Replies

1. 
   jonsherryl | May 08, 2003 04:51am | #1

   "English" walnut is an Old World species (Juglans regia), which at the conclusion of the last glaciation, was actually confined to northern Persia (Caucasus-Caspian region.) It's believed it was brought westward along with human migration into the Mediterranean basin and eventually across the Alps into Central and Western Europe in fairly recent times. Most experts believe that it was not actually brought to England until the Roman occupation, probably sometime around the 1st century A.D.

   Black walnut (Juglans nigra) is a New World species, native to eastern North America. It is about 10% denser and much darker in color than English walnut.

   Claro, is the Spanish word for bright or clear and it has become the common name for the wood of English walnut (the same Juglans regia) now plantation grown for producing commercial walnuts in California. There is some confusion in the trade regarding the use of the term "claro" in that some dealers use it for any English walnut lumber, while others consider it a special figure of English walnut that is often cut from the lower trunk of grafted, plantation trees. This special material is a popular gunstock wood in that it typically has variegated pigmentation (dark brown veining intermingled with the typical "milk chocolate" color of English walnut.) However, English walnut (grafted or not) often produces variegated figure. Either way, it's a beautiful wood.

   Some dealers even use the term claro for the wood of the native West Coast walnut (Juglans hindsii), but it's misleading in that this West Coast walnut; Hinds walnut, is far more like our Eastern black walnut in terms of both density and color.

   There are upwards of 15 species of walnuts worldwide, so the above certainly doesn't cover the water front on this subject...But the above three types, plus butternut and one of the Latin American species called nogal are the "big five" as it relates to the kinds (color phases) of walnut lumber usually seen on the American market...There are several Oriental species that are also very fine cabinetwoods (more like the butternut side of the genus), but you almost never see them here.      

   
   

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   Edited 5/7/2003 9:55:40 PM ET by Jon Arno
   

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   Edited 5/7/2003 10:06:11 PM ET by Jon Arno

   
   

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   Edited 5/7/2003 10:43:14 PM ET by Jon Arno

1. 
   flonji | May 08, 2003 12:10pm | #2

   Your  reply on walnut struck a cord.

   I have a woodworkshop and showroom in NZ and in the showroom bowls turned from english walnut. Not too long ago I had a customer who was a walnut orchard grower in California and we had a somewhat heated discusion on whether or not I had the correct description on the tickets for these bowls because in his opinion the colour was far too dark and had to be american black walnut or something else which had bambusulled (?) me. Anything which he had cut from his orchard had been of a far lighter colour, and being a customer he was of course correct in all his assumptions.

   Your comments on top of this experience suggest that a deviant strain has developed in orchard grown trees in the California climate/growing protocol, enough to have collected its own nomenclature. Trees grown here can -not always - have trunks 3 to 4 feet in diameter, 2 inches of sap, heartwood of hard and soft browns and even 'jet' black streaks. I say 'jet' black to distinguish from the purplish haze I associate with American black walnut.

   Not too specificate, simple a thought which developed from a discusion with someone with very hardened opinions and your notes ran along this theme. Possibly to simplistic.

1. 
   jonsherryl | May 08, 2003 03:48pm | #3

   Flonji, the walnut genus (Juglans) segments into three types: The black walnut group, English walnut (one confirmed member so far, but we still know little about some of the Latin American species) and the butternut group. The various species tend to hybridize easily within their groups, but only with considerable difficulty between groups. The exception is the English walnut, which sort of works both sides of the street in that it will hybridize more readily with members of either the butternut or black walnut groups.

   Nut growers are forever experimenting with various combinations, both for enhanced nut production and also for more hardy rootstock...So, the walnuts have been so heavily manipulated that the wood that comes to market (especially plantation claro stock) is a real genetic grab bag. The best way to buy it is on the basis of "what you see is what you get." The ones that intrigue me the most are the Oriental species like heartnut and Manchurian walnut (and their hybrids.) They're very interesting woods and will likely become more available here as some of the "experimental" stock planted in the mid 20th century fully matures. The joy of working with the various walnuts is that there are no losers...You can't go wrong.

   I don't know what you folks down under are up to, but if your horticultural practices in nut production parallel your approach to forestry, I'll bet it's interesting.

1. 
   blindau | May 08, 2003 06:44pm | #4

   Jon, So I take it that Black Walnut has the hardier root system and the English Walnut nuts are more desirable, so English Walnut shoots are grafted onto Black Walnut trunks? What type of tree would grow from a nut of this tree? An English Walnut or a hybrid?

   Bill

1. 
   jonsherryl | May 08, 2003 07:33pm | #5

   Bill, the nut that is produced results from the genetic makeup of the scion (the English walnut twig grafted on to the rootstock) and it would be no different than the nut produced by any English walnut tree.

