Thursday, July 16, 2015

Word of the Day -- Walnut

The Walnut tree or Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 33–131 ft tall, with pinnate leaves 7.9–35.4 in, with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts, but not the hickories 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.

The common name walnut derives from Old English wealhhnutu, literally 'foreign nut' (from wealh 'foreign' + hnutu 'nut'), because it was introduced from Gaul and Italy. The Latin name for the walnut was nux Gallica, "Gallic nut". The genus name "Juglans" comes from Latin jūglans, meaning 'walnut, walnut tree'; jūglans in turn is a contraction of Jōvis glans, 'nut of [the god] Jupiter'.



No comments:

Gygaxian Fantasy Worlds: An Introduction

For several weeks now, we’ve been hyping up the Gygaxian Fantasy World series on various platforms, Facebook, X, Instagram, and Twitch. It ...