Part 2

The smooth little nuts are angled and pointed, and when they are ripe, the thick, corky, green husks part into four equal divisions, and the nuts fall out. So much less trouble than walnuts, in their spongy husks, that never part regularly, but wait until they are torn off by impatient boys or squirrels, or until they dry and gradually crumble away.

The shagbark hickory is a beautiful tree when covered with its shining foliage in summer. Each leaf is made of five leaflets on a wiry leaf stem. The three outer leaflets are larger than the pair set nearest the base of the stem. The whole leaf is often more than a foot long, and sometimes there are seven leaflets on each.

The most wonderful shagbark hickory tree I ever saw was one I met once at sundown, after a long walk across country. It stood in a field, alone, and so near my home that I had noticed it almost every day through a long winter. I had gathered a quantity of nuts as they fell in the frosty autumn days, and it was a race between me and the squirrels, often, to see who should get the bigger share. I think they beat me, which is perfectly right. I remember now how rich the foliage looked as it slowly turned from green to golden brown, and fell in a great windrow all about the shaggy trunk, as the nuts ripened.

All winter I noticed how strong the lithe limbs were, and how flexible, as the wind twisted them about in storms, and how much of promise there was in the great, scaly buds that tipped the twigs.

It was late April when I came by. As I looked up into that tree top the sunlight was shining through, and at first I thought I must be dreaming. Instead of buds, I saw what seemed like lighted candles, each with a silken frill, like the recurved petals of an iris, below the tip of flame! I had never seen a tree thus illuminated, and the sight was enchanting. The warm spring air had brought out the hickory buds, with those of other trees, and while I was looking for flowers on the ground, the buds above had swollen, cast off the winter covers, revealing the silky inner wrappings of the young shoots. The rich downward-curving “petals” were only the inner scales of the great buds, grown long and wide, their vivid orange setting off the compact yellow buds that still stood erect. These concealed the tender, velvety leaves that were soon to be revealed with the falling of the leaf scales. I had never seen a hickory tree opening its iris-like buds before, but I have never missed it since.

The big shellbark, or shagbark, hickory is the sturdy “big brother” of the little shagbark. In every particular it exaggerates the characteristics of the favourite among our nut trees. The bark is more shaggy, the tree grows larger, the nuts are bigger. Are they better? No. But they are much the same in flavour, and being so good and so big, they have the market name of “king nuts.” The best of them are gathered in the woods of Missouri and Arkansas. The tree is found from Pennsylvania westward to Oklahoma, but the lumber is valuable for the making of vehicles and tool handles, and so the trees are now scarce in the states that are oldest.

In winter the big shagbark trees show their orange-coloured twigs. They are peculiar to this one hickory. The leaf stems stay on the twigs after the leaves fall, and give the tree top in winter a ragged, hairy appearance, that matches its shaggy trunk.

THE DISAPPOINTING HICKORIES

The pignut has been given this ugly name because farmers, in the early days, turned their pigs into woodland pastures to fatten on the thin-shelled nuts that dropped from this kind of hickory tree. They are not bitter, but merely tasteless, and it is only a “greenhorn” from town or city who will spend time to gather these poor hickory nuts, mistaking them for shellbarks. They are not usually angled, but smoothly rounded, often pear-shaped, and the husks are thin. The shagbarks are in husks nearly one-half inch thick, which split in four divisions, and fall apart to release the ripe nuts. The husks of pignuts divide but part way down, and so the nuts are not freed from them promptly. The kernels are yellowish white.

A look at the bark of a shagbark hickory, and then at a pignut fixes in mind one of the chief differences between these trees. The pignut has clean, smooth, grey bark, becoming coarser and rougher with increasing age, but never shedding its bark in ragged strips as the shagbark begins to do when the trees are still young. Smoother foliage and twigs, smaller buds in winter, and a more regular round head make the pignut a fine tree to plant on the lawn, where the shagbark would be out of place, on account of its shaggy, untidy trunk.

Another handsome hickory tree with nuts that are very disappointing to the members of a nutting party is the mockernut, called also the big bud hickory, and the white heart hickory. The last name is wrong because the heart wood is brown, and it is the wood near the bark that is white. The tree has the largest buds and the stoutest, clumsiest twigs and branches in the whole hickory family. The leaves are correspondingly large, sometimes nearly two feet long, of seven to nine leaflets, on downy, swollen stalks. The catkins of the staminate flowers are like thick, chenille fringes, six inches long, often longer, hanging in May below the new leaves.

The nuts are large and look most promising at first. The big, four-parted husk is as thick as a shagbark’s, but it does not split all the way down. So the first difficulty is to get the nut out of the husk. The bony shell is the next. It is astonishingly thick and hard to crack. Last disappointment of all, the kernel is at best very small, and not worth the trouble of getting it out, though there is no denying that it is better-tasting than a pignut, and almost as sweet as a little shagbark. Very often the shell contains a spongy substance that is tasteless, instead of the kernel the patient nutter has a right to expect.

