China and Japan. Leaves oval or ovate. Nut globose, scarcely apiculate at the apex, sparingly wrinkled; septa thick and bony.
A large number of varieties have arisen in cultivation.
1. Var. pendula. Tree, pendulous in habit.
2. Var. præparturiens. A bushy shrub, producing fruit at an early period, sometimes when only two or three years old. According to Carrière[1] it was obtained from seed by Louis Chatenay, a nurseryman at Doué-la-Fontaine, about the year 1830, the first mention of it being in Ann. Soc. d' Hort. Paris, 1840, p. 741. M. Chatenay found in the midst of a number of seedlings of walnuts three years old a single individual which bore fruit. This variety was put into commerce by M. Janin of Paris. According to Carrière, when the seeds of it are sown, different forms are produced, from young plants which bear fruit in their second year up to others which only produce fruit at an advanced age. The plants are also variable in size. The nuts are generally thin-shelled and small, but good in quality.
3. Var. præcox. Comes into flower and fruit a fortnight earlier than the common kind.
4. Var. serotina, Desfontaines. This variety flowers very late, and is recommended in localities liable to spring frosts. It is said[2] that of this variety, when sown, only three per cent came true, and flowered late in the season.
5. Var. monophylla. Leaves simple or trifoliolate. A small tree of this kind, which bears both simple and trifoliolate leaves, the basal pair of leaflets being very small, is growing at Bayfordbury, the residence of Mr. H. Clinton Baker.
6. Var. rotundifolia. Leaflets oval.
7. Var. serratifolia.[3] Leaves serrate. There is a specimen in the Kew herbarium from a tree in Germany, all the leaves of which were distantly serrate in margin. The leaves of young seedlings are always serrate; and this juvenile character is often retained in some walnut trees up to a considerable age.
8. Var. laciniata, Loudon. Leaves very deeply cut. The foliage of this variety is light and feathery, much more so than that of the common walnut, and is retained till late in the autumn. A fine specimen was reported in 1884 to be growing at Bicton.[4] Elwes has seen only three trees of this form, of which the largest, growing on a lawn at Westonbirt, was 30 to 40 feet high. Another was at Melbury, and a third, of no great size, at Poltalloch in Argyllshire.
9. Var. heterophylla. Leaflets variable, some of the ordinary form, others irregularly cut.
10. Var. variegata.[5] Leaflets with white margins.
11. A tree was growing in 1890 at Chawton Park, Alton, Hampshire, of which specimens with extremely narrow leaflets were sent to Kew.
The number of varieties of the walnut in cultivation, as regards the shape,
- ↑ Rev. Hort. 1882, p. 419.
- ↑ Gard. Chron. 1883, xx. 114. See Rev. Hort. 1861, p. 430, fig. 108. Called St. John's Walnut, as it does not put forth leaves till Midsummer or St. John's Day, in Parkinson's Theatrum Botanicum, 1414 (1640).
- ↑ The serrate-leaved walnut is mentioned by Parkinson, loc. cit. 1413.
- ↑ Woods and Forests, 1884, pp. 164 and 512. See also concerning this variety L'Horticulteur Français, 1862, p. 47.
- ↑ Rev. Hort. 1861, p. 429, fig. 104.
