Are there walnuts in Greece. Why is a walnut called walnut: the origin of the name

Many of those who take up the cultivation of walnuts are confused, not understanding why Walnut blackened and how to fix it. However, diseases of the walnut tree and the fight against them are not as difficult as it seems, if they are diagnosed and prevented in time.

From this article you will learn:

Walnut is a strong tree that has no worthy competitors in middle lane combining the same enviable productivity with longevity. Moreover, it is quite resistant to negative environmental factors and is not too capricious to care for. However, it happens that gardeners have to determine why a walnut turns black on a tree that produced several bags of crops last year.

Most often, the reason why walnut fruits turn black on a tree is a bacteriosis disease. In some sources, the very deterioration in the appearance of fruits is called bacterial burns. Unfortunately, today there are no such tree varieties that would have absolute immunity to bacteriosis. At the same time, experienced gardeners say that in trees with a thin fruit shell, walnut fruits turn black more often than in thick-skinned species.

The peel of a walnut turns black: why such fruits cannot be eaten

Outwardly, a bacterial infection of the fruit can be seen by the appearance of watery spots, gradually turning black. If the infection manages to penetrate the fetus, then the nuclei are damaged - they liquefy, smell unpleasant and, of course, become inedible.

With a lesion after the nuclear membrane has hardened, the chances of defeating the nutrient yard are minimal. In this case, the peel, as a rule, turns black, but dries directly on the shell and separates very poorly from it. The chances that the nut in this case will keep nutritional qualities, is, although they are still better not to use.

The walnut is sick - the leaves turn black

Bacterial burns affect the health of not only fruits, but also leaves, branches, shoots. The progress of the disease is the same: at first small black spots appear, which gradually increase and lead to death. On the shoots, the first burns appear on the tops, and then spread to the whole body. Bacterial damage to the bark leads to its drying out, wrinkling in the first season, and ulcers and cracks are strewn through it.

Walnut fruits turn black: how to save a tree

To prevent the spread of the plant through the culture, it is necessary to collect the affected peel, fruits and foliage. You should also cut out branches and bark dried up by the disease, clean the headquarters and bases of skeletal branches. It is also necessary that the earth at this time remains loose.

When a walnut turns black on a tree, it is necessary to arm yourself with copper-containing processing agents and Bordeaux mixture:

1. Trees in the bud stage are sprayed with a 3% mixture of Bordeaux mixture.
2. After the formation of the initial leaves and before the flowering of female inflorescences - 1% solution of the same preparation.
3. After the trees have faded, in rainy weather, you need to spray them a couple more times with an interval of 1.5-2 weeks with a 3% solution of Bordeaux water.

To increase the effectiveness of antibacterial treatment, it is advised to dilute another 10 ml of urea in addition to 30 ml of Bordeaux liquid in a liter of water. The estimated dose of adding urea to 1% Bordeaux mixture is 3-4 ml.

Diseases of the walnut tree and their treatment

In addition to bacteriosis, there are several other diseases, the manifestation of which explains why the walnut turns black, leaves and fruits fall off, branches and embryos deteriorate.

Brown spotting, marsonia

One of the most common ailments walnut tree- marsonia or brown spotting. It is also known under the names marsonioz and anthracnose. This disease has a fungal nature and a wide range of lesions, including not only shoots and fruits, but also leaves.

None of them modern varieties walnut does not have complete immunity to this disease. The fight against it is complicated by the fact that the pathogen can quite successfully survive the winter in fallen fruits and leaves, as well as in wounds of branches (cracks, scratches, cuts). The main channel of infection is cracks in boles and branches, open in spring. Trees grown from regions with frequent rainfall and constant humidity are most susceptible to marsonia.

The struggle against Marsonism is carried out by the same methods as the treatment of bacteriosis. In the case of both diseases, it is necessary to stop the spread by removing and burning the damaged organs and smearing the cuts left after cutting with garden pitch or paint. To fill the volumetric hollows, you need to pour rubble inside, and cover it with plaster on top.

Nut gall (warty) mite

This disease of the tree affects the leaves of the walnut and leads to the appearance of small wart galls over its entire surface. Further, by autumn, a rusty coating can form not only on the leaves, but also on the fruits of the tree.

