niPPOCASTANACE^ 



647 



white, with thick hr^rdly distinguishable sapwood; used in the manufacture of arti- 

 ficial limbs, for woodeu ware, wooden hats, paper pulp, and occasionally sawed into 

 lumber. 



Distribution. Rich soil of river-bottoms and moist mountain slopes, Allegheny 

 Couuty, Penusylvania, and southward along the mountains to the neighborhood of 

 Auo-usta, Georgia, and northern Alabama, and westward to southern Iowa, the In- 

 dian Territory, and western Texas; most common and of its largest size on the high 

 mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. A form (var. hyhrida, Sarg.) with 

 purple or red flowers and leaves clothed on the under surface, like the petioles and 

 inflorescence, with dense pale pubescence, and with lighter colored bark, is not rare 

 on the Alleghany lM,ountains from West Virginia southward. 



Often cultivated in western and central Europe and in the eastern United States, 

 especially the form with red flowers, as an ornament of parks and gardens. 



3. ^sculus austrina. Small. Buckeye. 



Leaves with slender grooved villose or pubescent usually ultimately glabrous peti- 

 oles 3'-5' long, and usually 5 oblong-obovate or elliptical acuminate leaflets, gradually 

 narrowed from near the middle and acute at the entire base, finely or coarsely and 

 sometimes doubly crenulate-serrate above, dark green, lustrous and glabrous except 

 along the slender yellow midribs and veins on the upper surface, lighter colored and 

 tomentulose on the lower surface, nearly sessile or petiolulate, 4'-5' long, l^'-2' wide. 



Flowers opening from the first to the middle of April, bright red, usually f'-l' 

 long, on slender pubescent pedicels much thickened on the fruit, sometimes \' long, 

 and mostly aggregated toward the ends of the short branches of the narrow pubes- 

 cent inflorescence 6' -8' in length; calyx tubular, short and broad or elongated, pu- 

 berulous on the outer surface, tomentose on the inner surface, with rounded lobes; 

 petals shorter than the stamens, connivent, unequal, oblong-obovate, rounded at the 

 apex, puberulous on the outer surface and glandular, with minute dark glands, those 

 of the superior pair about half as wide as those of the lateral pair, with claws much 

 longer than the calyx; filaments and ovary villose. Fruit ripening and falling in 

 October, usually only a few fruits maturing on a cluster, generally pear-shaped or 

 occasionally subglobose, mostly 2-seeded, l^'-2^' long, with very thin pale brown 



