Gnarlodious wrote:
For example, examine the avocado. This fruit evolved symbiotically
with the now-extinct giant sloth. The animal ate the fruit whole and
the fruit offered up its flesh in exchange for having its very heavy
seed propagated. This means that human animals now serve the purpose
of the three toed sloth.

So imagine the walnut being eaten by a now-extinct animal (like
giraffe) which digested the husk as low-grade food and excreted a
viable seed. This theory incidentally explains why domesticated plants
need to be nurseried past the sprouting stage. Seeds excreted into a
steaming pile of nitrogen mulch have a much better chance of growing
It may also explain why walnut shells (and pecan) are loaded with
tannic acid, to acclimatize the seed to an acidic stomach. Compare
that to the fig fruit, which is alkaline and has no hard shell.

-- Gnarlie
http://Gnarlodious.com/Concept

Yes, thanks for the suggestion of avocado and of osage orange in
your other post. Before I agree with you on that train of thought, I
need to be assured that the husk is not the "growing part" of the
seed of the black-walnut. I need assurance that the husk is
incidental and not integral to the actual seed growth.

If it is incidental, then the sloth or giraffe would benefit from its
food and the seed benefit in spreading. But if it is integral to
the actual growth of the seed inside, then the evolutionary
pattern requires much more insight.

Compare the husk of hazelnut to that of black-walnut or the
husk of coconut or brazil nut. So I am beginning to think that
a husk, no matter what the size of the husk is somehow
related to the growth of the seed inside and thus has a function
far beyond a animal attractant to spread the seed.

Maybe the husk is the pipeline or channel for which the plant
nurtures the growing nut-seed inside. If I can rule that out, then
I would agree the husk is just incidental and whose function
maybe 100% animal spreading.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies