Speaker 1: Chapter eight of ten Common Trees. This is a LibriVox recording.
Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
Speaker 1: by Kimberly Sassen. Ten Common Trees by Susan Stokes, Chapter eight,
Speaker 1: The little walnut. Once upon a time there was a
Speaker 1: little nut. It lived in a green house upon the
Speaker 1: top of a high tree. Figure one. The house was
Speaker 1: a sticky affair on the outside, and had neither door
Speaker 1: nor windows. Still, it was cozy and warm, for as
Speaker 1: you see, it had a tough husk for an outer wall.
Speaker 1: Next to this was a bony shell, and clear inside
Speaker 1: was the little nut. Figure two. There were two rooms
Speaker 1: into which its two leaves fitted. Their walls were crumpled,
Speaker 1: and the little nut pressed out just as far as
Speaker 1: it could and filled all the crannies. This little nut
Speaker 1: was five months old, for it had arrived upon the
Speaker 1: tree in May. Now, if you will look at a
Speaker 1: walnut tree in May, you will find it has made
Speaker 1: ready a great many homes for nut babies. They don't
Speaker 1: look just like the full grown house first, because they
Speaker 1: are not any larger than a grain of rice. And second,
Speaker 1: because they have two top knots, perhaps we had better
Speaker 1: call them chimneys. Here is a group of these nut
Speaker 1: houses Fig. Three. You can find them in the tip
Speaker 1: of a branch, just after the leaves unroll. The round
Speaker 1: part is sticky, but the chimneys are hairy, and if
Speaker 1: you look very closely, you can see that they have
Speaker 1: been dusted over with a yellow powder, and there is
Speaker 1: a slight frill at the neck. Fig. Four. I have
Speaker 1: sometimes cut down into the house through the chimney and
Speaker 1: found where the grains had made their way through the
Speaker 1: chimney into a little room at the bottom. In the
Speaker 1: little room was an egg cell. When the pollen grain
Speaker 1: reaches it, the little egg cell wakes up and begins
Speaker 1: to grow. It grows and grows until it becomes the
Speaker 1: kernel of a nut. I think you would like to
Speaker 1: know where the little pollen grain the walnut's fairy prints
Speaker 1: came from. It was probably carried by the wind from
Speaker 1: another tree, although we find both stamens and pistols on
Speaker 1: the same tree. It came from a queer little flower
Speaker 1: that has thirty or forty pockets full of gold dust.
Speaker 1: The little flower doesn't look much like a flower it
Speaker 1: seems to be a little shelf holding eight or ten
Speaker 1: little stamens, each of which has four pockets. Fig. Five.
Speaker 1: The little shelves grow in clusters in tail like catkins. Fig. Six.
Speaker 1: There are from twenty to forty flowers in a catkin,
Speaker 1: and a very great many catkins on a single tree.
Speaker 1: The catkins do not grow in the tip of the branch,
Speaker 1: but stand out from the sides farther back. They are
Speaker 1: always green in color, and disappear after the wind carries
Speaker 1: away the pollen. They were very different from the little
Speaker 1: nuts high up in the tree. The little nuts kept
Speaker 1: on growing. The winds rocked them to and fro the
Speaker 1: rains washed their sticky walls, and the mother tree kept
Speaker 1: adding to the food supply in the little leaves. By
Speaker 1: and by October came and with it a high wind
Speaker 1: which whisked own nut house and all down into a corner.
Speaker 1: But the same wind also carried the leaves about and
Speaker 1: covered the nut with a warm blanket. Then the clouds
Speaker 1: gathered and the white snow fell. The little nut slept
Speaker 1: under the snow, but when the ground froze deep down,
Speaker 1: it cracked the nut's shell. After a while, the nut
Speaker 1: awoke and began to use the food the mother tree
Speaker 1: had put in its leaves. It was thirsty too, and
Speaker 1: was glad to drink the melting snow. So it ate
Speaker 1: and drank and began to grow. The two rooms of
Speaker 1: its house became too small for it, and it pushed
Speaker 1: out a tiny which turned into the ground. By and by.
Speaker 1: The little root was so busy getting water, and the
Speaker 1: little nut was so busy using it that a long
Speaker 1: green sprout sprang out from between the two leaves, pushed
Speaker 1: through the old leaves above out into the sunlight, where
Speaker 1: it opened out into a green leaf. It was a
Speaker 1: long green leaf made up of many separate leaflets, a
Speaker 1: great many pairs of them. Then it put out another
Speaker 1: and another, and you could see that it was going
Speaker 1: to be a walnut tree. If you would like to
Speaker 1: see one like it, look under the walnut trees. In
Speaker 1: the spring fig. Seven, after the young tree had put
Speaker 1: out several leaves, it took a rest, and when October
Speaker 1: came I found it with a hood on the end
Speaker 1: of the stem. The hood was made from leaves which
Speaker 1: did not grow long, but which remained short and dark.
