THE ROMANCE OF OUR TREES 



debt it owes. It is less generally known that to her 

 many other gifts Greece added the Horsechestnut, 

 but the fact is established after a lapse of three and a 

 quarter centuries. Western Europe's first knowledge 

 of the Horsechestnut was of trees cultivated in Con- 

 stantinople — just as was the case with the Lilac, most 

 familiar of garden shrubs. The two discoveries 

 almost synchronized. The Lilac was sent from Con- 

 stantinople to Vienna in 1 560. Seeds of the Horse- 

 chestnut were sent in 1570 from Constantinople to 

 Vienna by Dr. von Ungnard, Imperial Ambassador 

 to the court of Suliman II, and a tree was raised by 

 the celebrated Clusius. But a Flemish doctor, one 

 Quakleben, who was attached to the embassy of 

 Archduke Ferdinand I at Constantinople, in 1557 

 first mentioned the tree in a letter to Mattioli as told in 

 the letters, "Epistolarum medicinalium libri quinque," 

 published in Prague in 1561. Later Mattioli re- 

 ceived a fruit-bearing branch and published the first 

 description of the tree with a good figure of the leaves 

 and fruit on page 212 of his "Commentarii in libros 

 sex Pedacii Dioscoridis De medica materia," which was 

 published in Venice in 1565. Mattioli called it 

 Castanea equina because the fruits were known as 

 At-Kastan (Horsechestnut) to the Turks who found 

 them useful as a drug for horses suffering from broken 

 wind or coughs. Here then we have the origin of 

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