28 F'AGACEAE. 
CASTANEA. Chestnut. 
(Family Fagaceae). 
Shrubs or mostly large trees 
with fissured but otherwise smooth 
gray bark: deciduous. Twigs 
moderate, more or less fluted: 
pith moderate, star-shaped, con- 
tinuous. Buds. solitary, ovoid, 
sessile, oblique, with 2 or 3 ex- 
posed scales, the end-bud frequent- 
ly lacking. lLeaf-scars alternate, 
little raised, half-round, rather 
small: bundle-traces 3, often com- 
pound: stipule-scars’ elongated, 
unequal. 
The deeply grooved pith of the 
chestnut, affording one of the most 
obvious means of identifying its 
winter twigs, attracted the atten- 
tion of Malpighi who pictured it 
more than two centuries and a 
half ago among the interesting 
things that could be seen by the 
aid of a magnifying glass. In common with many other gen- 
era, Castanea shows a varying phyllotaxy or leaf-arrange- 
ment,—5-ranked on erect shoots, 2-ranked on those that spread 
horizontally,—and a correlated upward displacement of the 
buds on the latter. This has been attributed to a response to 
gravitation similar to that which directs the upward growth 
of stems in general; but Kny, in a short communication to 
the Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde of Berlin in 1876 
shows that it is rather the manifestation of an inherent ten- 
dency to bilateral symmetry. 
1. Buds downy: shrub or small tree. (Chinquapin). C. pumila. 
Buds glabrous. (American chestnut). (1). C. dentata. 
