CUPULIFER 2. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 9 
and Asia; the other species are confined to the eastern United States; two of them are trees, and 
the marrons of Lyons, and these still hold the first place among the 
varieties of the Chestnut. The best French marrons, or as they 
are called in the United States, Spanish chestnuts, are produced on 
the mountains of Provence, near Viviéres, and in the neighborhood 
of Lyons, which, as the chief centre of distribution, has given them 
its name. At least fifty other varieties of the Chestnut are now 
distinguished by name in Europe, although different names are 
sometimes given to the same variety in different countries and 
provinces, and the number of really distinct cultivated varieties is 
probably not large. In the mountain districts of central and south- 
ern France and in Tuscany the Chestnut is cultivated on a large 
scale, orchards being established by planting in well prepared soil 
seedling trees which are grafted when five or six years old, usually 
by means of a ring graft, with the Marron. The trees, which are 
carefully pruned to keep them in shape and to insure their produc- 
tiveness, begin to bear when ten or twelve years old, although they 
do not produce large crops before the age of forty or fifty years. 
The nuts are gathered as they fall and placed in deep trays arranged 
under the roofs of small huts, in which slow fires of green wood 
are kept burning until the nuts become dry and hard. They are 
then ground into flour, which is made into a thick porridge, — la 
polita of Limousin and Périgord, — or into thin cakes or a sort of 
bread ; or when intended for export the nuts are slightly dried in 
the sun, and then packed in casks in sand. (See Parmentier, Traité 
de la Chataigne. — Sequeira, Mem. Econ. Acad. Sci. Lisboa, ii. 295 
[Acerca da Cultura, e utilidade dos Castanheiros na Comarca de Por- 
talegre]. — Lamy, Essai Monographique sur le Chétaigne. — Decaisne 
et Naudin, Manuel de lAmateur des Jardins, iv. 613. — Sousa 
Pimentel, Pinhaes, Soutos e Montados, pt. ii. — Spons, Encyclopedia 
of the Industrial Arts, Manufactures, and Raw Commercial Products, 
ii. 1352. — Reports on the Cultivation of the Spanish Chestnut [India 
Office, 1892].) 
The European Chestnut was probably introduced into the United 
States by Eleuthére-Irénée du Pont de Nemours, a Frenchman 
who came to this country in 1799, and three years later established 
on the banks of the Brandywine, near Wilmington, Delaware, the 
gunpowder works which are still carried on by his grandchildren. 
Du Pont was deeply interested in horticulture and agriculture, and 
in 1805 planted the European Chestnut on his Delaware estate. 
The original trees are no longer alive, but their progeny is widely 
scattered through the middle states, where several named varieties, 
descendants of the Du Pont trees, are recognized. During recent 
years some attention has been paid to the cultivation of the Euro- 
pean Chestnut in the United States, and small orchards of seedlings 
or grafted trees have been established in the middle Atlantic states, 
in Georgia, and in California. In New England it is not very hardy, 
and produces fruit but sparingly and in a few favored localities. 
Varieties of Castanea Castanea with laciniately cut and divided 
leaves (var. laciniaia), or with variously colored leaves (var. varie- 
gata), are sometimes cultivated in European gardens, although 
they are curious rather than handsome (Loudon, Arb. Brit. iii. 
1984. — Dippel, Handb. Laubhoizk. ii. 55). 
The Chestnut-trees of China and Japan have been considered by 
some botanists as forms of the European species and by others as 
distinct species. 
Of the distribution and properties of the Chinese tree compara- 
tively little is yet known beyond the limits of its native land, where 
it appears to abound in the central and northern provinces. It is 
the Castanea Bungeana of Blume (Jfus. Bot. Lugd. Bat. i. 284 
[1850]), referred by Bunge (Mém. Sav. Etr. St. Pétersbourg, ii. 136 
[Enum. Pl. Chin. Bor.]) and by A. de Candolle (Prodr. xvi. pt. i. 
