CHESTNUT, SWEET OR SPANISH 45 



and should be collected and sown at once, as they 

 quickly lose their germinative power. They want 

 plenty of room, at least four inches being allowed 

 between seeds when planted in the nursery border. 



Chestnut, Sweet or Spanish 



(Castanea vesca) 



are many fine specimens of the Sweet 

 JL Chestnut in the London parks, notably in Ken- 

 sington Gardens and on the light, gravelly soil at 

 Greenwich and other outlying districts ; but though 

 it succeeds well in the less smoky parts it is not to 

 be recommended for planting in very confined streets 

 and where heat and chemical impurities of the atmo- 

 sphere are the order of the day. Certainly in some of 

 the City squares and churchyards the Sweet Chestnut 

 is found struggling bravely with the adverse conditions 

 with which it is surrounded, but in such cases it 

 rarely develops into what could be described as either 

 a large or a handsome tree. 



In the park at Greenwich it has attained to huge 

 dimensions, some of the many specimens which were 

 planted two centuries ago being noble trees with 

 trunks that vary from 12 feet to over 20 feet in 

 circumference. There are some large, well-developed 

 trees in the central parks, better still at Brondesbury 

 and Hampstead, where the soil and atmospheric 

 conditions are more conducive to rapid and healthy 

 growth. The Spanish Chestnut is an introduced 

 tree, and though the exact date of introduction is 

 not known, there is every probability that it was 

 brought to this country by the Romans. When it 



