Walnut Tree

Came across this lovely old walnut tree. Walnut trees are valuable for the veneers they produce for top quality furniture but I fear that this tree is safe as it only has a short trunk; actually it needs some work doing on it as there are a number of dead branches.

Walnuts are delicious either mature and dried which most of us would recognise but also harvested young and pickled which are excellent with a nice strong English hard cheese.

It used to be thought that giving the bark of walnut trees a rigorous thrashing in the Spring would stimulate the flow of sap and produce a bigger yield of walnuts. Hence the old country rhyme:
“A woman, a spaniel and a walnut tree – the more you beat them the better they be.”

24 August 2014