Crumple leaflets of this tree in your hand, and they smell fruity, like an apple. They turn to yellow and russet in autumn.

The bitternut is a hickory nut whose kernel no squirrel eats. It is as bitter as gall. Thin-shelled as a pignut, and usually less than an inch in length, the nuts are enclosed in thin husks, that differ from others in having thin ridges that rise along the four lines where they split at the time the nuts are ripe. Two of these clefts run farther down than the other pair. The nut shell is thin, slightly flattened sometimes, and marked with dark lines. The kernel is white, and you will never taste a second one.

The sure sign by which to tell the bitternut hickory is the tapering, flattened, yellow bud. At any time of year a few, at least, of these buds are to be found. They are numerous from midsummer till May; after that, a few dormant winter buds remain to tell the tree’s name until the new buds are showing in the angles between leaf and twig No other hickory has little, yellow buds.

In winter the slimness of the twigs, and in summer the small size of the leaflets make this the most delicately built of the hickories. The buds are the smallest to be found on a hickory tree. Yet it is the quickest to grow, and one of the handsomest trees in the family. Because it loves best to grow with its roots in wet soil, it is called the swamp hickory.

THE BLACK WALNUT

No boy or girl who has ever gone nutting “in brown October’s woods” can forget the fruits of the black walnut trees that hang like green oranges, high up on the ends of the branches, and have to be climbed for and shaken down. And each fellow on the ground looks out for his own head, as the shower of nuts comes down. Oh! the rich, walnut smell of those juicy husks, as we bruised them on the nearest stone, tore them off, wiping our damp fingers on the grass, before cracking the rough-shelled nuts. The brown stains stayed until they wore off, but the memory of the sweet kernels lasts longer, and the pungent odour of those nut husks is in every twig, bud, and leaf of every walnut tree. Bruise any young shoot, and by the odour of its sap the tree’s name may be guessed.

There is another test for a walnut tree, for those who do not know the odour of the sap. Cut a twig, and split it. The pith of walnut trees is not solid, but is in thin plates, separated by air spaces. This is a sure sign.

Walnut trees grow rapidly, and are a valuable tree crop to plant. Nuts for seed are packed in gravel, and left outdoors over winter. The stubborn shells are cracked by Jack Frost in such a way as not to injure the seed, which is the meat of the nut. The nuts are planted in spring just where the trees are to stand, for it is much better for a walnut tree never to be transplanted.

I have heard my grandfather tell how the early settlers in Ohio cleared the rich bottom land along the rivers. The great trees that had grown, undisturbed, for centuries, were the “weeds” that had to be cut down and removed, before the soil could be ploughed and sowed to oats or wheat. The only way to do this was to burn the trees, by piling them together and firing the pile, as soon as it was dry enough to burn. The “log-rollings” were the neighbourhood gatherings, when men brought their teams and log chains, and worked like Trojans, dragging the logs to the places selected for the giant bonfires, later on. The women and children had a grand time, watching the men at work, and preparing the dinner, which was a feast, and a great social occasion.

The stump of many a noble black walnut tree, cut down a century ago, has stood, undecayed, until recent years. So valuable is its wood that these stumps have been pulled up with expensive machinery, for the gnarly-grained roots that are still sound. Cut into thin sheets, the wood is used for veneering furniture. Think how many millions of dollars’ worth of lumber went up in smoke in those bonfires! Black walnut is scarce now, and can hardly be bought at any price.

THE BUTTERNUT

The butternut trees are stripped of their fruit in October by boys who have visions of long evenings, such as Whittier describes in “Snow Bound,” with nuts and apples and cider, by a roaring fire. Some boys leave the black walnut trees to others, and fill their bags entirely from the low, broad butternut trees, that have more nuts in each cluster, and they are not so hard to reach. Many will say that they are much sweeter and richer than black walnuts. Others do not care for them because they are so oily. Indeed, they are called “oil-nuts,” and woe to the youngster who has eaten “all he wanted”!

The butternuts are oblong and pointed at one end, and sticky to the touch, differing in this particular from the globular fruits of the black walnut. The same clammy feeling makes it unpleasant to touch the leaves of butternut tree. The resinous sap seems to ooze out through pores along the hairy leaf veins.

In summer time, when the fuzzy, green butternuts are scarcely larger than olives, and their shells are so soft that a knitting-needle goes through without any trouble, the time for making pickled nuts has come. The gathering of the clustered green fruit is fun, but as soon as they are scalded, the “fur” has to be rubbed off of each, before the nuts, husks and all, are put down in spiced vinegar, to be used as a relish for serving with meats the following winter. The “furring” usually falls to the children, and they get very tired, for it is a slow and monotonous job, whether one uses a coarse towel or a brush. However, it would be unpleasant to eat a furry nut, no matter how carefully the spicing was done.

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.