44 FAMILIAR TREES 



twisted trunks recalling bits of Spain, or of Salvator 

 Rosa's Calabrian landscape. In the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of the metropolis there are no specimens 

 to surpass the fine trees in Kensington and Kew 

 Gardens. 



Turner, in his "Names of Herbes" (1548), 

 writes : " Nux castanea is called in Greeke 

 Castanon, in Englishe a chestnut-tree, in Duch 

 Castene, in French Ung Chastagne. Chesnuttes 

 growe in diverse places of Englande. The maniest 

 that I have sene was in Kent." From Shake- 

 speare's allusions to it in Macbeth and the Tam- 

 ing of tlte Shrew, it would seem to have been 

 a common article of food in his time. 



Below the rounded, slightly-pointed buds in 

 spring may be seen the projecting bracket-like 

 scars which supported the heavy leaves of the 

 previous year. The bark of the young saplings, 

 and of the pollard shoots that are grown for Hop- 

 poles in the South-east of England, is smooth 

 and of a rich vinous maroon or red-brown tint ; 

 but in older trees it becomes grey, and splits 

 in vertical lines so as to allow of the expansion 

 of the wood within. These vertical cracks widen, 

 deepen, and sometimes, as the trees grow, become 

 twisted, thus often giving to the full-grown Chest- 

 nut stem a most distinctive rope-cable-like ap- 

 pearance. The tree attains a height of fifty, 

 eighty, or even one hundred feet, and single 

 stems may no doubt exceed twenty feet in 

 girth. The branches are given off alternately and 

 nearly horizontally, but, spreading outwards, bend 



