A Fall Field Guide Nuts

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Walnuts, like most other nuts, keep best in the shell. This is as good an excuse as any to put off the difficult job of cracking them open and removing the kernels. Commercial English or Persian walnuts open easily and yield whole or half kernels. Not so the black walnut. You have to smash your way in, and then pick out the pieces of edible nut from the fragments of hard shell. You can buy special nutcrackers, or tackle the job the old-fashioned way: Put a flat rock in a cardboard box, place a nut on the rock, and smack it with a hammer. Once you've tried black walnut pieces in homemade ice cream, bread or muffins, you'll know the reward is worth the effort.

Butternuts

A close relative of the black walnut and otherwise known as the white walnut, the butternut (Fuglans cinerea) ranges farther north, extending into New England and parts of Canada, but not as far south. The butternut ranks among the highest in food energy of edible nuts, with a whopping 27.907o protein, 61.207o fat and about 3,000 calories to the pound. Wild nut aficionados rank cinerea kernels near the top in taste, too.

Though its leaves resemble those of the black walnut and its crown is similarly rounded and open, the butternut wears fewer leaflets on longer stems, so its foliage overall appears sparse. Its bark is distinctly lighter than the black walnut's dark gray or brown bark, and is generally smoother.

Butternut trees bear early-at just two or three years of age. The fruit is elliptical, like a long, narrow egg, and has a thin, green outer husk covered with fine, bristly hairs that give off a near-permanent brown dye. The inner surface of the husk produces an equally powerful orange dye. (Time to get out the old clothes and rubber gloves again.) The nut inside is oval, with a deeply ridged and pitted shell that's almost but not quite as difficult as 1. nigra to crack.

The thin, fragrant, oily kernel inside each shell can go rancid quickly, so it's important to shell and use butternuts soon after you've husked and dried them. No problem; butternuts are sweet and delicious straight from the shell, raw or roasted, or baked in cake or pastry.

Hickory Nuts

Hickories-in all, some 20 species and subspecies—are widespread throughout the eastern and central United States. The hickory is the consummate "pioneer tree," not only because of its importance to early settlers as a food source but also because of the hard, durable wood it provided (and still provides) for tools and tool handles.

When you're a nut gatherer, hickories are both a joy and a frustration. Though several kinds yield delicious, sweet nutmeats, others produce fruit that is bitter or almost all shell. It's not always easy to tell one kind from the other.

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