CUPULIFERZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 7 
CASTANEA. 
FLOWERS unisexual, monecious, apetalous, in erect unisexual and androgynous 
aments; calyx usually 6-parted or lobed, the divisions imbricated in estivation; 
stamens 10 to 20; pistillate flowers included in an involucre of scale-like bracts; 
ovary inferior, 6-celled ; ovules 2 in each cell, ascending. 
the accrescent spiny involucre. 
deciduous. 
Fruit a nut inclosed in 
Leaves alternate, dentate, penniveined, stipulate, 
Castanea, Adanson, Fam. Pl. ii. 375 (1763). — Endlicher, 
Gen. 275. — Meisner, Gen. 346. — Baillon, Hist. Pi. vi. 
257 (excl. sec. Castanopsis and Calleocarpus). — Bentham 
& Hooker, Gen. iii. 409. — Engler & Prantl, Pflanzenfam. 
iii. pt. i. 54 (exel. sec. Castanopsis). 
Fagus, Linneus, Gen. 292 (in part) (1737). — A. L. de Jus- 
sieu, Gen. 409 (in part). 
Casanophorum, Necker, Elem. Bot. iii. 257 (1790). 
Trees or shrubs, with astringent properties, watery juice, furrowed bark, porous brittle wood, terete 
branches, short ovate or oval acute buds formed in early summer,’ covered with two pairs of slightly 
imbricated scales, those of the lower pair lateral, the others accrescent, becoming oblong-ovate and acute, 
and marking the base of the branch with narrow ring-like scars,’ stout perpendicular tap-roots, and 
thick rootlets, producing, when cut, numerous stout shoots from the stump. Leaves convolute in the 
bud, ovate, acute, coarsely dentate with slender glandular teeth, penniveined, the slender veins running to 
the points of the teeth, petiolate, deciduous, leaving, when they fall, small elevated semioval leaf-scars 
marked with an irregular marginal row of minute fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Stipules ovate or linear- 
lanceolate, acute, scarious, infolding the leaf in the bud, caducous. Flowers moneecious, unisexual, 
anemophilous, strong-smelling, the staminate appearing with the first unfolding of the leaves on 
elongated simple deciduous aments from the inner scales of the terminal bud and from the axils of the 
lower leaves of the year, the pistillate scattered or spicate at the base of shorter persistent androgynous 
aments from the axils of later leaves.’ 
axils of minute ovate bracts, the lateral flowers subtended by similar but smaller bracts. 
Staminate flowers in from three to seven-flowered cymes in the 
Calyx 
campanulate, pale straw-color, slightly puberulous, deeply divided into six ovate rounded segments 
imbricated in estivation. Stamens from ten to twenty, inserted on the slightly thickened torus; 
filaments filiform, incurved in the bud, elongated, exserted, white; anthers ovoid or globose, pale yellow, 
attached on the back, introrse, two-celled, the cells parallel, contiguous, opening longitudinally. Ovary 
rudimentary, pilose, minute or wanting. Pistillate flowers sessile, two or three together or solitary, 
within a short-stemmed or sessile involucre of closely imbricated thick oblong acute bright green scales 
1 Castanea does not form a terminal bud, the end of the branch 
dying and dropping off at midsummer, leaving a small circular 
scar close to the upper axillary bud, which prolongs the branch the 
following season. 
2 Henry, Nov. Act. Acad. Ces. Leop. xviii. 533, t. 40. 
8 The flowers on the unisexual aments are generally open when 
the stigmas of the pistillate flowers are in condition to receive their 
pollen, and these aments with the fading flowers usually fall from 
the branches before the opening of the staminate flowers on the 
androgynous aments, which does not occur until after the fecunda- 
tion of the pistillate flowers. 
There is some evidence that Castanea is not productive without 
cross-fertilization. Dr. J. Schneck (Bot. Gazette, vi. 159) found 
that several isolated planted Chestnut-trees near Mt. Carmel, IIli- 
nois, where the Chestnut is not indigenous, produced habitually 
large numbers of sterile involucres but no nuts. Trees in the same 
region in groups were prolific, while individuals not more than one 
mile from other Chestnut-trees produced a few nuts in the usually 
empty involucres. (See, also, Newby, Gardener’s Monthly, xxvi. 
145 ; xxvii. 20.) Mr. Thomas Meehan, on the other hand, believing 
(Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci. xix. 283 ; Proc. Phil. Acad. 1879, 166) 
that the staminate flowers wither and fall with the aments before 
the opening of the pistillate flowers, concluded that they were fer- 
tilized by pollen from the flowers above them on the androgynous 
spikes. 