   The rootstock used isn't always black walnut. Hinds walnut is also used and, as I understand it, they've developed other hybrids for this purpose, depending upon what is hardy given various climates and soil types. These nut growers are a pretty savvy lot. When you wait for decades to see the nut crop come up to full speed, you tend to pay special attention to what you plant.  

2. 
   Telemike | May 09, 2003 07:32am | #6

   There's another variety of walnut sold out here in California - "paradox".  I'm familiar with paradox as the new rootstock of choice for english walnut plantings in the central valley.  Recently, I found a small stack of boards in McBeath in Berkeley and bought one (expensive) board.

   It's highly figured and looks like a souped up english.  The boards were about six feet in length and looked like they were between the root burl and the graft union.

   I'm looking forward to all of those odd hybrids you speak of!

1. 
   jonsherryl | May 09, 2003 04:59pm | #7

   The stump end of the log, including the graft union often yields some fantastic figure. Gunstock makers like it both for that reason and also because the natural curvature of the grain as it approaches the roots is functionally ideal for the purpose of gunstocks.

   ...But this "paradox" trade name is a new one on me. Is this the name of the rootstock hybrid, or something the lumber dealers have coined? If you have them, I'd like to know the botanical particulars. In other words, what species they've crossed to develop it. Is it a cross between Hinds and black walnut (hindsii X nigra) or something more exotic?

   Edited to note:

   After some reflection on the fact that "paradox" couldn't be all that new...since it's wood is showing up in the lumber trade...So, I checked one of my references. It's a cross between English walnut and Hinds (J. regia X J. hindsii) that was developed sometime around 1930.   

   Edited 5/9/2003 10:23:44 AM ET by Jon Arno

1. 
   GregB126 | May 09, 2003 10:40pm | #8

   Jon,

   Right.  I remember "paradox" rootstock being used in plantings in the 1970's.  It was something growers thought about turning to at a time when the viral disease, "blackline", was beginning to hit California Growers pretty hard.  Among other things, it was thought it allowed the tree to survive longer once infected, although it would therefor theoretically allow for more (pollen-born) disease spreading if the infected tree lasted longer.  All our trees were on black walnut rootstock, which, if I remember accurately, had better resistance to such things as phytofthra (spell??) root rot.  In any event, the "English", more properly "Persian" walnut was very delicate and wouldn't do so well in contact with our soils.

   Without getting too far into irrelevant trivia, I would like to mention something I saw at an agricultural extension conference at U.C. Davis in the late '70's.  It was essentially a little tree in a test tube, growing in agar of some kind.  It was part of some genetic research focused on isolating certain attributes (e.g. resistance to a certain soil born pathogen), the ultimate goal of which was to be able to customize a variety to a specific growing area.  Gotta love the American farmer.  I got out of the business before learning how things progressed beyond that.  The image was kind of like an extraordinarily small bonzai tree to my then young eyes (in reality probably just a sprout).  Funny what sticks in the mind.

   Cheers,

   Greg

1. 
   Telemike | May 10, 2003 08:27am | #9

   Looking at the board, the tree was at least about 40 years old.  The graft union is not included - I bet it became really expensive gunstock for the Drilling (sp?) company in Germany.  A local firewood guy that also sells gunstock wood sells his graft unions to very expensive gun makers in Germany.

   I'm lucky enough to have some scenesent english walnuts on california black walnut root stocks that keep dying!  Oh, the pity!  I've gotten some good burls and some good logs.  However, sloppy pruning has left some cut off branches in the burls and I only get smaller pieces.

   You're right that the english walnuts don't like the local pathogens.  We have some 16" - 18" english "volunteers" along the fence line.  They don't produce any walnuts, but their disease is my figure and color!

2. 
   jonsherryl | May 10, 2003 02:16pm | #10

   This "paradox" topic is getting more and more interesting with each new post. So far, you've mentioned that the piece of it you bought was about 6' long and that it doesn't seem to contain the graft. I'm wondering if this J. regia X J. hindsii cross just happens to produce highly variegated figure throughout the entire tree...being as it's unlikely the graft would be more than 6' above the soil line, or that even so, the variegated pigmentation would extend for 6' below the graft, if it really represented graft tissue. It sounds like the board you bought must have come from a hybrid "paradox" tree that was allowed to mature without an English walnut scion.

   ...That's a very interesting prospect from the woodworking point of view. 

