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FAGAOEAE. 



CASTANEA. Chestnut. 

 (Family Fagaceae). 



Shrubs or mostly large trees 

 with fissured but otherwise smooth 

 gray bark: deciduous. Twigs 

 moderate, more or less fluted: 

 pith moderate, star-shaped, con- 

 tinuous. Buds solitary, ovoid, 

 sessile, oblique, with 2 or 3 ex- 

 posed scales, the end-bud frequent- 

 ly lacking. Leaf-scars alternate, 

 little raised, half-round, rather 

 small: bundle-traces 3, often com- 

 pound: stipule-scars elongated, 

 unequal. 



The deeply grooved pith of the 

 chestnut, affording one of the most 

 obvious means of identifying its 

 winter twigs, attracted the atten- 

 tion of Malpighi who pictured it 

 more than two centuries and a 

 half ago among the interesting 

 things that could be seen by the 



aid of a magnifying glass. In common with many other gen- 

 era, Castanea shows a varying phyllotaxy or leaf-arrange- 

 ment, 5-ranked on erect shoots, 2-ranked on those that spread 

 horizontally, and a correlated upward displacement of the 

 buds on the latter. This has been attributed to a response to 

 gravitation similar to that which directs the upward growth 

 of stems in general; but Kny, in a short communication to 

 the Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde of Berlin in 1876 

 shows that it is rather the manifestation of an inherent ten- 

 dency to bilateral symmetry. 



1. Buds downy: shrub or small tree. (Chinquapin). C. pumila. 

 Buds glabrous. (American chestnut). (1). C. dentata. 