Root cancer or goiter

Root cancer is one of the most devastating diseases, because due to its secretive nature, it can lead to stunted growth and deprive the tree of fruitfulness. Externally, the disease manifests itself in the form of influxes and growths on the roots.

Infection occurs through damage to the root system. The causative agent is a gram-negative rod-shaped soil bacterium Rhizobium radiobacter, which disrupts the structure of tissues, while stimulating their rapid growth.

It is believed that root cancer is not treatable, so it can only be prevented. First of all, it is the refusal to plant walnuts in areas previously occupied by crops that are susceptible to this disease. Seedlings should also be examined before planting - they should not have cracks and wounds through which infection can occur. Roots that have growths are removed. For prevention, the root system must be treated with a 1% solution. caustic soda. Treatment with a disinfectant solution lasts five minutes, and then it is washed off running water. Abundantly affected seedlings with damage to the root collar or main root should be burned.

IN Ancient Rus' The Greeks introduced the walnut in the 9th century. That is why for centuries the corresponding name was firmly entrenched in it.

In itself, this nut was called Sinop, because, according to written sources, it got there from Sinop (the city in). Today, in the wild, real walnut forests have been preserved only in the Tien Shan mountains.

VALUABLE BONE

The walnut is a tree from the walnut family (Vydnaxiaceae) with a spreading crown, reaching a height of 35 m. The leaves of the walnut are large, complex, pinnate, consist of 5-13 entire serrated leaflets. The leaves open at the same time as the flowers. The flowers are small, greenish, dioecious. Males form inflorescences-earrings, females are single or collected in several pieces in the apical racemes of annual shoots. They do not attract insects either by beauty or aroma, and the walnut is pollinated with the help of the wind.

The fruit of the walnut is a naked green drupe with a thick leathery green rind (pericarp). From a distance, it can be mistaken for a small apple. When ripe, the peel turns black, bursts along the seam of the stone into two parts, releasing it from its captivity. This bone is what we call a walnut in everyday life and love to eat so much, without thinking about the correct biological terms.

NATURAL STORAGE

Walnut seed is very nutritious, and it can rightly be called a pantry of nutrients. It contains a lot of oil - up to 75%, protein - up to 18%. The nut is rich in vitamins - beta-carotene (precursor of vitamin A), E, ​​C, B1, B2 and B6. Walnut supplies our body with valuable macro- and microelements: potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, manganese, copper and zinc. The green pericarp of a walnut contains three times more vitamin C than rose hips. The seeds contained tannins and the dye juglone. In the partitions between parts of the walnut kernel, in addition to tannins and juglone, alkaloids, iodine, and various organic acids were found. IN medical purposes Since ancient times, not only seeds have been used, but also leaves, flowers, green pericarps, shells and thin partitions of walnut kernels.

DID THE NUT GROW IN EUROPE?

Archaeological finds indicate that at least 9 thousand years ago, people were already eating walnuts. The first written references to this are found in the ancient Roman historian Pliny the Elder and Lucius Columnella, who left us a 12-volume treatise on agriculture ancient rome in the 1st century. From the "Natural History" of Pliny the Elder it follows that the walnut was brought to Greece from Asia Minor in the 7th-5th centuries BC. e. However, paleontologists occasionally find isolated remains of walnuts from the beginning of the Cenozoic era in Europe, dating back to about 60 million years old. The question whether the walnut was distributed in Central Europe remains controversial. Most of walnut trees in modern times, grows in gardens, and specimens found in the wild are wild cultivated plants.

FROM THE BALKANS TO THE HIMALAYAS

In the Mediterranean, the walnut survived the last ice age, which ended about 25 thousand years ago. Findings in and in Western and Southern Anatolia (on the territory of modern Turkey) testify to this. The natural range of the Quaternary walnut is the eastern part of the Mediterranean coast, the Balkans, the Front and central Asia. Walnut grows in humid mountain gorges, in the Himalayas it rises to a height of up to 3300 m.

NUT FORESTS

Real walnut forests - the only ones in the world - grow in the spurs of the Tien Shan mountain system on the slopes of the Ferghana, Kuraminsky and Chatkal ranges at an altitude of 800-2000 m above sea level (on the territory, and). Relic trees here reach 800 years of age, their trunks are up to 2 m in diameter. These are the largest walnut forests on the planet. In August, the ground under the huge tent-like crowns of trees here is completely covered with a carpet of crumbling nuts.

