If you live near a walnut tree, there’s no escaping hearing the hard plunking sound of falling nuts this time of year. There’s also no avoiding the dark stains on the streets coming from walnuts unwittingly smashed by vehicles.
On October hikes, I must be careful not to step on the sticky, green-husked nuts strewn along sidewalks. But I also have fun watching squirrels sitting in trees chomping on the shells or burying walnuts in the soil.
Trees, including walnuts and oaks, drop nuts every year. In some years, called mast years, they produce much more. Scientists still wonder: Do the trees know if they produce many more nuts in one year, the hungry critters like squirrels will get so satiated that some of the nuts will remain to sprout and create a new tree? Is it the tree’s way of ensuring its species’ survival?
Walnut and oak trees typically mast two times every five years. This year doesn’t seem to be a mast year for walnuts, at least in my neighborhood, but there still are plenty plopping on and staining the neighborhood. High mast years can occur in one part of the country, but not in another, depending on factors such as weather and tree location.
When the walnuts fall to the ground they look like green tennis balls, which blacken later in the fall. That black causes stains on streets as well as on a squirrel’s mouth, and it has been used as a dye by early North American dwellers. Pam Otto, outreach ambassador for the St. Charles Park District, likens walnut stains on squirrels to milk moustaches on humans.
A squirrel has just the right anatomy to get to the nut within. Strong teeth and powerful jaws enable it to remove the husk, and then chomp on the hard shell to get the reward — meat full of protein and minerals.
Squirrels find walnuts fallen on the ground, but they also sit in trees and use their teeth to cut the walnut from a very short attached green branch. They may drop walnuts, too, and if you’re not careful, one could land on your head, though certainly that’s not their plan. Or is it?
While chewing, the squirrel’s teeth scratch against the hard shell, making a chittering or crunching sound. Raccoons and wild bears also eat walnuts, but I haven’t seen any raccoons doing so in my neighborhood, and we don’t have any bears, of course.
The walnuts we buy at the store and use for holiday baking are not black walnuts. These are English walnuts, which are much easier to harvest and likely originated in Persia, despite the name.
Harvesting and preparing black walnuts takes more time and energy, and it’s quite messy. One method involves using a mallet to pop off the hull, and then a hammer or a long block of wood to crack the shell. Then there’s cleaning and sorting, and trying to avoid the staining. Some folks harvest and prepare their own black walnuts in the U.S., and you can purchase them. I found some for $20 a pound, a bit more than the $12 a pound for the English walnuts at the same store.
If you’ve ever tasted a black walnut, which I have, you might think they are more bitter or tangier tasting than an English walnut. Supposedly, if you pick and hull them at just the right time, the flavor can be quite lovely, though still stronger and earthier tasting than English walnuts.
Most of the walnuts grown in the U.S. are English walnuts from California. Franciscan monks introduced the English walnut from South America to California in the late 1770s.
As the holiday season approaches, I think of the Slovenian rolled walnut bread, called potica, that my mom used to make. My sister and I sometimes make it as well. We use ground English walnuts, but wouldn’t it be fun one year to try it with black walnuts? It would be more expensive, for sure.
The thought of cooking with a native product found right in my own neighborhood is tantalizing. I found some potica recipes online that call specifically for black walnut. But there’s no way I’ll be harvesting and preparing my own. Let the squirrels have them. Maybe they’ll be less inclined to raid the bird feeders.
Sheryl DeVore has worked as a full-time and freelance reporter, editor and photographer for the Chicago Tribune and its subsidiaries. She’s the author of several books on nature and the environment. Send story ideas and thoughts to sheryldevorewriter@gmail.com.
