Yet another Charleston WV artist blog. (But this one's SHINY!)
This is the black walnut tree in my back yard. The nuts have already fallen, and oddly enough -- they're not black. They look sort of like hard limes. The outer covering falls off and the nut inside is black, the hull oozing with an inky blackish-brown substance that stains the skin (and everything else) brownish-yellow. People used to make everything from wood stain to hair dye using this walnut ink. You can still buy the ink in places, but it's crazy expensive. I would love to learn how to make it, myself.
4 comments:
They turn black and stain your hands (or anything else for that matter) once they have been on the ground for a while.
Tell me about it! I do the laundry! Yuck.
I can totally see why people got the idea to stain furniture and dye their hair with this stuff.
It smells gross, though. :P
We used to gather the nuts and throw them in the driveway and then drive over them with the car. The meat inside a black walnut is good tasting but very sparse. I love black walnut ice cream.
We have a few black walnut trees, too. Some people like the taste of black walnuts, but I personally think they taste like crap. Not only that, but we nearly break our ankles on the ones littering the ground. :\
I don't know if this'll help, but there's some info on making walnut dye here:
http://www.basketmakers.org/topics/tutorials/walnutdye.htm
And some other good links at the bottom. :)
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