Nut-Fruit OASIS

Here, in the spurs of the Tien Shan, unique walnut-fruit forests have formed, where pistachio, apple, pear, cherry plum, hawthorn, Turkestan maple, cherry peacefully coexist with walnut. At the same time, as elsewhere in the mountains, the phenomenon of vertical zoning is clearly visible here, and the walnut occupies its own, clearly defined zone.

For him, the boundaries of growth in the mountains are limited by two factors: below 1100 m - insufficiently humid, above 2000 m - insufficiently warm. In the middle part of the mountain belt, at an altitude of 1400-1800 m, walnut forests reach their best development: they are usually clean (not mixed), dense, and highly productive. In the second tier, under the canopy of the main walnut forest, only hawthorn is found, and then only singly - an almost ubiquitous plant of these places.

Juglon is found not only in seeds, but also in the pericarp, leaves and other parts of the tree. It is the juglone that prevents other plants from growing under the walnut. Juglon from fallen leaves penetrates the soil and inhibits the germination of seeds of other plants. In the Middle Ages, when people did not know the reasons for this phenomenon, the walnut was the subject of a variety of legends and beliefs.

A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF

Kingdom: plants.
Department: angiosperms.
Class: dicot.
Order: beech.
Family: walnut.
Genus: walnut.
Type: walnut.
Latin name: Juglans regia.
Size: height - 4-25 m.
Life form: tree.
Walnut lifespan: up to 1000 years.

In fact, the Greeks will not die of laughter. And they don't even understand we are talking about their language. Because the official language spoken in Greece is Hellenic. Why do we use the exonym " Greek language"? Let's see how historians explain this fact.

Who are the Hellenes?

The peoples living on the Balkan Peninsula - Achaeans, Ionians, Aeolians - turned into Hellenes in a banal way. Initially, only one of the Greek tribes that inhabited the region of Phthiotis (southern Thessaly) was called that. Accordingly, their land was called Hellas or Hellas.

Linguists believe that, most likely, the people received the name "Greeks" in honor of the mythical patriarch Hellenes (Eλλην). One way or another, but gradually the name spread to the neighbors. Perhaps not without the help of Homer, who mentioned this ethnic group in his works, which passed from mouth to mouth in ancient times.

By the 5th century BC. in the territory modern Greece internal cultural unity of various tribes was established. The inhabitants of most city-states - Sparta, Athens, Corinth and others - began to consider themselves a single people under the general name "Hellenes".

Accordingly, from the IV century BC. e. after the conquests of Alexander the Great and the unification of the country, a single language began to develop based on the Attic dialect.

How did the Hellenes become Greeks?

The fact that the words "Greece", "Greeks", "Greek" came from Latin is not disputed. But there are different ideas about how they got into the language of ancient Rome.

According to one version, the word "Greek" comes from the name Greek (Γραικός) - the mythological progenitor of a small nation (γραῖος), who lived on the territory of the state of Epirus. This people was mentioned by Aristotle. Then the word got into Latin.

According to another, at first the Romans called the Hellenes-colonists who moved to southern Italy from the city of Gray on the island of Euboea "Greeks". Then the word spread to all the inhabitants of Hellas, which in Latin became known as Graecia.

Another variant of the appearance of the word "Greek" in relation to the ancient Hellenes can be suggested based on the Latin words grex, gregis: 1) herd, 2) crowd, group, society. Perhaps the Romans so called a group of Hellenes who lived in southern Italy.

From the Latin language, the words "Greece, Greeks, Greek" first came into the Romance languages, and later into the Germanic and Slavic languages. in different European countries they are pronounced differently depending on the local phonetics, but the root (gre) remains the same.

English: greek; Greek language
German: griechisch; Greek language
French: grec (grecque); de la Grece; Greek language - le grec, langue grecque
Italian: il greco; Greek language - la lingua greca
Spanish: griego de Grecia; helénico (Hellenic); Greek - lengua griega
Ukrainian: Greek

Why did Russian porridge become buckwheat?

With the origin of the word "buckwheat" is also not so simple. The food historian V. Pokhlebkin vividly described the long “journey” of this culture from southern Siberia and Altai through the Urals to areas of purely Slavic settlement. It is clear that buckwheat already during the Middle Ages becomes one of the traditional cereals and national dish Russian people.

