A valuable tree
Black walnut tree
Alexander Grant was an early Stratford developer and the town mayor in 1879-80. A lawyer by profession, he was involved in not only his own housing developments, but he worked for other developers as well. In 1887, he named eight streets for the native trees found growing in Stratford: Ash, Cedar, Chestnut, Cherry Elm, Oak, Pine and Walnut streets.
Black walnut and butternut are the only members of the walnut family growing naturally in Eastern Canada.
Walnut is scarce today, and highly prized as cabinet wood. Mature straight-trunked walnut trees are worth thousands of dollars to the furniture industry, and most have been felled for that purpose.
Walnuts, which are savoured at Christmas, are harvested from English walnut trees grown in California. There are no such species in Canada.
The Latin name for walnut is "Juglans nigra." The name walnut is of German origin, meaning foreign nut. It first came to the Romans from Persia. By Stanford Dingman
Black walnut, a symbol of excellence
The role of the United Empire Loyalists has always been a fascinating part of the Canadian.
In The Trail of the Black Walnut, a book published in 1957, there is a complete and absorbing account of what happened to one group of those Loyalists, specifically the thousands of men and women known as the Quakers, Mennonites, Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch, who toiled through a trackless wilderness in search of rich limestone soil and the black walnut.
The book traces the history and stories of settlers from the 1770s onward in an accessible way. Most black walnut trees are long gone in Stratford, cut down so that houses might be built.
The Black Walnut Trail in Fonthill, near St. Catharines, is an easy six-kilometre walk in a 735-hectare, day-use park . Black Walnut Trail | Ontario Trails Council
