Black Walnuts, Juglans nigra, are named after Jupiter, the most powerful of Roman gods. They were also associated with Jupiter's wife, Juno, the goddess of marriage and childbirth. Walnuts were thrown at weddings in ancient Rome. The Roman gods ate Walnuts with gusto while mere mortals were expected to live off acorns and Chestnuts. Oddly, in Romania, a bride would tuck one walnut into her bodice for each year she wished to remain childless. Juno, evidently, was a pretty wise and accommodating goddess.
In the Middle Ages, Walnuts were thought to have even stronger powers. Fevers? Evil eye? Epileptic fits? No problem for Walnuts.
Walnuts hanging in the kitchen bring abundance. In China, good-luck crickets were carried in carved Walnut shells.
Care to dream of a future spouse? Sleep beneath a Walnut tree. Take care, though, Walnuts took a dangerous turn when their habit of staining things a indelible black and their bitter qualities were noted. The same tree that would grant your future-beloved dreams now threatened to kill you in your sleep should you dare drowse beneath it.
Walnut trees were said to draw lightning. A branch could protect you and a tree in the yard would guarantee that a bolt wouldn't toast your homestead.
Walnut trees release a substance, Juglone, that inhibits other plants from growing in their spread. Evidently, Privet is immune. We carried truck loads from beneath our Black Walnuts when we finally laid waste to it before we moved to the farm.
We have many Black Walnuts doting our pasture and skirting our woodland. They seem pretty accommodating. They are happy to hold up our birdfeeders and shelter scores of birds waiting their turn for a sunflower seed snack. They throw a few nuts to the one squirrel we seem to have in the pasture. He carries them to a fencepost to gnaw on until his chin and chest are black with the juice from the hulls.
Last year I spent a long day cleaning the nuts from their awful, bitter, tough hull. For all my work I had about 50 black nuts and was honestly so fed up with the process that I didn't even bother cracking the nuts and picking out the meager meat. K's Dad loves Walnut ice cream. Luckily, he can buy it at the grocer's. Have you tried a Black Walnut? After all of the work, you're left with an almost inedible crumble of dry bitterness.
In any case, our leafy Walnuts shade a corner of our pasture. In Winter, they form a line of dark scribbles, like Japanese calligraphy across a gray sky. They leaf out late. I scratch their bark obsessively, making sure they made it through the winter. In late Spring, they send out tentative leaflets. In Summer, they are cloaked in droopy, green glory. In the evening, after the sun has set, the trees exude a strange perfume. Woody, green, pleasantly bitter. And then, in late Summer, they yellow and drop leaflets one by one. We will soon miss them outside our wavy glass window, their nude, darkly furrowed bark scowling through Autumn's first cool nights.
No, our Walnuts know no witches. That we know of, at least. And our farmhouse still stands, after 170 years of lightning storms, protected by their curving limbs. And we sleep pretty well beneath them. With or without our nightly Walnut snack.
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