According to the scientist, initially in Rus', buckwheat was cultivated on monastic lands, most often by Greek monks, who were considered well-versed in agronomy. Whether the Greeks themselves gave such a name to the cereal, or whether the Russian people called the fruits of their labor with a consonant word, it is not known for sure. However, according to the generally accepted point of view, the names "buckwheat", "buckwheat", "buckwheat" were fixed thanks to the Greeks.

The next version of the origin of the name of buckwheat has nothing to do with Greece, but is connected with the need to warm up the groats. In other words, "buckwheat" - from the verb "warm", that is, heated porridge or heated cereals.

Perhaps, once it was generally the only hot food, and everything else was eaten cold: dried, dried, salted or just raw. Thus, it turns out "warmed porridge." And if in order to store buckwheat grains, they had to be calcined in the oven or held under the sun, then the name “warmed groats” is quite logical.

The words "buckwheat" and "buckwheat" are an example of a curious linguistic paradox. It is "buckwheat" - herbaceous plant buckwheat family, the grain of this plant and cereals. And "buckwheat" is a diminutive name. So "buckwheat" is a derivative of the word "buckwheat", and not vice versa.

Since the 15th century, buckwheat began to spread to other countries. Europeans considered it an oriental culture, although the concept of "east" varied greatly. In Greece and Italy, buckwheat was called "Turkish grain"; in France and Belgium, Spain and Portugal - "Saracenic or Arabic".

In the second half of the 18th century, Carl Linnaeus gave buckwheat the Latin name "fagopirum" - "beech-like nut", since the shape of buckwheat seeds resembled beech tree nuts. Since that time, in the German-speaking countries - Germany, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark - buckwheat began to be called "beech wheat".

In modern Greece there is, as they say, everything. Except for buckwheat. That cereal, which translates as "buckwheat", nor appearance, nor does it taste like buckwheat, which is familiar to Russians.

And what about the walnut?

Greek is a synonym for modern "Greek". Judging by the fact that the word was used by N.V. Gogol, it is not very outdated: “They rolled out a barrel of honey into the yard and put a lot of buckets of walnut wine.”

Ushakov D.N. interprets as follows: "WALNAL - WALNUT, walnut, walnut (out of use and preserved only in a few special names: Walnut (a variety of large nuts). Walnut sponge".

Why is the obsolete “walnut” used in connection with a tree whose homeland is Central and Asia Minor? The antiquity of what is happening gives historians a flight for fantasy: the ubiquitous Greek monks are again on the scene, bringing and cultivating walnut trees in the monastery gardens. Or perhaps they were Greek merchants who traded nuts in Rus'. In both cases, the walnut came to us through Greece.

In Hellas itself, the walnut has been growing for so long that even legends have had time to add up. For example, such. The god Dionysus had a beloved - the daughter of the Greek king Carius. Due to an accident, the girl died. Then Dionysus turned her into a hazel. In memory of his daughter, Karius erected a temple, the columns of which were made of walnut wood in the shape of a young woman and were called caryatids.

This is the contribution the Greeks made to the Russian language. Or rather, the Romans, since it was they who called the ancient Hellenes Greeks.

In the modern world there are about a hundred varieties of edible nuts. The most common of them in the CIS is the walnut. Why is this variety so named? Why is it useful? And is Greece really his homeland? Let's find out the answers to all these questions.

What kind of nut is called "walnut"

Before considering the question of why the nut is called "walnut", it is worth knowing what kind of plant it is and how it is also called in Russian.

The walnut is a species of tree from the Juglandaceae family. Outside of greenhouses, these trees grow freely in Asia Minor, the Balkans, Greece, Ukraine, California, India, China, as well as in the Transcaucasus.

They gained their popularity thanks to their large fruits - nuts. Since ancient times, walnuts have been not only a popular delicacy among all peoples, but also a very healthy dietary product.

In addition to the name "walnut", this fruit is also called "Voloshsky", less often "royal".

It is noteworthy that, apart from Russians and Belarusians, other peoples do not call this nut "walnut". For example, in Ukrainian it is “hairy”, in Polish it is włoski, in Czech it is vlašský, in English it is walnut, and among the Greeks themselves it is καρυδιά (karýdia).

