THE ENGLISH WALNUT The English walnut trees are grown in orchards in Southern California. These trees are quick to grow, and come early into bearing. When you buy a pound of these thin-shelled nuts at the corner grocery store; you may well wonder where they grew. Perhaps little children picked them up under trees that grow in Italy or in Greece. Fine, large nuts come from France, but none of them are raised in England. Many of the best nuts are raised in California, where more and more trees of this kind are planted each year. They grow in the Southern states, but have never been planted on a large scale as a commercial nut tree.
The English walnut tree grows in England, but the nuts never have time to get ripe in that climate. They are gathered green, and pickled, husks and all. From English grandmothers we learned to pickle our own butternuts while the shells are still soft.
The earliest shipments of the walnuts of Europe came into this country from England. Probably merchants in London sent them to merchants in New York. The dealers did not ask where these walnuts grew, but told people who asked that they came from England. This explains the name by which everybody now calls them.
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. Eng
lishmen were among these who were loud in praise of them. " Walnut," the name they gave the trees, means " a nut that comes from a for eign 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, an other reason for planting walnut trees was dis covered. 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. Be sides gunstocks, walnut wood was much in fashion for handsome furniture. A walnut for est 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.