WALNUTS AND BUTTERNUTS.
Black walnuts grow on large, handsome trees of very hard, fragrant, dark-colored wood. Walnut wood used to be prized more highly than it is to-day for furniture and the inside finish to houses. It takes a fine polish but grows rather dark and somber-looking with age.
The black walnut is a native of the eastern part of North America. It belongs to the same family as the hickory and, like that, bears two kinds of flowers.
Ripe walnuts.
The nuts have hard, thick, black shells, and also a softer outer covering, or rind, that is very bitter and disagreeable to the taste, and that stains the fingers a dark brown.
The “meat,” or kernel, of the walnut is very oily, and some people do not like it because of its rather strong flavor. Squirrels are fond of walnuts, however, and often plant them in the way we have seen.
The English walnut is an Asiatic tree belonging to the same family, which has been cultivated in Europe and, to a small extent, in this country. Its nut is larger than the black walnut, has a thin shell and a large, sweet kernel. The nut is delicious and a great favorite at Christmas time. It is sometimes picked green and pickled, and some people are very fond of pickled walnuts.
The nut yields an abundance of valuable oil, and the wood of the tree is very beautiful and useful for many purposes, one of which is to finish houses on the inside, and another to make gunstocks.
There is another tree belonging to the same family that grows in America and looks very much like the black walnut tree. It is the butternut. Butternut wood is valuable, and butternuts have sweet, oily kernels that most people like. The flowers, of course, are like those of the walnut.
Butternuts.
A brown dye is made from the inner bark of the butternut tree, and also a medicine is obtained from it.
During the War of the Rebellion the Southern soldiers were often dressed in homespun clothes dyed by the bark of the butternut, and on this account they were called “butternuts.”