114) to the European species. According to Bretschneider (Jour. 
North China Branch Royal Asiatic Soc. n. ser. xxv. 318 [Botanicon 
Sinicum, ii.]), who does not distinguish the Chinese from the Euro- 
pean tree, the Chestnut is grown throughout the empire and is 
frequently mentioned in the Chinese classics. Abel, in 1816, found 
near the village of Tatung dwarf Chestnut-bushes, and their small 
fruit exposed for sale in the markets (Narrative of a Journey in 
the Interior of China, 165) ; and near Ningpo Fortune found two 
species or varieties cultivated on the hills. ‘One is somewhat like 
the Spanish, and, although probably a different variety, it produces 
fruit quite equal in quality, if not superior, to the Spanish chestnut. 
The other is a delicious little kind bearing fruit about the size and 
form of our common hazel nut.” (A Residence among the Chinese, 
51. See, also, Smith, Chinese Mat. Med. 60. — Soubeiran & Thier- 
sant, Mat. Méd. Chin. 140.) 
In Japan the Chestnut-tree is distributed from central Yezo, 
where it is not abundant, southward through the mountain forests 
of the other islands. When considered as a variety of the European 
Chestnut — the view now adopted by most botanists who have 
studied the Japanese flora — its name and synonymy are as follows : 
Castanea Castanea, var. pubinervis. 
Fagus Castanea, Thunberg, Fl. Jap. 195 (not Linneus) (1784). 
Castanea vesca, Blume, Bijdr. Fl. Ned. Ind. 524 (not Gertner) 
(1825). 
Castanea vesca, B pubinervis, Hasskarl, Cat. Alt. Hort. Bog. 73 
(nomen nudum) (1844).—Siebold & Zuccarini, Abhand. Akad. 
Miinch. iv. pt. iii. 224 (1846). 
Castanea crenata, Siebold & Zuccarini, /. c. (1846). 
Castanea stricta, Siebold & Zuccarini, /. c. 225 (1846). 
Castanea Japonica, Blume, Mus. Bot. Lugd. Bat. i. 284 
(1850).— Gray, Mem. Am. Acad. u. ser. vi. 406 (On the Botany 
of Japan). — Miquel, Ann. Mus. Lugd. Bat. i. 121. 
Castanea vulgaris, « Japonica, A. de Candolle, Prodr. xvi. pt. 
ii. 115 (1864). — Franchet & Savatier, Enum. Pl. Jap. i. 450. 
Blume (i. vc. 285) describes twelve varieties of his Castanea Ja- 
ponica, distinguished principally by the form of the leaves and the 
These are reduced 
by A. de Candolle (/. c.) to four, which probably represent cultivated 
amount of pubescence on their lower surface. 
rather than wild types. 
In the mountain forests of Hondo the Chestnut is abundant at 
elevations of about twenty-five hundred feet above the sea, scat- 
tered singly or in small groves, but never forming forests and 
rarely growing over thirty feet tall or producing a trunk more than 
a foot in diameter. It appears to be rarely planted in Japanese 
villages or in temple gardens and is not cultivated in orchards, 
although some attention must have been given to its improvement 
as a fruit-tree, for varieties bearing fruit two or three times larger 
than those of the common forms are abundant in different parts of 
the empire, where the chestnut is an important article of food. 
Large chestnuts gathered on the neighboring hills are exposed for 
sale in the shops of Aomori, the most northern city of Hondo; and 
still larger ones, equaling the best marrons in size and flavor and 
produced in the south, are sold in Kobe and Osaka, great quanti- 
ties being annually sent to the United States (Sargent, Forest Fl. 
Japan, 69). 
The leaves of the Japanese Chestnut are the favorite food of the 
Chestnut Spinner (Caligula Japonica, Butler), a wild Japanese 
Bombycid, whose cocoons are gathered and their threads used as 
woof in coarse fabrics (Rein, Industries of Japan, 210). 
