41. OSTRYA VlRGINICA HOP-HORNBEAM. 31 



virtues freely to water and may be administered in infusion or fluid ex- 

 tract. An infusion, prepared with three or four drachms of the leaves 

 and a pint of boiling water and well sweetened has been administered to 

 a child as much as it would drink.* 



NOTE. The American variety of the chestnut differs from the Span- 

 ish chestnut of Europe the true C. vesca, L. in having leaves more 

 acute at base and nuts much smaller and sweeter. 



The chestnut tree in Europe attains a prodigious size and age. One 

 exists on the side of Mount Etna famous as Castagno di cento cavalli, 

 because it is said to have sheltered a hundred mounted cavaliers. It is 

 scarcely more than a shell now, but is said (on the authority of Michaux) 

 to measure 160 ft. in circumference. At Sancerre, France, is a tree 

 which Michaux tells us " at six feet from the ground is thirty feet in 

 circumference; 600 years ago it was called the Great Chestnut, and, 

 though it is supposed to be more than one thousand years old, its trunk 

 is still perfectly sound and its branches are annually laden with fruit." 

 The fruit in that country is a favorite and valuable article of food. 



GENUS OSTRYA, MICHELI. 



Leaves ovate or oblong with straight veins. Flowers appear in early spring with the 

 leaves. Sterile flowers in cylindrical, drooping catkins from buds near the tip of the 

 branches of the preceding year; calyx a mere bract, roundish-ovate, ciliate and bear- 

 ing in its axil several stamens with short and sometimes forked filaments; anthers 

 1-celled and conspicuously hairy -tipped. Fertile flowers in short, imbricated, brac- 

 tiate catkins terminating the shoots of the season, bract deciduous and bearing in its 

 axil a pair of pistils, each adherent to a calyx -scale and surrounded with a tubular or 

 sac-like bractlet, which later completely envelops it; ovary incompletely 2-celled and 

 2-ovuled ; stigmas 2 filiform. Fruit a pendent strobile, very much resembling a hop, 

 made up of the imbricated, enlarged and closed involucral sacs, each of which con- 

 tains a single, smooth nutlet. 



Small trees. (" Ostrya " is the ancient Greek name.) 



41. OSTRYA VIRGINICA, WILLD. 



HOP-HORNBEAM, IRON-WOOD, LEVER-WOOD. 



Ger., Amerikanisclie Hopfenbuche ; Fr., Bois dur ; Sp., Ojaranzo de 



lupulo. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. Leaves ovate-oblong, acuminate, sharply doubly serrate, 

 with 11-15 principal veins, smooth above, under-surface and petioles somewhat 

 downy; leaf -buds slender and acute. Fruit (fully grown by August) as described 

 for the genus, involucral sacs downy, furnished at the base with rigid hairs. 



A rather small tree with fine spray, developing a full, round top when 

 growing alone, and often with twisted trunks. Its hop-like fruit, which 

 develops early and remains on until late, characterizes it during the sum- 



* U. S. Dispensatory, 16th ed., pp. 381-2. 