3. 
   Telemike | May 16, 2003 08:19am | #11

   Jon, lots of the walnut I cut around the ranch was grafted englishes that died due to lack of water during a drought in the '70s.  The rootstocks are hardier and have grown into trees in their own right.  Some of the black walnut stump sprouts are 24" in diameter!  The paradox may be a root stock sprout that grew out into a tree.

4. 
   jonsherryl | May 16, 2003 03:30pm | #12

   Just curious, but do you know what species was used as the rootstock for the walnuts on your ranch? Does the wood produced by the rootstock shoots look like typical hinds or black walnut (meaning uniformly dark), or are these trees yielding variegated figure?

5. 
   Telemike | May 17, 2003 07:35am | #13

   The rootstocks are some type of black walnut.  The heartwood starts out purple/creamy brown, very ugly.  When dry, it's a pretty uniform dark brown with red and purple highlights (all of my own is air dried - not a problem in my drafty old barn at 105 in the shade).  It's got wide rings and works quite well.  It seems to be local rootstock of choice about 50 years ago when this property was an orchard.  Perhaps the California Black Walnut - (is this correct?)

   This is also the wood that some of the local sawyers call "Claro" walnut, incorrectly I believe.

6. 
   jonsherryl | May 17, 2003 04:52pm | #14

   >>"It seems to be local rootstock of choice about 50 years ago when this property was an orchard.  Perhaps the California Black Walnut - (is this correct?)"<<

   This certainly makes it sound like the rootstock was hinds walnut. There are only two walnut species native to California. The California walnut (Juglans californica), which was common to southern California before you folks paved that part of the state...and the more northern species; hinds walnut (J. hindsii.)

   ...As for your comment that local sawyers out there refer to the wood of hinds walnut as "claro" sheds light on why "claro" has become such a confusing common name in the lumber trade. Hinds is a member of the black walnut group...not that that fact alone would make it inappropriate to refer to it as claro. A common name legitimizes itself with common use...or by being the first term used to describe a given species.

   In the case of "claro" being used to identify hinds walnut, though, it doesn't seem to make much sense, on two counts: First, claro is the Spanish word for clear (connoting "light" or "bright"), which is more descriptive of the wood of the Old World species; J. regia, AKA; English or Persian walnut...And second, the earliest reference I can find to the use of claro as a common name is Professor Record's mention of it in his text: Timbers Of the New World (1943) where he says: "...Some handsomely figured timber, called claro walnut, was obtained from Chico, California, in 1934, and is said to have grown from nuts from Spain planted by General John Bidwell about 1850."

   This reference would suggest that "claro" was being used to describe the wood of pure, Old World walnut;  J. regia...and the "handsomely figured" reference seems to vaguely (but not certainly) suggest that it might have been wood with variegated figure...which does sometimes ( actually quite often) occur in this species, regardless of whether it has been grafted to other rootstock or not...So, was the term "claro" being used here simply because the wood was cut from Old World walnut...or because it was "handsomely" figured?...I have no idea. 

   In my experience as a hardwood buyer over most of the latter half of the 20th century, "claro" has been the term used to refer to walnut with variegated figure (mostly sourced from grafted plantation stock)...as opposed to either black walnut, or the more typical, uniformly "amber-milk chocolate" colored stock of ordinary English walnut. But historical precedent suggests it is an appropriate term for any J. regia with variegated figure.

   ...Sorry for the length of this myopic post, but hopefully any struggle to straighten out the use of a confusing common name is a battle well fought. 

7. 
   blindau | May 18, 2003 03:18pm | #15

   Jon, I think I'm starting to piece this together. English Walnut, with its' milk chocolate color is often variegated. When this same tree is grafted onto Black Walnut or Hind Walnut rootstock, the grain above the graft is almost always variegated. The increased frequency of occurrence of the figure resulting from the graft has given rise to the name Claro, which in addition to its' literal translation has the connotation of "really cool". Since this new name isn't technical, it is easy to use it in a loose sense and can easily mean different things to different people. If the above is correct, what's your guess as to why grafting produces the extra figure? It seems like any kind of stress, say curly maple, leads to the phenomena of figure. Could it be that the healing over of the cuts at the graft is the stress that leads to the figure?

8. 
   jonsherryl | May 18, 2003 04:24pm | #16

   Bill, I don't think the fact that a scion of English walnut has been grafted on to other rootstock has any major impact on the type of wood tissue the scion continues to produce above the graft. It might cause the annual rings to be wider or the texture slightly coarser as a result of a change in the availability (amount) of nutrients the scion receives...but this would be no more significant to the physical properties of the scion's wood tissue than a change in growing conditions.

