The fruits of the walnut tree or their kernels are what we particularly love about this plant. Walnuts taste delicious and are good for people. In our article we present the walnut fruits in detail. You will learn everything you need to know about the appearance of the fruit and information about the nut yield.
Walnuts are surrounded by a soft shell that cracks open when the nuts are ripe
This is what the fruits of the walnut look like
For a long time, the fruits of the walnut tree were considered stone fruits in botany. However, today we know that it is not just colloquial, but really real nuts.
In 2006, experts from the Ruhr University Bochum found out that the green shell that surrounds the nut (the kernel) is not - as originally thought - part of the pericarp, but is instead made up of leaf organs.
The nut itself can look very different in terms of shape and size. Sometimes it is round, sometimes oval-cylindrical, sometimes egg-shaped and sometimes beak-shaped. It is 2.5 to 8 centimeters long and 2.5 to 5 centimeters wide - with a shell thickness of 1.8 to 2.2 millimeters.
Worth knowing about nut yield and harvest
Walnut trees generally only bear fruit when they are about ten to 20 years old. It takes even longer to achieve extraordinarily good yields: the trees bring rich harvests from around 40 years of life. In old age, however, the yields then decrease again.
In addition to age, the following factors also play a role:
- location
- variety
In addition, walnut trees do not fruit equally well every year - whether you can look forward to a lot of fruit depends heavily on the weather.
Exciting: Large-crowned trees bring yields of up to 150 kilograms of nuts (per tree, mind you)!
Here is an overview of the average nut yield per year (per tree):
1st to 15th year: 0 kg* (whether good or bad location)
16th to 25th year: 10 or 7 kg (good or bad location)
26 to 35 years: 25 or 15 kg
36 to 60 years: 45 or 22 kg
61 to 80 years: 55 or 13 kg
81st to 100th year: 32 or 13 kg
* If there are yields, then only very small ones (a few hundred grams).
Harvest Notes
In our latitudes, the fruits ripen in September and October. Harvesting is easy as the fruit falls to the ground by itself.