SAPINDACE, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 53 
Flour made from the seeds has been used as a cosmetic,! and is said to make the best starch ;? and it 
has been stated that paste made from this flour is superior to any other on account of its greater 
tenacity and because it is repellent to moths and other insects,’ a quality which recommends it to book- 
The seeds of sculus Chinensis are said by Smith* to be sweet, and to be thought useful 
In northern India the 
binders. 
by the Chinese in the treatment of limbs contracted by palsy or rheumatism. 
leaves and branches are cut in large quantities for the winter fodder of cattle.5 The Japanese employ 
the bark of Asculus turbinata in connection with ferrous acetate and sulphates to produce a black 
dye.® 
Aisculus Hip- 
pocastanum has been a favorite in gardens and parks" since its introduction into Europe in the middle 
A number of varieties with differently divided or blotched leaves, or with 
AKsculus includes some of the most ornamental trees of the north temperate zone. 
of the sixteenth century.® 
more or less double flowers, have been developed in cultivation,’ but none of them equal the normal 
form in beauty. 
lovers of beautiful trees. 
Asculus rubicunda,” a probable hybrid with bright red flowers, is valued by the 
The American species are all handsome plants in cultivation. 
All species of Aisculus thrive in rich rather humid soil, and display their greatest beauty only in 
regions of abundant and well distributed rainfall. 
They can easily be raised from seed, which, how- 
ever, soon loses its vitality ; and the varieties may be perpetuated by grafting. 
Although the Horse-chestnuts are sometimes disfigured and injured by insects,” they are not 
1 Baillon, Hist. Pl. v. 388. 
2 Parmentier, Recherches sur les végétaux nourrissants, 176, 218. 
3 Griffith, Med. Bot. 214. 
4 Contrib. Mat. Med. China, 5. 
6 Brandis, Forest Fl. Brit. Ind. 104. 
6 Rein, Japan nach Reisen und Studien im Auftrage der Kénig- 
lich Preussischen Regierung dargestelit, ii. 211. 
7 The symmetrical habit of the Horse-chestnut and its dense 
heavy head of foliage adapt it rather to formal gardens and ave- 
nues than to more picturesque landscape-plantations. 
8 The Horse-chestnut was first made known in Europe by Qua- 
kelbeen, a Flemish physician attached to the person of the famous 
traveler Busbeck, ambassador of the Archduke Ferdinand I. at the 
court of Solyman II., who, in 1557, sent a branch and fruit from 
Constantinople to Matthiolus, the commentator of Dioscorides (Lib. 
i. 184, f. ed. 1674. — Sprengel, Hist. Ret Herb. i. 340). The seed 
was sent to Clusius in Vienna in 1576 from Constantinople, where 
it is possible the Horse-chestnut was already in cultivation, by the 
Baron David von Ungnad, ambassador of the Emperor Rudolph II. 
to the Ottoman Porte. 
ne to the seeds, which he says were so called in Constantinople 
Matthiolus gave the name of Castanee equt- 
because they were given’ to horses as a remedy for broken wind. 
He described the leaves and fruit in a letter to Aldrovandus (Epvst. 
Lib. iii. 125, ed. 1674). Clusius described the tree as Castanea 
equina in 1583 (Rar. Stirp. Pannon. 3, 5), from a specimen which 
was growing in Vienna in 1581. Gerard speaks of the Horse- 
chestnut in his Herbal as a rare tree in England in 1579. It was 
first planted in France in 1615 by a Monsieur Bachelier, whose 
garden in Paris was famous at that time (Loudon, Ard. Brit. i. 
464). The Horse-chestnut was brought to the United States in the 
last century. John Bartram, writing to Peter Collinson in April, 
1746, acknowledges the receipt of the seeds, of which he had hopes, 
as “some seemed to be pretty sound.” (Darlington, Memorials of 
Bartram and Marshall, 175.) 
9 Loudon, Arb. Brit. i. 463.— Koch, Hort. Dendr. 59. 
10 Loiseleur ; De Candolle, Pl. Rar. Genev. t. 24; Herb. Amat. t. 
364. — De Candolle, Prodr. i. 597. — Loudon, Arb. Brit. i. 467. — 
Fi. des Serres, xxi. 129, t. 2229. — Rev. Hort. 1878, 370, t. 
The history of this plant has never been satisfactorily determined. 
Even the date of its appearance is unknown, although it seems to 
have existed in France as early as 1812, and in England as early as 
1820. The belief that it is a garden hybrid between sculus Hip- 
pocastanum and isculus Pavia of the southern United States is 
supported by the fact that it resembles the former in its dark green 
leaves with remote veins and in its echinate fruit, while the flowers 
have the four red petals of the latter. In stature it is intermediate 
between the two. 
According to Koch (Verhandl. Ver. Beford. Gart.in den Konig. 
Preuss. Staat. 1855), some of the seedlings of this plant do not dif- 
fer from the true Horse-chestnut, while others produce smooth 
fruit. 
Koch (Hort. Dendr. 59) refers to Asculus rubicunda as syno- 
nyms the following: — 
Esculus carnea, Guimpel, Otto & Hayne, Abbild. Holz. 25, t. 
22.— Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 43.— Lindley, Bot. Reg. t. 1056. — Wat- 
son, Dendr. Brit. ii. t. 121.— Don, Gen. Syst. i. 652. — Torrey & 
Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 253. 
Pavia carnea, Spach, Ann. Sci. Nat. ser. 2, ii. 53; Hist. Veg. iii. 
22. — Sweet, Brit. Fl. Gard. ser. 2, t. 301. 
Esculus Watsoniana (Dietrich, Syn. ii. 1225.—Pavia Watsoniana, 
Spach, Ann. Sci. Nat. ser. 2, ii. 53) is probably another hybrid of the 
same parentage, or a variety of Z. rubicunda, from which it differs 
principally in having darker colored flowers with shorter stamens. 
11 Among insects known as peculiar or specially partial to these 
trees, a leaf-miner (Lithocolletis guttifinitella, var. esculisella, Cham- 
bers, Canadian Entomologist, iii. 111) is recorded as abundant in 
Kentucky, mining the upper surface of the leaves of £sculus gla- 
bra. The larva of a small moth (Proteoteras esculana) bores into 
the tender terminal branchlets of this tree in Missouri (Riley, 
Trans. St. Louis Acad. iv. 321) ; and its leaf-stalks, buds, and flow- 
ers are sometimes destroyed by the larve of Steganoptycha claypo- 
leana, Riley (Papilio, iii. 191 ; Am. Nat. xv. 1009; xvi. 913). 
The number of insects which are known to attack the Horse- 
chestnut in Europe is not large. It is worthy of note that two of 
the most troublesome have recently been introduced into America 
and threaten to become dangerous pests here. These are the wood- 
