8 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. CUPULIFERZ. 
scurfy-pubescent or tomentose below the middle, subtended by a bract and two lateral bractlets. Calyx 
urceolate, its tube adnate to the ovary, the short limb divided into six obtuse lobes. Stamens minute, 
shorter than the calyx-lobes, sterile. Ovary inferior, six-celled after fecundation ; styles six, linear, 
spreading, white, covered below with slender hairs, tipped by minute acute stigmas, exserted from the 
involucre ; ovules two in each cell, attached on its inner angle, descending, semianatropous; micropyle 
superior. Fruit maturing in one season, its involucre containing from one to three nuts, globose or 
oblong, glabrous or tomentose and densely echinate on the outer surface with elongated ridged bright 
green ultimately brown branched spines fascicled between the deciduous scales, coated with pale 
tomentum on the inner surface, splitting at maturity into from two to four valves. Nut inclosed in the 
involucre, ovate, acute, crowned with the remnants of the styles, bright chestnut-brown and lustrous, 
tomentose or pubescent at the apex, cylindrical or, when more than one, flattened by mutual pressure, 
attached at the base by a large conspicuous pale circular or oval thickened umbilicus; perianth of two 
coats, the outer cartilaginous, the inner thicker and lined with pale tomentum. Seed solitary by 
abortion or rarely two or three, filling the cavity of the nut, marked at the apex by the abortive ovules, 
exalbuminous; testa membranaceous, light chestnut-brown ; cotyledons thick and fleshy, more or less 
undulate-ruminate, sweet, farinaceous, hypogzous in germination; radicle minute, superior, inclosed 
between the cotyledons, the hilum basal, minute. 
Castanea is now confined to the temperate regions of eastern North America, central and southern 
Europe, northern Africa, western Asia, and central and northern China and Japan. Four species are 
distinguished. The type of the genus, Castanea Castanea, in various forms inhabits Europe, Africa, 
1 Karsten, Pharm.-Med. Bot. 495 (1882). ground. (See Strutt, Sylva Britannica, 17,t.19.) This is probably 
Fagus Castanea, Linneus, Spec. 997 (1753). — Du Roi, Harbk. _ the largest tree planted by man which is now living, unless, as some 
Baumz. i. 270. — Brotero, Fl. Lusitan. ii. 325. authors believe, the great Chestnut-trees on Mt. Etna in Sicily 
Castanea sativa, Miller, Dict. ed. 8, No. 1 (1768).— Parlatore, were planted (Philippi, Linnea, vii. 743 [Ueber die Vegetation am 
Fil. Ital. iv. 170. Aetna]}). The trunks of two of these Sicilian trees measure sixty- 
Castanea vulgaris, Lamarck, Dict. i. 708 (1783). — Nouveau four and seventy feet in circumference ; and at the end of the last 
Duhamel, iii. 66, t. 19. — A. de Candolle, Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 114 century the low trunk of the Castagno dei Centi Cavalli, the largest 
(exel. var. y).— Willkomm & Lange, Prodr. Fl. Hispan.i. 246.— of these trees, which owes its name to the popular and oft-repeated 
Boissier, Fl. Orient. iv. 1175. — Laguna, Fl. Forestal Espatola, fable that John of Aragon with a hundred mounted followers once 
pt. i. 203, t. 28. found protection under its broad and leafy crown, had a circumfer- 
Castanea vesca, Gertner, Fruct. i. 181, t. 37 (1788). — Willde- ence of nearly two hundred feet at the surface of the ground. For 
now, Spec. iv. pt. i. 460. — Reichenbach, Icon. Fl. German. xii. 6, centuries it had consisted of five separate pieces with an open space 
t. 640. — Hartig, Forst. Culturpfl. Deutschl. 150, t.19.— Hempel between them in the centre of which a small house had been built. 
& Wilhelm, Baume und Strducher, ii. 36, f. 142-144, t. 19. (See Houel, Voyage Pittoresque des Isles de Sicile, de Malte et de 
An inhabitant of mountain forests in the temperate regions of Lipari, ii. 79, t. 114.) Subsequently two sections of the trunk dis- 
Europe, the Chestnut grows spontaneously from Portugal to the appeared, and a road now runs through what is left of this ancient 
shores of the Caspian Sea and as far north probably as the German tree. (See Nature, iv. 166.) Trees with trunks from twenty to 
Rhine-provinces and Belgium, although its cultivation has been thirty feet in circumference, and believed to be at least a thousand 
practiced in Europe for so many centuries that it is not possible to years old, are not uncommon in southern Europe, where the Chest- 
fix with precision the area which it occupied before man recognized _ nut is the largest and, with the exception perhaps of the Olive, the 
the value of its fruit as food and began to plant it. It grows, longest-lived inhabitant of the forest. 
apparently naturally, on the mountains of Algeria near the borders The wood of the European Chestnut is pale or sometimes nearly 
of Tunis ; but it is not impossible that the Chestnut-trees of Alge- white, with dark brown heartwood, and contains numerous fine 
ria, which do not form forests as do those on the mountains of medullary rays and bands of large open cells marking the layers of 
southern Europe, were first carried to Africa by the Romans, who annual growth. In construction it is not so durable as oak, yet in 
probably also introduced them into Great Britain, where the Chest- southern Europe chestnut-wood is largely used for building, for 
nut is not believed to be indigenous (Barrington, Phil. Trans. xlix. furniture and in cooperage, and is often grown in coppice to supply 
23. — Bentham, Jil. Handb. Brit. Fl. ii. 749), although in the southern stakes for vineyards, hop-poles, and barrel-staves. It is as a fruit- 
counties of England it grows to a large size and attains a great age. _ tree, however, that the European Chestnut is most highly valued ; 
The Tortworth Chestnut-tree on the estate of the Earl of Ducie, in and in Spain, France, and Italy, where chestnuts often form a 
Inne ee eBin, which is still in a healthy condition, was remark- large part of the food of the peasants, especially in the mountain 
able for its great size in the reign of Stephen, who ascended the districts of central France and northern Italy, attention is given to 
English throne in 1135, and is probably considerably more than a the selection and propagation of varieties with large well-flavored 
thousand years old. In 1776 the short trunk of this remarkable nuts. Olivier de Serres, early in the seventeenth century (Thédtre 
tree measured fifty feet in circumference at five feet above the de Agriculture, 114), praised the Chestnut-trees which produced 
