THE H0K8E-CHESNUT FAMILY. 



157 



XXXV.— THE BLADDER-NUT FAMILY. Staphyledcem. 



A small family of ornamental shrubs, represented near Manchester 

 by the principal species, the common bladder-nut, or Staphylea pin- 

 ndta, included in almost all the British Floras, but a native properly 

 of Central and Eastern Europe, and in England only a runagate from 

 cultivation. Its large, pinnate, elder-like leaves, opposite and stipu- 

 late, and beautiful pendulous clusters of regular, pentamerous white 

 flowers, resembling chandeliers, and appearing in May, instantly dis- 

 tinguish it from every other inmate of the garden. Individuals occur 

 at Worsley ; near Newbridge hollow, beyond Bowdon ; on the road 

 between Cheadle and Stockport, and in the belt of shrubbery before 

 Didsbury College. It attains the height of about ten feet. 



E. B. xxii. 1560; Baxter, iii. 198. 



XXXVI.— THE HORSE-CHESNUT FAMILY. Sapindacem. 



A family for the most part stately and aristocratic, various in value 

 and properties, widely diffused in India and South America, but 

 altogether extra-European, and in England scarcely known except in 



Fig. 112. 

 Leaf of Horse-chesnut. 



the horse-chesnut itself, — -Msculus Hippocdstanum, — that magnificent 

 tree, whose noble septate leaves and superb pyramids of white blos- 

 soms, flushed, like sea-shells, with pink and yellow, and lighting up 



