JUGLANS MANDSHURICA, Manchurian Walnut
- Juglans mandshurica, Maximowicz, Prim. Fl. Amur. 76 (1859); and Mél. Biol. viii. 630, fig. (1872); C. De Candolle, in D.C. Prod. xvi. 2, 138 (1864); Gard. Chron. 1888, iv. 384, fig. 53.
- Juglans regia octagona, in Revue Horticole, 1861, p. 429, fig. 106.
- Juglans regia cordata, in Garden, 1896, p. 478, fig.
A tree attaining 60 feet in height and 5 feet in girth. Bark dark ashy in colour, furrowed in old trees. Judging from herbarium specimens, as I have not been able to examine living trees in England, this species differs little in character of leaves and branchlets from Juglans Sieboldiana. Maximowicz, who observed both species growing wild, states that he was unable to find any good distinctions between the two species except in the characters of the nut.
The fruit occurs in short racemes, six to thirteen in a cluster, and is globular-ovate to oblong, viscid, and stellate pubescent. The nut resembles that of Juglans cinerea, but is less sharply ridged, globose or ovate, rounded at the base, abruptly and shortly acuminate at the apex, eight-ribbed, with the intervals much wrinkled.
This species occurs in mountain woods in eastern Manchuria, between the Bureia range and the Sea of Japan, from lat. 50° to the Korean frontier. It is frequent along the river Amur in its lower part and on its tributaries. This species is also widely spread throughout Northern and Western China, where it is common in mountain woods at low altitudes, from Chihli through Hupeh and Szechwan to Yunnan. So far as I have seen it, both in Hupeh and Yunnan, it never makes a large tree, and rarely exceeds 40 feet in height, but Komarov informed us that in Mandshuria it attains 80 feet high by 19 to 20 in girth.
This plant was introduced[1] into the Botanic Garden of St. Petersburg by Maximowicz from seeds sent from the Amur. A tree[2] from seed planted in 1879 in the Arnold Arboretum bore fruit in 1883, which was large, more nearly spherical and less rough than the butternut, and of good flavour. The tree is described as being compact and handsome in habit, and likely to become of value as a fruit tree in the northern parts of the United States, where the common walnut cannot be grown successfully.
Specimens were sent to Dr. Masters[3] in 1888 from a tree which had fruited in the nursery of Mr. J. van Volxem at Brussels, where the fruit ripens some weeks before that of the common walnut, and the tree seems less injured by spring frosts. (A.H.)
