Far back in its history, this tree grew wild in Persia, and on the wooded hillsides of Asia Minor. The people gathered the nuts for food. It was the custom of visitors to send presents of these nuts back to their friends in Europe when they were travelling in the Orient, and discovered how very good these unknown nuts tasted. Englishmen were among these who were loud in praise of them. “Walnut,” the name they gave the trees, means “a nut that comes from a foreign country.” The Greeks had called it “Jove’s acorn,” for they could not think of any other name good enough. Kings sent presents of nuts to each other. Then people began to plant nuts, instead of eating them all, and gradually all the warmer countries of Europe found they could grow these walnuts.
The size and quality of the nuts improved under cultivation. Now there are many varieties, all larger, thinner-shelled, and better-flavoured than the original wild nuts that still grow in the forests of Asia Minor.
In the centuries when the countries of Europe were always at war with their neighbours, another reason for planting walnut trees was discovered. No wood was so good for gunstocks. No young man could marry until he had planted a certain number of walnut trees. This was the law in some countries in the seventeenth century. So multitudes of these trees were set out. Besides gunstocks, walnut wood was much in fashion for handsome furniture. A walnut forest was a very profitable crop to raise, for lumber alone. A tree that bore such nuts, while its trunk was growing big enough to go to the saw mill was doubly profitable. The people of the colder countries were ambitious to share in this prosperity. But an occasional winter of extra severity killed the young trees.
THE CHESTNUT AND CHINQUAPIN
Next to the hickory nuts, we must rank the chestnuts. Some may give them first place in the list of American nut trees. In England the chestnut trees one hears about are never praised for their nuts. English boys and girls do not eagerly plan for half-holidays spent in the jolly sport of chestnutting. Their chestnut trees turn out to be very familiar to our eyes. They are the horse chestnuts that we see so often at home. Their nuts are handsome enough, and quite worth gathering for use in some games, and just to have and to handle. But chestnutting! That is one of the great joys of October in our country, a thing no boy or girl would miss without bitter disappointment.
While the leaves turn yellow on the big trees, children and squirrels have their eyes on the clustered, spiny balls at the ends of the branches. “Not yet!” is the sign they read as plain as printed words. Warm days come and go, and the tree holds out its sign, even after the leaves begin to fall. Father and mother say: “Be patient!” But they do not remember how hard that is. It is a long time since they were eight and ten and twelve years old.
Then a cold night comes, and in the early morning a hoar frost is disappearing as the sun rises. Four seams can be seen on some chestnut burs, and the impatient boys throw clubs into the tree tops. But their fingers are sore with trying to pry the burs open. The nuts are cheesy and insipid.
“Just you wait a spell.” This is the advice of John, the raggedy man, who does the chores. “You can’t hurry up chestnuts. When they’re ready, I’ll take you where you can get a barrel of ’em, and not kill yourself, nor ruin your hands gettin’ ’em.” He sees the rising tide of fear before it is expressed in words, and answers mysteriously: “Nobody knows the place but me. Let the little fellers an’ the town folks hunt for nuts under the trees along the road. They’ll get a quart apiece, mebby, if they work half a day. The place I’m goin’ to, you can scoop ’em up in handfuls.”
The trees far back from the high road are certainly more generous to the few who find them than are the more accessible, and therefore more popular trees. Nobody “scoops them up in handfuls,” literally, for there are the burs, quite as prickly as before they split their four segments apart, and let the two or three nuts fall out. Careful and quick motions are needed to pick up the pointed nuts among the larger burs. But the game is most absorbing. If the bags fill slowly, there is the consoling thought that the shells are thin, and the nuts are almost solid meats. The busy picker stops now and then to sample a few. They certainly are riper and finer tasting than they were a short week ago.
Unopened or partly opened husks are often gathered. The nuts will ripen and roll out on the attic floor, or on the roof of the side porch. Few parties who go chestnutting content themselves with the loose nuts they gather. The end of the day is a scramble to fill the bags or baskets with hulls not yet fully open. Mittens faced with leather or made of canvas are a good protection for the hands.