when I was a child and visited my grandparents in New Ulm and St. Peter,
in southern Minnesota, the abundance of butternuts, black walnuts and
hazels to be found along the roads and especially along the Minnesota
and Cottonwood river bottoms. Since such nut trees were not to be found
near Springfield, where my parents lived, which was just a little too
far west, I still associate my first and immature interest in this kind
of horticulture with those youthful trips east.

The only way we children could distinguish between butternut and black
walnut trees was by the fruit itself, either on the tree or shaken down.
This is not surprising, however, since these trees are closely related,
both belonging to the family _Juglans_. The black walnut is known as
_Juglans nigra_ and the butternut or white walnut as _Juglans cinera_.
The similarity between the trees is so pronounced that the most
experienced horticulturist may confuse them if he has only the trees in
foliage as his guide. An experience I recently had is quite suggestive
of this. I wished to buy some furniture in either black walnut or
mahogany and I was hesitating between them. Noting my uncertainty, the
salesman suggested a suite of French walnut. My curiosity and interest
were immediately aroused. I had not only been raising many kinds of
walnut trees, but I had also run through my own sawmill, logs of walnut
and butternut. I felt that I knew the various species of walnut very
thoroughly. So I suggested to him:

"You must mean Circassian or English walnut, which is the same thing. It
grows abundantly in France. You are wrong in calling it French walnut,
though, because there is no such species."

He indignantly rejected the name I gave it, and insisted that it was
genuine French walnut.