The Juglandaceae are a plant family known as the walnut family. They are , or sometimes shrubs, in the order Fagales. Members of this family are native to the Americas, Eurasia, and Southeast Asia.
The nine or ten genera in the family have a total of around 50 species, and include the commercially important nut-producing trees walnut ( Juglans), pecan ( Carya illinoinensis), and hickory ( Carya). The Persian walnut, Juglans regia, is one of the major nut crops of the world. Walnut, hickory, and Alfaroa are also valuable timber trees while pecan wood is also valued as cooking fuel.
The fruits of the Juglandaceae are often confused with drupes but are accessory fruit because the outer covering of the fruit is technically an involucral bract and thus not morphologically part of the carpel; this means it cannot be a drupe but is instead a drupe-like nut. John Derek Bewley, Michael Black, Peter Halmer (2006) The Encyclopedia of Seeds: Science, Technology And Uses
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