60 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. SAPINDACEZ. 
inches long, with thin smooth or slightly pitted pale brown valves, and is generally two-seeded. The 
seeds are one and a half to nearly two inches broad. 
ZEsculus octandra occurs in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and extends along the Alleghany 
Mountains to the neighborhood of Augusta, Georgia, and to northern Alabama, and westward and 
southwestward to southern Iowa, the Indian Territory, and to western Texas, where it has been noticed 
as a low shrub near Boerne in the valley of the upper Cibolo River. It grows in rich soil im _river-bot- 
tom lands or on the moist slopes of the higher Alleghany Mountains. On these slopes in Tennessee 
and North Carolina it is most common and reaches its greatest size, sending up tall straight shafts which 
are sometimes free of branches for sixty or seventy feet from the ground. 
The wood of dsculus octandra is light, soft, close-grained, and difficult to split, with numerous 
but very obscure medullary rays. It is creamy white, the thick sapwood being hardly distinguishable. 
The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.4274, a cubic foot weighing 26.64 pounds. It is 
used for the same purposes as the wood of Asculus glabra. 
A variety ' of this tree, characterized by its purple or red flowers, by the dense pale pubescence 
which clothes the under surface of its leaves, petioles, and inflorescence, and by its lighter colored 
bark, is not rare on the Alleghany Mountains from West Virginia southward, and in Texas. 
Aisculus octandra was first described by Humphrey Marshall m 1785, although, according to 
Aiton, it was cultivated in England as early as 1764 by a Mr. John Greening. It is the handsomest of 
the North American Horse-chestnuts, and one of the most beautiful of the trees which compose the 
deciduous forests that cover the southern Alleghany Mountains. 
Aesculus octandra, especially the variety with purple flowers, has long been a favorite in gardens 
where, if planted in good soil, it makes a handsome tree with a rather narrow head of pendulous 
branches. It is very hardy and less often disfigured by fungal diseases than the Old World Horse- 
chestnut ; but its flowers are not so showy, and it seldom attains so great a size. 
1 Esculus octandra, var. hybrida. Pavia hybrida, De Candolle, Prodr. i. 598.— Don, Gen. Syst. i. 
4. hybrida, De Candolle, Cat. Hort. Monsp. 75. — Poiret, Lam. 653.—Spach, Ann. Sci. Nat. ser. 2, ii. 56; Hist. Veg. ii. 27. — 
Dict. Suppl. iv. 334. Loudon, Arb. Brit. 1. 472. — Koch, Dendr. i. 512. 
££. discolor, Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 255. — Nuttall, Gen. i. 242. — “2. Pavia, var. discolor, Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 252. — 
Bot. Reg. iv. t. 310.— Elliott, Sk. i. 436.— Sprengel, Syst. ii. Walpers, Rep. i. 424. 
167. — Sert. Bot. iv. t.— Walpers, Ann. iv. 381. 4E. flava, var. purpurascens, Gray, Man. ed. 5, 118. — Sargent, 
Pavia discolor, Poiret, Lam. Dict. Suppl. v. 769.— Don, Gen. Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 43. — Watson & Coulter, 
Syst. i. 653.— Spach, Ann. Sci. Nat. ser. 2, ii. 58; Hist. Veg. iii.  Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 116. 
28. — Loudon, Arb. Brit. i. 472. 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATES. 
PuateE LXIX. Ascutus OcTANDRA. 
. A flowering branch, natural size. 
A winter-bud, natural size. 
. Vertical section of a staminate flower, natural size, 
. Vertical section of a pistillate flower, natural size. 
. A lateral petal, natural size. 
> OC Pm oo DD in 
. An upper petal, natural size. 
PLATE LXX. /Escunus OcTANDRA. 
. A fruiting branch, natural size. 
A seed, natural size. 
Vertical section of a seed, natural size. 
mB wr 
. An embryo, natural size. 
