14 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. CUPULIFER. 
people. The aments of staminate flowers, when they first appear, are about half an inch long, and are 
green below the middle and bright red above; when fully grown they are from six to eight inches in 
length, with stout green puberulous stems covered from the base to the apex with crowded or sometimes 
below the middle with scattered flower-clusters. The androgynous aments are slender, puberulous, and 
from two and a half to five inches in length; near their base are scattered irregularly two or three 
glabrous two or three-flowered involucres of pistillate flowers, which are raised on stout peduncles some- 
times nearly half an inch long, and are subtended by short broadly ovate bright green bracts and 
bractlets; they are about a third of an inch in length, and rather longer than broad when the flowers 
are expanded, their scales being scurfy-pubescent, especially on the lower surface near the base ;* above 
these involucres of pistillate flowers are scattered clusters of staminate flowers; these are smaller than 
those on the staminate aments, and fall in fading from the persistent rachis, which continues to rise 
throughout the season above the short raceme of fruit. The involucres grow rapidly and attain their 
full size by the middle of August, when they are from two to two and a half inches in diameter, 
sometimes a little longer than broad, and often somewhat flattened at the apex, with walls coated on the 
inner surface with lustrous rufous pubescence, and glabrous and covered on the outer with crowded 
fascicles of long slender glabrous much-branched prickles; they begin to open with the first frost and, 
gradually shedding their nuts, fall from the branches irregularly late in the autumn or during the 
winter? The nuts, which are usually much compressed, vary from half an inch to an inch in width 
and are usually rather broader than long, although ovate-oblong nuts twice as long as they are broad 
are not uncommon; they are coated at the apex with thick pale tomentum which often extends to the 
middle and occasionally nearly to the base of the nut, and when dry are frequently marked with dark 
longitudinal bands ; the shell is lined with thick rufous tomentum, and the seed is very sweet.’ 
Castanea dentata is distributed from southern Maine to the valley of the Winooski River in 
Vermont, to southern Ontario* and along the southern shores of Lake Ontario to southeastern 
Michigan, southward to Delaware and southeastern Indiana,’ and along the Alleghany Mountains to 
central Alabama and Mississippi, and to central Kentucky and Tennessee. Very common on the 
glacial drift of the northern states, where it grows rapidly to a large size and lives to a great age, it is 
rarely found on limestone soils, and, except at the north, does not range far beyond the Appalachian 
hills, upon which, in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, it attains its noblest dimensions. 
The wood of Castanea dentata is light, soft, not strong, coarse-graimed, hable to check and warp 
in drying, easily split, and very durable in contact with the soul. It is reddish brown, with thin lighter 
colored sapwood composed of three or four layers of annual growth, and contains numerous obscure 
medullary rays and bands of many rows of large open ducts marking the layers of annual growth. 
The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.4504, a cubic foot weighing 28.07 pounds. It is 
largely used in the manufacture of cheap furniture and in the interior finish of houses, and for railway 
ties, fence-posts, and rails, its durability, due to the large amount of tannic acid which it contains, being 
its most valuable quality. 
The nuts, which surpass those of the Old World Chestnut in sweetness and flavor, are gathered in 
great quantities in the forest, and are sold in all the markets of the eastern states. 
1 On occasional individual trees the involucres of pistillate 
flowers replace the staminate flowers on the androgynous aments, 
either partly or entirely, and so become racemose. (See Martindale, 
Proc. Phil. Acad. 1880, 351.) 
2 A tree near Freehold in Greene County, New York, supposed 
to be from sixty to seventy years old, produces uniformly involucres 
that are reduced to a small torus-like cushion upon which the 
naked and unprotected nuts stand. These are well formed, but 
are never allowed by birds and squirrels to ripen. 
8 The American Chestnut, which many botanists have considered 
a geographical form of the Old World species, differs from the 
European tree in its thinner leaves, which are narrower and more 
cuneate at the base, in its better flavored and sweeter seeds, and in 
the thinner shell of the nut, and is best treated as a distinct species. 
* Brunet, Cat. Vég. Lig. Can. 50. — Bell, Rep. Geolog. Surv. 
Can. 1879-80, 53°. —Macoun, Cat. Can. Pl. 443. 
5 Ridgway, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. v. 84. 
6 Little attention has yet been paid to improving by selection 
and cultivation the nuts of the American Chestnut. Of better 
flavor and larger size than those of the uncultivated forms of the 
European species, and with an equal tendency to variation, there is 
no reason why they should not be made to surpass the best varieties 
