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The second most satisfying American nut was and remains the black walnut, but not every one has the fortitude to crush off its juicy rind, which stains indelibly, and then crack and pick the convoluted meat out of the rough, iron-hard shell. Walnut fanciers are better off buying young English (actually Persian) walnut stock and cultivating it to fruition in eight or ten years. The rinds are less troublesome, the shells papery in comparison with wild walnuts, and the fat meats easier to extricate. A close and prolific wild cousin of the black walnut is the butternut, but finding this species in your new grounds is no cause for excitement. The nuts are inferior, the trees short-lived softies and slow to bear. The hickories are a third walnut relative, deliciously flavorful. Their rinds split off handily in sections, but the meat in their dense, tight shells is almost impossible to pick out whole. The shagbark fruit is bigger than the smooth bark, which is deprecated as pignut. As shade trees, native hickories deserve ground-space for their rugged symmetry, but they are not worth buying or cultivating. Only squirrels, and epicures of utmost patience, truly enjoy hickory nuts. Pecans are one more member of the walnut family, indigenous from lower Indiana to Mexico. In Texas they grow as forests. Pecans have been extensively refined and cultivated throughout the South, where they are an important money crop. Long-lived and vigorous, pecans want rich soil and lots of growing room—sixty feet between trees. |
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