What nutrients are rich in walnuts

This plant owes its immense popularity not only to its taste and satiety, but to its grandiose healing properties. Moreover, not only the nuclei themselves, but the peel, shell, roots and bark of a tree, as well as leaves, are able to have a beneficial effect on the human body.

Unlike other plants, unripe walnut fruits are very useful, because they contain 7-10 times more vitamin C than black currants. At the same time, they still cannot be eaten, since in an unripe form they contain some poisonous volatile substances.

Edible ripe fruits are a storehouse of vitamins A, D, E and K, contain semi-saturated fatty acid(Omega-3 and Omega-6), as well as antioxidants.

Walnut leaves are rich in ascorbic acid, carotene and vitamins P and B.

The nut shell contains gallic and ellagic acids, which are excellent tannins.

The use of walnuts in everyday life and industry

Considering what useful vitamins and the Volosh nut is rich in acids, let's find out what it's like practical use this plant.

As mentioned above, unripe walnut fruits rich in vitamin C are not eaten, but they are used to make very tasty and healthy jam.

The kernels of ripe nuts are eaten both raw and roasted. In addition, they are added to sweets, cakes and other pastries (including unsweetened ones), to cheeses, salads, jams.

In addition, Volosh nuts are a private component diet food. As a rule, they are part of fitness mixtures and energy bars. Also, this fruit, along with honey, dried apricots and lemon, is part of the famous Amosov health mixture.

From the leaves of this plant, various tinctures are used to purify the blood, prevent skin diseases and as an anthelmintic. They are also used to repel flies and moths. In cooking, walnut leaves are added during conservation.

On the basis of hard walnut shells, preparations are made for the treatment of wounds and infectious skin lesions.

The industry also widely uses walnut wood for the manufacture of furniture and musical instruments. And from the shell of the fruit are extracted substances for tanning the skin; from green shells - paint for fabrics.

A Brief History of the Walnut

Most of the ways to use the walnut were discovered in ancient times. There is evidence that before the ice age this plant grew almost everywhere in Europe, as well as in India, China and Japan, as well as in Greenland and Siberia. Which of these countries was the first to use the fruits of this plant for food is not known.

But there is reliable historical evidence that the Greeks borrowed the tradition of eating this type of nuts from the Persians, who called this product nothing more than “royal”.

After the Greeks, the Romans mastered this plant, and with the advent of Christianity, the whole of Europe.

In the USA, this plant was brought only in the 19th century, but soon became very popular.

On the territory of the Crimea and Tavria, the Volosh nut appeared approximately in the 2nd-3rd centuries. n. e. as evidenced by archaeological finds. It is possible that during this period it came to Rus', although its wider distribution occurred in later centuries, with the advent of Christianity.

Several theories about where the name "walnut" came from

Having considered the features of this plant, its areas of application, as well as history, it is worth moving on to the main issue. So why is the nut "walnut" and not "Japanese", "Indian" or "Chinese"? There are several versions of the origin of this name in Russian.

According to the most common, the first to grow entire gardens walnuts began at the monasteries. And since the Greeks were mainly engaged in this, as they were more knowledgeable in agronomy, the fruits of the trees began to be called "walnuts". By the way, for the same reason, buckwheat porridge is called so. It was the Greeks who were the first to grow and cook this cereal.

There is another version of why a walnut is "walnut". Some believe that these plants were brought to Rus' not by the clergy of their Byzantium, but by merchants, and much earlier. However, not knowing exactly the name of the plant, they began to call it "walnut" - by the name of the place of origin.

Why walnut is "walnut" and not "Greek"

Having considered the most famous theories of the origin of this term, it is worth understanding the features of the name. So, according to the rules of the Russian language, you need to say "Greek", then why is a walnut "walnut"?

IN this case this spelling is explained by tradition. The fact is that at the time when this plant appeared in Rus', there was an adjective "walnut". It was they who named this type of nut. And when the norms of the Russian language changed, and the adjective “Greek” began to be used (which is still relevant today), most citizens continued to call the nut “walnut”, and this name stuck with it forever. This is why the walnut is "walnut" and not "Greek".

However, if we recall the works of N.V. Gogol, he called this fruit - Voloshsky nut. Where did this name come from?

The origin of the "Voloshsky" nut

Having figured out why a walnut is “walnut”, it is worth finding out for what reason it is sometimes also called “Voloshsky”. Moreover, in a number of Western Slavic languages ​​and Ukrainian, this name is the main one, and the phrase "walnut" is not used at all.

