In Praise of Black Walnuts

You might want to wear a hard hat next time you go to the outdoor classroom.  There is a black walnut tree in the back corner, and it's walnut season!  If you sit there long enough, you might just witness the loud thud of a walnut hitting the ground.

Here's our black walnut tree.

Black walnuts (Juglans nigra, meaning black Jupiter nut) are beautiful trees.  I like them because they provide light shade (not too dark - their leaves are sparse and let the light through), give us delicious nuts, provide food for squirrels and are an excellent source of wood.  The dark walnut wood is so beautiful, strong and light that a full-grown walnut tree can be worth $5000 or more if it is cut down and sold for wood.  Plant a few walnut trees today and harvest them in 30 years for an excellent return on your investment.  Plus you can eat the walnuts in the mean time!  Just be sure to re-plant what you harvest.

Whole in-shell walnuts are available  in grocery stores this time of year.  They are a great snack, and since they take a while to crack open, you can't spoil your dinner with them.  The grocery store walnuts are English walnuts and ours a black walnuts, but our walnuts are still very good to eat.  In fact, their strong wal-nutty flavor makes them superior for adding to ice cream, fudge and cakes.  You just have to catch them before the animals do.

A black walnut with the husk still on.

Walnuts grow with a husk on them that makes them look like big round limes.  The husk contains a chemical called juglone that makes it smell rather pungent and stain your hands brown if you touch it too much (it won't hurt you, but you can't wash it off).  The juglone in the walnut husks also seeps into the ground under walnut trees and prevents some plants from growing, which helps prevent walnut trees from having too many competitors for sunlight and soil nutrients.  This plant warfare technique is called allelopathy, and it's fairly common among plants to have secret chemical wars going on in the soil.  Smell a walnut husk and notice the bitter juglone smell.  You can also smell the same odor in crushed walnut leaves.  Every fall, the walnut leaves fall and add a new dose of juglone to the soil.  Juglone is also a potent dye and is used by dye-makers to color fabric.  You could try this out by soaking a cloth in crushed walnut husks and water.

Black walnut with squirrel teeth marks in the husk - I bet that tasted awful!

My dad taught me a special technique for removing walnut husks: put a bunch of walnuts in your driveway and drive back and forth on them.  You should be left with a bunch of crumbled husks and intact walnuts.  You could also just wait for the husk to turn black and rot away, but by that time your walnut has probably become infested with worms or fungi.

Chewed hole in a walnut shell with the entire nut removed by a squirrel.

After you remove a walnut husk, the next challenge is to open the walnut shell.  Black walnuts have stronger shells than English walnuts.  My dad's trick for walnut shells is to wrap several walnuts in an old towel and bash them with a hammer.  Very fun.  Then you can use tweezers and a nut pick to pick out the walnut pieces from the shells.  It's a messy business, but totally worth it.

Whole walnut with husk, walnut with husk partially chewed, walnut without husk, and opened walnut.

Search around the bottom of our walnut tree and look for walnuts with the husk on, with a rotted husk, with the husk gone and with the shell open.  Look closely and you will find walnuts with teeth marks from the industrious squirrels that like walnuts for the same reasons we do.  Squirrels have gigantic, orange chisel-like teeth that you can see here.  They scrape their teeth through the husk (ick!) and the shell, then dig out the walnut with their teeth, tongue and claws.  If there are enough new green walnuts, you might want to take one with you and open it yourself - they are delicious!

Black walnut tree.  If you click on the picture, you can zoom in a see clusters of walnuts.

Walnut trees do not grow walnuts in order to provide us with snacks.  The walnuts are actually the offspring of the walnut trees.  The nut part is actually a seed.  If you put a whole in-shell walnut in the ground this fall, it will sprout and grow a new walnut tree in the spring.  The food value of the walnut - the part we like to eat - provides food for the new walnut tree until it can grow enough leaves to use the sun for food.

Here's more information on harvesting black walnuts if you'd like to do a more serious walnut harvest.