Le Ye Walnuts

Le Ye Walnuts

　　Le Ye thin-shelled walnuts are a specialty of Le Ye County in Baise City, Guangxi. The kernels of Le Ye thin-shelled walnuts are delicate, glossy, plump, and crispy.

　　There are three types of walnuts in Le Ye: iron walnuts, sandwich walnuts, and thin-shelled walnuts. Iron walnuts are very heavy and hard, thin-shelled walnuts are very light and “pao” (a local dialect term meaning fluffy or crisp), while sandwich walnuts have a hardness level between the two. What makes Le Ye walnuts famous is undoubtedly the thin-shelled walnut, with its delicate, glossy, plump, and crispy kernels.

　　Le Ye thin-shelled walnuts grow in the rocky mountainous areas at altitudes of 100 to 1,300 meters, located near the village clusters around the Dashiwei Tiankeng Group, a world-famous karst wonder. They are mainly produced in towns such as Huaping, Gantian, Luosha, Tongle, and Wucheng. The fruits are less exposed to pollution during growth and harvesting. According to officials from the Le Ye County Fruit Office, Le Ye thin-shelled walnuts were mainly wild in the past and have a cultivation history of about 300 years. In Changdong Village, Wucheng Township, Le Ye County, there is a walnut tree over 120 years old, which once yielded up to 15,000 walnuts in a single year, making it the oldest high-quality walnut tree in the county. In Dazhai Village, Quanda Village, Luosha Township, a walnut tree produces nuts with shells as thin as 0.048 centimeters, the thinnest among all walnut trees in the county.

　　In 1997, eight high-quality thin-shelled walnut varieties from Le Ye County swept the top eight spots in the regional high-quality thin-shelled walnut competition. As a result, Le Ye was designated as a high-quality thin-shelled walnut production base by the regional Department of Agriculture. Over the past decade, the area of high-quality thin-shelled walnuts in Le Ye has expanded to over 30,000 mu, yielding more than 600 tons of high-quality walnuts annually, with an output value of approximately 30 million yuan.