142 WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND BLOSSOMS. 



Romans, and that it got a more permanent footing on our land 

 than its importers. It is grown chiefly for the sake of its young 

 wood as hop-poles, fence-posts, and hoops. Unlike the oak, its 

 timber deteriorates with age. 



It is distinctly an acquisition to our woods and plantations, 

 its long, toothed, shining leaves being fine both in shape and 

 colour. Its male flowers are produced in long, yellow catkins, 

 consisting of a great number of six-parted perianths ; from these 

 depend from ten to fifteen stamens, which discharge great quan- 

 tities of pollen. The female flowers are borne in threes within 

 an involucre (cupule\ and each has its perianth adhering to the 

 ovary ; there are from five to eight cells in the ovary, and a 

 similar number of stigmas, but, as a rule, only one cell matures 

 one of its two ovules. 



The name is said to be derived from Castanum, the name of 

 a town in Thessaly whence the Romans first obtained the fruit. 



The Oak (Quercus robur}. 



First and foremost in any list of British trees should come 

 the Oak, in utter disregard of all botanical classification, for not 

 only was our supremacy of the sea and our existence as a nation 

 gained by aid of our oaken walls, but a grand old Oak is finely 

 typical of British solidity, strength and endurance. Fifteen 

 years may be regarded as the average age at which the oak 

 first produces its fruit, the acorn, and it continues to ripen its 

 annual crop for centuries. Dryden has certainly not exag- 

 gerated in his lines that tell how 



"The monarch oak, the patriarch of trees, 

 Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees J 

 Three centuries he grows, and three he stays, 

 Supreme in state, and in three more decays." 



According to the records and traditions relating to many hollow 

 ruins of enormous girth still living at their circumference though 

 long since dead at heart, Dryden's nine-century tree is only 