   The genetic makeup of the English walnut (J. regia) simply causes it to sometimes produce variegated pigmentation. I've often wondered why this is so. Could be that English walnut is a fertile hybrid of a black walnut species and a butternut species that got established eons ago...or it could be that it is the more primitive stock from which both the black walnuts and the butternuts durived. We do know, from the discovery of fossilized nut shells found in lignite coal deposits in Germany, dating to the Pliocene (5 to 10 million years ago) that species very similar to our North American black walnut and also our butternut were native to Europe. The Pleistocene glaciations (beginning about 1.75 million years ago) then drove all the walnuts out of Europe and only J. regia (the "Persian" walnut) survived in all of western Eurasia. What we do know about modern J. regia is that it seems to be more genetically compatible with both members of the black walnut group and the butternut group in terms of being able to more easily cross pollenate with species in either of these more divergent groups.

   I suspect the reason the stump stock of grafted trees has been the dominant source of the nicest "claro" probably relates more to its marbled (convoluted) figure and the close proximity of wood tissue from both the black walnut rootstock and the English walnut scion, which probably enhances the contrast...But frankly, I'm not certain of any of these conclusions and it's one of the reasons why I'm fishing for feedback in this thread from woodworkers closer to the scene there in California.   

   Edited 5/18/2003 9:30:07 AM ET by Jon Arno

   Edited 5/18/2003 10:22:19 AM ET by Jon Arno

9. 
   GregB126 | May 18, 2003 07:46pm | #17

   Jon,

   I'm trying to help you fish, at least as to one of the puzzle pieces.  I sent an email to my old "farm advisor", with whom I haven't spoken in approx. 20 years.  The University of California extension has such experts stationed throughout the state.  There is a different advisor for the different general catagories of agricultural production.  (as you know, this system is fairly common across many states).  He advises on fruits and nuts.  I asked for referral to publications discussing walnut rootstock, and the history of its development and use.  He's a pretty busy guy (I come from a county which grows lots of permanent crops: almonds peaches, apples, nectarines, pistachios....), but maybe I could ask if he'd be willing to connect directly with you and eliminate guessing and transmission of info irrelevant to our discussion.  Does any of this sound likely to be "fruitful"?  Granted, his focus is on production, but the UC has been intimately involved in agriculure, at every step from genetics, to disease control, to irrigation....  Our main variety was a university hybrid, named after a professor who helped develop it.  Anyway, let me know if any of this interests you.

   Cheers,

   Greg

   p.s.  One develpment unfortunate for woodworkers, is that the graft union has come much farther down in the last 30-35 years.  The entire trunk used to routinely be of black walnut.  We didn't have a single union which was more than a foot off the ground.

10. 
    jonsherryl | May 18, 2003 09:28pm | #18

    Greg, I'd love to hear from your Ag buddy on this subject. I'd also like to get some up to date info on what they're doing with hybrids of the Oriental species (heartnut, etc.)

    ...As for changing the level of the graft unions, I guess it's a matter of priorities. There must be some reason for the new practice. Could be their planting pre-grafted saplings, rather than doing the graft in the field. Whatever the reason, nut growers are interested in growing nuts rather than the claro their grandchildren might get a few bucks for down the road...Don't mean that critically, it's only rational.

    Edited 5/18/2003 2:38:17 PM ET by Jon Arno

11. 
    GregB126 | May 18, 2003 11:24pm | #19

    Jon,

    In accord.  We always got them from the nursery ready to plant and grow.  The only part that needs to be soil-born pathogen resistant is the part in contact with the soil, so....  There some other pragmatic factors.  With the black walnut, as opposed to paradox, you get "sucker" growth.  Little sprouts we were forever cutting back from the black walnut portion.  We finally began burning them back just after emergence with a gas torch I believe was made for cleaning up chicken coops (ghastly thought-- the smell!)  The other thing is harvesting.  Until they get quite large, the shaker can grab the trunk and do all its work there.  Believe me, it's better to grab a smooth surface.  The fruitwood is far smoother than the black, with paradox being fairly smooth.  With the very large modern shakers, it is quicker and more cost effective to blow on through the orchard and shake each tree only once.  With trees as large as ours eventually got, one does go for multiple shakes up in the main branches.  This slower method would have been a necessity using older grafting methods I suspect were in use a little before I came on the scene.

    Still, we used to have occaissional visits from folks who would offer us some cash for a tree or two for gun stock making purposes.  I resented the heck out of them!  Sacriledge!!  Now I understand an orchard I helped set out and plant as my first paying job in 1969-1970 is being taken out.  Bulldozed.  I lay awake nights thinking about getting my hands on a few of them.  Knowing each and every one very intimately, I can tell you exactly which ones I'd like to take.  My fear is that they will all go up in smoke.  Tragic.

    I'll keep you advised.

    Cheers,

    Greg