N. ORD.—SAPIN DACE. 43 
Tribe.—HIPPOCASTANER. 
GENUS.—AESCULUS,* LINN. 
SEX. SYST.—HEPTANDRIA MONOGYNIA. 
AESCULUS HIPPO- 
CASTANUM. 
HORSE CHESTNUT. 
SYN.—AESCULUS HIPPOCASTANUM, LINN.; CASTANEA FOLIO MULTI- 
FIDO, BAUH.; CASTANEA EQUINA, GER.; CASTANEA PAVINA. 
COM. NAMES.—_COMMON HORSE CHESTNUT,} ASIATIC HORSE CHEST- 
bh IP beh cine ie (FR.) MARRONNIER D’INDE; (GER.) ROSSKAS- 
IE. 
A TINCTURE OF THE FRESH, RIPE, HULLED NUT OF AESCULUS HIPPOCASTA- 
NUM, LINN. 
Description—This stately, umbrageous tree usually attains a growth of 
about 60 feet in height, and 50 feet in diameter of foliage. Trunk erect ; ovate, 
-and smooth-barked when young; oval, tending to quadrilateral, when old ; dark 
of the full grown tree greyish, rough, and fissured ; zner bark smooth, greenish- 
white, tough, fibrous, astringent, and bitter; wood light, not durable. Leaves op- 
posite, digitately 7-lobed ; leaflets 7, obovate, with a cuneate base, acute tip, and 
doubly-serrate margin ; straight-feather-veined, early deciduous. Inflorescence 
dense, pyramidal, upright, hyacinthine thyrsi, terminal upon the shoots of the 
season ; flowers many, often polygamous, the greater proportion of them sterile ; 
pedicels articulated. Calyx tubular or bell-shaped, oblique or inflated at the base ; 
limb s-lobed. Corolla spreading, white, spotted with purple and yellow ; petals 
4-5, usually 5, more or less unequal, nearly hypogynous, clawed and undulate 
margined. Stamens 6-8, usually 7, declined ; fA/aments unequal, awl-shaped, long 
and slender: anthers oval, 2-celled. Ovary ovate, stipitate, 3-celled ; s¢y/e 1, fili- 
form; stzgnuta acute; ovules 2 in each cell, Fruit a roundish, echinate, 3-celled, 
3-valved capsule, splitting into 3 dissepiments, disclosing 1-2 full formed, some- 
what hemispherical nuts, and sometimes an aborted third ; seed a large amyla- 
ceous nut, having a dense shining ¢esta marked with a large roundish hilum ; coty- 
ledons thick, sarcous, cohering ; radicle conical, curved. 
rge and variable order is chiefly tropical, especially the 
Sapindacew.—This la 
* An ancient Latin nai’ “The Aesculus of the Romans was a kind of oak. 
+ Horses are said to eat greedily of the fruit, and the Arabs to use the powdered nuts in the food of their horses 
when affected with pulmonary disorders ; 
{ From a resemblance of the nut tot 
hence the vulgarism. 
he eye of that an 
imal. This name is more applicable to the American species. 