Speaker 1: These were the bud scales, and they covered the winter bud.
Speaker 1: Then it dropped the leaves it had put out in
Speaker 1: the spring, and passed the winter as a bare twig.
Speaker 1: In the spring it dropped the bud scales and made
Speaker 1: some more green leaves, And then again it made a
Speaker 1: winter bud. Each year it added a few inches to
Speaker 1: its height and a few leaves to the ends of
Speaker 1: its branches. Each year it added a layer to its
Speaker 1: bark and made new winter buds. So it became a tall,
Speaker 1: young tree with strength to spare. And in the spring
Speaker 1: it fashioned houses for new nuts and catkins, which should
Speaker 1: shed pollen dust. Just as the mother tree had stored
Speaker 1: food in its seed leaves, it now stored food in
Speaker 1: the leaves of its own seed children. The tree grew
Speaker 1: tall and beautiful in its forest home. Its umbrella like
Speaker 1: head was lifted some sixty feet into the bright sunshine.
Speaker 1: Its plume like leaves waved in the breeze for a
Speaker 1: hundred summers more. And then there came a change. On
Speaker 1: the edge of the forest. There sprang up a little town.
Speaker 1: The hum of the sawmill frightened away the birds by
Speaker 1: and by the land was all cleared, and the daisies
Speaker 1: plowed under, and the tree I suspect it passed through
Speaker 1: the sawmill. The walnut family. The walnut tree whose story
Speaker 1: I have told is the American black walnut. It has
Speaker 1: been so highly valued for its beautiful dark wood that
Speaker 1: the forests, once very abundant in the Mississippi Valley, have
Speaker 1: almost entirely disappeared. Fortunately, it is now being planted and
Speaker 1: cultivated for future use. Although it grows very slowly. It
Speaker 1: is distinguished from other walnuts by its long leaf with
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty three leaflets, its dark wood, and the nut,
Speaker 1: which is nearly black with sharply cut ridges. The white
Speaker 1: walnut or butternut is also prized for its wood, which
Speaker 1: is reddish in color, but not so desirable as black walnut.
Speaker 1: It has a shorter leaf with from nine to seventeen leaflets.
Speaker 1: The base of its fuzzy stem is shaped like a horseshoe.
Speaker 1: The nut is oblong and pointed at the tip, and
Speaker 1: the kernel is much valued. The English or European walnut
Speaker 1: is frequently cultivated in the mild portions of the United States.
Speaker 1: It has short leaves with five to nine leaflets. Fig. Eight.
Speaker 1: The thin shelled nut separates easily from the husk when
Speaker 1: dry they are common in the market. The hickories are
Speaker 1: closely related to the walnuts by their leaves, flowers, and
Speaker 1: nuts with a bony partition. They are separated from the
Speaker 1: walnuts on account of the husk. The husk of the
Speaker 1: walnut is continuous of one piece. The husk of the
Speaker 1: hickory opens by four distinct valves. The shag bark or
Speaker 1: hickory is a tall, spreading tree with bark which breaks
Speaker 1: away in long strips and has light colored wood. The
Speaker 1: leaves have usually five leaflets, which are several inches in length.
Speaker 1: The nut is thin, walled, whitish, and slightly flattened. The
Speaker 1: big shell bark has a larger leaf with from seven
Speaker 1: to nine leaflets, which are downy on the under side.
Speaker 1: The young twigs are slightly orange colored. The nut is
Speaker 1: larger and pointed at both ends. The pecan is the
Speaker 1: species found in the south. It grows to a greater
Speaker 1: height than the northern forms. The leaves are longer, with
Speaker 1: from nine to fifteen pointed leaflets, and the husk is
Speaker 1: thin with yellowish threads. It opens by four valves, dropping
Speaker 1: the nut but not the husk. The nut is oblong,
Speaker 1: about an inch in length. Smooth and thin shelled. The
Speaker 1: kernel is sweet and of excellent flavor. Reference Seed Babies,
Speaker 1: Margaret Morley, Nuts Falling Foster in Child's Garden of Song,
Speaker 1: Succession of Forest Trees, the rough end of chapter eight