Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed vp / a kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes & fruites for meate or sauce vsed with vs, and, an orchard of all sorte of fruitbearing trees and shrubbes fit for our land, together with the right orderinge, planting & preseruing of them and their vses & vertues

Chap. XXII.
Nux Iuglans. The Wallnut.

Although the Wallnut tree bee often planted in the middle of great Courtyards, where by reason of his great spreading armes it taketh vp a great deale of roome, his shadow reaching farre, so that scarce any thing can well grow neare it; yet because it is likewise planted in fit places or corners of Orchards, and that it beareth fruit or nuts, often brought to the table, especially while they are freshest, sweetest, and fitted to be eaten, let not my Orchard want his company, or you the knowledge of it. Some doe thinke that there are many sorts of them, because some are much greater then others, and some longer then others, and some haue a more frangible shell then others; but I am certainly perswaded, that the soyle and climate where they grow, are the whole and onely cause of the varieties and differences. Indeed Virginia hath sent vnto vs two sorts of Wallnuts, the one blacke, the other white, whereof as yet wee haue no further knowledge. And I know that Clusius reporteth, he tooke vp at a banquet a long Wallnut, differing in forme and tendernesse of shell from others, which being set, grew and bore farre tenderer leaues then the others and a little snipt about the edges, which (as I said) might alter with the soyle and climate: and besides you may obserue, that many of Clusius differences are very nice, and so I leaue it.

The Wallnut tree groweth very high and great, with a large and thicke body or trunke, couered with a thicke clouen whitish greene barke, tending to an ash colour; the armes are great, and spread farre, breaking out into smaller branches, whereon doe growe long & large leaues, fiue or seuen set together one against another, with an odde one at the end, somewhat like vnto ashen leaues, but farre larger, and not so many on a stalke, smooth, and somewhat reddish at the first springing, and tender also, of a reasonable good sent, but more strong and headie when they growe old: the fruit or nut is great and round, growing close to the stalkes of the leaues, either by couples or by three set together, couered with a double shell, that is to say, with a greene thicke and soft outer rinde, and an inner hard shell, within which the white kernell is contained, couered with a thinne yellow rinde or peeling, which is more easily peeled away while it is greene then afterwards, and is as it were parted into foure quarters, with a thinne wooddy peece parting it at the head, very sweete and pleasant while it is fresh, and for a while after the gathering; but the elder they growe, the harder and more oily: the catkins or blowings are long and yellow, made of many scaly leaues set close together, which come forth early in the Spring, and when they open and fall away, vpon their stalkes arise certaine small flowers, which turne into so many nuts.