The term "Volokhi" today and in the old days was used to refer to representatives of the Romanesque peoples of the Danube states, among which were Greek tribes. It is likely that in the West Slavic lands this word was more often used to name the Greeks and Romans. Therefore, the nuts brought from their lands were called "Voloshsky", and this name was fixed in the Ukrainian, Polish and Czech languages.

Candidate of Biological Sciences V. Artamonov. Photo by I. Konstantinov
Science and Life No. 10, 1988, p. 158-1615

The legend about the origin of the walnut says that Caria, the daughter of the Laconian king Dion, beloved of Dionysus, was turned into Walnut. In Caria, named after her (the word "brown" meant "hazel" among the ancient Greeks, but most often this meant walnut), in the old days, girls led round dances in honor of Artemis, to whom this plant was dedicated. Once, the members of the round dance, frightened, rushed under the protection sacred tree and suddenly turned into nuts hanging on its branches.

The wide distribution of legends about the walnut tree in Greece indicates the age of its growth there. Modern botanists believe that the areas of natural distribution of the walnut are South Kazakhstan, Central Asia, Iran, Afghanistan, the western regions of the Himalayas and Tibet, the southeast of Transcaucasia (Talysh), Significant walnut forests in other places of the Transcaucasus, in particular in Western Georgia, are considered as overgrown ancient gardens, abandoned during the numerous wars of the Georgian people with the Persians and Turks. In Central Asia, walnut forests are located mainly at an altitude of 1000-2000 meters above sea level. The plant has chosen steep rocky slopes, ravines, gorges, where its roots strengthen a thin layer of fertile land.

In Rus', walnuts were cultivated in monastery gardens nine centuries ago. According to scientists, the earliest centers of this culture were the Vydubetsky and Mezhegorsky monasteries, located along the Dnieper above and below Kyiv, the first bastions of Christianity in Rus'. Apparently, along with the faith, the Greek preachers brought this plant with them, which determined its Russian name.

True, the clergy did not always treat the walnut with favor. It was noticed that there is no vegetation under the canopy of the tree. Christian preachers explained this fact by the fact that supposedly evil spirits nested in the walnut, harming people and plants. In fact, a special substance juglone is formed in its leaves, which is toxic to other plants; so, it inhibits the growth of tomatoes, alfalfa, potatoes ... Rains wash juglone out of walnut leaves, it enters the soil and poisons the vegetation that appears under the crown. In general, walnut leaves are a real biochemical plant that produces a number of essential substances. They contain caffeic acid, vitamin E, serotonin, calcium pectate, great amount vitamin C and even nicotine. For this reason, traditional medicine has long used leaf decoctions to treat many diseases.

Walnut is a beautiful tree up to 30 meters in height with a spreading crown and a powerful trunk covered with thick dark gray cracking bark. The leaves are complex, large. They consist of 5-11 ovate-elongated leaflets and look like ash leaves. The first leaves appear. in April - May, and at the same time the tree blooms.

Walnut flowers are small, inconspicuous, inconspicuous. In Central Asia, many old people believe that the tree does not bloom at all. There is even a saying on this score: "The one who sees the walnut flower will die." Meanwhile, male flowers are collected in green earrings, the length of which reaches 12 centimeters. Earrings are laid on young shoots in summer, winter in large conical buds, and in April - May, when leaves appear on the plant, they lengthen very quickly. Each male flower contains 12-18 stamens. Female flowers are located singly or in groups of 2-4 in the upper part of the shoots.

Walnut is a wind pollinated plant. Bees attracted by pollen, although visiting male flowers, ignore female ones, so their role in pollination is negligible. The difference in the blooming of male and female flowers on the same plant reaches 15 days. This results in cross-pollination.

Fruits a nut from the age of ten, but largest yields begins to give by the age of 30, the fruits ripen in September - October. In everyday life, they are called nuts, but from a scientific point of view, this is not true. In a real walnut - hazel, oak - the pericarp is hard, woody. But in a walnut, the fruits have an outer soft greenish shell. It is clearly visible in immature fruits, but disappears when ripe, so that the inner layer of the pericarp is outside - the so-called endocarp - the shell ... That is why botanists call the walnut fruit a drupe, but unlike a typical juicy drupe - cherries, plums, peaches , apricot, consider it a dry drupe.

