HORSE-CHESTNUT FAMILY 



acuminate, feather-veined ; midrib and primary veins prominent. 

 They come out of the bud conduplicate, woolly, brownish green, 

 drooping ; when full grown are dark green, thick, rough above, 

 paler green beneath. In autumn they turn a rusty yellow. Peti- 

 oles long, grooved, swollen at the base, sometimes chaffy at the 

 point the leaflets diverge. 



Flowers. May, June. Terminal, polygamo-monoecious, white, 

 unilateral, borne in upright thyrsoid panicles; pedicles jointed, four 

 to six-flowered. 



Calyx. Campanulate, gibbous, five-lobed, lobes unequal, imbri- 

 cate in bud ; disk hypogynous, annular, lobed. 



Corolla. Petals five, imbricate in bud, alternate with calyx lobes, 

 more or less unequal, with claws, nearly hypogynous, spreading, 

 white, spotted with yellow and red. 



Stamens. Seven, inserted within the hypogynous disk ; filaments 

 thread-like, exserted, curved ; anthers introrse, two-celled ; cells 

 opening longitudinally. 



Pistils. Ovary superior, three-celled ; style thread-like ; stigma 

 pointed ; ovules two. 



Fruit. A coriaceous capsule, globular, rough, prickly, three or 

 two or one-celled by suppression, loculicidally three-valved. Seeds 

 or nuts solitary in each cell, brown, shining, with a large round pale 

 scar, or hilum. October. Embryo fills the seed ; cotyledons very 

 thick and fleshy, remaining underground in germination. 



The Horse-chestnut in the earlier weeks of May is a sight for gods and 

 men. PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON. 



No knowledge of technical terms is necessary to enable one to pull apart 

 one of the great horse-chestnut buds, to notice the water-proof varnish on the 

 outside, the scale armor just within, the soft downy padding which protects the 

 minute leaves and the tip of the stem from sudden changes of temperature, to 

 see that leaves or flower cluster are already formed in miniature ready to 

 burst their covering when the favorable time shall come. GEORGE D. PIERCE. 



Our well-known Horse-chestnut is a native of Greece and 

 began to be cultivated throughout Europe in the seventeenth 

 century. Standing alone and allowed to attain its natural 

 shape it becomes, a stately tree. The trunk is erect, and 

 the branches come out with such regularity that it develops 

 a superb cone-like head. The branches almost invariably 

 take the compound curve, upward from the trunk, downward 

 as the branch lengthens, and upward at the tip. 



The spray is clumsy, and in winter each twig is finished 

 by a large terminal bud an inch or more long, which bears 

 56 



