The Chestnuts 271 



The name is the old classic one of the European beech, Fagus sylvatica, the 

 type of the genus, which has darker foliage and is frequently planted in our area, 

 especially the very dark-leaved form known as the Copper beech. A very pic- 

 turesque weeping form is also a great favorite with lovers of beautiful trees. In 

 Europe the fruit is largely used as food for swine, and the sweet, bland, fixed oil 

 expressed from it is used as food. Fossil remains representing species in this 

 genus have been found in Alaska, Colorado, and California. 



II. THE CHESTNUTS 



GENUS CASTANEA [TOURNEFORT] ADANSON 



ASTANEA comprises about 5 species of trees or shrubs of the north 

 temperate zone, none, however in western North America; they are 

 noted for their large, sweet nuts. 



They have alternate, stiff, membranous, sharp-toothed, straight- 

 veined leaves and caducous stipules. The flowers are strong-scented, appearing 

 after the leaves have fully unfolded. The staminate are in erect or ascending 

 deciduous catkins in the axils of the lower leaves; the flowers are in clusters of 3 

 to 7, stalked in the axils of small ovate bracts, some of them being subtended 

 by two smaller bractlets;- the perianth is bell-shaped, deeply 6-lobed, the lobes 

 ovate and rounded; stamens 10 to 20, their filaments thread-like and white, the 

 anthers ovoid or globose, yellow, long-exserted and introrse. The pistillate 

 flowers are at the base of the upper catkins in clusters of 2 to 5, mostly 3, enclosed 

 in a green, sessile or almost sessile involucre of thick, imbricated, oblong, sharp- 

 pointed, more or less hairy scales; the perianth is urn-shaped, 6-toothed, the 

 staminodes shorter than the teeth; ovary inferior, elongated, imperfectly 6-celled; 

 styles 6, spreading, linear, white, hair}% stigmatic at the apex and projecting 

 much beyond the involucre; ovules 2 in each cell. The fruit ripens in the 

 autumn of the first season, composed of the much enlarged, spiny, i- to 4-valved 

 involucre, completely enclosing the i to 3 nuts, or seldom more, which are leathery 

 coated, ovate, pointed, more or less compressed or flattened when crowded; they 

 have a large basal scar and are tipped with the withered style; seed usually only 

 one, completely filling the cavity, without endosperm; the cotyledons are thick, 

 fleshy, sweet and mealy. 



The genus was founded on the Old World chestnut, Castanea Castanea (Lin-, 

 naeus) Karsten, which is cultivated in several improved varieties and its nuts are a 

 very important source of food in some sections of southern Europe and western 

 Asia, where they are dried and ground into meal; they are much larger than the Ameri- 

 can nut, but less sweet. It is sometimes cultivated in this countr}'. The- 

 name is the classic name of the Old World tree and is supposed to be derived from 

 a city of that name in Thessaly. Fossil remains referable to this genus have been 

 found in the Arctic regions of both hemispheres and in western North America. 



