short. Fertile flowers solitary or several together on a peduncle at the end of the branches, with a 4-toothed calyx, bearing 4 small petals at the sinuses. Styles 2, very short; stigmas 2, somewhat club-shaped and fringed. Fruit with a fibrous-fleshy indehiscent epicarp, and a mostly rough irregularly furrowed endocarp or nut-shell.—Trees, with strong-scented or resinous-aromatic bark, few-scaled or almost naked buds (3 or 4 superposed, and the uppermost far above the axil), odd-pinnate leaves of many serrate leaflets, and the embryo sweet and edible. Pith in plates. (Name contracted from Jovis glans, the nut of Jupiter.)
1. J. cinèrea, L. (Butternut. White Walnut.) Leaflets 5–8 pairs, oblong-lanceolate, pointed, rounded at base, downy, especially beneath, the petioles and branchlets downy with clammy hairs; fruit oblong, clammy, pointed, the nut deeply sculptured and rough with ragged ridges, 2-celled at the base.—Rich woods, N. Eng. to the mountains of Ga., west to Minn., E. Kan., and Ark. Tree 50–75° high, with gray bark, widely spreading branches, and lighter brown wood than in the next.
2. J. nìgra, L. (Black Walnut.) Leaflets 7–11 pairs, ovate-lanceolate, taper-pointed, somewhat heart-shaped or unequal at base, smooth above, the lower surface and the petioles minutely downy; fruit spherical, roughly dotted, the nut corrugated, 4-celled at top and bottom.—Rich woods, W. Mass. and Conn. to Fla., west to Minn., E. Neb., E. Kan., and southward. A large and handsome tree (often 90–150° high), with rough brown bark, and valuable purplish-brown wood turning blackish with age.
Sterile flowers in slender lateral and clustered catkins; calyx naked, adherent to the bract, unequally 2–3-parted. Stamens 3–10; filaments short or none, free. Fertile flowers 2–5 in a cluster or short spike, on a peduncle terminating the shoot of the season; calyx 4-toothed; petals none. Stigmas sessile, 2 or 4, large, papillose, persistent. Fruit with a 4-valved, firm and at length dry exocarp (involucre), falling away from the smooth and crustaceous or bony endocarp or nut-shell, which is incompletely 2-celled, and at the base mostly 4-celled.—Fine timber-trees, with hard and very tough wood, and scaly buds, from which in spring are put forth usually both kinds of flowers, the sterile below and the fertile above the leaves. Nuts ripen and fall in October. (Καρύα, an ancient name of the Walnut.)