English walnut—the favored wood for gunstocks for centuries—is both a difficult topic and an easy one.

It’s difficult because it’s like writing about Picasso’s Guernica without showing the painting. True, you can publish photos of individual examples, but with walnut, the exception is the rule. So, at the same time, it’s easy because virtually nothing you write can be conclusively proven to be universally wrong.

So let us begin with a few words on walnut generally, then move on to some specifics.

English walnut, the thin-shelled variety, Juglans regia, is our subject, whether ’tis grown in England, France, Turkey, Armenia, the Pyrenees, or the lower slopes of the Himalayas. It also grows in California, but California walnut is to French as California plonk is to a 1983 Gevrey-Chambertin.

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