In the summer, Unless you're a "tree aficionado" you will probably walk by this tree, without paying it much attention (like I have many times), except perhaps to marvel at its size. It really doesn't assert itself until the "nutting season" in September / October when it begins to shed its leaves and drop its tennis-ball size fruit.

      While crossing the northerly pond bridge at Edwards Gardens (Toronto), in early October, I came across what appeared to be an abandoned child's ball. On closer examination it turned out to be a fruit that had fallen (along with many others) from a large tree nearby. The tree is a 60 foot giant with a trunk that is about 3 feet across and the fruit easily passes as a slightly undersize but overweight, old tennis ball..

      The fruit has a light green seamless skin enclosing a yellowish-green pulp that, when crushed, discloses a hard dark brown nut shell within. The pulp has a strong "disinfectant" odour and leaves a persistent brown stain on the fingers. My vague suspicion that it might be a Black Walnut was confirmed when I checked a tree book and the Internet later. The fruit was dropping quite regularly and, considering its weight, hardness, and height, some head protection would probably be in order for any prolonged harvesting.

      In Canada, the Black Walnut is only found in the special warm temperate area north of lake Erie extending roughly from Sarnia /Grand Bend easterly to Lake Ontario and then along the shoreline as far as Kingston. This is really the northern tip of the "Deciduous" or "Carolinian" Forest of North America. A link mapping the Canadian portion of this area is provided in the references. The tree is widespread in the north-east USA but not necessarily in large numbers, as over the years it has been extensively harvested for its attractive, high quality, wood.

NOTHING GROWS UNDER A BLACK WALNUT!

      This is a gross overstatement, but don't try to grow certain plants near a Black Walnut tree. The tree and its roots produce a plant toxin called "Juglone" which inhibits some plants such as tomato, some conifers, and even Black Walnut seedlings. The result is called "Walnut wilt" and is also addressed in the reference links. Because it inhibits its own seedlings, the tree depends a great deal upon animals such as squirrels to carry the nuts clear of the influence of the Juglone toxin.

THE EDIBLE BLACK WALNUT

      I picked up a few of the fruits and, while wearing rubber gloves (important!), extracted and scrubbed the hard nuts with a stiff brush, and then set them aside to dry for a few days. My operation was definitely not as thorough as that of Leo Matheny of Warrenton, Virginia who kindly responded to a question I placed on the Internet.

      In the 60's, Leo's father grew black walnuts for sale to local markets. The operation involved a lot of manual labour. Leo, in his teens (and the primary workforce), hulled, washed, dried and packed many a nut for his father. According to Leo, he washed the nuts in a concrete mixer with sand until they were clean and "looked pretty as you please!" The nuts were then dried on screens in the sun for about two days. Following that, Leo packed them in small boxes with cello windows for the market. In those days the nuts sold for $1.50 a pound. In addition, as a by-product, Leo's Father managed to sell the "pulp mash" to the utility pole industry as a wood preservative for $10 for a 55 gallon barrel.

     According to Leo, commerical growers used a nut huller, that looks something like a limb shedder. The machine had a five hp gas engine, that powered about thirty twirling hammers that beat the hull from the nut. The hull came off in small pieces, and fell in 55 gal. drums. The nut would stop bouncing around in hammers with out the hull and would fall to the bottom to be conveyed out to a bin.

      The meat within the Black Walnut is quite edible and tasty. To get at it, though, one must first crack the shell which is reported to be an onerous task. Various methods have been suggested in newsgroup correspondence:

      The Black Walnut is basically different from the conventional "English" walnut in that its internal "partitions" are thicker and very hard, making removal of a "whole" nutmeat almost impossible. Conversely, the partitions in the English walnut shell are fragile and often come out with a whole nutmeat.

Black Walnuts with outer husk removed.

Nut split in half. Cracking & digging now required.

Nut split and Found empty. Shows meat locations.

Shell fragments after cracking and picking. Thick partitions