The very name we have given it forbids us to claim the walnut as a native of the British Isles, for in Anglo-Saxon speech it was wealh knut, the foreign nut, just as they called the Celts of the West wealas, the foreigners, a name which has persisted to our times, as Wales. So, also, mediÆval German writers termed France das Welsche Land, and, referring to the whole world, they described it as in allen Welschen und in Deutschen Reichen, "in all Welsh and German realms." It is not easy to fix the limits within which the walnut may be accounted indigenous, so widely has it been cultivated for its fruit; but it is certainly found as a wild tree over a great part of south-eastern Europe, through Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Persia, the Himalayas to Burmah, China, and possibly Japan.

More has been laid upon Roman shoulders in connection with their occupation of Britain than perhaps they should justly bear, but we may safely credit our conquerors with having introduced the walnut, which they held in very high esteem as providing a favourite article of food, and the nuts were easily carried and planted. The name they gave it—Juglans, i.e. Jovis glans, "Jove's nut"—betokens the value at which they rated this tree. Pliny devotes a long chapter to the walnut, expressing doubt whether it was known in Italy during Cato's life (B.C. 234-149). He says that it was brought into Greece from Pontus (Asia Minor), thence to Italy, wherefore the fruit was called Pontic or Greek nuts. He also describes how these nuts were thrown at weddings, certainly a more formidable kind of missile than rice and confetti, as we now do use.

The walnut has adapted itself to the soil and climate of the British Isles in exactly the same measure as the Spanish chestnut—that is, it will thrive in all parts of the United Kingdom and grow to very large dimensions under reasonable conditions of shelter; but it will not produce fruit worth gathering in ordinary seasons north of the English Midlands. Its merit as a timber tree entitles it to far more attention from foresters than it now receives, for, indeed, it is one of the most valuable hardwoods that can be planted. The fruit was too precious to the Romans to allow the tree to be used for that purpose, but, wrote Juvenal, Annosam si forte nucem dejecerat Eurus—"if the east wind happened to uproot an aged walnut"—the timber was highly prized for furniture.

Howbeit, there are walnuts and walnuts. The tree, having been cultivated for its fruit from immemorial time, has developed a great number of varieties, producing large or thin-shelled nuts, which cannot be trusted for the production of fine timber. Where that is the purpose, it is important to plant the wild type, for which the demand is not such as to encourage nurserymen to stock it. John Evelyn, nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, urged his fellow-countrymen to give more attention to the walnut, but he urged in vain.

"How would such publick plantations improve the glory and wealth of a nation! but where shall we find the spirits among our countrymen? Yes, I will adventure to instance in those plantations of Sir Richard Bidolph upon the downs near Letherhead in Surry; Sir Robert Clayton at Morden near Godstone, and so about Cassaulton [Casehorton], where many thousands of these trees do celebrate the industry of the owners, and will certainly reward it with infinite improvement, as I am assured they do in part already, and that very considerably; besides the ornament which they afford to those pleasant tracts."

It is curious to find Evelyn, who infused a fair proportion of scientific scepticism into his practical treatise, lending credence to some of the mythical virtues of the walnut. Thus he gravely writes that "the distillation of the leaves with honey and urine makes hair spring on bald heads."

In raising this tree from seed the walnuts offered for sale as food should be avoided, for these generally have been kiln-dried, and their vitality, as well as their flavour, thereby impaired or destroyed. Nuts should be selected from large trees of the best habit, laid in sand during the winter and sown in February. They are rather ticklish plants to handle in the nursery, owing to the long bare tap-root which they send down, and which should be shortened when the seedlings are transplanted, as they should be at a year old. If fine timber be the object, the young trees when planted out should be stimulated to upward growth by the presence of other trees as nurses. A very slight spring frost suffices to destroy the young growth; but the walnut generally escapes that risk by being the latest of all our woodland trees, except the ash, to put forth leaves. I do not remember to have seen the young leaves appear so early as they did in the remarkable spring of 1914, when they were put forth before the end of April; the ash continuing bare that year till the very end of May.

Of the many fine walnut trees scattered over the midland and southern English counties, I have seen none equal in size to one figured in Elwes and Henry's great work (vol. ii., plate 74), a truly noble specimen growing at Barrington Park, Oxfordshire. In 1903 it was between 80 and 85 feet high, with a girth of 17 feet. The bole and branches are covered with burrs, indicating that the timber would make beautiful panelling and veneers.

The only notable walnuts which I can remember to have seen in Scotland are one at Gordon Castle, another at Cawdor, and a third at Blairdrummond. The first of these would have been a magnificent tree had it been subjected to forest discipline in youth, and so expended its vigour in height rather than breadth. It is only 60 feet high, with a girth of 10 feet, but it covers with its huge branches a space nearly 80 feet in diameter. The tree at Cawdor is about 65 feet high, with a girth of 15 feet 7 inches; and that at Blairdrummond is the tallest of the three, with a girth of 13 feet. Such dimensions cannot compare with those which the walnut attains in Southern Europe. A writer in the Gardeners' Chronicle described one in the Baidar Valley, near Balaclava, which yields from 80,000 to 100,000 nuts annually, and belongs to five Tartar families, who divide the produce between them.

Still, there are so many fine examples of what this tree may become in Great Britain that one may well ask why the production of its timber has been so utterly neglected. Mahogany and other foreign woods have usurped its place in the cabinet trade; but we still import large supplies of walnut, not only for panelling, but for the stocks of army and sporting small arms. For that purpose it has no equal, owing to its lightness, strength, the nicety with which it can be cut to fit gunlocks, and because it never warps nor swells when exposed to wet. "During the last war," says Selby in 1842, "when most of the continental ports were shut against us, walnut timber rose to an enormous price, as we may collect from the fact of a single tree having been sold for £600; and as such prices offered temptation that few proprietors were able to resist, a great number of the finest walnuts growing in England were sacrificed at that period to supply the trade."[14] Some years ago the War Office authorities sought to extend their sources of supply by substituting one of the superb kinds of timber grown in our colonies; but although twenty different woods were submitted and tested, none was found suitable except the American black walnut.

This (Juglans nigra) is a larger tree than the European species, growing to a height of 150 feet with a girth of 15 to 20 feet in the middle States of North America. It has now become very scarce, owing to reckless destruction of the forests; but there are some specimens in England already approaching the dimensions of those in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. For instance, there is one at the Mote, near Maidstone, over 100 feet high, with a girth of 12 feet 6 inches in 1905, and another in the public park at Twickenham, 98 feet high in the same year, with a girth of 14 feet 3 inches. Besides some lofty black walnuts of the ordinary type at Albury Park, Surrey, there is one very handsome tree on the terrace, near the house, distinguished as a variety under the title J. nigra alburyensis.

I do not know of any in Scotland, except a few hundreds which I raised from seed about ten years ago, and which are now planted out in mixture with the Japanese Cercidiphyllum. The only fault I find with them is that, while the young growth is as tender as that of the common walnut, it is earlier in starting, and therefore more liable to injury from spring frosts.

The timber of the black walnut is quite equal in quality and superior in beauty to that of the European species. The tree is sometimes confused with the kindred genus hickory (Carya), whereof there are many fine specimens in Great Britain; but the two genera may be readily distinguished from each other by cutting across a twig. The pith of all species of walnut is neatly chambered, that of the hickories is solid.