West Indian walnut

Description

Juglans jamaicensis, the West Indian walnut, nogal, or palo de nuez, is a species of walnut in the Juglandaceae family. It is found in Cuba, (Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), and Puerto Rico. It is not, in fact, native to Jamaica, as its name would suggest. This is a large tree which can reach 25 m (82 ft) in height. The compound leaves are each made up of several lance-shaped, toothed leaflets up to 9 centimeters long. Trees bear male and female inflorescences, the male a catkin up to 11 centimeters long and the female an array of flowers at the end of a newly grown shoot. The fruit is a drupe roughly 2 to 3 centimeters long with a black husk and a seed, which is an edible walnut meat, inside. In Puerto Rico there are only ten to fourteen trees of this species remaining. It is also rare in Cuba and Hispaniola. It is threatened by habitat loss. It may never have been common, but specimens were likely lost when forest was cleared for coffee plantations on Puerto Rico, and it was probably harvested for wood. The attractive wood is similar to that of the black walnut (Juglans nigra). This tree has protection under the Endangered Species Act of the United States, where it is listed as an endangered species. Walnut trees are any species of tree in the plant genus Juglans, the type genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are referred to as walnuts. All species are deciduous trees, 10–40 metres (33–131 ft) tall, with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres (7.9–35.4 in), with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts (Pterocarya), but not the hickories (Carya) in the same family. The 21 species in the genus range across the north temperate Old World from southeast Europe east to Japan, and more widely in the New World from southeast Canada west to California and south to Argentina. Edible walnuts, which are consumed worldwide, are usually harvested from cultivated varieties of the species Juglans regia. China produces half of the world total of walnuts.