A Fall Field Guide Nuts

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To distinguish between the two groups, look at the leaves of the tree in question. If the leaf lobes (the projections around the outer edge) are distinctly pointed, the tree is most likely a bitter-acorn, red-oak variety: pin, black, red, scarlet and willow oaks are members of the family. White-oak leaves, on the other hand, have rounded lobes. Chestnut, bur, live, white, gambel (also known as Rocky Mountain white) and post oaks are examples of sweet-acorn types. Another distinguishing feature is the inner surface of an acorn's cap: If it's smooth, the nut probably is from a white oak; if it's fuzzy, chances are the nut was produced by a red.

Regardless of the type of acorn you find, taste a few before you gather quantities. Acorns vary in bitterness not only from species to species, but from tree to tree. Sample some nuts from several different trees, then forage from the best among them. Pick only fresh nuts, and discard any specimens that appear moldy or that have worm or insect holes (this is good practice, of course, when gathering any variety of wild nuts).

Once you've removed their caps and shelled them, exceptionally sweet acorns can be eaten as they are, either raw or roasted (bake them in a slow, 250° to 300°F, oven for about an hour). But even "sweet" varieties can be too bitter for some tastes, and in some places only red-oak acorns are easily available. Fortunately, tannin is soluble in water and can be extracted, leaving behind palatable nuts. Boil the kernels whole for 15 minutes, pour the water off (it will be brown with tannin), add fresh water, boil for another 15 minutes, pour the water off, and add fresh and so on, until the water is only barely tinted. White-oak acorns may require only one or two changes of water, while red-oak nuts may need many. (Incidentally, you may want to save that first batch of tanninrich water; it is a wonderfully soothing topical wash for bee stings, insect bites, sunburn and rashes.)

Once the tannin has been removed, roast the nuts and use them as you will. They're good finely chopped and added to bread or muffin dough. Most acorn fans, though, like to grind the nuts into meal—just put them through a blender or grain mill, or pulverize the kernels with a mortar and pestle. Acorn meal, light brown and pleasant tasting, can be substituted for up to half the flour in any recipe.

Beechnuts

There is no mistaking the handsome American beech (Fagus grandifolia). Its strikingly smooth, duskygray bark has served as a scratch pad for generations of lovers and others with something, anything, to say. The earliest Sanskrit characters were inscribed on strips of beech bark. And it was a beech tree in Washington County, Tennessee, on which Daniel Boone carved the famous missive, "D Boone cilled a bar on tree in year 1760." (That tree lived until 1916; it was estimated to be 365 years old.)

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