Inside the drupe is the nucleus, the tuberculate surface of which is very reminiscent of the convolutions of the brain. This is nothing but a seed with two very peculiar large cotyledons, each of which is divided into two lobes. It is covered with a light brown film, the color of which can be used to judge the quality of the kernel. The most delicious and fatty seeds are covered with a light film with a golden hue. Each tree produces about 100 kilograms of nuts per year, and especially large specimens - up to 300 kilograms. The yield of the same tree varies greatly from year to year. The inhabitants of Mingrelia believe that a high harvest of walnuts portends abundant snow in winter.

Abkhazian and Mingrelian chefs cook lovely dish- chicken stuffed with walnuts and poured over pomegranate juice. Churchkhela is better known to readers - walnuts boiled in grape juice. In the old days, soldiers who went on a military campaign were supplied with it. And the kernels of nuts themselves are tasty and nutritious. They are high in fat (up to 75 percent) and protein (9-18 percent). The oil is used to treat burns and non-healing wounds. It is light yellow in color with a greenish tint and pleasant smell, not inferior in taste to Provencal.

Walnuts are a real treasure ascorbic acid and tocopherol, as well as trace elements - iron, cobalt, copper, iodine, nickel ...

K. E. Tsiolkovsky called the walnut the tree of the future, and I. V. Michurin - the tree-combine, because all its parts go into action. The famous traveler Thor Heyerdahl, preparing for his long and unsafe expeditions, necessarily included walnuts in his diet. Astronauts during the flight use pasta and cream made from walnuts. Confectioners widely use them for making cakes, bread, pastries, ice cream... The oil is used not only in medical and food purposes, but also in printing, perfumery, painting - it forms a transparent, durable film that does not crack over time on the canvas. Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Goya, Rembrandt kneaded their paints on this oil.

Walnut cake goes to the manufacture of halva, gozinaki. Very resistant black and brown dyes for wool and silk are made from the outer shell of the fruit, and tannins used for leather processing are extracted. Nutshell used in the production of linoleum, roofing, in grinding business ...

Walnut wood is of rare beauty, it has been highly valued by cabinetmakers since ancient times. Dense, durable, resistant to pests, it is perfectly polished, does not crack and does not change its volume when heated. The walnut is used for interior decoration, the manufacture of expensive furniture, gun stocks, and various handicrafts. Its popularity in the world market is very high.

So-called burls sometimes form on trees - burrs with very dense, patterned wood, from which craftsmen make souvenir boxes, medallions, brooches, snuff boxes ... The extraction of a unique raw material - walnut burl - is carried out in Kyrgyzstan. Here, on the pre-Alpine terraces, a rather extensive array of wild-growing walnuts has been preserved, occupying almost 600 thousand hectares. The age of many trees is 500-800 years, but they are by no means old men, because some specimens live even up to two thousand years! So, for example, a thousand-year-old giant stands in the Georgian village of Martkobi. According to legend, during the Battle of Martkob, in its vast shadow was the headquarters of George Saakadze (1580-1629), the leader of a major popular uprising in Kartli and Kakheti against the Persians.

World production of walnuts is more than 800 thousand tons. It is mainly grown in the USA (up to 200 thousand tons), Turkey, Italy, China, France, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, India. As a result of long-term cultivation, numerous varieties of walnuts have been isolated - oilseeds, large-fruited, early ripening, with very thin shells, etc. Of particular interest is the cultivation of early-growing varieties, small trees of which begin to bear fruit in the third year of life. They are exceptionally productive.

The walnut is an extremely valuable crop from an economic point of view. From each hectare, it yields two thousand rubles with a profitability level of 260 percent. All costs for laying plantations pay off in two years of fruiting. Currently, in many places in Central Asia and the Caucasus, on the empty slopes of the mountains, new plantations are being laid - walnut groves.

The walnut is a representative of the walnut family, which has 8 genera and about 60 species. The best-known genus of the family is the walnut, which accounts for about a third of all species in the family. In our country, in addition to the walnut, two of its relatives grow - the Manchurian walnut and the ailantolium walnut, or Siebold. The first of them lives in the Khabarovsk and Primorsky Territories, and the second, listed in the Red Book of the USSR, lives in the south of Sakhalin and on the island of Kunashir.